“Oh, it’s your father! Quickly, take him his plate!”
“But I must see to my friend!”
“You must go, Hakim, he will not wish to see you.”
“I won’t leave you, Ibu!”
“You must! Tao, take your father his plate now!”
“But what of my Jane?”
“She will be well, come, let us go!”
Jane heard a door open and close, and then small arms wrapped around her in a fierce hug. She felt like every limb was stuck in molasses, she could not return the gesture. But Tao’s words as he buried his face in her chest struck fear into her very marrow.
“She will die now,” he said softly. “My path has been chosen for me.”
With that, he and his mother disappeared back into the living area. There were screams and there were cries. There were strange sounds Jane couldn’t identify as anything more than multiple voices raised in carnal pleasure and then within minutes there was naught but silence. She heard soft sobs and wondered what had happened. But in the same instant she knew.
Jawahira was dead. The last thing she saw was ten year-old Tao Vasan Naran standing in the entrance to the bedroom covered in his mother’s blood.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“You see, my mother and her twin were very rich women,” came a soft and thickly accented voice in the darkness. “But when my ibu married my father, my grandfather disowned her. It was therefore Ibrahim’s mother who got the inheritance.”
Jane blinked. She felt like she was seated, but once again found only darkness. There was the hand holding hers again, and the voice she recognized immediately. She tried to speak his name but no sound emerged though she was certain she’d said it.
“You need not speak with your mouth, only your mind,” his voice said gently.
“Why can’t I see?” she thought, and was rewarded with a slowly brightening glow. She couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but gasped when she looked to her right.
Seated on a large overstuffed chair was Vasan. She was sitting in an identical chair and they were side by side. But he looked so different; she couldn’t put her finger on what it was, exactly. He was still bald, his skin that shade she could only describe as bronzed olive. His dark eyes looked evenly back at her and the corners of his mouth upturned in a small smile.
“All right, I think I need an explanation, and I’m not talking about what I just saw” she said. “You pulled me through the portal my father opened.”
“I did.”
“You don’t look the same.”
“I don’t?” he asked, letting go of her hand to touch his face. “Feels the same to me.”
“Undoubtedly, but…you don’t look…um…evil…anymore.”
“You’re not frightened of me.”
She shook her head. “Surprisingly no.”
“Here you see the real me, Jane. Whatever it is your father opened led to this place called Kekosongan Besar. I know it well.”
“What do those words mean?”
“The Great Void,” he replied. “Here all is as it should be, yet nothing is what it seems to be.”
“Honestly, Vasan.”
He grinned. He actually grinned. “I do not mean to be cryptic. You see, the existence of this plane is as natural to me as the fact that we breathe. Here we can be, do, see and feel anything we wish to.” He looked around as though seeing something there where she saw nothing. “Although I don’t believe this is my own dimension, it is similar enough.” He sighed. “It has been many years since I have been to this place.”
“Vasan, that doesn’t help me a whole lot. You reached through the portal and almost grabbed my father. You did grab me. And now we’re sitting here like it’s time for tea and crumpets after, I might add, I found myself running through the goddamn jungle with a little kid who turned out somehow to you be you.”
He leveled his eyes at her. “I do not know why we are here anymore than you do.”
“You pulled me through, that’s why I’m here! I could be home right now getting to know my father!”
Rising to his feet, complexion changing to nearly scarlet with anger, he began pacing what was, to her eyes, a nonexistent floor. “Don’t,” he seethed. “It was you and your father and those wretched Tanners who schemed this dimension into existence! Where it is and how we fare here are not my doing!”
She leaned back in the chair as she watched him pace. He had a point, there was no denying it. He wasn’t responsible, well not directly anyway, for this predicament. For her being here, yes. But the where? No.
He stopped and turned to face her. “It would seem that when we traveled to my past, I became that child again.”
“You mean that was…” Jane struggled to find the right way to phrase it. “The little boy who pulled me through the jungle, the you I’m seeing before me now was inside him?”
“I know that I was in there, but I was acting the way I had at that age. Except, of course, for you.”
“You know, I didn’t understand a lot of what you and your mother said until toward the end of it.”
Was he turning red again? “I don’t recall. It’s not important.”
“It is to me!” she protested. He waved his hand in the air and it reminded her so much of his mother, whom she had now briefly met, that she smiled sadly. “Tell me,” she said softly.
“Tell you what?” he railed, arms waving in the air as he began pacing again. “There is nothing to tell!”
“Tell me about Jawahir.”
Vasan whirled on her. “Don’t say her name.”
“Why not? She was your mother and that was her name, was it not? But why were you called Tao? And why was my father calling himself Hakim?”
“Questions, questions, always with the questions,” he muttered, returning to his seat.
She would have laughed out loud had it not happened again. Without warning, she found herself out of the Great Void and into…what?
* * *
She could sense that she was still somewhere in the jungles of Malaysia. But that was the last thought that made any real sense. This time she was not running, nor was there a small boy holding her hand. It was dark in the most palatable sense of the word. Not nearly as dark as the Void, to be certain, but only because of the lone candle which bathed a large stone, and a young man who knelt next to it, in its minimal light.
The sounds surrounding her were frightening, for they told of creatures she had never seen except from the safety of zoo collections. But these animals, she well knew, were wild and free, and perfectly capable of choosing to have her for dinner. No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than she heard a snarl behind her. Before she could turn, she felt a large beast slam her face-first into the jungle floor. The wind was knocked from her as for the briefest of moments it stood upon her back. She couldn’t catch her breath. She didn’t dare move.
And then with a great cry something leapt over her head and the beast was flung from her back. It snarled again and then roared, frightening her into scrambling away as she turned to try to make sense of the sounds with sight. But whatever was happening was well away from the candle and when a figure suddenly appeared before her with blood on his arms and hands, she screamed before losing consciousness.
* * *
The first thing she felt was a hand smoothing her hair gently from her forehead. Then strong arms lifted her into the air and began to carry her somewhere. Her eyes blinked open to find it was nearing dawn, but she kept still and silent for fear of who this person might be. This man she mentally corrected as she looked upon his visage. Jane couldn’t help the gasp that escaped her lips. This was an older version of Tao; there was no mistaking the strong, square jaw, the shape of the head and eyes.
Soon they were back in the hut that she clearly remembered from her earlier visit. She felt the same soft feather mattress beneath her body as he gently laid her upon it and smiled down at her. He quickly disappeared through the door she knew led o
utside and for a moment she let herself rest and try to figure out what the hell was going on.
He returned with a basin of water and placed it on the floor next to the bed. Then he fetched a folded cloth and was soon sitting next to her. She noticed his hands and arms were freshly washed at the same moment he noticed she was awake.
He bowed his head to her. “We meet again.”
She was surprised that he was speaking a language she could understand. “You are Tao. Also the one I know as Vasan,” she replied.
He nodded once and met her eyes. “I am.”
“You have aged.”
“I am fourteen,” he said and she was truly surprised. He seemed large for a teenager, more mature than those years would allow for.
“Where is your cousin?”
“He has gone abroad,” Tao replied. “It is only my father and I now.”
Jane thought back to something someone had once told her, something she knew was pertinent to this conversation, that she desperately should be able to recall. But it just wouldn’t come and she watched as he dipped the cloth in the water and slowly wrung it nearly dry.
“Please turn over,” Tao said. “The tiger injured your back. Your wounds should be tended.”
“Tiger?” she squeaked. “You’re telling me that was a tiger that attacked me?”
“Yes,” he nodded as she rolled to her stomach. He lifted her shirt…she didn’t even know what shirt she was wearing…lifted it until the back of her bra was exposed. Without a word he unfastened it and smooth the sides away from the skin of her back before proceeding to push the shirt up to her shoulders.
She felt the sting of whatever it was the tiger had done to her and air hissed through her teeth. “Is it very bad?” she asked.
He began to dab at a wound over her lumbar spine. She flinched as he replied, “Not as bad as some I have seen.”
“Are you the one who saved my life?” she asked, cringing with each touch of the wet cloth.
“I killed the creature,” he said by way of response. “Its pelt will make a fine vest.”
“You saved my life,” she repeated. “Why did you do that?”
She felt him shrug as he moved to rinse and wring out the cloth again. “I do not know.”
Opening her mouth to say something else, Jane jumped when she heard a door slam. The entire hut shook and she twisted her head to be able to see Tao’s face. He laid the cloth over a particularly painful area of her back between her shoulder blades and closed his eyes.
“What is it?” she asked, but he hadn’t the chance to respond.
The door from the living area burst open and in the growing morning light she saw the most terrifying thing she thought she’d ever laid eyes on. He was gigantic; he filled the entire doorway and then some. At least six-and-a-half feet tall, his head was bald and his goatee and mustache thin and tapered. He was most certainly Chinese, but with large eyes that seemed to glow ethereally.
His chest was so broad she thought she might be able to lie fully across it head-to-toe, and one bicep was larger around than her thigh. He almost seemed to roar like the tiger she’d heard earlier when he spoke.
“What is this?”
Tao turned to face the man but didn’t rise from the bed. “A stranger was attacked by a tiger, Father,” he said evenly.
“You did well, boy,” the man said as he crossed the room in three strides.
Father? This man was Vasan’s father?
“I needed a new one. It would appear you have found just the thing for me,” his voice boomed. “Fair-haired, too.”
“No, Father,” Tao said in a near-whisper.
The large man seemed genuinely surprised. “What did you say to me?”
Tao laid a hand on Jane’s back protectively. “I said no.”
The father grabbed Tao by the neck, his hand so large it completely encircled it. But Tao’s forearm came up and shoved it away.
“Boy, do you forget who I am?”
“I do not,” Tao replied, his hand still upon Jane’s back. She couldn’t help but tremble, the pain of the tiger’s claws all but forgotten. “But this one is not for you.”
“You dare give me orders?” his father roared. Reaching down with both hands, he grasped Tao by the shoulders and picked him right up off the bed until he dangled in the air. Jane gasped and rolled to her side, scooting back to the other side of the bed and onto the floor, where she knelt and peeked back to see what was happening. “Why is she not for me, boy? Do you want her?”
Jane gulped as Tao struggled to free himself. But his father’s hands were far too strong. Then the man moved one hand to the boy’s neck and began to squeeze. “No,” Jane whispered. “Vasan doesn’t die. He doesn’t die, he…he…” She struggled to recall exactly what she knew.
“You know very well that unless a woman has promised herself to another, she is mine to take and to kill!”
Jane rose to her feet, discarding her bra to the floor and pulling her shirt back down over her torso. Raising her chin defiantly but fearing her gelatin legs would give out any moment, she spoke. “I have promised myself to him, sir. I am his.” Though she knew she wasn’t actually speaking English, somehow she simultaneously understood her own words and theirs as such. It was disorienting, to say the least.
The man’s eyes grew large and she could have sworn a yellowish glow emitted from them, if only for a moment. “You lying bitch!” he spat, tossing Tao to the floor like waste paper. He lunged across the bed toward her. Jane shrieked and ran around the edge of the bed toward Tao’s crumpled body. “You do not belong to him! Nobody would want him! He is the spawn of the devil!”
She tuned out the maniacal laughter that came ever nearer as she knelt next to Tao, who’d just begun to stir. Slowly his eyes opened, and she knew his father must be overhead by the look on his face. She cringed and ducked as lightning-fast Tao’s hand reached down to his belt and a shiny object glinted past her eye. She felt something heavy fall upon her, crushing her body to Tao’s. Then just as quickly the two men were rolling across the floor, leaving her lying there watching helplessly.
She saw the thing that had glinted; in Tao’s left hand there was a strange sort of knife with a curved wooden handle and what could only be described as a wavy silver blade that was at least seven inches long. As she struggled to come to her feet, she realized she couldn’t move a thing. Panic swept through her. Had her neck been broken when the father had fallen on her? No, no, it couldn’t be.
But as Tao and his father continued their struggle she realized that she couldn’t move a muscle. Her eyes were glued to them but her arms and legs would not obey. At last, bleeding profusely, the father came to rest on his back with Tao straddling his chest. He raised the strange knife high into the air with both hands.
“Foolish boy,” his father growled. “Don’t you know I can’t be killed?”
In one swift movement, Tao proved him wrong. The knife found its mark, sinking deep into his father’s chest. Suddenly there was a shriek that cut through Jane’s head like the very knife Tao still held fast to. She wanted to cover her ears, but couldn’t. A wisp of smoke curled up from his father’s mouth as he bellowed, “Noooooooo!”
The darkness began to creep into the corners of her vision again. She saw Tao’s body thrown across the room, saw him slump against the wall. He opened his eyes and looked directly at her. “Thus,” he gasped, “the beginning…of my end.”
She could see Tao’s father breathed no more. A thousand voices seemed to cry out, whether in agony or jubilation she could not tell. The last thing she saw as the darkness closed in was that the young Vasan’s eyes had gone completely red.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
This time when she came to, there was sufficient light to see, and she was no longer in the place called the Great Void. Rather, she found herself in a room made all of stone. Tapestries full of varying shades of reds and blues hung on the three walls; the fourth was occupied by a double-wide closed
wooden door.
In the center of the room a fire pit held flames crackling merrily. She could feel their warmth. There was a soft click and she looked toward the door to find a woman wearing barely enough to cover her chest or pelvis entering with a silver tray. She looked to be a native Malay with dark skin, straight black hair to her waist and very dark eyes kept trained on the floor.
She placed the tray on a table across the room. It was only when the woman approached her that Jane realized she was laying on a beautiful sleigh bed made of light-colored wood similar to that of the table. The mattress was soft and inviting; the sheets were either silk or satin, she couldn’t tell which, and were blood red, matching with the comforter.
The woman stood at her bedside and gestured for her to rise. Jane complied, mystified. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.
In silence, the woman stood with her feet apart and arms spread out to her sides, then nodded to Jane to do the same. Her eyes still hadn’t left the floor. Jane mimicked her movements and yelped in surprise as the woman began to unbutton her blouse. She clenched a fist over her chest, gathering the cotton of the shirt, and asked, “What are you doing?”
The young woman moved to an armoire along the wall, also made of the same wood as the bed and table. Opening the door, she seemed to be looking for something and then, having found it, pulled it from the rack. Jane gasped. It truly was the most beautiful native gown she had ever laid eyes on. She recalled from all the research she’d done on her Lightning books, when she was describing Vasan, his palace and his slaves – Jane gasped. That was it! That’s where she was now, and this woman before her was a slave, she just knew it.
That meant the slave had been ordered to bathe and dress her, and Jane knew the poor girl would be the one to suffer if she chose not to comply. She watched as the girl laid the gown out on the bed, smoothing it gently as she went, then stood spread-eagled again and nodded at her. Finally she peeked up at her face, stifling a smile. Then her fingers reached out and unbuttoned the rest of the blouse, carefully removing it and laying it behind Jane on the bed.
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