"I would've been damned if you did,” Netu said, with a sigh of relief. “Thanks, baby, for saving it all for me! Clever you! I know, from now on, you won't forget I’m your baby."
“A promise remains a promise. It’s an obligation that must be met to its logical conclusion. I've given you my word, and that’s it."
"Did your ex-boyfriend tell you why he wanted the request honored?"
“Yes. He explained it would enable him accomplish all his dreams - some kind of magical touch that would seal his future."
"He knows your spiritual station then?"
"He knows a lot about me."
Anne swelled with joy. She could not hold back any secret from him, having allayed her fear. She gazed into his eyes and grinned. "Netu, the difference between you and all the men I've ever known is that you are intelligent," she said, riveting her gaze to the wall to stifle laughter.
Netu felt flattered. "Really?"
"Sure. Smarter than anyone I've known." She fell back into his arms and they lay down together, smiling and smooching, oblivious of the world's cadences.
This happened a week prior, a victory he had celebrated by over-pampering Anne with attention. The assurance they got through their new mother-and-child pact had sustained this victory over Anne.
Strange feelings began to give doubt to their well-knitted love barely a week after. Claws of suspicion fought hard to capture his mind, luring him to a depth he could not understand. In artful self-defense, for the second time in a week, he almost reneged on his vow to never again hurt Anne. He regretted this.
He did not doubt the relationship though, except for some intrusions in their love. Netu termed these as “the ugly hands of evil.” He had to save Anne from this rearing evil, or from his doubts, by making sacrifices.
Would Anne perhaps misinterpret my move as a blatant bluff? Would she not imagine I had given her a wild stallion kick just to fulfill my desire? Netu blocked such thoughts from spoiling what had to be done, and done fast.
"A perturbing silence, wouldn't you say?" Anne broke in. Her probing gaze prompted him back to the present. “What were you brooding about? I saw a slight crease on your face."
"Just thinking; darts, here and there,” Netu drawled. “Couldn’t focus on a single thing. I could tell you were thinking too."
"Yes," responded Anne. "Same vagueness of thought. Nothing to hold onto. A romance with fear, of what I couldn't say. It just hovered around my heart – like I was scared of losing something really special.”
Netu got the hint. "Mine wasn't fear as such but the thought of decisions that must be taken without delay."
Anne reclined her head on her palm and propped her elbow between jutting pillows. "What decisions?"
Netu supported his head with an elbow and peered into her face. He saw a mask of concern there. "Decisions in our best interest," he answered in a solemn tone.
Anne feigned ignorance. "Oh, I didn't realize we were that pressed."
"The pressure on us is no longer sublime, as it were,” Netu said, with a churlish chuckle at the import of his statement. “Some moments ago you felt it too. You said so, if I remember correctly. It’s been so with me for some time now. I've tried to kill it in my head, fling it into the deep seas, but it just wouldn't leave. The decisions come at times of confusion, like this moment, because that’s the safest way both of us would go unhurt."
A sudden quake rumbled in Anne's belly, along with spasms of fear and disorientation. By God, don’t let him say something stupid. She tried to cover her inner trembling with a wry grin. "My ears are eager to hear your judgment, my lord,” she said with a forced calmness.
"There are two decisions to be made; no, two choices rather,” Netu explained. “Sounds more humane to see them as choices. Embedded in those choices that I would give you are the solutions to an impending disaster. I'm trying to forestall the unavoidable canon fire our emotions would face if we overlook the anxieties that had enslaved us in recent times. We need to make those choices if we must sustain our hopes for better dawns.
He paused, smirked at Anne, and went on. "It’s a fact that we’re in love with each other. It’s also true that we don’t want to hurt each other. The only way we can safeguard our mutal feelings and protect our future is to make the right choices."
Anne’s mind raced a marathon. She could not tell what he was up to.
Netu observed in Anne's shifty maneuvre on the bed, a weird blend of fear and faked easiness. He could perceive her struggle to resist by sheer will power a wave of anger rising against her senses, yet the betrayal of fear of something unknown glared in her restlessness.
Netu grunted, and then resumed his proposition. "Anne, you must think deeply of these options before you make your choice. It's for the sake of our love. There's a revenge instinct driving its tendrils into our hearts. We can both trace its origin to our past lives - many incarnations and civilisations ago. We have to stop the growth of these dangerous tendrils."
Netu knew his punch line – the options with which he would stun Anne – but he foot-dragged instead. "I've examined and re-examined the choices with care," he said, lowering his gaze, seeking for an inner empowerment to voice the design of his heart. "For our sake you would have to choose between me and what you think I could do to erase the instinct of vengeance in you."
In Anne's mind, the options sounded like clapping thunder, leaving her gaping as if blinded by a strong wind. She tried to rise from the bed but sat instead at its edge. Her head ached in disbelief and confusion. Despised, she felt a desperate need to defend herself.
As far as her blighting thoughts went, she felt trapped like an unyielding parachute, stuck to no fault of hers. "What kind of talk is this?" she muttered almost to herself, with a shrewd glance.
Damn my indiscretion! She cursed. If I’d not told Netu Deo of our four other incarnations and the chain of intrigues imported to the present, he would not haunt me now with those memories. Damn him for probing and eliciting such cherished secrets from me from time to time! But is Netu aware of those times, and only wanted to confirm what he had already known? Damn, I’ve told him of the deadly schemes that marred, made, and remade those incarnations even if he knew! And here I am, a fool for it!
Netu read her fears well and tried to ride the turbulent wave of her incensed emotion. "It’s the best thing to do," he said with caution. "Let me explain. In the options, we have individual claim to a great future, though devoid of collective ambition. The first choice offers you the chance to fall in love again. And it’s a natural way to erase from your consciousness any lingering impression that I might have left behind. There might be evergreen memories in spite of the new affair but with time, you'd learn to forget me completely. The alternative to this choice, if you view it as too harsh, is to tell me the one vital key that would unlock the vaults of vengeance. This, I believe, will liberate in your being the sweet force of love. The second choice, you’ll admit, will unite us and lead to the fulfillment of our collective ambition. As for the other choice, you know where it puts both of us. What do you say to this?"
Anne had never in her life experienced so grave a shock. Her perfect universe was in shambles, thanks to Netu’s deadly whim. Had his love song been a ruse? What a height of treachery? How unpardonable his wiles to chop off her heart for sale in the market stalls? Had she been wrong to trust in love, to give her being wholesale to the deft beckon of cupid's hand? To blazes with his options, whatever they mean! There would never be another man that could replace him in her heart with as much relevance. She had loved him boundlessly. No man could command so much of her respect and care as he had done, in spite of her faint awareness of his guilt conscience, what he termed a tempest of vengeance.
Just yesterday, with his sly remarks about promotion, he had incensed her like a fiery hornet, and she had managed to tame the violent wave of suspicion with her own
embankments. With the present options, however, Netu had gone ahead to demystify her heart’s stronghold, rendering her prone to the torment of the elements.
"If you love someone so deeply, you wouldn't ask such a person to make the kind of choice you ask me to make," Anne stammered. Her voice quivered, masking a strange, wracking pain inside her. Tears squirted and blemished her gorgeous face. "Do you really love me?" she sobbed, as she fought to take hold of her emotion.
The room became hazy. The entire world spun with blighted fury before Netu's eyes. The atmosphere dazed him with uncalled-for images which shocked him into tears, but chivalry restrained him.
No warrior would permit himself to weep in a battlefield; it is the greatest weakness, he argued with himself. He needed all the courage he could summon to end this war, though subtle.
"I love you, Anne,” Netu said, in a waning voice. “Perhaps, I've not told you this before, but you know I do. I can't bear to see you hurt. That informs my action; choices, I mean."
"You say you love me?" Anne queried. She still sobbed, hiding her face in her palms.
"Yes, I do." He seldom used the word, love, for those he cared for but he regretted nothing, having said the word she wanted to hear. Balls of insistent tears rolled down his eyes and fell on his T-shirt. Embarrassed by his swelling emotion, he wiped his eyes with his palm. A warrior never cries, he thought.
“Netu, if you love me, why do you do this to me?"
"What I've just asked of you is the sacrifice of love," Netu said. He fought back his splurging tears and tried to take Anne back into his arms.
She stiffened at the force of his words. He did care after all! But did he give his choices on selfish grounds or for mutual interest? Even through the maze of jeering images, she could see the glint of hope in the tumultuous, hazy expanse. By her reckoning, these options belonged to the devil.
Sacrifice of love, he had called it. Should she make the sacrifice? Dreadful thoughts assailed her. She shuddered to consider the reality of such a sacrifice: Netu dashing out of her life like a vagrant shooting star.
Netu wound his arms around her shoulders and weakened her resistance. "Please, Anne, don't make me lose control," he pleaded in a quivering voice. “Stop sobbing, if not, I too will break down. Please, calm down.” He suppressed a choke in his throat, swallowing hard.
Anne turned in his clasp and stared at him with bleary tear-rimmed eyes. When she noticed the squirting tears in his eyes, her heart exploded with feelings.
"Sacrifice of love!" A husky sob accompanied her echo as she threw herself onto Netu’s shoulder. "Sacrifice of love!" she repeated once more, bathing Netu's shoulders with tears.
"It is okay, my baby,” Netu coaxed on, stroking her back. “It’s okay. I love you, calm down. You still have me. Hush, now. I'm here with you."
She pulled away and smiled. Her charming face carried not the faintest trace of anxiety, anger or despair. The gloom of her sobs surrendered to a mood of wild delight. Perplexed, Netu eyed her with curious excitement.
Anne smiled even more broadly. "Netu, the choices you gave me were in line," she said. "We'd better be done with them then." She paused, rearranged her braids to a neat knot behind her earlobe, and retraced her thought. "The first option excites me more; a lasting antidote I must say, since we won't have to come back to face our weights all over again. So, I'd go for the first option." She glowered. "I remember your words all too clearly: sacrifice of love! Let’s make that sacrifice for our sake."
Netu knew Anne’s ingenuity had taken him to his wit's end. He conceded this fact. If he gave Anne Ofino a hard shove, she would find her way back into his heart with an uncanny relevance. He had thought she would go for the second choice, fearing the consequence of the first; but she had tried to outsmart him in his own game, denying him the code to her heart's tempest of vengeance.
"If that's your choice, well, all right," Netu said, knowing she could not have meant it. "But I would most certainly subscribe to the second option. It soothes us more. With it, we can have ourselves caring and sharing for eternity."
"Do you really believe I like the idea of leaving you for someone else?" Anne asked, pressing her bosom against his chest and imprisoning his neck with her slim arms. Her nipples hardened under her shirt. Yet, it did not arouse Netu. Instead he fixed his mind on the sour mood he had been trying to alter to mirth. “I don't ever wish to leave you; not even for a second, no matter what happens between us," she spluttered, the tears oozing out. "I am scared of losing you, Netu. Please, don't ever leave me."
Anne Ofino sobbed. Her earlier resolve, melted away, and she relapsed into a listless state of anguish and despair.
Netu held her close, cajoling her with sweet words, rocking her to a lullaby. "Let's forget all about options,” he said. “No one ever said anything about options and none of us must remember anything of the sort. The issue is buried. Let’s not exhume it. Just remember: nothing has been said and nothing will anymore be said about our future. We have each other and that's the best we could ever have! Promise, you’ll forget about it."
Anne gave a weary nod, her sobbing staunched by his words.
"Fine," Netu continued. "You and I together we'll reach the highest peak, and there, we'll know our paradise! How about that?"
”Whatever you say," Anne said.
Silence hung over the pensive mood. The combined charge of their entangled bodies dissolved the stubborn knots of fear and tears.
When at last the orange-gold luminescence of the imperious sun fell over the precarious western edge of Newland's expanse, enthroning a round moon on the eastern horizon and the silvery shawls of a bright night, Anne got ready to leave. She had spent two days at Netu's place. Her joy was such that even he could not help but admire her shock-absorbing spirit. She took the day's arguments and the pressures of the past week in her strides as if nothing had transpired. They resolved after the argument on his options to be a strong team. They would work out their destinies together as a team, and allow no fear or suspicion to threaten their deserved peace.
Netu Deo escorted Anne Ofino to OldHill’s bus stop and dallied around until she boarded. "I'll see you at the weekend," she half-shouted to Netu as she sat down. In the same breath, she added cheerfully, "Netu, don't do what I wouldn't do."
“I won't,” Netu replied, smiling. The bus zoomed off towards Diosh Park, where Anne would disembark for another bus to Remwil District. She waved him, smiling, while Netu reciprocated. He turned and walked down the slope of OldHill back to the apartment. His fast softening heart intrigued him. Would it ever stop huffing especially for Anne Ofino?
Part Two
ATLANTIS
THE PAST
Chapter Six
SONGHAI, ATLANTIS. Twenty-five thousand years ago.
Tonka Manu drew open the drapes of the nearest window in the large oval penthouse. A sudden surge of emotion took over his mind - a prickly sense of premonition in the depths of his heart. While his right forefinger traced the edges of the drapes, his heart reeled in the grip of an intense revelation he could not place. It had a lot to do with Atlantis. This worried him. He knew not what it meant or how it could be overcome.
His dark-brown eyes were first fixed on the outside of the penthouse’s window. His gaze then rose beyond the Divine Theatre, the lush expanse of the intervening gardens and arching tapestry of Manu Square's tangling mansions. He beheld the northern horn of civilization. In the view, great riches and architectural masterpieces spread all around him like the magnificent bloom of a Lotus flower. In Tonka’s eyes, the skyline was awash with glimmering sapphires of triangular, dome-shaped structures. They reflected the hazel glare of the lazily hovering sun. Beneath them, varied economic trees spread their foliage like royal canopies along a plush-green avenue. Under the shades, gold-plated, eight-lane carriageways schemed into side streets, sparkling amidst the enchanting surroun
dings. On the streets of Songhai, aerophibian cars and buses, their wings idly tucked to their sides, vied with a variety of posh automobiles. The automobiles moved with ease and emitted no poisonous exhaust. In the steps of the many Atlanteans prowling the busy streets of Songhai, the essence of the divine glared from Tonka Manu’s assessment. This aspect had fed the initial phase of the civilization and inspired the humans to heightened accomplishments in later phases. A reckless attitude, however, had crept into their joy. In spite of the consequences of their misplaced priorities and spiritual stead, Tonka Manu thought Atlanteans might steer clear of the dangerous cliff and spare him the bouts of anxiety.
A maroon colored Hansa convertible pierced into view through pockets of hazel clouds in its flight. The customized aerophibian car skirted the northern skyline and nose-dived into the fields to the east beyond Manu Square.
Ahead of the Divine Theatre, men and women strolled on the promenades. Some made swift turns into intersecting streets while others strode leisurely into nearby alleys. These movements were inspired by how grande Atlantis was, especially with the aura these folks radiated. The men wore small caps that took up portions of their heads. They looked pristine in cassock-like silk garbs, almost like hollow tendrils stretching below their knees. These covered the better part of their ankle-length trousers, an obvious inelegance when seen in light of the surrounding splendor.
Whorls of large siphons and blouses reflected the women's sense of chastity. Their scarves and shawls covered their hair but exposed their radiant faces, like over-dressed dolls. Young men on trendy bicycles and motorbikes breezed past the pedestrians walking on the bulwarks.
An eagle’s antics in the hazel sky also drew Tonka Manu’s attention from the vantage point of his penthouse window. It crested the cool currents of the coastal wind, soaring with elegance between trees, above high towers and robust buildings that blended into the beautiful vastness of Atlantis. Soaring on fully spread wings, its tail swayed to the west-bound currents. It did not reckon with the fascination of the Atlantean who observed its tricks from the window of a penthouse in a cluster of mansions that formed an arc round the Divine Theatre in the holy hub of Manu Square, Songhai.
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