by Aaron D. Key
Maone looked at me dispassionately. “I’m not sure you are.”
Never had she reminded me more of the stern guardian she had been, which took me back to an awed childlike state, but I struggled against this feeling of powerless.
“I should know,” I said. I was eager to get the unpleasant event out of the way so that life could progress.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dealing With Aeth
We reappeared at the breakfast table. Yan was toying with a piece of bread.
Rael smiled when he saw us. “It’s good to see you both again. Are you ready, Damon Ich?”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure whether it was possible to know if I had done enough to deal with the scariest situation I had ever faced. I just knew I could not banish fear to the sidelines anymore.
“I’m nervous about spending long in your time,” Rael continued. Once we have dealt with Aeth together, Elena and I will leave before our presence disturbs anything. Maone will stay with you for a while to give you whatever help you need, and then you can arrange for her to travel to Glant’s city. You see why I enclosed you and Maone so carefully in what I thought was an impenetrable bubble. I was afraid your being here would cause even more trouble otherwise. Now, are we ready?”
As if he had called her, Elena appeared on the staircase. There was a definite tension in the air. Elena was not happy with Rael or Maone. There was something on her mind of great significance but she was not sharing it. I was trying to work through the story she had told me and I thought that I was beginning to understand. Elena said she left her bed one night, lived three months with Aeth, and then returned to Rael, him none the wiser. I could understand why this would lead to some tension between them but it didn’t explain the anger she was tightly holding in.
“I think it’s time to go to the hill,” Rael said eventually, and we all made for the staircase. It was eerie, like being a visitor in a place with a rigorously practised fire drill in progress and not knowing what to do other than to follow.
“All you will need to do, all of you, is suppress anything Aeth tries against you. I will deal with him. It is my duty because I brought him here and gave him the power. But I think we would be most effective against him if we are all working together and not fighting against each other.”
Rael said this to me but with an almost pleading expression in the direction of Elena. She seemed oblivious and stayed silent.
“It is important that none of you kill Aeth,” Rael continued. “We all need power. We should not risk this gift killing Aeth, otherwise he would have achieved his mission to disrupt everything we work towards.”
Maone looked nervously at Elena and Rael and then, as they turned away, grimaced at me. I was not exactly sure what Rael was getting at either and shrugged my shoulders.
When we reached the hill, we entered the circle of trees together.
Maone looked at me and smiled, and I saw again the amber depths that lurked in her pupils. I knew they were now in mine too.
Rael looked around. “Are we ready?”
The trees around us faded and were replaced almost instantly with identical ones. Never ageing, never growing, always fruiting but never flowering. They were more constant than the sky above, which was a continually changing tableau. It was completely dark, an ominous sign very rarely seen, stars and moon hidden behind a storm cloud.
We stepped out of the trees into the scene of devastation I had seen in my memory. The one difference was I didn’t see any bodies, for which I was grateful. We didn’t walk in line like avenging angels but each at our own pace. Elena was first, Rael walking behind, talking to her. I caught only the word “please”. Maone followed behind again, taking a slightly different route. It was easier now to walk over the blackened plain as there was no vegetation to obstruct our path. I was slowest of all, looking around me with a sense of dismay. Yes, I had seen it in my dream, but I had just left my garden looking beautiful and now I couldn’t even see the remnants of it.
We came at last to the inner courtyard by the lion’s head spring. Aeth was sitting in front of the still-flowing water, just as he had been in my dream. Slumped beside him was Monta, with glazed and unfocused eyes, as if he had been stunned. Aeth looked up as we grew closer, and stood up.
“Hello, Elena. Back so soon? It was only a few minutes ago you left me. I knew you would never be able to stay away.”
Elena said nothing but carried on looking at him as if he were an interesting insect trapped in a jar. Rael made no sign that he had heard him at all. Aeth looked disconcerted and tried again to get some reaction.
“Maone, I see you recognise me. I would hope so. I am still warm from your bed.”
I looked at Maone in sympathy. I did not know if Rael had told her but by the look on her face he had decided not to.
“It was you!” she said in a tone of betrayal suffered and loathing.
“I would’ve come back, you know, but this happened to me before I had the chance,” Aeth said in a tone of gentle mocking.
Maone also looked away and said nothing, as if she was too disgusted with him, or herself, to carry on noticing his presence.
Elena looked at Maone with a face suddenly reddened, and then she looked at Aeth, and then Rael. She now looked happier than I had seen her since I had died.
“And Damon Ich, I see you have survived – looking a little bit dilapidated but in much better condition than I intended to leave you in. So many opportunities I had to destroy you, but you always seemed to have such a strong sense of self-preservation.”
I did not know how to answer and so I didn’t. I still pitied him, even more now I was really here, and I saw the fragile shell he inhabited. He looked like a body that had vomited and excreted the last drop of goodness out of it and was now as light as a bag of dehydrated skin. I could not understand how Maone had been attracted to this walking corpse, but I imagined Aeth had used the power to fill his body with life and energy.
I also pitied him because he was all alone, apart from Monta, who had only supported him to save his loved ones from torture. I was there with my family, all four of us together, an unusual situation for me. It didn’t seem fair that he had no one.
“I think it is time to end this,” Rael said, stepping forward.
There was a roar in my head, of power rushing through my blood. I tried to do as Rael asked. I wondered what options he was considering if we couldn’t kill Aeth. I tried to suppress any defence that Aeth could come up with, but he seemed lifeless.
Maone was working beside me; our thoughts mingled. We were both confused by the lack of resistance.
I couldn’t tell what Elena was doing. She wasn’t helping us, I knew.
Rael fell to his knees. “Elena, No!”
Aeth had also fallen to his knees. Then he slumped in a surprisingly small heap on the floor. Monta was beginning to look around him with a sense of surprise. Rael was sobbing now. Elena was nowhere to be seen. There was another figure through the archway behind us, full of light and power, but not Elena – throbbing with a power completely unconstrained and alien. The roar in my head suddenly turned off, as if a switch had been pushed.
I could hear the sound of the water trickling out of the lion’s mouth and birds, geese or swans, flying overhead. Echoing footsteps made their way towards us on the stone pavement. I turned around to see Ann, hand in hand with Elena. She smiled at me in the friendly but challenging way I now remembered so well, but she turned to Rael first.
“Rael, I am sorry but I killed Aeth. I believed he deserved it and really in his heart wanted death. It would have been cruel to have sent him anywhere, even cured, with the memories he would have had. I’m sorry if it meant so much to you.”
“You killed him?” Rael said in a tone that sounded more hopeful than saddened. “Elena, you are safe – your power intact?”
Elena came closer and stood beside Rael as he stood up straight.
“Was that what you were worried about? I thought you really didn’t want Aeth to die,” she said suspiciously. “Why do you care whether I retained my power or not? I don’t need it.”
“I thought you had lived with Aeth for two hundred years and only the power was keeping you alive,” Rael explained. He looked embarrassed.
Elena laughed. “You thought I was over two hundred years old. Flattering! We spanned those years, but jumped in time between them. I think it’s been no more than two years since Aeth lost his power and we ended up here.”
“I should have realised. I’ve been an idiot. And you have always been beautiful to me. As to Aeth, I would not have felt happy being the one to decide whether he should die or not,” Rael said slowly. “I have no feelings about it other than that.”
“It’s me who’s been an idiot,” Elena said with her head partially bowed. “I need to apologise to you and to Maone. I believed I saw the man who said he loved her in her memory when you first brought her here and it was you. I realise now that it was Aeth. So many similarities to fool me. I think he deliberately made himself look more like you in her memories to cause trouble. I thought you had grown tired of me.”
“You are an idiot! Do you mean you have believed that all this time and said nothing?”
“If you had grown tired of me there would have been nothing to say,” Elena said quietly.
Rael and Elena began to look as if they were going to kiss.
“We have more important business,” my sister interrupted sternly.
“We do,” Rael agreed cheerfully, now without a care in the world.
“I thought you had died,” I said to Ann nervously. There was something quite intimidating about her at the moment. Perhaps it was because she was holding on to her anger; the anger with which she had killed Aeth, as if to justify her act.
I tried to explain. “In my memory, I thought I saw you die.”
“Well, yes. Fortunately for me Elena was there, and she was able to help me escape from Aeth for long enough to acquire power of my own.”
“I don’t understand how,” Rael interrupted. “I thought I had shielded it very well. I did not think anyone would ever find the source.”
“You had – at least from anyone without power,” said Elena primly. “I reminded Ann that as she was there when you first came across the power, she would know what to do if she got there. She was reluctant but decided that it was important soon after Aeth began to pay her attention. I distracted him and was able to send her to the place where you acquired the power, and when she returned, she was a useful ally. Not only did she have power, but unlike all those who took their power from you, hers was without conditions.
“Aeth was a bastard but a bastard I knew very well. He kept me around because he thought I would hate it, but what he forgot in the rush, I think, of being free from me and of being a powerful man again, was that I was not a victim. I acted like one to support his delusion but there was nothing he could do to me unless I allowed it, and being there with him, I was able to help.”
Elena walked around and put her arms around Monta to help him rise. She smiled at him and he smiled nervously back. It was an unusual expression for him, but I could tell he was reminded of his stay in the desert tower in which he had been a mindless slave to the woman called Elena.
“Monta, I can tell that you need to sleep. Have a rest here.” Elena pointed to the stone seat. She made a pillow out of her scarf and watched him rest his head tentatively. As he shut his eyes there was a sudden relaxation of all the muscles in his body, a slump as if he had died. Elena looked round at our worried faces with a timid smile.
“He’s alright. He has had the worst few months of his life and he needed to sleep properly, that’s all. He is very resilient. Hopefully he will wake with faded memories and a comforted mind. I owe it to him. He has been invaluable.
“We knew that Aeth had asked Monta to kill Koa. The despair in Monta’s heart was very apparent. Ann and I convinced him to pretend to carry out the idea that he had decided upon and we made it appear real to you so Aeth would believe it. Then your sister took Koa and Herai to a safe place out of Aeth’s reach.”
“They are alive,” I said in awe. The relief was overwhelming.
“We were a little concerned when Monta decided to stab himself in the heart, but he assured us he knew Aeth would restore him so he could carry on being useful. He thought Aeth would become suspicious if he showed no emotion.
“And from then on every time Aeth asked Monta to kill someone, we made it look good and we hid them away on the other side of the desert wall.”
“Monta asked us to take Jack early on, before Aeth decided to kill him. We pretended he died of natural causes. The scheme worked well and fooled Aeth. I think it would have been bad if we had not been there.”
This seemed to be a great understatement. I could hardly believe it.
“Everyone is alive then?” Rael asked to be sure, hope beginning to lighten his face even more.
“I don’t believe we missed anyone,” Ann said with great pride.
“I wanted to tell you but I knew Aeth would suspect something if you started to feel relief,” Elena confessed to Rael.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you did all this and I knew nothing of it,” Rael said, and he gave Elena a bear hug, to which she responded stiffly but seemed to quite enjoy. Then he hugged Ann, more gently this time.
“Anyway,” Ann said as he released her delicately, “most importantly I do not need this power now and I want to get rid of it. I really hated Aeth and I’m afraid I enjoyed killing him, although I am beginning to feel a little guilty about it now, but there are lots of other people I don’t like that much. So could you take it away before I get carried away?”
I could tell this was a hint of the Ann I knew peeping through but by the hurried way Rael went to work, the humour was lost on him. He carried out a process that had obviously never been tried before because it lacked elegance, and yet soon we saw the power leaving Ann’s body almost like an image of her soul drifting out into the sky and then heading towards the gorge as if going home.
Everyone was alive. I could hardly take it in. Koa was alive; Tan, Herai, and Monta were alive. Everyone else I had ever known from Herron, alive. I felt like I could now tackle the process of getting back to normal with some hope. I did not need to restore time back to where it had been. We could build on the present and go on from there.
So I turned to say goodbye to Rael and Elena, before they left, with a sense of calm.
“I don’t think we need to make this a long goodbye.” Rael smiled. “I have a feeling we will be meeting again.”
“What about Maone?” Elena said, looking around. “Isn’t she coming back with us?”
“Maone will stay here with Damon Ich until he is settled and then she will go to help look after Glant’s, or should I say your, city. She will make sure they do not starve and they are protected.”
“Oh.” Elena’s face fell as if she were going to cry. “That is so kind, Rael! I should have arranged something for them but I wouldn’t have known how to achieve such a thing.”
They left as she put her hands into his and they drew closer together. The space where they had been was now just empty air above dry mud.
Ann turned around, catching sight of the bundle of clothes that seemed to be all that was left of Aeth, and made an expression of disgust.
“Do you think he’s alright?” I asked as I looked on Monta’s sallow face on the seat. He was hardly breathing and he looked like a corpse in the harsh sunlight.
“I’ve learned to trust Elena. Don’t you?” Ann looked at me again with a challenge, a look of surprise, and then she smiled.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said and took me by the ar
m. We walked back out to the lakeside where the air was fresher, in spite of the smell of charred and rotten vegetation.
“I am pleased to see you,” Ann said thankfully, now more like her real self. “You were the only one we thought to begin with we had no chance of saving, but then Koa told us he had seen you in your new form in your future. We were hopeful then we would find you again. He wasn’t sure when in time you were but he suspected you were with Rael and he was right. So how have you been, Damon Ich?”
“I’m fine, but I am not who I was,” I answered and realised that this had been troubling me. “I remember being the person you knew, that is who I was forty-five years ago, but now I have spent more time being someone else. I feel displaced, almost pointless. I thought that when the memory came back, everything would fall into place and being here would seem natural and homelike, but it hasn’t worked.”
“I think it will just take time, you know,” Ann said sagely. “Don’t forget that if you want us to, Tan and I can run things as we always did. We’ll come to you with our shopping lists but otherwise you will be free to carry on your normal work or anything you want.”
“Is Tan alright?” I said, remembering I should care, that I did care.
“He’s fine. One of the first to go obviously, so one of the first we saved. He’s been having a great time organising civilisation in a desert. Unlike Rael, Elena has no qualms about obtaining things from other worlds. It was a useful liberation, for that emergency at least. We have been living very comfortably. He will be relieved to see you, just as I am, even if you are not feeling yourself.”
She gave me a hug, which reminded me.
“Aeth said you were pregnant?”
“I know,” she said excitedly. “So far, as far as Koa and Elena could tell, having power does not seem to have caused any damage.”
“They should know,” I said in token reassurance.
“Shall we bring them back, Damon Ich, from the desert?” Ann asked. Taking my consent for granted, she added, “Send me to them and I’ll tell them it’s safe to return. Give us half an hour so they can gather their belongings – I think we will need everything they have in this desert Aeth has created – and you can bring us back.”