Release

  “These are called Koeksisters. I believe the recipe has evolved over time from when our Dutch ancestors introduced them here, and now everyone loves them. Annarita has been trying to match my mother’s recipe for weeks! I think she is trying to get them ready for a church gathering or something of that nature. Anyway, I managed to sneak a few into my basket before she saw me,” Johannes admitted. He handed one of the braided pastries to her.

  Tiegal took one bite and immediately started choking. Without hesitating, Johannes rushed to her side, slapping her on her back.

  “Tiegal! Breathe!” he shouted, utter terror flashing over his face. She shook her head at him, waving her hands up and down.

  “I’m fine!” she reassured him, as she picked him the pastry to take another bite. “Hmmm. That is just delicious.” She laughed at him as his shocked expression instantly transitioned to confusion.

  “I wasn’t choking from the taste. It was a surprise that’s all.”

  Johannes shook his head.

  “Of course! Gosh, I’m sooo sorry. You must be starving hungry. I do keep trying to get more food to you but it’s just difficult with Annarita. She watches me like a hawk these days. I don’t know if it’s because she thinks I’m going mad. She said something the other day about people in the town talking about me again. It seems some folk have noticed that I wander into this area after dark and now they’re speculating that I’m mixing with dangerous black magic type of people. Or that is the latest theory anyway. It’s amazing what people can come up with when there is enough space for their imaginations to run wild!” he explained.

  Tiegal tried to respond, but her mouth was still filled with koeksister and she was enjoying it too much to stop.

  “Keep eating. I want you to eat as much as you can,” he urged, giving her a gentle, reassuring squeeze on her arms. “In fact, eat both of them. I brought two for you and I have some fruit in the basket too.”

  He ran back over to the basket again and returned with two oranges and a bunch of red grapes. Tiegal’s stomach grumbled loudly at the sight of the additional food he placed at her feet. She wiped her lips clear of the sticky sugar and quickly picked up an orange to hold in her hands. She relished the feel of the texture. It was just another reminder of how similar this world she now inhabited with Johannes was to her own.

  “The koeksister is exactly like a pastry we have on Kimberrago Island. We call it a Plassimer where I am from, but it tastes exactly the same. I used to serve these to the kimberlings when I was teaching. That’s if I could get permission for an end of week treat. And the fruit is the same too. I would collect oranges when I was younger, for the banquets they held at the Estate Hall, and then later, when I was in charge of Namnum, my elephant, I would bring her bananas and figs, exactly the same as you have here too, and mostly called the same names, with the exception of a few.”

  The sound of a deliberately loud intake of breath, followed by his lips smacking together, surprised her.

  “We have not really talked too much about this have we? About where you came from and what it all means.”

  “No, we haven’t,” she agreed. “I think we should.”

  “You must think I am rude Tiegal. You’ve heard everything about my life, and my family, but I only know bits about this world you came from.”

  “Hey, Johannes, you know the bits I have told you. The parts I wanted to tell you, or I was ready to share. I am grateful for how much space you have given me.”

  The way he shifted his bottom deeper into the hard ground beneath him indicated how this turn in the conversation was making him feel uneasy.

  “Johannes, I wasn’t ready to talk about it with you, because I could hear how muddied your head was. So much has happened to you with your parents leaving this world. Your mind has been darkened with pain from all your hurts. But your thoughts sound clearer now so...”

  “So much has happened to me! You have found yourself in a whole new world and you are worried about me!”

  Despite her efforts to appear serious but calm – to set the scene for him for a more complicated conversation ahead - she allowed herself a little giggle.

  “It wasn’t as shocking as you might think. I had dreamed it was going to happen remember?”

  “But that’s just it! Most people dream about things, but they don’t actually happen! You have all these powers Tiegal and I don’t understand any of them, but they are just normal to you. And you keep mentioning how you also have this on Tandro, and that this is very similar to where you grew up, but I just can’t imagine how, or what? You must be more advanced in some way. You looked so human and talk just like we do and yet your eyes are like magic lights and you can hear what I am thinking!”

  He sounded exasperated, but she knew it was more about his fear of what she could tell him – of how it could separate them even more – than a reluctance to learn of things beyond his world. His mind was surprisingly advanced. They had spent enough time together for her to know that he possessed an ability to think outside the confines of the small world view he had lived until now.

  “You know, I was thinking about this yesterday, about how similar and yet different our worlds are, when I had nothing else to do but wait for you.”

  “I know, I’m sorry you are so on your own…”

  “Don’t be! It can’t be helped. You have things you need to do, and I have things I can think about here, and try to work out.”

  “What are you trying to work out? How you got here?”

  “Well, yes, that part of course, but also, how connected the worlds are too. So, why do we have these similar things and yet your world is so much simpler? Your technology is almost non-existent compared to Tandro. And you are only just discovering diamonds, and you haven’t even really understood their true powers yet.”

  “We sound simple, here? You told me you grew up living on floating decked tents on the edge of islands. It doesn’t even sound like a whole planet, more of a little section of one.”

  “That’s because it is! It’s…” Her words became lost in the wave of a yawn. Just the prospect of explaining everything – at least, everything she understood – was exhausting. She needed more fuel. Luckily, her fingers were still sticky from the sugary pastry he had given her. She licked them all over, keen to absorb any extra source of energy available, ignoring his frustrated but amused gaze, or how she knew it was making his thoughts drift to ideas of what other things her tongue could do.

  She raised her eyebrows at him, enjoying this extra bit of power she had over him. His cheeks burned red.

  Guiltily, she wiped her fingers on her skirt and mouthed a silent sorry to him. Twisting her body at an angle, she fell onto her back with a thud, resting her head on the softer patch of grass next to where he sat with his legs crossed and elbows resting on his knees, waiting patiently for her to speak.

  “What I know about what Tandro is, and what I think Tandro might be, are two very different stories. And neither are quick picnic ones either.”

  The sound of Johannes’ chuckle – an affectionate response to her words – made her body shiver with pleasure.

  “Your stories are the best ones I have heard Tiegal. But short? They never are!” he teased her. His fingers tickled her scalp, running between the strands of her hair.

  “I love the way you always touch me,” she whispered.

  “Good! But don’t get distracted. I only have so long here.”

  “I know. So, I will have to talk fast then. Okay?”

  Without waiting for a response from him, she lay one hand on his knee at the side of her, and the other on the grass, and then closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of the afternoon breeze. When she felt settled enough, she opened her mouth to start her story and tell everything about Tandro that she was ready to impart.

  “Before I describe the world I used to live in, I need you need to open your mind, even more than ever, because when I said your world is simpler, I meant that it is much more primitive
. And there is a good reason for why I think this. Because…” she stalled, waiting for the sudden breeze to pass over them, before she launched into her theory.

  “It is 1866 here right now? Yes?” she checked, without really needing to. She had lost count of the times she had asked him the year they were in.

  Johannes nodded patiently.

  “Okay, well, where I came from, in Tandro, it is… 2066.”

  She paused and waited, listening to the change in his breathing as he absorbed this information. When she was satisfied that he was ready to hear more, she continued.

  “So, of course, this must mean that not only did I come over here from another world, that looks very similar to yours, but I also came from a place in time, two hundred years from now.”

  She waited a few more seconds, listening to his silent reaction, noting how he was trying to remember things she had said to him these last few weeks, all her references to Tandro that could verify what she was now telling him. When she was satisfied that he was satisfied by the possibilities in her theory, she carried on.

  “From what I have been told, or at least what they want me and the others to think, we did used to live across all the land spaces on the planet, as you do here. There were lots of countries spread out all over, where people spoke different languages, and looked quite different in their skin colour, and what they wore and how they appeared. But, that all came to an end over a century ago. That was when the war ended. The worst one we had ever had. This was the war without winners. Well, I say that, but impatience and fear won, I guess. That’s the only reason I can think of to explain why someone would be stupid and selfish enough to release a gas they knew would destroy everything - and everyone. Well, almost. And before you ask me, no one knows for certain how this happened. I mean, no one like me anyway. The elders do of course, because they lived through it, but the new species, like me, are just told the story they want us to hear - when we are kimberlings.”

  “kimberlings?” he interjected.

  “Sorry, what you refer to as children. We don’t have families like you do here Johannes, remember. We are raised as single islands, to protect our own fire, like the morning mantra I told you about?”

  “Oh, yes, of c- c- c course,” he stammered above her head.

  She could hear his mind struggling to piece together what she was relaying, trying to imagine such a scenario, at a time that had not even happened in his world yet.

  “So, you see, when all is gone and ended, there has to be a new beginning. And that is the world I was created into.”

  The word ‘created’ was deliberate – and important. Again, she waited to hear his reaction. Strangely, he was quiet.

  “Atla, and his team of scientists were the only ones who survived the ending. The story goes that they had foreseen the destruction ahead and decided to build a hideaway to survive in until the air was clear enough again. And when they came out, they sailed to the safety zone that remained, what was left of our world, the archipelago of habitable islands, that we now know as Tandro.”

  She paused to gather her thoughts, her head all of a sudden feeling foggy, as it always did when she tried to fit the pieces of this story together.

  “And that is when Atla ordered the scientists to experiment with their ideas to make a new species of people, in a new way…”

  The rest of her words - what formed the crux of her story - were in her head, but for some reason she couldn’t get them out of her mouth. A strange buzzing sound was darting in between her left and right ear and she felt herself drift into a different state of consciousness – a foggy in-between place - as she described the world she had come from.

  “Tiegal! You are moving!” Johannes shouted out. He pulled on her shoulders to pin her down. Even though she knew her body had moved position and was now elevated slightly from above the ground, she couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes.

  “I’m serious Tiegal. Wake up from wherever you are going right now.”

  She blinked her eyes open in reaction to his fingers clicking in front of her face.

  “What happened then?” She searched the grass around her, digging her fingers into the dry mud to confirm she was once again on solid ground.

  “I have no idea Tiegal. You’re not even wearing that neckpiece of yours, but you looked like you were going somewhere. Away from here! Do you think you were connecting with Tandro maybe? Because you were talking about it?” he suggested.

  “I don’t know Johannes. I didn’t feel like I was losing my body again, or disappearing, it was more that I just had some sort of extra energy as I was talking. It’s almost like I was connecting with something.”

  She made her bubble sound with her lips again in an attempt to lighten the mood, or at least, relieve the pressure of the strangeness of it all. Johannes ignored it. His forehead was burrowed into a deep frown.

  “What do you think you were connecting with?”

  He placed his hands over hers, as he so often did when they talked in this way. It instantly calmed her.

  “I can’t explain it really. It’s just this feeling I have that, you and I have connected to something much bigger than we realise, perhaps even connected to a link between our two worlds?”

  She paused for a moment, taking her time to peel the skin off an orange, enjoying the smell of the citrus juice as it ran between her fingers. It was so tempting to tell him more – about her dreams of what will happen the first time they kiss, and when they eventually dare to take their mutual desire for intimacy even further – but something told her to hold back, to let this prophecy unfold more naturally. She knew it would happen soon. Patience was the key.

  “Now what are you thinking about? You look like you are drifting away. Do I need to pin you down again?”

  “I wish you would!” she teased him. Catching his blush, she winked to show it was another of her jokes.

  “I was thinking about a theory I have.”

  Johannes laughed. “Not another one. This was supposed to be a relaxing picnic and so far I’ve heard how we all need to make our islands complete before we can connect with another one. And that thing you said earlier, about me being like your mirror in your dreams.”

  “You were a mirror in a way, yes! Like I said, I dreamed about you when I was in my loneliest and darkest moments and it was your image that gave me the strength to follow my true desires, over here. You woke me up to who I really am!”

  It was starting to feel like a struggle to hold back all her thoughts with him. She knew she was pushing him with her ideas. That, as a human, he could not possibly be ready to accept.

  “You’re my soulmate Johannes.” She spoke in a whisper.

  “I think you are too Tiegal…no, I know you are!” he answered just as softly. “And I do understand your island and mirror ideas. Well, just about anyway. But, please, do tell me more,” he urged her, still holding her hands.

  Tiegal nodded. “Let’s just move into the shade first. I can see your light skin is burning in this midday sunshine. It is not healthy for you.”

  They both picked up the food around them and walked hand in hand to the shade under a group of thorn trees where they could comfortably sit next to each other and look out on to the river.

  “So, I have been having some dreams recently about the first time I appeared, and it felt like it was trying to explain something to me…something that I needed to share with you.”

  When he didn’t answer her, she waited and listened to his breathing, ensuring he was in a receptive state. This was going to push him even harder.

  “You may remember I told you that there was a lot of excitement around my Derado initiation ceremony because they had discovered an enormous blue diamond which was abundant with energy.”

  Johannes nodded. She leaned into him and willed herself to carry on.

  “Okay, so from what you have said, you and Elna also found a diamond too, at exactly the same time that I released my energy from my Derado?
”

  She watched his expression as he clocked together her words in an attempt to follow where she was going.

  “So, I think we both connected to a diamond find at exactly the same time. I stood in diamond water on my world and you were standing right next to water with your diamond discovery. Perhaps, with these parallel conditions, we created a kind of magnetic link between our two worlds?”

  Johannes turned to face her. He looked excited.

  “Okay, well there are a lot of coincidences here, yes. But what about the water? I don’t see the link there.”

  “Water amplifies energy. That’s why we stand in a pool of diamond water when we first connect our Derados on our Release Day. It’s supposed to increase the release.”

  As she finished her sentence, she dared to steal a look at Johannes, wary of how far she had taken her theory. He was gazing out at the river ahead of them. She moved herself closer to his body, hoping she could pick up on his thoughts:

  But there is also another key part to this. My first ever kiss… with Elna!

  Tiegal jumped back from him, not wanting to hear any more of his private debate. She moved herself over to the riverbanks and leaned over so her tears could drop into the water. They made little ripples. It was something she used to do when she was younger, when the others were asleep in the camp – even Zeno – and she felt her loneliness would consume her.

  Nothing had really changed. This new life was different, but somehow just the same. She was still the same girl.

  “Tiegal! What’s wrong? Why are you crying? Did my silence upset you?” She could sense Johannes’ unease from behind her.

  She turned away from him, feeling both guilt and shame. She had promised not to keep reading his thoughts, but she couldn’t believe that was how he had decided to interpret her theory.

  “You were listening to me again, weren’t you?”

  She flinched at the anger in his voice. He was furious.

  “I didn’t mean to Johannes…well, I did, but I just wanted to make sure you didn’t think I was completely crazy. And then, I heard you thinking about your kiss with Elna! That it was this that brought me over to you! I can’t believe that was your first thought! Why would you think such conflicting energies would flow like that? Didn’t you say that my appearance upset Elna so much that she left you?”