Arek’s eyes never stop roaming, searching for anything unusual. It is far more than his size that makes him seem intimidating and dangerous; it is his constant awareness. I have never seen someone so sentient of everything around him.
“What are you looking for?”
He glances at me, almost like I have woken him from a deep sleep.
“I’m listening.”
“What can you hear? Anything?”
“Not yet.”
“Is that water?” I hear a rumble in the distance.
He listens more intently, then smiles. “You’re coming back.”
“I don’t know about that. I just have good ears.”
“The best ears of any Epheme couldn’t have heard that.”
My mind wanders for a moment. “You were there for more than thirty years watching me and I didn’t know.”
“You saw me once.” He grins.
“I did?”
“Yeah. Your first year in college. I passed by you and you looked up at me like you knew me.”
“But I didn’t.”
“No. But I got to pretend for a moment.”
I breathe and wipe the sweat from my forehead. “I’ve never been in trouble for anything in my life.”
“You also thought you never had a father or held a gun.”
“Or had a husband.” I look at him. “Why have they been able to get away with all of this here?”
“Like we said—it’s Forbearing Land.”
I look at him curiously. “I know you said that, but why can’t everyone—all humans—figure it out so that this can’t happen.”
He laughs. “Ego gets in the way every time. Why is there ever an impasse to anything? Ego. If one gets it, the other is left wanting and that’s just never an option.”
“Make everyone have jurisdiction over all of the Bryers. Or separate them out.”
“They’ve tried over the years, but it just seems to be a technicality in our history that we can’t solve, among many other things.”
“So, there are more than just Navin and Japha’s men out here?” I start looking around as though the forest has eyes.
Arek laughs. “Oh, how times have changed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I used to have to beg you not to come and try to win these people over.”
“I would do that?”
“Yeah. You thought everyone could come back to their right mind, if just coaxed enough. No fear. You just believed.”
We are quiet for a few more feet, as we pass by three trees made from one. Several birds sit along the branches while watching us march in the gray mist.
“You said Navin was pardoned.”
“Somehow he knew the right people in the Powers. But Navin will never be sinless. He knows he’s guilty of a myriad of things, and so do the Protectors. If the Powers wanted us to arrest him, we’d arrest him. Honestly, I think they’re afraid. The rebels have been building power and popularity during the last few years, making the Powers weary of rash decisions—especially after everything that has happened with you. It’s a game. It always has been.”
Finally, we reach a rushing river that plummets nearly a half mile down a cliff face.
“Arek . . .” Diem and Kilon want to speak with him.
The edge of the waterfall calls to me. My shoes push dirt over until it hits the wind and blows away. The gigantic rumble of the crashing river is deafening and mists my face even from high above. A brown and white eagle, its wingspan longer than six feet, flies in circles midway down the falls. A paralyzing numbness travels down my arms, yet the eagle keeps my attention. Suddenly it turns to two eagles, then three . . . and so on. The fatigue can’t be rubbed out of my eyes even with my palms, and the bird multiplies. My eyes grow heavy just trying to examine the expanding flock of birds.
Peter is near me also taking in the view.
“Do you see them?” I ask.
“Them who?” he asks.
“The eagles.”
He watches me carefully, his face backdropped by an army of trees that come in and out of focus. “There’s only one.”
“Peter . . .” I whisper, “something’s wrong.”
“Willow?” Peter asks as he comes forward. “Arek!”
My balance is lost, and the earth seems to rock back and forth as Peter reaches out and takes my hand.
“Peter, help . . .” My voice wobbles like my knees until there is nothing that can keep me upright, not even Peter’s young hand. The burn of his pull on my arm is no match and soon my body falls heavily over the edge.
Arek’s arms try to reach me, but he is too late. “Remy!” he yells.
I am weightless. My arms hover wide and the ground is coming soon yet there’s no fear. My mind feels hacked—someone else has control. Will it hurt when my body hits the water?
I wake when my body crashes against the water. The icy river immediately paralyzes me so that my breath sticks in my chest and can’t get out. The rush of the dense liquid rolls me again and again, making it nearly impossible to reach the surface. My body convulses with desperation. My lungs scream as my hands frantically claw the water. I’m getting nowhere!
Then a large fist plunges into the water and pulls me out. When fresh air hits my wet cheeks, the pain of my lungs expanding makes me cry out. Soon I lie on a hard surface with my eyes closed and my arms wrap around my chest, painfully gasping for breath.
“Quite the fall,” the man’s Scottish brogue echoes.
I open my eyes to find my shirt torn and soaked as the cascading waterfall covers the hidden tunnel where we are. To my right, the rushing white water pounds, but to my left, the rock wall is covered in mineral deposits and moss. A man’s black boots stand just inches from me, but when I follow his strong body to find his face, I don’t recognize him. I crawl away until I am close to tumbling into the falls again.
“How did you do that?” I ask, my voice scratchy.
He kneels, “Make ye fall?” He smiles but doesn’t answer. “We need to go.”
“Where?”
“Come on.” The man yanks me to my feet. My body is already in the early stages of hypothermia, my skin is hard and goose bumped. The coat Sassi gave me now weighs twenty pounds and it sounds like a heavy weight when I drop it.
“Let’s go,” he pushes.
“Not until you tell me what I need to know.”
“I don’t have to do any of that.” He roughly grabs my arm, but I plant my feet and send my hands flying, unexpectedly connecting with his face. It only makes him angry and he wrestles me to the ground then pulls zip ties from his pocket. He yanks my arms behind my back till they nearly break. “Now get up. Walk,” he demands. Although I desperately don’t want to go, my feet begin to move without my direction and that’s when the numbness rips through my cold arms once again. He presses a gun to my neck and leads me deeper under the waterfall. This is dangerous, yet I’m just following his lead. I try to tell my legs to stop, but there is no mind–body connection. All I can do is slow us down and make him angry.
He grabs me. His large body overtakes me easily and he slams me against the solid rock wall. A knife slips beneath my chin as he presses his cheek to my head until I can smell his rancid breath. “Do not think for one second that I will not end this right here. For years I have wanted to end you . . . just rip your bloody heart out. Give me any reason, Remy.”
“I don’t know who you are. I swear.”
“Let me remind you. I’m Meryl and I hate you more than the devil himself. I would give anything to get my hands on you. You just happen to be in luck that Navin’s waiting. Do you understand me? Do not tempt me.”
Finally, we continue. Farther back, deep and echoing, the rock tunnel leads us beneath the earth. Eventually he twists a knob on the wall, which sends a dim light over our heads, but it is still dark just ten feet ahead.
“I did this,” he says as we walk forward, my feet no longer listening to my own refusal. Yet I�
�ve felt this before, and he isn’t the only one in my head. Suddenly it is clear that each person left their own imprint on my brain—just like everyone has their own smell. Navin is somewhere near. He continues, “Arek will never find us because it systematically turns off once we leave. You see—look back.”
About ten feet back is dark. With every step, only the light overhead stays on.
“I came up with that.” He proudly smiles.
Just then, a vision returns to me and I look at him. “I know you. You’ve worked for Navin for years.”
“So, you do remember?”
This memory makes me panic. “Meryl . . .” Just the look of this tall man, his eyes empty and the twitch of his mouth aggressively angry. “You hate me.”
“Always have. I’ve thought about killing you myself for years. You’ve been lucky—Navin has always kept you fer himself.”
There’s a green mossy overgrown path under the constant drip of water that comes from somewhere we can’t see. Something about this place, whether it be the sounds or the darkness, tells me of its haunting. I get a strange feeling as though we aren’t alone and yet I can tell it’s not human. Somehow a spiritual world, possibly roaming free, brushing by me until the hair on my body stands straight.
“Many have died in here . . .” My voice is barely audible even bookended by stone.
Meryl keeps quiet, possibly ignoring the thick morbid air or possibly unaware of it. All the while, my heart and stomach turn with the awareness that we are in a sacred place.
He pushes me until my back flares with irritation. It takes twenty minutes, the light constantly following us through the gray cave, until the light of day meets us and we duck under hanging roots. We enter the forest again. Only now, just ahead the crumbling stone of an ancient castle sprawls across the green, moldy, moss-covered scape.
My chest tightens and instantly I begin to shelter my mind like Geo taught me.
This Bryer oozes dark mysteries and I wonder if all Bryers are the same. Black windows seem to stare like vacant eyes. We pass a tall, broken gate that is rusted through and walk up the long-overgrown path that was once red brick, manicured, and beautiful. Yet the crimes and sins of this place seem to suck the color and life from every inch like an old man just before his last breath. I want nothing to do with it.
Meryl whistles.
This is the exact situation Arek has been desperate to avoid. Several men and women rush outside, catching sight of us.
“Arek’s here!” Meryl calls with a deep growl.
Everyone looks me over like vultures to a carcass and I know it is because Remy caused a lot of trouble for them.
“Hey!” a man hollers from the mossy post on the stone castle. His gray shirt is wet from the moisture in the air and his black jeans sit tight against his lean thighs. Suddenly he runs and jumps from the edge of the rock wall, slamming into me. Our bodies create a crash in the forest. His thick angry fingers grab my hair, as he points his knife at my skull just behind my ear.
“Hold back, Chase!” Meryl yells.
Chase’s face is bright red and the anger pulses from a vein in the middle of his forehead. “We can end the entire thing right now.” His hand shakes as he presses the weapon into my skin, but just enough so that the skin breaks very little.
“He said don’t touch her,” Meryl growls, but makes no move to stop him. “Chase, step back. You want to deal with Arek? We’ve no time! Tell Navin and everyone to pack up.”
Chase is desperate to press his knife farther and I watch the battle in his eyes. “Ephemes killed my wife. A group of them. They killed her because they found out who she was.” His spit hits my cheeks and lands in my eye. “And you stand against us for taking back our sanity . . . our freedom.”
“I don’t stand against anyone,” I say, my lungs smashed by his body, which makes my voice tight. “I don’t know you. I’m not Remy.”
Chase’s eyebrows furrow as he slowly pulls away. “What the hell?” he says, then looks at Meryl.
Yet the tall man only shrugs as he pulls me to my feet. “That’s what she says.” He yanks me up the crumbling steps to the thick wooden front door that is nearly ten feet tall with hard black iron hinges. Already, the digging in my head begins. Walk into nothing unguarded. Have intention at every moment. It takes just a second to remember the chant from the night before. I repeat it while checking every window from the outside. Was Ian nearby?
The sinister quiet that imprisons the castle on the outside transforms to a bustling business on the inside. Computers line the stone walls, while men and women run around connected to the internet from an underground system. It is bizarre to watch them carry on like Silicon Valley. Guards stand nearby looking as I imagine the KGB or FBI to look. I can tell that my presence is the reason they run about with panic.
“You didn’t expect this, did ya?” Meryl asks.
“No.” I whisper as I step over cords.
The word was beginning to spread that I was there, so groups were gathering to watch us walk through. Meryl whistles again and several more men come to surround me with protection. They hurry through and Meryl’s accent grows stronger as he begins to explain things to me. “Ephemes killed us for years. They murdered our families and yet you want us to find peace. What peace do they offer us? None. Ephemes will do anything to separate themselves because of their ego.”
“But I do agree. I hear what you are saying.” Perhaps the only way to get out of this mess is to connect . . . find a way in? Yet he hates me. He said it himself. “Why can’t there be something else? There has to be a way to—”
He interrupts with a laugh. “You may say that you’re someone else, but you sound the same as Remy. My daughters died—my seven-year-old twin girls were killed by a man who found out that we were Velieri. So, I killed him. Do you understand the pleasure that gave me, to hear his misery?”
There is no ignoring the way humanity—Ephemes or Velieri—hurt each other. I feel stuck, unable to give any comfort. These men and women in the rebellion aren’t evil—they’re broken. Nobody knows more than I do, after my mother and the attack, what it feels like to be changed without hope of ever changing back. Yet I can’t give up.
“There has to be a way,” I say softly.
Meryl lets out a large terrifying, raging sound and grabs me by the neck. His fingers are so long, he can use one hand and place the other on his gun. “Every time you say something like that, it makes me want to end you. It’s that kind of talk that got many people killed. There is a way of ending all this.” He grins as his nose nearly touches mine. “Kill them all. Take away the other side so there’s no longer anything to fear.”
“Or hunt,” one of the other guards says.
“That’s why they do those things. Fear. They don’t understand you because the government has forced you to hide for so many years,” I say with a clamped neck. The pressure in my head begins to build as the blood stops.
“They don’t need to.” He clicks his tongue against his cheek and shrugs his shoulders when he finally lets me go.
From the veranda looking out over the expansive castle living room, the hustle continues, yet it is hard to see through the six suited guards. Double doors, with chipped green paint and rusty hinges, are at the end of the hall and Meryl reaches out to push them open. The clang tells me just how heavy they are.
We enter a grand room. Red tapestries hang from the ceiling and red carpet spreads out beneath our feet. It is ratty and old. The windows are boarded for construction. A desk sits in the center, while computer and television monitors are strategically placed throughout the room. Between the shoulders of two guards, I can just make out a monitor that appears to shuffle through pictures of different landscapes and buildings. Suddenly things begin to become clear. Navin isn’t a criminal with no money and no power; they are building something bigger than Arek and Leigh understand. My eyes squint to make out the video that is playing on a different monitor. Then another. And another.
I understand now. They are cameras from all over the world—on buildings, bodies, and in places that shouldn’t be seen. The President of the United States is walking through the hall with her husband. It is all surreal, hitting me in ways that are unfamiliar. I know fear more than anyone, and I know sadness, but deep within, there is always the knowledge that these feelings will go away. Today it is deeper, wider, grander, and all encompassing. This could never end.
Our. New. Normal.
The monitors follow the Prime Minister, the Queen, members of the cabinet, and political powers of the world. Navin and Japha have the most terrifying kind of power in the world—unknown and unexpected.
A heavy presence enters the room. It feels the same as the night before when Geo and Arek Traced my subconscious and my demons played games. I look down half expecting the gray decaying fingers to be reaching through the cracks of the floor. Yet it is just damp, dirty carpet.
Meryl and the men leave after turning the monitors off, and I stand alone in the dark room.
“Remy. Or are we still calling you Willow?” It is Navin. I know instantly by the pressure in my head, however Arek and Geo made sure that I am prepared. My rhythm protects me. Finally, I see him coming from the shadows of several large pillars.
“Whatever you want,” I say quietly.
“So, you remember everything?”
“No.”
I don’t think he believes me. His granite-like eyes make me tremble and I look away. “Tell me what you do know.”
I try desperately to keep my mouth shut, but I can feel it. A pulse of electricity surges through my jaw and then my mouth, the words wanting to come out. I try to use willpower, but in the end it isn’t enough. Geo and Arek must know that the best training in the world cannot prepare me to go up against Navin so quickly.
“I remember my father . . . seeing Japha with my mother in the carriage . . . your relationship with my mother . . . killing my mother . . .” Somehow, I escape telling him that I saw him kill her.
Out of the Shadows: Book One of the Velieri Uprising Page 22