by Julian Cheek
He paused.
You have to get back down there, Sam, and have it out with her once and for all or you are on the fast route to the loony bin.
Sam gritted his teeth against his lower lip a few times, scratching his head absent-mindedly as he plucked up courage to go back down and confront the only person who could possibly explain everything, much though he was not looking forward to the outcome.
With a final exhaled breath, he stood up, dusted himself off and turned back, walking over the grassy surroundings, back onto the windy head road and down into Greyshott, to have it out once and for all with the leader of the Angels of another dimension.
“You are a bloody idiot, Sam!” The last thing hovering in the air where he had stood, before it too was taken away by the breeze to disappear into the air, dancing away to join with all the other statements, promises and devotions that had been made over the centuries from this self same spot.
His journey back down into the village was filled with second thoughts and scenarios proposed placing him anywhere else but where he was about to go. The skies didn’t cloud over bringing with them the certainty of heavy rain. In fact, as days went, this one was just fine.
Sam eventually reached the High Street and turned up towards the church and the den of adders which, until recently, was a very nice café serving the best English Breakfast going. As he approached, he saw that, as usual, a few punters were already sitting down inside enjoying their early morning brew and fantastic fried egg sandwiches. Outside, people passed by as if nothing was different. How wrong they are! Sam thought.
He found himself standing at the threshold, his feet refusing to take him any further. The decision was made for him as the door opened, spilling two people out onto the street. Inside, he saw Alice standing in the centre of the space, tables all around her. She was looking straight at Sam, ignoring everyone else around her. Thankfully, her eyes had returned to their normal blue hue and her face had stopped glowing. She had that look on her face as if to say, “And?” Sam stepped up into the threshold and entered Timber’s Tea House.
“Mary?” Alice called back into the kitchen. “Take over here for a while will you? That’s a dear.” Mary bustled out from the kitchen, smoothing down her apron and casting a suspicious eye at Sam, wondering what business he had here with Alice at this busy time of the morning.
“It’s not as if I don’t have anything else to do back there,” she protested as she huffed and puffed past Alice to take an order from one of the window tables.
With a final look back at Sam, Alice turned and disappeared into the gloom of the kitchen. Sam followed, feeling like the proverbial lamb to the slaughter.
Sam realised in all the time he had been coming to Timber’s, he had never seen the back of house areas. The kitchen was spotlessly clean. Stainless steel counter tops, shiny utensils and numerous pots and pans were all on display. A kitchen showing someone had pride in what they did. Off to one side, attending to a few pans sizzling away, the cook was busily preparing food. The heady smell of eggs, bacon and sausage wafted over to him. Breakfast was already in full swing.
Beyond the spotless kitchen, a corridor led off. A small office to one side and a store room to the other, and beyond that still, a rear door, which was open.
Sam walked down towards the open doorway, causing “cook” to cast a few surprised gazes in his direction before she turned back to concentrate on making sure the bacon was done just right and the eggs didn’t burn. Outside, there was a small car park, the rear of a number of shops, all jostling for height, shape and size, and a single ship’s container, door open, Alice disappearing into its interior.
Now why on earth does she need a container? echoed through his mind, as he approached the open doors and plucked up the courage to enter a place which only had one exit! With one last look back, hoping that at least someone had seen him step into the container, he pulled himself into the cavern and disappeared from public view.
Inside, there were two rows of shelves on either side of the long walls, stacked high and holding all manner of articles, most foreign to Sam. A workbench was positioned at the end of the container and Alice was standing over it, her back to him. Head down, her shoulders hunched and her fingers gripping the edge tightly, she waited for him to draw nearer.
The container door closed softly with a silent clink behind him and the interior lit up with the soft glow of a “somewhere else” light. All sounds from outside had ceased, as if they were in a sound-proofed room.
“My name is Aronui,” Alice began softly. “I am what is called an Anahim in my reality. Most of what Ngaire told you is true, to a fashion. If you will, I will try to explain that which is missing from the telling but suffice it to start by me saying that you and I have known each other for many years. Longer than you realise. When you first entered Maunga-Atua, you entered with courage, wisdom and a power we had never seen.” Alice paused for a moment, thinking back to that time, and then she continued. “When you returned, the Sam I know had been lost in the shadows and a shell remained. My world stopped that day, Sam, and every attempt from that day till now, has been on trying to unravel what happened when you challenged Lord Elim in the depths of the Kairaki mountains. My despair cannot be imagined. It’s not every day that an Anahim, a creator of worlds, is brought low!” She said the last in attempted weak humour. Sam could have heard the pin drop and its noise echo through the chamber. He said nothing.
“Ngaire was correct about why we, why I, came here. I came to search, and find.” Alice turned to face Sam now, continuing. “The Anahim and the Nephilim were locked in a no-win situation. We know each other’s ways much too completely for any one side to triumph and whilst the Ethereals are more powerful, the Nephilim have greater numbers. The only solution was to seek the one who held the source of the awakening of our existence.” Alice spoke softly and slowly, always scanning Sam for some reassurance that he was listening and understanding what she was saying. She continued.
“When we had created all that you have experienced in your dream, we knew that a time would come, when that order would be challenged. We knew that the source of creation, the essence of all that is, would be sought, attacked and possibly destroyed. We could not allow this, so one volunteered to take our purest essence into themselves, becoming one with it, and left our world, in every sense of the word. That Anahim was Hahona, The Healer. He merged with the oneness and moved himself out of our existence, reforming himself anew here in this world reality that you live in. Where else could we hide what is pure? The Nephilim do not have our powers, so we knew they could not follow in the same way as we were able to. We therefore also knew that being here, should our world order be threatened, the purest essence that creates all things would still exist and would be able to be rekindled should we all face defeat. Hahona came here, Sam. Many eons ago. He came here and he merged with one person. They were unaware of the merging and indeed, that was the intention. They were to go on with their lives as if nothing had changed, and, in effect, this remained. The life force was past down from generation to generation.” She paused again, waiting for Sam to make a connection. “It now resides in you. Is now you, Sam! And, crazy as it might seem, inside you, you hold all the power and creative ability to make worlds, form time and mould life itself. I can therefore well understand that you are having a problem accepting what is happening to you at the moment!”
Alice stopped talking, allowing the silence to work its healing on Sam. For Sam, that would still be a long way in coming.
He heard all that she had said, but the concept explained, was so far from his reality, that it almost felt like he was watching a film from the safety of his own armchair, or indeed, like having a dream, knowing one would be waking up at any moment and would leave whatever transpired in the dream world, safely locked away.
Alice continued. “When I arrived, Sam, I was able to communicate with you, not just on a ‘human’ level, but I was also able to tap into our o
wn energy that resided within you such that you felt at one with me and you understood and accepted this series of events for what it was. Not as a pure human being, but as a bigger entity. You were able to understand and therefore, you were able to be trained in how to wield what lay dormant inside you and, most importantly, how to keep that which is within you, locked away from this reality. Should it have been released here, we hate to think what the consequences would have been.”
In some strange way, Sam sensed that what Alice was saying, was true (to her) and, incredible though that was, Sam felt relaxed that whatever had been going on, was under some sort of control, control that he maintained. However, bits of conversation that he remembered Ngaire telling him, rose to the surface and he interrupted Alice to challenge this incredible message.
“Ngaire told me that when you arrived here, you lost all your powers. If this is true, how then do you know what has been happening to me in Maunga-Atua with such clarity?” Sam did not, for one minute, believe that his dream world was anything other than a dream. He accepted, however, that some weird stuff had been going on recently, sufficient enough for him to question his interpretation of events, and indeed, in this instance, to question the proprietress of Timber’s Tea House, who looked and acted no differently than any other human he had interacted with, other than her eyes were known to change colour and she apparently was able to glow at will.
“Did you ever question Babu when he said he could communicate with you regardless as to how far away you were from each other?” Alice replied. “You knew that what he said was true, even though you had never experienced this before or had any reason to believe that a creature, as you thought he was at first, was able to communicate with you through thought!”
She has a point there, Sam pondered. And then, without thought, “Is he alright?” Sam suddenly yearned to see Babu again and to see that he was alive. “Is he still alive?”
“Babu is not like the other Padme we created,” Alice replied. “Babu exists and is not that easy to destroy. Like you, he too is different. Yes, Sam, he is alive.”
Alice allowed Sam to absorb this good news, then she continued.
“We, the Anahim, created each and every Padme. Do you not think that we are able to communicate with them also, regardless of where we are… or when… or whether we are in another time, place and dimension? Shell, Egg, Yolk, Sam. Remember? One and the same. Time, space, infinity… to us, there is no difference! We know and see everything! At the same time. Because, where we exist, time does not. It is a created thing just as much as the Padme are.”
Sam was battling to come to terms with this incredible explanation of everything in a whistle-stop tour of quantum dynamics, faith and other things for which he had no words by which to describe. It was if he was looking at a picture but his eyes were out of focus. Try as he might, he could not see the picture clearly.
“Hang on, Alice. You were supposed to have lost your powers when you came here. How then can you communicate with Babu if those powers are no longer there?” Sam thought that question was going to cause her problems.
It did not!
“My powers are not lost, Sam. They are merely laid down. If you will, they are not allowed to exist in their true form here because, if they did, this place as you know it would be utterly destroyed, but aspects of our being remain. Communication being one of them.”
“Did you create us?” Sam thought he would close that particular anomaly down seeing as they were talking about out of this world things presently.
“There is no easy answer to that, Sam,” Alice said. “We did and we didn’t. If I can explain briefly: Do not see this earth as confined to a sphere flying through space around a star which is one of billions of stars flying in a galaxy which is one of billions of galaxies in the universe. When you were in Maunga-Atua, was there anything about it that made you feel it was not real? Were you able to touch the trees, feel the water on your face, talk to the people there? And yet, even though you could experience all these things as much as you experienced the waves crashing down at Sandhaven yesterday, you believe now that it is not real because you do not experience it in the here and now. But, do you experience the furthest galaxy in this system? Have you ever seen the Magellanic Clouds? You have not, and yet you know they exist. Why? Because someone has told you they exist and you believe them. You have experienced something in another world, and seen and touched it first hand, and yet you refuse to accept what your eyes and heart are telling you. What makes more sense, Sam?”
Before Sam could assimilate all this, Alice concluded. “The concept of ‘all-ness’ is difficult to grasp for one who has never experienced it. But you have, Sam. You have experienced and lived in both the here and the there. That which is within you, whether you accept it or not, continues to function, to operate and, thankfully, appears to still be able to work. What we have to do, is switch on the part of you that was switched off when Lord Elim confronted you.”
There is that name again, thought Sam. Why is it that everyone keeps on telling me about Lord Elim and yet I have no recollection of him, no recollection of travelling to some mountain area, no recollection of having any battles with anyone prior to a few days ago?
“Sam, when you were discovered, lying in a heap at the foot of Mount Ohanzee after you went into the mountains of Kairaki to do battle with Lord Elim, Babu summoned the Anahim. A mighty army of the greatest of us came to protect you and no one dared enter our protective cordon around you. You were brought safely back to health and then you re-appeared here, in this world domain. I have tended to you ever since and have been waiting. Waiting till you were ready to return. Waiting until today. I have something for you.”
With that, Alice turned back to the worktable and opened a silver chest in front of her, lifting its lid up and back. She delved into the depths of the chest and brought out a small object. Closing the lid, she turned back to Sam and slowly offered out her hand, open for him to see.
A small, tightly tied satin cloth was lying in her outstretched hand, holding an object in its care. Alice proffered it to Sam, who, with trepidation, reached out and took it gently from her. He untied the string and slowly unrolled the material until the object within lay open for him to see.
“When you left to bring order back to our world,” Alice started, “You took with you the Staff of the Ethereals through which your powers were to be focussed and expressed. When you returned, all that remained of the staff was that.”
Inside, glowing softly in the light of the container, was what appeared to be a silver haft. Brilliantly engraved with motifs and emblems, and embossed with gems, the handle willed Sam to touch it. He picked it up slowly. It fitted his grasp as if it was always intended to reside there. At one end, an opening existed which appeared to have once held another piece. The timber staff itself was missing. The haft felt worn and smooth in his hands, as if waiting to be wielded. It was a thing of beauty and Sam was entranced.
“We do not know what became of the staff,” Alice said, cutting into his thoughts. “But we know it still exists and that somehow, the reconnection of it to the handle will somehow reunite your mind with what happened, and perchance, reignite that which remains to be concluded; the end of Lord Elim and the realignment of order within Maunga-Atua and our worlds. Sam, you need to find the staff again. Find the staff, destroy Lord Elim, rescue Pania and rebuild that which is dying. We need you to be Sam. The One. The Chosen. The Wielder of All Power. And we need you now!”
Sam could sense the strength of feeling emanating from Alice. It was as if the world as he knew it, for a moment, had disappeared and everything that existed and always had done, was refined to this one moment where two people stood facing each other and everything else disappeared. Sam was not able to fully digest what had been thrown at him, but he knew, in the back of his mind, that he would.
Soon.
The Turangai revolt
“We cannot just stand here and do nothing!”
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br /> “We must take stock of all that is…”
“Enough about waiting! If we wait, we die, and I am tired of dying!”
“Be still! No one can make any decision if we are all talking at the same time. Ngaire, say something.”
The mists moved silently through the forest, its tendrils, like feelers, moving over the moss, searching for prey. It covered everything without exception and flattened the colours into a dull, generic grey, too tired to push brightness into the offering.
Within the forested area, in a clearing long since swept clear of covering trees, a shape shifted in and out of focus as the mists moved past and over it. The shape was large and cumbersome and seemed to have grown out from the undergrowth, its walls forming the same dull green as the surrounding woodland and the roof glistening with moss and droplets of water, trapped from rejoining the mist banks beyond.
A large tent, tied down with guy-ropes and seemingly erected a great many years ago, lay nestled within the clearing. Almost nondescript in itself, other than at one end, where a gaudy set of low-glowing lamps illuminated a flap in the fabric of the walls, through which, from time to time, groups of people could be observed entering or leaving it. Around the outside, like sentinels, the various Padme sat in a concentric circle. All facing outward. As more people entered the tent, their Padme peeled off and joined their comrades. A secure force, protecting those within from anything and anybody foolish enough to try to attack on this most darkest of evenings.
The tent was being used as a nexus point for a gathering; A very large and important gathering, and it was from within the dull walls, that the sound of many dissenting voices could be heard, rising and falling in volume like the tide of the ocean.
“Ngaire, you must accept that the situation cannot be allowed to continue?” said one elderly man, his beard flowing over his hands and twisting in and out of a gnarled stick he used as a cane.