by A. D. Koboah
The world faded away along with his pain.
***
It took many months for Akan’s battered body to heal, but against all the odds he did heal.
The first day he was able to step outside the temple, he almost collapsed when he saw the streets littered with rotting bodies. The stench that filled his nostrils made him gag, only to gasp in pain. Jow quickly helped him back inside the temple.
Eventually he was strong enough to begin the long process of burying the dead, a labour that took many months. They hoped they would find the remains of the goddess and bury it, bringing her lost spirit back from the underworld. But Mutata had clearly been diligent in exacting his vengeance on the child goddess and they found nothing that might even come close to resembling Alayai. Not a piece of her robe or even a lock of her hair.
Akan’s devastation was total, his waking moments filled with images of Alayai in the clutches of the beasts of the underworld few had glimpsed without being driven completely insane. His nights were an endless montage of those moments in the temple when he had watched his son and Alayai die.
Akan and Jow remained in the deserted village long after the dead were buried, keeping a vigil at the temple, offering up prayers to the true goddess of the moon to save the soul of the child goddess. Akan was certain the prayers went unanswered. He felt it in his soul. Alayai’s pain was a living thing taunting him. Rutia and Essa were long gone and perhaps Akan could have tried to find them, but he could no more abandon Alayai in death than he could when she was alive. Jow stayed because she had no one, only the child goddess. Throughout the years Akan had only ever had a glimpse of Jow’s enduring love for the child the night he struck Alayai. Jow had been too afraid to show it with any kind of affection, not even a word or a touch. Now the child was dead and Jow’s grief was as deep and wrenching as Akan’s.
Only the knowledge that his family had survived the destruction of the Enwa people, and that his seed would continue to flower on the Earth, was able to give Akan a sliver of light in a world turned black with despair.
Jow died a few years later after a short illness. Her last few days had been ones of anguish as she fretted over the fate of the child goddess.
“You have to keep praying.” She gripped Akan’s arm, her eyes staring wildly about the room, her breath struggling to enter and leave her chest. “Only you can save her.”
It was a burden he had been unable to fulfil during Alayai’s short life. And it was unlikely he would be able to do so now she was lost to the underworld. Yet after Jow died he continued his hopeless vigil amongst the empty streets of the ghostly village where the moans of the dead could be heard deep in the night. Their torments whispered on the wind in the silence of the noonday sun.
One afternoon he was on his way to collect water, his gait slow and unsteady now that the years had gathered themselves around his joints making them as stiff as tree limbs. That was when he came to a stop and glanced around the village in surprise. The homes all around him appeared to be disintegrating, as if they were made of mouldy leaves instead of stone. Most of the homes had completely fallen away. He turned in a circle and stared around him. All the structures of the village were slowly being erased as if by an unseen hand. Only the temple remained along with the wall, but only because Akan resided in the temple and the wall around the village kept him safe.
Alayai.
He knew without a doubt that somehow, wherever she was, she was the one responsible and she wanted all traces of the village wiped from the face of the Earth.
Akan got to his knees and wept. Alayai was still so angry, and he could feel that anger along with her pain. He bowed to the earth and prayed to the goddess of the moon, to any deity that might take pity on him, and asked them to save Alayai’s soul from the underworld. He stayed that way in prayer until dusk crept into being, concealing the sight of the decaying village with a night time veil.
When death found Akan, his spirit did not join that of the others gone before him to the nirvana they all dreamed of in life. It lingered by the temple and he continued his lonely vigil, offering up a lamentation to the true goddess of the moon, even when everything he had known disappeared and the earth reclaimed the village so there was nothing to suggest that it, or the Enwa people, had ever existed.
Finally one of his prayers was answered, the first prayer he had ever uttered to the goddess of the moon: The prayer to one day be of service to her.
Before him was a way to return to the world of the living for a short time. He could be born again, although not as a man. It all made sense now, his vision of the goddess, Alayai’s words when in the grip of the ekniwa. The brown mare he had seen in his vision quest.
Agu had been right. The horse was a glimpse of a future life. And in that life, he would be able to be of service to the earthly incarnation of the goddess of the moon by helping to keep her beloved alive so she would always have a reason to return to the earthly realm. In this way he could ensure her favour would always be his.
Chapter 35
I was standing with Akan in the ghostly echo of the courtyard of the abandoned village, surrounded by decaying buildings, the sacrificial altar before us.
“It was only a true desire to be of service to you that could ensure your favour,” Akan said. “My spirit is before you now only because you will it. I am not worthy to be in the presence of the true goddess of the moon, let alone submit a request to her. But I beseech you, do not leave Alayai in the underworld or trapped between dimensions as she has been for centuries.”
“Why have you only asked me to save Alayai? Why have you not asked me to save the Enwa from destruction?”
“Because we brought it on ourselves. We knew the sky gods were displeased we were consulting with the vacoma. We could have stopped then. But we ignored their anger and continued, even going so far as to offer human lives in sacrifice to quiet the anger of the gods. Alayai was another of those sacrifices. I should have done what Tanu said and gone to the temple elders and told them she was just a girl. I should have convinced them to stop the charade and free Alayai from the temple. But I remained silent because I knew the sacrifices would begin again if I did so.”
“She killed tens of thousands in her quest to inhabit a human body and live again. She has also taken the lives of my earthly descendants. I cannot let it go unpunished.”
He stared at me in utter despair. Then he threw himself prostrate before me. He rose to his knees and I saw tears fall onto his cheeks.
“Goddess, Alayai’s sins are because of my mistakes. I should have either killed her the moment I laid eyes on her, spared her from Mutata’s evil, or taken her away as I wished to do many times. Her sins are my sins. Please do not let her continue to suffer for my wrongs.”
He lay prostrate before me once more in a pose of surrender and helplessness.
I stared down at him in frustration at his endless sorrow and his enduring love for his child goddess, the entity which had haunted my family and shed so much of their blood. If I denied his request, would his spirit continue to linger, offering up prayer after prayer in the hope he could save Alayai?
I sighed. The words she had spoken to him so long ago were right. He had my favour. I would not allow his spirit to linger and suffer.
I reached for him and pulled him to his feet, my decision made. The decaying village around us disappeared and we were in what the Enwa people saw as their underworld.
It was in fact another dimension that had no physical form. It was a place of never ending darkness and chaos. A void with endless valleys where the desolate face of despair was all one beheld. There was no sky in this hell dimension, for if there was a sky one could dream of a sun rising to meet it. So there was only emptiness where a sky should be. There was also no ground in this dimension, nothing to stabilise or keep a person rooted, only a long fall into emptiness.
We saw Alayai almost immediately. She appeared as she had been when Akan first laid eyes on her. She was on
her knees surrounded by menacing shadows, tears streaming down her face. A ghostly outline of the temple she had been trapped in when she was alive could be seen in the dark. A thin papery impression of Tanu’s corpse lay a few feet away. Before her was a vague impression of Akan lying unconscious whilst blood seeped from him. It seemed she was reliving the worst moment of her life and tears were streaming down her face as she screamed Akan’s name. Lurking all around her were the vacoma. Always hungry for pain and misery, they revelled in her torment.
Her gaze fell on me and hatred flamed in her eyes even as she began to cower in fear.
Then she saw Akan.
The hatred melted away from her features, her eyes wide in her tear streaked face, her small mouth in a perfect oval of awe even as her brow furrowed in mistrust at what she was seeing.
Akan held out a hand to her, anxiety in his dark eyes. At first she just stared at that hand, then her gaze shifted to me, the hatred she felt for me fighting for dominance in her eyes. I wasn’t sure she would be able to look past me, and the hatred she had harboured against me for centuries, in order to move toward Akan and out of this hell dimension. It was a choice only she could make. At first I thought the hatred was going to win out, but then she was on her feet, pulling away from the vacoma and the never-ending darkness. She ran into Akan’s arms and the hell dimension receded from view.
They were gone. It was done and they were both at peace now.
My mortal body was hovering within seconds of death’s cruel fingers, but another soul caught between the land of the living and the dead called to me. It did more than call to me; it tugged painfully at my heart. I surrendered and time parted for me once more.
His image blazed into view, that of a small boy, shadows grasping for him. His eyes were two coals alight with fever, fear etched in blunt lines across his features as he beheld the flickering, skull-like faces of the dead drawn against the darkness in chalk. The world of the living still had him in its savage grasp and I saw a room, white walls, silks and linens, along with the faces of the living drawn in sorrow. A prayer uttered in another tongue for some higher power to save the boy filled my ears.
The child was staring at the dead stalking him, moving through walls and the people around him. Then his gaze focussed on mine and held it. I moved to stand before him, moving through the living. My presence, unlike that of the spirits of the dead, seemed to calm him. I looked away from him and toward the closed door.
She was here.
Her arrival was announced by screams from below and the sound of furniture crashing. The two women who were caring for Arnaldo ran from the room, locking it behind them. She appeared in the room in a rippling of air, her long dark hair hung loose about her, blood on her lips and staining her dress. The black fire in her eyes softened and her mouth quivered when she saw Arnaldo. She moved toward him.
I allowed a semblance of my form to be seen and she came to a halt when she saw me standing over the boy. She snarled at what she could see of me, the apparition of a woman, her form undulating, dipping in the light that burned in the room.
With a single thought, I sent her flying across the room. She hit the wall and fell to her knees, the black, feral look in her eyes replaced with uncertainty.
Sacred.
She stared at me in bewilderment, tears leaping to her eyes, and it was as if death rode in along with those tears, turning her eyes into rain swept landscapes of devastation.
Sacred, I repeated.
Her face crumpled into a wild, unrestrained desolation. She looked at the sick boy and then back at what she could see of me. She lifted her face to the ceiling and howled in rage and pain.
She vanished.
Arnaldo had not taken his gaze away from me.
I knew he would survive the illness and that Auria would return and turn him into a vampire when he was older. Therefore Avery and I were likely to face a powerful enemy in the future, one who did not hold the hatred for Auria the boy vampire had. But I could not leave him as he had been when we met: A man trapped in the body of a child.
I stepped away from him and the room receded from me, the image of his face lingering, his coal-dark eyes lit with that feverish fire as he peered at me.
I was once more in the void, watching shapes, places and people come and go, the past mingling with the present and future.
It was done.
The chapel ebbed into being around me. It was dark in the underground chamber now, the sconces having been snuffed out. The dead trapped in the chapel for centuries were now at rest and silence lay within it like a heavy shroud. I returned to my body, back to the shocking pain, its frailties and weaknesses along with the hardship and uncertainties of the mortal realm. Death was only a breath away. I could feel it hovering over me, enticing me away from the pain of my body and back to the timeless existence that had once been mine.
Now the chapel entity was gone, the aged building succumbed to time and the ravages of the fire that should have destroyed it. I heard a dull thud as one of the bricks fell to the ground near my face. More followed and all around I heard a deafening cracking, a tumultuous roaring, as the ceiling began to give way. I lay in the blood gathered around my body like slick red glass, the staff protruding from my back as debris rained down all around me. Death was almost upon me. I wept at such a lonely, wretched death, having no way of knowing how long I would have to wait this time before I could return to Avery.
The chaos around me dissolved from view. The last word on my lips was Avery’s name, my thoughts only of him until the very end.
Darkness reigned once more.
Chapter 36
I knew I would return to him. I just did not know when. Would it be decades or centuries before I could gaze upon the face that had snared my heart, making the relative paradise I existed in a hell I could not endure?
It did not take centuries or even decades. It took mere weeks.
The first sign I still walked in the mortal realm was the sensation of soft lips against my cheek, the simple touch a brand of desire that set my skin aflame. A hand caressed my face, a benediction I would have spent an eternity waiting for.
I opened my eyes, but saw only blurred shapes.
“Avery, she’s awake!”
I could make out two distinct forms, the smaller of the two with flame-coloured hair cascading about her.
“Dallas?” His hand, the exquisite touch, was at my cheek again.
And then images shot through my brain as his thoughts assailed me. I groaned.
I saw his memory of regaining consciousness at the clearing to see a mound of rubble where the chapel used to be. Shadrach was amongst the ruin using his telekinetic power to throw the rubble to one side in an effort to get to something beneath.
Shadrach’s actions could only mean one thing. Avery leapt to his feet and ran to the ruin.
“Dallas!” he screamed, clambering over to Shadrach.
Shadrach faced him, his expression grim, compassion in his eyes when Avery began tearing at the ruin, a crazed howl escaping him.
Overwhelmed by the images, the sharp teeth of fear that had bit into him in that moment, I withdrew into comforting nothingness.
The memory of his lips against my cheek remained, along with the knowledge that I had an eternity more of such tender mercies to look forward to.
The next time I returned to the land of the living, he was sitting at the side of the bed, holding my hand. This time his thoughts were completely shielded from me and I only saw his face, relief in his eyes, and love, the love he had hidden so well from me. He kissed my hand, and although I wanted to remain and gaze upon his face, I was still so weak. I lost consciousness again.
Summer gave way to autumn, autumn surrendered to winter. Spring took back the land from a desolate winter before my strength returned to me. Throughout that time Avery never left my side. Although I could not remember some of what occurred once I was impaled by the golden staff, most of it remained, along with a peac
e I had never felt in all my mortal and immortal life. I was here with him, nothing could part us.
Summer had blossomed and I stood outside in the field of flowers watching the sun set. I had seen so many sunsets in this field, each one magnificent, all the more so because with the surrender of the sun, I would be with my beloved.
The past few months had been sheer bliss and I was rarely away from Avery for more than a few minutes. His thoughts were completely open to me now, but there was one thing he had tried, unsuccessfully, to keep hidden from me. A question he wanted to ask but which made anxiety flare within whenever he thought about uttering it.
Is it too soon?
Will she think I only want to marry her because she looks so much like Luna?
Will she say yes?
It had been on the tip of my tongue on more than one occasion to tell him to stop dithering and just ask me.
But I remembered far too many arguments in the past that started because I snapped at him. So I kept quiet and instead suggested a road trip, one which would see us travelling around the world. Perhaps somewhere along the way he would find a way to ask me.
I sighed when I thought about the past and the many wasted years Avery had spent searching the world for me whilst I followed him, my rage, pain and self-hatred making it impossible for me to just go to him. I would never repeat the mistakes of my past, especially now I knew just how much I had given up to live an earthly life with the man who had captured the heart of a goddess.
It was a moment or two before I became aware of Shadrach behind me.
I turned around to find him standing at the foot of the stairs, watching me, that curiosity gleaming in his eyes. I smiled and moved to stand before him.
“How long have you been standing there, Shadrach?”
“Not long, Dallas. Or should I call you Luna?”
“How long have you known?” I asked.