“And risk losing them after I just found them, I don’t think so. The more people I involve in this, the more sacrifices will be made available.”
“The Prophecy says the child was born and raised with both light and dark. If Dwayne was the dark, then the light must be your biological parents. You’ve spent far too many years with the dark, threatening to turn you, because it’s all you’ve known, it’s all you remember. It is time for you to remember the light. You need as much of that on your side as possible.”
“I don’t even know if they’re still alive,” she said, her voice now quiet and insecure.
“They are. I took the liberty of checking … and getting a phone number, and an address … and calling them.”
“You did what?” she exploded.
“They’re expecting you.”
“Oh,” she raged. “You have totally crossed the line with this one. How could you -? How dare you -? You remember that whole thing about free will? Well you just took mine away, buddy, by doing that. How can I not show up now if they know I’m alive and are expecting me?”
“Yeah, that’s kind of why I did it,” he said quietly.
“What is it that you are not telling me?” She was in his face.
“You have siblings. An entire family. Aunts. Uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, the whole nine, though I do regret to inform you that all your grandparents have passed on. Your parents are in their mid-60’s and 70’s. I already explained to them that your body spent a significant period of time in a coma, and so therefore it didn’t age.”
“I am so mad at you right now, Jacob,” she pointed out.
“I know, but you’ll forgive me. You always do.”
“Then I guess you won’t mind staying here and babysitting Jasper.”
“Aliyah, wait, I planned on going with -.” The door slammed. “ – you. I don’t think I have ever seen your Mommy this mad at me before, Jasper. She’ll be back.”
All in 30 seconds when she realized he still had the directions, which he refused to give to her unless she took him along for the ride.
“Fine, but I’m not saying one word to you, not one, throughout this entire trip.”
“I think you just said about ten.”
“Starting NOW.”
CHAPTER 36
“We’re going to have to summon the Light elders.”
The Dark elders were convening, trying to figure out a solution to an issue they hadn’t foreseen when they’d turned against the Lightness and allied with the Lost souls.
“We cannot. They will expect redemption. Everything we’ve spent an eternity conspiring toward would all be lost. I don’t understand it. We allied with them. They were supposed to destroy the Lightness. We’re losing thousands a day to the Nothingness, thousands of our own, with fewer losses of the Lights. Are they really so lost as to not even have a sense of direction? There must be something we can do to turn them around and stop them from destroying their own.”
“We’ve tried. They won’t listen. Even promising to give them the humans did nothing to stop them from continuing to destroy the Darkness.”
“The humans, that’s it. We’ve imprisoned them all in the Darkness. That’s what the Lost souls are after. Should we return all the humans to the Lightness, the Lost souls will change course and finally destroy what they were meant to destroy – the Lightness.”
“Brilliant, but how will we return them to the Lightness without a Light elder?”
“Are you forgetting what we’re dealing with? They’ve done nothing but protect the humans. All we will have to do is tell them we’re releasing the humans, and they will come and take them, no questions asked.”
“Won’t they suspect our motives?”
“It doesn’t matter. They will still make that sacrifice to save the humans. They’re Light. That’s what they do.”
“Our numbers have fallen significantly. We need to return to Otherland at least a quarter of the souls sent to the human world.”
The angry Dark elder constrained the smaller Dark elder, his eyes flaring grey ice. “Aliyah is still alive! We need all the souls we can afford over there in the human world to rid of her and prepare for our New World. Here, the Nothingness may be spreading into the Darkness, destroying our realm, but there we are having far greater success. Humans are easier to control than are souls, whether Light, Dark, or Lost.
“They’re filled with self-preservation to keep their human forms alive, because they fear us and fear eternity, unlike those already a part of it. They will do just about anything to save their own lives and the lives of their families. It is they that are our greatest asset in strengthening our rebellion.”
“You’re right, of course, Dark elder. I just feared that if Aliyah returns here before she is dead and her soul imprisoned, our numbers are too few to fight her.”
“True, but in the end, Aliyah is still human. As great as the Prophecy foretold of her being, her humanity will be her undoing, and that undoing began the moment she retrieved her human child and returned him to the human world. She cannot entrust his care to anyone else but the Light knight, but she doesn’t fully trust the Light knight either. She will not return here and risk her human child’s life. That is why I provided strict orders that the child remain alive … for now.”
“And what of Dwayne?” the third elder asked. “He is calling himself the Dark master when we agreed that title would be yours when we finally settle into the New World. He is gaining worshippers. People are bowing to him. Even Dark souls have begun calling him the Dark master and following his orders instead of yours. Your orders were for her human form to be killed and her soul entrapped by any soul that accomplished it, whereas who they’re calling the Dark Master has ordered that she be brought to him alive.”
“He is exactly where we need him to be right now. His mission, his motivation, his feelings of power, and his obsessive need to control, makes him the strongest Dark soul in the human world. He will not stop until he accomplishes what he wants. I have no doubt that he won’t accomplish exactly that. He will be the one that destroys Aliyah’s threat to our dominion, so that the Prophecy will be as it was meant – ‘An eternity of darkness never before known’. Unbeknownst to him, he is making my job easy. He can gather the devotion of a billion followers, humans and souls alike, so that I don’t have to. When it is time for me to take my throne in the New World, all I will have to do is rid of him, and all of his followers will become my own.”
“You are wise, Dark Lord.” The two dark elders slightly bowed in respect.
“I am all-knowing!” he bellowed.
***
True to her word, Aliyah did not speak to him the entire journey, not even to acknowledge him with grunts, facial expressions, or body gestures. Her face remained stone-cold, and she focused her tunnel-vision on looking straight ahead while she drove. He’d tried everything.
He’d tried talking about Jasper to soften her, and tell her funny little things that he did.
He’d tried reassuring her.
He’d tried apologizing.
And when none of that worked, he’d tried tricking her and manipulating an answer or reaction out of her.
“Do you want me to get the gas attendant to fill your car free of charge? I know you’re probably running short on cash.”
“Do you want me to drive for a while?”
“You know, it’s your fault I had to cross the line. You’re too stubborn.”
“I watched you sleep all night. You snore like a big fat man with a sinus infection. You also fart in your sleep like a perfectly-tuned trumpet. I think you farted Amazing Grace.”
“Hey, so do you remember last night when you taught me how to play 52 pick-up? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh that hard.”
“Do you want me to feed Jasper? You know what I bet he would love more than anything? Icecream.”
He got nothing. No response. No reaction. Just the repetitive flexing muscle of her clenc
hing her jaw.
The only reaction he got out of her was when she abruptly squealed to the side of the road and shut the car down after he told her the house was a block away.
“Stay here,” she finally spoke.
“Oh, come on, Aliyah. You know you need my support on this. I know you’re mad at me, but you do need me. I can’t imagine how scared you must be feeling right now. Besides, you don’t know which house it is.”
“Yes I do,” she barely whispered. “I remembered the moment I saw the school. Stay! I won’t be very long. The only reason why I’m doing this to begin with is because you forced it.”
She cracked the window a ¼ of an inch, and locked the doors once she’d stepped out of the car.
“Fine,” he said, in pronounced resignation. “I’ll stay here and take care of Jasper.”
She laughed aloud once walking half a block, knowing that he was just learning for the first time about the child-safety locks, when he would have believed that her distractions had caused her to miss the important fact that he’d easily be able to unlock the doors from the inside. Finding the safety-lock button, however, would buy her a heck of a lot more time.
She stood across the street from her short-lived childhood home, and became flooded with flash-memories. It was a simply-structured house with light blue vinyl siding, a triangulared roof, and white shudders. Concrete steps that led to the front door, decorated with a white wreath – a wreath that she’d made out of white plastic bag pieces when she was six. A small flowerbed followed the length of the house, exclusively adorned with irises of all different colors.
She had helped plant those irises. Her mother, with her long dirty blonde hair and soft features, planted those because she always joked about how she didn’t even have a green pinky toe, and was more creative at killing plants than growing them. She’d learned that irises were not only easier to maintain, but also multiplied every year. Some things never changed, because those over-crowded irises were in desperate need of being replanted.
There were a dozen cars lined up in the driveway and on the quarter-acre of grass in the front yard, forewarning her that it wasn’t just her biological parents expecting her. “Nope, not doing this.” She began to turn away. But then she heard the jarring of a weathered door being opened. An old woman with long white hair stood on the cement steps, staring at her.
Mama, her heart lurched. She’d underestimated just how much pain she would feel with this reunion.
I can’t do this. I should never have agreed to this, she cried, as the feeble woman began slowly descending the stairs. Lydia’s good-heartedness kicked in at the thought of making the woman come all the way to her. “I’ll come to you,” she said in a croaky voice.
“Jacob just called and told me you were here. The poor boy got himself locked in the car and I had to explain to him where the child-safety lock was,” were her first words spoken. Despite her aged appearance, her voice was as light and smooth as Lydia remembered. Her mother had used that voice to sing her to sleep after waking from a nightmare. Lydia couldn’t get her mouth to work, unless she wanted to break down sobbing.
“He said you would look younger than we would expect. If I didn’t see my Savannah all over you, I would think this was a trick with how young you still are, but you are. You are my Savannah. My Savannah, finally come home.” She broke the bounds of being the first one to cry; Lydia was quick to follow.
“It’s me, Mama. Your daughter. Savannah,” she finally sobbed, the name said aloud clenching her heart so unbelievably tight, she could hardly breathe. She ran toward her, and lifted her Mama in a gentle embrace.
Her mother touched her face with arthritic fingers, “I never stopped believing that I would see you again. I never gave up hope. All these years, I always knew that you were out there. I could feel it, and I vowed to keep breathing, keep living, keep fighting for that moment that we would be reunited. I never gave up,” she said fiercely.
Lydia – er - Aliyah – er – Savannah – didn’t have the heart to tell her that she’d never remembered … until now, but her mother’s blue eyes twinkled with all the light of the sun reflecting off the water’s surface that she consoled herself with the knowing that there must have been a part of her, the good part of her, that had, in fact, remembered. Perhaps all along having been the force that kept her from falling into darkness, and choosing light instead.
“So this must be Jacob, and my grandson, Jasper. You don’t have to stand all the way over there. Come closer. My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be.”
Looking at Lydia, Jacob cautiously approached. “Closer, let me see you.” After a moment, she inhaled with a bright smile, “My Lord, Savannah, you married yourself an angel.”
“It’s the greatest pleasure to finally meet the woman that brought my angel into this world,” he said. Lydia snorted impolitely.
“Come on, dears. We’ve kept people waiting long enough. As soon as I got the call, Savannah, I called the entire family – those of us that are left, that is. You have family come all the way from Hawaii that boarded passage and a flight just to finally see you again on the second greatest day of my life. The first, of course, was seeing you for the first time.” She walked ahead. Lydia stayed back just a bit in order to get a pinch into Jacob’s underarm.
“I can’t believe you would tell her we’re married when we are so far from being that. Not only aren’t we married. Jasper’s not even your son,” she sneered. “Don’t you dare use your Light knight eyes on everyone and win their hearts. Keep your eyes down, get it? I have every intention of telling them we’re divorcing at the end of this thing, and I want all of them on my side. Not feeling sorry for the fact that you’re completely annoying, intrusive in my life, a liar, and so not the angel that you want everyone to think you are.”
Jacob held the door open for her in response, and she was greeted by a huge banner that said, WELCOME HOME SAVANNAH, and probably 30 people young and old crunched inside the small house. She scanned the crowd for one face, and found him sitting in a wheelchair by the kitchen door, a huge smile on his face, and tears in his eyes.
“Daddy,” she crooned, and headed directly toward him.
“Baby girl,” he whispered while sobbing in her ear. She kissed his salty tears.
Pain crushed her, wanting to overwhelm her, and the only support keeping her body from falling was her happiness. All the years that she thought she’d been suffering alone, when they’d certainly had their share of it after losing her, without the blessing of lost memories, the advantage of forgetting, the peaceful obliviousness of not being aware.
Mama went to him, touched his hand, his face, his heart. “His blood pressure’s dropping. I fear all this excitement has drained him. Savannah, honey, would you like to help me get him into bed? He just needs to rest for a little while.”
“This old heart of mine just can’t seem to handle all the love it’s holding inside it,” he said with a tired smile.
Lydia pushed him toward her parent’s bedroom that she used to love to sleep in when she was younger, curled between the two of them, feeling completely safe and secure. She helped him into the bed, fluffed his pillows, and curled the blankets around him. She helped him with the pills and water Mama had handed her to give to him. “Is this usual for him?” she turned to Mama, and saw the flicker of concern on her mother’s face while covered with a gentle smile.
“I’m not quite finished with the food. The family can wait a bit longer,” she said. She pressed a slow kiss to her husband’s forehead, then left the room.
“What do you think? Am I too big to fit in this bed with you, Daddy?” she said.
“Never too big. Always my baby girl,” he said, his breath coming with difficulty.
She crawled in beside him, holding his bony hand.
He touched her hair. “I’m happy … So happy. Seeing you. Everything’s right again. … My biggest regret was … not telling you enough … how much ... I loved you. I lov
e you … baby girl. … Flower,” he called her by her child’s pet name.
“I love you too, Bumble Bee Daddy.”
“You … remember,” he smiled, his lids closing.
How could she ever have forgotten?
When she was assured that he was sleeping, and only sleeping, she maneuvered out of bed, ready to meet the rest of her family. Following dinner, and a hardy appetite that Lydia hadn’t had since her last homemade meal in this home, they sat around the table, telling stories, and exchanged updates spanning the 32 years she’d been gone. The sun began to fall.
Jacob stood, alerting Aliyah, then walked around the table and pressed his hand on Mama’s shoulder. Lydia and her mother both stood up to follow him while the rest of the family continued to reminisce.
“What’s wrong?” Lydia whispered.
“Nothing that I didn’t already know was going to happen,” Mama said with a small smile. “A glorious day indeed. I couldn’t have asked for a better ending for my beloved of so many years.”
“No!” Lydia cried. “It’s all my fault. Nothing can ever just be good! Everywhere I go – everyone’s lives that I touch, bad things happen.”
“Bad?” her mother chuckled. “Oh honey, this is so far from being bad. Getting old, watching your body disintegrate, your body creaking and crackling in weakened painful bones – That’s not pleasant. This is truly a blessing. Seeing you one last time was all he needed to finally feel at peace and let go.”
“If you knew what I know, you might not feel that way.”
“That’s why I’m going to make sure he gets to where he needs to go,” Jacob said. “I promise, Aliyah, I’ll get him to the right place.”
“Now I’m confused. What does he plan on doing with my husband?” her mother asked.
“He’s going to help him safely cross,” Aliyah said simply. “Please be careful, don’t get caught, and I swear to God, Jacob, if you mess this up and let something happen, you better hope you get caught, or I’ll kill you myself.”
Kneeling on the floor, both his hands gripping her Dad’s, his face suddenly fell against the bed.
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