Otherland

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Otherland Page 25

by Almondie Shampine


  She’d hardly finished feeding him when another family member was grabbing him up so that Aliyah could fully savor her breakfast. She’d had so little time to share with her son since she’d returned him here. It had surprised her how much she had enjoyed watching him suck down his bottle, while never taking his eyes off of her. Something so simple, yet so deeply satisfying.

  Aliyah felt different. Lighter. Whereas normally she would have been filled with anxiety, bitterness, and the normal attitude of having to deal with things that normal people didn’t have to, and hating every moment of it, she felt at peace, settled.

  Normally she would have run out the door, ready to battle, just to get it over with in hopes that eventually she’d be able to have a regular life. Instead, she treasured and cherished this time that she had with her family, her son, and even took some time to enjoy a second cup of coffee. She even found herself humming while luxuriating in the soothing warmth of the shower massaging sore muscles.

  When she felt the summons, she didn’t hesitate to respond, even though she felt the Dark souls coming toward her family home. She trusted that they’d be able to protect themselves and her son while she took care of business. It was the three Light elders that she arrived to.

  “Thank you for answering our summons so promptly. We didn’t think you’d actually come, to be honest with you. We need your help.”

  “What can I do for you, Light elders?” she asked respectfully.

  “We know that the Dark souls are trying to take over your world, but we’ve bigger problems here. The Nothingness is taking over our world in all directions. We can neither stop them, fight them, or slow them down. Our Bylaws have always maintained that we keep the worlds separate, but if our world ends, it will only spread more into yours. They say you can walk both the Lightness and the Darkness.”

  “I can,” she said.

  “They say you spent a period of time in the Nothingness, but didn’t become fully lost.”

  “Obviously, I’m still here.”

  “The Prophecy says that you may be able to conquer the Nothingness and the Darkness, and return to us our world.”

  “Conquer? And by whom do you mean when you say our world,” she questioned, as the Prophecy Jacob had told her and the translation she was hearing were two completely different things.

  “The Lights.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Pink Eye.”

  “Excuse me? Have you forgotten who we are? You must mind your elders.”

  “I love the fact that you’re so good and selfless-serving, but you’re not really all that smart, are you?” Aliyah pointed out.

  “We thought you were Light and were on our side? Were we mistaken?”

  “In a way, yes, sorry if that hurts your feelings, but I’m from New York City, and people can fight people with bad intentions on a daily basis, and hope to eventually win, while so many others lose. A mugger one day doesn’t stop the bank robber the next day which doesn’t stop the person roaming the streets looking for someone to control the day thereafter.

  “And you can lock up that mugger, lock up that bank robber, lock up the sadist, but more will follow, and you can’t imprison them all. Do you know how many repeat offenders we have? They get locked up for their crimes, serve their time, and when they walk free, instead of thinking that it’s time for change and time to be a better person, they’d only been biding their time to get their next fix. I will travel into the Darkness. I will do as you’ve asked, but it won’t be to conquer, I assure you that.”

  The elders looked at one another and must have been convening in their unspoken communication, as they all seemed to become weary when they turned back to her.

  “I thought – I don’t understand. The Prophecy said that you were the one. There must be some kind of error. We must consult with the High master. Please come with us and we’ll get this all sorted out.”

  “Are you questioning the High master?” Aliyah stood firmly, her chin pointed upward. Something the Light knight would do.

  “No, never. We would never question him. It’s just possible that –. There are so many Aliyah’s in the human world, and you weren’t even born and come into human life with that name. Perhaps – .”

  “You don’t have to explain. Go and do whatever makes you feel better. I, on the other hand, have a duty to uphold, and right now you’re just wasting my time,” she said brusquely.

  She walked ten steps, saw the black spot no bigger than a pencil dot, and fanned her arm to the right, opening to her the Darkness. She stepped into it, confronting a line, like the immigration borders, except with Dark souls.

  “I told you she would come,” the smaller Dark elder cowered behind the other two. “Now what will we do?”

  “You of so little faith.” The one headlining the role of Dark lord quickly cast him into the barrier of the Nothingness separating they from Aliyah.

  “Summon your spirits from the human world!” she shouted above the moans of all the Lost souls.

  The Dark elder cackled, “Why should I? Otherland may be coming to an end, but your world remains quite fruitful. Of course, things like this take time, and some of you humans are sickly self-sacrificing, but we will win this in the end, and there’s nothing you can do, Aliyah. We will have that eternal darkness that the world has never known. You cannot defeat us in both worlds.”

  “I have no intention of defeating you,” she said. “Nor do I plan to fight you. I understand why you are doing what you’re doing, and I don’t want to stop you.”

  “This is very surprising indeed. Does this mean you have finally turned Dark and you’re on our side? With that the case, you’d be the greatest ally we’ve ever known,” he said appreciatively. “I’d even take you as my wife, if you would have me. My eternal partner, you and I, side by side. I have never had anything but admiration for you, Aliyah. The way you handled your Dark soul guardian, I couldn’t have done a better job.”

  The one remaining Dark elder looked at his Dark lord in the first remnants of distrust.

  “I’m not on either side. I’m neutral,” she said.

  “You can’t be. We’ve all of us had to choose a side, and that’s how it’s been for eternity, and that’s how it will be for eternity.”

  “Can you and the other Dark elders enter the Lightness, Dark elder.”

  “No.”

  “Can the Light elders enter the Darkness?”

  “Never.”

  “Then why can I do both without a Light or Dark escort?”

  “You’re the Prophecy, a child born and raised of both light and dark that would be able to freely travel between them.”

  “Correct, but there’s a reason for why I can do that, and it’s not just magic I happened to be born with in order to live the Prophecy. That’s just dumb. Watch.”

  Aliyah left her body. They instantly shielded their dark forms from her light, but when they realized they weren’t burning, they finally looked at her. She had the right Light side of her body facing away from them. The left side, though, was not light. It was Dark, like them.

  “How is that possible?” the Dark elder roared. “How can you be both?”

  “Because I chose both, that’s why. I didn’t want to be all Light or all Dark. I wanted, no, needed, to be both. And I’m far from being the only one that couldn’t choose between being one or the other. Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” the Dark elder barked.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Only then did they recognize the silence. The Lost ones were no longer moaning and screaming in their pitiful cries. They were no longer destroying and continuing to expand the Nothingness. Rather, they were finally still, finally quiet, no longer restless, as they looked upon and listened to Aliyah.

  “How did you do that?” the Dark elder continued to yell. “We used threats, force, punishment, rewards, promises, everything to contain them, and they would not stop. What did you do to them?”

  “I gav
e them hope, just as I will give to you. You want a New World, and I completely agree with you, but it won’t be in the human world; it will be here. It has never been fair to have to choose one or the other, when both of them come at steep prices.

  “It never should have been good against evil, as everyone has lived up to its name, spending their lives believing they had to battle one or the other, become one or the other. Good people are just as capable of doing bad things as bad people are at doing good things. Someone who chooses good shouldn’t have to sacrifice their lives or the lives of their families in honoring that, and someone who chooses bad or is made to feel like they’re bad shouldn’t have to spend their lives actively playing that role, just to live up to it.

  “The Lost souls are more than Otherland and the Human World combined, because they were neither all light or all dark, neither all bad or all good. So when it came to their crossing to Lightness or Darkness and having to choose, they knew they couldn’t go to either one, so they remained in the in-between. Lost. Hopeless in the human world and hopeless once deceased. The only thing they could live off of was the hope of others, before that, too, was destroyed. I can free you. I can free all of you,” she said to the Lost souls.

  “Then you would go against the High master, and side with us after all,” the other Dark elder said.

  “Not at all. These were his plans all along. He just had to wait for everything to line up just right for all of this to occur without impacting free will. It wasn’t he that chose your eternal Darkness, that you should never be able to walk in the light again. It was the decision that you agreed to with the Light elders to attempt peace. Neither one of you believed that you could walk freely amongst one another, so you agreed to separate Otherland into Lightness and Darkness.”

  “The Lights and Darks mixing,” he said, as though having thought about it for the first time. “The Light elders would never go for it.”

  “If I can get the Light elders to agree, will you summon the Dark souls to return to Otherland?” Aliyah negotiated.

  “Half of it has fallen to the Nothingness. Otherland is destroyed.”

  “Sometimes it takes something to fall before it can be rebuilt again. Now that the Lost souls have hope for a place they can belong, they will rebuild, and this world will be full and plentiful again. Even better than it was before.”

  “Fine, Dark Light one, if you can get the Light elders to agree to share all of Otherland so that we aren’t bound to the Darkness for eternity, I will call them back.”

  “But Dark lord, you said we were thriving in the human world,” the last Dark elder said.

  “Silence! If we remain banished, then even in the human world we are bound to the Darkness as souls unless we spend eternity in possession of humans with all their disgustingness and limitations,” he snarled.

  “Hello? Human here,” Aliyah sang, returning to her body. She swiped her hand at the white dot, opening the Lightness, and easily passed through.

  “Is it done, Aliyah? Has everything returned to the way it was?” the pink-eyed Light elder asked.

  Suddenly, a Light soul with black eyes appeared to tackle Aliyah, managing instead to go through her.

  “Whoops, still gettin’ used to bein’ dead.”

  “Cherise!” Aliyah cried out.

  “Light guardian, did the High master send you? If not, we are holding a meeting of the utmost importance to our worlds.”

  “Girl, I’m so glad you here. These Lights drivin’ me crazy. They so passive. Jus’ sit there meditatin’ like monks, waitin’ on the High master’s orders. I be like, ‘Let’s go kick some ass,’ and they goin’ look at me like I done kilt someone or somethin’ just cuz I says the a-word. They world fallin’ apart and they judge me for sayin’ a word they don’t approve of. Ain’t that stupid? I was ready to go black again. All you white people always judgin’ like yo’ shit don’t stink. Yeah, you heard it, elders. I done swore again. Whatchya gonna do? Huh? See, they even scared of little old me. Be scared of they own shadow if they had one, just cuz it be black.”

  “You can’t be here,” the pink-eyed Elder raised its voice.

  “Fool, you know what I am?”

  “A – a Light guardian?”

  “So why you think I be here if I ain’t doin’ my job. I’m Aliyah’s guardian, stupid.”

  “We apologize. We were not aware,” the elder with the glittering topaz eyes said.

  “I know you ain’t know. I just got the orders. What kinda elders are you, bossin’ me around like I work fo’ you, like I here to serve you? You ain’t the High master. You ain’t know what it like. Now ya’ll goin’ listen to my girl, Aliyah, cuz she be the greatest thing there ever was. ‘Stead of bein’ with her baby, she be here tryin’ to pick up all y’alls messes.”

  “We’re creating a New World here where Darks and Lights mix, and there’s no separation between the realms,” Aliyah blurted out.

  The pink-eyed Light elder gasped, “Everyone knows that the Dark and the Light don’t mix, human. We protect innocents. They destroy them. We have honorable intentions. They don’t. We’re good, and they’re … they’re just evil and will never be anything more than that. It has been written for all of time since peace was made in Otherland and the Bylaws written that the Dark would be eternally banished to Darkness, and the Lights would enjoy their eternity serving the High master in the safe haven of the Lightness.”

  “Peace is no longer,” Aliyah said sharply. “I’ve been in the Darkness. It is destitute and cold, silent and black as blindness. There is neither happiness nor hope there. Darkness feeds darkness. Hopelessness feeds helplessness. You cannot leave a soul or a person eternally engulfed in helplessness and expect them to accept their fate. Like I told the Dark elders, a person can be good, and then mess up and do something we call bad. Does that make them eternally bad? Is it possible that, given the right environment, they might choose to save a life instead of destroy one?”

  “My girl got a point. I done some bad shit when I was younger, growin’ up where I did. If you wanted to survive, it had to be that way, ‘till those of us that wanted somethin’ better got outta there. Most never had a way out. I had my Mama. That woman be workin’ three jobs for fifteen years jus’ to get me out. Not everyone’s got that. Look at me. Did my soul go bad? Well look fo’ yo’self. I got more white cushion than all y’all got.”

  “We will not, can not agree with your proposition. We cannot risk our Lightness to the Dark.”

  “Then the Lost souls won’t stop until they’ve destroyed all of Otherland,” Aliyah whispered, “As they are both Light and Dark, as am I, without a place to belong.”

  “The Lost souls are lost. That is their nature. They cannot change. They will not stop until they’ve consumed all they can consume and are then left with nothing, like you humans do in your world.”

  “I am Aliyah! The Prophecy. I stopped them! They are now willing to rebuild everything destroyed. Heed my words and accept what is being offered or let Otherland fall.”

  “Should Otherland fall, then it is as it was meant. The High master knows all. He sees all. If Otherland falls, then it is his will.”

  “See, I told you they passive. Can’t get nothin’ done ‘round here,” Cherise said.

  “If you cannot let go of your old ways of thinking, then new souls will replace you as elders, and you will be stripped of your titles.”

  “We have been the Light elders for -.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. For eternity. Save it. You really don’t have any concept of eternity, do you? It’s forever. It goes on and on, which means you can be elders for eternity, and then younger souls can replace you and be elders for eternity, and so on and so forth,” Aliyah said impatiently.

  They peered at one another in confusion. “Threaten us all you want, Dark soul. It will not work for us. We will never stop serving the High master.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m really appreciating you right now. I thought you were bad wit
h your whole duty-bound crap, but these souls are ridiculous.”

  “Who you talkin’ to?”

  “Jacob,” Aliyah said.

  “Where he at?” Cherise looked around.

  “I’ll explain later. In the absence of being in the High master’s court, and none of the Darks or the Dark elders being allowed there at this time, if you don’t agree with these conditions, then I’m going to banish Cherise to the Nothingness,” Aliyah threatened in a bored voice.

  “Yeah, you heard her, she goin’ to – Wait, whatchyou say? Girl, that ain’t right. That just ain’t -.”

  “Give us a moment to convene,” the Light elder said.

  “You know they don’t like me, Aliyah. Bad move. Now they see you bluffin’.”

  “Very well, we cannot risk an innocent, especially a Spiritual Guardian, becoming lost. Temporarily, we will agree with your terms until we reconvene in the High master’s court.”

  “Huh.” Cherise grunted. “Didn’t think it be that easy.”

  “I should have just threatened to throw you in the pit to begin with. Would have saved us some time,” Aliyah said.

  “I ain’t worried ‘bout that. I got all the time in the world.”

  “Unveil the Lightness, Light elders,” Aliyah demanded.

  They did so grudgingly.

  She stepped in to the Darkness. “Unveil the Darkness, Dark elders.”

  “It is done?”

  “Yes, for now, it is done. You are free to come and go as you please. All I ask is that you remember this for eternity, have a new book rewritten with new Bylaws. Remember the High master’s mercy. Should you continue your ways … Should you continue to seek to destroy, to hurt, to cause pain … Should you destroy the peace, then another Prophecy will come to pass, one in which the Light will rival against the Dark, and an eternity will come to pass where you will feel no peace as you will be imprisoned in inescapable helplessness,” Aliyah warned, raising her voice for all to hear.

 

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