by Melissa Kuch
“He shouldn’t be moved until tomorrow,” The doctor added ripping a sheet of paper from the pad and handing it to Mrs. Xiomy. “He’s lost a lot of blood, and rest is the best thing for him now.”
Aurora sat on the edge of the bed and gazed down at Boreas, who was asleep, cleaned up from the night before. She continued to experience flashbacks of him bleeding to death in his mother’s arms.
“I am glad he’s okay,” she said, finding the words hard to say as she took his hand in her own.
The doctor exited, and Mrs. Xiomy thanked him again for all that he did. When the door had closed shut behind them, Aurora turned to Otus and angrily snapped, “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
Otus continued to hold Boreas’s hand. “You had a rough night too. I thought it best that you sleep. There was nothing else you could have done. I carried you back to your room once I heard the doctor’s report.”
“Yeah, you still should have woken me when I was in the Sacristy.”
“Praying?” Mrs. Xiomy said putting her hand on her shoulder.
Aurora fumbled with her shirt sleeves, annoyed she had gotten caught. “Figured it did no harm to try.”
“Which god did you pray to?”
“The one that would help Boreas.” She obstinately clenched Boreas’s hand a little tighter, afraid that he would slip away from her again, like he nearly did the night before.
Suddenly his eyes flickered open and adjusted to the light trying to make sense as to where he was. He opened his mouth and tried to speak, but Mrs. Xiomy stopped him, “Don’t try to speak. It will take a few days for the wound to heal. But you’re going to be okay. We’re all here.”
His eyes perused over them from face to face until he stopped on Aurora and didn’t take them off her. He took her palm in his hand and using his fingernail, gently wrote the words I’m sorry against her skin.
“Stop it,” she said choking back tears. “You just get better, okay? And no more kissing other women, you got that? I don’t want to have to swing down the curtains like Tarzan again.”
The door swung open and in walked Fawn, looking frail with dark circles under her eyes. She was carrying some medicine with her. “I had them ground this up for him this morning. An herbal remedy my mother used to make me.”
Aurora stood up to allow room for Fawn to get close to her son. She gently touched his forehead and then his cheek with the back of her hand. Then she mixed the medicine with a glass of water, and then fed it to him through a straw. He grimaced in pain as he swallowed but no longer did he glare at Fawn like a stranger. He stared at her like a boy gazing into the eyes of his mother.
“It was a close one, but you’ll make it. My son doesn’t go down without a fight. It will take more than a knife to defeat him.”
Aurora then turned to Fawn, knowing that it was now or never to approach her about their mission. She deserved the right to know.
“Fawn, I am sure Boreas would tell you this if he could, so I will tell you for the both of us.”
She sat up stiffly and faced Aurora.
“Boreas and I are on a mission to help Otus get to the northern lights. We are fulfilling a prophecy that we need to be there together in order to save the planet from a Geometric Storm. The prophecy is based on a book that is now in the possession of the long-lost heir of Pierre Gassendi. I was told last night that the heir had helped to design the glass elevators but had decided to stay on the mainland. Do you know where we can find him?”
She stood up and paced the room back and forth. “You and Boreas are on this mission? No, it is not true. When he said it I didn’t believe it.”
“You mean David’s prophecy, before he died.”
Fawn stared at Mrs. Xiomy, her expression changing to hatred. “Are you trying to get back at me? Getting my child involved in this wild goose hunt. This suicide mission! I nearly lost him last night. He is not getting mixed up with you again.”
“It’s his choice. They approached me, mind you,” Mrs. Xiomy declared defensively.
“And they answered the conch shell.” Otus added.
Fawn stood up and fixed the sheets over her son’s chest, her matronly instincts coming back at full force—to protect her son at any cost. She pulled back the hood of her cloak, and her hair was a wavy mess that was tangled down her back. It caused her to look more like Medusa than the goddess she appeared the day before.
She pointed at Mrs. Xiomy and exclaimed, “It is because of you that we are even down here. You turned your back on the rebellion, gave us all up like pigs to the slaughter, to save a man who didn’t want any saving!”
“I am sorry!” Mrs. Xiomy gasped. “I will never forgive myself for what I did. But I loved David. What would you have done, Fawn?”
“You know what I would have done!” she snapped back. “And I hope wherever he is he knows what a coward you became at the end. Still a coward! Hiding away on Wishbone Avenue in that house of yours, afraid of the world and everyone in it. Don’t now use my son and this girl to fight this battle for you.”
She had been leaning toward her, Fawn’s mouth like a viper snapping out words that had been repressed for fifteen years. Mrs. Xiomy’s back was against a wall. There was no trace of the rebellious woman with the scarf that Aurora had witnessed back on Wishbone Avenue. It was as if that courageous act of fearlessness was a fleeting glimpse of the woman from her past; replaced with one who had felt loss and could never go back.
“You’re right,” Mrs. Xiomy replied. “I am a coward. I was also a woman in love. And I can’t deny that I thought what David said was a man’s illusion on his deathbed. But you cannot deny that the Aurora Borealis is true! And the giant exists! How can you deny that this is their destiny and we are now a part of it, whether we want it or not? We either end it here or we keep moving toward the lights.”
Fawn stepped back into the shadows, her eyes illuminated by a solitary candle flame. She looked from Otus to Aurora, and finally her eyes rested on Boreas, who was now fully awake. He was making a motion with his finger and Aurora realized he wanted to write something. She saw the pad and pen that the doctor had been using to write on and quickly handed it to him. He scribbled something nearly illegible, but Aurora handed it to Fawn, who took it and read it.
She immediately crumpled it into her palm and left the room, the door slammed shut behind her.
Otus turned to Aurora. “What did he write?”
Aurora looked down at Boreas who had once again fallen under the spell of sleep. She picked up the crumpled piece of paper and opened it with her fingers.
It read: Please Mom.
The burial of the Great Secretary happened that afternoon, and Aurora, Otus, and Mrs. Xiomy were all in attendance, despite the conflict in their hearts that the man tried to kill their friend. Fawn presided over it and had informed the country that his death was due to self-defense, that he had gone mad in his final hour. The people still congregated to pay their respects. There were multiple religious services happening simultaneously. Aurora couldn’t comprehend how these people with all different beliefs were able to worship freely with no fighting. How were they able to live under the same roof?
Eileen said that this had not always been the case. Before the IDEAL took power, there was a war, with each sector fighting against each other: Muslim against Muslim, Catholic against Catholic. It was the Civil War of Religions that soon grew until it was meant to wipe out everyone from the opposite religious factions. It got so bad that friend fought against friend and family member against family member. Something needed to be done.
That was when the IDEAL came out with his political platform. The idea of abolishing religion across the world was to create unity amongst the people and prevent humankind from killing each other over something that no one had been able to prove existed. The IDEAL gathered followers, and eventually the wars started ending on their own as religious sectors realized they had to band together or else everything their people had fought and died for was
for nothing. Without religion, they were going to lose their way of life and their belief structure. Soon all the religious protestors stood tall together to fight under David Xiomy, who led their rebellion and told everyone that though they may disagree on a lot of things, they all believed in something, and that meant everyone was fighting for the same cause. It took someone like him to make people wake up and realize their petty differences were causing hate, which was something every religion was against.
A bronze statue of David Xiomy stood in the center of the Great Hall, his back to the people, just like the picture of him of being taken away by the guards. Though he was being taken away to be killed, he was still fighting for what he believed in. That gave the people hope.
“No wonder he had two women fighting over him,” Aurora thought, admiring this man who was able to do so much in such a short amount of time. She wondered what his face looked like, but no one had a picture. They were all destroyed in the hope of destroying his legacy. They could not prevent people from spreading the story. They could control the Internet, the phones, and the satellites, but they couldn’t prevent people from telling stories, and the story spread from mouth to mouth to mouth. Eventually that was how this country was formed, this rebellion on the bottom of the ocean floor.
Aurora rode the glass elevator to the meditation center, also known as the Oubliette, the place of forgetting. She felt she needed to get away from everyone and take a moment to breathe and figure out what they were going to do next. She stepped out of the elevator and into a hexagonal glass structure. The elevator retreated back to the main building, and Aurora felt like she was suspended in the water, surrounded by a hexagon of glass; the sides and even the floor and ceiling were made of glass, so it was almost as if she was sitting in the center of the ocean. She peered out in all directions as beautiful species of fish and sea life floated past her, curious of this unknown species inhabiting their space. Who was she, and what was her purpose there? Was she friend or foe? Aurora contemplated these thoughts over and over again, watching amazing species of fish swim up to her and look into her eyes, contemplating if each of these beings had a soul. Did one hand control all of these things, all of life’s events? Was someone controlling where she was right now or did they have free will to speak out against their fate and start a new path?
She was trying to piece together the pieces of this puzzle. She now understood how Boreas was involved on this mission, being Fawn’s son, but what was her purpose? She was in the epicenter of this mission to save mankind, and she just sat there looking out and contemplating, “Why me? Why was I chosen for this?”
She sat on the glass, looking down into the ocean and spotting snails, turtles, and coral. She was aware that though not visible to the naked eye, microorganisms also inhabited this space. Though she couldn’t see them, she knew they were there. Could there be a soul? Something that made her unique, special compared to the others on this planet? There must have been a reason she could hear the conch shell. Could there be something more inside her that she didn’t see herself?
The fish darted away as if sensing a danger in the ocean. She stood up slowly and peered out into the ocean, but there was no sign of a shark or other dangerous wildlife. Her eyes darted upward, where she spotted a large fish blocking the sun from streaming down into the ocean. It all went dark, except for a small glow of light from the Oubliette. Her body started pumping adrenaline as it recognized danger, and she quickly pressed for the elevator to return to her, hitting it multiple times and realizing it was not coming fast enough.
Just then something dropped from the large gray outline and sunk toward her. It floated down like a weight and exploded into the ocean. The floor and the walls around her shook violently and caused a slight crack in the glass. Air was immediately compromised, and she held her breath as water started to seep into the hexagon. She would only have a minute until she ran out of air, and she pressed the button again more urgently as another explosion rocked her and the glass below her cracked. She immediately jumped to the other side as it went crashing under due to the extra weight. Another crack was forming where she was standing, and water was seeping in, now at her waistline. Who was attacking them? How did they know where to find her?
The door swung open, and she jumped into the glass elevator as the doors shut just in the nick of time and the water drained from the grates. The elevator went soaring through the ocean back to the main building of Plymouth Tartarus. As soon as the doors swung open, she cried out, “We are under attack!”
Immediately the red alarm was raised, and everyone in the Great Hall started to follow their emergency protocol. Fawn was there on the intercom, having also seen the attacks on her sonar radar, and informed everyone to remain calm and follow what they had practiced. Everyone was to get to their designated submarine and to head to the safe haven immediately.
Aurora crashed into people swarming madly past her. She ran to Fawn and exclaimed, “What about us? Where should we go?”
“You will come with me on Submarine 1. Otus, I am afraid, is on his own. There is no submarine large enough to fit him.”
“What about the glass elevator. It is large enough for him. It brought him down here!”
Fawn shook her head. “Otus cannot return to the cave. I am sure that is how they have located us. I am sure he would rather risk death than be taken by the Inspector. I am sorry.”
She hurriedly announced more instructions over the intercom, instructing the mission control team to attack the ship that was dropping the bombs. “Take it out of the water,” she ordered, and the torpedoes were released, soaring through the water. However, more bombs exploded close to their proximity. They must have deployed the air force in their general direction. Though not able to be seen, the Common Good knew they were down there. And that made it even more deadly.
Aurora ran like mad toward the Sanctuary where she found Otus and Mrs. Xiomy. They had her backpack with them and were on their way to get Boreas.
“Otus, we are under attack. I think they found out we were here. We have to get you out of here now!”
“Not without Boreas!”
“He is going to be with his mother in Submarine 1. Mrs. Xiomy, go with him and make sure he gets there safely.” “What about you, Aurora?”
“We are hijacking the elevator. It’s the only thing large enough for Otus.”
Otus turned to her and smiled. “I have some tricks up my sleeve too, Aurora. You have seen how fast I can run. I can swim fast too!”
Aurora looked at him, astonished. “And you can hold your breath?”
“I think I’ll be able to manage. You get into that submarine with Fawn and get the answers we need before we lose her too. If she plays some ‘go down with her ship’ nonsense, then we are all lost.”
The floor shook under them, and water started to seep through the glass walls. She dashed to the bedroom, where Boreas was struggling to get onto his feet. Otus lifted him up carefully into his arms, and Boreas whispered, “What’s happening?”
“They found us!” Aurora cried back, and they made their way through the hall toward the south wing, which held the submarines. They ran into Babs, who was searching for Eileen. Alarmed, Aurora agreed to search with her, but Mrs. Xiomy grabbed her by the arm, insistent that they continue to head for the submarines.
“This place is not going to hold, Aurora. I mean, it’s made out of glass, for heaven’s sake!”
“I have to find Eileen! Just go!”
They separated and Aurora, along with Babs, ran up and down the halls, banging into people left and right as they searched for any sign of Eileen’s red hair. Fawn’s voice was still sounding instructions through the loudspeaker, and water was gushing in through cracks in the wall. They passed the Sistine Chapel and saw some of the workers trying desperately to salvage some of the panels as others were covered with water, the paint streaming down the old man’s face like tears in the center panel. As they were passing the Sacristy, Aurora
caught a glimpse of Eileen’s red hair nearly hidden by a fallen plank. She ran to it with Babs by her side, and they lifted the heavy plank off her. Eileen had a huge gash across her eye, and the plank appeared to have crushed her rib cage. She was barely breathing, and Aurora looked at Babs, knowing there was no way they could move her.
“Eileen! Oh my god.” Babs hugged her sister and kissed her gently on the forehead. “Oh God, please help us!”
Eileen shook her head, gasping for breath. “Please don’t worry about me.”
Babs shook her head furiously. “No, I will not leave you!”
Eileen blinked her eyes fighting back tears. “You must leave. Both of you.”
Aurora kissed her friend on the forehead, and a tear slid down her face. She tried to hide the fear in her voice. “I will make sure your sister gets to the safe haven. But you are coming with us too, Eileen. You are coming too!”
Eileen tried to shake her head, but she couldn’t. “I am going to God’s house now. He will take care of me.”
The water was now gushing into the Sacristy. Hooded figures were working tirelessly to get the books out of their glass cages, not noticing the three young women huddled in the corner. Eileen grabbed Babs’s hand and gave it another squeeze. The golden cross necklace was clutched in her palm and she held it out toward Aurora, the last movement she was able to make. Aurora took it and kissed her hand, taking the cross from her friend.
“God be with you.” Eileen said with her final breath.
Babs shook her sister, trying to wake her up, as the water covered her body like a blanket. She started screaming in hysterics as the glass ceiling shattered from another explosion, and Aurora grabbed Babs and pulled her away, grasping the cross tightly in the palm of her hand. She spotted Fawn giving orders in the Great Hall. The windows were exploding, shards of glass sprinkling like rain as people started to scream. Water gushed in toward the high altar in all directions. She remembered Otus’s warning. She instructed Babs to keep running toward the submarines and to find Otus. Babs nodded, realizing the gravity of their situation, and took off toward the submarines. Aurora put the cross around her neck and then ran into the main hallway toward Fawn, who was helping an elderly man and woman get to their boats.