The Return To Erda Box Set

by Beca Lewis

  The whole idea of what they called magic eluded me. What was magic? Was it what we called in the Earth Realm paranormal powers? I could do those in the Earth Realm, but it seemed as if I was without those skills in Erda.

  The professor kept telling me that everyone could do what was called magic. It was an innate skill that everyone on Erda knew about which in a way made it not magic. It was like breathing. It was part of life. Link said that if you think about it that way, everything is magic.

  In Erda, some people practice using magic and get better at it the same way people practice music while others don’t care to learn more than basic humming skills.

  When I asked him if magic was innate for everyone in the Earth Realm too, he looked away for a moment. When he looked back, his green eyes squinted at me, and a lock of dark hair fell across his forehead as he answered. “Yes. But,” and then turned away.

  That was it? “Yes, but what?” I asked, trying to be polite. I squinted my eyes at him as he had at me. Made no difference. He refused to tell me more.

  At the end of the day, the professor called me to his desk where he sat perched on the edge. “Hannah, this is as hard for me as it is for you. If I tell you everything, if anyone of us tells you everything, you might not discover it for yourself. We can only guide you to where you might find the answers.

  “I can tell you that you, Hannah, that you have the same skills you had before you came here, except on Erda they are much more powerful and expansive. But here you have to find the source of them and bring it into yourself. No one can do that for you. But it’s there, waiting for you.

  “There’s a reason you were asked to come here. We need your skill more than we ever have before.”

  What he said didn’t make any sense. “You asked me to come here? I thought I begged and begged. And if I have those powers, why do I feel so powerless? So ordinary?”

  For the first time, Professor Link smiled. “You did beg, Hannah. You begged, and we asked. The two had to come together. As for not being able to access your powers, it’s because on Earth you didn’t know where those powers came from.

  “You thought nothing about how you acquired them. And if you are honest with yourself, you thought you were slightly better than everyone else because of it.

  “Here, everyone knows where magic comes from. They understand the source. Those of us who want to protect that source honor it. We know it does not come from us. It does not make us superior because we practice it more. In fact, it becomes an obligation to protect those who need protecting.”

  “So, let me get this straight. You want me to stop feeling superior? Check, done. I have never felt so inferior in my life. You want me to learn where magic comes from, and then protect it? That means someone wants to destroy it?”

  Link’s face grew dark as he continued to stare at me with those squinted green eyes. I wondered if the squint was because he couldn’t see well, or he was protecting himself, not allowing me to see something about him.

  “You still feel superior, Hannah and that will get in the way of returning to who you are, and that’s dangerous. Because, yes, a very powerful someone wants to destroy magic for everyone but himself.”

  Link reached into a drawer in his desk and took out a small wooden box and handed it to me. “This was left here for you.”

  Astonished, I took the box from him. It was beautiful. Carved on the lid was a large spreading tree. Bare of leaves, the intricacy of its branches could be seen reaching across the lid. Its root system spread out across the side and wrapped around the entire box. I ran my finger across the carving and realized the box had been carved around the tree. How could that be?

  Opening the box, I found a bracelet embedded with a picture-jasper stone. The veins running through the stone looked like the tree on the box.

  Link took the bracelet out and placed it on my left wrist next to my friendship bracelet from Johnny. It immediately molded itself to my arm.

  I had so many questions. Who left this for me? Why did it feel so familiar? When I looked up to ask, Professor Link was already scooping up his books and papers. He left without saying another word, leaving me still feeling lost but not quite as alone as before.

  “So, Link thought you were ready for it,” Suzanne said.

  I whirled around and found her standing at the door smiling at me. She could have been there all along, or maybe she appeared using the same magic she used when she’d vanish.

  “Come along, Hannah. We’re going into the village for dinner. You’ll be leaving the castle soon, I want you to meet some of the people going with you.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the Riff. It’s as dangerous to get there as it is to participate. We’ll need more protection.”

  Protection. My stomach cramped at the thought. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t known there was danger. I now knew what that shrieking sound had been in the woods. Besides, I had been isolated in the Castle for weeks. I was pretty sure that had to do with keeping me safe while I trained.

  I hoped my training was enough. I guessed it would have to be.

  I needed more answers, and I thought that our trip to the village would get me some. The bracelet on my wrist was reassuring. I knew that jasper stones represented healing, courage, and wisdom. They are grounded to the energy of the earth. I knew that although I was in a different dimension I was still on the planet earth, and I hoped that the stone would help me find the strength I needed for the mission that was before me.

  Shatterskin Fifteen

  A few days before we left to visit the village of Dalry, we were outside sitting in the grove of trees that grew almost to the Castle wall, when my life in Erda turned upside down.

  Professor Link often took us outside to teach. Sometimes we strolled through the garden where he would point out various plants and insects. I thought it was because he hated being cooped up inside a building, no matter how beautiful, as much as I did. That probably was true, but he was trying to show me something so obvious I missed it. Until one day it clicked.

  He was showing me a connection. How that bird planted trees or that bug made the soil more fertile, or how that group of flowers provided homes and food for everything from insects to people. But he always brought it back to the trees. Time and again the story wove back to how the planet lived because trees provided everything it needed,

  Eventually, dense as I can sometimes be, I realized he was teaching me all about the trees. Everything he showed us, everything I took for granted, happened because the trees had provided for it.

  In Erda, trees were everywhere. I thought it probably looked like the eastern part of the United States in the Earth Realm before man started cutting down trees.

  Erda was a land of forests. I suppose that like most people, buried within my thinking was the awareness that trees provide life. But in Earth, not everyone acknowledged that fact and instead many people did their best to eliminate trees and nature as much as possible. I don’t think they dislike nature as much as they love making money from her resources.

  Maybe that was the difference Aki mentioned in the story about the two dimensions. Perhaps the people of Erda never lost their connection to nature and trees which supplied everything needed for the planet to thrive, and the people of the Earth Realm lost theirs, or it was never accepted in the same way as they did in Erda. I thought there was probably more than that, but I was sure that I was on the right track.

  On the day I learned about Shatterskin, the sun was warm as it wound its way through the tree canopy and pooled at our feet, melting away some of my homesickness. Overhead I heard birds singing. Many of them the same as the ones I knew, and a few I had never seen before. I could hear Lady drumming away further in the forest, but I knew if I called her she would be at my side in an instant.

  Zeid and I
were sitting on a stone bench in the center of the grove while Beru and Ruta were standing at the tree line. I knew something was up. The tension in the air was heavy and oppressive.

  As Professor Link said the word “Shatterskin” that tension erupted all around me. It was as if the word itself had shattered the peace in the grove. Everything, including the bench, moved into a state of readiness.

  “What the ziffer,” I said. “What happened? What’s a Shatterskin?”

  Zeid turned to me and whispered, “Best not to keep saying that word. We avoid it as much as possible.”

  “That’s true,” Link said. “It likes to hear its name, so now that you have heard it let’s not mention the name again in this lesson. It also has an army of minions we call the Shrieks.”

  “Shrieks? Like the ones I heard while we were coming here?”

  When Link nodded, I felt sick inside. The sound had been so loud I could barely think, and everyone had run faster than I thought possible. They were afraid of him, or it, or them. These people, capable of magic of all kinds, were terrified of a sound.

  *******

  Link and Zeid left me hanging after that. I think all my teachers like to fill me up with worry and fear and see how I deal with it, because they did it all the time. They gave me bits of pieces of knowledge and then left me with it to let my imagination run wild.

  The rest of that day I kept thinking about the shrieking we had heard, and how everyone had felt the fear. Everyone ran from it, not just me. I tried filling in what I knew with what it could be, but nothing came to me. All I managed to conjure up was more terror that I was going to re-encounter it.

  I asked myself if I could face it. Could I confront an unknown entity that wanted to hurt my friends and me, and not run away? Could I stand and fight? Of course, that was what Niko, Link, and Aki were training me to do.

  I was not the same girl that came to Erda weeks before. The body I acquired in Erda had started to become familiar, and it was hard to remember the little girl I had been in the Earth dimension.

  I was still afraid, but no longer fearful, which I was hoping was a distinction that would work in my favor.

  The day Link told me about Shatterskin, Aki’s class was the last one of the day, and I knew it was going to be different again. The teapot and teacups were on the table. Aki was already seated and waiting for me.

  “Are you ready to hear more of the story, Hannah?”

  “More of the story? Meaning still not the whole story?” I asked.

  Aki inclined her head and closed her eyes, a movement I had seen her make before but could never duplicate myself. When she opened them her eyes were no longer pale blue, but almost black.

  “Part of. For a reason. Sit.”

  I sat. Aki poured tea, took a sip, and waited for me to take a sip. More aware than I had been in our first storytelling session, I felt the tea flow through me, opening spaces as it traveled. Aki waited, and when she knew I was ready, she began again, “Once upon a time…”

  Shatterskin Sixteen

  Aki continued, “As the two brothers traveled through the galaxies in the silver serpent, they decided on the planet we call Earth. Its real name is Gaia. It was perfect for their purpose. To make their experiment work, they had to agree on some rules. They decided on two parallel dimensions. Up until that time, Gaia’s dimensions had developed almost exactly alike. Nature was in charge, and she knew the exact thing to do to bring each dimension into a state of optimum health.

  “There were no creatures on the planet Gaia that weren’t born of nature’s careful planning. Each entity had its place. They knew what their purpose was and joyfully lived it. Harmony reined. Yes, there were storms and earthquakes. Icebergs slid across continents destroying ecosystems while building other ones. Some of the creatures yielded their life form to build up the riches of the world. Every aspect of both dimensions was in perfect balance.

  “What we call death was not seen that way to the creatures of the Gaia. Although none of nature spoke of energy in words that we might use today, even the tiniest microorganism knew it was a part of the One power or force that was the life of the planet. If one creature gave their life force to another, it didn’t matter. They knew that they would rise again, in a different form perhaps, but they understood that life continues.

  “They freely gave and freely received. It was heaven as we might think of it today. Harmony was all that they knew.

  “Then one day the brothers arrived, and everything changed—because that was what the brothers wanted to do. Make change. Make chaos, and see what happened. They were playing a game called “be gods of a world.” They would play until one of the gods won. They didn’t care if it took thousands of years to play out. That would only be a drop in the bucket of their lifetimes.

  “In each dimension, Earth and Erda, they placed life forms that had not developed as part of the natural system. They put these different life forms in equal numbers in each dimension. They gave them the same training, and the same supplies, and started their experiment.

  “It wasn’t just humans as you know them, Hannah. There were cultures culled from planets they had visited in their thousands of years of travel through countless solar systems.

  “Of course some were more suited to Gaia’s system than others, but for the most part they managed to survive. In each dimension, they evolved to match their surroundings.

  “But because of the differences that the brothers put into place, they evolved differently.”

  Aki paused and took a deep breath. So deep I could almost see it travel through her body as she allowed the muscles that had begun to tense up to relax. I could almost feel what was coming next. Erda and Earth were different in many ways. But why were they and how did that happen?

  I forced myself to wait as she kept her eyes closed and breathed. When she started again, I could barely hear her. “They made rules. Rules of the game they wanted to play. Since none of the life forms they had brought to the planet had evolved out from the nature found on Gaia, one of the first rules was obvious. Survive.

  “But in Erda, the rule was to survive in harmony with the life forms already present. Learn how to become part of that system. Thrive with the planet. Evolve to fit with it.

  “In the Earth dimension, they didn’t impose that rule. The knowledge of the harmony of nature existed, but they didn’t instill it into the new inhabitants. It had to be learned. And the creatures had a choice. They could thrive with it or without it.

  “Perhaps the brothers wanted to see if the beings they left in the two dimensions on the planet Gaia would learn harmony with nature because it seemed evident that evolving with it and protecting it was the only way to thrive long term. For whatever reason, they left it up to the free will of the people in the Earth dimension and made it part of the way of life in the Erda dimension.

  “There were many ramifications that were born from this one difference. Most of them you know, or will see for yourself, Hannah. However, the one that you are dealing with now is what the Earth dimension calls magic. In Earth, very few people accept magic as real. In Erda, everyone knows magic. Beyond that, and much more importantly, they understand where magic comes from. They know it’s real. They live with it daily. Every citizen of Erda uses magic to provide everything that they need.

  “Some have more access than others because they want to have it. They become artists of magic. They practice. Just as someone might practice their innate skills in art, or sports, or music, or teaching, or farming and become masters of that art, there are creatures here that practice magic.

  Aki stopped and let me sit, steeped in silence. The implications of what she was telling me answered so many questions. However, I had more.

  “Go ahead, Hannah, ask that question that is burning to be spoken.”

  “Ther
e must have been something else they did. Otherwise, why are there terrible things that people do in Earth? And not just in the Earth dimension either. Here in Erda, you are all afraid of the Shrieks. What else did the brothers do?”

  “You’re right, Hannah. They did something else. They put duplicates of themselves in other dimensions. They wanted to know which brother would win, not just in the galactic game that they were playing, but within each dimension.

  “One brother was given the desire to control and have all power. The other brother was instilled with the desire to build community and harmony with shared responsibility for the welfare of each other.

  “The brothers were careful not to put their duplicates too close together in Erda, because in the Earth Realm the battle was settled almost instantly. They didn’t want a repeat of that in Erda.”

  “It’s the Cain and Abel story isn’t it?”

  Aki looked at me, her eyes slit so I could barely see them. “It is. They learned from it. In Erda, the Cain and Abel characters were placed far enough apart that Abel’s offspring were not aware of what Cain was doing until only a few centuries ago.

  “You said Abel’s offspring. How could the original Cain and Abel still be alive?”

  “Because in Erda, life continues for thousands of years. It’s still the original brothers. And the brother who is Cain in the Erda story has no desire to share his power with anyone, even his own offspring. So he never married and never had children.

  “Instead, he builds creatures that serve him and his desire to rule the entire planet. He will do anything to win the game. Cain destroys. Of course, his name is not Cain. In Erda, his name is Abbadon, the destroyer.”