All Living : A Seedvision Saga (9781621473923)

by Humphrey, Michael C.

  “Kole?” It was a woman’s voice, spoken very softly, no more than a whisper, but unmistakable.

  He spun toward the door, which had opened a sliver without him hearing it. His blood was racing. He saw one beautiful eyeball and a tendril of soft, brown hair through the crack.

  “Kesitah!” he shouted, leaping over to the door and flinging it wide. In one second, to use Cain’s word, she was in his arms.

  Time seemed to stop. Kole felt himself falling into a dream, or waking from one. He laced his fingers behind the small of Kesitah’s back and felt the tips of her hair brushing the backs of his hands. He pulled her into him. He felt her grip on him tighten as well; the small, slim muscles of her arms crushing him, pulling him closer, tighter into her, as if somehow their flesh could absorb each other, and they could become one complete person as the Creator had intended.

  Kole could feel the ripe swell of her breasts crushing themselves against the hardness of his chest. He could feel her belly against his own, radiating warmth into him. She smelled like honey and cinnamon and freshly baked bread recently removed from the glowing embers of a dying fire.

  She was a full head shorter than him, and her face fit comfortably into the hollow of his neck. The warm wetness of her breath tickled his throat and sent shivers down his back, causing his skin to gooseflesh. Kole’s eyes were closed and he explored her body with his senses, feeling more than seeing the rich, amber glow of her essence, hearing the mellifluous melody of her love for life and for him.

  The sun no longer poured through the window as it had moments before, but neither was there darkness. Kesitah became the only thing in the room, in the world. The softness of her skin, the cling of her hair in his beard, it was every moment of laughter that he had ever lived. Every contented sigh, every mother’s smile, or father’s approval, all focused upon one man, one moment. There were no sounds from outside the walls of this room, no people to make the sounds. Kesitah alone was existence, and Kole felt alive.

  They clung to each other for days, years it seemed. Afraid to let go, afraid that the other might slip away like a gust of wind, briefly felt but containing no promise to cool their vehement ardor. But the days were only seconds and the years only heartbeats. Gradually they separated but did not let go of each other. Instead, they stared into each other’s faces, counting time in the increments of their smiles.

  Kole could see each individual eyelash on Kesitah’s lower lids. He felt the curve of her waist and her hips through his fingertips. He saw the radiance of her irises, first blue and then green, sparkling like a sun-dappled lake in a secret mountain valley. A movement pulled his gaze to her lips. They quivered with her unspoken emotion. Her eyes glistened with moisture, and he felt his own eyes stinging with salty realization that she was real and here and finally his.

  She took her hands from his waist and pulled his hands into hers, gripping them fiercely. Kole was reluctant to let her body go but hesitant to resist. Her fingers were soft and small and perfectly made to fit around his own. How he loved this woman. His heart ached in her presence, his knees weakened, and his breath caught in his chest. Perhaps loving someone so much is easier with one less rib, thought Kole absurdly. His blood throbbed in his temples like an answered prayer. The silence echoed between the two of them, yearning to be heard but leaving little room for anything else. Kole struggled to speak. The words in his mind overwhelmed him, constricting his throat, yet fighting for freedom.

  “I missed you, Kes,” he finally managed to say, his mouth suddenly dry again.

  She nodded, pensive with understanding. A tear slid down her cheek and rested on the pink of her lower lip. She stared at his mouth, as if trying to divine whether the words she had heard were more than mere imagination. She licked her lips nervously and tasted her own tears. Her hands were delicate baby birds inside of his, afraid to fly for fear of falling. When she spoke, it was no louder than a whisper.

  “Where were you?”

  Kole peered deeply into the questioning look of her gaze, the lump forming, growing in his throat. He was afraid to speak, afraid that his voice would betray his longing. Anguish and elation battled within his breast and he sought to choose his words with care and gentleness. He gave her a tender smile.

  “Where were you, Kole?” she repeated softly, so sadly that Kole felt something breaking inside him. “I waited for you. I waited seven years for you. I waited so long. I thought I would die without you. I knew you would return, but you never did. I would have waited longer. I would have waited forever. I wanted you to come back so bad, Kole, to come back for me.”

  Her words poured out in a threnody of misery. The pain she had sealed away in the depths of her soul for a century burst forth in an uncontrollable cascade of lament. Kole could feel her body shivering, trembling. He could feel his own muscles twitching uncontrollably. Their fingers still tangled together, their eyes unable to look anywhere else.

  “Kole,” she said again, as if that one word, spoken often enough, had the power to wake them from this reality and allow them to live in the land of their longing. “Kole, where were you? Didn’t you know I was waiting for you? Didn’t you care about me?”

  Kole could not see through the blue blur of tears that brimmed his eyes. He squeezed them shut, felt them slide down the channels of his cheeks to pool in his beard. “I tried, Kes. I didn’t know…didn’t know it would be so long.”

  “Why?” she implored. “Why was it so long? What took you a hundred years to remember me, to come back for me?”

  Kole felt speechless, yet words tumbled through his overwrought mind. There were too many things to say, too many truths, and all of them seemed to require at least another hundred years to explain. Kesitah slipped her fingers out of Kole’s. He desperately wanted to hold her again, hold her and disappear with her and never look back. She touched the sleeve of his tunic, running her cupped palm over the material.

  “This is beautiful,” she said.

  “It’s nothing compared to you.”

  She drew in a battered breath as if a sob lodged in her throat. Kole watched her, admired her courage at that moment. What suffering she must have endured over the years, to have been torn from her life and thrust into another, and yet to stand here so bravely, trying to change the subject for him, trying to ease his agony. He stepped toward her and held her elbows. He pulled her closer until their faces were nearly touching. She did not resist.

  “I will take you with me,” he said.

  “Where would you take me?”

  “Anywhere but here, Kesitah, anywhere in the world, as long as I am with you. We can start over. We can have the life we were meant to have. We will find happiness together. We can forget the years we were apart. They will fade into nothing compared to the years that we will have with each other. We can start over.”

  “Kole…”

  “Kesitah, please, take my hand. We will leave now. We will walk away and never look back.”

  “Cain would never allow me to leave.”

  “I’ll deal with Cain,” said Kole gravely. “Can you pack some things? Pack them quickly, and flee this place with me?”

  “I could have bore you children, Kole.”

  “You shall still bear them, Kesitah.”

  “Beautiful children with your bright blue eyes and thick dark hair. Little flaxen girls and ruddy-faced boys. We could have watched them play together, Kole, watched them smile and giggle, take their first steps, call you dada.”

  “We will, Kesitah.” Kole could feel the emotion once again building in his throat as he watched the distant look on Kesitah’s face become more distracted. Her eyes glazed over with a faraway look, and Kole felt an urgency as the moments slipped away.

  “Kesitah.” He said her name again, watched her eyes refocus on his. “I’m here for you now. Can you ever forgive me? Forgive me for not
being there for you?”

  “Forgive you for going to the garden without me?” added Kesitah.

  “Yes, forgive me for even that?”

  “I forgive you,” she said, and her weeping took her hard then, shaking her shoulders as she sobbed, as if releasing her forgiveness created a hole in her heart through which everything she had ever felt could now flow.

  Kole felt more than saw the sunlight return to the room. It rippled into the gloom like lambent water, soothing and brilliant. Kesitah’s loveliness captivated Kole as the rays of grace from its beams burnished her hair with heavenly highlights and her eyes with divine radiance. Her forgiveness freed him from a pit of guilt he had not known he had fallen into. He swept her into his arms once more and held her until her sobbing subsided.

  When she pulled gently away from him, he let her go. She used the sleeve of her dress to wipe her eyes and face. Her breath still caught as she tried to draw it in, but she gave him a thin smile.

  “I love you, Kesitah,” he confessed. “I always have. It amazes me that I can be so happy and still be standing here, crying like a little boy. You have always possessed the ability to elicit emotion in me, and you have not lost your touch.” He stopped as she slowly shook her head. Her smile faded, and regret filled her eyes.

  “Kole.”

  Just one word…but enough to penetrate the illusion that he had wrapped around his reality. Just one word, a prelude to a pronouncement that he was petrified to perceive. Just one word, that speared into his gut with an icy coldness and left his skin feeling clammy despite the heat of the desert morning that engulfed him. Just one word…his own name had betrayed him.

  “I love you as well,” she said, and for a brief flashing moment he allowed himself to hope again, “but these are not happy tears, my beloved. These are tears of mourning. The future that was ours no longer exists. The plans and hopes and promises that we talked about and looked forward to are all dreams that we have now woken up from. The children that we would have had together all died a hundred years ago, before they were even born. I am so sorry, Kole,” she said, seeing the look of utter loss that melted his smile into a pool of despair. “We cannot be together, my love. It is not meant to be. It may once have been, but those days have long been lost to us. This is my life now. My home is here with my children. Once I could not imagine my life without you, now I cannot imagine my life without them.”

  “They can be with us,” Kole countered. “I would never ask you to abandon your children, Kes.”

  “No. They cannot be with us. They cannot be with you, Kole. You are a stranger here to them. They have their father and this city. They have their families, and they have me. I will not abandon them no matter how sweet the dream of being reunited with you might seem, and I will not ask them to abandon Cain.” She paused and swallowed hard, getting her emotions under control.

  “My life has not been entirely unpleasant. There have been moments of joy, of happiness. Granted there have been struggles, but I have endured them, and have found a form of contentment. All is not lost, Kole, only the illusion of being together. There is still happiness to be had. For you and for me. But I know now that we will have to find that joy separately, without each other. I believe this, my sweet Kole. I have prayed upon this for years and then prayed even more fervently for strength once the answer to my prayers had settle on my heart.”

  “Kes…”

  “Please, Kole, if you have ever loved me, if you still love me, don’t make this any harder than it already is. I am not strong, Kole. I feel my resolve weakening even as I say these words. But they are truth, my love. If you force me, I will surely go with you. And together we would tear this family apart and destroy it. We would disgrace our Creator by placing our love for each other before Him. Our family would despise us, and we would live out the rest of our lives in suffering, watching as our love for each other slowly died from shame and guilt.”

  “Never!”

  “Maybe not for you, Kole, you have always been so strong and sure. But for me, this is exactly what would happen. I would grow to hate you. I would shift from dreaming about what might have been with you to what might have been with them. I am not strong, Kole. I am weak. I don’t want to hate you. I love you now as I have never loved before, and I am content with that. Please do not force me to love you less.”

  Kole was stunned to silence. He recalled once when he had been twelve summers old, climbing a tree with Cain. The two of them had tried to see who could climb the highest. Kole had been in the lead over his younger brother when his foot had snapped a branch too small to support his weight. His hands slipped, and he had fallen, hitting branches all the way down until finally he had landed hard on the unforgiving ground. The breath had been knocked out of him, and he had lain beneath that tree gasping, thinking he might die. It seemed as if that branch had just broken again.

  When Kole found enough wind to form words he looked up into Kesitah’s eyes. “I have never felt strong and sure,” he said.

  “You are strong, Kole. You will find someone to love, and you will love her. You will have a family, and you will remember this day with gladness; this day when you found freedom, when you found that love cannot be confined. You will always have a place in my heart, Kole. I will think of you fondly and hope to see you from time to time. We will laugh again together, but it will be proper and appropriate. Not poisoned by the past. Please Kole, you must let me go. You must. It is the only right resolution in God’s sight.”

  Kole sighed, so broken and beaten down by each word she said. He had viable arguments and persuasions yet to use. He wanted to fight her resolve, to change her mind, to display for her the error of her decision. The seedvision showed him the purple coloring of her remorse and sorrow, and he could not bear to see it. Had the Gardener given him these gifts only to taunt him with them? If he could see what someone was feeling but that person forbade him to help them feel better, what use were they then to him? Had he misunderstood? Were these gifts from the garden not gifts at all, but a bargain struck when Kole was distracted? Trade his life with Kesitah for a life without her? Trade happiness and love and children for inaudible music and invisible colors? How was that fair? How was that a good deal?

  Kole’s emotions ran wild. His face was slack but did serve to hide his agony, and in truth, only a few seconds passed while these multitudes of thoughts raced through his mind—dejection, hurt, shock, self-pity. But then without warning a sense of peace entered him, from outside himself, like a cool breeze through a fevered dream. Kesitah said that she had prayed!

  As much as Kole longed to believe that the Lord had not answered her, he knew that was not so. He was not the only one whom the Lord listened to and spoke with. Kesitah was beloved by the Creator. He had heard her cries and granted her a reprieve from her grief although it came with a difficult calling. She must be the one to share that truth with Kole. But she had found fortitude and the Lord’s grace and had been able to accomplish His purpose for her. She had freed Kole from his own anger and sadness, offering him instead her comfort and trust; trust that he too would make the right choice.

  The words of his father Adam came back to him, words that Adam had whispered in his ear to be sure that he heard them. “Remember, Kole Chay, to choose right when the moment is upon you. Rarely are we given a second opportunity.”

  This must be the moment that Adam foresaw, a moment when Kole stood at a split in his life. To choose one way, to follow his heart, to have Kesitah by his side and bring down the Lord’s wrath upon them or to choose the difficult path of releasing her, thereby showing a greater love, albeit a more painful one.

  Kole remembered the thoughts that he had had while lying in the wet grass on the morning of the hunt. It had occurred to Kole to understand that even while the mind might supply warming and pleasant thoughts, the body’s actions, like lying in the wet, morning grass a
mong other things, could cause discomfort. The significance of this had escaped him then but now became clear. If he chose wrong, even though it was what he wanted, it might make him feel good for a while, but in the end it would cause problems. And not only for himself, for everyone. It was as if he were in the garden again staring at the forbidden fruit, hungry for it yet knowing that even a small taste would bring disaster.

  Kesitah watched him, hesitant, pensive. Kole smiled at her, and her face lit up in understanding. He had heard her. He had trusted her. Kole reached inside the neck of his tunic and pulled out a leather strap. He lifted it up and over his head and took a step toward her. Dangling from the leather was a small wooden bird, carved carefully by the hand of a young man in love with a girl.

  “This belongs to you,” said Kole, placing it over her head and lowering it around her neck. “I made it for you on my journey to the garden. I did not realize that it would take me so long to give it to you.”

  “Oh, Kole, it’s beautiful,” whispered Kesitah. “I will wear it always to remind me of you when we are far apart. When I see it, I will pray for you, for your safety and happiness.”

  “You are my happiness, Kesitah. I never meant to hurt you. I am so sorry to have caused you so much anguish. I know you have forgiven me and I may have even started to forgive myself, but I cannot quit loving you, Kes. I will love you for a thousand summers, and then I will love you longer.”

  “Oh,” Kesitah gasped, flinging herself into his arms. “I will love you too, Kole. I will never not love you.”

  They held each other tightly, and Kole could feel her crying once more in his arms. He pulled his head back to look into her face. “Did I do something to make you sad again?” Kole asked tentatively.

  “No, Kole. No you didn’t. These are the happy tears,” and she smiled up at him, and he felt his heart melt inside his chest.

  The door to the room banged open and Kole and Kesitah spun around in surprise.