by BC Powell
“I want to compliment you on your chosen path to the Tree during your Ritual. It was quite unusual and original.”
“Thank you. It was either that or get the crap beat out of me.”
“Crap?” he asks.
“I apologize,” I say. “That’s not a nice word, so please don’t add it to your vocabulary. It’s just an expression from my world.”
He cocks his head to the side. “This is your world now, is it not?”
I have to pause and smile. Just as Cavu probably didn’t realize the impact a few simple words of encouragement would have on me, Wren has no idea of the deep feeling of acceptance his statement gives me.
“Thank you for saying that,” I reply. “From my original world, I guess I should say. The expression I used means I was getting beat pretty badly by the Tree.”
“That’s often the case with the Tree of Vision,” he comments. “It attempts to teach you a valuable lesson about yourself.”
“So I learned.”
I proceed to explain to him what I want made. Starting with something simple, I describe picture frames. I’m happy that the “three feet tall by four feet wide” description translates into a size he can understand, confirmed when he holds his hands out to show me the width and height.
I’m more concerned with describing an easel and how it works, but he seems to quickly grasp the concept. I also ask him for a dozen small round metal containers with screw caps for the paints I hope to make, and a flat, round tray to serve as a palette for mixing colors. Finally, I describe paint brushes, wanting a few different sizes.
“Shall I use hair for the bristles as I do with cleaning brushes?” he asks.
“As long as the hair is straight,” I say. “I don’t know what the procedure for getting hair is, but mine’s too wavy to work.”
“What about mine?” Tela asks.
I quickly examine her thick straight hair, deciding that it’s exactly what I need for brushes. “Yours is perfect, Tela. I’m curious to know what happens to the blue when you cut it off?”
“It soon fades away,” she replies. “How long do you need the lengths to be?”
“About two inches,” I answer, happy again that the measurement translates.
“Do you have scissors?” Tela asks Wren.
Wren walks to another marble slab and returns with a pair of shiny steel scissors. After he gives them to Tela, she hands them to me.
“Cut what you need,” she says, turning away from me.
Her hair is styled with bangs over her eyes, but it falls just past her shoulders on the sides and back. I carefully snip two inches off all the way around the back while Wren catches the trimmings in his hands. When I finish cutting, I’m thrilled to see that her hair still looks decent since I’ve never cut hair before.
“Thank you, Tela,” I say as she turns to me. “That’s really nice of you.”
“I was going to cut it soon, so I’m honored I could help,” she replies.
“It’s a huge help,” I say.
“When would you like everything?” Wren asks.
“Take your time,” I reply. “There’s really no rush, and please do it at your convenience. I don’t want it to interfere with anything important.”
He looks up at the tops of the steel trees while talking out loud to himself. “I need to carve the molds from marble, test them, blend the steel.” His eyes drop to mine. “I’ll have everything for you in eight morrows.”
“That’s it?” I ask.
“I see no reason why it should take longer.”
“You’re awesome,” I say genuinely.
“I don’t think constructing a few simple items of steel is any reason to be struck by awe,” he replies.
“It’s a common expression in my . . . my former world,” I say. “It’s like saying ‘thank you’ and ‘that’s great’ combined into one.”
“Then you’re most welcome. Any time you’re on the Mount eight morrows from now, I’ll have your items for you.”
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it,” I say.
“I’m the one who feels honor.”
After saying farewell to Wren, Tela and I return to the Delta with the other Travelers. At the end of the morrow, I’m surprised when Sash doesn’t show up at our habitat. I summon her several times, but she never replies. When my mild concern soon grows to true worry, knowing that she’s Balt’s primary target, I decide I should contact Larn to tell him she’s missing. As I kneel to the ground, to my relief, Sash steps through the tunnel.
She hands me a black bag filled with chalky white powder and tells me she hopes I can use it to make white paint. When I ask her where she found it, she explains that she traveled to the eastern Desert near the Dunes and scraped it from crumbly white rocks that are common in that area. She spent her entire waking morrow traveling almost two hundred thousand miles, not telling anyone because she was circumventing the new Traveling procedures, just so I could have white paint. I hold her in my arms for a very long time, making sure she knows how much I appreciate her devoting her entire morrow to something for me.
At Sash’s request, three Constructs carve an opening from the main cavern of our habitat to the smaller cave beside it. We move the table and stool Sash added to the habitat for me into the other room. The Constructs cut shelves into the walls to store art supplies and polish the floor smooth using dried pumice stone. With the soft, warm light of Swirls illuminating a space about half the size of our main cavern, the room has the intimate, comfortable feel I want for an art studio.
A few morrows after my studio is finished, with the aid of the other Travelers, I transport everything Wren made to our habitat. The easels function as they should, and the quality is the same as the finest I could buy on Earth. The brushes and other miscellaneous items are identical to what I had described. Like everyone does in Krymzyn when tackling any task, Wren attempted to achieve perfection, and he accomplished it.
After I collect all the items I need for pigment, the last issue I face is finding a substance that will blend the pigment into a paint that dries. Water doesn’t seem to soak into anything in Krymzyn, so I can’t use that to make watercolors. I explain the dilemma to Nina while picking up a batch of canvas at the grove. She suggests I use the same liquid they strain from vines growing on the Mount that she used on the canvas.
The fluid Nina recommended mixes the pigments into paint exactly as I’d hoped. Similar to an oil paint, the thick, colored liquids adhere to the canvas while maintaining their rich tones when they dry. I blend the colors I need on the smooth steel palette and begin my first painting in Krymzyn. The subject matter is fairly simple, but I plan on taking my time with it. I want the image of Sash kneeling in front of Ovin’s tree to be perfect.
In the weeks that pass, tracked by the calendar I made and continue to add to, I realize how much more time I have to paint in Krymzyn than I did on Earth, an unexpected benefit of life here. With the long hours I worked at my design job, it would have taken me many years to finish enough paintings to eventually have a fine art show.
Even with the new Traveling regulations in place, my duties rarely take up the entire morrow, leaving me plenty of time to paint. We transport items across the Delta, sometimes take children to a variety of locations where they spend time observing the different purposes, and make daily trips to the Mount. But we can round-trip the Mount in less than an hour, including load time for the transports.
Each time Darkness falls, continuing to do so in a regular pattern, I’m the Traveler on watch in Sash’s hunting region. Larn takes over the duty for the Hunter Beck was partnered with. In the pouring rain, I alertly scan the terrain for any sign of Murkovin. Since the rope was removed from the river, we still haven’t had a single creature try to enter the Delta.
Early one morrow, the ring of a bell echoes through the hills of the Delta, summoning us to a Ritual of Purpose. Standing on a hilltop overlooking the magnificent Tree of Vision, Sash and I at
tend Kale’s ceremony. As Sash already saw, after minimal damage to his body from the Tree, Kale’s purpose as a Traveler is revealed. Larn is named his Mentor, although Sash tells me that it’s not necessarily always the tallest of the purpose who’s appointed. It could have been any one of the Travelers.
When Kale begins his Apprenticeship, Larn sometimes summons me to the Traveling Hill to help out with his education. Tela occasionally joins us as well, seeming to genuinely enjoy helping others through the learning process. As I try to teach Kale the mechanics of traveling, the principles are reinforced in my own mind, explaining why Larn likes to have younger Travelers take part in the training of an Apprentice. Although he breaks a few bones, the most notable a leg on his first full blend, Kale masters the skill almost as quickly as I did. After all, he was a little boy at Home when Sash still dwelled there.
On the morrow of Kale’s first successful travel with no injuries, Tela and I help him celebrate by teaching him to high-five. He seems perplexed by the custom at first, but he also understands that it’s my way of offering him praise for his achievement.
At the end of the morrow, I say my good-byes to Kale and Larn. Tela and I walk together in the direction of our habitats. Hers is in the region immediately to the north of Sash’s and mine, although her habitat is located farther to the west than ours is.
“Do you feel comfortable being in Krymzyn now?” Tela asks as we walk.
I’m surprised she would ask me such a personal question since no one seems to engage in exchanges of that nature in Krymzyn. At the same time, I don’t mind because I genuinely like Tela, a sentiment enhanced even more by how much she reminds me of my sister.
“Why do you ask?” I reply.
She turns her face to mine. “I’m just curious, and you seem to be doing well here. If it’s too intrusive, I apologize.”
“No, not at all. I’m just surprised. People here don’t seem to talk much about themselves with others.”
“It’s not the way of most, especially the taller ones. But it seems to be necessary for your balance.”
Tela always has the same matter-of-fact look on her face when she talks. Her voice, while soft and feminine, is monotone with little or no inflection. But her eyes are much more expressive than those of the other people in Krymzyn. Right now as we walk, I can see genuine curiosity in her eyes, but I also get the sense that she really cares about how I’m doing.
“I’d say I’m getting comfortable here,” I answer. “I feel better now that I’m actually fulfilling my purpose, even though I’m really sorry that it happened because of Beck’s death. But I feel like I fit in more now.”
“It must be very strange to leave your own world,” she replies.
“It is, but I do like it here. The hardest part is really wanting to see the people I’m close to in my world, and not being able to.”
“I’m sorry you feel that for those people.”
“Thank you,” I say.
She studies a sleeping sustaining tree as we pass by it. “I would find it odd to be in another world. I believe I would be worried the people wouldn’t accept me.”
“I’ve felt that a lot since being here,” I say. “I’ve really only felt comfortable recently. You and Larn have always been great to me, though.”
“Thank you,” she replies, focusing her eyes on mine again. “Can I ask you something you might find strange?”
“Sure,” I reply, thinking no question she asks me could be anywhere near as strange as the things that have happened to me in Krymzyn.
“When you were on the rock in the river with Sash, why did you press your lips to hers?”
“I was blowing air into her lungs,” I reply. “She wasn’t breathing from being under the water.”
“But I’ve seen you do it other times as well, when she wasn’t in need of help. She did it to you before the first time we started your traveling exercises.”
“Oh, that’s called a kiss. It’s something two people in my world do when they feel the way Sash and I do about each other.”
“How do you feel about each other?”
I don’t answer for a moment. It’s difficult to explain emotions Sash and I share to someone in Krymzyn, and I’m not even sure I should. But I decide that since she’s asking and no one’s told me not to talk about things from my world, I’ll try to define love for her as best I can.
“It’s an emotion called love,” I say. “It’s complicated, but it’s just something between two people that’s a very strong feeling. A deep connection and caring for one another that only those two people feel for each other.”
“It seems odd,” she replies, looking down at her bare feet as they stride through the grass.
“It’s kind of like how everyone here feels about honoring Krymzyn, except it’s just for one person.”
“But then you exclude others,” she says with a sideways glance at me.
“Well, you can love lots of people in different ways. Like, I love my family . . . the man and woman who gave birth to me and also my sister, but in a different way.”
“Why is what you feel for your family different than what you feel for Sash?” she asks, “family” now added to her vocabulary in the same way “sister” once was.
“I feel about my family the way I think you feel about everyone in Krymzyn. Like I’d give my life to protect them the same way you would for others here. But with Sash, it’s more of a deeply personal feeling that’s just between us. It’s the desire to be together and share as much of our lives as we can. Like neither of us is really whole without the other.”
Tela thoughtfully nods her head. “Why do you and Sash put your arms around each other and press your bodies together?”
“That’s called a hug,” I reply. “It’s just something else people who care about each other do in my world. But you can hug anyone you care about. Like families and friends hug all the time. It’s very common where I come from.”
“Physical interaction appears to be important on your plane,” she says, saying almost the exact same words that Sash once said to me.
“It is. I used to think it was strange that people here don’t really touch each other the way we do in my world. I think it’s because you’re so in tune with the world mentally. Maybe you don’t need the physical—like you’ve evolved past it or something.”
“Perhaps,” Tela says.
As I think about my own comment, combined with all my experiences here and everything I’ve learned from Sash, I think I finally realize that, in Krymzyn, a much deeper spiritual communication replaces what I think of as typical interaction between people.
We reach the valley leading south to my habitat and both stop walking.
“Tela,” I say, turning to her and smiling, “I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me since I’ve been here. You have no idea what a huge help you’ve been.”
“I’m honored,” she replies. “Since the first time we met on the Tall Hill, I’ve felt comfortable around you. I’m very pleased that you’re here, Chase, and I enjoy spending time with you.”
I’m really surprised by her verbal expression of feelings other than “honor”—something that never seems to happen here. “That means a lot to me, Tela. Thank you.”
Tela raises a hand in the air for a high five, and I slap hers with mine.
“I’ll see you on the morrow,” she says, but before she turns away, she smiles at me.
As she walks to the west, my feet are glued to the crimson grass and my mouth is hanging open. A single startling thought just hit me out of nowhere when she smiled.
I’m having a noticeable effect on the people I’m around in Krymzyn. It’s not just that they’re mimicking my behavior because I haven’t done some of the things in their presence that I’ve seen from them. The people are feeling things that seem to be outside the norm for Krymzyn when they’re around me, and they’re sometimes followed by a physical reaction. Emotions that are forever
inside me from my world are entering others, probably through their sense of awareness.
Tork’s outburst of anger that mirrored my own, Cavu’s blush from Sash’s compliment, Maya’s taking my hand in hers when she said good-bye after Storytelling, and now, Tela’s friendly, personal conversation with me followed by a spontaneous smile—all common physical reactions from my world to a variety of feelings people don’t express here. I’m having as much of an impact on the world of Krymzyn as it is on me.
Chapter 31
“Chase, please come to the Telling Hill,” whispers inside my head.
I finish a stroke, lay my brush down, and rise from the stool in front of my easel. When I walk from my studio into the main cavern, I find Sash standing on her hands, her legs straight up in the air, a meditative calm on her face.
“Eval just called me to Sanctuary,” I say.
“I’ll be here when you return,” she replies.
I grab my spear and trot through the tunnel. As soon as I exit the door, I break into a sprint, wanting to get whatever Eval needs me for out of the way as quickly as possible. I’m mildly annoyed that she summoned me so late in the morrow, partially because I returned to our habitat later than usual from talking with Tela but more because I’m anxious to continue work on my first full-color painting in this world.
After streaming over the countryside to Sanctuary, I reach the base of the Telling Hill. I coast up the slope, slow to a walk, and climb almost to the top. On the round, flat crest of the hill, the Disciples are sitting in a semicircle, facing me. With her back to me, a woman is seated on the grass in front of them. I immediately notice her shoulder-length dirty-blond hair that looks like it came from my world—something I’m not used to seeing in Krymzyn.
As I walk to the group, the Disciples all look past the woman and straight at me. The woman slowly turns her head.
“Ally!” I shout.
My sister jumps to her feet. Tossing my spear to my side, I dash to her, but almost stumble to the ground from the shock of seeing her face. We both throw our arms around each other, and I lift her off the grass.