by A. A. Volts
“Oh God, no,” said Jonas when he saw there wasn’t a bridge ahead. “We are stuck.”
“Nope, but I’m afraid you won’t like our descent very much,” replied Dr. Rainer.
I didn’t have a clue how we were going to get down. We were fifteen hundred feet or so from the ground.
“I wonder why this tree isn’t moving,” Carla said as she touched the old tree.
“They are very old. This one has been around for well over a millennia. Although it spent more than half of that time living and breathing, they too need a change of scenery every now and then. So her spirit has moved on but left this empty shell behind. Good, because it’s still useful to us,” Dr. Rainer explained.
It took a while, but we arrived at the next wooden platform, I was about to ask how we were going to get down when I saw a long cable at the end of the platform. It looked like a zip line, except that it seemed to go on forever.
“The only advice I have to give is this: whatever you do, do not let go, because it’s a pretty long way down,” Dr. Rainer said, smiling as he got Spark from me. He held Spark in one arm, grabbed a handle from a wooden box next to the zip line, placed it on the line, and jumped off the ledge. I couldn’t help but notice the confused look on Spark’s face as he zoomed down.
“Something tells me that Dr. Rainer is enjoying this,” Nyx said. She got a hold of the zip line handle and thrust herself forward, but not before looking Jonas straight in the eye and saying, “I’ll be waiting for you.”
It wasn’t long before they both disappeared into the distance.
“Your turn,” Carla said to Jonas.
“No, I’ll go after you,” Jonas replied. “This isn’t that bad.”
“Well, then I’ll see you guys down there, wherever that is,” Carla replied as she got another handle, placed it on the zip line, and also jumped. I had to confess that I was a little worried for her. She looked tense.
Jonas had been quiet for some time, which usually meant trouble. I could count on my fingers the times Jonas had been completely quiet.
Even though I was used to heights, I was apprehensive too—but I sensed that Jonas’s problem was deeper than that, so I pulled him aside and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know for sure. I’m scared, but it’s that I…” Jonas paused.
“What is it?” I said. “You can tell me.”
“Well, I guess I have mixed feelings. I mean, I like it here, but I miss home. I miss my mom and dad, but at the same time, I don’t want to leave here and be away from everyone we’ve met,” Jonas replied. For a second, I thought he was going to cry but he quickly composed himself.
“Ah, I know what this is about. This is about Nyx, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Promise me you won’t tell her anything.”
“I promise. I won’t say a word.”
“Okay, I’m trusting you. I think I like her. What should I do?” Jonas asked.
“I know how you feel,” I said as I considered telling him about my feelings for Carla. But I quickly decided against it. It didn’t seem like the right time. There might never be a good time.
“You know, there’s no easy answer for that question, but I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. After all, if we get home, we can still astral travel again and come for a visit,” I said to put his mind at ease.
“You’re right. Now if I could just figure out how to get off from going down this zip line thing,” Jonas joked, which was a very good sign.
“Listen, buddy, I want to tell something. We will get home, that much I can promise you,” I said, patting my friend on the back.
“So do you want to jump next?” Jonas asked, looking down.
“I would, but I’m afraid that if I did, you would be stuck here all by yourself for God knows how long,” I replied.
“You’re probably right, so how do I do this?” asked Jonas with a nervous smile.
“I guess there isn’t much to it. Just grab the handle, and like Dr. Rainer said, don’t let go,” I replied as I started to worry about it myself.
Surprisingly, Jonas firmly grabbed the handle. He seemed ready to go but then paused for a few seconds.
“Don’t make me push you,” I said, laughing and trying to motivate him.
“Here goes nothing!” Jonas yelled as he clumsily almost fell off the ledge. Thankfully, he was holding on tight to the handle. I think he screamed the whole way down, but I couldn’t say for sure because after a while I was unable to hear him.
So there I was. Standing all alone, overlooking the massive drop before me and the wilderness below when I started to wonder what in the world was I doing? What have I been doing all these years? For a split second, I thought that if I fell, everything would be over and I would finally be able to see my mother again. No delays, no fuss… but deep down inside I knew it wasn’t an option. I was sure there would be excruciating consequences for anyone who tried to take the easy way out. From what I had seen so far, I knew enough to know that I didn’t know anything, except that there was no easy way out. There was simply the way it had to be.
Worried, I paced back and forth contemplating all that had happened to me.
Suddenly, my right shoulder blade started to burn. I didn’t even have time to blink before I felt him approaching. As the pain grew, so did my rage.
In a moment of clarity, I realized that I was extremely angry: I was angry for having to grow up without a mother. I was angry for having to jump without knowing where I would land. And most of all, I was angry for being in Threshold for so long and not seeing any signs of my mother.
My heart rate increased with my anger. As the sense of dread filled my veins, I knew I was running out of time.
I had a decision to make. If I was to slide down the zip line, I would be involving everyone I cared about in my fight against Phasma. If I stayed on that platform, my friends would probably be safe… yet something told me I shouldn’t face Phasma alone. I weighed the pros and cons of each scenario for a few minutes before I realized that no matter how much I tried to protect my friends, they were already involved. I had no right to make the decision for them. So I decided to trust my gut feeling and share my burden with the only friends I had. If I was going to face to Phasma, at least I would have the best friends I could have asked for by my side.
***
I was reaching for the box of handles when I heard Phasma’s raspy voice coming from behind. He couldn’t have been more than five feet away.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Phasma asked.
I cringed as I tried to decide whether or not I should turn around, but in the end it was inevitable. So I turned around to face the figure who had been haunting me ever since my mother passed away. It was as though her passing had opened the floodgates of hell.
I knew instinctively that I wasn’t just fighting Phasma. I was fighting fear, rage, fighting a stew of negative feelings and emotions that had dominated my very being for a long time.
“You know what? It’s time for us to settle this,” I said.
“As you wish,” Phasma replied. “You’ll pay for your trespassing.”
“I won’t let you push me or anyone else around anymore,” I said as Phasma stood there staring at me with his cold eyes.
“It’s about time you stopped running from your destiny,” Phasma finally replied.
“Don’t worry, I’m not running anymore. I’ll make a deal with you, whatever happens, you leave my friends and family alone,” I said.
“They don’t matter,” Phasma replied.
“I beg to differ. They matter much more than you could ever imagine,” I replied, looking around for anything I could use to defend myself.
“We’re more alike than you know,” Phasma replied.
“I’m nothing like you!” I yelled.
“You’re in denial, but it doesn’t matter. Your suffering shall be your demise,” Phasma said.
There was nothing I could use to defend myself
.
In a way, I felt like simply giving up. But in the end, I decided that if I was going to die, I would die fighting. Even if I had to do it with my bare hands.
“You’re a fool if you think there is any hope left,” Phasma continued.
“That’s the only thing I have left, and not you or anyone else can take that away from me,” I replied.
“Hope is nothing but an illusion. Just something to keep fools afloat until the last second, until the end,” Phasma replied with a horrifying laugh.
“Then I guess I’ll die a fool. Speaking of which, why haven’t you killed me yet?” I said.
“The moment had to be right,” replied Phasma.
Cornered, I did the only thing I could: I ran as fast as my legs would take me, figuring that with any luck I would get to the zip line before Phasma had a chance to stop me.
As I turned around and started my desperate run, I felt his claws hit my back and push me onto ground. My face slid across the wooden platform and I felt each splinter as they punctured me. There was little I could do besides scream. My face burned, and my skin felt like it was being ripped off.
My body came to a stop several yards away, but I still felt as though his claws were digging deep inside my back. The pain made me nauseated and weak. When I tried to get up, the pain only intensified.
When I finally managed to get up, Phasma pushed me back onto the ground.
“Get off me!” I screamed with all the strength I had left.
I was wheezing, and the pain was almost intolerable. I became convinced that Phasma was probably right after all: the end was near. A part of me said I should just stop fighting the inevitable, because it would make the permanent transition to the world of the dead easier. I knew then that death was unavoidable, and most of all, that death wasn’t real. There was life on the other side, I had seen it, touched it, felt it, and most important of all, lived it. Death was simply a transition, an inevitable change that everyone would have to endure sooner or later. The other part of me argued that I shouldn’t give up. That I should never give up, even when everything seemed lost and hopeless.
At that moment, I remembered what my mother used to tell me when I was a child. In fact, I heard her voice saying, “Mark, as long as you follow your heart, everything will work out just fine. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You’re a good person, but you need to truly believe that.”
Suddenly the pain didn’t bother me anymore. I was busy trying to figure out where I had heard that recently. No… it couldn’t have been her, I thought. But I wasn’t mistaken. It had to be her. Had she been right under my nose all this time? Had I been too busy to see her?
I was sure of it. I had spoken with my mother on several occasions; I just didn’t realize it was her. She looked so different yet familiar. I’d finally figured out where my feeling of knowing Mrs. Barnes came from. She was… I paused for a second. She was my mother. I could hardly believe I actually found her. How could I not have realized this sooner? My mother always told me she wanted to be a librarian when she was growing up.
“Let me go! I must see my mother. She’s here,” I yelled at Phasma. As I struggled, the pain became unbearable.
“It’s too late for you,” said Phasma as he forced his claws deeper into my back.
“No, you’re wrong! It’s never too late. And hope is never an illusion. I know that now. Get off me!” I demanded.
For years, I had hoped to see my mother again, and now that I’d finally realized I had, I was bound to the floor without anything to defend myself. I clung to life by a single thread of hope. At least my friends were safe.
“Get off him!” said a fast-approaching voice.
I tried to see who it was, but I couldn’t.
“I said get the hell off him now!” Jonas said, sounding much closer.
The voice was definitely Jonas’s, but I had never heard him sound so courageous or determined.
Suddenly, I felt Phasma’s claws being pulled out of my back. I turned around and noticed that Phasma was no longer on the platform with me.
Puzzled, I looked around, only to find the platform deserted. I hadn’t realized at first that help had come from above, at least not until I saw Spark’s gigantic shadow. As he flew over my head, the bright and sunny day turned into darkness.
Jonas, Carla, and Nyx were riding Spark. His wingspan was insanely large. The only resemblance with that little and scared dragon I’d seen just moments before was the color of his scales and his face.
“Oh my God!” I screamed as they took another pass over me. They flew so low that the wind from Spark’s wings kept me grounded. But Spark wasn’t just flying around for show: Phasma was dangling unconscious from his claws. Apparently, Spark had grabbed Phasma and taken him into the air. The impact must have knocked Phasma out.
Unfortunately, the effect was temporary. I noticed that Phasma was coming to his senses.
Scared, I did the only thing I could think of: I ran and grabbed a zip line handle and threw my body forward with all the strength I had left, aiming for the narrow zip line. It was the scariest thing I had ever done in my life. I almost regretted jumping once I was in the air and it looked like I would miss the line. I was relieved when I finally heard the clicking noise the handle made as it connected to the zip line. The fact that I made it to the zip line was a miracle; I had jumped from several feet away.
I looked back and found Phasma flying right behind me. As he flew, his body left behind a dusty, thick, and black trail. Wherever he flew, darkness took over. Dayside was turning into Nightside.
I was sliding so fast that I had trouble holding on to the handle bar with my left hand. The pain in my back came back. Phasma must have left a wide hole in my back that affected my ability to hold the handle bar.
I glanced back again. Phasma was much closer than I’d hoped. Right behind him were my friends, holding onto Spark’s back for dear life. Whose idea was this? Certainly not Jonas’s.
Suddenly, I felt a searing pain on my left side. Phasma had shot me with some sort of dark energy beam.
I was about to get hit by another beam when Spark flew in front of Phasma’s line of sight and took the hit on his right wing. He screeched with pain and tumbled through the air. I saw my friends’ faces change to complete desperation.
It hurt too much to continue to hold with both hands, so I let my left hand go and hoped that I could keep holding on with my right.
Phasma was preparing to shoot a potentially fatal energy beam.
I was faced with a choice. I was either going to get hit and fall to the ground, or I could simply let go and hope to find a soft landing spot. I didn’t dare to look below me to find out how far away the ground was.
I needed to follow my heart and just trust that everything would work out the way it was supposed to. For someone who didn’t believe in destiny, I found myself trusting it with my life.
I waited as long as I could; I waited until his energy beam was coming toward me, and then I just let go.
All my fears and doubts came to the surface as soon as I felt my fingers let go of the handle bar. I had expected the whole thing to be quick. But it wasn’t. At first my heart seemed to stop beating, and then I started to fall. As the adrenaline rushed through my body, my heart felt like a tremendous jolt of electricity had jump-started it.
Deep down, I knew that, one way or another; my life would be changed forever. I hoped I would survive the fall and that I would be able to get back to my normal life, knowing that my mother was well and not lost forever in the unknown or worse, into nothingness.
I surrendered to my fatal destiny. I’d put my trust not only on what my mother had taught me but also in her.
Even though I didn’t dare to look down as I fell, I knew instinctively that the ground was approaching fast. So I closed my eyes in a futile attempt to shield myself from the shock. As I did, memories started playing behind my closed eyelids, and again my life flashed by. I saw every smile I’d
had since I was a child, every dream, every hope and wish. But they flew by too fast for me to fully appreciate them. I stared as all my childhood illusions, aspirations, and delusions were presented to me without any censor or filter.
I saw my own birth, my first steps, my first day of school, my first kiss—which happened sort of by accident with Carla when I was eight, how could I have forgotten that? All in all, it had been a good life, even though I had wasted most of it blaming everyone and myself for my mother’s death. I’d blamed God, the cosmos, my dad, her job, and myself—but at last I realized that I was wrong.
Call it what you will: God, creator, unconsciousness, evolution, or whatever else you can think of, “It” knows exactly what we need in our lives. The path we are given is the best path we can hope to walk. I knew that now; it all made perfect sense. As I fell to my death, all the pieces were falling into place.
It wasn’t that I had given up on life. I had finally given up fighting for a different life, the life I believed I deserved.
At last, I made peace with destiny. Destiny and I were finally and fatally in sync. I surrendered to the weightless, to my destiny. I was ready to take the next step.
When everything seemed lost, and all I had left were seconds, I felt a warm and soothing arm grab me and carefully slow my fall. My back touched the grass gently.
I opened my eyes and saw the most amazing sight. It must have been an angel sent to receive me into the steps of heaven. It had to be.
“I know what you’re thinking, Son, but you’re wrong. It’s not yet your time,” said Mrs. Barnes as she gradually became younger.
“You’re… my mother. Why didn’t you say anything before?” I asked, crying tears of joy. I felt relieved, happy, and betrayed all at the same time.
“I couldn’t, Son. You needed to free yourself before you could see things clearly,” my mother said as she tended to my wounds. The pain ceased almost immediately as light emitted from her hands and quickly healed my broken body.
“My friends, are they okay?” I asked as I tried to get up, but the task proved impossible.