I fidgeted my foot under the table. I looked up from the book that was laying out in front of me. I had been trying to read the same page for twenty minutes. I started fiddling with my pen as I watched the boys who were sitting across the table. They were deep into the books they were reading, learning.
“Okay!” I slammed my hands down on the table, with no one else in the library the noise was even louder. Both of them jumped.
“What?!”
“I can’t take this anymore!” I pushed the chair out from under me, standing.
“What are you talking about?”
“What more do we need to find in these damn books? We’ve been here for days reading. We’re wasting time,” I drew out the last word to make my point.
“Abigail, we need to find out more about this fourth world.”
“Yeah, we don’t even know what it’s called yet,” Ryan agreed.
“And what about the world we have now? What about everyone that is waiting down in Limbo to be saved? To be brought home. If we keep waiting we might not get a chance to see the fourth world because ours won’t exist!” I turned from the table starting towards the door.
“Where are you going?” Chase sighed.
“Going to find the entry to the fourth world. Obviously, the entrance is on Earth. There must be a marker on Earth that shows where the entrance is just like Limbo and Ether. So I’m going to find it,” Owl flew from the window to hover by my side. “See even Owl agrees. Come on Owl.”
“Owl!” Ryan warned.
Owl flew over to him hissing at him before flying back to me.
Ryan gave Chase a sideways glance. He sighed. “Fine, we’ll go. But I would just like to let it be known that I don’t think this is a very good idea.”
Ryan laughed. “When have any of our ideas been good?”
“Where are you going?”
“To find Limbo’s marker.” I turned off to the right.
“Why?”
“Because I’ve seen it before. Charlie showed it to me to tell me where Ryan was.” Owl stopped me by flying circles around me. “What's a matter Owl?”
He hooted.
“Do you know where it is?”
He spun up into the sky before taking off. I looked back at Ryan.
“Go or you're going to lose him.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I whispered holding a hand back behind me. We were only a few hundred feet away from Limbo's entrance. From what I could see from there, they had at least tripled their security. Owl knew too. He flew behind the nearest tree, hovering. We all gathering in front of him. Ryan pointed to the ground. Owl just blinked.
Abigail, it's here. Ryan said that it's on the other side of this tree.
Ryan must have got Chase to listen to his thoughts. I knelt down and crawled around the tree. Slowly I moved the dead leaves on the forest ground, trying to not make a sound. Just when I was about to give up I brush my hand over something cold. I moved the leaves off of the flat perfect round rock to see Limbo’s symbol engraved into it. When I have removed the last bit of dirt an orange light came from within the engravings. I looked over my shoulder to see that everyone was paying attention. I looked back to see the light dissipate and then the symbol shift to the left.
The shifting. It did that the first time I saw it too. It didn’t glow though. Come on. Let's go.
I rose, waving them back. When we could no longer see any sight of where we had been I stopped.
“Those markings must mean something.”
“I don’t know. Legend says that they were only there to mark the worlds for when they were first created. They do nothing more than that."
“Then why did it show the shifting?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you guys see that head on the stake back there?” Chase asked. We both looked over at him. I had to think for a minute, I was so concerned about the marker that I wasn’t paying much attention to anything else.
“Yes,” Ryan nodded.
“That was the guy that was going to kill me had Abigail not showed up when she did. Aaron must have gotten mad and killed him. Made an example out of him.”
We all stood in silence for a few moments. I knew Chase was hiding the pain he felt.
“We need to go find Ether’s marker next. Come on.”
***
“Did you guys find it?” Chase called over to us.
“No, you?” We all turned to face each other.
“It doesn’t make sense. Ours wouldn’t be any farther away than this. Where we all are is how far Limbo’s was.” We were all a few hundred feet away from the stairs in different directions.
“Well, maybe ours is farther away? Let’s spread out a little more. Chase, you start to go left. Ryan, go straight out from the stairs. I’ll go right.” They nodded. Owl flew off with Ryan.
I kept my pace slow kicking the leaves and pine needles off to the side as I went. I would stop if something looked out of place but they were all just rocks buried into the ground. I looked over my shoulder to see that I had wandered off more then I had thought. I turned back deciding that I would go a little bit farther before turning back. Something was telling me to. Each step I would stop and clean the area in front of me as much as I could but there was nothing like we had found earlier.
Maybe their marker is different.
I looked up from the ground to see that the forest around me was much thicker than the rest of the forest that I have explored. There were more trees here that were closer together. Their colors richer than the other trees that were behind me. For a moment I wondered if I had walked into the other world without realizing. I looked back over my shoulder again. I had only taken a few steps since the last time I had looked, or so I had thought. Behind me, the trees all looked the same, full of color. Not daring to move I turned back taking in my surroundings. I looked down to my feet to see that I was standing on something. I took one small step back kneeling down to see a flat perfectly circle rock embedded into the ground.
Chase, come here. I think I found the other world.
“Ryan, come here!” I figured that he would be able to hear me from this distance. I still didn’t believe that I had gone that far.
You found it?
Just come here.
I was sitting with my legs folded under me when the boys came running towards me. Clearly, Owl had guided them. They knelt down beside me.
“Oh my god, we thought that we lost you. How did you get all the way out here?”
“What do you mean? I’m not that far away.”
“Yes you are, we were sitting on the stairs waiting for you when you called for us. It took us fifteen minutes to get here, running,” Chase explained.
“Chase, look around,” Ryan was looking to the canopy of tree branches around us.
“It’s different here isn’t it?” I asked, looking over at him.
“Wow, it’s beautiful here. Everything is so colorful and alive.”
“Where the hell did you end up, Abigail?” Chase asked looking around.
“Here!” I thrust my hands down towards the rock.
“Are we in the other world now?”
“There’s no way,” Chase shook his head.
“Well, then where is the entrance?” Ryan questioned.
“Will have to find it,” I paused. “Did you guys look at the symbol though?”
They both looked down.
“Weird.”
“A circle with a square inside. If there have always been four worlds why is this symbol so different?” Chase questioned.
I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
We all sat in silence for what seemed like an eternity until Owl made a small noise, snapping us all from our trance.
“Come on, let’s see if we can find the entrance,” I pushed myself to my feet, looking around.
A few more minutes passed and like when we were trying to find Ether’s marker we ended up about a hundred feet from each
other, with the marker in the middle of us.
“Find anything?”
“Nope.”
“No, you?”
I sighed starting to walk back to the center. The boys followed meeting back with me. Owl continued to fly around, sometimes he would stop and sit in a tree and then take off to the next. He had seemed to lose interest awhile, he was just happy to be outside.
“Okay, I think we should head back.”
“And do what?” Chase asked.
Again, I sighed. “Okay, okay. You guys were right. We should have waited a little longer. We don’t even know what this fourth world is called, plus we can’t find the stupid entrance.”
Both of them smiled.
“But!” I held up my hand. “I did find the marker and that will be a valuable piece of information since now we can look for the symbol and we know where it is now. So this was not a pointless mission… just saying.”
They laughed.
“Alright, come on. Time to go home,” Ryan waved him to follow, which he did obediently.
When the stairs started to come back into sight I was surprised at just how long it did take. “Wow, I guess I was farther than I thought.”
“How did you even get that far?”
“I don’t know I didn’t even notice, to be honest.”
“How come we couldn’t find Ether’s marker? It doesn’t make sense. We find Limbo’s no problem. And even found the other one too, purely by accident but still. Why can’t we find our own?” Ryan questioned.
I shrugged. “Owl, do you know where it is? You knew where Limbo’s was. How did you know where it was?”
He hooted, flying a circle around us.
“He said that he saw it once before too. Like Charlie. Didn’t think it was important,” Ryan interpreted.
“You’ve never seen ours.”
He hooted again. I knew that was a no.
“Maybe we weren’t looking the right place,” I stepped up onto the first step to head to Ether.
“Wait!” Chase grabbed my arm making me stop where I was.
Immediately I was on guard waiting for an order. Ryan looked over at him also waiting. Owl landed on the platform of the stairs.
“Look at that!” There was excitement in his voice as he pointed down to where Owl was sitting. Looking down, Ryan and I were also surprised.
Engraved on the platform of the stairs was the symbol of Ether. Owl hopped onto it touching the engravings and then hopping back. Just like Limbo’s the engraving glowed an orange light and then shifted to the right.
I turned back to both of them, pointing down to the symbol. “Has that been there the entire time and we have never noticed? There’s no way.”
“I don’t think so. I think it just appeared.”
“Well, how the hell does that happen?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Ryan mocked me from earlier.
I twisted my face, pretending to laugh. He smiled, proud of himself.
“Okay, let’s go. We have a lot of work to do.”
***Chase***
“Chase, have you found anything in that book that is of any use at all?” Abigail was sitting with her legs folded on my bed with a few books out in front of her. Ryan was sitting in the chair that was in the corner. Abigail has snapped him from his trance. He was looking over the top of his book at me. Owl sat on the window sill, his favorite spot in any room. I sat at my desk on the opposite side of the bed from Ryan.
“Um, actually I think I have.”
“What did you find?” Ryan closed his book. As he walked around the bed he placed the book at the end of it.
“This book talks about places that I have never heard of before.”
“Where? Here?”
“Yeah, like the Valley of the Death.”
“Well doesn’t that just sound like a lovely place?” Abigail scooted to the edge of the bed letting her feet hang over.
“It sounds interesting actually. But I just got to a page a few minutes ago with the symbol we found in the forest on it.”
“What did it say? Was there a name?”
“I haven’t found a name yet but it says that that is where the Creator resides.”
“What?”
“Yeah, it’s neutral land apparently.”
“But I thought that Earth was,” Abigail said.
I shook my head. “Apparently Earth has nothing to do with the three worlds. It’s just a place that we can enter them from.”
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Abigail came from Earth,” Ryan pointed over to her. He was looking over my shoulder at the book. I knew he was trying to see if he could understand the language.
“No actually. It talks about her in here.”
“Me?” She was embarrassed.
“You were a very important person long, long before you were born.”
“Wonderful.”
“But she was born on Earth. She’s from Earth,” Ryan couldn’t understand where I was going with all of this.
“Actually she wasn’t. Neither was her brother. Yes, her parents may live on Earth now but she’s technically not from there,” I could see that Abigail was suddenly overwhelmed.
“So then why was it prophesied that there were others before her?”
“They didn’t believe that it would take this long for the true one to come alone,” I paused pointing down to the book. “This is what it’s telling me.”
“So she is the actual one?” Ryan asked pointing to her. I could see that that made her uncomfortable.
I nodded. “Her name is in the book. Her whole family line is. The whole history and all the events that would happen.”
“Is my name in the book?” Ryan joked.
“Actually, yes. Both of our names are.”
Shock took over his features then pride.
“Does it say what’s going to happen next?” Owl had come to sit beside her. She stroked his head slowly.
“No, it doesn’t. It says that she will make the decision.”
“Oh well isn’t that just wonderful,” She laid back on the bed, Owl came and snuggled into her arm. He was trying to comfort her.
“What does that mean?” Ryan frowned.
“They don’t know what is going to happen. It is up to her to decide.”
“So literally the weight of the world is on her shoulders?”
“Worlds,” I corrected.
“Thank you so much for that,” She growled. She sat back up taking Owl into her lap.
“I’m sorry but—” I paused. “It’s the truth.”
We all sat in silence for a few minutes. Not wanted to upset her anymore I turned back to the book continuing to read to see if there was any other information that I could learn. Ryan still looked over my shoulder. He was waiting for the next piece of information but we both knew that we had to let her be the one to break the silence.
“Okay, so can I get a few things straight?”
We both looked over at her waiting.
“So I’m actually from Ether. We were always supposed to become friends. Earth is only useful from the entrances. This fourth world is where the Creators live. And I have to make the decision as to what happens to the Worlds.”
I nodded. She took some time to process.
“So do you think that the Creator or Creators, whatever, wrote this book?”
“I mean that makes sense. Some of the things that I have read in here have lined up to things that are on the fountain.”
“Interesting,” Ryan crossed his arms.
“All these loose papers are people who have added in things after this book was written. Like events that happened and things like that.”
“How could they read it if you are the only one that can read it?” Ryan questioned.
“Certain people throughout the generations have been able to read it. All of the names are written on the front page. The last one was your mother, Abigail,” holding my page I flipped the other pages onto my
hand to show them all of the handwritten names.
“So does it say how or what we are supposed to do with this fourth world?” Ryan asked.
I flipped back to the page I was at. “Not really. It’s up to Abigail.”
“Does it say how we can find it?” She asked.
“Ah, I haven’t finished reading the section about that world but it sounds like we were in the right place. I just—” As I looked back down to the book I stopped. Something had appeared on the bottom page that wasn’t there before.
“What is it, Chase?”
“The fourth world is called The Divine.”
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE - ABIGAIL
“Here it is,” I pointed my foot to the marker.
Chase and Ryan came over looking down at it. “Okay, so it has to be around here somewhere.”
“Did anyone notice when the forest changed?” Ryan asked.
“No.”
I shook my head. “It just suddenly changes and you’re in a whole different place.”
“Maybe we're already in The Divine then.”
“No I don’t think so,” Chase paused looking around. “I don’t think it’s that easy. There has to be an entrance. Start looking.”
After what seemed like hours I looked around to see what the boys were doing. They were carefully touching the trees and rocks and even sometimes the ground to see if there was anything to find. Owl had found a nice tree branch to have a nap in.
“Anything?”
They both turned to me shaking their heads. As they walked over to me I notice their gaze suddenly seemed to suddenly go through me. I turned to see someone step out from behind a tree.
“Rachel?” Chase and I said in unison.
“Olivia?” Ryan said at the same time.
“Olivia?” I turned to Ryan narrowing my eyes. As I stared at Ryan visions of reading the letter from Jo came back to mind. The pictures of her daughter were attached to it. I turned back to her, my anger rising.
No!
What’s a matter, Abigail?
The Divine Fallen Page 15