Rise

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  She would run.

  And she could not, would not, do that.

  * * *

  “Tom Sanders,” April said, sliding into the car next to Richard. “Shelley’s new boyfriend. Nick’s dad was in there—he thinks they’ll be with Tom Sanders.”

  “And that would be . . .”

  “Up the coast somewhere. Several days’ drive. He doesn’t know more than that.”

  “Can you still feel him?” Richard asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, April.”

  “For what?” She turned to regard her old friend. He looked drawn.

  “That we didn’t keep better track of him. For his sake, and for yours. We should have paid more attention to your concerns.”

  “Maybe,” April said, sitting back against the leather seat. “I don’t know. I worry too much. I just wish we knew where to find him.”

  “A name is a start. I can trace that. Maybe even tonight, if he’s got a record or anything I can easily look up.”

  April closed her eyes. The thought of Sanders having a record didn’t make her any happier. “Yeah.” She grimaced. “I was so sure he’d be here. Wishful thinking, I guess.”

  Anger at Shelley rose up, sudden and violent, and she wished again for the fire of the Spirit burning in her. Why was it so dull? Why now? And how could Shelley do this—how could she be so selfish as to put her own son in danger, pulling him out of a happy home where he was safe and thriving for the first time in his life, all because she wanted the gratification of feeling like a mother—even if she was a terrible one?

  Bile rose up in the back of her throat.

  “Are you okay, April?” Richard asked.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. This is all so close to home for me. I feel like it’s me out there. Only it’s worse, because I thought I could protect myself, and I don’t think Nick can.”

  “Nick has something you didn’t. He has the Spirit.”

  “I hope it does him good,” April muttered. “I have the Spirit too, but it’s not doing much for me at the moment.”

  Richard looked at her curiously, but he didn’t say a word—just started driving. “I’m going to the office,” he said. “To try to look up our friend Sanders. You coming, or you want me to drop you back at the house?”

  “I’m coming,” April said. She had no desire to go home now. Not without having found Nick. It would feel too much like failure, or like giving up.

  But she grew angrier as they drove across the village to the legal office where Richard worked. Angrier, more lost, more unhappy. And she found as they drove that most of her anger was turning inward, to where the fire was supposed to be. To where the Spirit supposedly was, silent and inactive.

  What kind of time is this to stop speaking? she asked. Why show up all the time when I don’t want you, and now that I do, drop me?

  Hot tears stung at her eyes. She was a child again, a victim of a father’s violence and a mother’s neglect. Like fire and cold, heat and silence.

  They pulled into the parking lot behind the office. Richard parked and then paused, his hands resting on the wheel, his head turned slightly in April’s direction but his eyes not actually looking at her—nonconfrontational but clearly having something to say. She waited for him to say it.

  “Don’t be alone,” he said finally.

  “I can’t help it,” she snapped.

  “You might not be able to hear right now, but that doesn’t mean nobody’s there. You’ve still got the Oneness. I know the things you’ve experienced have been isolating you somewhat, but that doesn’t change what you are—what we are.”

  “I appreciate that,” she said, although she found his words as annoying as reassuring.

  She was the painter from the cave, the great saint who had encountered the Spirit in the womb of the world and set loose a fire of vengeance, deliverance, and power. She was one whose experiences no one else could understand or enter into, one who could bring a new kind of vision and life.

  Did that mean she didn’t need the Oneness?

  Or that she thought she didn’t?

  Maybe Richard’s words rankled because he was right, and he was calling her out—gently—for her pride.

  As she got out of the car and followed Richard into the office building, she sent up a prayer into the cold, dark sky. Okay! I’m sorry! I surrender . . . whatever it is that I’m doing wrong. Just please, please help me.

  Richard flicked the office lights on, and April just wanted to collapse in an office chair and cry. Her legs and arms and hands and feet were so cold, and she felt empty. Beyond herself. Exhausted.

  Richard unlocked a couple of filing cabinets and fired up the office computer while April watched, dull and hurting at the same time. Thoughts of Nick plagued her like an ache in her stomach.

  She just wanted him to be okay.

  While Richard searched through files, he started to hum. The melody was low and rich, and she recognized it as one he had hummed for years—just to himself, half under his breath, a part of who he was.

  She closed her eyes and let his baritone sink into her soul.

  The sound of a life changed. Her life changed. The sound of security and peace after a childhood of fear, where a man’s voice was always a frightening thing and music was always loud and blaring. The sound of slow years of healing and change, before the cave, before the hive, before the fire.

  And there, curled up in a chair listening to Richard sing, she heard the Spirit again.

  I was there, the still voice said. All those years. I was the song and the healer and the safety you knew.

  But you scare me now, she said. I don’t understand you.

  Then hang on to what you already know. I am not changed. I am only more than you thought when you first knew me.

  Part of her wanted to ask—since the voice was talking now—where Nick was. But part of her didn’t. Part of her just wanted to sit here and listen to the Spirit and talk to him, because she realized that her anger had come from thinking she was abandoned.

  And she had been wrong.

  Anyway, although she couldn’t explain why or how she knew this, she realized that whatever this person-to-person relationship with the Spirit was, it didn’t guarantee getting answers. She wasn’t just going to be able to ask any question and immediately learn what she wanted to know. Even if the answer felt important to her.

  Right now, it was good just to know that she wasn’t alone.

  She sat and basked in that for a while, losing track of time. She snapped back into the real world when the office door opened to a mittened hand, and Mary walked in and took a seat beside her. Without a word, she reached over and gathered April’s hand in her own.

  Only seconds later, Melissa and Alicia came through the door, and Diane, Chris, and Reese after them. Tyler was a few minutes later, but he came too. No one really said anything. They all just took their seats around the office and joined hearts and waited for Richard to say something. He looked up and smiled at each one who entered, but he didn’t say a word.

  Half an hour later, Tony and Angelica spilled through the door and sat on the floor, the only space left, at Chris and Tyler’s feet.

  April didn’t understand. She didn’t know why they were here or how they had known to come—especially the twins, who must have driven in. But her heart wanted to burst.

  With the reality, the power of not being alone.

  She closed her eyes and let herself feel the truth of the Oneness. The more she let herself go into it, the more fully she felt it all: the heartbeats, pulses, breath in lungs. Souls intertwined. Thoughts and feelings winding around each other. They were all veins in the same stream, the same blood pulsing through all of them. One body, one heart, one Spirit: Oneness. All being sought and known and shaped by the same Worker in the womb in the world.

  And they were all going to find Nick, and bring him home, together.

  Chapter 16

  Niccolo reined his ho
rse in at a watering trough in a cold village just south of Franz Bertoller’s mountain city. According to the maps he’d been following, he was close. His heart told him the same. Teresa wasn’t far. Mother to him, sister to him, muse and confidante to him, this one whom he loved was near.

  If it hadn’t been for the disease that knocked him off his feet for weeks after her departure, he would have been here long ago. But the battle had been harder fought than anyone expected, and demonic voices plagued his dreams—taunting him with threats and visions of failure and death.

  Never had he had such an experience. The sisters had tended him with all their skill and compassion, but it was thoughts of Teresa that pulled him through. An unaccountable conviction that she needed him.

  He had always counted himself in debt to Teresa. Without her not only would his life have ended in the miserable plague of his childhood, but he should never have come into the Oneness; and not only would he never have known Oneness, but without her he would never have discovered his gifts, his remarkable art, the way he could help others, his place in the world.

  He was not happy to find she had gone off without him, although it didn’t surprise him—she had always been headstrong and determined. She complained when he followed her example in that, but they both knew where he had learned it.

  Dismounting, he stretched his legs while his horse watered itself. The village was small and dirty; a chill in the air did little to mitigate the smell of refuse mingling with smoke from hearthfires and the forge of a nearby blacksmith. Eyes fixed on him; loiterers and tradesmen stared. He tried to ignore them. He had a bad habit of getting drawn into the lives of people he encountered, and right now, he didn’t want to lose any more time finding Teresa. He shivered, not wanting to admit how much the cold and damp were affecting him. He’d thought he’d left the fever behind him, but eight days into his journey, it seemed to want to come back for a second bout. He was doing his best to deny its chances.

  “Ho, stranger,” a gruff voice greeted him.

  He looked up to see a man of middling height and middling girth, with a bushy beard and sharp eyes, standing only a few feet away. The man was looking him over carefully, but there was no real threat in his manner.

  “I am just passing through,” Niccolo said. “My horse was thirsty, and I . . .”

  “No need, no need,” the man said. “You’re welcome enough. I suspect you may be thirsty also, aye?”

  Niccolo intended to say no, but the truth came out his mouth instead. “In truth, it has been some days since I had much else but spring water.”

  “Then come in, and have a drink. I am the innkeeper here.”

  “It’s good of you, but I fear I’m short on coin, and on time.”

  “The coin is not necessary; twas I who offered the drink, not you who tried to take it. As for time, your horse could use an hour’s rest, and so from the looks of you could you. You can ride off again hastily if you please, but I wager you’ll soon be slowed by exhaustion. Come, boy, take my advice and rest a little while.”

  Niccolo opened his mouth to protest, but the man’s good sense overcame his protests before he had time to form them. He found himself nodding instead, and tying his horse to the post.

  “I thank you,” he said. “I think my journey must not be much longer, but I’m grateful for the respite nonetheless.”

  The man led him into a small, crowded inn that was welcoming in its way. The air was thick with smoke and the smells of ale and of roots stewing in a meat broth; Niccolo’s mouth watered. He’d grown up on the wine and finer fare of the south countries, but after more than a week of eating mostly dried fruit and hard meat and bread, anything hot and hearty smelled wonderful. His host caught sight of his face and said, “The stew I cannot offer you on the house, but if you’ve a coin or two, there’s no reason you shouldn’t feast as hearty as any man of the village and farms hereabouts.”

  “I might be able to manage that,” Niccolo confessed, settling down on a wooden bench at a table. The man had been right about his condition. He hated to admit it, but he was worn through.

  “You say you have not much farther to go,” the innkeeper said, setting a tankard of ale before Niccolo. “Where be your destination?”

  “The castle of Franz Bertoller,” Niccolo answered.

  “Indeed?” the innkeeper asked, his bushy eyebrows shooting up. “Strange business thereabouts, these days! But I don’t know how a southerner such as you would have heard about it so quickly.”

  “I haven’t heard,” Niccolo said. “I am going there for reasons of my own. Can you tell me what’s happening there?”

  “Death was happening,” the innkeeper said, “a mighty plague that swept much of the country, though it left us pretty much alone. But then yesterday some began to come through the town what said a miracle had come—that the nearly dead rose from their beds and walked upon seeing the face of a painting.”

  Niccolo shot to this feet in his excitement. He lowered himself again, aware that he’d spilled ale all over the table with his abrupt motion. The innkeeper didn’t seem to care. “Did they say anything about a woman?” Niccolo asked.

  “Aye, the painting was of a woman. A servant girl, they say. Mighty strange, the whole story.”

  “I don’t think that would be the one. More likely they would say she was a noblewoman—for she carries herself like one, though she is a humble sister of the Oneness.”

  A darkness came over the man’s face, and he looked about him as though afraid of eavesdroppers. “The Oneness, you say? That’s a bad business in these parts, boy, a bad business indeed.”

  Niccolo frowned. “What can you mean?”

  “The lord of the castle is no friend to the Oneness,” the man said. “His father courted their favour, but the younger Bertoller had them all killed many years hence. His has been a foul lordship, but that deed was one of the foulest.”

  Alarm rose in Niccolo’s heart as his mind raced back to his boyhood and the northern nobleman who had taken him from his parents on the road and brought him to the abbey and Teresa. He had never liked Franz Bertoller back then, but had always felt somewhat indebted to him, and he was too young to understand what Teresa really thought of him or why the sisters had asked the lord to withdraw his help and leave the abbey for good. He was sure that, whatever else might have been true, they had not viewed the man as an enemy—not a murderous one, in any case.

  So they could not have known this part of his history.

  “How many years hence did that happen?” Niccolo asked.

  The innkeeper gave him a date, and Niccolo nodded—it had been some time before Franz Bertoller ever came to the abbey in the south countries. Apparently the lord had concealed much from the sisters.

  “And the rumours you hear of the castle—they say nothing of a woman?”

  “Not that I’ve heard, but those with stories to tell passed through quickly. They were sick, you see, and were healed, and all eager to get back home. As I said, the plague has largely left our folk be. Don’t know the reason for that, but I’m grateful.”

  “You are under the Spirit’s protection,” Niccolo said. “May his grace rest on you.”

  “I don’t know much about any of that,” the man said. “I do know our kind never took up much with the lord. He’s a crafty one, going in for intrigues and covenants and shadowy deals, and worse—the man deals with dark spirits, they say. Our folk are more honest than that. We pay taxes and let him alone, and he lets us alone in return.”

  His errand suddenly feeling that much more urgent, Niccolo rose to go. His host pushed him back down with a hand on his shoulder. “There now. Ye still need to eat something or you’ll not get far. I don’t like to remark upon it, but ye look as though there’s a touch of the fever upon yourself. Will do you no good to starve your body besides.”

  Niccolo submitted, again forced to concede the man was right. His mind whirred over what he had just learned but could come up with no other pla
n than to leave as soon as possible, rush to Teresa’s side, and rescue her from any threat. He had never been a man of craft, preferring to take the most direct course and stick passionately to it. It seemed to him that his benefactor was being obstinately slow about bringing his bowl of stew, but then, perhaps the man was trying to help him—make sure he actually took the rest he needed.

  When the stew did come, Niccolo swallowed it too fast to taste it, scalding his tongue in the process.

  “I thank you,” he said, laying a small stack of coins on the table. “For the food, the drink, and your goodwill. And indeed for the tales you’ve told me.”

  “No trouble,” the man replied. “I wish you well on your errand. Take care of yourself, lad; it’s a cruel country you ride into.”

  Before he began to feel sick again, Niccolo had made good time. He anticipated that Franz Bertoller’s city was only another day’s ride, and as he urged his horse through the mountainous terrain thick with pines, he cast his spirit forward and tried to sense the presence of Oneness—of Teresa, not far away now. No assurance of connection came to him beyond what he and Teresa always shared—a heightened sense of the unity that bound all the Oneness together. That he had always, like a second breath in his lungs.

  As a boy, some among the Oneness had been puzzled by Niccolo because it seemed that he had never Joined—the moment of entrance that every member of the Oneness treasured and forever remembered had never happened to him. This worried some, but wise Mother Isabel saw past it to the reality that Niccolo was already One. “Called from the womb,” she had said. He did not know much about that. He only knew that Oneness was his whole life. Until the moment he met the sisters at the abbey, he had not understood who he was. But from that very moment, he had known himself to be forever home with them.

  His failure to save them from the plague, so many years ago, still haunted him. He felt his gift for painting and creating wrestling in him, wanting out. But the very idea of loosing it brought back the crushing disappointment, the devastating helplessness of the day the plague was stronger and the sisters died.