Isle of Gods II: Amara

by H. Lovelyn Bettison

  “Stellan told me you had a vision about a danger coming to the island,” she finally said.

  “Most everyone knows about my vision now. We didn’t have to come out here to discuss it.”

  “I know. That’s not why I brought you here.” She looked around again, checking to make sure she wasn’t followed. “How do you feel about the way the island is run?”

  “The island is run?” I wasn’t sure I understood her question.

  “About the way Father and Herthe do things?” She cocked her head to one side and waited for an answer.

  “I don’t know. I never thought about it before.”

  Aina sucked her teeth. “You can tell me the truth. I mean, everyone knows about how your visions annoy them. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “I’d like to be able to speak freely, of course.” I felt like this was a set-up of some sort. Aina was an elder after all and could’ve been sent by Father to test my loyalty.

  She took a few steps closer to me. “Is that all you want? To speak more freely?”

  I wondered if she knew about my plans with Twee to leave the island. “For now.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Interesting,” she said.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Many of us are unhappy,” she said.

  “But you are an elder.” With what Chatham had told me earlier and now Aina I was beginning to think our little society wasn’t as content as I’d been led to believe. Was I just too naive to not have noticed it on my own?

  “Many of the elders are unhappy. We want to do something about it and we’re trying to get as many other souls involved as possible.”

  “What will you do?” I asked.

  “I don’t know yet, but we’re making plans.”

  A small blue bird landed on a branch near my head and began to twitter. “I don’t think I want to be involved.”

  Her face sank. “That’s your choice, but please promise not to tell Father.”

  “Why would I?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you want to curry favor with him.”

  I laughed. “I think that would be a useless pursuit.”

  She nodded in agreement and I wondered what she knew. Had he spoken to her about me?

  “You aren’t the only one who feels that way.”

  “I thought I was.”

  She smirked. “You are so wrapped up in your visions that you’re blind to most everything else that goes on here, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “You should pay more attention. That might be helpful to you in the future.” We walked back toward the path together in awkward silence before going our separate ways.

  I didn’t tell Twee about my brief encounter with Aina. She had enough on her mind already, but as we sat in the sand on the beach I told her about the man I’d seen in the seerstone.

  “What about my family?” she asked. Her lack of excitement irritated me.

  “I don’t know how to control who I see yet.” I watched the waves, rushing into the shore with their foamy tops.

  “You have to help me find my family. That’s the one thing I asked.” She squeezed my arm and looked at me with pleading eyes.

  “I will do what I can, Twee, but you have to understand that I’m only learning now.”

  “You’re smart. You’ll learn fast.”

  I hoped she was right because our raft alone was not enough to get us off this island. We needed help and the man I’d seen earlier in the seerstone was the exact person we needed. I could feel it. There was a reason the stone showed him to me. His face had seared itself into my mind. Each time I closed my eyes I could see him looking at me. He would save us.

  Only a few short days passed before I was able to experiment with the seerstone again. Each time I used the stone it got easier. This time it took no time at all for me to focus in on the man. He stood on the street in a crowd with a baby in his arms. He was startled again when I appeared, jumping back slightly and then turning to say something to the person next to him, I didn’t know what. The other people around didn’t react to me at all which led me to believe that they could not see me. I was only visible to him.

  There was no time to waste. I had to try to communicate. That was the only way to get him to come to the island. Locking eyes with him I began to send him my thoughts. It was the first time I’d tried anything like this so I kept it simple. “Help me,” I thought over and over. I had no way of knowing if what I was doing was working. He turned to the woman next to him and said something, but the words sounded like a garbled mess to me. The woman shook her head and looked at him with pity in her eyes before walking away. “Please help,” I thought. He appeared to say something else and again I couldn’t understand. I wasn’t sure why that was. Maybe I wasn’t focusing enough. The frustration of not being able to understand him broke my concentration and the image flickered a few times before fading into nothingness.

  That took so much out of me that I nearly fell asleep right there in Father’s hut. I didn’t though. Exhausted, I managed to leave without being noticed and drag my weary body to my own hut to get some sleep. With my eyes closed I could still see the man. He was becoming part of me. I started to see his life in my mind as if it were running parallel to my own. I didn’t know if what I saw was completely real or simply something I’d made up in my head, but I could see something, a murky version of what his mortal life must be. Sometimes he could see me too. I wondered if Father ever formed this type of connection with a mortal without the use of the seerstone. It was almost like being in the mortal world myself.

  Then one night I saw the mortal man in a vision. His ship was caught in a terrible storm. The wind roared and the clouds unleashed buckets of rain. The man held to his ship tightly looking out at the increasingly rough waves. He called out for my help, but I could not help him. He had to make this journey alone. I squirmed with helplessness watching this terrible scene. I was sure he would die before getting to the island, then I felt Father’s arm drape around my shoulder. “I see you’ve called a friend,” he said.

  I nodded and an acidic burn rose in my stomach at the thought that I might be responsible for this mortal’s death.

  “Do you think he needs help?” Father asked.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  Father closed his eyes and his body emanated a white light that engulfed everything around us. The storm stopped. The light faded and I could see the ship that carried the man just inside the great rocks that surrounded the island.

  “You saved him,” I said, my body filling with gratitude.

  “He has come to take you away?” Father asked and suddenly I didn’t want to leave. I was tied to this island and the other souls on it. Father removed his arm from my shoulder as we watched the man in the distance lower a smaller boat from his ship and begin paddling ashore.

  “I changed my mind,” I said.

  “It’s too late.” Father walked away from me toward the water and before entering the surf looked back at me. “Don’t be afraid, Amara. You were meant to go,” he said. As he placed his foot in the sea his body turned into a column of clear water that held his form for a split second before plunging into the surf beneath him.

  I gasped, clasping my hand over my mouth before waking to find myself in my own hut.

  When I stepped out into the morning air I expected my desire to leave the island to be gone. The vision was so vivid, but it hadn’t made me change my mind at all. I felt pulled toward the sea and my every thought was of the mortal that might finally take me beyond the barrier rocks to a life of freedom. I was meant to go and was eager to experience the power that I would have once I was no longer confined to this place.

  Chapter 14

  The seerstone became a kind of addiction for me. Even though I didn’t really need it to see the man anymore I wanted to use it every chance I got. I could see more detail with it and felt that I could communicate with him more easily. I started taking more
risks just to get a few minutes with it.

  Time sailed by while I looked into the stone. On this day I didn’t know how much time had passed. I would say only minutes, but the dusty-rose-colored light coming in through the window told me otherwise. Upon realizing that the sun was setting I stood up quickly and peered out of the door to make sure I could step out without being noticed. Father stood just a few feet from the door chatting with two elders. His back was turned toward me but the elders faced my direction. Through the tiny crack I’d made in the door I couldn’t see the whole scene. There could’ve been others around but I couldn’t risk opening the door any further because the elders would surely see me. My heart raced with fear. How was I going to get out undetected?

  I looked around the hut for some place to hide. There was a pile of bundled blankets in the corner, but how long would I be able to stay under them in the heat? Surely Father would not be in for the night. Supper had not yet been served and then there would be a fire in the middle of the settlement. I strained my ears to listen for his voice. It was getting louder and I knew there was no more time to think. I had to hide. I ran across the room and quickly buried myself in the pile of blankets. He walked inside. He was talking to someone, one of the elders, Tobias.

  “… but you still haven’t told us what this new age is,” said Tobias. “We haven’t had a vision or prophecy from you in over a thousand years and this one is so vague that we really don’t know what to do with it.”

  “There is nothing for you to do with it besides wait and experience.” Father’s voice was tense.

  “The other souls have been asking about the new age and the vessel. We are the elders and you would have us look like fools unable to explain even the simplest things?”

  “This is not simple. We will all wait.”

  “Does that mean you don’t know what it is either?”

  “I never said that. What I said was that we are only asked to wait and experience. There is no need to make this difficult.”

  “Difficult? You are the one making it difficult. What did you and Herthe put into that mortal girl? If it is what I think she will be dead before your new age ever happens. Then what will you tell everyone? Then how will you explain that this is a new era of light. It will be a new era of death, the first mortal death to ever occur on our sacred island. How will that affect everything?”

  I listened as Father seemed to move things around the hut like he was looking for something. I held my breath as he got closer and closer to me. The shuffling around stopped. Then he said, “Twee will not die. She will not mar our island with death. I know it.”

  “You do not.”

  “Am I not the great all seeing God? Should I not know?”

  “You should know, but it seems to us that you do not. With each passing day the other elders and I wonder if you were ever really the great and all seeing God at all. You seem too willing to use the title but unwilling to do anything required of one with such a great title.”

  I heard footsteps and he left. There was a heavy sigh and a thud not far from where I hid.

  I held my breath and could hear my heart thumping in my chest, my blood rushing in my ears, and the slow pulse of my breathing. I put my hands over my mouth and nose to try to conceal the sound and took a long slow breath.

  “You can come out, Amara.” His voice was flat. I did not move. “You must be hot beneath all of those blankets. Come out.”

  I held my breath again and stayed as still as possible hoping that somehow he was not talking to me. He’d said my name though so there really was no use in pretending.

  “I’m waiting.”

  I reluctantly lifted the blankets and looked out from under them to see Father in his cream-colored robe sitting on the floor about a foot from me. “Did you really think you could hide from me?”

  I shrugged.

  “Did you think you could come into my hut and I would not feel your essence in the air even after you’d left?”

  “You’ve known all along that I’ve been coming in here?” I thought I was keeping the secret so well.

  “Of course.”

  “Why did you say nothing?”

  “I was waiting for you to confess.”

  “I would never do such a thing.”

  He looked at the stone. “Have you figured it out yet?”

  I said nothing.

  “You need more practice, don’t you? It was harder than you thought. You assumed that because you also have visions that you’d be able to see into the stone with no problem. You wondered what could possibly make me so special. You thought that you too could be the ruler of this island.”

  “I—” I started to speak, but he wouldn’t let me.

  “Your visions are useless. What do they really mean? I am the first and by so being I am the one who has control over all. You cannot fool me. You with your selfish dreams of freedom and your tired visions would never even be able to fill one of my shoes. You are young and weak. You have not seen the world that I’ve seen. You did not rise from the dust to find yourself alone. You have not created anything. You have not destroyed. You’ve done nothing because in reality you are nothing. Why do you still not realize that there is an order to life for a reason?”

  I stood under the weight of his words.

  “Who said you could stand?” His voice cracked like a whip. “I am not through with you.”

  “But I am through with you.” I stormed out without looking back. I cannot say that I was not afraid. For I was. I knew not what Father was capable of really. I’d never heard him speak in such a harsh tone before.

  I exiled myself that evening before Father and Herthe could. I packed a satchel of necessities and headed up the rocky path to the far side of the island alone. As lonely as I felt at the time I thought that actually being physically alone would not make much of a difference. Yes, I was abandoning Twee. I wondered if she’d be angry with me because I hadn’t found out if her family was still alive. I pictured her heading down to the beach in the morning while everyone else ate, looking for me at our meeting spot behind the large bumpy boulder. I wondered if she would abandon her plan to escape without me.

  The rocky trail followed the sheer cliffs around the west ridge of the island. This was the same trail I’d followed on my journey with Father more than one hundred years ago. It was surprising that no vegetation had overgrown this path so rarely walked. I walked for hours in the dark with only the glowing stone I’d packed to light my way. When I could no longer walk I found a hidden spot behind a bush to sleep.

  Over the next couple days I hiked around the base of the mountain eating whatever I could find, berries and bitter roots, some grubs. I missed the prepared meals of the settlement. Eventually I set up my final camp at the edge of a lonely beach on the far side of the island.

  Our agelessness makes time less relevant to us. It ticks on and we hardly notice, but I never realized how relevant time becomes when you are all alone. The hours dragged by and soon the prospect of eternal life seemed like a punishment. I gathered food to eat, but I needed more than what I could forage, so I taught myself how to spear fish. It was surprisingly easy. I resumed my practice of focusing. With so much time to myself mastering this seemed more doable. Being alone made me more determined to leave the island than ever. I still had so much that I needed to tell the man if he were to find me here.

  I could recall his face so easily especially his eyes, the way the light reflected and danced in them. I started willing him to come here, sending him clues, planting the seed of the desire for something more deep inside of him. One morning I awoke to the shrill scream of cicadas. A fog had nestled on the trunk of a tree near me and the air was heavy. My limbs tingled and I knew the time was near. The man would have to leave his home soon if he were to make it in time to pass through the door that would lead him here. All this time he’d become my companion helping me feel less alone in my exile, but if all went well I would soon be able to meet him.


  Chapter 15

  I can’t tell you what day it was when I finally felt the pull of their approaching ship, because we don’t mark the days like mortals do, but I can tell you that the sky was a crisp azure blue that made my eyes rejoice. There had been cloud cover for days, but when the clouds finally broke the sky celebrated. Gulls flew in great groups overhead diving into the water catching the silvery fish gathered near the shore. I’d tied up the hem of my robes and waded out in the surf with my spear at the ready. The fish leaped from the water, their sleek bodies breaking the surface and arching in the air before returning to the water with a splash. I speared one easily. I had gotten much practice.

  I was preparing my catch for cooking when I started to feel the pull in my chest. It started as a gentle throb that was only noticeable for a few seconds at a time. Mistaking it for the loneliness that occasionally washed over me when I realized how long it had been since I’d spoken to another soul, I chose to ignore it. I went back to cooking and eating my fish as I normally would, pulling the meat from the bones and savoring its sweet, smoky flavor. I only ate fish once every few weeks as a treat, but even this simple pleasure could not bury the ache in my chest.

  As the week wore on the ache slowly amplified until I couldn’t help but notice its constant prodding. It consumed me. I could feel it from the bottom of my ribcage to the top of my neck when it transformed into a pulsating pull that compelled me to follow it. I could not sleep. I could not practice my focusing exercises. I could only move. I left the house of woven sticks I’d made for myself and started walking back to the settlement. I walked all night and all day without stopping, not even to eat. My pace was slow as if I were trying to conserve the energy in my body, but I continued to walk. It was dark and the moon was high in the sky when I made it back to the settlement to join the others. Everyone was sleeping and I walked straight through the middle of the settlement and back to my hut. It was as I had left it. It did not look like anyone had been inside since I’d gone. I half expected to find someone else sleeping there, but I did not. I was weary from walking for so long. My stomach cramped and clawed at my insides, but exhaustion proved more powerful than hunger. I collapsed into my bed and almost immediately fell deeply asleep.