“Just hold on to me,” Elaina said. “You probably should close your eyes.”
Elaina began the saaue meditation. Sylvia closed her eyes and immediately felt a surge of energy enter her through Elaina’s hands. The power flowed up her back, and when it struck her head Sylvia suddenly felt weightless. Everything happened so quickly, but she thought she remembered Elaina pulling her by the hand through a luminous archway. The swirling mist that filled the archway felt prickly and uncomfortable, until she had passed through to the other side.
“Wake up!” she heard.
Sylvia opened her eyes and there was Aura, smiling mischievously. “I knew you’d come!” Aura said.
“Its…really you!” Sylvia said excitedly.
“Course it’s me.”
“Where are we?” Sylvia asked. She peered around. She was flat on her back on a hot, white sand beach, and Aura was sitting on her belly, straddling her. Elaina was lying on the sand beside them, shading her face with her hand.
The sun gleamed in the cloudless sky, which faded from dark blue overhead to pale blue where it met the turquoise ocean. Sylvia let her sister pull her up to sitting, and the two girls embraced.
Elaina sat up too. All three young ladies had gorgeous yellow blossoms tucked behind their left ears, and they were dressed sparsely in two-piece garments woven of white plant fibers as thin as silk.
“Are we really here?” Sylvia asked. “Is this the spirit world?”
“This is Mama’s island,” Aura said. “Don’t you remember?”
“Let me see.” Sylvia stood. Palms rose from the sand. Deep green foliage at the jungle’s edge soaked up the sun’s brightness. A vast lagoon, shallow enough to walk in for hundreds of steps, resolved into a deeper hue as it neared the island’s fringing reef.
Sylvia had many fond memories of visiting this island with Aura.
“I’ve got so much to show you,” Aura said. She helped Elaina to her feet. “You should see, too, Princess.”
“How long have you been here, Aura?” Sylvia asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve explored the whole island, and every corner of the reef. Alika and Hoku are here too!”
“Our grandparents,” Sylvia explained to Elaina. Sylvia brought her black hair around in front of her and shook the sand from it. She found that some of it had been tied in thin, evenly spaced braids.
“Where should we visit first?” Aura asked her sister. “The jungle or the reef?”
Sylvia turned to Elaina. “Uh…do we have time?”
Elaina searched her spirit for an answer. “I feel we can take as much as we need,” she said. But she knew she was responsible for getting herself and Sylvia back to Arra—eventually.
“The jungle,” Sylvia said, and the three of them stepped off through the hot sand toward the trees. At the fringe of the forest they found a patch of shrubs with pear-shaped berries, and a tree densely packed with leathery yellow fruit. Aura reached up, plucked one of the fruits, and ripped it into three pieces, sharing with her guests. The green, oily pulp tasted both sweet and sour.
Aura led them deeper into the forest, and soon they had lost sight of the beach. Before long she had them climbing vines to reach huge blooms in the canopy, and striding along ten-meter-high branches to access the ripest fruits. None of them sensed any danger or fear of falling, although the bodies they were in seemed real.
“How do you know when this one is ripe?” Elaina asked. She was sitting in the crotch of a tree in the canopy, peeling the brown skin from a fuzzy fruit to access its custard-like flesh.
“That one’s going to be great,” Aura said. “Alika said to wait until the green is gone, and it looks like yours is completely brown. You don’t need to peel it. Just poke a hole and suck it out.” Elaina punctured the flesh with her nail, and slurped the middle out of the fruit.
Sylvia was on a branch below them, trying to open an unfamiliar fruit. This jungle romp was bringing back the joy of the summer days when she and Aura used to play here. School had been less of a burden then; times were easier. Even though Sylvia knew there was a much darker world she would have to return to, she was in no hurry to go back.
“Let me help you get that open.” Aura slid down a vine and landed on Sylvia’s branch. “Pass it here,” Aura said. She took the fruit and twisted it in such a way that it easily snapped in half. Juice, pulp, and seeds dripped down for the insects, frogs, and fungi to consume. The flesh of the green-hearted fruit was for Sylvia.
They spent what seemed like an entire afternoon exploring the wonders of the jungle, but in the odd time-flow of the spirit world, when they got back to the beach the sun had hardly moved.
“I know you have to go,” Aura told them, “but let’s show the princess the lagoon too.”
Sylvia consulted Elaina again for permission. Elaina said, “Please, Aura, I’d love to see it!”
The water in the lagoon was just slightly warmer than perfect. As the three ladies waded out into the shallows, tiny shoals of blue and yellow lemis darted out of their way. A hot wind blew crosswise along the water. Sylvia nearly stepped on a ray, which shimmied away in a cloud of coralline sand. “This lagoon is my treasure chest,” Aura declared, “and all the treasure is alive.”
Soon they were striding among table corals. The water deepened, and Aura fell forward into the crystal soup, her shiny black hair spreading out in all directions, tousled by tiny eddies. Elaina and Sylvia began swimming, too. Beneath the surface, a new world had its finest attributes on display. The salt water didn’t bother the girls’ eyes, and it seemed they could hold their breath for ages.
The lagoon was home to thousands of swimming, drifting, crawling, and sessile species, from the tiniest speck of a free-floating micro-animal, to weaving and darting schools of silver and blue fish, to sprawling communes of corals with their feathery polyps rippling in the current. The whole scene resembled a busy city.
Aura found a chocolate brown conch uninhabited, and she used it to mark the center of an “exploration zone.” She would set the shell on a table coral while the three girls explored the wonders all around on their own, keeping within sight of the shell. When they were finished exploring the area, they would move on to the next zone. In practice, they rarely separated, following each other to point out this eel, or that clam, or the overhead passing of a school of powder blue fish.
The entire place was one huge celebration: a feast for the senses in honor of the grand design of the divine spirit. The highlight for Sylvia was the sea dragons, with their potbellies and yellow, white, and black frills. Elaina favored the gobies, and was thrilled each time she found a new one peeking out of a shady hole. Aura was partial to the tiny reef sharks, who scampered off when she tried to pet them, but then nosed their way back to assess this strange human creature and her rippling cloud of black hair.
The divine spirit eventually assembled the three adventurers on the shore once again. The water beaded and bounded off their bodies, clothing, and hair, and they were at once dry.
“Thank you for coming to visit,” Aura said.
“If there’s a way,” Elaina asked her, “will you come back to Arra with us?”
“I mustn’t,” Aura said. “It’s not right. I’m supposed to be here now.”
“But…are you sure?” Sylvia asked.
“I’m sure,” she said. “Don’t worry about me, Sylvie. You and I will swim together again, and for me it will be like tomorrow. Tell Mama and Dada I love them and I’ll always be with them. They’re going to adopt Ella now, and they will need your help.”
“I’ll miss you,” Sylvia said. The sisters embraced.
Aura took Elaina’s hand. “Thank you, Princess. You come back soon and bring Sylvia, okay? Next time we’ll go swimming on Celmarea. There is a reef there, right?”
“I don’t know. I think so…” Elaina had seen Alessa’s field guide to Celmarean coastal creatures, and some of them looked reefy.
“Then it’s set. Our next adventure will be on Ce
lmarea. Bye for now.”
“Bye,” Sylvia said, and Aura turned and skipped off into the forest, without looking back.
Elaina took Sylvia’s hands and soon they were wrapped up in divine light.
They opened their eyes to find the Arran survivors muttering to each other in amazement, for Aura’s body had simply vanished from her cot, her blanket falling flat.
CHAPTER TWENTY
T he allied armies finally achieved a major strategic objective: recapturing the Arrans’ largest granite quarry from the enemy, who had been using it as a forward base. Losing the quarry was a hit to the Destaurians’ morale. It disrupted their coordination, which helped the Arrans and Audicians advance southward. The allies quickly set about cleaning up the quarry and making it suitable for their own use.
Makias was taking a turn on the front line, battling Destaurians with his sword, his bow, and his Celmarean abilities, while dodging arrows, rockets and bombs. His armor was smeared and dotted with someone’s blood: it could have been his own—he wasn’t sure. A generally peaceful man who had never consciously killed any living thing before this mad war erupted, Makias was tiring and losing his focus. And Alessa knew it. She also knew he was still wearing his headset.
“Take a break,” Alessa told him in Celmarean. She was transmitting from Black Tube Caves.
“I’m fine,” he told her.
“Horse shit,” she said. “You’ve nearly been killed twice in the past ten minutes because you’re not paying attention. You’re tired. Get off the front line. Get to the quarry. Find my sister—she’ll take care of you.”
“I’m needed here. And I don’t know where your sister is,” he said. But Alethea was right behind Makias, listening to the same transmission. She tapped him on the shoulder.
“Panuse,” he said, on seeing her.
“Just take half an hour,” said Queen Alethea. “Come with me to the quarry. It’s safe there now.”
“Very well,” he said. Makias switched off his headset to save the battery, and he ran off with Queen Alethea and her guards.
“Focus on the happy times,” Alessa had been saying to him. “The night of the dan dineu.” Makias didn’t hear this transmission, but Alethea did.
“She says remember the night of the dan dineu,” Alethea told him. This made Makias smile. Celmarean ladies, he thought. Always taking care of their men.
He entered the dark quarry office where medics were setting up the new field hospital. The memory Alessa suggested that he relive wasn’t entirely happy, but most of it was, and he knew exactly why she had suggested it. He would give it a try. He found a straw mat in a corner and knelt there.
Makias thought back to when he and Alessa were fifteen years old, to the night of the dan dineu: the ritual presentation of the infant princesses Eleonora and Elaina to the people of Celmarea.
Dan dineu ceremonies always took place on the same Celmarean beach, in the summertime. By tradition, after the formalities, the entire population would celebrate with dancing, storytelling, music, and artistic water displays until the sun came up.
As soon as the ritual segment was over and Alessa was no longer needed in her official capacity, young Makias pulled her aside. “Come back to the palace with me. I have something for you.”
“But everyone’s here,” Alessa said, removing her ceremonial outer robe. “Nobody’s in the palace.”
“It won’t take long,” he said. “But they mustn’t see us leave.”
Makias recalled how stunning Alessa looked that night in her reiana kai, a minimal two-piece white garment of flowing fabric constructed to complement and celebrate the female form. Her long hair was done up halfway to reveal the lines of her bare neck and shoulders. Her bare midsection, legs and feet were nothing short of perfect. But the most exciting thing about her was always her eyes—the whites bright and unblemished, supporting dark irises that led straight into the dynamic, fun-loving and mischievous soul he had fallen in love with. And although he could not yet read her mind, and she hadn’t said so for sure, he believed that she loved him too.
Keeping an eye on each other across the crowd, they briefly engaged groups of celebrants with light greetings as they snuck toward the periphery of the party. Alessa walked with a juvenile skip in her step back then. And her quick facial movements betrayed a teenage awkwardness that she would soon grow out of.
When they reached the edge of the party crowd, they disappeared behind a row of carts and met up behind a tree.
“I have to admit that was fun,” Alessa said, smiling with only the right half of her mouth—another habit she’d since broken. “What are you planning?” She playfully ran all ten of her fingers like spiders up his bare chest. Like most of the men and boys that night, Makias was wearing nothing more than a white swath around the waist.
“Just follow me.” He grabbed her hand and led her on a route that had them ducking under bridges, running through the mature, dried-out rows of a coastal tryptil farm, navigating a thin ledge above a drainage canal, and hiding under a bridge as a cart passed overhead. When they got to the palace, there were a few attendants about, but the teens managed to stay out of everyone’s view, and were unnoticed even when they rinsed the sand and dirt from their feet in the gateway basin. Makias led Alessa up to the residence wing, and opened the door to his quarters.
“Uh…uhh…we can’t get caught in here, Makias.”
“Trust me,” he said, and he showed her into his bedroom. He had decorated the room in her favorite colors, set out candles, and spread out a picnic on a low table with all the foods he knew she enjoyed the most. He had been cooking and baking for three days.
“Whaa…what’s all this?”
“I thought we’d spend a little time together away from the crowd,” he said.
She filled a large plate with a bit from each dish he had made, and they poured tall glasses of nectar, and sat down together on the cushioned lounge. “Last week the necklace, and now this. Makias, you must really be in love with me.”
“I can’t deny that. Have you thought about my proposal?”
“Of course I have. I’ve been thinking about it non-stop.”
“And?”
She took a deep breath. “I’m not going to say yes or no. We’re so young, Makias. We’re not even in Kalmise yet. If I agree to be yours now, and we find out later we’re not meant to be together, it would break your heart and mine. Is that what you want?”
“I’ll risk it,” he said. “I’ll risk a broken heart just to hear you say one time that you love me.”
“Oh…” she said. He could tell she was touched. Her soul seemed to warm and connect with his just through her eyes. Those amazing eyes. Still, her lips quivered slightly with fear. He wished he was a few years older and could read her mind.
“I would say I love you,” Alessa told him. “There, maybe I said it just now—but there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Don’t tell a soul that I revealed this.”
“I promise not to.”
“Things are about to change.”
“What’s about to change?” he asked.
“Everything. Our entire way of life. The council has been talking about it for weeks. They can’t explain what’s going to happen, but they feel something will. Of course I can’t even read their feelings yet, which annoys me to no end.”
“What could possibly happen?”
“I don’t know. They’ve foreseen something. They are meditating on it night and day. The most I can get is that it concerns Elaina and Eleonora.”
Looking back, Makias realized that he’d had all of the pieces of the puzzle he needed to guess what might take place. He knew about Radovan. He knew the line of pure blood had been broken in the council. But Radovan had gone back home, hadn’t he? Things should have been as they always were. It made no legal difference who the babies’ father was; they belonged to Panei Andiena. And the Celmarean civilization was strong. What could possibly disru
pt their way of life?
“Let’s not worry about what might happen,” Makias said. “Let’s enjoy what we have now.”
“You’re right,” Alessa said. “You’re absolutely right.” She ran her hands slowly up his bare chest and moved in close to him. He took this as a cue, and leaned in to kiss her. She broke away just before he could.
“Makias, if you kiss me everything will change instantly. You know that, don’t you? I know we’ve said a lot, but a kiss means much more.”
“Then what if you were to kiss me?” he asked.
“That would be a much better idea,” she said, and she leaned in and kissed him deeply. It was a first kiss for both of them. It sent Makias into the clouds, being loved like that, and it was a feeling he would always remember.
The next kiss he initiated, and she allowed. They continued, and left most of the food untouched until they eventually figured someone had to be looking for them.
They returned to the celebrations still not formally committed to each other, but they were very different people than they had been earlier in the evening. Over the months that followed, as the Celmarean council grew more concerned about the perils ahead, Alessa grew more distant from Makias, despite what she knew they both wanted.
______
“Are you all right?” Jaimin asked Makias. Makias opened his eyes. He was lying on his side. The field hospital was now completely set up around him, and the prince was rousing him. Makias knew he must have been asleep for hours.
“What’s the hour?” Makias asked.
“Not midnight yet.”
Across the room, rows of Arran soldiers—burned, hacked, slashed, bashed and bruised—were being patched up by the medics or wholly restored by Elaina. Elaina’s mere presence gave those barely clinging to life the additional measure of hope they needed to make it through.
Bits of soldiers left on the battlefield had been seen glowing, lifting off the dirt where they had fallen, and floating toward the quarry to reattach to the bodies they belonged to.
The allied officers were overjoyed that Elaina was restoring their men. However, they weren’t impressed by her insistence on healing the wounded of the enemy too. Whenever Elaina exhausted her line of patients, she would hurry over to the nearby detention area to work on any seriously injured Destaurians. This engendered a rumor among the Destaurians that Princess Eleonora, who was known to be a mender, had snuck behind enemy lines to help her subjects.
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