by Ky Lehman
Strolling through the sun filtered forest with our fingers laced into a stretch of trees I now remember are called Hallow Groves, we come to the shady patch of grass by the brook where Benni Dhoo and I had rested only days before.
“Do you want to stop and eat,” I ask, pointing to the spot.
“I could eat,” he says, eagerly leading me off the path.
We sit under a gigantic oak tree and waste no time wolfing down our feast of pizza rolls, white chocolate and strawberry muffins, and plastic cups filled with juicy chunks of peach, pineapple and mango, washing it all down with the spring water in our drink bottles.
“Josh?” I ask between mouthfuls.
He lifts his head from his roll and looks at me like a hungry chipmunk with nuts packed into his cheeks.
I burst out laughing.
What? His full mouth, raised eyebrows and amused expression asks.
“How has it been, seeing your father again…as he is?”
He chews quickly, swallows and simply says, “Amazing.”
“Yeah. I bet,” I agree.
He shifts so he is lying on his side facing me and says, “The other day, when I realised who he was, I immediately remembered everything about him. The respect I had for him. The admiration. How much I loved him…and how much he loved me. Hitting me all at once like that it was, well, overwhelming to say the least, but it left me with no questions. No uncertainties. In that instant, I was…sure of him,” he says, his voice faltering.
“What was the first thing you remembered?” I eagerly ask.
“His goodness and how people trusted it. I remembered always being really proud of that,” he says, thoughtfully picking at the grass. “And to willingly go through a transition like that to stick around and protect his family. I felt…so…” he says, choking up, clearly unable to finish his thoughts out loud.
To show him I understand, I say, “He has a way of doing that. He makes those he loves feel like a rare treasure. Cherished, you know?”
With glistening eyes and a knowing smile, he nods.
He moves again, this time so he is sitting up against the tree trunk, and motions for me to join him. I crawl over to him and with his arm around my shoulder, I lay my head on his collarbone. The contrasting smell of his body heat mixed with the crispness of his cologne hits me head on. I think can I hear him inhaling deeply too.
Then, out of the blue, he says, “I have no doubt of how much I loved you. My heart is bursting with it,” he says, mirroring my thoughts.
“Mine, too,” I say.
“You know, I had a taste of it a few years back, when I saw your face in the crowd at the Cloverleigh festival,” he says, packing no punches.
“You saw me?” I gasp, lifting my head and looking at him incredulously.
“I sure did,” he says, his eyes blazing. “And I’ve been searching for you ever since.”
We sat there in stunned silence until Josh finally breaks it by asking, “When you saw me on stage that day, did anything come back?”
I gulp, attempting to wet my sand-paper throat, and croakily answer, “You could say that. But, at the time, I thought I was just developing a major crush on the hot lead singer of a local rock band.”
He throws his head back and laughs. “Hot? What about talented?”
“That too,” I shyly add.
“And what do you think now?” he asks frankly.
“Well, after remembering life as your wife, I’m no longer star struck,” I say, making him laugh even harder. “But, even after all those lifetimes, ours is the only romantic love I’ve really ever known…but, from what I can gather, for a while there it was like a fairy-tale, monsters and all.”
He huffs and curtly says, “And that’s exactly what the red cloaks and their minions have turned it into. Make-believe.”
Talking of fairy tales makes me think of the Orchard, and some other stops along the way I’d like to make before our day together comes to an end. I wrestle my phone out of my tight pocket to check the time. “Shit!” I exclaim, jumping to a stand. “Josh, it’s nearly six o’clock!” I shout, racing around packing up what was left of our picnic. “And I still want to take you to the caves, the Orchard, the Clearing-”
“Not the Clearing,” he asserts.
“Why not?”
“I’ll see it tomorrow,” he points out.
“We should have time-,” I attempt to say.
“The caves are near here, aren’t they?” he uncharacteristically cuts in.
“Yes, but-”
“How about we go to the caves, and then see how we’re travelling after that,” he says, softening his tone.
“But, to get to the caves, we have to walk right past the Clearing,” I argue. Having him all to myself, I want to squeeze all I can into our day together.
He wearily sighs, eyeballs me and unsmilingly says, “Ren, I have my reasons, OK?”
That tone. That tone I remember. That, I’m-telling-you-politely-that-I’ve-had-enough-so don’t-push-it tone. I am astounded at how that rarely heard tone can still clearly resonate through two action-packed millennia.
“OK,” I say, trying to shrug off my disappointment and diffuse the tension. “All the same, we better make a move if you want to visit the caves and the Orchard and still make it home in time for the Midsummer rains.”
We throw our bags over our shoulders, refill our drink bottles and with the evening sun setting overhead, we silently make our way down the tree lined path, past the hidden track that leads to Clearing and out of the forest, up towards the hills and the limestone caves our little family of three once called home.
The damp summer heat attempts to slow us down, but the pull of the past is stronger as in record time we reach the summit and the entrance of our cave. Everywhere I look, the memories of starting new life in a new land are so vivid, so much so, I am sure this revolutionary time in our history is about materialise right in front of our faces.
The ghostly sight of our life-loving son, Benjamin, dangling from his favourite tree and the overwhelming love it brings ignites a childlike courage to stomp on the egg shells I believed I should always tread on; to free myself of the moment just gone and excitedly run up to the luminous orb I see ahead, as the innocent voice of our beautiful boy calls to me to reach out and touch it, Mum. Don’t be scared.
“But I don’t know what it is, Ben. I don’t know what’s inside,” I plead with him as I stand frozen before it.
Mum, don’t be scared of its shiny beauty or the changing form within, because it is the same all of the others that have come before it: salt white, salt night, salt the vessel of golden light…
“…the salt and the light come together as one,” Nathan’s voice echoes on the soft breeze tussling my hair.
My son’s faith and Nathan’s sacrifice gives me courage to reach out to touch it, and as I do, our five-year-old Ben says, What form it takes belongs to you. What hatches belongs to the world, and with a big wave and an even bigger smile, he fades into the greenery behind him.
Awestruck, I look over at Josh, wondering if he saw our Benjamin, and if he heard the wise words his young mouth just spoke. I can see that the remembrance in his eyes is shining brighter than ever before, but his silver stare is not focused on the tree where Benjamin was, it is set at the entrance to the cave. “Salt and light,” he breathes.
“Yes! Yes!” I exclaim, rushing at him and gripping his biceps. “The shiny egg in the distance! Salt and light! Did you see Ben too?”
“Yes…I saw Ben,” he gasps as he clasps my hand and leads me in the direction of his bewildered gaze, “standing with a huge crowd of others, here…they were all standing right here,” he says as he releases my hand and turns around in circles, searching the dusty ground for evidence of what he saw. “They all held a golden apple in their left hand and a red rose in their right…and then, starting with Ben, one by one, they dropped their rose and when it hit the ground it turned into a statue of salt the same size
they were,” he shakily explains and gestures, showing me their different heights, “and the apples they still held in their hands glowed even brighter than before.”
“Salt and light,” I shout out, remembering. “Oh my God. The truth…it’s preserved here. The bones of our family, of our descendants, are hidden here, deep in the caves,” I exclaim, pointing into the black hole that was once the entrance to our humble abode.
Before this cavern became the perfect place to hide the Avalon ossuaries, it was the place Micah first recommended that Ben and I make into a home. Warm in winter and cool in summer, it protected us from the elements, and with the Tor People’s help, it also protected us from being discovered by our enemies. Here, we had everything we needed to live and live well: rich soil for planting, a forest alive with game, a lake full of fish and fresh water, shelter, privacy, and each other, all with our loved ones staying in the village only a short walk away. Deep inside the cave, there are many chambers we rarely, if ever went into, preferring to stay where the light could reach so we could always see where we were going, and who was coming.
For two years, our young son and I lived in this cave, and when Joshua was miraculously returned to us, the three of us lived here together for another ten years after that. However, during the years our son was growing into a man, our small family together with those who chose to join us, would leave the Apple Isle for months at a time, travelling our homeland and the homelands of others, meeting and learning from the many persons, clans and villages we encountered along the way. These years we lived like nomads were peaceful and enlightening ones: we learned and shared much, each time returning home richer in our knowledge and lighter in our hearts. It was on our last journey together that our son met his Druidic bride, Iona, who returned with him to the Apple Isle where they happily raised a large family and lived into old age.
Joshua and I were in our twilight years when he passed away after a short illness. He was conscious and lucid to the end, thanking his brother for saving him from a young man’s death, and me and Benjamin for keeping him, he would joke. “I leave this world owning nothing, but a richer man has never lived…” were the last words he spoke at the very end of that first glorious life of his.
Three years after my husband’s passing, my health started to fail, and I finally took Micah up on his repeated requests for me to move into the new home he had built on the piece of land the Tor people had gifted to our family. I stayed with Micah and our kin up until the weeks I could feel the end was drawing near, and I returned to the cave with Joshua’s bones to live out the rest of my days. Micah, Ben, and our kin regularly came to check on me, and it was here in our cave that I took my the last breath as Shoshanna, with Micah sitting by my side, promising me that my bones would be placed next to my husband’s, and following us, the bones of our descendants: that these skeletons of truth will always be kept safe in the deepest chambers of our cavern home.
My mind’s eye can clearly see the chamber where the Avalon ossuaries wait in darkness, but I have no idea how to find my way to the centre of this vast maze of unlit corridors. Without the collective memories of the Three Roses, it would be nearly impossible to stumble across the cave’s inner cavities, let alone finding your way out again. And even before stepping foot inside the cave, you’d have to get past Benni Dhoo first.
I turn to tell Josh my thoughts, but his mind is on life, not death. “I remember seeing you standing here at the mouth of the cave with Benjamin on your hip, watching in me in amazement as I ran up to you,” he says, coming up behind me and resting his arms around my waist and his chin on my shoulder.
In this lovingly familiar stance, it takes only a second for me to get to where he is. “If Benni Dhoo didn’t tell me you that you were alive and on your way, I would have thought I was seeing a ghost.” I turn in his arms so I am facing him. “I truly remember that moment as being the happiest I have ever felt,” I admit, peeking up at him.
“Me, too,” he says, softly rubbing his nose against mine.
“Can you remember what Benjamin said when he first saw you?” I ask with a smirk.
“Who is this dirty, smelly man?” he recounts, and we both laugh. “But, I pretty much stepped off the boat and came right to you. I couldn’t wait.”
He leans in to kiss me, and even though my nostalgic love for him is at dizzying heights, I guiltily step out of his embrace.
“What is it?” he asks, puzzled.
“Josh, that woman…that’s not who I am anymore.” I sadly admit.
“I know,” he says, reaching for me. “From what I can gather, you are so much more.”
Transfixed by his tender expression, desperately clutching to the flailing part of me that is uncomfortable about rekindling our two thousand year old romance so soon after our reunion, I take a steadying breath and say, “Josh, there is a lot more that you don’t know about me than what you do,” I say, placing my hands on his tensed forearms, “and you mightn’t like the person I am now.”
“You could say the same about me,” he says.
“Exactly.”
He pauses, sighs and says, “It does feel like we’re cheating.” Unsure of what he means, I pull a face at him. “Here I am, experiencing this devoted, overwhelmingly perfect love, and all I had to do was show up,” he explains.
Feeling him pulling away, I blanch and dejectedly nod, acknowledging that we are on the same page.
“So, we’ve got to shelve what we’re feeling, and…date first?” he asks, screwing up his face.
“Sadly, yes,” I reply, even though remorse is starting to scramble my moral compass.
“Alright,” he says with a mock sigh. “Deal,” he says and then quickly throws in, “Hey, Ren?” as he pulls me into a friendly hug.
“Yes?”
“Can I take you to dinner?” he softly says in my ear.
“I’d love to go to dinner with you,” I say, smiling up at him.
He offers me his arm and we leave the home we made as Joshua and Shoshanna to have dinner with the family we had a hand in making all those lifetimes ago. We walk down the hill, through the cooling breeze of this Midsummers Eve dusk, intermittently looking over our shoulders to get another glimpse of the old world love we know, but in today’s world, we know it is not enough.
We walk hand in hand, side by side, in reflective silence, until the soft evening sounds are muted by a mighty crack of lightning that is Prince Dural initiating the coming of Midsummer rains. Like a timely, well-rehearsed dance, Princess Avira then blows a gale that pushes the clouds heavy with rain overhead and Lady Tallulah releases the powerful downpour, as Uncle Craig, Prince Arthos, willingly accepts it, as we all do, knowing that our small patch of the earth is being cleansed and blessed to receive the four Luminaries and their chosen Tor clans.
Knowing that there will only be one crack of lightning, I drag Josh towards the shelter of the nearest tree. “The rains are early this year,” I point out, smiling at the happy cries coming from the village. “Usually they come when it’s dark.”
“Maybe the rains coming at dusk is a message,” Josh says, his voice and his expression grim.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“That the light is fading,’ he says, looking up at the shrouded sun slowly withdrawing from the skyline, “and that this might be our last chance to set it right before the darkness comes for good.”
Chapter 18
“What story will it be tonight, mon chou,” Nanna asked as she tucked me into bed.
“The one about the king and the apple seeds.”
“Again?”
“Again, please. It’s my favourite.”
“Why, Renay? Why is it your favourite?”
“Because the king needed a rose to help him turn something ordinary into gold.”
“Once a century, the Archangel Prince would pick an apple from divine Tree of Souls to give to a worthy king or queen to empower their rule, their people, and their lands with great knowledge
and prosperity.
This story happened at a time we now know as the Bridge between the Ages, and it was uncertain time for all. Many lands were in need of the heavenly apple, but the Archangel Prince only had one to give. To help him make his decision, he visited with the crowned ruler of every land and asked them how they would use the knowledge and prosperity he had to offer them.
‘I would like to possess the knowledge of all of the greatest war lords and the means to better arm and defend our lands,’ said one king.
‘I would like to know when I have met the right woman – one of noble birth who will be a dutiful queen and will fill the royal nursery with sons,’ said another.
‘I would like to better understand the movement of the stars, so I can see if my firstborn son will continue to rule as I have,’ said an aging king.
‘I would like to know more about art and architecture, so I can turn my kingdom into one of great beauty and culture,’ said a newly crowned queen.
A young king of a small land already blessed with great knowledge and prosperity asked his wisest adviser what he should say to the Archangel Prince.
‘Ask only for what you need,’ his advisor proposed. ‘Say to the Archangel Prince that you don’t need the whole apple, only the seeds.’
‘Why only the seeds?’ the young king asked.
‘What does one seed have the potential to grow into, your Majesty?’ the advisor asked his king.
‘An apple tree,’ the young king answered.
‘Precisely,’ said his advisor. ‘Many apples with many seeds will grow into many trees.’
‘To bring future knowledge and prosperity to our land, and the lands of my peers?’ the young king asked to make sure that he understood.
His wise adviser nodded, and asked the preoccupied young king, ‘Do you not agree?’
‘I do,’ he sadly answered. ‘But, with no living family, I would like to have the apple to help me find love, and my queen,’ the lonely young king explained.
‘You asked for my advice and now you have it, but ultimately, the choice is yours,’ his wise adviser said.