“You’ve come from…a different place…to find me”.
“Yes”, he was intense, vibrant even as he tried to explain. “It’s not going to make any sense to you unless I tell you the whole story though. I’m not your enemy. I’m here to keep you alive because you’re special”.
“Why am I special?”
“You are weary and I have some things to arrange. We will talk when you have slept”. He looked as drained as I felt.
With that, he got up and left me. He said some muffled words I could not catch.
Like magic, I was asleep before the door closed.
Falaira
I woke feeling refreshed and hungrier than I had ever felt in my life. I had dreamt of my father and woken up crying a few times, each time I had woken up I had sensed Khalashaya there, watching over me. All the way through that awful night that seemed like it would never end, I found an ally in the last person I never suspected I might.
He had told me nothing more of why the creature was after me or how he had known this in the first place. He had said nothing more of other worlds.
I stirred and opened my eyes. The shutters were open and daylight streamed in, bringing with it the sounds of the town at work.
This turned my attention to my situation. With a jolt I once again realised that I was completely and utterly alone in the world. Not showing at the library would mean a certain end to the illegal employment I had been given begrudgingly and I would certainly not be allowed to work anywhere else.
I noticed a bowl on the mantelpiece, an inspection of its contents revealed rough bread and cheese. Whatever the reality of my situation, I’d be far better off facing it with food inside me.
I ignored the gnawing feeling of fear and anxiety and decided to feed my hunger.
Setting the bowl down of the mantelpiece I turned as I heard Khalashaya enter.
He smiled to see the bowl empty.
“My taking your memories last night depleted your energy. I knew the food would be much appreciated”.
“Thank you”.
“Are you ready for a walk?” he said.
In my overtired state last night I’d almost been prepared to believe that Khalashaya wasn’t from Earth but I knew better this morning.
“When you tell me you are not from this planet, you really do mean one of the Defender colonies don’t you?”
He sat down on the bed with his back the wall and actually laughed.
“No, I’m not from here. I am from another star, most probably another reality. No one knows; only a select few know how to get here”.
“And you came for me because?”
“No”, he said firmly. “You can’t hear all of this in the wrong order. Only the facts in the right order will reveal the understanding you need”.
“So tell me them”. I looked at him, “Please.”
“Let’s go for a walk then”
“I cannot be seen on the streets, especially with…” I blushed as I realised I’d been about to say “a man I am not married to”.
He seemed to ignore the blush.
“So how do you get about? How do you conduct your work?”
He really was from another world.
“We do not; we are at home looking after our families”.
“And what do you do when you have no children or husband? Do you read? Cook?”
“We’re forbidden the art of letters and marriage is usually mandated in females over the age of 16”.
He stood up and walked towards me.
“Then why aren’t you married? You are just past that age, are you not?” I ignored the questions and noticed curiosity in his eyes that he seemed to shove away. I did not wish to answer them.
“No one will see us” he said.
He grabbed my arm, muttered some unintelligible words and the room went dark, replacing itself quickly with thick trees. The trees were greener and lusher than any I had even seen in the city but they still bore the hallmark of the acid rain.
I looked around quickly, ready to run.
He grabbed my other arm.
“We’re alone”.
“Where are we?”
“Where I came out when I travelled to this world, it’s not far from the city and where I came through a hole in reality…turns out the last people to do that left a permanent weakness in that spot which means that people coming from my world will always emerge there”.
He was getting harder and harder to understand, people from other worlds had come here before?
What was a rip in reality? What would be on the other side? My head hurt.
Khalashaya let go of my arms and started walking towards a clearing.
“I need to check…make sure” he said.
“Of what?” I said.
“I need to check I can still get though. I can move myself from place to place like I have done just now but I can only jump short distances. The distance we need to travel requires…well, I need to make sure the weakness in the wall is still there and that nothing else has come through”.
With one last desperate look around I followed him. Walking on the fragrant and springy earth felt very strange, I’d never walked in a forest before. In Zafiya the vegetation and undergrowth were scant, the corrosive rain and poisonous snow saw to that.
I breathed in the scent of moist leaves, marvelling at how fresh and clean it was.
I caught up with him in the clearing; he was sitting on a dead tree looking around with a confused expression on his face.
He got up quickly, with renewed purpose and walked behind the tree, raising his hands he touched the air in front of him gingerly; seeming to be listening for something. He clearly found something he was happy with as he lowered his hands and turned to me with a smile.
“It’s still there. We do have a problem though”, his smile dropped as he put his hands up to the area once more and seemed to pinch the air slightly.
We looked at each other; I nodded at him to carry on.
“Here’s the problem. Here, right here in front of me” he reached out and touched the air in front of him again “is a weak point in the universe that connects two worlds. They touch because of magic cast thousands of years ago that I can barely imagine let alone emulate”.
“Now” he continued, sitting back down on the dead tree trunk. “I can sense recent travels through the weak point”.
“So what’s the problem?” I asked.
“I am the only one who has come through that rift in the last seven or eight millennia…give or take a decade or two”. He looked sick.
I didn’t immediately understand the significance of this and then it dawned on me, making my stomach contract with fear.
“The creature that killed my father…has been here for a long time”.
“Exactly,” he said, standing up again and walked over to the weak space. “It is strange how we only sensed it recently and yet it has been here for years, perhaps hundreds of years”.
"When did you sense it?"
He looked at me, I was not sure but there seemed to be a sharpness in his wasted face for a second. Then his face relaxed but remained neutral.
"About seven cycles ago".
He checked himself quickly.
"I mean, three of your years"
Three years, it had taken him that long to come through and find me.
"How did you know it was after me?"
He looked at me and then looked away.
I sat down beside him, trying not to let my sadness get the better of me. My father would never see this forest, I would never see him again. I’d never hug him again.
I was suddenly struck with the image of my father’s face as we’d said goodbye for the last time the day before. His expression was that of someone who had committed the worst possible crime, which was how I knew how much he had regretted his violent outburst.
I put a hand to my still tender face and tried not to let the hot tears fall that suddenly blurred my vision.<
br />
“Who gave you that bruised eye?” said Khalashaya.
I felt disloyal even answering the question. My father had been a great man, the best.
I felt Khalashaya’s hand on my shoulder and experienced a strange sensation; like something was being taken from me again.
I looked across at him and saw pain in his green eyes. I did not have the strength to be angry that he had violated me again.
My life of religion, regime and order had not prepared me for this. Even discussing the idea of sensing other people’s emotions by touching them was beyond me right now.
“The…thing that killed my father, how did you know to rescue me?”
“We sensed it. We have a…group devoted to the memory of the Long Lost – devoted to protecting their memory and magic. We did not realise we would also get the opportunity to protect them in the world they escaped to.
He looked very animated as he said this and suddenly, as if he had realised he’d said too much, he seemed to close off.
“The Long-Lost?” I said, confused.
“Again, I’m trying not to tell you everything in the wrong order. I come to you with full knowledge and lived experience and I am expecting too much of you to want you to just abandon your life and come with me without knowing what you need to know”.
We sat in silence for a while, Khalashaya appeared deep in thought and I had plenty to think about as well.
I thought of what lay in wait for me in Zafiya; with my father murdered and house destroyed, I was well and truly alone in the world with no claim to any help from a single person in the whole of the New World.
I thought of Herena and the other condemned women and wondered what my fate would be. I would surely be implicated in my father’s death.
So much had changed in the last 48 hours that the only coping mechanism available to me was to quell the panic by living purely in the moment. Thinking of the future caused panic to flood though me again.
Khalashaya suddenly turned and spoke to me, his voice cutting through my melancholy as a bird sang in a tree above my head.
“I meant what I said in the library” he said gravely. “I am your servant, I am here to keep you safe and protect you at any cost”.
I looked at him; trying to believe, to hope. His green eyes met mine.
“We’re the same, me and you” He said sadly, “And you must believe what I show you; however strange and unpalatable it seems to you at first”.
I listened to the beautiful birdsong and took in my surroundings once more. The fragrant air and springy earth felt like paradise compared to the burnt city. Yes, the ground was still burnt here and the burning rain had certainly made its mark; but the scenery, away from the tyranny of Zafiya was comparatively beautiful.
I looked down at the undergrowth that snaked around my ankles and then looked back up at him. Like it or not, he was the only link to finding out why my father had been so brutally murdered. I had to trust him, I had no choice.
He then took a deep breath and I knew, without knowing why, that he was about to say something significant.
“I am from another world, very different to this one in both appearance and custom Auriana”.
His deep voice was slow, measured and betrayed no emotion as he continued.
“So are you. You are from the same place I am from, the same world”.
Impossible, I had been born in Zafiya. My earliest memories were of following my mother around our house as she cooked and cleaned, of watching the burning rain fall, of wanting to go outside.
I caught him watching me curiously and I snapped myself out of my thoughts, which were starting to make me feel sad. I was an outcast from a burnt city, no woman from the stars.
He took another breath and I listened again, though rather less happily than before.
“You are descended from a group of magical people who came to Earth to escape a fearsome enemy; an enemy that would have completely decimated and murdered them”.
I felt weak again as I tried to take in what Khalashaya was saying. I was not from another world, I was normal, a woman like any other.
“Except Auriana” he cut in, as if he had been reading my thoughts, “You are not like any other woman on this planet; you can do things and see the world a different way. You can sense my emotions purely by touching me. You have Falairan stardust running through your veins like fire. That is something that only people of our race have.”
His eyes glittered, perhaps with the stardust he spoke of.
Such powerful images, they could not possibly be true. Could they? I had always sensed things; had I not sensed the danger before I had even entered the house the day before. I had felt the death inside the house seep through the thick wooden door like blood. I had felt its cold, evil touch connect with an inner part of me.
Before any of this had happened I had sensed Khalashaya beneath my window, sensed him behind me as I sent Herena to Oblivion.
Khalashaya stood up and looked up at the sky; he shivered and drew his cloak around himself. I was getting quite warm so this surprised me.
“You’ve only one sun, which has been so hard to get used to. Deloran is a tropical world, even in the coldest parts there is no snow”.
“So I’m descended from these people, these Falaira that came thousands of years ago?”
“You are.”
“And what makes you so sure it’s me? Surely after thousands of years the line would be weakened”.
He looked at me and smiled.
“I sensed you; also, have you noticed that we look rather alike?”
I laughed.
Another thing occurred to me; my parents did not look like Khalashaya and I. If I was Falaira, surely they were also Falaira. How did this work with my deep and life long belief in Jesus? I believed with all my heart that he had created this world and the cosmos; but another reality, another universe? Of all the stories my mother had told me, another universe with a race called the Falaira did not feature at all.
Khalashaya was looking at me again, with the curiosity in his eyes.
“If we knew everything, where would we get our excitement from?”
“Answer me this then, what are the Falaira like?”
He seemed to think before answering the question but I could tell he really wanted to give me an answer I would be satisfied with.
“The people I come from, my tribe, are…loyal, very protective of their culture and magic and they love nature and…”
I looked at him as he broke off and saw, to my surprise, that he was overcome with emotion.
I did not speak for a minute to let him recover himself.
“It has been three of your years since I saw them” he said.
“I am sorry,” I whispered, not knowing how I was going to be able to make this better for him.
Then his hand was on mine and he was looking into my eyes with an intensity that made me very uncomfortable.
“You are alive and safe with me. It has been worth every second”.
Acceptance
Later, Khalashaya found me in the bedroom. I’d pleaded a headache and asked to be permitted to go and lie down for half an hour. Khalashaya had looked at me strangely before giving his assent. I needed to be alone; I needed to think, to acclimatise myself to the way in which my life had changed irrevocably.
I had always been quick, fast and very adaptable to sudden change. It had been necessary in order for me to survive as long as I had. However, this far was far beyond the usual range of adaptation that has been expected of me before.
We had arrived back at Khalashaya’s dwelling and I had suddenly been hit with panic and a desire to be alone.
My head span and dizziness struck me as I lay back and stared at the ceiling.
Whose house was this? Was Khalashaya renting it from the Defenders or had he commandeered it somehow? He had been here for three years. He must have got it so that he was within regulations, he must have had to learn the rules of this
world very quickly to escape notice. Zafiya was a huge city but news travelled fast and my father would have certainly heard about a stranger in our midst and relayed the information to me in one of his less guarded moments.
I was amazed that I was already starting to think of Zafiya as “this world” as if I had already blindly accepted the existence of another one; another world where a different species of man walked, talked and lived their lives.
Khalashaya was clearly from another place though; as well as his appearance and ignorance of the deeper unwritten rules of the city, he carried an air of “something else” and a glitter in his huge green eyes that told the viewer that he was different.
My feeling of panic started to intensify again so I did what I had always been good at and considered the practicalities of the situation I found myself mired in. I looked around the room, it was well lived in; indicating that he had been living in this dwelling for some time.
I eyed the books I was still holding and grimaced. I must have been ill in the head to have taken them without thinking. Footsteps suddenly sounded behind “my” door.
Khalashaya entered.
He closed the door and came to sit beside me on the bed. I moved to make room for him, feeling very uncomfortable at his proximity to me on the bed…if Defenders were to enter now…
“You should know something about Deloran or most parts of it”, he said.
He looked so grave that I felt nervous.
He continued, still with the strange look on his face.
“This will come as a shock to you, but you need to know”.
“What is it? If you are about to say that reading’s not allowed then I’m very accustomed to that-”
“No”, he interrupted me and scowled; his tone harsh. I didn’t like the way the mood had turned suddenly.
“Women on Deloran are the very opposite of submissive like they are on this world, they’re warriors and queens. They view males like me – any males really – as little better than animals. Creatures who can’t control their base impulses. My tribe are more egalitarian but the rest of Deloran has not quite caught up, especially the ruling class”.
The Long Lost Page 6