by Cody Lakin
Maybe you’ve always known that there’s something strange about Fairlane Road. I wouldn’t doubt it, knowing how smart you are, Dad. The secret I’ve kept from you my whole life has everything to do with Fairlane Road, and the forest beyond it.
Do you remember, when I was little, how instead of movie marathons we would have Twilight Zone marathons? I’ve always missed those, especially in the months after Mom left. But it was our weird way of bonding. The best way I know how to explain Fairlane Road is in this context. My favorite Twilight Zone episode was always the one about the man who gets his car serviced within walking distance of his childhood hometown. All he had to do was walk there and he went back in time. I don’t mean to say that my spending so much time down Fairlane Road is time traveling, but it’s not unlike that. Down Fairlane Road, for me at least, is another world. The higher world, like Charlie Knox told you. The place beyond our reality, behind everything. And it is the most beautiful place I have ever known.
Just writing about it to you feels strange, just as I’m sure hearing this from me must be strange for you. I’m telling you this not only so that it’s no longer a secret, but also because there’s something you have to know.
First is that I don’t blame you for the things you said about Charlie Knox. He’s not who we both thought he was, and the things he said all had meaning and truth to them. He was right, and you shouldn’t feel guilty for thinking so. You aren’t betraying me, like you might think.
The second thing is just that: The truths Charlie spoke of. The awakening. The world will be different when I come back, I think. It’ll be easier, Dad. Better. And you won’t be so alone in your heart all the time, like I know you are. I have to go because I finally understand my own purpose, and what Charlie Knox meant to happen all along. He came to introduce us to the possibility of changing the world, assimilating the deeper truths so that humanity could transcend its separations, its doom. I don’t know how that will happen, but that is why I cannot come back. Not yet. He came to introduce it to us, to me, and it is my job, now, to carry it forward.
I’m running out of room, so I’ll be brief. There is a place in this world, this higher world, that is calling to me, and I must go. It is a long journey there, and the things I’m going to do there, and learn there, may take even longer. Months. Maybe years. I’m not sure. But I promise that I’ll come back, Dad, and when I do, like I said, the world will have begun to change. I intend to make sure of that. Charlie Knox couldn’t be the one to bring about the awakening—the utopia—that he spoke of, but I can. That’s why everything he did was connected to me. He needed me for this. He knew that this would be how it would end. So that’s what I’m going to do here. That’s what I’m going to start, anyway. The awakening. And you will feel it before anyone else does, because of how close we live to Fairlane Road. I don’t know yet what those changes will look like, how they will take root, or what it will mean for the rest of the world, but it’s my hope that the world will become so much easier, so much better, to live in. Beyond anything we can imagine.
I want you to know that I have found peace, of a sort, and I hope you do, too. You’re the reason I can do this. I want this for you, and for us. So this is goodbye, but only for now.
I love you, Dad. If there was a way that I could thank you for everything, I would. Take care of yourself, until my return.
Love, Jezebel
* * *
Jezebel awoke with the sunrise in the Fairlane World. She had slept on the bank of the glittering pool where Charlie Knox had died. Sometime in the night, someone had covered her with a blanket fastened out of fur and leaves. She thanked whoever it had been—she wondered if it could’ve been Pan—and spent a long time looking at the water, remembering how, as if in a dream, it had taken the dying Charlie Knox into its embrace. It had absorbed him, allowing his severed soul to reunite with hers.
“Thank you, Charlie,” she said. But there was no Charlie Knox anymore, she knew, and there never should have been. There was only her now.
She folded the blanket of fur and leaves and left it at the side of the pool in the case that whoever—or whatever—had left it might want it back, and then she left the forest and found her way back to the trail. A woman was waiting for her.
The woman wore no clothes, but this didn’t seem at all strange. She was, Jezebel knew, a fairy, allowing herself to be seen for her sake. Jezebel had seen her before. She was breathtakingly beautiful, but in a way that was difficult, if not impossible, to describe. The woman’s hair was a lush brown, the kind like dark mud between blades of grass, and her eyes were a vibrant purple—the only other purple eyes Jezebel had ever seen—glittering in the sun.
“Jezebel,” said the fairy with a dimpled smile.
“You’ve been waiting for me?”
“Of course. Many have waited. I am to guide you on your journey.”
“My journey to the mountains?” Jezebel smiled at the prospect of having company, although she knew that the woman would not physically accompany her, but would watch over her. Fairies, according to what she’d learned from Edgar Forgael, were not bound by physical space, and thus could rarely be bothered to move through the physical world like mortals who were stuck in time.
“To the libraries, yes.”
“Thank you,” Jezebel said. “Before I go, though, could you do something for me, please?”
“Of course.”
“Could you deliver this to my father? Maybe on the front porch of my house?”
“Of course.”
Jezebel handed her the letter, and with a smooth whisk of air the woman was gone, and Jezebel was alone on the trail which stretched across the higher world, known on Earth and to the fairies as Fairlane Road.
She waited for a few minutes before realizing that she could begin her journey anytime she wanted—no need to wait for the woman to return, as she could materialize anywhere, no doubt—so Jezebel turned and looked to the mountains, looming giants farther than the horizon, shrouded in mists and echoing with the songs from Faerie. She wondered if Edgar Forgael was there, and if she would meet him again.
She took a moment and then started on her way, knowing her destination was far off, but excited and content for the long journey. It would be the longest amount of time she had ever spent in the higher world, and she could only imagine—as she had in many dreams—the glories and wonders of the libraries which were her destination.
With the higher truths in her heart and a sense of wholeness in her soul for the first time in her life, Jezebel began walking deeper into the higher world, headed for the mountains and the world-changing truths that awaited her, and for the new life she had always wanted.
THE END
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