When there is a fear that you will be alone, till the end of the universe, the world will seem colder, and silence more prominent. And this was what Barbara had to face, as she waited in the ruined palace for Timothy’s energy barrier to finally run out of power.
The night was darkest, and Barbara sat leaning against the energy field. Her eyes struggled to stay awake, her own strength faded. Her body fell backward, as the force field disintegrated. She hit the palace floor, striking it hard.
And there was Timothy, she could barely bring herself to touch him, but when she did his face was cold and drained of all life. Though there was something that she’d learned from Wilbur: if someone were not breathing, you could breathe for them. And if their heart was not beating, you could press on their chest and beat it for them. She sat on her knees, staring at him, scared to begin. If this failed now, it meant it would fail forever.
She placed one hand on top of the other, and depressed his chest in a rhythm, until it seemed like enough. Then she opened up his mouth, and placed her lips onto his, and blew the air from her lungs.
In the corner of her mind, through this all, she remembered the words of Arthur Greyford: that, ���In this world it was nearly impossible to die.��� Both a blessing and a curse, it would seem, but in this instance she hoped for a blessing: an unbelievable, impossible thing.
And there it was, Timothy’s body convulsed. His eyes shot open, and he gasped a breath of life-giving air. Timothy’s nearly fatal sword wound had stopped bleeding long before, and was on its way to mending itself.
Barbara grabbed him up in her arms, and held him with no plans to let him go.
���How did I get here?��� Timothy asked, sounding as if he still felt pain in his body.
���We rode the globe light, along with Surru, we got here at the same time,��� Barbara answered.
Timothy was immediately frantic. ���Where is he?��� he asked, looking around the dreary room that began to light as the morning sun rose in that world.
���He’s gone,��� she said. ���And he won’t be coming back.���
And Timothy knew Barbara’s tones enough by then to know that this had meant the evil king had died. And though she did not wish to break the awful news, she had thought it better to do it then, rather than days or weeks later.
���No one is coming back for us, Tim… ever,��� she said.
Then, she went on to explain her final interaction with Ata, and that the globe had been destroyed, that there would never be anyone coming to rescue them.
���So… we’re here forever,��� he said aloud, trying to process it all.
���Yes,��� Barbara answered.
Timothy gave a coy smile, showing his still boyish side. ���It could be worse,��� he said, toying with her.
Barbara shook her head, and scoffed. ���I’m flattered,��� she said, with an air of sarcasm. Then, under her breath, not really meaning it, ���I can’t believe I cried for you,��� she said.
Though Timothy caught her words with his now improved hearing. ���You cried for me?��� he said, straining to sit up under his own power. ���Why?��� he asked.
Barbara was astounded. ���Because you died, Tim,��� she said. ���Don’t you remember?��� Then coming to wonder as soon as she’d said it, whether that was even something that could be remembered.
Timothy furrowed his eyebrows. ���No, I didn’t,��� he replied.
���You stopped breathing for like… five hours,��� she answered, completely flabbergasted that he did not believe her.
But still he protested, and furthermore saying, that actually she hadn’t properly answered his initial question, when he’d asked, ���How did I get here?���
���You’re not going to win this,��� she said with a raised brow. Then continued, ���I resuscitated you. I brought you back from the dead, and you’re not even going to thank me.���
Yet, still Timothy would not accept this, saying that if he were dead, then how could he recall everything that had happened, as if it were his most vidid memory.
Which made Barbara, then, ask the obvious question, ���What, exactly, do you remember?���
And this was Timothy’s answer:
���Well, I thought I’d gone into another world,��� he said. ���But I guess it might have been a dream. Though it felt real, more real than anything I’d ever felt… as if this were the dream, and there I was finally awake.���
Barbara smiled to see that Timothy was so impassioned by this. ���And was I in your dream?��� she asked, playfully.
���No,��� Timothy answered. ���But Pierre was,��� he said. Which was another reason why he said he thought it might have been real. Except that Pierre was younger than he was normally. ���Well, not younger, exactly,��� Timothy tried to explain, as if you’d had to have been there to fully understand. ���It was as if he was no age at all,��� he said.
���Does that make sense?��� he asked, finally.
Barbara smiled at him. ���No, Tim. It doesn’t,��� she said. ���And besides, you were dead. I know you were,��� she said, trying to be more sensitive to his feelings this time.
Yet, he would still not agree with her.
���No. It was real. I know it was,��� he said. ���I could feel it,��� he protested.
And when Barbara asked what he’d felt, in that other world he’d said he’d gone to, his answer was this:
���Beauty,��� he said. ���But not even beauty, it would be what beauty would call beautiful.��� And he was fairly certain there was no word on Earth to describe precisely what he’d meant.
���How can you feel beauty?��� she asked, while Timothy’s wounds continued to heal, and the sun continued to rise outside the walls of the palace.
���Tim, that’s not even possible. ‘To feel beauty.’ You’re not making any sense,��� she said at last.
Though this had offended him deeply, ���Well, there it’s possible,��� he said.
And though they tried, this was not something they could come to an agreement on that morning, and so they thought it might be best to leave for another day, of which they would have many.
After sunset in Gleomu, while still holding onto life, King Corwan was brought back to the palace (which has a special history to it, which I would like to explain):
For reason of the devastation that was done to Ismere’s cavalrymen during the war, all of Gleomu’s horses within close proximity to the capital city were either murdered, or had been so significantly injured that they were unable to pull a cart.
Leaving, for that reason, only horses that had served in the foreign armies, and one lone old plow horse: who’d been captured by Surru’s forces, and had been made to pull heavy, unmerciful loads during that entire year of continuous battle. And now, her mane was ragged, and body slouched, scarred from whipping, and her ribs visible through her skin. And this horse was, of course, Myre.
And why I should bring up something so heartbreaking as Myre’s present condition, is so that you, reader, will understand what it meant when I say that she was chosen to bear the cart, on which the wounded Corwan lay.
Yet, perhaps because of her slow pace, and wearied complexion, it made for a more somber procession; With Tavora, leading her the entire way, and petting her neck and kissing her nose when she would falter.
And that night, King Corwan passed from this life, surrounded by the love of his surviving family (along with King Wilbur and Queen Matilde, and Tavora and Ata, who were not asked to leave, but were allowed to stay in the room with the royal family). And that night, before his passing, he lay a hand, individually, on the heads’ of all of his children and grandchildren, and prayed a prayer of blessing ove
r each of them. And a special blessing for Prince Asa, who was now the King’s eldest son, and next in line for the throne after Queen Delany. (Since Princess Alethea had chosen to abdicate her reign to her younger brother, Asa, whom in her words, ‘would be a better king than she would be Queen.’)
And Corwan kissed his wife, and closed his eyes, and slept.
Chapter Forty-Six
Ends & Beginnings
Now we are nearing the end of our histories, and while there is so much more that could be written, volumes more that could be explained and detailed in full, I’ve chosen to select the few more details that I will, since they are the most important, and will leave the rest of these stories to other historians who may come after me.
Oded, as you should remember, had caused the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people, all for his own greed and selfish interests. And this you should remember as I tell you that he was executed, after his trial, roughly a month after the completion of the Great War of Nations.��
And those who would think this to be unsympathetic, should consider that perhaps if Oded were allowed to live (for reason of his sincere remorse, and true change of heart), it would, as his court judgement stated, ���necessarily degrade the value of those lives lost.��� Which in another way could be put, that Oded was executed not because of vengeance, but because of fairness.
Though, if anything could be made good about the situation, it was that he and his daughter’s relationship was wholly mended, in only that short last month of his life. So that their relationship at the end of his life was even better than it had been before. And when he died Tavora cried, bitterly, not because she hated him (as she had months before), but because she loved him.
And on the day of his execution, Queen Delany kissed him on his cheek as a symbol of pardon before all the peoples who gathered, saying quietly in his ear, ���I forgive you… for both our sakes.���
Now for this next part, you should remember that by the time our young travelers had come back from the Giant world, after a year’s exile, by then none of them were children any longer: Barbara was already seventeen, and Timothy was a year her senior, and eighteen, along with Ata who was eighteen as well, and only slightly older than Timothy, and Tavora, the youngest of them all, was still sixteen for a few more months afterward. So with that understood, you should know that they were not babies, and a good deal more mature than many of their old friends from Earth would have been at their ages, and all of them quite in control of their own decisions. Which is an extremely overdrawn way to say that they were of age, and especially by standards in Gleomu, where adulthood was traditionally granted at the age of fifteen.
And so, now that this is understood, I will begin the next portion of events, the weddings:
Ata and Tavora were beautifully married with a mixture of traditions in their ceremony, taken from Earth and from Gleomu. Though this did not happen right away, seeing that it took them another full year after the war to even admit their affections for one another. Yet after that they progressed quickly, and the following fall they were wed, and lived by humble means in her parents’ old home near the stream (where they also buried Myre when it was her time).
And Ata took up the occupation of an inventor, like his father before him, which became fantastically successful in time. And a few years after they were married, Tavora gave birth to a healthy baby boy, whom they named Asim, after Ata’s father.
By comparison, Barbara and Timothy’s courtship was vastly different, as well as their marriage. Several months after they were stranded on the world of Eddesu, Timothy secretly smelted and cast a small gold ring for Barbara, and gave it to her on the pinnacle tower of the palace, overlooking the city, which they had slightly begun to rebuild in their spare time.
And since there were no guests to invite, and no elaborate ceremony to be planned: the following day at sunset they were married, speaking their vows to one another within the remnants of the old palace, before each other and before God. Albeit, the traditional English vows seemed strange to recite in a world of forever. Though they spoke them anyway, attempting to make the ceremony as official as they could, with only the two of them.
���For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part…���
Which was odd to say in a world of perpetual health and life, where riches hadn’t mattered, but still they said it, and meant it.
Notwithstanding, you should also know that they did not marry out of obligation, but out of honest desire. (And I would guess, that they might have been married, no matter what world they had lived in.) And just a little more than a year later, they had their first girl, deciding to name her Eve, which seemed only fitting.
*
�� This is what the year long conflict against Surru, and his army, had been called.
Conclusion
After a Decade
And their lives progressed in both worlds, flowing with the simple joys of living, celebrating birthdays and holidays, and festivals and religious observances in Gleomu. In Eddesu, Timothy and Barbara constructed a makeshift calendar of holidays, which included Christmas, on one randomly chosen winter’s day.
And it was during this time, after ten years of living gratefully in those new worlds they had found themselves in, that something happened:
���Wake up, you old night bird,��� Tavora said��, shaking her husband awake, who had at that time had the poor habit of occasionally staying up far too late, in order to finish his ���projects��� as he called them.
Ata groaned unintelligibly.
���Get up,��� she said, playfully pulling his feather pillow out from under him. ���You are never going to believe this.���
���I won’t believe what?��� he managed to say.
But Tavora would not tell him, and only repeated, that he, ���would never believe it.���
And she insisted that he properly dress and come outside.
���For what?��� Ata called out, as he donned his socks.
���You’re never going to believe it,��� she shouted from outside the room.
And when Ata found his wife and children seated around an old and kindly man, in their common room, he could not believe it.
���It’s grandfather,��� young Asim said, referring to the man who was his namesake, seated on their couch.
And Ata, who did not cry often, did at that moment. ���It is, isn’t it,��� Ata said, running to embrace his aged father.
���But how did you do it?��� Ata asked.
Asim, the older, still holding onto his boy who had become a man in his absence, answered, ���I am an old man, who wished to see his son before he died. I found a way.���
But more specifically, this is what had happened:
Within the first few months of Ata’s, and the others’ disappearance, Asim, along with the Hayfields, began to grow worried. They knew that only something dreadful would have kept their families from reaching them.
And from that point onward, Thomas Hayfield began to commission Professor Asim in secret, to build a new device that could travel through the stars. And for over ten years, the Hayfields wasted all their family’s vast estate in failed experiments, and faulty scientific theorems. Until one fine spring morning, Asim finally succeeded in sending a potato across the room, which then became a houseplant across the city, and a sheep to the Americas. And, at last, himself, through the expanse of space, drawn by a father’s love.
Asim’s device which he’d created was roughly the size of a common wristwatch. Though it was only powerful enough to transport one person at a time, and so he’d brought five extra.
And several days later, after careful, heated discussions about where to find the world of Eddesu, a search party was organized to be sent to rescue Barbara, and hopefully Timothy as well, from the w
orld of forever.
���Look, Mommy. Falling lights in the sky,��� Eve said, excitedly, as she was there helping Barbara who sat near their campfire stirring a pot of stew.
���Yes, dear,��� Barbara answered without looking away from the fire. ���They’re called shooting stars. And I’m sure you’ve seen them before, haven’t you?���
���But these aren’t shooting stars,��� she said, the young girl’s voice straining for her mother to pay her more close attention. ���These are landing nearby,��� Eve said, after a few more seconds of careful examination.
An unbelievable joy rattled in Barbara’s heart. She threw her stirring spoon to the ground, and ran to her daughter, lifting and spinning her around in the air, and kissing her on the cheeks.
Eve giggled. ���What do those lights mean?��� Eve asked.
Barbara held her daughter closely. ���It means we’re going home,��� she said.
And Barbara shouted to Timothy, who was busy at work inside their new, more manageable home on the outskirts of the city. (He was finishing up the last patches of mortar, in their last broken wall, with the aid his young son and other daughter. Since, as he said, ���It is one thing to have to see ruin everyday, and another to choose to live in it.���)
���Hurry, Tim,��� Barbara called through the open doorway, meaning for him to come outside. Although, she was so excited that she hadn’t actually said it.
���I am hurrying,��� he answered, spreading on the last bit of mortar. ���You know, this might be our home for the next thousand years. I’d just like it to be perfect for you,��� he said.
And realizing her error, Barbara corrected herself. ���No, come outside,��� she shouted. ���We’re going home!��� she said, with an almost immeasurable amount of gladness in her voice.
And the next morning, after a night of happy reunions, Barbara and Timothy Hayfield, along with their three children, were brought back home to Gleomu: to the jubilation and cheers of the capital city, and to the embrace of long awaited friends and family. And the day afterward, Timothy’s parents, Thomas and Agatha Hayfield, were transported to Gleomu, to be reunited with their long lost son, and newly discovered daughter-in-law and grandchildren, to live there permanently.
The Histories of Earth, Books 1-4: In the Window Room, A Prince of Earth, All the Worlds of Men, and Worlds Unending Page 62