by Jen Valena
Of course, she thought, my pendant has stuck with me, even into another dimension. Its reappearance validated her belief that objects were more reliable than people.
A single, small eye with a star for a pupil was in the center, with two spirals spinning out. Engravings circled the outer border, all embossed with black tarnish. On the flip side, there were more geometric designs and symbols. As she held it, the world started to spin ever so slightly. She hadn’t thought about the symbols in years. She now understood where the pendant had come from.
Tyrsten said it first, “This is Ma’thean.”
“Impossible.” Her face was blank, reassessing all of her life. “But—”
He pointed to the eye emblem. “This is the symbol for Magians. How did you come by this?” Tyrsten studied every twitch of her body for a reaction.
“Gramps said that it was meant for my mother and to wear it always.”
“Gramps?”
“My godfather.” She stared at Tyrsten a long moment while she tried to make sense of it all. Then she dropped her attention to the coin in her hand. “He took care of me after my parents… died. And now I can’t even ask him about this, since he recently passed away.”
Tyrsten grazed her shoulder with his palm, reminding himself to keep his touch to a minimum.
“I wore it every day of my life, until the chain broke a little before I was taken by those men.”
“What do you remember about your parents?”
Ithia gazed into the distance, into a mental watershed of blurred impressions. “I only have one memory of my mother. I’m not even sure if it’s real. I must have been less than a year old, since that is when she died. But I remember a sunny day, in my mother’s arms. We were in a garden of sorts. I have a vague sense of trees and flowers surrounding us. She smelled like gardenias, the fragrance enhanced by the warm sun.” She glanced at Tyrsten. “I know practically nothing about them, except I lost them when I was a baby.”
“What was the nature of their Fate?”
“Gramps didn’t tell me much. Just that they were gone because of some disaster. We never really talked about it, like thinking about my parents was too painful for him.” She traced the coin’s lines with her finger.
“He never said how?”
“No. I learned early on that he wasn’t going to tell me.” She squeezed her fist around the talisman. “It drove me crazy not knowing so I made up my own story. I assumed it was a really bad car accident because Gramps hated cars.”
✹ ✹ ✹
In the main hall, a large fresco stretched over thirty feet starting at the dormitory entrance and ending at the meditation room’s door. Three Magian teachers, dressed in black robes, welcomed several students.
Ithia was taking a crack at interpreting the inscription when Tyrsten joined her. “What does this phrase mean?”
“Remember what you have forgotten. You are of the stars.” Tyrsten lightened the strain in his face and appeared less inhibited. “If you feel up for it. I have an experiment.”
She delivered a suspicious once-over. “What sort of experiment?”
“Do not panic, it should be—mostly harmless.” He smiled, and she forgot herself for a moment. “It is a form of meditation that may clarify some details about your past, once you have mastered it.”
Tyrsten set up the meditation room with two cushions on the floor and two candles, one on either side of them. He invited her to sit facing him. Tyrsten lit the candles. He relaxed into a pose, and she followed suit with her palms up resting on her knees.
“Calm your mind. If a thought comes, let it go. Allow your eyelids to close for a moment and notice where your focus goes—it should be just above the bridge of your nose, to your third eye. Do you sense that?”
Her attention drifted to the center of her forehead. It was the same location she had discovered when trying to see through her blindfold.
“Now open your eyes and see through that window. Relax your eyes into a state of unfocused awareness. Gaze at my face and let whatever images that come—come. Do not analyze or judge. You can think on the images later. Just allow them to unfold.”
He shimmered like a perfectly carved bronze statue illuminated by the flickering candles. She let her mind relax, and he began to change. She tried to not force the phenomenon. His face appeared to wear a thin mask, a wolf. On his shoulder, a ghostly raven perched. Slowly, the image faded into the face of another man. She remembered him, but it belonged to another lifetime.
Now Ithia stared deeper into his eyes to find Tyrsten amongst the faces. Something else began to happen. Once again, her spirit was pulled to fall into his eyes. She was pulled from her body and into his soul. Faces that had elusively flashed during the Actuation, this time appeared to her at a decelerated pace. Face after face, she had known them all. The images unraveled to show other lives, in the past—in other worlds—in the future. These were her lives, lives they had together. She was tied to him, more profoundly than she wanted to acknowledge.
The information became too intense, too emotionally heavy and was coming too fast.
They both fell back. Ithia hit her head on the wooden floor.
The meditational link was broken.
Recovering first, Tyrsten scrambled over to see if Ithia was injured. Thinking her unconscious, he cradled her head against his chest, brushing aside the strands of hair from her face.
The wild thumping of his heart summoned her to open her eyes. “What happened?”
“We were both overcome by the energy coming through. You hit your head.” He let her go and shifted away.
“No—the other part.”
“What did you see?” He hoped to side step this turn of events.
“A wolf, a raven, then I saw people. They all were familiar—like I knew them. They were you, but not you—”
“You saw my animal spirits.”
“But what about the rest—the people?”
“Me.” Tyrsten lowered his eyes. “Us,” he said as if saying it aloud was for his own clarity. He studied her eyes for some understanding of what he said.
“Us? But how? Past lives?”
“Other lives. This is not the first time we have met. We have known each other as friends, as colleagues, as teacher and student, and…” He didn’t say the rest, as if it might cripple their already convoluted relationship.
Ithia stared into his eyes, knowing in her heart what she had seen, what he would not say, what he wouldn’t admit to seeing. She whispered, “Lovers.”
“We should not have done this!” Tyrsten’s shoulders tightened.
“It bothers you that much?”
After a pensive moment, he stammered. Tyrsten didn’t finish. His face conveyed how he regretted uncovering their past.
Ithia waved her hands back and forth between them. “It doesn’t change anything. We aren’t—anything now. It’s good we uncovered this. It explains why I felt like I’ve known you before.”
He said nothing, just stared, which made her more nervous. Ithia kept jabbering on to mask his silence with an avalanche of her own words. “Now that we recalled that we have a history, I can make sense of things. This is good we understand our past. Right?” She paused to notice he was a deer caught in the light of their discovery. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
Tyrsten hadn’t heard her.
His hands deftly grasped the sides of her face.
He drew her closer.
Now inches apart, he stared deep into her soul, lost in her eyes, he wasn’t sure what he intended to do. Rationally, he knew that he must keep his distance.
He understood now why he had such a difficult time keeping her out of his thoughts. Their connection was much more complex than what the Actuation had created.
Tyrsten couldn’t stop himself from hovering within her eyes, eyes that mirrored his own. His initial impressions were correct—he had known her. He reminded himself, There is a reason we don’t remember our previous lives—w
hy it is said we have to drink from the River of Forgetfulness before incarnating. We have different lives to live this time.
Ithia’s heart pounded, she felt she might just faint again from the suspense of what would happen next.
Tyrsten closed his eyes and drew her into an embrace, burying his face in her hair. Her nose pressed against his neck. He smelled of sage honey.
He welled with emotion. It crashed against the insides of her own heart.
His breath warmed her neck as he murmured, “It is good to see you again.”
In one swift movement, he stood up and shielded his face to prevent her from seeing him in this condition and exited the room.
Ithia sat motionless after he left, allowing the scene to play repeatedly in her mind.
✹ ✹ ✹
Ithia had a difficult time sleeping that night. Tyrsten hadn’t returned to his room. Her mind’s eye constantly checked the Vihar grounds with no sign of him.
She worried that she had thrown him over the edge. As he suggested before, perhaps she had called him to her. Perhaps her subconscious intention during the meditation was to find out what Tyrsten was doing in her life, and if she should trust him. However, the knowledge seemed to have wedged them apart.
Ithia flopped over in bed to face another side of herself, one that could possibly deal with her situation.
✹ ✹ ✹
In the morning, Huldo noticed that Tyrsten wasn’t around. He asked Ithia, “Where has Tyrsten gone?”
Huldo had a knack of getting her to confess. She tried to shield herself mentally.
“You were with him last night, right?” Huldo asked.
“Yeah. Then he left.”
“His horse is gone. He did not mention where he was running off to?”
“Nope.” Ithia started to slink away before he tried to get more answers out of her.
“Wait a moment.” He put his finger to his lip as if in deep thought.
She had blown it. Huldo sensed she concealed something. He didn’t move, but his intent on getting a straight answer was like a lasso that held her in the room.
“What happened last night?”
“Tyrsten taught me a meditation technique.”
“That simple, huh?”
She tried to act nonchalant. “Well, it came up that we knew each other in past lives.”
“Interesting. I assume you were close in these other lives.” Huldo asked in a regulated voice, “And what did you think of that?”
“It explains why I felt comfortable with him so quickly.”
“How did he take it?”
“It’s obvious that he had to think on it—alone—by his disappearing act.”
Huldo’s uncanny ability to draw the truth from her was now in full effect.
“I told him I didn’t want anything from him. It was another life.” Ithia sighed. “I just want to go home.”
“Only now, you have the knowledge of his existence, which does complicate that plan.”
“Once I help out Tyrsten, if that is what I’m meant to do, then I want to go back to my old life and forget all this ever happened. But it doesn’t feel like it matters what I want.”
“You are right. It does not matter what either of you want.”
Ithia nodded, then glanced at him sideways, sensing he meant more in what he said.
✹ ✹ ✹
Days rolled by without sign of Tyrsten. Ravens flew around the Vihar, and Ithia wondered if one of them was connected to his spirit.
Her dreams deteriorated. It felt as though someone was spying on her within her dreams. And that feeling began to spill over while she was awake, which was distressing. As if the shadows, themselves, had eyes, and she had no way of protecting herself.
Ithia didn’t go out of her way to fit in at the Vihar, believing she would soon leave for Earth, and there was no point getting more attached. She was a foreigner among them. They were hospitable, but she sensed they worried about what she was. They thought she had done something to Tyrsten. She knew Nolan spread the rumor. Huldo and Anise were friendly, but Ithia felt like a third wheel around them. Feron did his best to make her comfortable, but was often too busy for conversation. Ithia could also tell he was introverted, and she hadn’t won a seat in his inner circle.
Ithia retreated by exploring the compounds in more detail. She noted the water catchment and gray water systems for the gardens. A solar water heater made up of copper pipes swirled on the roof. Compost piles stood alongside the kitchen garden. There was a windmill for the well. Chickens enjoyed spacious scratching grounds. Goats roamed the vast fenced acreage. Beehives swarmed with activity, readying themselves for winter.
A carved stone sundial didn’t calculate hours but rather breaks throughout the day. Located in the middle of a small, grass knoll surrounded by flat rocks, it made Ithia curious about their concept of time and how differently they spent theirs on Ma’thea, or at least at the Vihar.
The whole compound was in harmony with nature, not something she was accustomed to on Earth. She felt accepted by the land and the buildings themselves, more so than by the people.
Feron, the resident bookworm, taught her some of the Ma’thean script. Ithia grasped the written word quickly as if remembering it rather than learning it.
That afternoon, as Feron aided her in a translation, he checked a brass pocket watch, attached by a chain to his leather vest. “Time to start dinner. You may join me, to keep me company. I promise not to ask you for help.” He shrugged. “I like to do it myself, but nobody believes me.”
“Sure. But give me any grunt work you don’t like to do.” Ithia asked, “May I see your watch? It’s the first time-piece I’ve seen on Ma’thea.”
“Magians are not fond of them. They are opposed to all clocks. They say our stars, the sun, are the only indicators of time they need.” In a mockingly serious voice, it was apparent he repeated what was expounded to him in the past, “A mechanical object should not dictate when meditations should occur or when to hold ceremony. Time is the flow of our inner rhythms and the pace of our Universe’s tempo.”
“So that is why the sundial is set up into break times and not into hours?” Ithia pushed a button to release the lid. The ivory face displayed twelve hour marks, and the cover had a compass.
“The Magians have the calculations of the sun, the moon and the stars. I like watches for precision cooking.” Feron chuckled to himself.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Oh, Hu had the bright idea of gifting Tyrsten a watch not long after our teacher disappeared. Tyrsten was not pleased. However, Hu rationalized that it would be beneficial for coordinating our efforts. Hu secretly wishes to undermine the strictness of Tyrsten’s Magian lifestyle since there are no teachers around to enforce the rules anymore.”
“Did Tyrsten sense Hu’s motives?”
“Well, Tyrsten’s watch broke an hour after he had it. He said it was probably due to his energy overwhelming the quartz mechanism. Not to mention he demagnetized its compass.”
“Quartz? It has a battery?”
“Battery?”
“A device that stores energy.”
“Interesting, but no. There is a rotating pendulum inside the case. As the wearer moves, the pendulum spins at a very high speed which charges the leyden, a battery of sorts.”
Feron fidgeted. Sensing he didn’t want her to overwhelm the mechanism accidentally, Ithia handed it back. Feron examined the watch for damage that Ithia might have inadvertently caused.
Ithia winced. “Did I hurt it?”
“No.” He smiled, relieved her short time with the piece did not make an impact.
She excused herself, found her old handbag in the corner and discovered Huldo sitting out in the garden. “I have something for you.”
“Your fine company?” Huldo smiled and patted the bench next to him.
Ithia chuckled and pulled out a small LED flashlight from her bag. Placing it in his hand, she asked, “You lik
e it?”
“I saw this cleaning up after the soldiers and your Actuation, but didn’t know what it was.”
She switched on the light.
Huldo jumped with excitement. “That is wonderful!”
“Feron mentioned you liked watches, and I thought you might like a flashlight.”
“Flash, light.” Huldo shined the beam on the Temple wall and made a shadow puppet with his hand. “I do like it, but you have such little left from your home.”
“I don’t need it anymore with my new Magian night-vision. I can see perfectly at night.”
Huldo grinned. “Yeah, I wish I had that. Very useful.”
“Well, now you have it, of sorts.”
“Thank you.” He hugged her.
Ithia noticed she didn’t pull away, she fell into the embrace. How am I getting used to this affection?
✹ ✹ ✹
Nolan kept an even closer eye on Ithia since Tyrsten’s disappearance. Huldo tried to reassure him that Tyrsten needed time to think about what was the best plan of action for Ithia. Nolan’s instincts insisted something else was afoot.
After days of observing her, however, Nolan concluded that she was genuinely upset over Tyrsten’s absence. It was no act. She was—vulnerable. Real. She was an innocent woman who had little idea of what her future held. And Tyrsten had positioned himself to use her for his own gain. She wasn’t like other Magians. There was no other like her. Unexpectedly, Nolan found that intoxicating. He studied her schedule, making note of her morning meditation before busying herself by helping Feron in the kitchen, Huldo with chores, or Anise in the garden.