“I will not let you die.” Rafael mouthed the words in a promise before subjecting Jareth to a contemptuous glare. “You have complained often that I fail to question what we’ve been taught, but it’s you who are failing to question now! The mere presence of this Tulpa signals something is horrendously amiss. Until we can inspect the Glass Wall, I will give us all more time to find the truth!”
Jareth roared in protest, but it was too late.
One moment I was in Rafael’s arms, lying on the floor of my room, dying. The next moment, I was still lying in his arms, but on a field of blue flowers and looking at a rose-colored sky with two moons.
The thing he had called a Tulpa was gone, and I was once again in complete control of my own body.
Chapter Nineteen - Avalon
Immediately, nausea overwhelmed me in intense waves. I screwed my eyes shut and drew a ragged breath. I could feel Rafael’s strong arms steadying me.
“Just breathe deeply.” His tone seemed cold and distant. “The nausea will vanish shortly.”
He sounded upset, but I was too queasy to look at him to verify it. I could only stay huddled as I was and it took some time before I managed to open my eyes and look around.
My brain didn’t want to acknowledge the incredible landscape spread out before me. It was simply too alien. Two moons took up half of an entire sky that swirled with pink clouds. The moons were so bright that even though it appeared to be nighttime, I could see a great distance in every direction.
We were on top of a gentle sloping hill. To one side spread a vast forest of plants reminiscent of giant blue celery stalks as tall as twenty story buildings. On the other side, I could see small hills covered with grass and more flowers, predominantly blue. Mountains circled the horizon in every direction. It was warm and pleasant. A heavy perfume hung in the air and little creatures sang, making sounds somewhere between a frog’s croak and a crow’s caw.
Noticing that I was looking around and alert, Rafael let me go and rose to his feet. His face was pale and he looked nauseated himself.
As he stepped away, I snapped out of my strange reverie and recalled the red tentacle creature that had almost sucked my life away. Shuddering, I gasped, “What was that thing?”
His hands clenched tightly. Keeping his eyes trained on the distant mountains, he replied, “It was a Tulpa.”
Not exactly sure that I really wanted to know, I asked hesitantly, “What is a Tulpa?”
It didn’t seem like he was going to answer me at first. He was still staring at the mountains. His arms were clasped tightly now, and I could see the hard outline of his muscles through his form-fitting shirt. When he replied, it was in as few words as possible. “A Thoughtform.”
“Never heard of a Thoughtform, either,” I muttered.
“You humans create them,” he answered distractedly.
At that, my mouth dropped open. “Huh?”
“As a race, you are not yet aware that you create these manifestations in the Second World.” He turned on me then, and I saw that he was shaking. His face was gray, and I couldn’t tell if he was angry or sick, or both.
Alarmed, and feeling a little defensive, I clambered to my feet. “Well, you can’t blame me! I didn’t create that thing. It wasn’t my …” I was going to say “fault”, but it suddenly struck me that it was my fault. I had stolen the red tube.
His gray eyes were tortured. “You have no idea what I’ve done, Sydney! I’ve broken the most sacred rule of the Fae!” He paused, struggling to form words, and when he did, it was in a voice so low that I could hardly hear him. “I’ve brought a human to Avalon—the most cardinal sin! What if I’m wrong? What if you were supposed to die?”
I gulped in shock. “But … you told Jareth that I wasn’t supposed to!”
“But maybe I’m wrong, Sydney!” He strode back to me and grabbed my shoulders, digging his long fingers into my flesh and half shaking me. His lips were white. “What if I’m wrong and Jareth is right? What have I done? How can I even contemplate what I’m thinking? It’s an unimaginable crime!”
He wasn’t making much sense. “I don’t know! What are you contemplating?” Unbidden tears formed in my eyes.
He wasn’t even listening to me. He was staring at me, talking, but I could have been anyone. “How can I even wonder if the Glass Wall is a farce? How could I even think of breaking it? I’ve spent my entire life protecting it! No one has done what I have, no one! I’ve brought a human to Avalon!”
“What is this Glass Wall?” I found myself shouting at him. Tears were streaming down my cheeks now. I tried to smack his hands from my shoulders, but he was holding me too tightly.
“We are supposed to protect humanity! What am I doing?” Rafael was shouting now too, obviously caught in the grips of panic. “What have I done, Sydney? I’m not really certain why I did it. You clearly had fate lines leading to your death! Why did I ignore those?”
“Well, I’m not sorry you saved my life!” I burst into tears.
He kept shaking me, yelling in my face, and I just couldn’t take it anymore.
I hauled off and punched him in the nose.
Abruptly, he let me go, clutching his hand to his face as a clear fluid seeped through his fingers.
I stared, stunned.
I knew that he wasn’t human, but seeing the clear blood only drove that fact home more than anything else had done before.
There was a lengthy pause.
“I deserved that,” Rafael finally admitted in a somewhat calmer, muffled voice. His heavily eye-shadowed eyes peered at me from over the top of his hand, which he clamped tighter over his profusely bleeding nose. “But you’re gravely mistaken. I haven’t saved your life. They won’t allow you to live here. They won’t even want to take the chance. The consequences are too disastrous. More likely, we are both dead.”
As the words sank in, I began to shake. “Why?” I finally managed to whisper.
“Because you shouldn’t be here, and I should never have brought you!” Rafael closed his eyes and his shoulders sagged. “Most likely I am wrong and nothing is amiss with the Glass Wall.”
Glancing at his hands, he shrugged out of his shirt and used it to wipe the blood from his hands and face. He still wore a tight-fitting black tank top, one that revealed a lithe, muscular figure.
“What is this Glass Wall?” I asked again. My voice was shaking now too.
Casting his soiled shirt aside, he replied, “The Glass Wall protects Earth, all of humanity, from the Brotherhood of the Snake. My kind has guarded the Glass Wall for over a thousand years. Without it, your planet would be in grave danger.”
I was getting overwhelmed with fright. All I really wanted to do was to run around in circles and scream. I scarcely heard him as he continued.
“We first encountered humanity in the time of your King Arthur, and you were well on your way to being enslaved by the Brotherhood. Our Queen at that time, Morgan, constructed the Glass Wall to protect your race from their evil designs. I am from a long line of Fate Trackers, who hold the sacred duty of protecting the wall above all else and … I’m the first … to come this close to breaking it.” His words ended in a devastating whisper.
Morgan. The name sounded familiar, but I collapsed to my knees and covered my hands with my ears. I didn’t want to hear anymore.
I stayed that way for quite some time until my mind began to calm.
I wanted to go home, back to Al and Betty, but I was stuck on an alien planet. Panicking wouldn’t help and would only lead me to miss opportunities to return to Earth. I was going to have to get rid of my fear, or at least bottle it until later. Screwing my eyes shut, I allowed myself three, long, deep breaths and then informed myself it was time to let the panic go. From this moment on, I was only going to focus on how I was going to get home.
It took me several tries, but I finally managed to steel my resolve. I rose to my feet to face Rafael.
He was slouching before me with his hands i
n his pockets, and his enigmatic eyes studied me impassively. Standing with the two moons behind his back, his bold eye shadow gave him an even more unearthly appearance than usual.
I was scared, but I knew the only way out of it was to act, not to sit there and wallow in emotion. “What are you?” I asked the question that I’d been trying to answer for weeks.
His gaze still locked with mine, he answered quietly, “We are the Fae.”
Frowning, I strained to recall any incident where humanity had interfaced with an alien race called the Fae. I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of them. You must be mistaken. If humanity had met an alien race a thousand years ago, it would be all over our history.”
“It is.” His lips curved in a smile. “We have a healthy presence in your culture, though we are now relegated to the realm of myth and children’s tales. We are referred to as Fairies, though some accounts still call us by our proper name, the Fae.”
My mouth dropped open in surprise. I would have laughed in the past, but now it wasn’t humorous. The situation was far too dangerous. Instead, I just licked my dry lips and mumbled, “You don’t have wings!”
Rafael gave a humph that sounded a lot like a laugh. “We never did. It was how humans chose to document our ability to Phase Shift. You see us vanish when we shift between the places we wish to be.” He reached over and touched me lightly on the tip of my nose and his eyes sparkled a little mischievously. “As you have discovered, the first few times are quite nauseating.”
It was hard to believe what I was hearing.
Rafael was a Fairy. They all were Fairies. Fairies!
Then, the light moment fled. His eyes adopted a haunted look once again, and he moved away, clenching his hands into fists.
I wasn’t sure what we were waiting for, but I didn’t have the nerve to interrupt him at the moment. He looked too tense. Instead, I sat back down and ran my fingers through the dirt. It was a bit like damp sand. I began to draw patterns in it with the tip of my finger and let my mind wander.
Maybe none of this was real. If I were lucky, I would discover that it was all a bizarre dream. Just in case, I pinched myself, but nothing happened. It was not surprising. In my entire life, there never had been an easy escape for me from anything difficult.
However, this time, a healthy portion my current problem was my own fault. I’d taken the Tulpa from Marquis’ car.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized, still resting my cheek against my knee and drawing swirly patterns in the sand. “I never should have taken that red tube from Marquis’ car, but I really wanted to give it back yesterday.”
It took some time before Rafael’s voice answered mine. His thoughts had obviously been very far away. “What?”
“I didn’t know there was a Tulpa in it. You know, I’ve never even heard of those before.” I kept talking, still focusing on the sand. “I was just curious what Marquis was doing and—”
I yelped as Rafael hefted me to my feet. I looked into his eyes, startled.
“Marquis?” His face held a mixture of bewilderment and disbelief. “You took the Tulpa from Marquis’ car?”
“Uh, yeah.” I admitted, slightly alarmed. “Al and I saw him … opening it up and …” I fell silent, uncertain why he appeared so disturbed.
“And what, Sydney?” Rafael breathed, horror-stricken. “You saw him doing what?”
“I don’t know!” I began shaking. It took me several long minutes to control my fear so I could reply. “It was weird. That thing stuck its tentacles in his nose and eyes … I guess. It was hard to tell ...” I trailed off.
He shuddered and closed his eyes, his face losing all color once again. I thought he was going to vomit.
“I’m sorry.” I really didn’t know why I said it. It just felt like I should.
Rafael’s mouth twisted in dismay. With his eyes still closed, he whispered, “Are you certain … that it was Marquis?”
“Yes,” I said. “We recorded him on video.”
His eyes flew open and his brows arched a little. “Recorded?”
Biting my lip, I admitted, “Al thought you were a drug dealer. He had a couple of video cameras recording your … house … since you moved into the … neighborhood. He’s been a bit suspicious. He got the alien detection kit at Thanksgiving. The thing that went off yesterday … ” It was harder to come clean than I thought. Even though I was still scared, I felt my cheeks redden with embarrassment.
Rafael just stared at me.
“I knew you would be here, Rafael.”
Both of us whirled to see Jareth standing behind us, dressed in his full black leather outfit, dangling chains, and porcupine hair. Apparently, he had taken the time to change.
“You always come here when you’re upset.” Jareth drawled. Tilting his head to the side, he sized me up and down. “I see that you have recovered, Sydney.”
Recalling quite clearly that in our last encounter he had tried to convince Rafael to let me die, I sent him an unforgiving scowl and muttered, “No thanks to you!”
“It’s nothing personal.” Jareth shrugged indifferently. “But make no mistake; Rafael has only delayed your death for a short time. No human is allowed to live in or leave this place.”
I glanced away as I willed my fear to stay bottled, and Rafael reached over and gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
“I hate to interrupt you, Rafael.” Jareth folded his arms in a creak of leather and jingling chains. “But now that we have inexplicably arrived in this fate line, we should inspect the Glass Wall before taking any further action.”
Rafael sent him a measured look. His lips curled into a mocking smile as he said, “How pleasant to see you come to your senses at last.”
“I shall root Sydney here.” Jareth replied.
At once, Rafael’s eyes flashed and his lips set in a thin, uncompromising line. “Sydney comes with us!” he said.
“Why would I be that foolish?” Jareth’s face darkened. “No one would ever permit a human so close to the Glass Wall!”
“You have no choice,” Rafael countered evenly.
Jareth stared at him a moment before remarking cynically, “Really? I can simply deliver you to your Queen, thereby washing my hands of this entire affair, and I wouldn’t even be questioned! All of the offenses in history combined are nothing compared to what you are in the middle of achieving, Rafael!”
“And you will simply walk away?” Rafael laughed. It was a deep, rich laugh rife with an elegant contempt. “As my lifelong counterpart, I know you as well as you know me. You care more about discovering the origin of that Tulpa than I do! I’d wager my life’s blood upon it!”
Jareth’s eyes filled with a hot anger, but he replied steadily enough, “It does no good to wager your blood as it’ll spill soon enough anyway, but perhaps I can wait a little while longer.” Turning to me, he withdrew from his sleeve the silver pen-like device I had seen before. He pointed it at me. “Do you know what this is, Sydney?”
I nervously shook my head.
“This is a trion.” His voice adopted a chilling tone. “The Fae have harnessed the power of sound to create this deadly weapon. With a single word, I can obliterate you as fast or as slow as I please.”
I swallowed. So I had been in danger on the night that I’d first heard of the Glass Wall.
“I will be escorting you,” Jareth continued in a harsh monotone. “If you take as much as a single step toward Rafael, I will annihilate all traces of you. Do you understand?”
“No! I don’t understand at all!” I snapped as he closed the distance between us in two large steps and grabbed my arm.
“We are going to inspect the Glass Wall, and you must come with us, because that fool refuses to leave you behind,” he explained. With a sneer on his lips, he addressed Rafael, “If you even touch a single hair on her head, I’ll annihilate you as well, regardless if you’re a Fate Tracker or not! I will never allow you to take her back to Earth.”
Ignoring
him outright, Rafael sent me a graceful nod and a reassuring smile. “Trust me, Sydney. I have faith we will find the answers we seek.”
At that, Jareth broke into a loud, condescending laugh. “Recall, Sydney, I’ve pointed out before that Rafael is quite the dreamer.”
“Odd choice of words.” Rafael raised a brow at him, and his eyes flashed dangerously. “Perhaps it is you that has dreamt of this Tulpa before? Shall we look into the mirror?”
Jareth jerked. I could feel a ripple run through him, but I didn’t understand either of them or what it meant.
Then, Rafael’s demeanor changed. Adopting a harsh tone of command, he lifted his arm and ordered, “To the wall. At once!”
With that, he vanished.
“Hold onto me tightly, Sydney.” Jareth scowled down at me.
With his fingers clasped around my arm in a death grip, he shifted, taking me with him.
Again, I was overwhelmed with an intense wave of nausea. Squeezing my eyes shut and falling to my knees, I was unable to look around to see where we had shifted to.
“Take deep breaths, Sydney.” Rafael advised as Jareth warned, “Keep away from her, Rafael!”
It took longer than they both liked before I could open my eyes. Jareth reluctantly offered a supportive arm that I promptly shoved away as I struggled to my feet on my own.
He grinned.
I was standing on what looked like white, compacted sand. I could only see a short distance ahead of me and on each side, before mist obscured my view. Rafael stood a respectable distance away, somewhat masked by mist with his thumbs stuck in his pockets and his eyes focused over my shoulder.
Slowly, I turned.
Behind me rose an immense wall of glass, like a monstrous dam of inconceivable proportions. It spread in both directions with each end fading into the mist. I stood before it, filled with a profound sense of awe, feeling to be the size of an ant in comparison.
The Glass Wall (Return of the Ancients Book 1) Page 20