Molly laughed.
Jaxon groaned. “You’re being a very bad, Tigerlily. But maybe I should take advantage while you’re not hating me. Will you meet me in my rooms tonight for our first date?”
“Nope, I’m a good girl.” I launched myself into his arms. He was so surprised he barely caught me. “You’re the bad boy. But I can be bad too. Wanna see?”
“I’m going to take this as a ‘yes’ to the date.”
Jaxon gulped as my fingers trailed down his red silk shirt to the snap of his jeans. His breath hissed in, followed by a moan. His eyes rounded as I traced his zipper, and he gave Molly a wide-eyed look.
“Don’t ask me. She came out of the water this way.”
Jaxon gripped both my hands in his, then took a step back. “I think I—ah, you—need a cold shower ... I mean, water. You need to drink some cold water and rest.” He gulped again when I pressed myself against him. “The race. Need to focus on the race.”
“Not a race.” I leaned up on my tiptoes to lick his collarbone. “When I get you naked I want it to be slow and last all night. I’ll make you want me.”
He made a choking sound, then suddenly he was gone. Wind whipped around us, tugging strands of hair from my braid and causing my nipples to harden even further. It sounded like his voice on the wind saying, “I already do.”
Molly squirted cold water all over me causing me to squeal. She smiled mischievously, then handed me the bottle. “Cool down before one of you spontaneously combusts.”
19
We lined up at the water’s edge once more. My head and stomach felt like I’d drunk my paycheck in half-priced margaritas. Molly had forced me to drink a bunch of water and lay down for a few minutes. I couldn’t say I was back to normal, but I could walk a straight line. That would have to be good enough for now because I was determined to win this one. Only one more race and I was in the lead.
Jaxon had come back but kept his distance. Mostly he grumbled that he was retracting his earlier statement about complicated not being a bad thing. He paced around the side of the lagoon, refusing to go back down to the observation area. I ignored him and worked through a couple of yoga poses to center myself.
When the whistle sounded this time, I dove deep, my focus on reaching the tunnel first to get ahead. The water pressure grew: it felt like I was swimming through heavy cream. My lungs strained desperately, wanting me to take a breath. The faint light of the tunnel was my only guide this far down. I was a foot away from the tunnel when something hit me from the side. Air burst from my lungs like the cork from a bottle, and it took every ounce of will I had not to gasp in liquid death.
Shark! I sank toward the rocky bottom of the lagoon hoping to find a place to hide.
A dark shape zoomed past me, and I felt something grab my butt. Sharks don’t try to cop a feel. Mikhail. It had to be him. Was he trying to kill me or take me out of the race? It didn’t matter because my lungs were nearly out of air and my shoulder—which had taken the brunt of the hit—was throbbing painfully.
This is how a life ends. Not in an explosion of colors like the setting of the sun but lost to the murky depths where light barely penetrates.
No! I had fought my whole life not to be like my mother used to be. I wasn’t giving up now. I will not die.
Determination filled me, and some instinct took over. I pressed my lips to the rock floor, and, using the last of my breath, I blew until there was nothing left. The ground shifted beneath me and expanded like a balloon forming a protective cocoon around me. The water rushed out like a geyser through the small hole above me before it closed completely. I was in a rock bubble only a little larger than my crouched form. I gulped in air thirstily, my head pounding and my stomach churning. Everything I had ever eaten seemed to suddenly make a reappearance as I heaved onto the rock beneath me. Thankfully, the noxious piles were swallowed by the rock leaving me with only fresh air.
I sat back on my knees and pulled my swimming goggles off to rub my eyes. Maybe if I kept my eyes shut the darkness wouldn’t bother me. My breath started to come more rapidly as memories filled my mind. The hot summer days of my childhood locked in the small dark apartment, the sound of my mother’s crying my only company.
Stop it! You aren’t there. You aren’t a helpless child anymore. Think. You can get yourself out of this.
My focus turned inward, sinking down to the core of myself. A vibrant green ball of light filled my mind. Then a second bluish-white ball. Then a tiny red ball. They dipped and weaved around each other. The green ball drew my attention and I reached out. A drop of green melted from the ball like wax and coated my fingertip. The smell of dirt and rain washed through me. My senses came alive with the sound and feel of nature all around. I saw through the eyes of a fish as it swam over my rock cocoon. I felt the wind as it rustled the leaves of a tree somewhere on the surface.
A newfound confidence filled me. I touched my finger to the rock in front of me and a glowing green mushroom unfurled. Then another and another.
The fear that had always lingered in the back of my mind that I would one day sink into the darkness of depression and never return, disappeared. I laughed, feeling like a giant weight had been lifted from me. The sound echoed around the small space and the mushrooms swayed as if sharing in my joy.
I knew exactly what to do now. I pressed my hand to the rock and it peeled back like a banana. I stood, and the water shifted out of my way. I walked across the lagoon floor, my air pocket secure around me. Then I closed my rock cocoon back up, securing a safe spot for the mushrooms to grow. I placed my goggles back on and let the water lift me up. The race was probably over, but I would finish what I started.
I let the water slowly fill in around me and swam for one of the tunnels.
Then I was through and swimming for the surface on the other side of the wall. I came up gasping and was surprised to find the rest of the contestants still in the water by the black markers marking off the training area. The tension in the air was thick. Kade called out to me, but a loud whistle cut off whatever he said. I realized they must have paused the race while I was trapped in my rock cocoon. I hurriedly took a deep breath and back down I went.
I was halfway there when my vision went blurry again and pain lanced through my temples. Had I hit my head when I was making my rock cocoon?
I didn’t think so, but there was something wrong. I made it back to the tunnel and pushed inside. The lights of the tunnel surrounded me, their white glow changing to that sickly yellow-green color. This tunnel was twice as long as any of the others, and it felt like forever before I exited out the other end. My foot grazed the wall by accident, but I took the opportunity to push off it. I pushed hard toward the surface, my shoulder protesting every stroke. The ache turned to burning, but I ignored it. Flashes of light sailed past me. The blue water took on a muddy brown color. My lungs screamed for one breath—just one. A cramp seized my belly, and bile filled my mouth. I chocked it back down, the foul taste making me want to gag.
Heaviness settled in my limbs, my heart beating like an out-of-control locomotive as I struggled to keep moving. I strained my blurry vision to make out the shoreline of the lagoon only feet away. Almost there. I broke the surface, but everything was lost to swirling lights. Shouts sounded, and I focused on moving toward them. My hand scraped against rock and that was the last thing I knew as white light closed around me.
20
My skin prickled painfully in the cold. All around me gray fog swirled. Keening wails echoed through the damp air. My stomach clenched at the sounds that were so similar to those of my childhood.
“Hello,” I called. “Is anyone there?”
The wails changed to heart-wrenching sobs. Maybe this time would be different. Maybe this time I could help my mother out of that dark place that claimed her. “It’s ok. I’m here.”
“You left me,” a small voice whispered. That wasn’t my mother’s hoarse voice telling me to go back to bed. I looked arou
nd. The dingy hallway of the apartment where I had grown up was nowhere in sight. “Where am I?”
“Thanatos,” the small tear-choked voice answered.
“That sounds like a toe fungus,” I mumbled. “What’s a ‘thanatos?’”
“This place. The shadowlands of the dead.” A hiccuping sob sounded. “You chose the Goddess, not me.”
“Who are you?”
“Meara,” she sniffled.
“You tried to turn me into a popsicle! What was I supposed to do?”
“I didn’t mean to!” she cried. “I was trying to protect you. He tried to follow you through the portal, but I wouldn’t let him. Now it’s too late. He knows you’re alive.”
“Who knows I’m alive?”
The ghost child I had seen in the Emerald Rain Forest materialized through the gray swirling clouds. She sat with her knees clutched to her chest, big sad eyes glistening with tears. Though she was made up of grays like the landscape, she seemed more solid here. “He will twist the truth around until you’re too confused to know what it is. He will ask you to do things, and you’ll want to do them to make him proud. He’s so nice when you’ve made him proud.”
“Are you saying there’s a bad man coming for me?”
She nodded. “He can visit here too. He’s been searching here for a very long time, but I’m good at hiding. You have to learn to hide too.”
“Please, Meara, I don’t understand any of this. Can you explain it to me?”
The silence stretched on for several moments before the child said petulantly, “I could show you, but you locked me out. You locked us all out.”
“What do you mean?”
“You put up the wall, and I can’t get to your thoughts anymore.” She nodded her head toward the swirling mists. “This is the in-between place where people go after they die to wait for judgment. The others aren’t like me. Most don’t know they are dead yet. They want to keep living and you offer them a way. Your mind has always been wide open. You could listen to the real world and this one at the same time. I keep them from getting into you, but I can’t stop their voices.”
“The constant noise in my head. The random thoughts. Are you saying I’ve been listing to the ghost hotline?”
“Yes, you have always been able to hear the shades. Most pass on and never notice you. Others ... they want their life back. They think you can give it to them. I protected you.” There was such a pained look of betrayal on her little face. “You shut the door. No one can get through. Not even me.”
“I don’t want to be possessed!” I shouted. Moans sounded nearby, and I lowered my voice. “Not by ghosts or a goddess. I just want to be me. Is that so hard to understand?”
“No.” She clutched her braid staring at the ground. “I’ve been with you since you were a baby. Tucked away in your head. Living through you as much as I could. I know what it’s like to want to be yourself.”
I closed my eyes imagining being a ghost inside another person with limited ability to interact with the outside world and your host completely unaware of you. It sounded like hell.
“I can’t image what you’ve gone through. But if you help me find answers and get out of this place”—Careful, Dia, there was no going back from this decision—“I’ll do what I can to help you too.”
“Do ... Do you mean it?” Meara stared at me with cautious hope.
“I pinky promise. You know how serious I take those. Partners?”
She nodded and floated forward to wrap her cold little finger around my own. “I pinky promise to help you too. Partners.”
Her smile bloomed and she hugged me. “Yay! We’re going to have so much fun. I can show you how to walk Thanatos and view through other ghosts. Not that you need much help since you’ve already done that. But there are so many of us. We’re gonna be bestist friends like when you were little.”
“My invisible friend, that was you?” Meara nodded. “Mom thought I was talking to the Great Mother. She would be so disappointed.”
Meara’s shoulders slumped and her head dropped.
“I didn’t mean she would be disappointed that you were my friend,” I hastily reassured her.
She gave me a small smile then held out her hand. “We’re still connected, but you have to remove the block so I can show you.”
“What about the other ghosts?”
“Don’t worry, they won’t get to you,” she said confidently.
Hesitantly, I slipped my hand into her much smaller one. “Uh, what are you going to show me?”
She giggled. “Once upon a time ... That’s where all stories start.”
“Right.” A bluish-white light flared between our joined hands and the shadows swirled around us. My head felt like it was being sucked through my feet as we were swept away. Then we were crashing through a thick forest, a white glow around a small fist, the only thing I could see. “What’s happening?”
“We’re reliving my memories,” Meara said calmly as she ran frantically through a dark forest. “Africa is the territory of Gaia—of the House of Seasons. Their home base is here, deep in the Congo. And so is the village where I grew up, Chaméni Elpída.”
The name hit me like a ton of bricks. We were going back to the village that had been attacked. I shivered, and it wasn’t from the cold.
Tree limbs smacked into Meara’s face and tore at her clothes as she ran. Then, suddenly, she hurtled away from the forest into the gray mists of Thanatos. My head spun at the unexpected change. Then she was back in the forest again. “Don’t be scared,” Meara soothed, “we’re not really here now.”
“It seems pretty real to me.”
She giggled. “You’ll get used to it. Then you’ll be able to connect with ghosts even when you aren’t asleep.”
She popped in and out of Thanatos, the scenery changing rapidly. “I learned to walk the shadowlands whenever I chose that night. Fear taught me what my father tried to force. I used Thanatos to travel over two thousand miles to get back to my family. To warn them.”
“What?”
“Thanatos isn’t like Earth. Time is slower. You can move over long distances with a thought, but it takes a lot of power.”
Meara finally stopped at the edge of the forest, gasping for air. Chaméni Elpída sat in the clearing in the distance. Only the village looked very different. The huts were well maintained. A large garden spread out across a field on one side. Livestock filled fenced areas. A drum beat as shadows danced around a large fire. Laughter rang out as children chased each other. “This is what my tribe once was. They only wanted a simple life. Working and living close to the Goddess. That’s why they left the House of Seasons. Our village was declared outcast, no longer under the protection of the Kyrion, but we were free to live as we chose. I didn’t understand that then. There was so much I didn’t understand.”
Meara ducked low to the ground and moved closer to the village. “It’s time for the story,” she said softly. “Once upon a time there was a beautiful chieftain’s daughter who was very powerful. She lived in this village deep in the Congo where no outsiders were allowed. But the girl wanted to see more of the world. She disobeyed her father and went out to explore the forests.
“One day she met a man who was also very powerful. They met many times as they explored their powers together and love grew between them. They promised themselves to each other knowing their families would not approve. Then the day came when the chieftain demanded his daughter take a husband. The girl refused and admitted she was with child. The chieftain was very angry and said his daughter would live apart from the tribe as a lowly gatherer. She didn’t mind so much because she could meet with her love without the watchful eyes of the warriors.”
Here, Meara tripped and fell. She sobbed harder but got back up. “When I was born the midwife told the chieftain of the mark on my back. Mother was welcomed back into the tribe. Her status was raised to protector of the village and Father was allowed to visit. He always brought gifts and
new things for me to learn. We were happy.”
“Then Father visited less. When he did come, he wanted only for me to practice my powers. He was angry when I couldn’t do it right. My eleventh year he did not come for my birth celebration. I blamed Mother.” Regret filled Meara’s voice. “I told her she drove Father away. I screamed at her that I hated her.”
The sound of her sobs was joined by her name being called and she ran faster. “Father came to visit weeks later, and I begged him to take me with him. We left in the middle of the night without a word to Mother.”
Her voice rang with a bitterness way beyond her years. “He took me to his family home, Phàsia Castle in Mauritania,” she said. “I wish I had never gone with him. It’s a cold, evil place.”
Meara’s scrawny legs pumped furiously as she raced toward a hut separated from the others. The thatched roof had haphazard sections of straw piled upon it as if someone had thrown it there for repair but never gotten around to completing the task. Gaps could be seen through the branches that made up the walls.
She cautiously pushed aside the animal-skin door. A woman lay curled on a reed mat in the dim light of the hut. Meara dropped to her knees beside the woman and brushed the dark hair from her cheek. Language poured from her lips that I didn’t know but understood nonetheless.
“Mother, I am sorry,” Meara sobbed. “Please forgive me.”
The woman rolled onto her back, and shock hit me like stepping off the edge of a cliff. I was in free-fall and terrified of what would be waiting for me at the bottom. How could she be here? The woman on the mat was a much younger version, but the face was the same. It was a face I had looked at every day growing up. One less lined with age and bitter disappointments, but there was a darkness in her eyes that I knew all too well. It was small, not the all-consuming darkness she had fought when I was a child. But there was no mistaking this was my mother.
Paldimori Gods Rising Box Set Page 42