Tiva whispered, “Yes, it’s all broken somehow.”
Sariya said, “That’s where a sprite comes in. It’s like an inner voice that tells you the meaning of the experiences you have while you’re under the button’s spell. In time, you can even get to where you don’t need buttons to reach the upper realms anymore. But between you and me, I’m not nearly there yet, and I’m in no hurry!”
They both laughed.
“I need something like that sprite thing,” Tiva said. “Most of my button journeys are fun, but sometimes they get real scary.”
Sariya gave her a knowing smile, her golden eyes alive with promising futures. Her full head of obsidian curls danced in the gentle treetop breeze. “A sprite is like your own private guide who takes away the fear when the visions get scary. They help you calm your inner battles, and get rid of old heart-burdens from your past…”
Old Lit baggage!
“Just let yourself get quiet while the mushroom takes you,” Sariya said. “I know now that I’ve been led here today for a deeper purpose—not just for secret girl talk!”
Tiva allowed herself to “get quiet” as best as she could, and waited.
Usually these days, the mushroom’s effect crept up on her slowly. This time her whole body instantly reeled with reality-warping energy. The tree platform veered sideways until it almost went vertical. Tiva rolled onto her stomach, and felt like a fly clinging to a wall.
“Don’t be afraid, just flow with it,” sang the amplified voice of a goddess-like Sariya.
“It’s incredible!” Tiva said, tingling all over with a musical energy.
“Look inside.”
Tiva closed her eyes, and sank deep into herself. The warm darkness swirled, as she gently fell through murky greenish-brown inner space. Shadows of memories faded into being, repetitive, angry, and disturbing. The groping hands of Yargat clutched at her from out of the blackness…
“Nooo!” she screamed.
“Take control of it,” said a friendly little voice that did not belong to Sariya.
“How?”
“Speak a new reality into existence! Create it with your words.” The voice was somehow vaguely familiar, and yet refreshingly new.
Tiva said something—she didn’t know what. The groping hands of Yargat melted into Khumi’s gentle caress—her fire-sprite—the way he was when they first met. The darkness brightened to a golden Aedenic glow.
“There now, you have the power, see?” said the Voice again. It sounded to Tiva like some boyish wood nymph, yet it rang with an ancient quality, wise, venerable, and somehow comfortably familiar.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Pahn, the voice of the forest. My name means All, and I am in all that is Nature. I’m here to take you back to Aeden always and forever.”
A’
Nu-Ahki awoke in a cold sweat. His heart thumped madly in his ears. The nightmare still shook his body as if the earth itself quaked.
He had watched, while Khumi and Tiva sat together in the forest. A huge wasp-like creature had landed on Tiva’s shoulder, and started to crawl all over her face and body. It jabbed her with its hideous pumping stinger repeatedly. Wherever it struck, swollen, pus-filled wounds rose in her skin. She smiled with numb indifference, while the creature covered her with inflamed welts, and wiggled under her clothes to reach every portion of her body. When the demonic insect had finished stinging, it crawled into her mouth and disappeared, head first, down her throat with a gurgling sound.
Khumi then turned to her, as if he had not seen the creature at all, and kissed her swollen, ulcerated face. When he pulled away, his mouth puffed out with a sting wound…
A’Nu-Ahki flew out of bed, ready to fight some violent intruder in his home. Instead of lashing out with his fists, or drawing the sword he kept hidden beneath his mattress, he hit the floor on his knees, and wrestled in a desperate spirit-battle for the life of a young girl he still hardly knew.
After centuries of inability to penetrate the spiritual ramparts around the region of Q’Enukki’s fortress, several fallen Watchers had finally broken the siege into Akh’Uzan.
Thou hast seen what Azazyel has done, how he has taught every species of iniquity upon earth, and has disclosed to the world all the secret things which are done in the heavens.
—1 Enoch 9:5 (Ethiopic Manuscript)
11
Encounters
Tiva first saw the Stranger from a distance.
She had been on one of her morning walks above Grove Hollow, along the narrow game trails that twisted through the woody northern foothills. At first, she thought he was just a boy, younger even than she was. He flitted from tree to tree, as if to taunt her playfully—though she was sure that he could not possibly see her hiding in the tall grass at the crest of a knoll in a wide clearing. He wore only a fawn loincloth with strapped leggings of goatskin to protect his thighs and shins from the scraping underbrush while he sprinted from tree to tree as if chasing something.
Tiva smiled at the fantasy that he was chasing her—though he could not know she watched him.
The Stranger paused, and sniffed the air. Tiva saw that he was not really a boy, just small and wiry—like Khumi—and about his same age. He pulled a set of Iyu’Buuli pipes from his leggings, and began to play the most haunting melody. The music resonated with the trees in a wild cacophony, as the Stranger began to dance up and down the clearing. His antics reminded her of her husband’s fire dancing, and widened her nostalgic grin.
Presently, the piper retreated to the woods again, his melody fading into the trees until Tiva’s heart ached.
She saw him again several nights later, amid the dancers at Grove Hollow. He still wore his fawn loin cloth and goatskin leggings, as he cavorted around the bonfire. When the music faded, the Stranger vanished into a crowd of drinkers on the other side of the fire pit, by the waterfall.
Tiva got up, and crossed the clearing to follow him. When she pushed her way through the drinkers, she found only a few lovers entangled by the pool. The Stranger was not among them.
That night, Khumi did not come home from the shipyard. Tiva sat up, humming the Stranger’s tune to herself while she drank herself to sleep.
When she woke up, it was almost noon, and her head hurt. She had cleaned the tree house top to bottom only yesterday. Since Khumi had spent the night at the drydock, there was nothing to straighten up except after her own small breakfast of flat-bread and cinnamon-seasoned olive oil.
Tiva decided to walk off her headache. She began up the stream bed trail to the Hollow, and from there onto the foothill paths. It only occurred to her that she was heading to the same clearing where she had first seen the Stranger when she emerged from the trees and climbed the small hill to her grassy hide. She reclined where she had watched him from the other day and waited. What am I doing? What are the odds that he’ll come this way again? Why do I even want him to?
She lay there for over an hour, and only became conscious that she was humming the Stranger’s tune softly to herself just before she got up to leave. I wish I had a seers’ button so I could talk to Pahn—maybe he can make sense of what I feel.
Tiva rose out of the grass, and trudged back down the hill for the forest trail. Late afternoon golds already deepened before she reached the main path to Grove Hollow. That was when she heard footsteps behind her, and felt that same old sense of “being watched.”
Tiva quickened her pace.
Several twigs crunched about forty cubits back.
She turned, and kept walking backward but saw nobody on the trail.
Panic hit, and she ran a couple hundred cubits. When she stopped, she heard nothing at first, until several birds in the trail-side bushes were frightened into flight somewhere behind her.
Tiva screeched, “Who’s there?”
Silence.
If she were nearer to the Shrine, she would have been sure that Yargat hid in the trees. She turned, and started to run, hoping to find s
omebody at the Hollow—preferably Moon-chaser.
“Please wait!” cried a boyish voice from behind. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Tiva halted and turned.
The Stranger rounded the bend in the trail at a trot.
“I’m really sorry, please don’t run away.”
“Why are you following me?” Tiva demanded.
“It’s not what you think. You were just on the path, and I was hurrying to catch up.”
“Why?”
“You were humming my song.”
Tiva was glad her dusky complexion wouldn’t reveal her blush in the forest shadows. She had not been aware that she was still humming.
“I was curious how you knew it,” said the Stranger. “It’s special music I only play when I’m alone with the forest.”
“Who are you?”
“Some call me Kernui. You?”
“Tiva.” She almost added, “Wife of Khumi,” but stopped herself.
“Hello, Tiva. I think I saw you at Grove Hollow last night.”
“I was there.”
“I rather like that place.” He gave a boyish grin that reminded her so much of Khumi that she almost smiled back at him.
“I’ve not seen you there before last night. Where do you live?”
“Oh, here and there.”
“That’s not an answer.”
His smile widened. “You never answered how you knew my music.”
Her eyes fell to his feet. “I heard it in the forest a few days ago. You must have been piping somewhere near the trail I was wandering on.”
“Why do you wander?”
The question caught her off guard. “I just take walks. It clears my head. Is that so strange?”
“No. You just seem lost somehow—and lonely.”
She meant to glare at him, but found that her anger melted when their eyes met. “Loneliness is nothing new. Why do you roam the forests? Are you also lost?”
“Some think so, but I don’t.”
“Then why do you think I’m lost?”
“I didn’t say I thought you were lost, only that just now you seemed lost somehow.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Not really.”
Tiva smiled at him. “So where do you live?”
He grinned back at her, and stepped closer. “Right now I live here.”
“At Grove Hollow?”
“No. Right here.” He pointed to where he was standing.
She laughed. “So you do wander.”
“At times.”
“Do you need a place to stay?”
Kernui’s eyes had a playful glow. “Are you making me an offer?”
Tiva shuddered. “I meant that I might ask around for you. I know the people here.”
“A woman of influence?”
“Not really. The Hollowers took me in once when I had no place else to go. They can be good that way. I just wanted to help.”
“But you already have.”
Tiva’s lips quivered. “How?”
“When a wandering vagabond gets to walk with a pretty girl, it is always a help.”
I should tell him I’m married, thought Tiva. Instead, she asked, “Are you just a wandering vagabond?”
“My father thinks so.” Kernui began to walk slowly toward the Hollow, and Tiva moved up beside him to keep pace.
“Don’t feel so bad.” She glanced at him sideways. “My father thinks I’m a whore.”
Tiva could not believe she had just said that, but the words were already out.
Kernui seemed to take it in stride. “I don’t believe that. You look too honest, too genuine.”
“You don’t know me. Maybe I’m just an honest, genuine whore.”
“Or maybe your father’s a jackass.”
She laughed. “Maybe.”
“Still, it has to hurt.”
Tiva focused her eyes back on the path. “No more than if my father called me a vagabond.”
“Oh, I think quite a bit more—if you’ll excuse my saying so.”
Tiva would have excused him for saying just about anything. “You’re probably right. I just haven’t thought of it in years.”
“So where do you live if your father has disowned you?”
“I didn’t say he disowned me.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“That obvious, huh?”
She almost didn’t notice when he slipped his arm around her shoulder. Before she could even think, she found herself liking it there.
“There’s nothing wrong with a little transparency.” Kernui nudged himself closer.
Tiva meant to say something, but when she turned to face him, they stopped walking. Kernui clasped her other shoulder, and she found herself kissing him. She almost melted completely into his embrace—did melt for several seconds. Then her heart almost stopped.
She pushed him away gently. “I’m sorry. I’ve given you the wrong idea. I’m a married woman.”
“At your age? You seem awfully young.” His wild eyes danced in the leafy gold.
“I’m young to be married, but I am married.”
For a moment, she feared the hunger in his eyes—that he would force her off the path into the bushes. They were close enough to the Hollow that her screams would be in earshot. She prayed he would realize this.
Kernui smiled, stepped back from her, and bowed. “Then your husband is a lucky man, and your father is wrong about you.”
Tiva watched him dash off into the woods as she began to cry softly to herself. You don’t really know me at all, Kernui.
The evening inversion winds began to moan through the trees overhead, while the voice of Yargat ripped her to shreds again from the inside out. Now you’re not just a whore, you’re an adulterous one.
A
varnon-Set smirked with a feral gleam in his whiteless eyes, while his teeth bristled in shark-like edges. He sat on a padded couch in one of the archonic palace’s many private meeting chambers, and said nothing.
Tarbet wanted more than anything to know the content of the courier dispatch that had so raised the Titan’s spirits. Avarnon-Set held the tiny scroll in tantalizing silence, just out of the brand new Archon’s reach.
Rakhau had died early that morning of “natural causes” at the young age of six hundred and eighty-four.
“Do you suppose that all your older brothers met with such illfated deaths so long ago, and that your beloved father passed on before his time by chance?” said the frigid voice of the Beast.
Tarbet trembled beneath his cloak, and measured his response with care. “Two brothers had unfortunate accidents, the other three, and my father all died of natural causes.” Of course, he added mentally, what could be more natural than the human heart being unable to beat after it’s been paralyzed by a dose of black sorvalis? Do you think I don’t know?
“But do you understand the higher purpose in you being Archon instead of them?”
“It was E’Yahavah’s will,” Tarbet piously intoned. He decided that to know any more than that would be too risky for now.
The Titan’s black hole eyes graced him with a condescending leer. “Yes, of course it was. But do you feel the shift in the power currents that flow just below your consciousness?”
Tarbet gazed out the palace window at his father’s enormous stone image in the dying red sun. Then his eyes fell down to the two obelisks of Seti that seemed dwarfed by Kunyari’s shadow. “There is change in the air,” he whispered with an icy knot in his chest. He remembered Tubaal-qayin Dumuzi’s left-handed prophecy about his future.
“You want to know about this dispatch.”
Tarbet’s eyes must have screamed that he did. Maybe the Emperor is just not strong enough personally to face the pressures of greatness.
“It spells out the direction the Powers will flow in,” the Titan Ambassador said, adding to the enigma rather than clearing it up. “You could figure into things prominently.”
&
nbsp; “I don’t understand.”
Avarnon-Set leaned back into his opulent dyed goat hair cushions. “The key word for you now is leeway—you will have it only as much as you give it. All humanity must find you waiting with open arms to receive their multitudes—no conditions. Would you like Sa-utar to become the center of global spiritual power again under your Archonate, the way it was in the old days—the way I believe your holy writings foretell it will be again?”
Tarbet could almost feel himself being pulled in like a hooked fish. “The texts speak of a holy city. What about Ayar Adi’In? You in Bab’Tubila and the prominent houses of the Steel Dynasty do not see the Temple in a religious light any more, but the urban and rural masses—not to mention Khavilakki—attach much religious affection to it.”
Avarnon-Set answered, “High Priest Gununi may have delivered his red-sore cure, but as far as I’m concerned it is too little, too late. I grow weary of priestly intrigues. They rot the face of authority as sexual diseases rot the body. As far as I’m concerned, the Temple is a purveyor of both!”
Tarbet allowed his shock to break free in the form of nervous laughter. “But the Temple created you! You sound like old Iyared, or worse yet, one of Q’Enukki’s sons.” Not to mention your own taste for young boys!
Avarnon-Set hacked out a laugh like a fur ball. “I told you I liked your little ‘Orthodox Revival,’ and I did. Yet now it is time for it to sputter out with a whimper. The death rattles have gone on long enough. The Powers need no Temple to spawn the likes of me. They use whatever human mediums are available because it is more convenient than creating completely new social institutions from scratch. The only question is; which human establishments serve their purposes at which time? At first, and for a long while, it was Temple. Yet now, Tarbet, it is time to shift our methods.”
“Shift?”
Avarnon nodded. “The Powers are beginning to spawn a spiritual movement among some of your younger generations not too far from here. Soon it should be mature enough to branch out and spread. When it does, I want you to embrace it. Give it the gentle guidance of your centuries of experience, O Father of Men.” His fangs flickered in the soft quickfire light.
A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3) Page 19