Quietly she took and ate her fill while Aithagg disappeared and she assumed he went inside the thatched hut to feed. The camp was still as the Vechey move as silently as night, fed, and then moved back into the time they came from.
She hung her head until her hair covered her eyes as she squatted on the ground eating her stolen meat in the darkness.
***
The group appeared back at where they had gathered. Aithagg glowed with strength and vigor. Catha seemed stronger but still diminished.
“Now. We prepare to go to the ritual time.” Eterili herded them into a circle. “This moment we step into will be your last moment synced to Linear time. You will go forth and sync into your own time, your own moment, where you will exist for all of eternity. Your time there can only end if the universe ends or you let the madness creep in.”
She stomped her foot upon the ground and her anklets clattered. “Then your very fangs will crawl to me asking for forgiveness. Do not stray from the way, and I will see you returned to our home-time to bond and bring children of your own into our tribe.”
“It is the way,” the teens recited, barely a whisper.
“It is the way,” Eterili said with finality.
The Vechey followed Eterili back to a time in the far distant pass. Aithagg left marked stones for Catha to follow. They arrived minutes before the white ball would hit the earth.
Aithagg grabbed Catha’s hands, and they walked towards the whiteness he knew was there. They were still far from it. It would be visible through the woods soon, visible to those who saw through time. He squeezed her hand gently. More than likely she did not see it. How to describe the white brightness of a sun hurtling to the ground?
***
The group paused as the whiteness became visible through the trees. The inability to see anything distinctly through time unnerved many. Eterili urged them forward. Bits of hushed whispers hung in the air:
“Do you see that?”
“What swallows all of time like that?”
“Is it a sun here?”
“…a moon?”
“Can you feel that?”
Catha looked anxiously at Aithagg. “I can not see it. Only darkness.”
“Can you feel the vibration?” Aithagg asked. “I don’t remember feeling that last time. But I was far away and not on the path we walk now.”
They all quieted as they approached the vast white ball of energy. It pushed at them as they approached. A vibrating wind pulsed with energy and made the hairs on the backs of their arms stand on end. Aithagg and others raised their arms to shield their eyes; the brightness was so intense.
Catha stared at dark woods in front of her.
Eterili’s shadow crossed between them and the whiteness. “Come closer.”
As they walked closer, the shadows of other teens became visible. They all stood around the whiteness, some scared, some brave, most wincing at the fierce glow. Aithagg saw his siblings, Catha’s siblings (the ones who had survived the journey) in the circle.
All gathered around wore similar expressions of wonder mixed with terror. Except for Catha. She looked forward in bewilderment and sadness, not seeing what the rest saw.
Here they stood together in the past, all the Vechey who had ever traveled to this ritual moment. Catha began to look at the others, wondering which one was her sibling who would soon die. She touched the dead sibling’s totem safely tucked away in her pouch. Aithagg tore his eyes from the white pulsing light, obliterating time in front of him, to follow Catha’s gaze. Across from him stood Icaeph. He held hands with a young lady. Icaeph met Aithagg’s eyes and they smiled grimly at one another. A moment passed and they looked back towards the center of the gathering.
The white throbbed and pulsed.
Aithagg was drawn and repulsed by the sight of it.
His body screamed there was danger and he should leave.
Catha’s hand slipped from his grasp.
His mind wondered what would happen—how exquisite to not know and not be able to see.
He looked at Catha and reached for her hand. Fingers outstretched. He took another step forward.
It happened quickly, much more quickly than he imagined possible.
The whiteness all at once was around him, in him, moving through him. Aithagg turned to find Catha, his hand still outstretched for hers.
She reached for his hand, a sad smile on her face as she stared into nothingness. The pulse of energy did not shake her as it did him. It did not make the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand out as his did.
Their fingers touched and finally he grasped her hand as the time they stood in filled with a ball of energy. A shock wave tore through everyone and everything. Her eyes flew wide as she saw the whiteness as it existed at the same time she did.
“Aithagg!” she shouted. A bright flash of light blanked him from her vision.
He held her warm hand.
Shouts and screams were all around as the white energy pushed at him.
Her hand was soft, tiny.
At the center, Eterili stood, her shape dark against the whiteness. Her staff held resolutely at her side.
Pure darkness and a sickening sensation of falling backwards overtook him. Aithagg held Catha’s fragile hand tightly until...
17 ALONE
Aithagg plummeted through darkness and landed on his back. He looked up at the full moon and a sky filled with ice-cube stars. No white light. No pulsing energy. No Eterili. No Catha.
In a panic he jumped to his feet looking about for Catha, anything, anyone. The leaves and dirt at his feet drifted with his movements. There was no one there. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. The air was colder than he remembered, dead, unmoving. Aithagg took in his surroundings under the full moon. He was in a frozen moment in time. His time, he knew from his teachings. The whiteness had pushed Aithagg until he landed in his own moment of time. Where? Where in time was he?
He calmed himself visibly and concentrated. Slowly, the ghost images of the future in front of him came into focus. There was not much time in front of him. He was close to main-time. Maybe one hundred winters in the past if he was to guess. He focused then on the past and searched. The visions of the past were overpowering, even more so than at any time in his life. Having unsynced with Linear time, he knew from his childhood lessons, would cause his ability to see through time to be much easier and as a result be overpowering until he gained control of his focus.
An incomprehensible urge welled inside him; he needed to get moving again. There was one last thing to do. He needed to find the place where he would sync. Right now he had unsynced with time but had not synced into a particular place. He would need to find the place from where he would draw energy from the soil. A cave somewhere as shelter for when he slept. His cells would tune to that place and this time. Aithagg would have to hurry before his need for sleep became overpowering and he would die in the open, shifting uncontrollably through the energy-filled daytime. But first, where was Catha? A dread filled him. He had held her hand, the warmth of her hand in his and then…
Nothing.
Perhaps she had her own time. But that was not how it worked. When two Vechey were promised and went through the ritual together, they synced in time together. His parents had told them of their pathway through the ritual thousands of years ago. How could she not have come through with him? Did she get sent to her own time? Did she…
Unable to finish the thought he looked up from his frozen moment. Things were more clear now. The ball of whiteness was something that had come from the sky. It had collided with the ground and the force of the impact laid
waste to all in its path. He followed the white streak of energy to where it impacted. There and then all of his tribe stood, had stood, waiting for the sky to fall on them. Eterili stood in the center of them all.
He saw through the whiteness now to himself and Catha. He had reached back to grab her hand. Held it tightly.
Then.
She screamed.
Defeated, he turned and blindly followed an instinct leading him north again. Numbly, he moved and let the dirt of the earth call him forward.
His feet carried him and he did not even care to heed the terrain or obstacles he tripped over. Aithagg moved towards a beckoning unknown.
Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. He moved in absolute silence. Out of time, he did not even cast a shadow. The surreal-ness added to the numbness. It was as if he did not exist.
She had been there and then, what? Did she live in another time? Perhaps he should look. He turned back and a warm pain in his chest spread like fire as if the universe would have him correct his course. Ignoring the pain, he went again to where the whiteness had been; where she had been. Blood beaded on his brow as he concentrated. Perhaps the whiteness had pushed her to another time. He only had to look harder. She was in another different time than him. That was surely what had happened. He slipped through thousands of years of time looking for her, calling for her. Denying himself the closer look at the moment the white ball of energy had hit them and pushed him from her and into his synced time. His mind would return to the moment she screamed, daring him to look closer, to see. He refused. She was another time waiting for him to find her.
At last he resolved to see. He saw through the whiteness and saw himself and her standing there with the others. The meteor had rocketed from the sky pushing time with it and filling the void with its white energy.
It had pushed the Vechey out and away from it. They disappeared one by one. But not all disappeared. Some, only a handful, including Catha, cringed from the heat as molten rock crushed them all.
He dared not look, but he looked at the moment the rock impacted her and she disappeared beneath it.
Aithagg stood in horror at her fate. But what was fate when one could change time? He could step back and save her. Tell her to run, to not approach the whiteness. What good was this ability if one did not use it?
Eterili had warned against manipulating time to one’s own desires. That is what the others did, the Manipulators. They changed time to feed their own need, and it changed the timelines and if left unchecked, changed the universe or could destroy it.
Aithagg turned his back to the image of her last moment. It had seared itself into his brain: her wide eyes, outstretched fingers. They had all stood there not understanding what the whiteness was. Unable to see the whiteness, she only had a moment to register the reality of the cause.
Pain gripped him. Jolts of agony pounded his skull. He needed to begin his journey before it was too late and he collapsed here in the open.
He focused on the moments when they all had approached the whiteness. It would be easy to slip in and warn her.
She was right there, had been right there. Her long hair in braids, slightly messy from the impossible journey she had just completed by his side.
The air was different, resistant.
He focused until all faded and he stood in time with his own self placing rocks on the ground for Catha to follow.
His original self looked up. “What goes wrong?”
Aithagg regarded his past self from only moments prior. “She can not survive the ritual.”
Original Aithagg stood, rocks still held in hand. “Can I change it?”
“That was my thought. Lead her away from here.”
The first Aithagg looked at the rocks in his hands and smiled a sad smile. “We had hoped,” his voice trailed off.
“I have to begin my journey to find my home now. I will have to move quickly.”
“You can return once you have gained your strength.”
“Yes. Eterili will have us for manipulating time. I am not even transformed for a sun and a moon.”
“Can we change it?” original Aithagg asked.
Aithagg swayed as a wave of pain overtook him. His vision wavered as if looking through water. “We have to try.”
“Eterili’s teachings. It is not the way.”
“You have not seen Catha get crushed. It will change how you think.”
“Why can I not see it?”
“After the whiteness, your vision changes. You can see through the whiteness much more clearly and see what happens there. It pushes us into our frozen-time.” Another pain gripped him. “My time is short. I must move towards a place to rest.”
“How will you know if I have changed it?”
“I do not know. We were such a good child growing up we followed Eterili completely and never tried to disrupt time.”
“It might not work.”
“It might.”
“Eterili may stop me.” Original Aithagg shrugged his shoulders.
“She may not.” He turned and steadied himself against a nearby tree. “I must leave or it will matter not and I will die here exposed.”
“Go.”
Aithagg began moving in the direction his body pulled, leaving behind in time and place his other self who would try to change time, to save her. He longed to stay, see if it worked. He would come back after resting.
His vision swam again. Strange colors were coming into his sight. He had learned of this in his lessons. Strands of yellows and oranges came and went across his vision like misty clouds. They floated and seemed to be unattached to anything. At times the colors dissipated at other times they clouded his vision so much he wished to rub his hand across his eyes and wipe them away.
Pain and exhaustion gripped him harder. He pressed forward through the thicket, desperate to find a safe place to rest.
18 VOICES IN THE DARK
The dark of the cave entombed him. He listened to the distant drips of water, the air as it moved through the cave, the nothingness. The water gurgled and whispered. It sounded like distant voices taunting him.
Everything you know must be a lie, the distant water said. A haunting whisper on the cool breeze blowing through the cave passage.
Icaeph had not seen his Manipulator for so long now he missed the companionship. He listened. Was the Manipulator out there?
Silence. Nothing adjusted.
Time flowed, as it should. Peace for the world around him. There was nothing for Icaeph to do. There was no spear placed through the heart of a tribe chief that would start fighting between Linear tribes which he had to fix. There were no landslides burying a struggling, significant boar. Many adjustments the Manipulator made were inconsequential to time. Some were cataclysmal in their importance. At the beginning of Icaeph’s years he was unable to tell which was which and nearly exhausted himself trying to fix everything. Eventually he began to gain an insight into what each thing manipulated changed in the future. How did he know the things he knew? They came to him as images in his mind.
Or perhaps he made them up. A delusion? Icaeph blinked in the darkness. Stories he made up to entertain his own mind, perhaps? How would he know?
You would not, the voices in the distant water told him.
He stood at the cave’s entrance in main-time, not remembering having walked here, and looked out into the grassy field. Small hogs rooted and grunted as they marshaled through the tall grass. A bird, startled by their progress, took flight and squawked its protest at being disturbed.
Silence and peace.
Nothing was wrong
or out of place. If he walked and searched, he would find nothing tinged yellow or red as things appeared when manipulated.
Where was his Manipulator? Last placed in a deer—he would have killed the deer by now near a tribe, near a human host.
Icaeph missed his Manipulator. He had never bothered to give it a name. The Manipulator had never stated he had one. Where did this evil spirit come from? Why did they exist?
It is the way, the insistent hiss was much closer than the distant water.
Icaeph turned expecting to see someone whispering in his ear.
There was no one. Only darkness.
A wind picked up outside and the falling leaves barraged the damp ground. The hogs grunted and moved further away from Icaeph. They continued deeper into the woods searching for something known only to them.
In truth, he was bored. Had Eterili not warned they should keep themselves modern, keep learning from the Linears, keep moving, lest idleness bring with it madness?
Hehehhehehehehe, the rocks laughed at him.
Icaeph glared at them half-heartedly.
Had he not just watched a tribe a few valleys from his own testing a new method of melting and pounding copper points? Other tested the properties of combining sulfates and minerals. All these things would be lost to history.
Is that the sun? The sun. The sun? The sun. More laughter fell from the leaves and jeered.
His body burned and ached before he saw the first pink and purple stripes of light in the sky. They peeked through the trees low, at his eye line, reminding him of his youth when he would stay out and try to see the sun rise with his friends. They would sit on the rock outside of their tribe’s cave and do their best to outlast each other. He had always won at that game, able to outlast everyone as the sun’s rays shown through the sky like shards of searing ice. Then he would have to retreat to the shadows of the cave when the searing pain on his skin became unbearable. His mother would scold him for the bloody sweat stains on his clothing that would need washing.
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