She swiped at his throat with the fangs. A ragged swatch of flesh tore open. He gurgled, then stilled.
“It is the way,” she whispered sadly.
She reached towards his mouth with her gnarled fingers and pulled his fangs out with a crunch. She took the time to weave them into her ancient anklet of mad Vechey teeth. They clicked in place next to the others. All those souls she had dispatched, freeing them to their next existence.
A freedom denied to her.
***
The Manipulator came closer to Aithagg. She moved her host’s feet quietly, though it threatened to drop dead with every movement she forced it to take. The Vechey was stooped in front of her, weak and kneeling in the dirt. She stood three steps behind him. It would be bliss to inhabit a Vechey. Immortal power. She would have the ability to destroy everything. No one to correct the wrongs she made. She was on the brink of freedom from pain, freedom from everything. Destroy the timeline and be free from it once and for all.
He had stopped ahead of her; she assumed to gather his strength. The climb up the hillside was steep and the ground gave way with each step. The Vechey was climbing towards the clear-cut area near the cave. Did this Vechey know the other Vechey was there? She had never seen two Vechey together. Only the one had been her companion of sorts for these years. His mind had been failing in these past thousand winters.
She saw this new Vechey stumble and thought this would be her chance. She lunged forward to attack.
***
Aithagg climbed higher, grabbing any stick or root to pull himself up the hillside as the loose rock crumbled under his feet.
His vision narrowed to pinpricks in front of him. His hearing shut down. He would not make it to a safe place to rest. He would die out here in the open. Aithagg thought of Catha and pushed further. Pulling. Stepping. Dragging himself higher towards a destination his gut said was the correct place. Small rocks dug at his skin. Grit stuck under his fingernails. Bramble and thorns tore at his feet. Bloody cuts dripped. Blood-sweat mixed with tan mud.
Something hit him and he twisted to throw off the assailant, unable to see them in his limited vision.
The assailant hit him again from the side with a strength less than his own, even in his diminished state.
Aithagg lashed out with a grunt and pushed the unseen assailant into a nearby tree.
They exhaled a cry and crumpled to the ground.
He climbed further and came to a flat area, a small grassy level field. Here Aithagg stood. At the other end of the clearing he saw the rock-face of a hill and the opening he sought.
He neared the entrance to the cave and tried to observe it cautiously. Still synced with time, the wind from the cave chilled his skin slightly. He needed to find an earth source, his earth source. When synced, it would sustain him and give him energy. He was near his end without it.
Aithagg stepped into the darkness of the cave.
She pulled herself from the base of the tree. Arms, twisted at awkward angles with bone protruding from skin, hung uselessly at her side. A battle cry erupted from her chest as she screamed and ran towards the Vechey as he stepped into the darkness of the cave.
The earth welcome Aithagg and pulled him into the cave. A homecoming. Every cell of his body aligned with the place and the time and he finished his syncing. His body sucked greedily at the energy from the earth. He fell flat onto the earth, letting as much flesh as he had available touch the dirt to enable the exchange.
She was near him now. She only needed to be near him when this host died to take over his body. The power she would possess. She looked to see if her Vechey was near. He would pose a threat if he caught her. He was nowhere to be seen. This caused her to pause. In her weakened state, she had not noticed the nothingness of him. How could that be? Then she saw the new Vechey’s collapsed form on the ground. She reached forward a hand to grasp him.
His mud-stained, sandaled foot stuck out of the darkness of the cave. She grabbed it with all of her might.
Aithagg opened his shirt so more skin contacted the dirt. His body breathed in the energy the earth of this cave afforded him. Something touched his foot just as he synced completely with the earth of the cave and his own timeline 1,000 years before main-time. A white shock wave rocked his body. Then the air became still and his shadow disappeared.
Her hand grasped nothing but dirt. The new Vechey had disappeared.
***
Eterili knelt in front of Icaeph, years before main-time, his blood spurting on her face in warm streams and said, “It is the way.”
A shock wave moved through the Manipulator and her host breathed its last breath. She released from the host and from all things holding her to this timeline. For once she had no need to destroy, no demands drawing her towards manipulating, destructing. Instead there was only peace. Numbness. Quiet. Passing into another plane. Brightness. Pure white.
***
A searing pain surged through him as his soul oozed from his eyes. Icaeph floated above his body where Eterili kneeled. She slashed the body’s throat. He expected to be overcome with remorse, but was not. Instead he was awash with peace. A release. A floating. A calmness. His being pulled forward towards something, he did not know what.
22 HERE AND THERE
Alexander finished with a last coat of linseed oil on the bedpost. When he stepped back into time and caught Brandy as she fell, he would have to explain to her all he was, all he had been. As a Linear—a modern Linear used to electricity, connection to everything, and a facade of science that tried to explain everything—could she even grasp something so different from her world? Not just something—someone. Him.
Alexander smirked. He was the outcast now, was he not? Looking for someone to accept him as he was. Perhaps he had placed himself in this situation repeatedly to atone?
Alexander began assembling the bed pieces together. Each groove fit in perfectly with the opposing notch carved in the wood. He tested it for strength. It held.
He thought back to his first winter in this cave, eons before he had climbed up and built this house, more eons before Brandy had crawled into his cave as an explorer and he had fallen in love with her.
***
Main-time’s first winter in his cave where he had newly synced had been difficult at first. He had barely enough strength to move, let alone to travel and feed. It had taken over a winter for him to gain strength enough to consider what to do about Catha. His previous self must not have saved her. No dreams came to him as fragmented changes of time. No wisps of memory to show how things had changed. He sat against the stone wall of the cave and marveled at the stillness of everything, his isolation and disconnection. Disconnected from all things that had happened before. Even Catha was distant from him now. He was ashamed to think it. The whiteness and the ritual were a distant dream. Yet, he was more connected with the soil, the dirt, the place as if he was one with it. He supposed he was. The ritual pushed him into a frozen-time and when he came to this place, his body became one with it and was removed from everything else.
He existed in a smallest moment of time but saw no vision of himself as he moved through the cave. No previous selves, no future selves as he had moved through timelines. Only here. He thought back to Eterili coming out of the whiteness and there had only been one image of her. That must be her time. It absorbed her, erasing all other images of her through time. Yet she lived in it Linearly. It confused him. He thought on the vastness of time no longer. He was here and this cave was a part of him. Catha must no longer exist. It wounded him deeply.
Another main-time winter passed, and he had made it to the valley several times and was able to sync into main-time to feed on the tribes passing through
there. It was a migration path, and the tribes followed the herds as they followed the stream to the river. He built his strength and by the time the green blooms appeared on the trees in main-time he was ready to go back to the ritual site to change time and save Catha. He had to try, even if it was not the way.
***
Alexander patted the bed frame and looked at the bath nearby. The claw-foot tub, which he had brought back from main-time, nearly overflowed with steaming hot water. Brandy would not let that go to waste even if she did not believe him or did not accept him for what he was. He did not care. He had tried his best to save her from the Manipulator. Even at that, he knew he would fail. He had Brandy here in his frozen-time to give her time to heal before she had to return to her time. There she would die. Alexander was putting off the inevitable. She would need to return, eventually. He had tried to change time and save her. Time if changed too often will entangle and become white. Not orange or yellow or red as when the Manipulator changes things in time, but white: a hot whiteness locking time and events, making them unchangeable.
Alexander, now ten thousand years the wiser, remembered the first time he had seen the whiteness of locked time. Unfortunately, then he had not known what the whiteness meant.
***
The coldness of Aithagg’s frozen-time had become normal to him now, even after only one winter. He began the journey back towards the ritual site. It would take a moon cycle and he hoped to endure the trip without sleep. Sleeping in the open was instant death.
How comforting the first sleep had been after he had found his cave and synced into his place and time completely. He had taken the journey to the ritual site twice and then his journey to the cave. How he had stayed alive was beyond him as his exhaustion had been profound.
When he had first found this cave he had collapsed on the ground and soaked up as much energy from the earth as possible. It was something he had never experienced before. His teachings did not depict the desperate exhaustion and starvation for this new energy.
Eventually he had lifted himself from the dirt ground and crawled further back into the darkness. He searched for a room in the cave which had stayed open for millions of years. He had found a domed room whose ceiling had fallen hundreds of thousands of winters before. He shifted in time and entered the room when the ceiling was still whole. Then he shifted back to his frozen-time and the large breakdown boulders returned to their place on the ground covering the entrance to the domed room completely. The boulders completely encased Aithagg within. Safe. Protected. Able to sleep, he did.
It took nearly the full moon cycle for him to regain his strength and now he worried the trip to the ritual site and back would prove too much. He would be unable to save her if he was weak himself. Aithagg climbed down the rock side of the mountain and walked along the valley floor in the same migration path the short-faced bear would take thousands of winters in the future and the hunters would follow.
Aithagg had to save Catha, his promised. She should be here with him to help keep time safe from the Manipulator.
With one hand on a supporting branch and one foot suspended, ready to take a step over a large boulder, Aithagg considered. Where was his Manipulator? Was he not taught for every Vechey locked into time, there would be a Manipulator? The whole reason for his existence was to protect time. Here he was off to wrong time for his own good.
Aithagg had not even thought to look for a time being wronged. He had only thought of healing.
He was not sure what to expect. How would he know if time was being wronged? How would he find the Manipulator? It was not like the Manipulator would walk up and introduce himself, Greetings. I am your personal Manipulator. See you next new moon when I begin. Where did Manipulators come from? Eterili had never answered that question. She had only smiled.
Aithagg stepped over the boulder and his mood darkened. Questions. All he had was questions and there was no one to answer them or tell him if he had guessed the answers correctly.
23 ENTANGLED
Leaves fell from the trees and the boy walked quietly so the razor-toothed cat would not hear him as he stepped closer on fallen leaves. The large cat dipped its head and drank from the spring water. Water droplets on the beast’s incisors glistened in the morning sun. Closer the boy crept. Spear raised. His tribe would herald him upon his return. Perhaps he would not get chastised for hunting alone if he returned with a feast such as this beast would give.
A large squirrel chittered overhead as it bounded from one tree to the next. It stopped on a branch nearby and chided shrilly to the boy. He watched in amusement as the squirrel continued to convey his displeasure at the boy’s presence. The cat did not seem to notice or care the commotion the squirrel caused. It dipped its head again to drink.
The boy transferred his weight from his toe to his heel until a twig was underfoot. He shifted his weight slightly to the left so the twig would not break and give away his position. His foot rested gently and silently on the leaf-littered ground.
The plump squirrel gave one last scathing retort and bounded away to places unknown. A small branch full of dead leaves dislodged and fell to the ground.
The cat’s ear twitched. He stopped drinking, held his breath. He raised his head and his ears twitched and rotated trying to catch any other sound signaling danger. Hearing nothing more he stepped back from the water and raised his head. Ears perked.
The boy held his breath and raised his spear.
Droplets from the cat’s chin fell to the ground, glimmering rainbows in the mist.
A feast, they would have a feast in his honor. The boy dared to pull his spear back further, his left hand held out in front of him for balance and aim. He would strike true.
***
“Yindi.” The word echoed in his being. Yindi. Why did this word echo in his soul?
He found no boundaries to himself only nothingness. It was beautiful. A nowhere-ness. So lovely. Floating.
The sun was rising. Energy filled the land and it soothed him. Perhaps he would dissipate and become one with everything. Or become nothing. Either way, it was a release and he reveled in it. He had been trapped somewhere. Where? A darkness. A misty memory, but this new freedom held promise, hope. He stretched or at least he thought he stretched. He had no form. No shape. He was pure energy, a life force. He floated and stretched and imagined the sun’s rays permeated his being.
Rapture.
Below him the tribe prepared for the day’s hunt. A small adolescent had separated himself from the tribe and was further up the valley, near the mountain’s base, hunting alone.
Icaeph did not remember his own name or existence. He cared not and stretched further, the sun warmed him to his core. He floated as part of the air, on the wind.
Perhaps he would lose his thoughts and become part of the wind itself. He accepted his fate and relaxed. Parts of him fell away. The joy of the earth hummed and whispered. If he listened closely, it was more than the earth—it was the universe.
The infinite stars called to him and he wished to be a part of them.
Swirling into nothingness.
Release.
A sharp shapeless pain. A cramping of his dissipated form gathering into itself, colliding, molding, shaping, clumping, swelling, expanding. His being tore away from the peace, the rapture, the void. A force pushed him harshly and hurled him downwards. The sun seared his skin, hot and uncomfortable. The ground stuck to his face. Leaves cut on his eyes. A spear lay near his unclenched hand on the ground. The sound of a large cat, running away from him through the woods, was loud and obnoxious. A fat squirrel sat on a tree stump and stared at him, twitched his tail and then quickly scampered up a tree chattering at him the whole way.
; Yindi. He thought. It was the only word in his memory. I am Yindi.
Trapped, he watched helplessly as his host brushed himself off, picked up his spear and walked dejectedly back to the tribe.
Yindi beat at the entrapped body and tried to take command of the hands, the arms, the mouth. Just to scream. Could he scream? He screamed. No voice emerged from the confining body.
***
The boy raised a hand to his forehead as if a splitting headache had just come upon him. His steps faltered.
Rocks riddled his path to the tribe. He tripped many times on the way back towards his home.
When he arrived, he climbed into his hut. His worried mother, dabbed his bleeding forehead, then called for their healer. The shaman heralded chants and incantations on the boy’s body through the days and nights. The boy became more distant and unable to talk coherently.
The mother cried when the healer told her the powers were not strong enough to remove the demon from the boy. He had wronged the ancestors somehow and they had sent a demon to haunt him. They banished the boy from the tribe.
He walked unsteadily, unable to bash away the voice in his head screaming over and over and over, “I am YINDI.”
The boy accepted the darkness, unable to fight the voice further. Did the healer not warn him of pride and straying from the tribe’s way?
The internal voice screamed once more, and the boy became nothing in the darkness, “I AM!”
***
The trip back to the ritual site, the whiteness, was not as difficult as Aithagg had imagined. He had gained strength after he had synced to his place and time. He had not realized. He assumed pulling energy from the ground must have given him the extra strength. He had taken care to fill a small pouch of the dirt and hang it on his waistband. Even a small amount of dirt would give him some extra vitality during his travels away from his place. He would carry a small bit of his “home” dirt with him whenever he went on long journeys. He patted the small bag. It reminded him of Catha: how she had patted the bag where the small shell had hung, his promise gift to her. The promise gift, a shoddy reminder of death. Something he had taken from her fallen sibling on his journey to the ritual site. What a horrifying way to promise yourself for eternity to someone—by giving them a reminder they might die.
When Darkness Begins Page 17