by Beca Lewis
During my squealing with happiness fit when I saw Pris and her sisters, Zeid had stood aside and watched with a tiny smile on his lips. As we started moving, Zeid moved up to walk beside me. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell something was on his mind. Something had happened during the ceremony, or more accurately, something hadn’t happened that upset him.
Perhaps he expected me to remember him and was disappointed that I didn’t. If I were in his shoes, I would be disappointed too. Still, he walked beside me, and I knew he was there because he wanted to be and he would protect me no matter what. I just didn’t know why.
Twenty-Four
“Why don’t we ride in the bubble?” I asked Beru.
I was already tired of walking. We had stopped to rest by a stream to fill our water containers and eat. Judging from the sun, since there were no watches, I figured we’d been walking steadily for at least five hours.
How much further could it be? Besides if there was magic everywhere why weren’t we using it? It seemed like a reasonable question to me, but Beru gave me a look that would have stunned a bird off its branch.
Apparently, my question wasn’t worth answering because she stormed off to sit beside Ruta. The Priscillas had popped themselves out of my pocket and sat sunning themselves on a rock while snacking on sunflower seeds. Cil had flown off and returned with them to share with her sisters.
Who knew how she found sunflowers in a forest, but if anyone could find food it was fairies. They had to have a nose for food. As tiny as they were they had to eat a lot, to keep their energy flowing. It reminded me of hummingbirds back home. Maybe it was hummingbirds in the Earth dimension and fairies in Erda? I added it to my growing list of questions.
The rest of us were sitting in a circle eating food we had packed in our backpacks. Well, I didn’t pack mine. Beru must have done it before handing it to me. I snuck a look over at her sitting with her back to me talking to Ruta about something. Maybe she had a right to be angry with me. I was complaining even when so much had been done for me. But magic was to be used, right?
“Wrong,” Niko said. “Wrong thinking. Stupid thinking. Selfish thinking.”
Aki and Niko hadn’t said a word to me since the ceremony, so I was startled by him sitting beside me, the fact he was reading my thoughts willy-nilly, and by what he said. Niko was always short on words, and always abrupt, so maybe I shouldn’t have been. But, hadn’t I learned anything? People were still reading my mind, and my feelings were still getting hurt.
“You’ll never be able to totally block any of us, Hannah,” Niko said. “You might not like it, but for now it’s for your own protection. Think of it like any of the protective forces you know from the Earth dimension, like the police or military. They wear devices to communicate with each other. We don’t need physical devices to communicate. Just as we don’t need most of the physical equipment you are used to using. We have harnessed energy differently.
“As for using magic to get a ride. No. Not done. We are not wasteful. We don’t abuse the gift we have been given. If there is a reason to use magic we will. Not until then.”
Taking advantage of Niko’s talking spree, I decided to ask him more questions. I could ponder what he had said as we walked. Didn’t like it, but I sort of, kind of, understood.
“May I ask, please, Niko, how long we will be walking today and where we are going.”
“Today we will walk until twilight. Use the time wisely. Think. Practice your fighting skills in your head. Look around you. Listen. You are not a little girl anymore, Hannah. You are Princess Kara Beth whether you like it or not. Remember yourself, because if you survive, someday you will be Queen Kara Beth. And if you don’t survive, neither does this world. Grow up, Hannah.”
Niko walked away and turned his back on me the same way that Beru had done.
Everyone had heard. I was mortified. I wanted to get up and stomp off. I wanted a door to slam. I wanted to cry, yell, run away. Instead, I sat on my rock and stared straight ahead. Grow up. Right. Easy to say. But I knew he was right. I was whining. No one else was, and for some reason, their fate rested in my hands. They didn’t ask for this either.
No one said anything. It felt as if the entire forest had sucked in its breath and was waiting. Even the birds were silent. There was nothing for me to say except, “I’m sorry.”
The forest let out its breath, and everyone returned to eating and murmuring with each other. The Priscillas flew to my head and attached themselves to my hair. If they did it the right way, they looked like decorations. La leaned down and whispered in my ear. “Everything will be okay, Hannah.”
Simple words that spun through me washing away my frustration and revealing that tiny flame of purpose I had felt before, back in the Castle. I whispered back, “Thank you.” I lifted my head to the sun and let its presence fill me with renewed energy. Closing my eyes, I did a short meditation that Aki had taught me.
I could feel the warmth of the sun, so it was easy to imagine light moving through me, filling me, dropping down into the earth and rising into the sky. I imagined the light moving out into an ever-widening circle surrounding my team and me with its power and protection.
The rock that I was sitting on wasn’t solid anymore. It was a living, breathing being. Underneath it, I could sense tree roots connecting in a mass of intertwining fibers. They too were breathing. Everything was breathing. The world was breathing.
One last light pulse and the image was gone. My eyes flew open, and I looked around. The world looked the same as it did before. What was that? Was I going crazy?
Niko and Beru were no longer sitting with their backs to me. Everyone was smiling at me. Well, if I was crazy, then they were too. Might as well go with it. Besides, I felt the difference in myself. I felt supported. Not tired at all. The flame was still there, burning a little brighter than before.
Niko gave me a nod. I had done something right. I corrected myself. I had gotten out of the way and allowed something to happen.
I heard Lady’s drumming in the distance. This time I knew what she was saying. The coast was clear. It was time to move on. It was only after we had been walking another few hours that I realized that Niko had never told me where we were going.
It pleased me that the need to know had faded. That thought must have pleased Niko too because I heard him say in my head. “Well done, Hannah.”
Twenty-Five
Niko was true to his word. We stopped at twilight. Everyone helped gather downed branches and logs from the forest floor. When we had enough wood, Beru held her hand out and started the fire, as easily as she had put it out before, right after I came through the portal. A million years ago. Or so it felt. I still had a bit of homesickness in my stomach, but it was fading, like a dream. I could sense the memories in the back of my mind, but details were blurry.
Watching Beru starting and stopping fires, I wanted to do what looked like magic as effortlessly as she did, as they all did. Like Ruta clearing a path through the trees, or Aki levitating, or Suzanne appearing and disappearing. I realized that I had accepted them as part of my day. Magic as a way of being. And yet, I didn’t have any magic, let alone effortless magic. Or, if I did, it hadn’t appeared. I hoped I found it before it was too late.
While we ate, Ruta was making trips in and out of the woods with what looked like logs, but he laid them in a circle around the fire rather than putting them in. I was too hungry to be more than slightly curious. Beru had produced bars out of my pack, and I was so used to her providing for me I didn’t bother to ask her how she kept doing that. Niko had filled all our water pouches, but I didn’t know where he had gotten the water. We had moved away from the stream. And again there were rocks to sit on, and I wondered how there were always rocks where we needed them.
Back in the Earth dimension, all of this would have been
extraordinary. Here, in Erda it was common. Or so it seemed.
“You’re right about that, Hannah,” Zeid said sitting beside me. “And yet you’re wrong about that too.”
“Zounds, Zeid, you keep doing that. You keep sneaking up on me! Cut it out! And stop listening in on my thinking, for ziffer’s sake.”
Zeid laughed at me. “If you would pay attention, you would see me coming. Don’t you think that is part of what you need to learn? I’m not dangerous when I sneak up on you, but other people and beings will be. As for reading your mind, stop leaving it wide open to people like me.”
“People like you? What kind of person are you? Mind reader? And what did you mean I was right and I was wrong.”
“You’re right. It is common among us.” Zeid looked around the circle. “Our little crew has been gathered precisely for their skills. Each member has spent years honing their art. It’s second nature to them.
“However, you’re wrong, because outside of these friends magic is a dying art. People have stopped practicing it. Many people have become complacent. They use their skills just enough to provide for themselves and have a decent life. They remain apathetic to the danger of losing their abilities.”
“So everyone in Erda has magical skills, they just don’t use them?”
“Of course. Look around. Nature provides everything. It’s the visible expression of life that holds the earth together. Energy, force, doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s all around. In you. Around you. In everyone and around everyone.
“There’s more than one reason why we are walking, Hannah. You are here to learn. To reconnect. To find yourself.” Zeid’s eyes burned into me as if his passion for what he was saying could somehow connect me to my skills.
I looked away, barely able to handle what he was saying. If it was around and in me, why couldn’t I feel it yet?
“Look, Hannah. You have to stop worrying about it. Part of using the magic within and finding your specific talent, is letting go and trusting. It’s a mindset. You are Princess Kara Beth. You have used your skills in the past. They haven’t gone anywhere.”
“People keep reminding me that I am a zonking princess as if that will help. It just makes me feel worse.”
Zeid shook his head. “Sometimes, Hannah, you disappoint me. But I do believe that we are on a mission that will succeed. It has to. Abbadon will destroy all that you see if we don’t. Without us stopping him, he will kill everyone. He wants to be the only person in Erda with magic skills. He wants to rule all of Erda. There is no way that we can allow evil to be the winner here. And Abbadon is the king of evil.
“We will succeed. You will step up and be who you are. I know that you will, Hannah.”
As Zeid moved away, I thought that he was dangerous, to me anyway. I tried not to notice how he looked at me and how that felt. Sometimes I could feel his azure eyes staring at me when he didn’t think I was paying attention. I paid too much attention to him, that was the problem. I couldn’t let myself feel anything for him. It made me feel disloyal to Johnny. That boy was fading in my dreams and Zeid was not helping. Zeid was wrong. He is dangerous.
Zeid’s back flinched, and I prayed that he hadn’t heard that series of thoughts. But the flinch made me think that perhaps he did, and now I was in even more trouble than before. Zut. I had to stop this craziness.
But his disappointment in me, and his belief in me, fueled my desire to find my talents. I didn’t have to make them. I just had to let myself return to them. I had returned to Erda. I could return to being who I was before.
By then it was time to sleep for the night. Niko had first watch. I was not on the watch list, and I knew why. I would be less than useless.
It turned out the logs that Ruta had pulled out of the woods weren’t logs at all. They were mats of moss rolled up like a yoga mat. Beru was already on her mat, and she patted the one beside her for me.
The Priscillas had been quiet the whole time Zeid had been talking to me, but now they started a soothing hum while Beru threw a gathering of leaves on top of me. It was almost as comfortable as my bed back home. “Which home?” I asked myself as I fell asleep. It surprised me to realize that I was thinking of the Castle as home.
Twenty-Six
We were up before dawn and were already moving out as the sun peeked up over the horizon, splitting its rays between the trees. Finally, I had become aware enough to notice we had our backs to the rising sun. We were moving west. Was it possible that the portal that opened in Erda had been close to where my home was in the Earth dimension?
That was something I had neglected to ask, and now I wanted to know. When Beru answered in my head that I was correct, this time I was delighted that she had been listening. It was an intriguing thought that the portal had been near my home all along.
When Beru projected an image of an open meadow to me, I knew where it was. It was a meadow on a hillside ringed with trees. That meadow had been both a happy and a sad place for me in my Earth life. It was also strange to think of my life as divided between my Earth life and my Erda life. Earth was then. Erda was now.
When no one corrected me, I knew I was right. I might never go home again. And even if I did, it wouldn’t be the same. “Unless we wipe your memory, Hannah,” Beru said. “And we would never do that unless all is lost here. Then we would send you back to the Earth Realm to be safe. Otherwise, we will not be opening any portal anywhere again until Abbadon is defeated, or it becomes absolutely necessary.”
The Priscillas on my coat twittered in concern. I reached down and gently pulled Pris’s pigtail. It was the best I could do right then to reassure her.
As we walked, I kept feeling a presence walking beside me on the left. But every time I looked, nothing was there. Whatever the presence was, it felt dangerous, but not to me. I was attempting to practice awareness when I caught a glimpse of something.
“Beru, there is something here beside me.” I didn’t say that out loud. I knew that she, and everyone else, was listening in on our common channel.
“Sure is,” was the response.
“That’s it? Sure is? What is it? How come you didn’t tell me?”
“Why do you think? You have got to see these things for yourself. Besides he has been waiting a long time for you to see him. You have to choose to see him.”
“Him? Long time? How long?”
“Since you returned to Erda. He waited in the forest outside the Castle.”
I felt like bopping Beru on the head. Ruta had fashioned a beautiful walking stick for me, and it felt like the perfect thing to use. But I didn’t dare. What would she do in return?
“Oh, for zut’s sake, Hannah, stop complaining and open up.” That was Ruta of course. Mr. Grump. But he was right.
I turned my thoughts to the presence walking beside me and addressed it specifically, doing my best to turn off the open channel to everyone else.
“At least I feel you,” I said. “I’m ready to see you now.”
Nothing happened. I tried again. “Seriously, I am ready. Show yourself to me.”
I heard a loud growl. I screamed and stopped in my tracks, dropping my walking stick in the process. Yep, that’s me. The ready to fight at a moment’s notice machine. I was weaponless and scared out of my mind.
In front of me sat the most massive wolf I had ever seen. Well, I had never seen a live wolf before, so I imagined it was bigger than most wolves. Actually, I wasn’t even sure if it was a wolf. But it looked like pictures I had seen. It was baring its teeth at me. Its piercing gold eyes were locked on me. I was a goner.
I was too frozen to move. Was I supposed to run? Fight? Use my nonexistent magic? Why wasn’t anyone coming to my rescue? Didn’t they know there was a wolf in front of me ready to attack?
The next thing I knew Zeid was beside me. �
�Are you disappointing me again, Hannah?”
He started walking towards the wolf. “Wait, wait!” I yelled after him and then stopped in embarrassment. Zeid was patting that monster on the head.
“Please, just open the earth and let me drop through it,” I said to whoever was listening.
“Get your lazy, fraidy-cat ass over here, Hannah,” Zeid commanded.
Gathering up my courage, I walked forward. The closer I got to the monster wolf, the more a feeling of deep contentment and love started rolling over me. And the door to my past opened a little bit further.
“Cahir,” I cried throwing my arms around the wolf and burying my face in his neck.
Memories of our time together rolled through my mind. Cahir as a pup. His mother delivering him to me personally. Her gift to me. Her precious son, Cahir, a warrior, to stand by me. I sobbed into his fur as he stood waiting for me as he always had.
Cahir and I didn’t share words. We shared images. I saw his life without me while he waited for my return. He hadn’t aged. Like most beings in Erda, age was chosen. Although there were children, once any being reached the age that they felt was the perfect age for them, their aging slowed dramatically. That stop age was different for everyone.
Cahir had been almost at his prime when I left. He had chosen to stop there as he waited. While I was gone he aged just enough to be at his prime now. That’s what he showed me. How he had prepared for my return. He showed me the family he had now. A pack of wolves. A wife, and pups.
“But you are traveling alone,” I whispered to him. His reply was to show his family safe in another place. Shadows of people were around them. I recognized seeing those shadows before, but still didn’t know who they were or where they were.
“You will, when it’s time,” Zeid said.
This time instead of being mad at him for listening in, I looked up and smiled at him. I watched as a look of shock and then pleasure passed through him before he smiled back.