Indigo: Abraham, Emotion Vol. 2: Murderer, Chapter Nine: "The Island, part one"

 

Chapter Nine: The Island, part one

 

            Alex woke on the beach, body half-submerged in the rolling tides.  She was face-down in the wet sand, mouth salty and dry.  A cough made the wound in her side throb, and each slow movement reminded her of the battle that brought her here. 

            The sun was high and pale, like she remembered from the water.  It hurt to open her eyes, but she forced through it as she dragged herself from the water and fell onto her back.  Sand clung to her wet flesh wherever it could.  It hurt to breathe, almost even hurt to think.  Her memories were vague.  She remembered Goliath, remembered Shana shining brighter than a star, and then the fractured glass and darkness.

            The blue sky was vacant and merged into the blue sea in the horizon.  The island where she was sat alone, adrift in endless, shifting waters.  There weren’t even any clouds to keep her company and no wind to stave off the heat of the sun.  It the far distance, just at the edge of what she could see, Alex thought there might be a shoreline, but she also thought it might be her imagination.

            A large forest dominated the islands core.  It was populated by thick rooted trees, bark like dark chocolate, standing so tall they seemed to hold the sky in their branches.  When she closed her eyes, she felt nothing inside, no light, no life.  She was alone there, entirely and completely, accompanied only by the sound of her heart hammering in her chest.

            She forced herself to sitting, and then to standing.  Her shoes squished as she walked, and she managed a few solid steps before she was reduced to a shuffle.  The shore where she walked was made of fine, white sand, so pure that her footprints may have been the first ever left there.  After thirty-minutes she came to a stop, staring at the foot prints she just made in the sand and the outline of her body where she had previous lied.

            She fell to her knees, shuddering, and hugged herself.  “No,” she whispered to herself, tears in her eyes.  She thought of Shana, and she stood again, difficult as it was.  She had found her before, and she could find her again.  She believed that as much as she could believe in anything.

            Movement, out of the corner of her eye, and she followed it into the forest.  She didn’t get a good look as it darted between the trees.  It was a small shadow, a child hardly to her waist, dark hair trailing after it like a shadow.

            “Abraham?”

            Alex followed, running as quickly as her legs could carry her and faster still when she could manage.  The tiny shadow forged ahead, ducking under branches, weaving through the thickets like it knew them by heart.  Alex stumbled after, feet swallowed by dead leaves, tripping and tumbling over hanging vines.

            They stopped together in a clearing, grass blackened and burnt, ground overturned, gutted.  Dead trees laid, rotting, to one side.  It looked to Alex like a scar cut deep into the forest, and the figure, a child, stood in the center.  It was a girl, dressed all in black, dark eyes fixed on Alex as she approached.  She looked like Abraham, but close examination showed Alex that she wasn’t.

            The little girl had dark hair, though not black, and tan skin.  Their eyes, Alex’s and the girls, and were the same color, the same brown so deep and dark that it almost looked like a void in space.  She smiled, bashfully, and gave a little wave.  “Hello,” she said, in a voice Alex recognized.

            In fact, Alex knew her, and stood, rooted, trying to place the little girl’s face.  It was so familiar, someone she knew from her past, someone she knew so well.  Every aspect of her was familiar, a memory long abandoned or deeply buried.  She knew her eyebrows, her nose, her tiny chin and her teeth, her posture, and even her laugh.

            “Wait.”  Alex’s eyes went wide, and once again she was shaking.  “Are you?”

            The girl giggled.  “My name is Alex,” she said.  “I’m you!”

 

: Murderer :

 

            Shana woke up in the sand, water tickling her toes and teasing her bare feet as it licked at the shore.  The sun was hot on her, warming her bones and sand around her.  She could taste salt and dirt and moved her dry tongue about before spitting out a mouthful of sand.  She could hear the sea shifting around her, singing softly in the breeze.

            She sat up and opened her eyes.  The beach around her was empty, white sand gleaming in the midday sun.  The blue-green sea stretched out behind her, into the horizon.  She thought, in the distance, she could see the shadow of an enormous tree, its long, spindly branches scrapping the sky.  Before her was a forest, dense and dark, bark like coal and leaves like emeralds.

            She stood and dusted her pants, knocking the sand from them as she spat more sand onto the ground.  she tucked back a few stray hairs and gave another cursory glance.  Alex was missing, disappearing after the glass fell away.  They had reached for each other in the darkness but were pulled apart.

            Shana held out her hand and called to it.  With it, she could search for Alex, even find her, but when she closed her eyes it wasn’t there.  The light inside of her was swallowed by the light around her.  It was so bright that it was blinding, and she couldn’t filter it.  So, she instead walked the length of the beach to see if she could find Alex nearby and called for Alex on the way.

            The island was empty, save for the forest at its center, which was nothing but shadows and silence.  It seemed to her as empty as the rest of the shoreline.  Wherever she was, she was alone, covered in sand, mouth dry as a casket.  She slumped with a sigh and hugged her knees at the edge of the water.  Again, she closed her eyes.

            Alex appeared in her mind, lying in the rain and bleeding.  Carolyne was nearby, looking equally dire.  That is how Shana found them, dying or near death, she could hardly tell.  There wasn’t time to contemplate it.  She applied pressure to the wound but found the blood slipping through her fingers.  She didn’t have enough strength to save Alex; it would have taken all the strength in the world.

            Shana had screamed and then there was a flash.  Then she was alone in a jungle, humidity leaving her clothes wet against her skin, her hair curling and damped.  Samantha found her, then.  Samantha, with her dark hair and ivory skin.  Samantha, who loved her and who she loved and through a series of mistakes and a strange revelation, Shana found Alex again, and she felt whole.

            She remembered how warm Alex had felt, and how brightly she had shined, and...

            Shana sat up.  “Warmth.”  She looked up at the sun and the clear blue sky.  “Light.”  She stood and looked back toward the forest, and she realized the truth.  Alex wasn’t missing but was all around her.  When reaching to her Voice, to Heart Song, she hadn’t failed but had found Alex already, burning like a beacon in the night.  The sun light, Shana realized, was decidedly familiar.  It was the way Alex shined when she would smile, and Shana knew it by heart.

            She smiled and hugged her legs tighter.  Alex was there, with her, all around her, and Shana was sure that if she waited long enough, they would see each other again.

 

: Murderer :

 

            Alex stared, and the younger version of her stared back.  The girl, Alex realized, didn’t simply share her face.  She shared her dark hair, her dark eyes, perhaps even her soul.  Somewhere inside of her still, Alex was the little girl staring back at her, and somehow, that little girl was her.

            “What...”  Alex paused, thought.  Her head still felt heavy like lead, and her brain, too.  It felt like she had been compressed and, all-in-all, she felt oddly self-conscious facing herself like that.  Without Shana there, Alex was entirely alone with herself.  Eventually, she settled on, “How’d you get here?”

            The girl skipped toward her, hopping over burnt earth and broken branches.  She came to a stop before Alex, her dark hair swaying, and she pointed at Alex’s chest, just left of center.  “Abraham thought we should meet.”

            That meant Abraham was alive, or so Alex assumed.  She crossed her arms and examined the little girl closely and found she looked very solid.  In fact, the longer Alex looked, the more real the girl became until she seemed more substantial than even the dirt beneath them.  “And you’re me, right?”

            Little Alex nodded, and she held her taller doppelganger’s gaze.  Alex kneeled down so that they were face-to-face, Alex the sober adult, solemn, serious, and mature; and Alex the little girl, pure innocence hidden behind smiles and jitters.

            “And why did she want us to meet?”

            The girl shrugged and stared at the ground, swaying gently as she rubbed her own arms.  She looked small and sad, but it lasted only a moment before her energy returned.  She met her own gaze again and gave her a familiar look, one that was meant only for Alicia.

            Alex stood stiff and stuffed her hands into her pockets.  She stared out at the forest, her face a mask of stone.  Her thoughts went to work, to Shana, to survival, to Abraham and the Emotion.  The sky was still clear blue.  There wasn’t a cloud in sight.

            Little Alex frowned.  “Why are you so grumpy all the time?”

            Alex looked down and found the girl staring again, arms crossed, feet planted, a miniature her with the same miniature gestures.  Even when narrowed, those dark eyes were big as saucers and dark as the ocean’s depths.

            “Just shut up, will you I’m trying to think.”  Alex paced away, walking the area of the scar.  If Shana was somewhere on the island, she reasoned, it was somewhere in the woods.  If she wants, then Alex would have to find a way off.  The Emotion, as she understood it, was meta-physical.  Maybe, she could use her voice to find a way off.

            Little Alex followed, trailing with her arms held behind her, humming to herself.  They walked for nearly ten minutes in silence, a girl and her past.

            Alex stopped, stared down at her smaller self.  “What’re you doing?”

            “Following.”

            “Why?”

            “Because.  Where are you going?”

            Alex rolled her eyes, huffed.  “I’m looking for someone.”

            A moment of contemplative quiet and then a smile exploded onto the little girl’s face.  She took Alex by the fingers, her hand small but strong, and gave a tug.  “You’re looking for Shana!  Follow me, I know where she is!”

            Alex was tugged forward and followed hesitantly.  Of all the people she knew, Alex trusted herself the least, but she had nowhere else to go.

 

: Murderer :

 

            Shana fell asleep, curled up and hugging her knees at the edge of the shore, the gentle lull of the waves sending her off as the water licked at her toes.  She fell into the darkness of her dreams, where time was suspended.  She waited like a stone until she heard something calling out to her from that darkness, a voice like a song, like the waves and the shore, perpetually rolling.  Time didn’t pass in the Emotion, she remembered, at least not in a manner which she understood.

            The voice drew nearer.  Shana, listen to me.  Hear me.  Please.

            It was a high voice that bounced around her.  It was the wind on the trees, distant and beautiful.  It was the twinkle of the stars against the black night.  She stood in the sand and opened her eyes, and she stared into the horizon, but she saw nothing.

            Please.  Just listen.  Open your heart and listen.

            The voice, Shana realized, was from inside of her.  It was the light inside, shining bright even in the darkness.  It was her soul.  The words reverberated through her entire being, and it surrounded her and consumed her, just as she surrounded and consumed it.  She closed her eyes again, and she saw it in the darkness.

            Her Voice was strange and beautiful, with long ears like that of a fox but a brunt, whale-like face.  Long whiskers hung from its maw; a tail swayed behind its heavy form.  Its appraised her with eyes that were the same color of brown as hers.  Its flesh was blue and gold.

            Warmth spread through her as it approached, and she opened her eyes and found it now floating above the water at roughly the same height as her.  Up close, it was enormous with a hardened carapace covering its upper body.  Long trains of knitted silk hung from its body, catching the breeze and spreading like wings.

            She touched its furry ears, and it rolled onto its back, revealing its soft underside.  She laughed.  “You’re my Voice, aren’t you?”

            It mewled symphonically.

            “I thought so.  But what are you doing here?  How did you even get here?”

            I came for you, it sang, I came to help you.  You’re looking for Alex, but she’s not here.  You’re too close to see where she is.  It righted itself and sunk under her, surfacing beneath her and lifting her onto its back.  The ridges in the carapace was perfectly spaced to fit her.  Her Voice cradled her as it drifted up into the blue sky.  Around her, she could see the skyline stretching out infinitely and the small island shrinking from view.

            Shana hugged its frame.  “What do you mean by I’m too close?”

            You’re inside of her right now, but that isn’t the same as seeing her.  A cell in your body doesn’t see you because it’s the same.  But I can take you to her.  I can help you find her, to really see her.

            “To really see her?  Like, what do you mean?”

            I can take you to her heart.

            “To her heart?  Like the Emotion?”

            Yes, but inside of her.  Alex is lost and alone, isolated in a sea of her own sorrow.  This is why she is here but not with you, and you cannot help her fix the problem.  Not here, and not how you would like.  It’s hers and hers alone, but you can still help.

            Shana nodded.  “I understand, and I want to be there.”  She grabbed tightly to the armor and patted her Voice’s side.  “Take me to her.”

            Her Voice hummed and drifted higher into the sky.  Water swallowed them from above and the world went black.  Shana’s lungs burnt as they ascended, going higher and deeper.  The shadows grew thick, dark hangs grabbing at her.  Her chest ached, her ears throbbed, but she kept her eyes open and, eventually, she saw the light.

 

: Murderer :

 

            Alex stood by the water, where the girl led her.  They still held hands, and the girl’s other arm, small and dainty, was stretched out and toward the sea where she pointed.  “She’s there,” she said.  “But you can’t see her cause it’s too far.”

            Alex released the girl, jerking her arm away and stepping into the water.  Her shoes filled.  In the distance, she could see a land mass and, in the foggy horizon, possibly an enormous tree, and she scowled.  After everything, all of the battles, all of the struggle, all of the hurt, Shana was stolen away from her yet again.  Another loss, another set-back, added to a lifetime of them.

            She kicked at the water.  “What the hell is the point of all of this?”  She screamed and flailed, and she stared then at the girl, who was recoiling back.  “So, what? I’m stuck here?  Stuck here while Shana is over there, out of reach!  I can’t even have her, can I?”  She approached her younger self and took her by the shoulders.  Shaking her, she screamed, “Why?  Why does this keep happening?  What did I do to be punished like this?  Wasn’t it bad enough to...”  She stopped, expression softening, eyes empty.  She turned back toward the sea, slouched, hands in her pocket.

            The girl paused beside her, hesitating.  A few empty seconds pass without only the sound of the tide to fill them.  Little Alex stepped forward.  “Are you okay?”

            “Just tell me how to fix it.”

            The girl took a deep breath, frowned.  She looked older, now, older than Alex, older than stones and trees, older than thought itself.  Standing beside Alex, she took her hand again.  “There is only one way, and you won’t like it, but I think it will work.”  She looked at Alex, a faint smile, and Alex nodded.  “Then, follow me.”

            They turned away from the water and the shore, and away from the horizon and stared into the forest.  From there Alex couldn’t see the scar, but she could feel it inside of her, deep, deep inside of her, hardened and forgotten, buried in the foundations of it.  The girl squeezed her fingers.  “Say goodbye to it,” she said.

            Alex looked at her.  “To what?”

            “To your little island.  When this is all over, you’ll never see it again.”  The girl looked at her, a tiny mirror, and said, “It’s important.  It’s how it starts.”

            Alex took a deep breath, and she nodded, and she whispered her goodbye.  Together they turned again and found the sea churning.  A storm was moving in, darkening the sky and stirring the waves.  Little Alex took a step forward, and Alex trailed after.

            The water opened, swelling with waves that parted like mouths and snapped at the air.  A long line of them spread across the sea, moving toward them with hurricane force, and the girls met them head on as they crashed against the shore, and they were swallowed.

            Darkness took them, blinded them, and chilled them.  The pressure of the water squeezed the last bit of light from inside of Alex, who awoke again, this time in darkness without even her soul to help her.  She heard a noise behind her, the sobbing of a child, and she saw a light, and she turned.