Indigo: Abraham, Emotion Vol. 3: Bridges, Chapter Fourteen: "The Other Side"

 

Chapter Fourteen: The Other Side

 

            Isaac had to blink, the brilliant morning light was so hard on his eyes.  When he sat up a tidal wave of pain washed over him, sinking him up to his head.  He swayed as the pain slowly receded, and then he stared in shock at his surroundings.  The cement was hard beneath him.  A car sputtered by.  The Emotion was in constant flux, but this was different.  There was life here, actual, human life.

            He stood and swallowed the image of a city in greys and whites.  Stone house, tall and narrow, stood in close, narrow neighborhoods.  They hugged each other, their edges weathered and smoothed, their forms slender and stalwart.  The water beneath the bridge was blue-green and endlessly flowing.  It looked just deep enough to sink under but still see the surface.  The air was fresh but also domesticated.  It smelled to him like a city might.

            People passed him.  Some stared.  Most ignored him.  They spoke in a language he didn’t understand, and there were dozens of them out this morning.  They were not the people of the Emotion, the tortured souls stuck there and warped by ubiquity.  They were a crowd going about their daily lives, living, and breathing, and working without a care for him or for his battles.

            Isaac leaned against the stone railing of the bridge and stared over the edge, and he wondered where in the world he had landed.

 

: Bridges :

 

            “So, this Isaac guy helped you,” Alex asked as she led the way up the stairs.  She looked back at Ellen over her shoulder.  Her tone was light, and she kept her hair tucked back and out of her eyes.  Ellen felt that Alex’s dark eyes seemed somehow brighter with her hair out of the way.

            Shana followed from the rear and watched them both.  Alex’s quick recovery following Goliath’s death worried her.  Her unwillingness to talk about or even acknowledge Carolyne’s death was even worse.  If anything, Alex seemed happier than Shana had seen her in years, perhaps in even a decade, and where Shana should have felt joy, she instead felt trepidation. She thought that Alex was burying it, as she buried everything else, but she didn’t want to force the issue in the Emotion.  As always, Shana chose to watch and wait, to be there for if—or when—Alex needed her.

            “Yeah,” Ellen said, “He’s kind of like my knight-in-shining armor.  He’s been protecting me this entire time.  I don’t know that I could have made it without him.”  Walking between them, Ellen looked first at Alex and then back as Shana, and she made note of their many bruises and bloodied clothes.  “What about you two?  You look like you’ve had quite the adventure.”

            Alex shrugged.  She kept a steady gait and held the wall as she walked to keep herself steady.  “Can’t be much different than yours.  Right, Shana?”

            Shana nodded silently.

            Alex looked past Ellen, into Shana’s eyes.  “Hey, is something wrong? You’re being really quiet.”

            “No, sorry, I’m fine.  I’m fine.”  She looked to Ellen and said, “It really hasn’t been bad.  I mean, we’ve had hard times, but we’re alive, aren’t we?”

            Ellen smiled one of her big smiles and clasped her hands as she laughed.  “Amen to that, sister!”

 

: Bridges :

 

            Isaac walked the streets aimlessly, stopping a plump man with a thick mustache and a fine coat to ask him questions.  The man, who was walking with the aid of a cane, paused and eyed Isaac with distant interest before saying something Isaac didn’t understand and pushing on.  Isaac watched the man go and stuffed his hands in his pockets.  He walked further into the town, keeping to the pale white sidewalks beside the narrow roads and following street signs that he couldn’t read.

            He walked until his feet hurt.  Movement had been hard to start and grew harder as the day wore on.  Within the Emotion, he felt endless and infinite.  No matter how far he went, no matter for how long, he never hungered or thirsted.  Sleep was more from habit than from need and was imposed on him largely for Ellen’s sake.  His return to the physical world, however, was draining.

            Stopping, he found rest on a nearby stoop.  The building behind him was tall and thin, with an old, dark wooden door bolted to the front on black hinges.  The porch was small and decorative.  The entire town looked to him like something out of a painting.  It seemed less real to him than the Emotion had been, but the people here reinforced one impossible fact—he had somehow made it home.

            Isaac’s father had once told him of how a high amount of spiritual energy could affect the mind.  It made Isaac worry that this all might be an illusion, but he kept that thought at the back of his mind, saved for when he couldn’t find anything more reasonable to believe.  For now, at least, the stone beneath his feet and the movement of the sky was proof enough that this was no simple vision.

            He slumped and drew a deep breath.  The air tasted different here, not unclean but lived in.  Somehow, and at some point, he had left the Emotion and gotten lost in the physical world.  He had appeared seemingly from the ground in a place he didn’t know, surrounded by people who didn’t know him and with little chance of finding his way back.  He didn’t like the thought, but it helped him to put everything else into perspective.

            First, he needed to look for Ellen.  She wasn’t with him when he woke, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t come with him through whatever hole he had fallen through.  If she had, then he would need to find her and situate her here—this place was likely safer than the Emotion.  If she was still in the Emotion, then he needed to find a way back fast to keep her safe.

            Isaac stood and, with his fists firmly in his pockets, walked forward with his head down.  He started back in the direction of the bridge and planned to fan out from there.  He wasn’t sure how long he would look, but he wanted to make a thorough search of the area before giving up on Ellen.  He wanted to make sure he searched everywhere for her and figured he could get his bearings in the process.

            On the way, he was stopped by a small woman.  She had large blue eyes that searched him in a cold but not unfriendly way.  Her hair was dark and short, her skin quite fair.  Her lips were full, pink, and her nose very small and slightly unturned.  She had the build of a ballerina, small and lithe, and when she saw him, she called out to him by his father’s name.  “Van?”

            Isaac stopped and turned to her.  The woman whore high-heels and a long black skirt, and she stood several inches shorter than him.  She watched him closely, inspecting every detail of him, and then her brow knitted.  “No,” she said, “Not Van, but you do feel like him.”

            Isaac’s neck bristled.  She approached him and stopped only inches away.  Despite their difference in height, Isaac felt like a child before her, like he was looking up at her.  She had a bag tucked under her arm and pursed her lips as she examined him further.  This time, she was looking into him.  He waited.

            “Who are you?”  She asked only when her investigation was finished, and the answer was not made obvious to her.  Isaac’s response was guarded.

            “Who are you,” he asked, putting distance between them, but it didn’t seem like enough.  She didn’t move.  “And how do you know that name?”

            She shifted her weight.  Her heels scraped the stone.  Her eyes remained cool and emotionless.  She was a scientist, and he was a bug in amber.  “You tell me first,” she said.  “How do YOU know that name?”

 

: Bridges :

 

            They cover their eyes when they reach the surface.  Having been inside the darkened temple interior so long, the sunlight felt like an assault.  They winced and recoiled, but they moved forward, one foot ahead of the other, and soon a warm, fresh breeze welcomed them. 

            The temple opened out onto a large cliff overlooking a forest.  The dirt was dry and chalky.  Their footfalls stirred the dust as they walked.  The sun was stuck in perpetual afternoon, casting a burning orange across the sky, framed in a golden hue.  The cliff tapered into a narrow land-bridge that was cut short by the imposing form of an immense, steel dome.  The dome stuck out of the landscape like a bulbous, grey tumor.  Alex stopped at the dull gray orb and put her hand to it.  It was smooth to the touch and cool against her palm.

            Shana joined Alex and examined it beside her.  “What do you think it is?”

            Alex shrugged.  “Who knows? In this place, it could be anything.”

            Ellen observed from behind them.  “Looks like steel,” she said.  “Wonder how it got here.  It doesn’t look natural, and it doesn’t seem very old, either.”

            Alex tapped her knuckles and listened to the interior ring—it was hollow.  Then, alongside Shana beside her, the hair on her arms stood on end.  They turned and found the temple gone, replaced by an empty, dusty expanse that stretched into the horizon.  More cliffs rose in the hazy, shifting distance.  Standing between them and the distance were two people, one with dark skin and long, straight hair, her eyes world-weary, her movements poised and precise but also slow, as if it were an effort to move at all.

            A tall man stood beside her, lean but with broad features.  Pink lips, large powerful hands, a broad chest and wide-set shoulders wrapped in an iron carapace and an open helm.  A great sword, nearly as long as he was tall, was strapped to his back and touched the earth as he walked.

            Alex put herself in front of Ellen.  She had her right hand balled into a fist.  “Who are you?”

            They stopped.  The man pointed.  “We know her, don’t we, little girl?”

            Alex looked back at Ellen, who stared back in wide-eyed fright.  She hugged her right arm to her side before looking Alex in the eyes, and she said, “I think we’re in trouble.”

 

: Bridges :

 

            The woman, Nyx, led Isaac back to her apartment within the city.  It was cramped and compartmentalized, the ceilings low, the floors made of bright, polished wood.  Isaac had to stoop whenever he moved between rooms.  Nyx had no such troubles.

            The apartment had a small living room with an adjoining kitchenette.  There was a bedroom behind another door and a bathroom connected to that.  A small balcony looked out over the city, guarded by curving, black steel rails that ended in arrow-headed points at the top.  Inside of the apartment, Nyx retreated to her bedroom to change while Isaac waited in the living room.  She removed her jacket and left it in the bedroom, returning and ushering Isaac into a Victorian lounge chair.

            “Tea,” she asked as she entered the kitchenette.  She put a kettle on and started a gas burner with a match.

            “Ah, sure, thanks.”

            Nyx nodded curtly and peeked out at him over a bar that separated the rooms.  “While we wait for the water, why don’t you go ahead and tell me it is that how you know about Van?”

            Isaac gave her a long stare.  She was a small woman, much shorter than him, but she met his gaze steadily.  Her eyes were large and dark and full of secrets.  She knew things about him that he didn’t know, and she knew his father, too.  Considering his history with his father, that left him more curious than trusting.  Waiting on the lounge, he kept his hands in his pockets more out of a sense of protection than out of anything to do, and he looked away.  “He’s just a guy from my past,” Isaac said, and he hoped he lied well.  “An old acquaintance.  I didn’t know him well, but I was hoping he could help me solve a problem I’m having.  He’s a smart guy.”

            Nyx left the kitchenette and glided across the room.  Her footfalls were silent, even on the old, polished wood of the apartment.  She settled on a plain, bare loveseat across from him and leaned back.  As she settled, she crossed her legs sensually and was keenly aware of him watching her.  “Yes, he is.  What is it that you want to know, exactly?”

            “Just some stuff about his past.”  Isaac tried to meet her gaze but could not.  She searched him whenever they made eye contact, like she was seeing everything he wanted to hide from her.

            Nyx smiled politely.  “Of course, any question you might have for him would obviously be about something he has previously experienced, or about someone close to him that he has experienced.”

            “Sure.”  Isaac met her eyes briefly and felt like an animal being hunted.  She was stalking him from her seat, her every movement graceful, even when at rest.  She was relaxed, but he was sure she could cross the room in an instant and seize him.  He cleared his throat, and she smiled.

            “Anyway, I am looking for Van as well, which is unfortunate for us both, isn’t it?  That said…”  She fixed her gaze on him, made it somehow sharper.   The air around them shifted, and so did reality.  Isaac could barely react before she had him pinned to the couch.  His arms were out, drawn from his pockets, his Voices gripped tightly in his hands, and she held her own Voice to his throat.  One foot had his left arm pinned, while the other was pinned to the floor.  The central shaft of a sai had drawn a small pearl of blood from his neck, and he could feel the cold steel of the second one pinning his other wrist to the cushion behind him.

            Isaac’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.  He met her gaze and found her eyes darker than before and full of power.  When she spoke, her lips her hypnotic.  “No more lies, boy.  Tell me the truth: how do you know Van?”

 

: Bridges :

 

            They stood in silence examining each other.  Alex kept herself between Shana and Ellen and the other two.  The armored man stood in front of the woman, his hands at his side but his blade gleaming in the burnished sunlight.  They regarded each other calmly, the woman showing only limited interested and seeming almost bored with the world.

            The silence was tense.  Without a word spoken, a thin line was drawn between them.  Alex stayed ready, her fist balled, her Voice at the back of her mind.  She kept an eye on Ellen, waiting for her to take the lead, but it was the lady, Deidra, who broke the silence.  She spoke listlessly, her gaze faraway, as if on a distant horizon.  “Do you still intend on confronting Abel?”

            Alex, realizing the question was meant for her, examined the woman before she answered.  Deidra had fine posture.  She carried herself how a queen might, or so Alex imagined, but she saw something empty inside of the older woman.  Deidra was incomplete, and it reminded Alex of herself.  “I don’t even know who Abel is.”

            “He has the girl,” Deidra said.  “He is the man behind all of this.”

            “The girl? If you mean Abraham, then, yes, we’re going to confront him and take her back.”  Alex sighed and let her hand come to rest on her hips.  The tension was gone.  Deidra clearly had no interest in a fight.  Alex wasn’t sure she had an interest in anything.  “Listen, we just want to grab her and go home.  We’re sick of fighting, and we’re sick of being here.”

            Deidra shrugged, and Cornelius laughed.  “The master needs the girl,” he said.

            “Why?”

            Deidra looked away.  She looked into the sunset with the same disinterest with which she regarded them.  Her dress was bunched in her hands, but the ends of it were still caked in dirt.  She walked to the very edge of the cliff, stopping with the tips of her toes peeking over, and she stared down.  Without looking up, she said, “She is necessary to the completion of his goals, very much in the same way that she is necessary for you to return home.  She is a very special girl, that one.”

            Ellen, from behind Alex, called, “Why does he need her? What is his goal?”

            Deidra looked at them directly now, her eyes empty and dark as beads of glass.  “He requires the girl so that he can become God.”

 

: Bridges :

 

            Nyx held Isaac’s gaze.  He looked away, eying the sai pressed to his throat.   His father had trained him since childhood to use his Voice, to feel others with special abilities, and to fight should he need to. Using his spiritual awareness and the powers buried deep within his soul, Isaac could augment his strength, speed, endurance, and even his perception, and even with all of that training, he couldn’t follow Nyx’s movements.

            His mouth went dry as he considered his options.  The hammering of his heart interrupted his thoughts.  She waited patiently for him to gather himself, his arms pinned in place.  A growing line of blood had trailed down his neck and gathered at his collar bone.  A thousand scenarios played through his head, but none of them were believable.  He decided to tell the truth.

            “I am Van’s son.”  Nyx stayed quiet, and she didn’t move, so Isaac continued, “My name is Isaac Eralder, and I am looking for Van—for my father—after I was somehow dragged to this place called the Emotion.  It’s a sort of meta-physical world, trapped somewhere between life and death, or physical and spiritual, in the same way that your soul links your spiritual being to your physical body.  Time and space there are different, distorted, almost like captured photographs.  You blink, and you’re some where and some time else, and the last time I moved between boundaries, well, I found myself here.”

            Nyx didn’t move and betrayed no thought.  She didn’t even blink.  Her dark eyes remained fixed on him for a long few seconds, and then she sighed and let the great tension in the air at rest.  Isaac thought for a moment that he was free, but her sai remained.  She closed her eyes briefly, but when they open again, they bore into him.  “You say that you are his child?  If you knew him at all, you would know that is impossible.  You have at least seven years on him, if not more.”

            “Seven years?  That can’t be possible.”  Isaac’s brow knitted.  He looked about the room, and about her, and he thought back to the bridge, and to the streets, and to the people moving about him.  “What year is this?”

            “1980.  Why?”

            Isaac remained quiet as he digested the notion.  It seemed impossible to him, but when put against everything that had happened to him recently, it also seemed somehow perfect.  The Emotion itself existed between time and space and could, logically, exist outside of it as well.  His time there was no time at all, and his leaving simply placed him at a random moment in time.

            The kettle interrupted them with a whistle from the stove.  Neither moved.  Nyx eyed him a moment longer and then moved, her Voice dissipating as she stepped away.  She left fearlessly, her back to him, and looked at him over the bar top as she prepared their tea.  “It’s ready.”

            Isaac sighed and sagged into his seat.  He wiped the blood from his neck and then stared at his hand.  From the moment he met Nyx, he could feel her power, but he hadn’t felt the full depth of it.  When training with his father, Isaac always felt like Van was holding back.  Nyx feels the same to him, like there is a deep ocean of strength buried in the depths of her, that he is only splashing in the surf.

            Feeling a person’s soul required training, and it also required intuition.  Those who could not manifest a Voice could sometimes perceive the auras of other people.  Those who could manifest a Voice, however, often got interference from the light that they cast off of themselves.  They can feel things, but they do not understand it.  Like a radio out of tune, all they get it static.  Isaac was taught from a young age to silence the storm inside of himself, to clear his thoughts, and to open himself to the world.

            Nyx returned with a tray that held two cups, two small plates, and the kettle.  She set it on a small table in front of him and then poured him a cup.  The steaming water browned as the tea leaves dispersed.  Isaac watched her movements, and he felt nothing.  She had buried her strength again.  One moment a raging fire, then hardly a hint of a spark, and when she looked at him, he knew that she could see everything he was.

            She poured herself a cup and dropped some sugar into it.  Then, stirring, she sat back on her loveseat and crossed her legs again.  Her pink lips pursed as she blew away the steam.  “To tell the truth, this all sounds suspicious, but I can tell you aren’t lying.”  She sipped her tea and licked her lips after.  “But that doesn’t mean that you’re telling the truth.  So, please, try your best to explain to me what is going on, and spare me no details.”

            Isaac did his best.  He told her in detail about the time which he came from, described Van as his father, distant but firm, and of his missing mother.  He told her about Sadieville and about a childhood spent training under his father’s guidance, about his disobedience and the battle at the college campus, and he told her about his journey to the Emotion and his reunion with his mother.  Ellen was mentioned, softly and briefly, and little detail was given about her, though he still thought of her.  He ended his story on this: “I saw a man there.  He reminded me of someone from my father’s old photographs, a man my father knew.  He was a boy in the pictures, I think, and I think his name was Abel.”

            It was only at Abel’s name that Nyx reacted to.  She lifted a single eyebrow and poured herself more tea.  Again, she added sugar, and she stirred it while watching him.  Isaac stared back feeling naked and childish.  Even to him, the story felt like the ramblings of a madman.  He held his tea with both hands and stared at it.  “Anyway, that got me thinking, if my mother was there, and Abel was there…My dad didn’t talk about it, and mom, well…Anyway, something happened between them.  Something that changed them forever, something that was still changing things now.  I wanted to ask my dad about it, to hear it from him.  So, when the boundaries shifted, I woke up, and well, I was here.”  He turned the teacup around in his hands, desperate for something to do.  The words all felt wrong, but he had no other way of explaining it to her.  The movement sent ripples through his tea.  He watched them meet and part and meet again.  “And that’s it.”

            Nyx sipped at her tea and then set it aside.  Diplomatically, she folded her hands on her lap, and she stared at Isaac until he got the courage to meet her gaze.  She made him feel hot and timid in front of her, like a child with a crush, and she seemed to know it.  She smiled at him.  “The Emotion?  If you’re telling the truth, then I know exactly why you’re here.  You wanted your father to answer your questions about his past, didn’t you?  But, by how you’ve explained him, do you think that he would have ever answered you honestly?  Even if he had, could he have been capable of answering your questions honestly, without bias?”

            Isaac, feeling silly for the notion, shrugged and stared at the floor.  “I don’t know, I didn’t think about it.  I still don’t even know how I got here.”

            “You speak of the Emotion as being outside of time, being both static and changing, physical and meta-physical.  Assume, if you can, that the Emotion somehow felt your need, that it ‘heard’ you.  Assume, also, that your desire was so intense that it found you an exit in an effort to grant you a wish, and it brought you here.”

            “But my wish was for answers.”

            “Answers that your father couldn’t give.”  Nyx looked out the window.  “At least not the man you know as your father.  Maybe your father was right there, on the very street where you appeared, just a boy, and neither of us even noticed.  I didn’t sense him.”  She looked at Isaac. “But maybe it was because you covered him up.”

            “Sorry, I guess.”

            “Don’t be.  I’m not too worried about him.  Honestly, I’m really looking for someone else.”  She looked fragile for a moment, and only for a moment, and then she became herself again—a hauntingly beautiful beast.  “You didn’t meet me in this future of yours?”

            “No.”

            “And you’re sure?  Maybe you did, but you were too small to remember.”  She picked up her tea, smiling as she sipped it.  Isaac stared.

            “Trust me, if I had ever met you, I would have remembered.”

            Nyx laughed.  “And now you loosen up.  Well, if we didn’t meet, then I imagine that something happened which took your father down another path.  I can’t imagine what—it doesn’t have to be bad—but it happened.”  She sighed wistfully.  “Maybe, like you, I was just carried away through time.”

            A cloud drifted in front of the sun and cast the apartment in momentary darkness.  They sat, silent, watching each other in the shade.  Isaac tried, ineffectually, to put his guard up, and it was starting to feel like an exercise in futility.  Nyx sipped her tea, and the sunlight returned.

            “How do I get back?”

            “What?”

            “You seem to understand all of this better than I do.  How do I get back?”

            “Who said you can?”

            “If I can get here, then I should be able to go away.”

            “Maybe that door only opens one way.”

            “Then I need to find another door,” Isaac said.  “I can’t stay.  I left someone there, someone I have to protect.”

            “You’re cute, and you’re assuming that the world cares.  But, if you’re desperate, then just use your head.  If a wish brought you here, then maybe a wish of equal effort could take you back.  The Emotion is supposed to be the world’s soul, so large and so vast that it is a vast sea of emotion, yes?  If that is true, then you should know as well as me that it is always around us, surrounding us, encompassing us, and within us.  Think of something, maybe that something you need to protect, and force your way back to it.”

            Isaac thought for a moment and then nodded his understanding.  He set his tea on the table and leaned forward on his knees.  “Okay.  Before I go, though, I have one more question.”

            “What is it?”

            “I was hoping you could tell me what’s going on, now and then, with my father, and with Abel.  You seem to know what’s going on, or at least more than I do.  Tell me what my father won’t.

            Nyx looked at him warily, her interest waning, and then shrugged.  Her smile was impish and rueful.  “Why not.  I could waste an evening.”

 

: Bridges :

 

            “Do you know what your little friend is,” Cornelius asked from behind Deidra.  He stared past them, at the vast dome behind them.  His gaze was empty but heavy, his face blank now, as devoid of emotion as his charge.  “No? And you’re still insistent on constructing a half-cocked plan to come in and save her, to protect her with no comprehension as to her true nature or value.”  Deidra, still looking over the edge of the cliff, called to him, and he stopped.  Bowing his head, he stepped back.  “I apologize.”

            She turned to the group and stared at and through them.  When she spoke, her voice was as hollow as her gaze. “That girl is important in ways you don’t understand and is vital to the function of the Emotion.  Think on your Voice, material manifestations of your soul, able to express your very spiritual essence as materialized, physical energies.  The Emotion where we stand is the world’s soul, and with a soul so vast, it would follow that the world’s Voice might be vast in turn, wouldn’t it?  And yet, that is the girl, your Abraham, the will of the universe, the Emotion’s Voice.”

            Ellen, who had only the meanest understand of the Voice and the soul, looked about for someone to speak, to ask what she felt the obvious question.  When no one did, she decided to speak for herself.  “And her being the whatever’s Voice helps this Abel guy become a god how?”

            Deidra shook her head and sigh; her dark braids danced.  “Not a god.  God.  Should he reign her in, then he will possess the power of the universe, of nature itself.  The Emotion, and all of the energy therein, will be at his disposal. He would control life, death, time, and everything in between. He could restart reality, all of it, everyone and everything.”

            Shana, from behind Alex and Ellen both, added, “Sound pretty god-like to me, but what I want to know is why are you helping him?”

            Deidra looked at her and shrugged.  “Why not help him?”

            “That’s no reason to help someone,” Alex said, drawing Deidra’s focus.

            “But it is a reason to not interfere.  We all suffer.  That is life, random and constant struggles without purpose and without meaning. None of this matters, our words, our battles, our triumphs or our failures.  Even if I chose not to help him, he would continue down this road.  My involvement changes nothing save for my involvement.  Whatever I do, I do knowing that it is meaningless, without value and thus without purpose.  I help him because the situation is what it is, and I am choosing to walk the path that is clearest for me.”

            Alex now scowled and crossed her arms over her chest.  “That’s a horrible way to look at it.”

            “Horrible or honest?  The truth is this: we are radiant souls shackled by material bodies, our earthly existence beginning soft and weak and ending just the same.  From the moment we first draw breath, we are on our way toward an inevitable and inglorious end, our every decision dictated by DNA and electrical impulse.  We are glorified computers carrying out processes assigned by a cruel and indifferent God. All of our feelings, our emotions, our attachments, and our valuables are lies to keep us blind, and I am merely one burdened with the gift of sight.”

            Alex’s jaw went tight.  She thought of Alicia dying in the hospital bed, her body giving out after fighting for seventeen years.  She thought of Shana staying with her through the long storm of Alex’s depression and mourning.  She thought of tiny Abraham, pale and frightened, begging for help as Ellen bled to death while serving as a human shield.  She found value in all of it, though she couldn’t find the words to express it.

            Shana hugged Alex then, hugged her from behind, and then moved to her side.  Staring Deidra in the eyes, she spoke softly, without judgment but also without reservation, unafraid of what she said or how she felt.  “I don’t believe you.  I don’t believe any of it.  I don’t know what happened in your life to make you feel this way, but I am sorry it did.  However, it doesn’t change this truth: I love Alex.  She has been my best friend from the moment I met her.  That is real.  I know that, and no matter what you say or what you feel, you can’t change that, and you can’t take it away from me.  Every tear we’ve shed together, good and bad, every heartache, and every smile, regardless of why they happened, have happened.  So, maybe what you see is the truth to you, but from where I stand, all I see is nothing but smoke and lies.”

            Deidra went stiff.  A frown formed on her delicate, implacable face.  “Your attachments and sentiments are the lies, illusions created by a lonely soul unable to deal with a harsh and uncaring reality, stifled by an empty dream, unwilling to wake up.”

            “Then I would rather dream than wake up!  Because it hurts sometimes, and it’s hard sometimes, but I won’t trade this for the world.  Maybe this life has no meaning.  Maybe the world doesn’t care, but if that’s the case, then I will care in its place.  I will give my life meaning.”

            Deidra stared at Shana without blinking, her eyes dark and glass-like.  Slowly, the frown on her face turned to a sneer and then wrapped into a small, baleful smile.  “Fine, if you feel that way, then I will allow you to pass.”

            Standing between then, Ellen blinked a few times and said, “Wait, what?”

            Deidra pointed past them, toward the iron husk which blotted the sky.  “That thing is borne from my soul.  It is my gift that I can create shells and shields within the Emotion, just as I have built one around my own heart.  In this case, I have been using one to keep you out and keep the girl in, but I can open it and allow you passage.”

            Alex and Shana shared a smile while Ellen whooped at their side.  “Under one condition,” Deidra said, and she let them grow somber before continuing, “One of you must stay here with me as tariff.”

 

: Bridges :

 

            Nyx led Isaac out the front door and stood with him in the hallway.  He stared quietly at her, still feeling a bit like a boy with a crush, his hands in his pockets while she stood at the doorway, an air of nonchalance about her.  “Not too long ago, for me, Abel and Van were once best friends,” she said.  “Something happened between them, something involving Van’s sister—the aunt you never knew—which tells me that it was something terrible.  Your father, your mother, and Abel, whatever happened between them, it is tied up with what happened to her, to Florian.”

            “I think you’re right.  It doesn’t answer all of my questions, but I think it gives me a direction to go.  How can I repay you?”

            She smiled and leaned against the doorway.  Her blouse rode high, revealing her hips to him.  “Well, maybe you can tell me this—do you know a man named Luc in your future?”

            “Luc?  No.”  Isaac said it with certainty.  His father may not have shared much about his past, but Isaac had a way of getting his own information.  He often snuck into his father’s parlor and read his files when he could, and the name was not at all familiar to him.

            Nyx’s expression softened.  Still facing him, she opened the door behind her.  “Well, thanks anyway, then.  Now, go back to where you belong before you break anything that can’t be fixed.”  She hesitated at the door.  “And for what it’s worth, good luck to you.”

            “Thanks,” Isaac said, and he watched her return to her apartment and stood there in the hallway a moment after.

 

: Bridges :

 

            When he stepped into the sunlight and felt the fresh air on his face, he felt a warmth spread through him.  His return would require a reconnection with nature and with the spirit of it. To return to the Emotion, he would have to find somewhere within the city to do just that.  He would be nervous for failure but found it unlikely.  If he had left the Emotion before, then he reasoned that it would be possible to return.

            He went to the bridge and stood idle there, looking over the water and watching it passage.  It was green in the midday sun and lined by white stone walkways.  The sun was drifting out of the sky, distorting his image across the water.  He appeared as a shadow in its murky surface.  He leaned onto the railing and to stare.

            Nyx had told him to find something important in the Emotion, to focus on the promise he had made.  He thought first of his mother, but it didn’t bring him much.  She left when he was young and with hardly any memories to remember her by.  Thoughts of her brought him only an empty hole in his heart.  His father may have been negligent, but when thinking of his mother, Isaac felt grateful for his father even being there.

            Nothing.  Isaac watched the water pass and had a thought: the Emotion was the world of the spirit and the soul, perhaps a passage in itself.  It was meta-physical, operating at least partially on feelings and thought before anything else.  The world he was in now, the physical world, wasn’t so subjective.  It operated on impartial logic, on kinetics, energy, and chemical.

            His exile from the Emotion had been the product of his emotions.  His return, however, would have to be made through the physical world.  The steady burble of the water set him at ease.  Closing his eyes, he thought of his father, as cold and as impartial as this world around him.  He thought of his mother, nothing more than a distant memory.

            Climbing onto the rail, he steadied himself, and then he jumped.  The air whipped up his jacket as gravity pulled him toward the water below.  The impact knocked the air from his lungs.  The water swallowed him with a mighty roar.  He drove in like a needle, his body pulled under by the water which filled the empty air that followed in his wake.  He went deep, fast, as liquid became solid, and the world shifted around him.

            He hit a wall and felt for the gate.  Then, he turned the lock when he found the key.  All he had to think of was…

 

: Bridges :

 

            Ellen was the first to speak following Deidra’s offer, and she said, “I’ll stay.”  They looked at her as she came forward.  “I don’t have a Voice or anything special like that.  I would just get in the way, but the two of you, you’re different, you’re strong.  If anyone can save Abraham, it’s one of you.  So, go, and bring her back for me.”  She wore a smile as she spoke, but the smile was obviously forced and partially wilted.

            Alex nodded.  She took Ellen by the shoulder and stared her in the eyes.  As it had with everyone, their time in the Emotion had changed Ellen.  From where Alex stood, the other woman seemed more solid, more certain than she ever was before.  Alex said, “Don’t worry, we’ll bring her back.  I promise.”

            Shana watched them part before stepping between them.  “No,” she said, “We won’t do it.  Listen, Alex, this isn’t my journey.  It never was, at least not really.  I never knew Abraham.  This belongs to you, both of you, if it belongs to anyone—the people who found her.  You’re the ones she asked to protect her, so it should be you two who bring her back.  Besides, Ellen, if you really think we’re stronger, then I think it’s probably a better idea that we don’t leave you alone with them.”

            Ellen looked over to Deidra and Cornelius, who watched them from afar.  She considered their awesome power and remembered the danger Carolyne had posed to her.  It stood to reason, she suspected, that they might even be worse.  She pulled Shana into a hug.  “Thank you.  Thank you so, so much.”

            “You three are so sickeningly sweet,” Deidra said.  Her calm had broken, replaced by a slowly evolving venom that lined her every word.  She shuffled past them, leaving her dress to drag in the dirt as she moved.  Cornelius followed.  Deidra stopped at the dome and turned to face them.  “Come forward when you’re ready.”

            Alex hesitated.  She looked at Shana.  “Are you sure that you will be okay here by yourself?”

            Shana laughed.  “Are you being serious right now? I’m not afraid of those two.”  She winked at Alex.  “I’ll be fine.  You two go and get her. And be careful.”

            Alex hesitated and then hugged Shana. Then, she turned to Deidra and to the dome behind her.  She found Deidra staring back with growing disdain.  The way she looked, the way she frowned, twisted Alex up inside.  For Alex, it was like a specter of her past.  “Why are you helping us now?”

            “I am helping no one.  I have no sides in this.  Opening this neither aids you nor hinders him. It simply opens a door.  Whether you take it, or what you do after, is your decision.”

            “Right,” Alex said.  She didn’t believe Deidra, but she didn’t have the energy or time to argue.  She looked at Ellen.  “Are you ready?”

            Ellen nodded and together they stopped at the dome. It was large enough to eclipse the sky and cast a large, dark shadow over them.  The surface was smooth and cold even at a distance.  It appeared hollow at a glance, much like Deidra’s gaze. 

            Deidra touched the dome without turning.  She dragged her finger back and the dome peeled away like putty, layer after layer receding, leaving an opening just large enough for them to pass.  A large stone-built bridge, grey in color and long aged, appeared beyond.

            Alex drew a deep breath and looked to Ellen, who nodded one last time, and together they crossed the threshold.  The air inside was heavy and stagnant.  The world grew cold for them.  Inside, buried beneath the ancient apathy that permeated this dome, Alex felt a faint tickle of Abraham, and she smiled.  “She’s here,” she said.  “I can feel her.”

            Ellen smiled in her growing excitement and took Alex by the hand.  “Then let’s go.”

            “Yeah, she’s waited long enough.”  Alex looked back to find Shana waving, and she waved back as the dome flowed, liquidly, back into place.

            Alex turned again and found the bridge significantly shorter, as if she was carried forward by her own enthusiasm.  The bridge stretched over another great expanse, this one a sandy chasm framed by vast, orange walls dulled by the dome-filtered sunlight.  The sky was dull and grey.  A massive cathedral stood before them now, stain-glass showing a maiden in chains with fire at her feet.  Gargoyles stood guard before her, their stone-faced snarling eternally. They felt like the eye of the world was fixed on them.

            Alex felt Ellen shaking beside her and squeezed her hand.  “Don’t worry,” she said, “We’re almost there.”

            Ellen took a deep breath.  “Right.”  Together, they advanced.

 

: Bridges :

 

            Isaac stood in a dusty canyon, stirring the thin, orange dust that had at some point gathered upon his shoulders.  Vast, smooth canyon walls towered beside him, layered and stratified by age and by time.  At the center of the canyon, standing immediately before him, is a vast, stony island crowned by a black cathedral, with a bridge of wrought stone stretching out from it into oblivion.  The sky was steel grey; the air was without warmth.

            He felt his mother here.  She was everywhere around him, in the sand and in the air. She was the atmosphere itself.  He couldn’t breathe without remembering his scent, couldn’t blink without remembering her face.  She felt uncertain to him, and also more real to him than he could ever remember.

            Alex was there, too.  He could feel her presence above him, in the cathedral, but she had changed.  Like his mother, she was more real to him, more solid and more certain.  She was resolved, the hollowness of her conviction having been replaced by some drive that was previously not there.

            He could feel someone else with her, a figure of deep rage, sorrow, and solitude.  They waited inside of the cathedral, overshadowing anything or anyone else within.  He looked up at the ancient, blackened stones of the building and regarded it with trepidation.  That would be his destination. 

            Without a word, he conjured his Voice and took the scaling the smooth, sandstone walls that surrounded him.