Chapter Eighteen: Covenant
part 3 Grace, the Divine, and the End
Shana couldn’t move. She dropped the covenant and collapsed to the
ground beside it. There, she sat panting
even while Alex approached. She watched,
wide-eyed and weak, as Alex and Abel traded words. Then, she watched, impotent and frightened as
a child, as they came to blows. It
happened instantly, Alex’s wide lunge missing entirely and her back exploding
after. Blood and bone poured from the
wound. Motionless and taut, time froze
in a tense silence. Abel withdrew, his
spear head receding like a storm cloud.
Alex jerked forward and, without the support, fell.
The silence lifted, and Shana
screamed. She screamed shrill and high,
and though she could feel it raw in her throat, she could hardly believe it was
her own voice. Outside of her body, she watched
herself claw at the dust and willed her legs to move but couldn’t. Locked in place, she watched Alex fall,
revealing Abel and his blood-stained spear to full view.
Alex lay motionless, her body
becoming a bloody smear of limbs and little else. She didn’t even breathe. Her eyes were glassy and pale, turned toward
the dust, unmoving, unblinking as Abel stepped over her.
Ellen stood to meet him. She stepped forward, and Shana’s vision was
obscured by long legs and thin arms.
Though she looked in better health than the others around her, Ellen was
still pale. She extended her arms and
stood before Abel, rooted like a tree.
To Shana, she looked more like a child staring down a tornado.
Abel stopped and angled his spear
up and toward her. The blood gathering
at the tip reversed and left a thin red line across his fingers. “Move,” he said.
Ellen glared back at him. “No. I
don’t really understand any of this, but I know one thing: I won’t let you take
her.”
“Fine.” He moved again, and it was as fluid as
before. From standing, Abel put all of
himself into the thrust. His spear was a
precise, deadly flash of liquid red and gleaming silver.
Shana’s spine tickled. A voice whispered into her ear. Sad, anxious, and urgent, it reminded her of
how Alex died and begged her to intervene.
Shana agreed, and this time she moved, too. Heart’s Song appeared in her hand and,
spinning, she caught Abel’s spearhead and knocked it off course. Her arms ached. Hitting his spear was, in her mind, the
equivalent of hitting a semi with a baseball bat, but she managed to knock his
thrust off by just under a foot.
Abel hardly seemed to notice. He simply continued his movement, spiraling
around and lunging again.
: Covenant :
Isaac waited until Crest’s body was
gone, watching it fade into the twilight until nothing was left of it, not even
the shadows. He had hoped that it would
give him some comfort, but Crest’s passing left him with nothing more than a
growing hole in his heart. What hurt
most was how much easier it had been to kill a second time.
He started toward the cliffs,
toward where Abel’s overwhelming presence loomed. Within the maelstrom of power, he could feel
the tiny specks, the droplets of strength tossed about by the storm that raged
around them. He could feel Ellen within
that, an absence of power, utterly normal and without safety. He could feel his mother as well, still
guarded but with the door to her heart now opened a fraction more than it once
had been.
The canyon wall was flat and
high. Ignoring his fatigue, Isaac
gathered his breath and started the climb up.
He used his chakrams, stabbing their bladed edges into the sheer surface
and used his feet to hold him in place.
His arms ached, but he pulled himself up a few feet at a time.
The raging battle above him
escalated. Two powers clashed and one
was swallowed and snuffed. Adrenaline
pushed him through his fatigue and drove him higher through his exhaustion. With a final grunt, he lifted himself up onto
the flatten crest of the canyon’s crown.
He arrived to find Abel, a giant of a man, bearing down upon a
voluptuous blonde he did not recognize, who stood between Abel and his intended
target, Ellen. Deidra and Cornelius
watched from the side, looking impotent before Abel’s undeniable might.
Abel moved more quickly than Isaac
could follow. His Voice howled,
splitting the wind with each thrust.
Isaac, without time to hesitate, poured himself into his Voice and threw,
shouting the words which came to him from his heart.
Sun
rising red, a screaming soul of fire burning the sky!
His chakram flashed with red flame
and sparked on contact with Abel’s spear.
It hit with enough force to deter the next incoming thrust before
spiraling off and embedding itself into the ground. The tension in the air eased and everyone
fixed their gazes on Isaac’s entry. Abel
eyes were hollow without whatever he poured into Crest to give them light.
Ellen, on the other hand,
brightened at his appearance. “Isaac!”
She allowed a small, tired smile to blossom on her face.
The woman before her chanced only a
glance but didn’t linger. She instead
lifted her hammer and planted her feet in front of Ellen. “Now it’s four on one! If we work together, we can take him!” As she
spoke, she stepped in toward him, swinging hard and bringing her hammer around
toward Abel’s head. He sidestepped
before the blow could land and lunged as he retreated.
The attack was interrupted. Cornelius intercepted, planting his feet and
swinging for Abel’s torso. Abel had to
respond quickly to block the attack, twirling his spear around and using the
dark wooden shaft to catch Cornelius’ blade.
Time froze with their weapons locked as everyone held their breath, and
then Abel gave a gentle shove and sent Cornelius stumbling.
And
thus He spoke, and the weight of His words shall crush you.
Shana closed distance and attacked
from the side. The front of her Voice
shined like the dawn. She meant to knock
Abel’s head clean from his shoulders, but her swing was slow and far too
wide. Abel ducked under and aimed his
spear at her abdomen as he stood.
The spearpoint stopped inches away
from her flesh, the air screeching around it like steel on steel. Deidra stood, arms raised, wincing and
shaking under the strain of her barrier.
Isaac, seeing the distraction, recalled his chakram and staggered
forward. The battle below and the climb
after had worn him thin. Even with the
adrenaline pounding in his temples, he felt slow and struggled for breath. Gathering his strength, he heaved a chakram
at Abel’s throat to end it quickly but missed.
As Isaac’s chakram sailed by, Abel
tilted his head and allowed another attack from Cornelius to pass with similar
ease. Momentum carried Cornelius
forward, into Abel’s reach. Abel grabbed
him by the arm and tossed him away, spiraling around and between Ellen and
Shana and toward Abraham behind them.
Shana followed him, but he stopped hard and caught her with his
shoulder.
The force of their contact knocked
Shana’s feet from under her and Abel, using his spear like a catapult,
jettisoned her toward the edge of the cliff.
Shana sailed and landed, sliding to a stop with little more than a thin
trail of pebbles and dust between her and the canyon floor. Ellen, meanwhile, put herself back in his
path and regretted it. With no one else
between them, she watched Abel’s approach in slow motion, his eyes empty and
unfeeling, stopping suddenly only inches from her, a slight shimmer surrounding
his body.
Abel grunted and shook before
giving a brief glance around. He found Deidra nearby, hands raised and body
shining with sweat. With a concentrated
frown, Abel forced his foot forward and the light around him faded. Deidra fell forward, her barrier was
shattered. He couldn’t move far before
Shana returned, leaping toward Abel with her hammer overhead. This time, he caught her Voice by the haft
with his open palm and held her in suspended in the air. Angling his spearpoint up, he thrust, and the
air wailed as his Voice slid off another invisible wall. Deidra cringed and vomited.
Looking now toward Deidra, Abel
tossed Shana aside and returned his attention to Ellen, who now held the
covenant and protected it with her body.
He stopped at her side and towered over her as a mountain does an
ant. His Voice gleamed with the remains
of Alex’s blood as he stared at her and through her, to the covenant that
consumed his focus. She was nothing to
him at this point, not even a corpse. He
lifted his weapon, and he prepared to kill.
: Covenant :
Wherever Alex went after she died,
she wasn’t unhappy. She felt no pain
there, nor hurt, nor sadness, nor loss of any kind. In fact, she eventually came to realize that
she felt nothing at all. An infinite
nothingness surrounded her, a waiting void gaping just beyond her reach with no
sense of urgency to reach it. The void
breathed around her in its nothingness, passing in and out of her and through
her like the tide.
Things
echoed in the nothingness, reverberating along the void. They took shape and became the likeness of
her, and she became them. Alex then
realized how limited the human perception is, fragmented by sense and
experience. In death, however, she saw
the undiluted truth. Everything was
connected, vast, and multifaceted. This
understanding was wasted on her, though, if for no other reason than her being
dead.
“Alex!” A thought echoed through the void, seeking
her. She felt it, became it, and
acknowledged it.
“Abraham.” Alex gave this thought form, not by her own
will, but by what lingered of her will.
A spark which simply refused to be snuffed. From nothing, Abraham’s tiny body appeared,
wrapped in all colors and also in none of them.
She seemed smaller now, smaller than even before, to the point of being
microscopic. Despite this, Alex could
see every aspect of her in fine detail, seeing things now that she didn’t know
existed, and she experienced them, also, and she became them, too.
“You’re
dead, Alex.”
“I know,
but that’s fine. I’ve died before. What are you, by the way, with all of those
colors inside of you?”
“It’s
different this time. This time, I don’t
know that I can save you.” Every word
Abraham spoke gave birth to new things.
Colors formed from the ether, appearing as sounds and tastes both new
and unfamiliar. She seemed somehow
guilty, though Alex didn’t understand why.
“Last time, when you were dying in the material realm, I rescued you and
pulled you into the Emotion. Pulling
your physical body into a meta-physical plane of existence allowed your soul to
draw on the ambient energy of the world around you and heal you. It used the spiritual energy here in the
atmosphere to mend your physical wounds and accelerate your recovery.”
“I see,”
Alex said, and she did. She saw everything
in her enlightenment. More than that,
she understood, too.
“But these
wounds weren’t aren’t just physical.
Your soul has suffered considerable trauma. That is how it works, in the Emotion. By being here in between, the damage done to
you is similarly two-fold, and this time it might be fatal, because Abel didn’t
simply stab your body. He impaled your
soul.”
If Alex had
shoulders, then she would have shrugged.
Her life seemed very far away from her, being less than a grain of sand
on the beaches of reality. By that
point, she was hardly even a thought, and she was becoming less with each
passing second. Then, she remembered
Shana, and she lingered. “How are the
others?”
“They are
unwell. By this point, Abel is a
monster, hollow and entirely without mercy.
He has no humility, no pride, nothing at all to make him human.”
“Sounds
dead, too.”
“He is less
than that, even, empty in his body and his soul. He did it so that he could accept me, and he
will go through all of them to get to me, if he has to.”
: Covenant :
Ellen
stood, arms out and eyes forward, her body between Abel and Abraham. He approached her slowly and without
emotion. Ellen screamed, “I won’t let
you take her!” She tried hard to keep
from shaking and failed. Alex already
died in front of her, and the others were struggling to keep pace with him.
Abel took a
step and led with his lance. Each
movement was a blur, but before the blow could land, Isaac appeared in front of
her. He winced in anticipated pain but
instead heard the crack of spiritual steel against solid air. Warmth spread across his back. He opened his eyes and found Ellen, buried
into his shoulder, shaking as she stared ahead.
She had gone pale and stiff.
She
whispered his name as he turned. Deidra
had put herself before him, her body curled forward with broken bone and fresh
blood forced from her back by the intrusion of Abel’s spear. The spearhead jutted well beyond Deidra’s
broken body. The air in front of her
shimmered, and she held the shaft of his weapon tight with her bloody
hands. Abel tugged his weapon from her,
and she fell backward into Isaac’s waiting arms. They fell together, Isaac landing on his
knees.
“Why,” he
whispered, holding her around the shoulders, forgoing any attempt to save
her. She was gone. It would be a struggle even to breathe. He clutched her even more tightly. “Why would you do that?”
Deidra
smiled and touched his face, her fingers leaving bloody lines across his
cheek. “My shield wouldn’t hold. I knew that, and I,” she coughed, hard, wet,
fatally, “Children shouldn’t die first.”
Then, sadly, as an apology, she said, “I love you, Isaac.”
“After
everything you did, after leaving me alone with him.” He hugged her, cradling her corpse. “Now, you’re leaving me again.”
Nearby,
Cornelius screamed and charged Abel with his blade up and gleaming in the
twilight. Isaac watched them meet, and a
single, short lunge ended it all. Abel
caught Cornelius in the face with his spearpoint and pinned him to the earth. His head went one way, his body the
other. Then, Abel turned to them,
covered in blood, expressionless. “We
are done now,” he said, and he took another step forward.
This time
Shana intercepted him, jaw tight and Voice ready. Like Alex before her, she was now willing to
give her life to save Abraham.
: Covenant :
“I am
sorry, Alex, but I need to ask you for another favor.”
Abraham
spoke with urgency, and Alex could feel it in her words. “Okay.”
“At this
rate it might be impossible to save you, but I can send you back for a time,
and when I do, I need you to deliver a message for me. Tell them to stop, to give me over to Abel.”
Alex
listened without judgement, save for a small part of her still tethered to her
body. This will be her way back, when
Abraham is ready to send her, but it is also what caused her to hesitate. This small part of her recoiled at the
thought of surrendering to the man who killed her. “Why,” she asked, “They’re fighting for
you. To protect you.”
“They’re
dying to protect me, and they’re dying for no reason. I came to you because I was afraid of what
Abel was, not of what he has become. I
am so much more than him, and I am sorry I ever burdened you to begin
with. Someday, maybe, you’ll understand
what I mean, but a man is far more frightening when they care. What he is now is nothing to me. For now, even if you don’t understand, I need
you to trust me.”
Alex did
understand, and she understood also that she wouldn’t always understand. For then, she could see Abraham, the true
Abraham, and knew that she was so much more than a little, frightened
girl. She was life, and she was the long
shadow life cast. In the afterlife, Alex
realized, everything was so stark, simple, and clear. It was attachment that warped perceptions,
and perception warped everything else around it.
“Okay,”
Alex said, and she could feel Abraham’s joy.
It shined in the void.
“Thank you,
Alex, and thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Everything you’ve sacrificed. I am so sorry that it ever came to this.”
“Don’t
be. I’m not. It gave me something to live for.”
: Covenant :
Abel stood
with his lance ready, poised to strike.
The battle was already over.
Shana wasn’t even an obstacle between him and his goal. She was nothing more than another body. Isaac, the strongest of those remaining, was
crouched beside him, holding his mother’s corpse and looking pale and weak.
The blood
on his spear pooled at the tip and fell.
He watched it with expressionless fascination and spoke without emotion
or investment. “In all this protest,
this is what you achieve. Failure and
death. I do not wish to kill you, or the
Lady, and but I will have her. I will
change it, change everything, and become the god needed to set things
right.” His flat tone added weight to
his words, but it lacked the conviction of a man who believes. He looked at her, his eyes empty like the
air. “I will be a god who understands
humanity. Trust me.”
Shana
stared back at him, her disgust showing in the tightening of her brow and the
grimace of her face. “Trust you,” she
said, her voice shaking. “Trust
you? To be human? Please!
You don’t have anything even remotely human left in you. You’re empty, stuck here in your own little
kingdom, plotting and planning and killing anyone in your way. No. I won’t trust you, and I won’t let you
become a god, because you’d be terrible at it.” Shana lifted her Voice, her
knuckles white from holding to it so tightly.
Standing before him was a struggle.
Fighting him was a literal fight for her life. It was hard to be brave in the face of death,
but Alex’s memory demanded it. She kept
her feet planted. “She would never
forgive me if I gave up now.”
“I will
remove you.”
“Go ahead
and try.”
That was
when what remained of Alex coughed and rolled onto its back. Choking, it sputtered until blood bubbled and
ran out of its open mouth. Its hair grew
dark with old blood which had pooled beneath it, sticking the dirt to its
scalp. Shana paused, looking past Abel
to Alex’s breathing corpse. Color was
returning to it. Shana wanted to thank
God and all of His angels, but it didn’t seem right. She wasn’t ready to believe it was real. She hazarded a hesitant, “Alex?”
Ellen
touched Shana’s shoulder and recoiled when she flinched. “Go to her,” she whispered, and Shana looked
back, nodded, and bounded away. Ellen
took her place, standing between Abel and the covenant as a human shield. She knew that she couldn’t stop him for long,
or at all, but she felt better about dying than doing nothing.
Shana
kneeled at Alex’s side and lifted her bloody head. Alex’s flesh remained cold and pale, but
there was warmth returning to her.
Alex’s eyes were slightly foggy.
Shana hugged her tight. “Alex?
Alex! Please, tell me you’re alive. Please!”
Alex wheezed. “Sort of.
Not much time. Listen. Tell Ellen.
Tell her to let go. To give up
Abraham.”
Shana
stammered, struggled for thought.
Everything had happened so quickly that the events were running
together, smearing into a contradictory blur.
Tears ran down her cheeks as cold blood gathered in her palms. “What? Alex, no. What are you saying? Everything we’ve done,
everything we’ve fought for to this point…Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Yes. I understand it all. I can see.
Clearly. Abraham. She’s so much. More than we understand. It’s what she wants. Trust her.”
Shana
looked up from Alex, to the waiting Ellen.
Abel watched. They both did. They could hear everything, and everyone was
suspended in space, waiting to see what Alex would say next and what Ellen
would do. Shana fixed her eyes on the
covenant. “Alex, are you sure about
this?”
“She
is. I trust her. You should, too.”
Shana
sighed. “Okay,” she said, and she heard
a faint breath and felt Alex go. She set
her to rest and closed her eyes. When
she looked up, she wiped her tears and found Abel waiting. Ellen stood her ground. She was crying now, too.
“No. I won’t back down. This is a trick. I don’t believe this.”
Isaac
frowned from where he squatted and set his mother’s body into the dust. He stood beside Ellen and pulled her
close. She flailed and scratched against
him, and he held her still until she fell, crying, into his chest. He gave Abel a glassy-eyed stare that seemed
out of place on him and said, “Just do it.”
Abel
watched, monetarily, and then nodded. He
willed his Voice away and made his approach.
Before the covenant, the red light it gave off casting dark shadows
across his face, he pressed his palm to its smooth, shining surface. It was warm to the touch and pulsed. The light grew faintly, at first, and then
shined. The covenant slid open, light
spilling now from its exposed innards, a bloody, blinding light.
The
covenant parted like fruit, and Abraham rose from within. She stood, wet and naked, her childish body
changing on contact with the air. She
grew tall and old, becoming a woman, perhaps even a mother, in the space of a
breath. Her hips blossomed. Her skin gleamed. Her figure was round and soft, and she
radiated patient warmth and divine grace.
Impossibly,
she touched Ellen’s shoulder and whispered to her. “It will be okay.” Then, she turned to Abel and cupped his
cheeks. The air around her shifted,
spiraling and twisting, catching her hair and making it dance like a crow’s
feather caught on the wind. “Everything
will be okay.”
Abel
changed, too. His eyes went dark and
wide as everything rushed back to him.
Emotions washed over him like a torrential rain. Confusion, hurt, surprise, anger, solitude,
and loss, each sprang through him and swelled within him. He felt each one acutely, and most of all, he
felt. Leaning forward, Abraham placed a
single kissed upon his forehead, and he screamed.
Light
filled him. It filled his skin, and his
eyes, and his mind. Since coming to the
Emotion, his every thought was how to control her. Only now, when he came to this point, did he
realize that she was beyond control. In
his tempestuous emotions, he conjured his Voice and plunged it into her. The earth splintered under his weight, the stones
parting from his sheer force of will.
Abraham, however, remained unharmed.
She
replaced her lips with a single pale finger and brought him to his knees. Kneeling with him, she hugged him, and Abel
cried like a child into her bosom as he screamed. “No. No!
NO!” He repeated it as his
mantra, and she shushed him patiently until he fell into a silence. Once he was calmed, she smoothed his hair and
soothed him.
“Don’t you
worry, darling. Everything will be
okay. I understand you’re confused, and
you’re frightened, and you’re so very ephemeral. And I know you’re guilty, too, but I forgive
you.”
When she said that, it was all
over.
: Covenant :
Again, Alex receded into her
shapeless, formless self. Warmth faded,
and the light went with it. Then, they
returned. Like the tide coming in,
warmth and light seeped into her in slow pulses. Her anxieties, her concerns, her happiness,
her friendship, it all faded in and out.
She floated in the nothingness, but she could feel it all at the very
edge of her perception.
She could feel Abraham, too, a
tangible thing formed from the nothingness.
A dark curtain of hair obscured Abraham pale form. She was a child again, but she moved with the
poise of an adult. Her eyes were large
and dark, sparkling with the cosmos inside of them. She smiled at Alex, and she spoke with all
the gravity and weight of a world.
“Thank you, Alex. Thank you so much. You have done well.”
They hugged, formless and fully
formed. Alex felt the warmth again, and
it was then that Alex realized the warmth she felt was Abraham surrounding
her. She realized also that Abraham
smelled of flowers, and that reminded her of Alicia, and it made her
smile. “What happened to him after he
opened the covenant?”
“He got what he wanted,” Abraham
said, cradling Alex in her arms and in her heart. “What he really wanted, I mean. He had been confused for a long time, and
hurt, too, but I set him on the right path.
Sometimes, people just need to be shown another path.”
“How did you do it?”
“I opened his heart, returned his
emotions to him, and sent him on his way.”
“Sent him on his way?”
“Yes.” Abraham ran her fingers through Alex’s
hair. Though she was smaller than Alex,
she seemed more the adult between them. Abraham was safe and serene, and Alex
wondered briefly if they were in heaven.
Abraham continued, “I returned him to where he began, to where we all
began.”
“So, he died?”
Abraham laughed. “Nothing dies, Alex. It all just passes.” She smiled.
“You should know that by now.”
Alex didn’t know, and she didn’t
understand the distinction between the two, either. Earlier she would have, she thought, and but
her return to her body had left her feelings disorganized and her mind
cluttered by sensation. Everything that
had made so much sense to her before seemed so far beyond her
comprehension. Even trying to remember
how that felt, though, was more than she could handle, so she decided to let it
go. She turned her mind toward other
things. “And what about Shana? Did she
pass, too? Where is she now?”
“No. She went back to the physical world, where
she belongs. You should be there, too.”
“But, I thought I…”
Abraham put a finger to Alex’s
lips. “Thank you, Alex, for helping
me. And for being my friend.” Then, Abraham released Alex to drift. They floated together, watching each other,
feeling each other. Then, taking Alex’s
cheeks, Abraham kissed her forehead and shoved her away. They parted like ships at sea.
: Covenant :
The sheets were softer than Alex
remembered, and the air in the room was crisp and cool. Ellen kept it that way, needing the hum of
the air conditioner to lull her to sleep at night. Light slipped in through the slats of the blinds,
adding a soft glow to the room’s interior.
Alex rolled onto her stomach, stretched, and thought that she could
stand to miss her morning class.
Then, she jerked up, head-first,
into the ceiling and gave a curse. “What
the hell?” She winced, holding her head
as she curled into a ball. It hurt, and
she felt every throbbing jolt. She went
wide-eyed. “Wait. I feel?”
Alex lifted her top, felt around her sternum, and found a long, thin
scar where Abel had pierced her. She
released a sigh, brows knitted.
Next, she rolled onto her side to
examine the dorm room. It was both foreign
and familiar. She was alone in the early
morning, lying in her bunk. The wall
hadn’t been exploded out across the field, nor were there any signs of damage
or reconstruction. Her body, she found
upon closer examination, was largely whole and entirely unchanged, save for
that single scar and the lingering memories.
She slid from the bed and pulled on
a pair of pajama bottoms. Every part of
her ached, like she had been sleeping for a week. She attempted to stretch out the kinks and
found only moderate success. Outside,
the halls were empty, as was the commons.
Her feet were cold against the slick, glossy tiles. It was the weekend, she reasoned, as there
were too few people there for it to be a weekday. She went to the front door and found Ellen and
Isaac outside at the smoking benches.
Isaac appeared to be crying while Ellen comforted him.
“Oh, you’re up. Good.
I was feeling kind of weird just walking around on my own.”
Alex turned to find Shana
there. Like Alex, Shana was unharmed and
showing no sign of adventure, except for the careful way in which she carried
herself. Alex hugged her on sight,
grateful for the warmth of her touch and the smell of her skin. Shana hugged her back, and they held each
other’s arms after the embrace ended.
“So, it was all a dream,” Alex
said, though her scar contradicted that.
Shana led her to the couch, and Alex settled beside her.
“You think so? I don’t know. I just feel like, in my heart, it was real.”
Alex stared at the far wall in deep
thought and decided Shana was right. All
of it was confused in her head, but all of it was there. She knew, in her heart, she could trust her
body and her mind, and she knew also that she could trust Shana, too. The battles, the Emotion, her death, it had
all happened. She lifted her right hand
and, if she stared long enough, could almost see Three Gods there, wrapped
around her wrist.
“We all woke up together in your
dorm room,” Shana said. “Isaac was with
us, too, but he left early and only just came back. He and Ellen have been outside ever
since. I think something happened.” She glanced at them through the window. “Oh, and we checked the date while you were
sleeping, and it’s only a few days before all of us were sent to the Emotion.”
“The a few days before?”
“Yeah. Before he left, Isaac told Ellen that
something similar had happened to him when he left the Emotion for a little
bit, except he was sent even farther back, but I don’t think it’s exactly the
same.” Shana stretched her arms overhead
and then sighed. “Also, Isaac’s mom,
well, she,” Shana picked at her fingernails as she spoke, “It seems like the
people who died in the Emotion, well, they stay dead.”
Alex stared at the far wall still,
and she thought of the scar under her shirt.
She wondered what Abraham did and how she did it. Then, her mind caught up to the conversation,
and her eyes went wide. She jumped up
from the couch and sprinted down the hall to Carolyne’s room.
: Covenant :
Three hours later, Alex and Shana
joined Ellen and Isaac outside.
Together, the four of them watched the paramedics haul off the
body. Shana wore one of Alex’s long
sweaters to keep the cold Spring air from nipping at her skin. It fit her like a dress. The police stayed only a moment longer. Alex had answered all of their questions
absently, as if passing through a dream.
They told her that they may contact her again, but that it seemed
unlikely. She stared at the dorm with
blank acceptance, feeling but not letting herself be overwhelmed by the
feelings.
Silence ruled, interrupted only by
the stirring of the trees. Isaac had
calmed and now stared like Alex. His
eyes were red, and he seemed tired. Ellen held his hand. Shana held Alex.
“So,” Ellen said after some time,
“Carolyne is?”
“She passed in her sleep,” Alex
said. “The paramedics said they couldn’t
determine the cause. The coroner will
have to figure it out.” Alex squeezed
Shana’s hand. “But we know.”
“It’s all connected,” Isaac
said. His voice was rough and distant,
lacking his usual energy. “Our bodies,
our souls, and our spirit. If one goes,
then the others just…” He brought his
hands together, knitting the fingers into a weave. Then, he pulled them apart. “Whatever is left just withers.”
Alex opened her mouth to
speak. She paused, licked her lips, and
swallowed. “Then how come I survived?”
Isaac looked at her. So did everyone else. His gaze was tired. To her, he seemed older. “I’m not sure. From what I saw, I would have thought you
would be gone.”
“You survived because you have
something to live for,” Shana said, and she held Alex even tighter.
Alex laughed warily. “I guess I do, even if I don’t know what that
is right now.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Shana
said. “And that, by itself, is enough
for now.”
