Black Page 24

  A note that cried, I love you.

  Tom breathed in great gasps now. He stretched his arms out before him. His chest heaved on the warm sand. His skin tingled with each minute droplet of mist that touched him.

  Elyon.

  Me too! Me too! he wanted to say. I love you too.

  He wanted to yell it. To scream it with as much passion as he felt from Elyon’s water now. He opened his mouth and groaned. A dumb, stupid groan that said nothing at all, and yet it was him, talking to Elyon.

  And then he formed the words screaming in his mind. “I love you, Elyon,” he breathed softly.

  Immediately, a new burst of colors exploded in his mind. Gold and blue and green cascaded over his head, filling each fold of his brain with delight.

  He rolled to one side. A hundred melodies swelled into a thousand—like a heavy, woven chord blasting down his spine. His nostrils flared with the pungent smell of lilac and rose and jasmine, and his eyes watered with their intensity. The mist soaked his body, and each inch of his skin buzzed with pleasure.

  Tom shouted, “I love you!”

  He felt as though he stood in an open doorway on the edge of a vast expanse, bursting with raw emotion that was fabricated in colors and sights and sounds and smells, blasting into his face like a gale. It was as though Elyon flowed like a bottomless ocean, but Tom could taste only a stray drop. As though he were a symphony orchestrated by a million instruments, and a single note threw him from his feet with its power.

  “I love youuuu!” he cried.

  He opened his eyes. Long ribbons of color streamed through the mist above the lake. Light spilled from the waterfall, lighting the entire valley so it looked as though it might be midday. The entire company lay prone as the mist washed over their bodies. Most shook visibly but made no sound that could be heard above the waterfall. Tom let his head drop back to the sand.

  And then Elyon’s words echoed through his mind.

  I love you.

  You are precious to me.

  You are my very own.

  Look at me again, and smile.

  Tom wanted to scream. Unable to contain himself, Tom let the words flow from his mouth like a flood.

  “I will look at you always, Elyon. I worship you. I worship the air you breathe. I worship the ground you walk on. Without you, there is nothing. Without you, I’ll die a thousand deaths. Don’t ever let me leave you.”

  The sound of a child giggling. Then the voice again.

  I love you, Thomas.

  Do you want to climb up the cliff?

  Cliff? He saw the pearl cliffs over which the water poured.

  A voice called over the lake. “Who has made us?” Tanis was on his feet, crying out this challenge.

  Tom struggled to his feet. The rest were scrambling to their feet. They yelled together above the thundering falls, “Elyon! Elyon is our Creator!”

  Like a display of fireworks, the colors continued to expand in his mind. He gazed about, momentarily stunned. None of the others looked his way. Their display was simple abandonment to affection, foolish in any other context, but completely genuine here.

  The voice of the child suddenly echoed through his mind again.

  Do you want to climb the cliff?

  Tom spun toward the forest that ended at the cliff. Climb the cliff? Behind him the others started running into the lake.

  Giggling again.

  Do you want to play with me?

  Now inexplicably drawn, Tom ran up the shore toward the cliff. If the others noticed, they showed no sign. Soon only his own panting accompanied the thundering falls.

  He cut into the forest and approached the cliffs with a sense of awe. How could he possibly climb this? He considered turning back and joining the others. But he had been called here. To climb the cliffs. To play. He ran on.

  He reached its base, looked up. There was no way he could climb the smooth stone wall. But if he could find a tree that grew close to the cliff, and if the tree was tall enough, he might be able to reach the top along its branches. The tree right beside him, for example. Its glowing red trunk reached to the cliff ’s lip a hundred meters up.

  Tom swung himself up onto the first branch and began his ascent. It took him no more than a couple of minutes to reach the treetop and climb out to the cliff. He dropped from the branch to the stone surface below. To his left he could hear the thundering waterfall as it poured over the edge. He stood up and raised his eyes.

  Before him, water lapped gently on a shore not more than twenty paces from the cliff ’s edge. Another lake. A sea, much larger than the lake. Shimmering green waters stretched to the horizon, neatly bordered by a wide swath of white sand, which edged into a towering blue-and-gold forest topped by a green canopy.

  Tom stepped back and drew a deep breath. The white sandy swath bordering the emerald waters was lined with strange beasts who stood or crouched at the water’s edge. The animals were like the white lions below, but these seemed to glow with pastel colors. And they lined the beach in evenly spaced increments that continued as far as he could see.

  He spun to the waterfall and saw at least a hundred creatures hovering above the water cascading down the cliff, like giant dragonflies. Tom eased back toward a rock behind him. Had they seen him? He studied the creatures hovering with translucent wings in a reverent formation. What could they possibly be doing?

  So this was Elyon’s water. A sea that extended as far as the eye could see. Maybe farther.

  “Hello.”

  Tom turned around. A little boy stood not five feet from him on the shore. Tom stumbled back two steps.

  “Don’t be afraid,” the boy said, smiling. “So, you’re the one who’s lost?”

  The small boy stood to Tom’s waist. His brilliant green eyes stared wide and round beneath a crop of very blond hair. His bony shoulders held thin arms that hung loosely at his sides. He wore only a small white loincloth.

  Tom swallowed. “Yes, I suppose so,” he said.

  “Well, I see you’re quite adventurous. I believe you’re the first of your kind to walk these cliffs.” The boy giggled.

  Incredible. For so small and frail a boy, he held himself with the confidence of someone much older. Tom guessed he must be about ten. Although he certainly didn’t talk like a ten-year-old.

  “Your name is Thomas?” the boy asked.

  He knows my name. Is he from another village? Maybe my own? “Is this okay? I can be up here?”

  “Yes. You’re perfectly all right. But I don’t think any of the others could get past the lake to bother climbing the cliff.”

  “Are you from another village?” he asked.

  The boy stared at him, amused. “Do I look like I’m from another village?”

  “I don’t know. No, not really. Am I from another village?”

  “I suppose that’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “Then do you know who called me?”

  “Yes. Elyon called you. To meet me.”

  There was something about the boy. Something about the way he stood with his feet barely pressing into the white sand. Something about the way his thin fingers curled gently at the end of his arms; about the way his chest rose and fell steadily and the way his wide eyes shone like two flawless emeralds. The boy blinked.

  “Are you like a . . . Roush?”

  “Am I like a Roush? Well, yes, in a way. But not really.” The boy raised an arm to the hovering dragonfly creatures without looking their way. “They are like Roush, but you may think of me however you want now.” He turned his head to the line of lionlike creatures lining the sea. “They are known as Roshuim.”

  Tom eyed the boy. “You . . . you’re greater, aren’t you? You have greater knowledge?”

  “I know as much as I’ve seen in my time.”

  The boy definitely wasn’t talking like a small boy. “And how long is that?” Tom asked.

  The child looked at him quizzically for a moment. “How long is what?”

 
“How long have you lived?”

  “A very long time. But far too short to even begin to experience what I will experience in my time.”

  The boy scratched the top of his head with one hand. He spoke again, staring out to the sea. “What is it like to come to Elyon after ignoring him for so long?”

  “You know that? How do you know that?”

  The boy’s eyes twinkled. “Do you want to walk?”

  The boy turned to the white sandy shore and walked casually without looking back. Tom glanced around and then followed him.

  It was as light as day, although Tom knew it was actually night.

  “I saw you looking out over the water. Do you know how great this sea is?” the boy asked.

  “It looks pretty big.”

  “It extends forever,” the boy said. “Isn’t that something?”

  “Forever?”

  “That’s pretty clever, isn’t it?”

  “Elyon can do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s . . . that’s pretty clever.”

  The boy stopped and walked to the water’s edge. Tom followed him tentatively. “Scoop up some of the water,” the child said.

  Tom stooped, gingerly placed his hand into the warm green water and felt its power run up his arm the moment his fingers touched its surface—like a low-voltage electric shock that hummed through his bones. He scooped the water out and watched it drain between his fingers.

  “Pretty neat, huh? And there’s no end to it. You could travel at many times the speed of light toward the center, and never reach it.”

  It seemed incredible that anything could extend forever. Space, maybe. But a body of water? “That doesn’t seem possible,” Tom said.

  “It does when you understand who made it. It came from a single word. Elyon could open his mouth, and a hundred billion worlds like this would roll off his tongue. Maybe you underestimate him.”

  Tom looked away, suddenly embarrassed by his own stupidity. Did he underestimate him? How could anyone ever not underestimate someone so great?

  The child reached up his frail hand and placed it in Tom’s . “Don’t feel bad,” he said softly.

  Tom wrapped his fingers around the small hand. The boy looked up at him with wide green eyes, and more than anything Tom had ever wanted to do, he desperately wanted to reach down and hold this child. They began walking again, hand in hand now. “Tell me,” Tom asked. “There’s one thing that I’ve been wondering about.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve been having some dreams. I fell in the black forest and lost my memory, and ever since then I’ve been dreaming of the histories.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Word gets around.”

  “But can you tell me why I’m having these dreams? Honestly, I know this sounds ridiculous, but sometimes I wonder if my dreams are really real. Or if this is a dream. It would help if I knew for certain which reality was real.”

  “Maybe I could help with a question. Is the Creator a lamb or a lion?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Some would say that the Creator is a lamb. Some would say he’s a lion. Some would say both. The fact is, he is neither a lamb nor a lion. These are fiction. Metaphors. Yet the Creator is both a lamb and a lion. These are both truths.”

  “Yes, I can see that. Metaphors.”

  “Neither changes the Creator,” the boy said. “Only the way we think of him. Like me. Am I a boy?”

  Tom felt the boy’s small hand, and his heart began to melt because he knew what the boy was saying. He couldn’t speak.

  “A boy, a lion, a lamb. You should see me fight. You wouldn’t see a boy, a lion, or a lamb.”

  Five minutes of silence passed without another word. They only walked, a man and a boy, hand in hand. But it wasn’t that. Not at all.

  And then Tom remembered his question about the dreams.

  “What about my dreams?”

  “Maybe it’s the same with your dreams.”

  “That both are real?”

  “You’ll have to figure that out.”

  They walked on. It might have been a cloud, not sand, that they walked on, and Thomas wasn’t sure he’d know the difference. His mind was reeling. His hand was by his side, moving as he walked. In it was this boy’s hand. A tremble had set into his fingers, but the boy didn’t show he noticed.

  Clearly he did.

  “What about the black forest?” Tom asked. “I’ve been in it. I may have taken a drink of the water. Is that why I’m dreaming about the histories?”

  “If you’d chosen Teeleh’s water, everyone would know.”

  Yes, that made sense.

  “Then maybe you can tell me something else. How is it that Elyon can allow evil to exist in the black forest? Why doesn’t he just destroy the Shataiki?”

  “Because evil provides his creation with a choice,” the child said as though the concept was very simple indeed. “And because without it, there could be no love.”

  “Love?” Tom stopped.

  The boy’s hand slipped out of his. He turned, brow raised.

  “Love is dependent on evil?” Tom asked.

  “Did I say that?” A mischievous glint filled the boy’s eyes. “How can there be love without a true choice? Would you suggest that man be stripped of the capacity to love?”

  This was the Great Romance. To love at any cost.

  The child turned back to the sea and gazed out.

  “Do you know what would happen if anyone did choose Teeleh’s water instead of Elyon’s water?” the boy asked.

  “Michal said the Shataiki would be freed. That they would bring death.”

  “Death. More than death. A living death. Teeleh would own them; this is the agreement. Their minds and their hearts. The smell of their death would be intolerable to Elyon. And his jealousy will exact a terrible price.” The boy’s green eyes flashed as though strobes had been ignited behind them. “The injustice will be against Elyon, and only blood will satisfy him. More blood than you can possibly imagine.”

  He said it so plainly that Tom wondered if he’d misspoken. But the boy wasn’t the kind who misspoke.

  “If they become Teeleh’s ,is there a way to win them back?” he asked.

  No response.

  “Anyway, I can’t imagine anyone ever changing or leaving this place,” Tom said.

  “You don’t have to leave, you know.”

  “Except when I dream.”

  “Then don’t dream,” the boy said.

  The idea suddenly sounded like such a simple solution. If he stopped dreaming, Bangkok would be no more!

  “I can do that?”

  The boy hesitated. “You could. There is a fruit you could eat that would stop your dreams.”

  “Just like that, no more histories?”

  “Yes. But the question is, do you really want to? You’ll have to decide. The choice is yours. You will always have that choice. I promise.”

  It was early in the morning when the boy finally led Tom back to the cliff, and after a great big bear hug, Tom descended the red tree, made his way back to the village, and quietly sneaked into bed in the house of Palus.

  He might have been mistaken, but he was sure that he could hear the sound of a boy’s voice singing as he drifted off to sleep.

  23

  Thomas.”

  A sweet voice. Calling his name. Like honey. Thomas.

  “Thomas, wake up.”

  A woman’s voice. Her hand was on his cheek. He was waking, but he wasn’t sure if he was really awake yet. The hand on his cheek could be part of a dream. For a moment he let it be a dream.

  He relished that dream. This was Rachelle’s hand on his cheek. The strong-headed woman who kept showing him up with her fighting moves.

  “Thomas?”

  His eyes snapped open. Kara. He gasped and jerked up.

  “Thomas, are you okay?” Kara, face white, stood back staring
at the bed. “What is this?” But Tom’s eyes were on the air conditioner where rolled white sheets had been cut and Monique had been freed. She was gone.

  “Thomas! Talk to me!”

  “What?” He looked at her. “What’s —” The sheets were wet. Soaked in red. Blood?

  Tom scrambled out of the bed. He’d been lying on sheets soaked in his blood. He grabbed his chest and belly as visions of the attacker shooting into his body flashed through his mind. Two silenced shots. Phewt! Phewt!

  Yes, there was that, but, more important, there was the lake and the boy. He looked up at Kara.

  “God is real,” he said.

  “What?”

  “God. He’s . . . wow.” His head spun with the memory of the lake. He could feel a wild grin tempt his face, but his mind wasn’t working in full cooperation with all of his muscles yet.

  “Well, at least I dreamed that he’s real,” he said. “Not just real, like wow he exists, but . . . real, like you can talk to him. I mean, maybe touch him.”

  “Very nice,” she said. “In the meantime, here, where I live, we’re standing next to a bed covered in your blood!”

  “I was shot,” he said.

  She stared at him, unbelieving. “Are you sure? Where?”

  “Right here. And here.” He showed her. Chest and gut. “I swear I was shot. Someone broke in; we fought; he shot me. And then he must have taken Monique.”

  “I called you. Was that before or after?”

  “You called before. He was here when you called.” Suddenly Bangkok was making more sense than the lake. “Actually, I think your call unnerved him. The point is . . .” Yes, what was the point?

  “The point is what?”

  “I’m not dead.”

  Kara looked at his stomach. Then his eyes. “I don’t get it. You’re saying that you were healed in your dreams?”

  “It’s not the first time.”

  “But you were shot, right? You were shot and killed. How’s that possible?”

  “I don’t know that I was killed. I lost consciousness. But there, in my dreams, I was lying on the shores of the lake. The air was full of mist from the waterfall. Water. The water is what heals. I was probably healed before I could die.”

  He pulled the sheets from the bed, grabbed the mattress. Flipped it over. Kara hadn’t removed her stare.