A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3) (24 page)

he sparkling greens of the upper forest layers danced across Tiva’s face. She spent her days alone now, with nothing to do after cleaning and baking but wait for the Hollowers to gather. With Khumi working late all the time, she had shed his limit on going to the Hollow only two nights a week.

What am I supposed to do—sit around until he needs me for food or sex?
She cursed the day, now more than seven years ago, that he’d accepted work with his father. Even the other Hollowers that had hired on as labor thought the whole project was a joke. Tiva had even overheard some of their friends laughing at them behind their backs. Worse, certain Zakes worked under Khumi—still a Youngblood—and resented him. There had even been fistfights recently. Khumi had never gotten into fights before the ship job!

Now he’s talking about carrying one of U’Sumi’s hand-cannons! This gnaws
regally! I can’t handle it anymore!

Tiva lay flat on the upper platform of their tree house and pouted. She wanted to eat a seers’ button to escape the festering silence, but Khumi had told her not to during work days, until he came home—a last bastion of her husband’s authority she had yet to disregard. She knew he had them numbered, and her stomach still hurt from eating a different, poisoned kind she had mistakenly picked on her own in a desperately bored rebellion against Moon-chaser’s old warning. It hadn’t killed her, but the vomiting, diarrhea, and headaches had made her wish it had.

It was still hours before the Hollowers would show up. Tiva rolled onto her stomach.
Khumi’s gonna work late again like a flaming wood-head!

A rustle came from the base of the platform ladder. Tiva tensed up in her “I’m being watched” panic,
then shook it off, and looked down over the side. Her muscles relaxed.

Sariya the daughter of Zebuli, Tiva’s outcast “elder sister” from
“Lit Land,” speedily wiggled up the ladder like a lithe brown lizard.

“At last, company!” Tiva said. “I’m bored out
a my skull without holes!”

Sariya shot up over the edge, rolling onto the platform in a single fluid motion that tumbled her up
, seated cross-legged. “Go to! Wanta eat a button?” She held out two big mushrooms she must have held in her fist while she climbed or somehow pulled from one of her miniscule wrap-around garments during her forward roll.

Tiva’s spirits lifted. The fact that Sariya had
only one button for each of them was not the letdown it would have once been. Since cutting down her intake, Tiva had found that it took less of the psychoactive fungus to bring her to spiritual harmony. Moon-chaser had explained once that it took a few years for the mushroom’s essence to build up in her brain, during which it required larger doses. Eventually her body became saturated. Now, only one button released the combined power of the saturation.

“So where ya been, S’riya? We hain’t seen you for months—have you lost weight?” Tiva asked, chewing her button.

“Don’t tell Moon-chaser—he thinks I was visiting my sister in Sa-utar—but I was pregged, and went to sacrifice it at the Khavilak Temple. My luck to draw fertile on my first mega-cycle! I’m not ready for baboes yet!”

Tiva tried not to show
her revulsion, but it must have reached her eyes.

Sariya laughed.
“I know that look! I was afraid at first too, and felt real guilty about it. The priestesses said I should tell a friend when I got back. I figured you wouldn’t mind. You don’t, do you?”

The fleeting fright in Sariya’s eyes melted Tiva’s heart.

She reached out and clasped Sariya’s hand. “No, I don’t mind at all—thanks for thinking of me that way. Look, I’m sorry, it was just a shock—you said it so quickly is all.”

Sariya averted her eyes. “S’okay. I understand. But it’s not like we were told as little girls. The baboes don’t suffer
because they can’t feel anything yet. It’s not like a bloody dragon-worshiper offering with fire, and all that. The Temple makes it a beautiful and meaningful experience.”

Tiva really didn’t want any more detail than necessary, but her mouth asked, “How?” before she could stop it.

Sariya reached into a pouch inside her bottom sash and pulled out a violet crystal that seemed to give off a light of its own. The dancing facets flickered in her eyes. “It’s a Life Crystal,” she explained. “The priestesses gave it to me to remind me that my sacrifice was done out of love for my babo. I’m not ready to raise children, and Moon-chaser definitely ain’t about to settle down. Can you think of anything sadder than for a child to come into the world unwanted?”

Tiva asked,
“Did it hurt you?”

A fleeting hollowness touched Sariya’s eyes,
and then vanished like a vapor. “A little, but they’re not evil people at the Temple, like our fathers told us. The priestesses were nice enough. They listened to my problems, and even took care of me until I gave birth, and was ready to leave. They gave me this Life Crystal, and told me that my babo will help make the world a better place—as much as if she had lived to grow up—more even! They said her creation codes and stuff would help them cure diseases, and make it so we can get closer to immortality.”

“It was a girl?” Tiva instantly regretted asking.

Sariya looked up from her crystal and giggled. “Yeah. I can feel her life force smiling out at me through this sacred stone any time. Wanta see?”

Tiva reluctantly took the stone from her friend. The seers’ button had not yet affected her perceptions—it still just felt like a shiny rock.

“Look into the facets.”

Tiva stared into the crystal. The light inside seemed to grow and recede, probably with the muted sunshine that sprinkled down on them through the trees. She tried to feel if there was any life in the cold radiance, but couldn’t find any. She handed the gem back to her friend.

Sariya said, “I found out something else while I was down there.”

“What’s that?”

“The Temple has found a cure for red-sore.”

“No kidding.”

“I took it.”

“Go to! You mean you had red-sore and didn’t tell Moon-chaser!”

Sariya laughed. “Of course not! The priestesses said it would prevent the disease too. Face it kid, with a guy like Moon-chaser, a girl needs all the security she can get. If you’re smart, you’ll go take it too. I know Khumi’s sees himself as a one-woman guy, but he’s only human.”

Tiva didn’t entirely know why she resented Sariya for saying that
; just that she did. “I’ll think about it,” she said diplomatically.

“You’d better. My sprites tell me that your relationship with Khumi isn’t as secure as you think.”

“Your what?”

“My sprites.”

“I’ve heard the word ‘sprite’ used in poems and fables, as in a mythical little specter that watches over trees and streams—but what do you mean?” Tiva hoped for an entertaining answer to help her forget about infant sacrifices before the seers’ button fully kicked in.

“How long have you been eating buttons?”

“About seven years, why?”

“It’s been fun, but hain’t it all been fragmented, like a half-done house, or too few hints to a really hard riddle? Or maybe it’s like a place you really want to get to, but just when you turn the next corner and think you’ve arrived, a sign says that there’s still another week’s journey ahead?”

Aeden. I want to get to Aeden with Khumi! But just when I think I’m there, all the rules change, and I have to start all over again.

Tiva whispered, “Yes, it’s all broken somehow.
”

Sariya said, “That’s where a sprite comes in. It’s like an inner voice that tells you the meaning of the experiences you have while you’re under the button’s spell. In time, you can even get to where you don’t need buttons to reach the upper realms
anymore. But between you and me, I’m not nearly there yet, and I’m in no hurry!”

They both laughed.

“I need something like that sprite thing,” Tiva said. “Most of my button journeys are fun, but sometimes they get real scary.”

Sariya gave her a knowing smile, her golden eyes alive with promising futures. Her full head of obsidian curls danced in the gentle treetop breeze. “A sprite is like your own private guide who takes away the fear when the visions get scary. They help you calm your inner battles, and get rid of old heart-burdens from your past…”

Old Lit baggage!

“Just let yourself get quiet while the mushroom takes you,” Sariya said. “I know now that I’ve been led here today for a deeper purpose—not just for secret girl talk!”

Tiva allowed herself to “get quiet” as best as she could, and waited.

Usually these days
, the mushroom’s effect crept up on her slowly. This time her whole body instantly reeled with reality-warping energy. The tree platform veered sideways until it almost went vertical. Tiva rolled onto her stomach, and felt like a fly clinging to a wall.

“Don’t be afraid, just flow with it,”
sang the amplified voice of a goddess-like Sariya.

“It’s incredible!” Tiva said, tingling all over with a musical energy.

“Look inside.”

Tiva closed her eyes, and sank deep into herself. The warm darkness swirled, as she gently fell through murky greenish-brown inner space. Shadows of memories faded into being, repetitive, angry, and disturbing. The groping hands of Yargat clutched at her from out of the blackness…

“Nooo!” she screamed.

“Take control of it,”
said a friendly little voice that did not belong to Sariya.

“How?”

“Speak a new reality into existence! Create it with your words.”
The voice was somehow vaguely familiar, and yet refreshingly new.

Tiva said something—she didn’t know what. The groping hands of Yargat melted into Khumi’s gentle caress—her fire-sprite—the way he was when they first met. The darkness brightened to a golden Aedenic glow.

“There now, you have the power, see?”
said the Voice again. It sounded to Tiva like some boyish wood nymph, yet it rang with an ancient quality, wise, venerable, and somehow comfortably familiar.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Pahn, the voice of the forest. My name means
All
, and I am in all that is Nature. I’m here to take you back to Aeden always and forever.”

A’

Nu-Ahki awoke in a cold sweat. His heart thumped madly in his ears. The nightmare still shook his body as if the earth itself quaked.

He had watched, while Khumi and Tiva sat together in the forest. A huge wasp-like creature had landed on Tiva’s shoulder, and started to crawl all over her face and body. It jabbed her with its hideous pumping stinger repeatedly. Wherever it struck, swollen, pus-filled wounds rose in her skin. She smiled with numb indifference, while the creature covered her with inflamed welts, and wiggled under her clothes to reach every portion of her body. When the demonic insect had finished stinging, it crawled into her mouth and disappeared, head first, down her throat with a gurgling sound.

Khumi then turned to her, as if he had not seen the creature at all, and kissed her swollen, ulcerated face. When he pulled away, his mouth puffed out with a sting wound…

A’Nu-Ahki flew out of bed, ready to fight some violent intruder in his home. Instead of lashing out with his fists, or drawing the sword he kept hidden beneath his mattress, he hit the floor on his knees, and wrestled in a desperate spirit-battle for the life of a young girl he still hardly knew.

After centuries of inability to penetrate the spiritual ramparts around the region of Q’Enukki’s fortress, several fallen Watchers had finally broken the siege into Akh’Uzan.

Thou hast seen what Azazyel has done, how he has taught every species of iniquity upon earth, and has disclosed to the world all the secret things which are done in the heavens.

—
1 Enoch
9:5 (Ethiopic Manuscript)

1
1

Encounters

Tiva first saw the Stranger from a distance.

She had been on one of her morning walks above Grove Hollow, along the narrow game trails that twisted through the woody northern foothills. At first
, she thought he was just a boy, younger even than she was. He flitted from tree to tree, as if to taunt her playfully—though she was sure that he could not possibly see her hiding in the tall grass at the crest of a knoll in a wide clearing. He wore only a fawn loincloth with strapped leggings of goatskin to protect his thighs and shins from the scraping underbrush while he sprinted from tree to tree as if chasing something.

Tiva smiled at the fantasy that he was chasing her—though he could not know she watched him.

The Stranger paused, and sniffed the air. Tiva saw that he was not really a boy, just small and wiry—like Khumi—and about his same age. He pulled a set of Iyu’Buuli pipes from his leggings, and began to play the most haunting melody. The music resonated with the trees in a wild cacophony, as the Stranger began to dance up and down the clearing. His antics reminded her of her husband’s fire dancing, and widened her nostalgic grin.

Presently
, the piper retreated to the woods again, his melody fading into the trees until Tiva’s heart ached.

She saw him again several nights later, amid the dancers at Grove Hollow. He still wore his
fawn loin cloth and goatskin leggings, as he cavorted around the bonfire. When the music faded, the Stranger vanished into a crowd of drinkers on the other side of the fire pit, by the waterfall.

Tiva got up, and crossed the clearing to follow him. When she pushed her way through the drinkers, she found only a few lovers entangled by the pool. The Stranger was not among them.

That night, Khumi did not come home from the shipyard. Tiva sat up, humming the Stranger’s tune to herself while she drank herself to sleep.

When she woke up, it was almost noon, and her head hurt. She had cleaned the tree house top to bottom only yesterday. Since Khumi
had spent the night at the drydock, there was nothing to straighten up except after her own small breakfast of flat-bread and cinnamon-seasoned olive oil.

Tiva decided to walk off her headache. She began up the stream bed trail to the Hollow, and from there onto the foothill paths. It only occurred to her that she was heading to the same clearing where she had first seen the Stranger when she emerged from the trees and climbed the small hill to her grassy hide. She reclined where she had watched him from the other day and waited.
What am I doing? What are the odds that he’ll come this way again? Why do I even want him to?

She lay there
for over an hour, and only became conscious that she was humming the Stranger’s tune softly to herself just before she got up to leave.
I wish I had a seers’ button so I could talk to Pahn—maybe he can make sense of what I feel.

Tiva rose out of the grass, and trudged back down the hill for the forest trail. Late afternoon golds already deepened before she reached the main path to Grove Hollow. That was when she heard footsteps behind her, and felt that same old sense of
“being watched.”

Tiva quickened her pace.

Several twigs crunched about forty cubits back.

She turned, and kept walking backward but saw nobody on the trail.

Panic hit, and she ran a couple hundred cubits. When she stopped, she heard nothing at first, until several birds in the trail-side bushes were frightened into flight somewhere behind her.

Tiva screeched,
“Who’s there?”

Silence.

If she were nearer to the Shrine, she would have been sure that Yargat hid in the trees. She turned, and started to run, hoping to find somebody at the Hollow—preferably Moon-chaser.

“Please wait!” cried a boyish voice from behind. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Tiva halted and turned.

The Stranger rounded the bend in the trail at a trot.

“I’m really sorry, please don’t run away.”

“Why are you following me?” Tiva demanded.

“It’s not what you think. You were just on the path, and I was hurrying to catch up.”

“Why?”

“You were humming my song.”

Tiva was glad her dusky complexion wouldn’t reveal her blush in the forest shadows. She had not been aware that she was still humming.

“I was curious how you knew it,” said the Stranger. “It’s special music I only play when I’m alone with the forest.”

“Who are you?”

“Some call me Kernui. You?”

“Tiva.” She almost added,
“Wife of Khumi,”
but stopped herself.

“Hello
, Tiva. I think I saw you at Grove Hollow last night.”

“I was there.”

“I rather like that place.” He gave a boyish grin that reminded her so much of Khumi that she almost smiled back at him.

“I’ve not seen you there before last night. Where do you live?”

“Oh, here and there.”

“That’s not an answer.”

His smile widened. “You never answered how you knew my music.”

Her eyes fell to his feet. “I heard it in the forest a few days ago. You must have been piping somewhere near the trail I was wandering on.”

“Why do you wander?”

The question caught her off guard. “I just take walks. It clears my head. Is that so strange?”

“No. You just seem lost somehow—and lonely.”

She meant to glare at him, but found that her anger melted when their eyes met. “Loneliness is nothing new. Why do you roam the forests? Are you also lost?”

“Some think so, but I don’t.”

“Then why do you think I’m lost?”

“I didn’t say I thought you were lost, only that just now you seemed lost somehow.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Not really.”

Tiva smiled at him. “So where do you live?”

He grinned back at her, and stepped closer. “Right now I live here.”

“At Grove Hollow?”

“No. Right here.” He pointed to where he was standing.

She laughed. “So you do wander.”

“At times.”

“Do you need a place to stay?”

Kernui’s eyes had a playful glow. “Are you making me an offer?”

Tiva shuddered. “I meant that I might ask around for you. I know the people here.”

“A woman of influence?”

“Not really. The Hollowers took me in once when I had no place else to go. They can be good that way. I just wanted to help.”

“But you already have.”

Tiva’s lips quivered. “How?”

“When a wandering vagabond gets to walk with a pretty girl, it is always a help.”

I should tell him I’m married,
thought Tiva. Instead, she asked, “Are you just a wandering vagabond?”

“My father thinks so.” Kernui began to walk slowly toward the Hollow, and Tiva moved up beside him to keep pace.

“Don’t feel so bad.” She glanced at him sideways. “My father thinks I’m a whore.”

Tiva could not believe she had just said that, but the words were already out.

Kernui seemed to take it in stride. “I don’t believe that. You look too honest, too genuine.”

“You don’t know me. Maybe I’m just an honest, genuine whore.”

“Or maybe your father’s a jackass.”

She laughed. “Maybe.”

“Still, it has to hurt.”

Tiva focused her eyes back on the path. “No more than if my father called me a vagabond.”

“Oh, I think quite a bit more—if you’ll excuse my saying so.”

Tiva would have excused him for saying just about anything. “You’re probably right. I just haven’t thought of it in years.”

“So where do you live if your father has disowned you?”

“I didn’t say he disowned me.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“That obvious, huh?”

She almost didn’t notice when he slipped his arm around her shoulder. Before she could even think, she found herself liking it there.

“There’s nothing wrong with a little transparency.” Kernui nudged himself closer.

Tiva meant to say something, but when she turned to face him, they stopped walking. Kernui clasped her other shoulder, and she found herself kissing him. She almost melted completely into his embrace—did melt for several seconds. Then her heart almost stopped.

She pushed him away gently. “I’m sorry. I’ve given you the wrong idea. I’m a married woman.”

“At your age? You seem awfully young.” His wild eyes danced in the leafy gold.

“I’m young to be married, but I am married.”

For a moment, she feared the hunger in his eyes—that he would force her off the path into the bushes. They were close enough to the Hollow that her screams would be in earshot. She prayed he would realize this.

Kernui smiled, stepped back from her
, and bowed. “Then your husband is a lucky man, and your father is wrong about you.”

Tiva watched him dash off into the woods as she began to cry softly to herself.
You don’t really know me at all, Kernui.

The evening inversion winds began to moan through the trees overhead, while the voice of Yargat ripped her to shreds again from the inside
out.
Now you’re not just a whore, you’re an adulterous one.