Micah and Samantha-Lee, send them to the mainland – if they allow them to live. My dad will take over, and help me rebuild the farm …
The chair jabs my side. I shift over and it jabs me in the opposite hip.
“Micah said you would be a hero, like your ancestors.” There’s no judgement in his voice, but the heat intensifies in my cheeks until my whole face is burning.
“Yes, sir.”
“So you agreed to assassinate the general to please your boyfriend, to secure his love for you.”
The chair jabs my buttocks.
“Your aim was to save your relationship, not to save the two thousand?”
“Well … it was both,” My voice fades as my shame grows. “Yes, sir.” My words are barely a whisper.
“You opened the portal, but your heart wasn’t pure, so you allowed Prospiroh to gain access. He has taken Theia. He is holding her captive and no god can intervene.”
Everything feels slippery, like it’s sliding away from me, into a black pit. How could I be so stupid?
“You have become the tree that spreads its roots upward, to admire the pretty birds that chatter in its branches. Your roots have forgotten to draw deep into the ground where the nourishment is. Nothing anchors you to the ground. With every windstorm you shake and rock.”
I don’t want to think about it.
“Reopening the portal will make Earth a defenceless target for Prospiroh’s storm bolts. He can destroy every last living thing. You cannot enter the real Celestia because you are still alive in your Earth form. You do not belong here yet. You need to go back and complete your journey through Earth. You will have to journey across Celestia until you reach the second portal that will take you home,” Francis says, leaning forward in his chair. He looks me in the eye, and I wonder if he can read what I’m thinking, if he knows my dad is out there with an alternative way home. “It’s a long way from here, and it will tax you to the end of your spirit. You will be alone for much of the way. You will encounter the angry dragon that lives inside you and tame it. It will give you time to grow and mature so when you return to Earth, as you must, you will be unshaken by the storms of life and the tasks that await you.”
“How do I get to your portal?” My dad’s one sounds so much easier, but Francis is taking so long. It might be closed by the time we reach it.
“You must cross the plain and climb the mountains until you reach the Fiery Spiral.”
“How will I know if I’ve found it?”
“It finds you, when you are ready. Come with me.” He reaches for his sticks and levers himself up. “Let me show you what I mean.”
He takes me into a courtyard garden smelling of jasmine and honeysuckle, and gestures to me to sit on the low wall around the well. He begins to turn a handle, and a bucket descends into the depths on a chain. A flock of white-eyes chatter in a shrub, twittering and jumping from branch to branch, and a chameleon rocks on a twig overhanging the doorway. I want to relax and enjoy it, but I can’t.
Why is it taking so long? My father didn’t want me to rescue Isi because there wasn’t time. What if he goes without me? I pick at the moss squeezing between the stones and watch the bucket coming up, centimetre by centimetre. Finally it’s in front of us, filled with glimmering water.
Francis leans over and pulls a fern from the clumps growing around the well. He dips it in the water and lays it next to me.
“What do you see?”
“It’s a fern.”
“What more do you see?”
“Um, a fern that hasn’t fully opened yet. With drops of water on it.”
He picks it up and runs his finger up the stem. “Can you see that it forms a spiral? It is straight at the bottom, but near the top it coils in on itself in ever-diminishing circles.”
Isi has followed us out, and now she rests her white head on my knee and gives a sigh.
“This is the form of the Fiery Spiral, the source of all that is,” he says. “It flows at the centre of everything, a river of light, of growth and wholeness. And our worlds are like the droplets on the stem.” He points to the glistening orbs of water one by one as he names them, “Celestia, Zulwini, Earth, Proskubia, which is the world where Prospiroh is holding Theia captive, Azuria, and so many more. The task of all living creatures, human, animal, god, no matter which world they inhabit, is to grow, to blossom, to bear fruit and to move on to the next world. And each world brings us closer to the centre of the Spiral.”
“The gods must move onward too? Surely they own Celestia and Earth and … wherever they live? Aren’t they perfect?”
“All beings must travel onward, perpetually onward until they reach the One.” He taps the head of the fern again, and his fingernails are waxy against the soft, green leaves.
“And then what happens?”
“We don’t know until we get there.”
I shake my head, trying to let the words filter through my brain.
“That is why your Earth is in trouble. The gods of Celestia are at war. They have stopped looking ahead to the Spiral. Instead they have turned inward, creating new worlds to focus on so they don’t have to see what keeps them trapped. Their bickering has become more important than the journey to the Spiral.”
Please hurry up, I think. I haven’t got time for a whole history lesson. “You have found yourself in a new world before you have blossomed. You were not ready to leave Earth, and so you cannot enter Celestia. Yet you must traverse it if you are to find your way back home.”
“Is that why Lucas can see things I can’t? Is that why he’s here?”
“Ah, Lucas.” His pale face softens into a smile. “Because he gave up his life to save you, and because he has the blood of the gods in his veins, he was able to move straight to Celestia.”
“So … I’m here in Celestia too soon, before I have finished my journey through Earth, and that’s why everything is bare and ugly. Why there are no animals or birds singing or insects. It’s because I’m not actually dead yet, like Lucas. Like Isi.”
“Isi is Theia’s dog, immortal, and able to transcend time and move between worlds, because her heart is pure. She lived on Earth with each of your ancestors, she lived with you at Greenhaven, and she is here now to help you make your journey. You used a portal to travel from one world to the next, but that portal is closed, so you must travel across this world, to the top of the mountains you see on the horizon. Another portal lies there.”
But my father is outside, ready to take me back to Greenhaven. Surely that’s easier. I can just go home, complete my life there as I normally would, until I die of old age, and then come back here to Celestia and see it as Lucas clearly does, as a beautiful place.
“There is only one way. Other ways may seem easier, quicker and far more pleasant, but be careful of tricksters, trying to get the necklace from you.” He reaches over and touches the amulets one by one. “Each world is like an amulet on a necklace and we must all pass through them one by one until we reach the end. We are all journeying, even the gods. When the time comes to hand it over, you will know it.” He leans down into a shelf carved into the rock wall, and brings out a small flask made of thickened glass. It swells out at the bottom like a bulb, and has a long, thin neck. He fills the bulb with water from the bucket and replaces the stopper.
“If you look into the water,” he says, holding it to the light before he hands it to me, “it will show you the way forward.” I close my fingers around it, feeling how neatly it fits into my palm.
“Go now,” he says, levering himself up with his sticks. “The journey is long