“THE NIGHT HAS passed.” Whether the voice came from a fading dream or not, Isaiah was uncertain of, but in either case it was what awoke him. The ground felt less viciously cold. Opening his eyes he saw it was now green and that the air had cleared around him.
“Will you allow me to guide you?” The voice asked, and he thought it sounded like the same one that’d been rather displeased with him when entering.
“I want out of here!” He yelled, trying to get to his feet. His right hip was aching, his chest was tight, and it was just barely that he managed to stand up.
“What is the fastest way out of here?” He tried more softly. Once again, he found himself in a lush, green area, but he did not trust any of its directions to lead to an exit point.
“Death is.” The tone was neutral, and he swallowed hard at the earnest response. It seemed this was the Parda’s wrath, and surely how the twelve had ended up either dead or severely disturbed (perhaps his father as well for all he knew). Worse was the fact, it seemed a tempting offer, though he felt a shade less fragile than he had some hours prior. Even this voice, unhuman and unemotional, seemed better than that endless silence.
“What did you come here seeking?” It asked.
“I swear on my life. I only came looking for my grandfather…you can keep your treasures.” he said and all of a sudden, the clear view started dissolving. First it was replaced by colors. All kinds of colors, brighter ones than he’d ever seen, inside of patterns he thought not even the most talented of sowers could recreate. Then, a total, blind blackness.
“Stop looking.” The voice was closer to him now, and he stumbled around trying to keep his balance.
“Give me my vision back!”
“Be calm, Isaiah.” Another voice (a woman’s) said, and he felt the pressure of a warm hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him forward. He thought he should scream, throw his arms around and try to escape, but resistance seemed futile. Instead, he let go, no longer caring much if he lived or died. No longer feeling fearful or opinionative on the matter. As if there was nothing left to lose or gain for remaining in his flesh. Shortly after, he felt he was no longer walking. With the warm hand still on his shoulder he felt himself floating like he imagined someone would do on a river. Instead of being on a fleet, he somehow was a fleet – blind as wood, thoughtlessly allowing the stream to carry him to any place it desired.
When his vision returned, it appeared like stars circling and dematerializing before his eyes. The first thing that met them was a waterfall. It was running down a tall hill and splashing into the beautiful, bleak blue lake that now reached him to his waist. His eyes followed it from the top down, and when he turned towards the shore behind him, he didn’t see his shadow or his reflection in the water. What he saw was his grandfather – his family, his flesh and blood. Theodore Aronin was sitting calmly by the shore, in the same garment (now slightly torn) he’d worn the last time he’d seen him, as if it’d been any ordinary day. Suddenly noticing him, he stood up on his bare feet and waved. Isaiah ran towards him and embraced him with an appreciation that only someone that’d just walked through a hell or three could.
“You are here...” Theodore cried hoarsely. His eyes filled with puzzlement.
“Yes! But we need to leave at once. I believe corruption has entered your head and you need help.” Theodore shook his head, his mouth half open.
“No. I am staying.” He stated.
“Please, it is important that you listen to me. You’re not thinking straight. We need to get out of here.”
“You, listen.” Theodore was calm, a peculiar steadiness behind his initial confusion, and though Isaiah sensed this, he felt alert. Suddenly aggravated, as if he’d just woken up and parts of his dream were still circling around him. “I know that I’m not.” He said, the faintest of smiles on his face.
“Okay.” Isaiah sighed, thinking as he had, that this part wouldn’t be easy. With no straightness in either of their minds, it seemed clever convictions or arguments would not lead them anywhere better. He hoped time would, that it was on his side now, as Wind had said.
*
Two days later (if they were to guess) Isaiah and Theodore Aronin still found themselves inside one of the Parda’s hidden gems. A place beyond any map ever drawn, where each person was left in their own navigation and narrative. They stayed close by the waterfall, feeling at least remotely safe and sustained. Other than some bushes of elderberries they lived by eating its fish and drinking its water. Theodore had, for the most part, been awfully quiet and Isaiah hadn’t minded much that he was. Having found a sense of calm, he felt happy just to see him alive, physically well, and at ease.
“How is your mind?” he asked, feeling (despite previous failure), it perhaps was time to reevaluate the subject.
“A wonder.” Theodore answered distantly, as Isaiah sat down next to him. They leaned on a big stone some ten feet away from the waterfall. Both felt the ghost of sunlight warming their faces.
“When we leave this place, we will get you help. I’ve found a healer, a doctor, and a chemist. One of them must be able to…”
“As I’ve told you, Isaiah, I will not let you trick me out of here.”
“I’ll stay here till you’re ready.” It was no new conversation – and in exceptional patience, Isaiah had already accepted the same answer thrice.
“You never go into the water.” He commented, finding casual subjects to flow easier between them.
“I’m afraid of water, you know that.”
“I’m sorry. I do know that.” He admitted, having heard the tale of how both his parents had been taken by the Deltan river when he was a boy. How he’d watched them drown, unable to do anything to save them. Theodore sighed.
“Do not be sorry, nature gives and nature takes. That is its way. People mostly just take…” He took a long breath. “I drink this water. It clears my mind, but it is no longer what it once was.” He’d already told Isaiah the water had some sort of miraculous healing qualities, which at least partly explained Mongoya’s thirst for it. If not ill, a man his age was undoubtedly vulnerable to become so. They’d also concluded it was this, rather than the herbal salve, that had healed Tzelem’s leg. Isaiah was yet to tell him about the leg’s (and his master’s) final fate.
“Maybe you need to walk into it. It’s okay if you’re afraid, I’ll be here to help you.”
“Another day, perhaps.” His lips smiled hopefully without fully reaching his eyes.
“Why does me being here make him sad? He should be happy.” Isaiah thought, and then he asked, “What kind of thoughts have come to you here?” Knowing it to be a question that required a longer answer. Theodore bent his neck backwards and closed his eyes.
“Very few were kind, but many have been honest... answers to things I’ve wondered about for ages.”
“Like what?” Theodore sighed, avoiding his gaze as he looked in the direction of the waterfall.
“I’ve always thought that if your father had grown up with a mother, things would have turned for the better. I see now that a mother like Elora perhaps only would’ve made it worse. That she was… disturbed and unfit for motherhood. I should have never made one out of her...“
“You told me you loved her more than anything.”
“I told you I loved her more than I loved myself – but it was a brief love… and I have come to realize that perhaps it wasn’t as true as what we led ourselves to believe. I convinced myself that I saw her differently than everyone else, which I still believe to be true in part. That’s the only reason she’d ever chosen a fool like me – not rich, handsome or even charming.” Theodore made a joyless, chuckling sound.
“You can’t possibly have been a fool. Mongoya told me you were among his greatest students.”
“If you only knew…” he said, his eyes seeming to be half the world away. “If I had only known it would come to this.”
“I’m sorry…”
“No.” Theodore cried, breathing heavily through his nose.
“For the first time I feel I’m loving all of her, or at least someone closer to who she truly was, even if she’s no…” he paused “no longer here. It’s just like falling in love with a ghost. Someone who will never return.” Isaiah wanted to suggest that perhaps they sometimes did. That at the very least, the voices of the departed were still among them somehow, but he could see that it wouldn’t ease his pain. No words could, and it occurred to him that perhaps they shouldn’t even attempt to. He saw it wasn’t his duty to remove it and that any heartache that came from love was one that needed to be felt. The pain with which the Parda taught her tough lessons.
“What thoughts have come to you, my boy?” Theodore asked once he’d gathered enough air. Isaiah bit his tongue. Over the past days he’d strangely noticed himself going back to the memory of the white bear. It was not a fearful one, rather, it seemed to walk around his mind, with an almost holy mercy about it. At first it’d arrived with an ache – almost like an uncanny longing attached to it – but now it seemed to mostly bring him an odd sense of ease and safety. Resembling the calmness he’d discovered during his first minutes in the forest. It was a beautiful thought, and yet, he felt his grandfather wouldn’t understand whilst being within this miserable enchantment with the long since departed.
“I’ve wondered about why you sent me away the first time.” He said instead, making Theodore look even more miserable.
“There were many reasons, Isaiah – none of them good enough, and none made by the man I once thought myself to be.”
“I forgive you.” Isaiah said, thinking he did and, if not entirely, knowing for certain that he wanted to. “Now, please tell me the worst one.” Isaiah said. Theodore looked at him, confusion adding another layer of sentiment to his teary, brown eyes.
“The day Tzelem came, I thought he was a guardian coming for you. I was very relieved to discover that he wasn’t, and thought it an opportunity to send you somewhere… safer. I used to know his father. He was a very resourceful man – and so I took a chance, assuming his sons too would be… good men. Men who could protect you.”
“Did you know of the Huxley fortress? That’s where I stayed all those years… as a captive.” Isaiah felt relieved as this truth left his chest. A captive. That was what he’d been, and the shame of this fact seemed to have dissipated. It seemed his grandfather didn’t care if he wasn’t a writer, and by being there now, he knew he needn’t say anything about the wild journeys he’d been on.
“I had heard rumors of it – both good and bad, but I never imagined they’d keep you there. He seemed so… fascinated by you.” Theodore paused. “Perhaps it was because of your name… some get blinded by names. Desperate men especially.” Isaiah wanted to tell him of Tzelem’s death – have it lifted off his chest once and for all, but he once again felt afraid he would see him differently. “He already does see you differently.” He heard himself thinking. As Theodore looked into the air, he opened his mouth to confess, but his grandfather was faster – faster to tell him the worst of the whole matter in three words so innocent, that nobody would think much of them at all.
“He saw you.”
“Saw me?” Theodore shook his head and abruptly got up from the ground.
“You asked on your 14th if things would ever be the same. I knew there and then the answer was no, and could have told you right then, but I didn’t.” His tone was suddenly sharp and accusing. “I had to bring you all the way here to tell you that...” He said, mostly to himself, as he strayed off.
“What is it you’re not telling me?” Isaiah followed him till he finally stopped in front of the pond. They both stared at the waterfall for some time, as if it would manifest some common ground for them to connect again. Understand each other as they once had.
“For some time after your departure…” he sighed, turning to look at him. This boy who he’d spent years looking at, and was now so exceptionally similar to his son. His son who he’d sensed since entering the Parda but was yet to find. “I was convinced you’d never existed at all. And a part of me… still believes you’re just an illusion. A trick of my own mind.”
“I… I’m here, grandfather. How can you say that? I was only away for four years!” Isaiah had thought he was ready to hear just about anything – no matter how strange, confusing or heartbreaking. He thought he’d be able to make sense out of it with this new, more neutral, state of being, and that whatever truth his grandfather had kept from him, might finally bring him some peace and understanding. Seeing the fear and confusion in his grandson’s eyes, there was nothing Theodore wanted more than to make it go away. He’d always feared this would happen. That his tongue would slip and reveal this fundamental question, that made every other question he’d ever had, seem utterly irrelevant. That of the boy’s (perhaps a man now) very existence.
“I’ve been wondering for much longer than that.”
“I don’t….”
“You don’t understand… and that is my fault too.” He breathed heavily.
“Then explain!”
“When your mother brought you to me, she had one mere wish: that I would keep you safe, for as long as I could. I thought the best way was to make you believe you could have all your questions answered from me and our ritual. That if I kept you from believing in things that seemed strange or unexplainable, things that might make you want to fight for something, you wouldn’t stray away the way your father did. There are few things more important than a mother’s last wishes…“
“You kept me from believing in what? Gods… places like this, even though you believed in it yourself?”
“I do not know what I believe in anymore. Gods are good for people who need hope. For those who need guidance and salvation. You didn’t need that – you were just fine until I… ruined you. I think there is something in our blood. Something that makes us mad if we can’t find truth. I truly tried to keep you away and I kept myself away from here too. For so long…”
“I didn’t come looking for truth, I came looking for you.” Theodore looked as he was about to walk away again, but he forced himself to stay put.
“I still don’t understand. I don’t understand what you came looking for or how you can stand there and tell me you don’t believe I exist!”
“They did everything they could to keep me away from this place. To distract me. I came to drink the water… it explains all the things I thought I wanted to know.”
“Well, how much more of it will you need to drink before you come to your senses?” Theodore looked at him. His eyes were much more distant now, as if he was staring at a ghost.
“Enough to drown it seems...there are many layers to deception.” He uttered, and then Isaiah saw it. All the fear, the remorse, the pain and everything dark and unresolved that he’d been unwilling to witness.
“You have to let me take you out of here. We need to go home.”
“My father used to say that when it becomes difficult to live simple dreams, it is time to wake up. It’s time for me to do so.”
“If you would just let me help you… “
“You need to leave me now, Isaiah.”
“No. I am done listening to you.” He said, then jumped into the pond just to wade around in it rather aimlessly. There was certainly something about the water there. Something that had made him feel at ease for some time, but just as all things, its effect had dissipated. Panic had taken over his body and he laid down on his back with his ears under the surface to silence its noise. Attempting to exist a little less vividly. To be as lucid as his grandfather saw him.