Krymzyn (The Journals of Krymzyn Book 1) (18 page)

Tork and Larn untie the rope from Sash, reattach the pillow to the end, and throw it back into the river. While they guide it down the rapids, I take several long, deep breaths, allowing myself to finally feel relief.

I look down at the river in front of my feet. My head starts to spin and I fall backwards onto the rock. I brace my hands on the granite, glancing up at Sash and trying to wave. She’ll know what’s happening.

A giant wave splashes off the side of the rock and high into the air in front of me, silver foam filling my vision.

*             *             *

“Sash,” I whispered to my computer screen.

As soon as I stopped shaking and strength returned to my hands, I slid the chair up to my laptop. When I watched the recording of my seizure over and over, frame by frame, I was amazed by what I saw.

I dove for the Frisbee, slid on my knees across soft, warm sand, and whipped the disk back to my dad. He snagged it one-handed from the air before jogging across the beach to me.

“That’s all, Chase. I’m worn out,” Dad laughed.

I stood and gave him a sweat-soaked grin. The planets had aligned, the weather gods had smiled, and we had a beautiful, warm, sunny Friday at Zuma Beach. I turned to my mom and sister, who were sitting on a blanket spread out on the sand.

“Ally, come for a walk with me,” I called, motioning to her with my hand.

“Not now, Chase. Mom and I are chillin’,” she replied, wrinkling her face.

“Come on,” I said.

I walked to the blanket, leaned down, and lifted Ally by the arm to her feet. As she stood, a feigned frown on her face, I was instantly reminded of Tela. Maybe I just wanted to see a resemblance between them, comforting my mind that I could find a surrogate in Krymzyn to replace my sister.

We strolled along the edge of the water, calm waves breaking onto the shore and white foam lapping at our feet. I’d started taking the anti-seizure medication as soon as I’d returned from the trip to the Mount. I’d had a lot to take care of over the past week and wanted everything in place before my Ritual in Krymzyn, just in case the outcome wasn’t what I hoped for.

I’d spent late nights in my studio working on the painting to leave for my family, only sleeping an hour or two each night. Since the cancer was still in an early stage, the only symptoms I’d experienced were headaches, mild nausea, and occasional blurry vision. I’d been able to hide them all from my family, despite how tired I’d felt.

Every moment of the day, every second I could, I’d spent with Mom, Dad, and Ally. When feelings of sadness and anxiety would hit me, panic at times, I’d ease my mind by telling myself that I didn’t have to go through with it. But I knew I would.

Mom had said to me that she’d be more upset at my missing my chance for happiness than she would be if I moved away. She hadn’t known that moving away meant never seeing each other again, but that didn’t lessen the meaning of her words. My chance for happiness was in Krymzyn.

For a few minutes on a slab of black granite in the center of a savage river, I’d had that chance taken away from me. When the breath of life had returned to Sash, I’d vowed that I would do everything I could for as long as I lived to make sure that chance never slipped away again. Those minutes on the rock, a scene from her own Vision of the Future, had been meant for me—final, absolute confirmation that my life belonged in Krymzyn.

After we walked about a mile, Ally filling me in on her junior year at Berkeley, I sat on the sand and looked out over the ocean. Ally sat beside me, both of us watching as the sun quickly fell to the horizon.

“You know, we’re lucky we grew up the way we did,” I said. “We just have, like, a perfect family.”

She turned and smiled at me. “Yeah, we are lucky. It’s funny to hear you say that, considering all you had to go through.”

“That didn’t matter,” I said, looking out over the waves, splashes of sunlight on their crests. “Shit happens, you know. But the important stuff has always been there for us. I mean, I hope they know how much I love them and know that you and I appreciate everything they’ve done for us.”

“They do,” Ally replied, still smiling.

“Ally,” I said softly. “I want you to know that I love you. I mean, I know I was an asshole sometimes. That’s just how big brothers are. But you’re the best sister a guy could ever have.”

She paused before answering. “Why are you saying this stuff, Chase?” She reached one arm around my shoulder, her voice cracking. “It’s back, isn’t it?”

“Two tumors,” I said, nodding. “They’re both malignant.”

Her hands shook as she reached her other arm around me, smothering me in a hug. Tears dripped from her face onto my shoulder. “What did they say?” she sobbed in my ear.

“Six months to two years. Who knows? There’s always a chance for full recovery. The surgery is in a few weeks,” I lied, wanting her to return to school. “I haven’t told Mom and Dad yet. Please, Ally, I don’t want you to say anything. I’ll tell them after you go back to school. I just wanted us to have this week together.”

“I won’t say anything,” she said, trying to control her tears. “This really sucks. I love you so much, Chase. You don’t deserve this.”

“I’ll let you know the exact date of the surgery so you can come back if you want to,” I said, continuing my string of lies.

“Of course I want to be with you,” she replied.

Sitting on the sand, we held each other for several minutes. Then I leaned back to look in her eyes.

“Ally, I have to tell you something, and you have to listen to me. You’re going to think I’m crazy, but you have to listen.”

She nodded, never taking her eyes off mine, and bit her bottom lip.

“You know all those pictures I’ve drawn over the years . . . and you’ve heard me describe what the doctor called a hallucination when I was younger.”

“I remember,” she said. “Mom thought you obsessed over it so much to escape reality.”

“It
is
reality. I go there, like to another dimension or universe or something, and I know for a fact it’s real. If I die on Earth, there’s a way I’ll still live in that world.”

She smiled at me, but it was a sad, patronizing smile, as if to say, “If that helps you get through this, it’s okay to believe that, and I won’t say anything to dispel your fantasy.”

“Ally,” I said firmly, “come to my studio late tonight, after Mom and Dad are asleep. I’ll prove to you it’s real.”

Curiosity momentarily reflected in her eyes. I pulled her close again and hugged her without saying anything else. We both looked out over the ocean, our arms around each other, watching the sun until it touched the water. When I was sure her emotions were completely under control, we walked back to our parents.

Late that night, Ally knocked on my locked studio door. She was leaving the next afternoon to go back to school. This was my only chance to try and convince her it was all real. I opened the door, walked her around my easel, and stood her in front of the four-foot-by-three-foot canvas I’d been working on all week.

I watched Ally’s pensive reaction as she studied the oil painting of Sash and me on top of the Tall Hill. In the painting, our hands were clasped tightly together, spears dangled from our other hands, and our feet were surrounded by crimson blades of grass. Under billowing clouds, brilliant streaks of scarlet and orange high above our heads, we both had peaceful smiles on our faces. I’d added a huge sustaining tree to the side of the hill in the foreground that wasn’t accurate as far as its location, but no one on Earth would know the difference. The Mount of Krymzyn rose behind us in the distance, majestic in its forest green glow.

“Geez, Chase. You’ve been drawing that girl since you were twelve,” Ally said.

“Her name is Sash,” I replied, “and the love we share, the way I feel about her, is more real than anything I’ve ever felt with anyone here.”

She slowly turned her head to me and frowned. “Do you realize how incredibly fucked up that sounds?”

“Yeah, I know, but listen. Have you ever had a recurring dream, but the exact same amount of time passes in between your dreams and in real life? Like, when you wake up from your dream on a Tuesday morning, in the dream it was Tuesday morning as well? Two days later, Thursday night, you reenter the dream and it’s Thursday night in the dream? Like the dream and real life are in perfect sync, and it happens over and over?”

“No, of course not,” she replied.

“Well, that’s what happens when I go there. Hallucinations don’t work that way, Ally. Everything is sequential when I go. People age the same amount as I do between visits. I mean, I first went when I was twelve, then seventeen, and now twenty-three. Everyone there has aged the exact same amount as I have. If I make a plan for something while I’m there, then it happens the next time I go. My seizures are only seconds here, but I can be there for hours during them.”

“That’s kind of weird,” she finally answered after a few seconds of thought.

“I want to show you something else,” I said.

We stepped to my desk, and I turned my laptop towards Ally. The video was already queued, so I clicked play and showed her the recording of my seizure. In the video, my body suddenly convulsed, legs stiffened, and hands jerked away from my body. Then I just sat in the chair, shaking, with drool dripping from my lower lip. Right before the seizure ended, my entire body jolted again like I’d been hit by an electric shock.

“I’ve seen your seizures in person,” Ally said quietly.

“But you never saw this,” I replied.

I scrolled back to the beginning of the seizure and zoomed in to my face. Stepping through the video frame by frame, I showed her the first convulsion forwards and backwards, making sure we saw the same frame over and over. In only one frame, dull beams of amber light streamed out of my eyes straight towards the camera.

“What is that?” Ally asked.

“Watch,” I said.

I scrolled to the end of the video, to the last flex of my body before my muscles relaxed, and stopped on a frame. The same amber light flared from my eyes.

“Where I go,” I said, “they do something called ‘blending their light.’ They merge their own bodies with rays of light. It’s complicated. The amber light you see is what takes me there.”

Ally stared at the screen for a few seconds then turned to look at the painting again. For a brief moment, I saw belief in her eyes.

“This isn’t proof of anything, Chase,” she finally said, shaking her head. “That could just be a computer glitch, or maybe you even painted those on there.”

“I didn’t touch the video,” I replied.

“It still isn’t proof of anything,” she argued.

“If the cancer kills me,” I said, knowing that it wouldn’t be cancer that killed me, “I want you to know I’m alive there. I have pages and pages of all that’s happened to me in a journal. You can also look at my drawings. I have hundreds of them you haven’t seen. You’ll know, Ally. You’ll know I’m there, and you have to convince Mom and Dad it’s all real so they know I’m safe.”

Ally shook her head and started to cry. I stepped to her, and we hugged tightly.

“Just keep an open mind, Ally,” I said in her ear. “You know I’m not a psycho. Besides, maybe I can beat it.” The last words were said only to calm her down.

“It’s sure a beautiful painting,” she whispered. “The best you’ve ever done.”

“Thank you, Ally. Anyway, you’ll come back before the surgery so we can talk more about it then,” I said, lying to her yet again. “I just wanted you to see this before you left.”

I hated deceiving her, but it was the only way she would return to school without saying anything to our parents. She spent another ten minutes just studying the painting and then went to bed.

I’d stopped taking the anti-seizure meds the day before, wanting to get them out of my system as soon as I was ready to return for my Ritual. A headache had started that afternoon, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. They were gradually getting more frequent as the cancer spread through my brain.

As the headache amplified, shooting from the back of my neck into my temples, I knew what it was. I had just enough time to hit record on my laptop and sit in a chair before the seizure started.

Sash sits ten feet down the Empty Hill with her back to me when I arrive. I know she knows I’m here, but she doesn’t turn to me. After walking to her, I sit on the grass beside her. Slipping one arm around her waist, I pull her close. She nuzzles my neck with her nose.

“I would have come sooner,” I say. “Not that I can really control it, but I had a lot to take care of in my world.”

“I understand,” she says. “When I last slept, I saw you return in a dream, so I’ve been waiting for you.”

She lifts her head and turns her face to mine. I lean forward and kiss her lips.

“Have you recovered?” I ask.

“Yes, I’ve healed,” she says. “Thank you again for what you did, Chase.”

“It’s just what we do for each other,” I reply. “What happened to Miel?”

“She’s still part of Krymzyn. Her body was taken to the Bed of Light on top of the Mount, and she’ll always be with us.”

“I’m really sorry, Sash. You did everything you could to save her. I should have done more to help.”

Sash shakes her head. “Tela did the right thing. Neither of you had weapons, and the Murkovin would have killed you both.”

I lower my eyes to the grass between my feet. “I feel like it was my fault Miel died.”

“You can’t ever blame yourself for events you don’t control,” Sash replies. “Apprentices are taught to always get to safety in the face of confrontation. They’re not ready to fight Murkovin. If you and Tela had joined the fight, Larn and I might have been killed trying to help you.”

We sit silently side by side for several minutes, arms around each other. I try to accept Sash’s reasoning but can’t help feeling like I should have done more.

“Tela’s no longer an Apprentice and is now serving her purpose,” Sash finally says.

“Good for her. She deserves it.”

“Two Darknesses have passed since you departed. After each, a man and a woman were chosen for the Ritual of Balance. Two children will be born, one to replace Balt and one to replace the Watcher who died at his hands. Another child is still needed to take the place of Miel.”

“You weren’t chosen for the Ritual, were you?” I nervously ask.

“I told you before,” Sash says softly. “Hunters are never chosen.”

I let out a slow sigh of relief. “Any sign of Balt?” I ask.

“None,” she replies, a look of disgust on her face. “He’ll soon be a Murkovin.”

“I want to talk more about Balt. I gave him a lot of thought back in my world, but let’s wait until we see the Disciples.”

She nods her head, takes her flask from the rope on her waist, and hands it to me. “Drink the sap,” Sash says. “You should have all of it.”

I slowly drain the contents of her flask, feeling the energy pulse through me before I hand it back to Sash.

“Sink your fingers into the ground,” Sash says, “and whisper what you want most from Krymzyn.”

I dig the fingertips of one hand into the dirt below the red blades. “I want to know if I have a purpose in Krymzyn,” I whisper.

Sash takes my hand in hers, holding it up for me to see, and golden light sparkles from my palm. In the distance, I hear a single ring of the bell.

“The first bell,” Sash says with a smile. “You’ve finally reached the height of purpose.”

I have to smile as well. I honestly think she’s learned to make a joke. She swings a leg over me, rests her hands on my shoulders, and kneels on my lap. I slip my hands around her waist. We kiss and then hold each other tight.

“You seem to know what the children’s purposes are before they’re revealed,” I say. “Any idea what mine is?”

As she leans back and looks into my eyes, the smile leaves her face. “With you, it’s different. I haven’t been shown anything. But I believe the Tree will see what I see inside you.”

“What’s that?”

“Balance,” she replies. “Maybe instead of a third child being born, you’ll be the one to return Krymzyn to the number of balance.”

“I love you, Sash,” I say, smiling. “You’re the only person who can ever make me feel this way. No matter what happens in my Ritual, I wouldn’t trade what I’ve felt with you for anything.”

“I love you, Chase. As long as I live.”

Another ring of the bell crosses over the hills. I remember that Tork told me that the second bell summons the people of Krymzyn to the Ritual.

“I guess that’s for me,” I say. “How do the people on the Mount know it’s time for a Ritual?”

“They can hear the bell on the Mount,” she replies.

I guess her answer doesn’t really surprise me. If the atmosphere can translate our languages, I’m sure it can carry sound waves where they need to go.

After another tight embrace, we both stand. We hold hands as we casually stroll to Sanctuary. I estimate that it will take about twenty minutes for the people on the Mount to reach the Delta, so I don’t feel the need to rush.

I look at Sash’s face as we walk, inhaling the beauty in her eyes, face, and scarlet-laced hair. Occasionally, I stop to hold her close to me, feeling the sudden need for her body pressed against mine. She describes amazing places in Krymzyn she wants to show me, and experiences she wants us to share. I try to imagine our lives together in a world so different from mine, but with the person I know I belong with.

We eventually cross over the Telling Hill, walk through the last meadow, and climb to the top of the hill overlooking the Tree of Vision. A few people already stand on the hilltops, looking down at the crimson field. The dark red limbs of the Tree, a stark contrast to the brilliant yellow leaves, gently sway in a breeze that isn’t there. The Disciples stand beside the bell in a semicircle with their backs to us.

We descend the hill, and Sash leads me to the front of the Disciples. My back faces the Tree of Vision, and the bell pole stands at my side. All seven Disciples drop to one knee and bow their heads.

“With gratitude, Chase,” Eval says, “we honor you for risking your own life to protect those in the grace of Krymzyn. You’ll always be remembered as the one person from another plane who truly understands our balance.”

I kneel in front of them. “It’s my honor to do what I can for Krymzyn.”

“I know that to be true,” Eval says as we all stand.

“Someone here told me once,” I reply, “that if words are spoken in Krymzyn, they’re the truth. I’ve learned to live by that statement.”

For the second time since knowing her, I see a hint of a smile appear on Eval’s face—for my benefit—and a look of warm appreciation in her eyes. I glance at Tork, and he nods, knowing my reference.

“Before we get this thing started,” I say, “I need to tell you something important. I think I know how the Murkovin are getting into the Delta.”

“Please share your thoughts,” Eval replies.

“When I dove in the river after Sash, I saw a woman with blond hair, kind of webbed fingers, and fins instead of feet.”

“A Serquatine!” Eval exclaims.

“She grabbed Sash when I was swimming after her and then she helped us to the surface.” I look at Sash, who stares at me with absolute disbelief on her face.

“If you’d come into contact with a Serquatine,” Eval says, “she would have ended your life. They consider our blood a great delicacy.”

“Well, this one didn’t end my life,” I say to Eval. “She had rope around her neck, one hand tied behind her back, and her legs were bound together. I untied the rope and freed her. I don’t think she could’ve done it with only one hand and those webbed fingers. After I helped her, she swam us up to the surface, and we made it to the rock.”

“That’s very strange,” Eval says.

“I gave it some thought and what I came up with is this. If the Murkovin captured her and tied her up, maybe they used her to cross the river, rode on her, or had her take rope across the bottom or something. Then they could cross the river during Darkness and scale the wall. I think it’s safe to assume that Balt was helping them.”

“An interesting theory,” Eval says.

“I also think Balt’s trying to kill Sash and using the Murkovin to do it.”

“Why do you believe that?” Eval asks.

“He’s feels threatened by how powerful Sash is,” I answer. “In my world, we have people called
sociopaths
—extremely bad people who don’t care at all about other people or society. I think Balt fits that description. When I was here and three Murkovin came into the Delta, they all went straight to where Sash hunts. If they wanted sap, it seems to me they would have just gone to a tree closer to the wall. They were here to kill Sash.”

I glance between Eval, Tork, and Sash. They all keep their eyes on me, but they’re in distant thought. Even as intelligent and intuitive as they are, a premeditated attack on someone here is a concept almost beyond their grasp. The people are pure, honest, and trusting. They battle the Murkovin, but the conflict is on a primal level. There’s no hatred involved. They accept the Murkovin as part of their balance. While I’m sure they’ve heard stories of evil from other planes, the thought of betrayal from one of their own is just almost beyond their comprehension.

“When you and I were in the Barrens recently,” Sash says to Eval, “I chased after a Murkovin.”

“I remember,” Eval replies.

“There was a trap waiting for me. I saw a vision and was able to stop before entering it. Balt was in the Barrens with us when it happened. He could have secretly alerted them that I was there.”

“He also saw us leaving for the Mount,” I say to Sash.

“You’re right. He was on the wall when we departed,” Sash says. “He could have entered the Barrens after we left, and organized the attack. Murkovin never attack so close to the bridge.”

Eval nods her agreement to Sash before turning to me. “What you say makes sense, Chase. We’re thankful for your insights.”

“I hope it helps,” I reply. “I’d check the edge of the river all around the Delta for any signs of where they come out of the water. Maybe there’s a rope secured along the rocks that leads to the other side.”

“And so we shall. Your help in this matter is yet another first,” Eval says.

“Well, let’s hope for one more first. By the way, just out of curiosity, are there seven Serquatine?”

“Yes, seven,” Eval replies, “but Serquatine aren’t considered to be among those in the grace of Krymzyn. While they serve an important purpose to our plane, they belong to the Infinite Expanse.”

I suddenly jump from the earsplitting clang of the bell beside me.