Elysium: Book Six of The Liminality

Chapter 39: Haven

It was so weird seeing Karla. She looked so desperate trying to reach me before the fade got her. The look on her face! Just utter hopelessness. It was almost like watching her die. And I should know. I had seen her die before, that time she blundered into the fellstraw. She really is a mess lately. I feel bad for her, I really do.

It's so typical and just our luck for her to fade just as she is about to reach me. It's enough to make a guy believe in curses, the things we've been through. A lot of it was self-inflicted on both sides. But I like her. I love her. I always have. Always will. We can't ever be together. We don't fit. But I know where she's coming from, and she knows me like nobody else does.

I promised Dad we'd go find Mom. So I fish around for another likely strand. The one I choose this time I had rejected before because it was nothing special. Just a thin strip of color one end, a little more on the other end and a whole lot of black in between. It's worth a shot. I mean the other strands remaining in my collection have pretty much the same asymmetry on one end or the other. I can't even tell which end is supposed to be me.

I can't lie. The asymmetry bothers me. It means that someone means more to you than you do to them, or vice versa. How could the colored part be so thin for both of us? I mean, I could see how the mind weaving could undo's Mom connection to me, but how could it affect my feelings for her? Those hadn't changed. All I can do is stick the strand in a slot and see what happens.

Bern and Lille assure me that they can stick around and wait for Karla. Zeke is all puffed out and humming so he knows we ain't staying put and is all for moving on. Dad's there twiddling his thumbs, still looking a little lost and numb. It kind of reminded me of how he would act after an argument with Mom when she would give him the silent treatment for days.

"You ready?" I ask.

"As ready as I'll ever be," says Dad.

"Okay, then. Here we go."

I slip the strand into a slot. It meshes with Zeke and we're off. Even before the petals are sealed we are rising. Zeke is nervous. I don't think he wants to be in this realm anymore and I can't say I blame him.

So I can see right away that we're not rising straight up so that tells me we're staying in realm again. Zeke's probably not too pleased about that. I can also see that we are headed up the valley, not towards the pitted plains, so that narrows our destinations to a few places really where I could reasonably expect to have soul connections.

The marsh lands. New Axum. Penult. Or maybe the outposts on the beaches across the channel from Penult.

Zeke tends to go fastest when our destinations are further away and though he's zipping along pretty quickly, so I have a pretty good idea where we'll be ending up. After an hour or so of drifting, if going a couple hundred miles an hour could be called a 'drift," my hunch is verified.

New Axum it is.

***

Zeke bypasses the main part of town, the dense warrens that have been restored from ruins, and sets down in a sleepy and pretty little community in the heights. This was an overflow neighborhood during the siege, the last part of the old city to be reclaimed when I stayed here and it was always the least populated. A lot of folks skipped this neighborhood to build from scratch in the natural areas just beyond. So the place, for whatever reason, is kind of neglected. But with its overgrown ruins interspersed with renovated structures, it reminds me of the Axum I knew before it had been reclaimed, where only Old Ones deep in their long sleep dwelt.

We land in a garden that looks suspiciously familiar. There are thistles and bluebells growing everywhere and even some heather on the tiny barren bluffs that hem in the yard. The ground is carpeted in clover and fern.