Just thought I'd save you some trouble. If you've never read Clearwater before, please read the first part of it, which starts at the beginning of Chapter one. It's down a little further in the fantasy fiction forum. Thanks.
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Divide and Conquer
Ronan watched from the cover of the trees as Sebastian called after Emma. He winced to himself and stepped out form his hiding spot. “Sebastian.”
“Wha. . .Ronan, what’re you doing here? Family outing?” Ronan could tell how worried the older boy was.
“Sebastian, we have to go after her and bring her back. She’ll get herself killed out there, alone. She’s got serious problems.
He nodded. “I’d noticed, actually. Come on, we’ve gotta get over the Fence, first of all.”
Together they hauled themselves up and over the top. Ronan paused, wondering if they were the first people to ever climb the Fence, to defy the rules engraved in stone and to drop noiselessly to the loam-carpeted ground on the other side of the Fence. Ronan looked up at Sebastian, who stood at least six inches taller than he did. Sebastian, at least, would know what to do. “She went that way,” Ronan said, pointing into the darkness.
Sebastian cocked his head and held out his index finger, the universal sign for be quiet I’m listening to something.
“What?” Ronan whispered.
“Listen, it’s like. . .crying.”
“I don’t hear anyth. . .wait, I think I do.” Stepping quietly, Ronan started off along the Fence, headed towards the faint whimpering that was barely audible even in the complete and utter silence of the forest.
A little girl crouched against the Fence, cradling a doll to her chest. She wore a pink dress that might have been pretty, before it was dragged in the dirt and torn across the knee. She was crying, a soft little moan that broke Ronan’s heart. He knelt beside her. “Are you alright?” he had never been very good with little kids. He always felt like he was treating them like half-wits.
Sebastian knelt beside him and took the little girl’s dirty hand. “Hey, hey, don’t cry, it’s okay. My name’s Sebastian. What’s yours?”
The little girl looked up at him and Ronan gasped. It was Jee, the little girl who was always skipping about in the center green and singing little songs from her TV shows. What was Jee doing in the other side of the Fence. She sniffled and wiped at her eyes, smudging dirt all across her cheek. “I’m Jee. Everything’s frozen. Why aren’t you frozen?”
Ronan let Sebastian do the talking. He’d probably just frighten the poor little girl even more. “How did you get out here, Jee? Did you climb that Fence all by yourself or was somebody with you?”
Jee looked at the porcelain doll that she cradled to her chest like a life-raft. “Nobody was with me, except for Lollipop. I’m scared. Can we go home?”
Sebastian turned to Ronan. “Can you take her home? I’ll bring Emma back.”
Ronan shook his head, because in his heart he knew that he had to find his sister. He knew that somehow, as messed up as she was, she loved him and he could get through to her. “No. Sorry. I go on, you take Jee home. Plus, I’m not strong enough to carry her over the Fence with me.”
The older boy stopped abruptly. “Neither am I.”
Not Enough Pain
From her place in the sky, where the clouds ended and the dimensions met, Ixchel cried bitter tears. No mercy was there for her, no respite, for in her heart she knew that the only peace would be when the human beings, with their life of ease and simplicity, were gone, exterminated, destroyed. What useless beings, Norns, for there as no respite in freezing time. There were faults. Four children, four helpless, drooling children remained free of her wrath. Why? Why were they special?
She hurled herself across the heavens and dug her nails into the fabric of reality. She screamed in pain and she screamed in jealousy but when she pulled her bloody hands from the cloth that separated one dimension there remained a slash through which time and space would bleed. She wrapped her hands in the healing breath of Menditryne and pulled from that dimension, the dimension behind the slash in the cloth, and pulled forth a dragon.
And Ixchel smiled as she looked upon the creature she had pulled from myth, for here, she knew, lay her redemption and her peace. She smiled as she looked upon the creature of fiery destruction and the dragon smiled back, for he too knew that there was a new age in the air. An age when gods and dragons roamed the flat, magic-less world called earth, and humanity was only a memory.
The dragon opened his great smiling mouth and from his throat came a fire that melted the air about Ixchel and she wrapped the dragon in all the love that remained in her. The dragon shed her love like a curtain of water pouring from a cliff. “You are foolish, little goddess,” whispered the dragon.
Ixchel’s wrath rose in her as a volcano rises from the core of the earth and she hurled her anger at the creature of fire and wing. “How dare you,” she breathed. She could feel the gods writhing and worming inside her, their anger becoming her anger. “I am your ruler, the master of your flesh and your spirit and your home. I command all that is you and all that you can ever hope to become. I am wholly your goddess and you shallbe ended for your insult to my power.” And in that moment, when she piled every ounce of strength, every iota of energy into pushing that insolent dragon out of existence, she realized that this creature was stronger than she was.
The dragon laughed and Ixchel hurled wind and then water and then soil at him. “You are foolish, little goddess. Your game is over and your mistakes will become the end of your reign. I am Ryu, whose name is holy and good and true. I am the master of the dragons, the master of the gods, and I am greater than any force of evil in your heart. You will bow to me, small one.”
NO! The word, the defiance, the hatred erupted from her, and so did the tears. She hurled at the dragon all the power in her: Apocate, the lightning. Addehali, the sun. Aijamusxa, who commanded monsters. The dragon Ryu, her one and only master, more powerful than the most powerful being, laughed and unfurled the great wings which stretched from the end of the world to the core of it.
“Bow to me, Ixchel. Bow.”
Ixchel’s tears, the tears of defeat, fell down a face as perfect as sunrise and dripped from her flawless cheeks to the thirsty soil of heaven. She sank to her knees and clawed at those immortal features with the same hands that had opened the way for Ryu, the same hands that were wrapped in the healing balm of Menditryne’s breath. And with the air of the goddess of healing, Ixchel’s heart opened once more and she wept with the pain of her actions. She opened the gates of herself and from her came the gods and goddesses she had slain with those same hands, the hands of Menditryne.
The immortal residents of heaven came from her blood and her mind and her heart until all that was left in the body of Ixchel was the small, weak goddess who wove the tapestries of heaven and blessed the pregnant women who prayed at the shrines at Cozumel and Isla Mujures.
But still, on the great floor of heaven stood the dragon Ryu, who smiled at small, weak Ixchel with the kind eyes of forgiveness. “Bow to me, my sweet Ixchel.”
Ixchel, goddess of weaving and pregnancy, whose heart was full of goodness and love, bowed low to the mighty dragon Ryu. She knelt before him and sang his praises in a song of unrivaled beauty and she gave him her loyalty. She knelt before her master and said, “Ryu, whose name is holy, I, Ixchel, do say these words to thee. I am yours, in body and in soul, for I must pay for my crimes. I am yours to do with as you wish.” And she closed the eyes of Ixchel, the eyes that had watched as the hands of Ixchel murdered millions.
Ryu took one mighty claw and lifted her chin until she opened her eyes and looked into his. “I, Ryu, whose name is holy, give thee to the gods and goddesses whom you killed. They decide your fate.”
And he took the crumpled from of Ixchel in his claw and set her gently, with the hand of love, before the assembly of all those whose powers were abused by the goddess of weaving. He bowed his great strong head to the gods and left them for his home, the dimension behind the rip in the fabric of reality.
Ixchel, whose flesh was of two priests and whose powers were few and weak, knelt before the assembly as she had knelt before her dragon. She opened her heart to them, poured out her sorrow and her great guilt and the apology that was too great for words, too great for thought, too great for forgiveness. She stood then and told them that her body and her soul belonged to Ryu, whose name is holy, and that no matter their punishment she would remain in the possession of the dragon lord.
And then stood Gao-Yao, who was the goddess of rebirth and reincarnation, and she faced the assembly of gods. She nodded her head once, gravely, and she spoke. “I am Gao-Yao, whose justice is absolute. I am the scales that balance good and evil, I am the steel hand and iron toe of the law. I am wise and I am all-knowing. Name yourself, you who has so cruelly killed the immortal gods.”
Ixchel, who’s face was marked by bloody tracks and whose hands held on them the healing breath of Menditryne, said unto the law, “I am Ixchel, flesh of two priests. I am Ixchel, who sits at the shrines at Cozumel and Isla Mujures and blesses the pregnant women who come to me. I am Ixchel, who weaves great tapestries. I am Ixchel, who angered the gods and I am Ixchel, who faces their punishment.”
From his robe Gao-Yao drew a whip that was made of nightmares and bound with the blood of the slain. “No.” He drew the whip above his head and brought it down on the back of she who stole the power of the gods. “Who are you?”
And in pain, Ixchel screamed and cried. She felt the skin of her back begin t to part and she felt also the blood of a goddess pour from those wounds onto the soil that drank so heartily of her tears. With every iota of strength remaining in her she pulled herself upright and faced the assembled gods. She said unto them, “I am Ixchel.”
And again the god of Justice, the god Gao-Yao reared back the nightmare-whip and brought it down onto the back of the goddess whose sins were more numerous than the stars. “Who are you?”
Her tears bled down the cheeks already scarred with the scratching of guilt and hatred. The waters of her eyes filler her mouth with the taste of salt and she licked her ruby lips. She took the agony of the whip and she changed it, turned it to energy and stood once more. She said unto the assembled gods, loudly and clearly through a mouth full of blood and tears, “I am no one. I have no name. I am nothing. I am dirt and I am rock and I am blood but I am no one.”
And Gao-Yao, who held the whip of justice, said unto her, “You are no one. You have no name. You are nothing. You are dirt and you are rock and you are blood but you are no one.” He drew back his whip and once again he hurled it at the back of the woman who was once a goddess and he sent her falling through the hole in the fabric of reality. He sent her through the hole ripped by a scream, into the dimension known as earth.
CHAPTER TWO
In the Land of Dragons
Ryu, the dragon lord, the one being who overcame the goddess Ixchel in her power, took to the wing and flew like the thunderbird through the dimensions to his home, the place where dragons slept in caves so old they saw the birth of Zeus. He soared first over the lands of the animals, the feeding grounds, and then the battlefields where the dragons clashed. He let the winds carry him higher, for on the low winds came the smell of rotting flesh, of burnt meat and the stench of lost potential. He circled then over the caves of the Silver dragons, for here were his enemies, the dragons he fought so hard to kill, the cold, cruel beings who shared their form but not their heart.
Ryu, whose name is holy, let his great wings carry him through the great aure sky to the caves of the Red dragons, the dragons whose coloring was that of blood, of life, of love. He alighted on the ledge and, on his great sapphire legs walked through the mouth of the cave.
Dragons bowed to him, lowering their heads in a sign of respect and inferiority. They sang their praises in the tongue of the Red dragons, the low hum of emotion. The dragon lord walked through the center of the cave to a nest at the rear, where one dragon remained unbowed.
He came to her and he nuzzled her head, tucking it under his and whispering his love into her ear. He pulled away from her and spoke to his only love, his Elia. “I have found an escape, my sweet, my dear. Our hatchlings will not mature in this war against the Silver. Will you come with me, then? Will you come with me to Earth?”
Elia bowed her great crimson head to the nest where four eggs lay, sleeping. “For you, and for our hatchlings, anything.” The she-dragon smiled and pushed at the eggs with her nose.
He bent his head beside her and carefully, gently lifted an egg into his claws. He closed them around the small white promise of tomorrow and took another from the nest. “To earth, then, my beautiful. No more Silver, no more fighting. It is only you, and me, and our hatchlings.
As Ryu and his love soared across the sky towards the rip in the fabric of dimensions, they were followed. They were followed in their flight by a creature of cold heart and cold eyes, and whose words were like the frost that creeps across the windowpane in perfect crystals. They were followed by a Silver dragon.
Emma’s Nightmare
Night enveloped Emma as she ran, ran from Sebastian’s beautiful eyes and from the chapter of her life called Clearwater. Her black coat was torn from the angry branches of silhouetted trees and her cheeks were burned with tears like acid. She slowed and pressed her face into the ridged bark of an old pine and cried. Emma never cried.
She wanted it to be over. The running, the crying, the emotions. She raised her face to the midnight skies and cried to them, “I hate love!” She pressed her thumbnail into her wrist, but it would not cut skin and she screamed in pain. She sank to the ground and pelted it with her fists, weeping and yelling.
And then she stopped. She sat upright and whispered, ever so quietly, “I want. . .Dad.”
She was never aware of falling asleep. She never remembered her soft crying as she rested her cheek against the cold ground, nor did she recall how gently her breathing became until she eased into the place where dreams run wild and become, horribly, nightmares. Emma lay there in the woods, in a world where all but four children were frozen in time, and she dreamed.
Sebastian stood before her. He wore shining white armor and he was smiling so perfectly. He stood strong and confident, warm and loving. Dream-Emma looked down. In her hand was a gun, cold and black and unforgiving. She raised the gun and noticed, in the abstract way of dreams, how large it was compared to her small, feminine hand. She raised the gun and pulled back on the trigger. In the perfect silence of dream-world, the shot shook every fiber of her being and she watched as her monster, her bullet, pushed through Sebastian’s armor and into his chest.
“NO!” She ran to him, ripping the chest-plate from his breast and staring in horror at the small hole where blood began to pool. She knelt beside him, beside her knight in shining armor, the knight whose blood was on her palm and between her fingers. She knelt beside him and whispered in his ear, “I killed you. I told you I’d kill you.”
And the dream faded like water through the holes of a colander. Emma slept, but it was a peaceful sleep, a sleep where not dreams but memories floated across the glistening pond that was her mind.
Dad held her by the hands and spun her around in a circle, and all she could see was his glowing face as the world slid by. She was wrestling with Ronan, and he was pulling her hair; she was crying and calling for Dad. Dad was teaching her how to build a kite, and they made it to look like a butterfly. Mom and Dad and baby Ronan took her on a picnic in the center green and the ants carried away the crumbs. Dad, with his funny laboratory glasses and his rubber gloves and his white lab coat. Dad, with his goofy grin and his indecisiveness about his moustache and his plethora of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Dad.
Emma awoke slowly, dozing off for a while. And then she pushed herself up, stretched and looked around her. Azure sky peeking through the emerald leaves, bushes and brambles littering a brown-as-dirt earth. Like cold molasses her memories crept back, and with the memories came the grief of losing Dad and the nightmare of living without him.
She stood and dusted herself off. She stood straight and planted her feet firmly as she had not in months. She took a deep breath and thought, as loudly as she could, I vow that from this day forward I will be a different person. I will live the sort of life that dad would have wanted me to lead and I will honor his memory. That done, she resolved to go back to Clearwater. She would go from there. Would Ronan ever forgive her? Would Mom?
A Former Goddess
The forest glowed with morning light and a woman whose beauty was marred only by three long scars down her cheek tread upon the loam. “I must have a name,” she told herself. “Everybody has a name.” She thought about it, and as she thought she came upon a shrub growing there. “I awoke in the forest,” she reasoned. “I will call myself, then, by the name of a plant. I shall call myself Ivy.”
Ivy tread the forest with care, never harming a seedling tree or a little sprig that stood in her way. She spoke aloud to herself, because she had no one else to talk to and she felt like the kind of person who liked to have company. “What do I know about myself, then? I am a woman, that is clear. I am an adult. I woke up in the woods, so maybe I live around here. I am Ix. . .Ivy. I have brown skin and I speak with an accent of. . .Mexico. Of Mayan descent, of. . . San Gervasio Also, I seem to know a lot about the Mayan Empire.”
She paused. A flicker of memory, a moment of clarity. “I am Ixchel, flesh of two priests. I am Ixchel, who sits and the shrines at Cozumel and Isla Mujures and blesses the pregnant women who. . .I am Ivy, whose cheeks are scarred and who wears only a woolen robe about her. I am lost and hungry and I seem to have a bit of a painful back.”
Ivy reached around and felt her back, scarred with three long lines as if she had been whipped. She frowned and kept walking. There was no use in wondering who she was. She would never remember.
Dragons Awing
Sebastian awoke feeling groggy and sore, and his sense of smell was telling him that he was most definitely not in his bedroom. He stretched and opened his eyes, then swore as he remembered Emma and Jee and Ronan, all of them partly his responsibility. He sighed and stood up. Immediately he knew that something was wrong.
The leaves on the trees were absolutely still. There was no wind. Nothing rustled, no birds sang and looking up he saw that the little swallow, flying there, was absolutely frozen. That disturbed his mind most of all. If time was frozen, which it must be, it still didn’t explain why that bird didn’t just fall. He had spent enough time around physicists to know that much. Nothing moved inside Clearwater, either. No early-to-rise scientists on their way to work, none of the beeping and whirring that was part of ordinary life in a lab town. No children snuck out of the house for a game of kick-ball before school.
And then he thought, Why aren’t we frozen?
He leaned against the Fence, listening to Ronan’s quiet snore and running through everything he had done the day before. Could he have gotten a chemical on him? What chemical? How did they get time moving again? How extensive was this time-stop, if the earth was still rotating but birds in flight remained airborne?”
Just as he was closing his eyes a giant shriek tore the air. Jee and Ronan sat upright and poor frightened ee clung to Ronan helplessly. Sebastian just watched as one gigantic dragon appeared in the sky, and then another. He rubbed his eyes as they vanished above the trees.
Ronan was staring at the place where they had vanished. “What the hell was that?” he muttered.
Sebastian choked on his spit and coughed. “Something is seriously wrong here, guys. And somehow I don’t think going back to Clearwater will help.”
It wasn’t over. Two minutes later, another screech pounded into his ears and he looked up as three Silver dragons appeared where the two red dragons had materialized only a short while before. But these dragons weren’t majestic. They were cold and heartless and Sebastian knew that if he wanted to find out what was going on, he would not go to the three silvers.
