Of Gaea Read online

  She thought she had known what pain was when she woke in the hospital and couldn’t use her legs. There was no pain even comparable to this sickening, panicky, ache that filled her chest. There were so many things she hadn’t said to him, things she hadn’t done. Somehow, the threat of losing him, even an empty one, put things Ari never knew existed before into perspective.

  He studied her face and nodded. “If that’s what you want.”

  Ari tuned back in to Leonidas. “It is.”

  “Well then,” He pulled the book to the top. He made no comment to what was probably a long wait on a response from her. “We’ve got time. We should start here.”

  Ari had noticed, he had not answered her other question. She had a feeling, he wouldn’t need to. If what she was trying worked, then it would be all too obvious why she was so important to Sparta.

  When the sun was nearly gone Ari began to fidget. “You should turn a light on.”

  “Afraid of the dark?”

  “It’s not the dark I fear, but what resides in it.” Ari bit her lip as she scanned the growing shadows. “I’ve seen things in the shadows, things I’d rather not fall prey to.”

  He didn’t laugh or jeer but slowly stood and walked over to the edge of the circle. From his pocket he lit a match and then dropped the lit match to something she couldn’t see.

  A ring of fire rose from the ground and traced the circumference of the circle. When it touched itself it went out, but there was a light, that she couldn’t explain in its place. It wasn’t the red light of fire either, but a cool, almost clean feeling light. When the moon hit the edge of the dome it flared to life and was nearly as bright as any lamp.

  “Our Mother Gaea, this night we ask for protection, this night we ask for healing. This night we ask You to bless the Faithful with Your love.”

  Ari could hear Leonidas’s prayer from where she sat, or rather, she felt it. The words weren’t quite right though. She didn’t hear them as he spoke them, but as a chorus of voices together as one. The voices chanted together and drowned out Leonidas’s words. Goosebumps broke out along her arms.

  As Leonidas shuffled back over Ari saw movement behind him. The darkness that she feared manifested along the edge of the circle. It had more form than it had previously. The demon horse was more pronounced in shape and larger than she remembered it being. There was with ooze streaming from its head and tail and dark rivulets of liquid streamed over him that she could only envision as some form of acid.

  The trees and plants seemed to shrink back away from it. Or at least that’s what she thought until the light creature joined it. Then she realized what the darkness killed the light was bringing back to life only for the vicious cycle to continue.

  She was more shaped this time too. She looked like a white peacock with the train of light behind her wings and tail. Everything about her glowed and it was painful to look at her for too long.

  “Can you see them?” Ari gestured to the edge of the circle.

  Leonidas turned and even though Ari didn’t see his face she saw his posture still and harden. “You are not welcome here. Gaea walks here, not you. Be gone! You have no business here.”

  “The child is our business.” The light creature danced up the wall searching for an entrance.

  “Give her to us and we shall leave everything as it was found.” The dark thing wasn’t so subtle and struck the wall of light with its hooves.

  “Gaea walks here.” The Kirin appeared inside the circle. Her voice was a beautiful song. “Leave this place. Now.” She stamped her hoof once.

  The other creatures only hissed at her. The Kirin reared backed and then charged. She rammed into both of them and all three vanished. Before their eyes the trees and plants sprung back to the way they had been only minutes before.

  “Now I’ve officially seen everything.” Leonidas muttered. “How often do you see them?”

  Ari laughed weakly. “Do nightmares count?”

  Leonidas bent down to look in her eyes. “Nightmares always count.”

  Ari cringed. “More than I want to.”

  “Let’s get started before they come back.” He slid some latex gloves on then looked at her. “Front or back first? We have forty eight marks to cover you in and around seven hours to do it.”

  Ari hadn’t moved since she rolled onto her back so she just pointed. “I’m already here.”

  “Lose the pants.”

  “That requires sitting up and rolling over.”

  “Ghluwht goes on your tailbone should I remind you. And Kicul on the back of your calf.”

  “Fine, fine. But if I’m rolling over, you’re doing the front first.” Ari rolled over and slipped out of the light cotton pants. She silently thanked Nasya for her foresight with the bathing suit. Ari rolled up the pants, added it to her shirt pillow and laid back.

  Leonidas took her arm. “We’ll start here; I’ll do one, patch it up and then move on to the next. Once I start we can’t stop. There’s no reversing this. Are you sure?”

  Ari took a deep breath and nodded. “Let’s do this.”

  She felt the cool cloth for cleaning, the shaver, and then the cloth again. Ari blocked it all out by studying the paintings on the dome. They could be seen clearly in the moonlight whereas the sunlight was too strong to look at them directly.

  Ari felt the sting of a million bees when the needle went in the first time but she didn’t flinch or tense up. Leonidas murmured in approval and kept working.

  “Can you talk and work?”

  “Depends. What do you want to talk about?” The needles never hesitated and Ari gave him credit for their swift clean movement.

  “Tell me about the paintings.” She had looked at him when she made her request and she saw his soft smile.

  “In the beginning there was only the earth. Gaea walked alone. The earth was Hers and She loved every part of it fully. Her creatures were what She sculpted from dirt and sand and water and fire. She was happy.”

  “She didn’t stay that way?”

  “Nothing is indefinitely eternal.” He cleaned up the first tattoo, covered it up and moved on to the next. “Her garden was beyond comparison and attracted the attention of many.”

  Ari listened with half an ear. His voice wasn’t unpleasant and his way of describing it was so clear she could imagine being there. His tone turned to a murmur of sound and then instead of his voice it was the hum of running water.

  The garden that sprang up around her made Leonidas’s look like a weed patch. It seemed to breathe as she did. As she walked along the path toward the babbling water another sound dance with it. A harp or some kind of stringed instrument.

  Ari’s feet barely rustled in the lush grass as she followed the sound. Since she was so silent she heard other sounds and saw other things. There were animals; they came out of hiding as she passed and she saw creatures that could not exist in her waking world.

  The noise came from an instrument that graced a woman’s lap. She sat next to a bubbling fountain. Animals sat around her, the plants seemed to lean towards her like she was the sun. When she looked up Ari couldn’t prevent the shock.

  She wore Ari’s face. Or Ari wore hers as the woman felt older than her. Much older. Her sandy hair was shades darker than Ari’s, but still gleamed in the strong light. Her eyes were different, though. Ari could see the forests in them, and oceans and volcanoes. It was like the world was encompassed in her eyes. She didn’t stop playing but smiled. And in that smile Ari felt… she felt more connected to this mysterious woman, than she did to either Ghita or Lyris.

  “You came. I wasn’t sure you would.”

  Ari knelt in front of her careful not to sit on the sand colored skirts that were spread out around her. “Why do you have my face?”

  “Perhaps, it is you that has mine?” She smiled again and stopped playing. The animals disbursed as if on cue and she rested the instrument against the fountain.

  “What is that?” Ari gestured to t
he instrument.

  “A zither. A beautiful instrument. It brings me comfort when I am trapped here.” She brushed off her skirts and stood in the same motion. “Walk with me?”

  Ari rose slowly and nodded. “Of course. Where is here?”

  “I’m sure you have questions. I would love to be able to answer them all, but I cannot. Not because of restraints, as I have none, but because of time. There simply isn’t enough of it to give you everything you should have.” She smiled again at Ari. “But for your first question, we are where all life use to spring from. My garden.”

  “Who are you?”

  Her hand reached out and held Ari’s as they walked. “I am you. It is difficult to explain. We are Gaea.”

  Ari’s muscles seized in her surprise and her hand clamped around Gaea’s. “Gaea?”

  “Long ago I created children of my flesh and tears. They were my comfort. Together if need be we could assimilate and become one entity. Then I was tricked, and my mortal form lost. My children were the only mortal connection I had left.”

  It made sense. In Ari’s memories there was never a time she hadn’t felt calmer, more at peace when within nature’s embrace. She and Sasha camped and hunted often. She wondered slightly if that was Gaea’s influence on her.

  Had there been other times Gaea had protected her? Guided her without Ari actually knowing she did? Ari blurted the first memory that came to mind. “At school, when Damia was choking me?”

  Gaea nodded. “Yes. You needed me. Desperately. And I came.” She looked at Ari sadly. “You are the last of what was once a great line. Over time, the Pure and the Tainted have digested members of my house.”

  “Pure and Tainted?”

  “The Pure are heavenly celestials and the Tainted are the fallen ones. Unfortunately we are trapped in the middle.”

  They crossed a wooden bridge in silence and then Gaea pulled Ari down to sit under a blossoming cherry tree.

  “They fight over control of the earth. Of our earth. Of course in the beginning they could control some of it, through my children, but I ended that. If the child sided with them I would no longer allow the child to draw from our source.”

  “Lyris said that on my birthday I would have a choice to make. And Nasya has said the Kirin has never stayed after majority. The Kirin is you isn’t it? And you don’t stay because they don’t stay with you?”

  Gaea’s eyes glowed joyfully. “The Kirin is a part of me, yes. She is one of my many creatures that can still maintain within the mortal society with little difficulty. She’s an ambassador we’ll say, in my name.”

  “If you leave once the Tainted or the Pure infect your child why do they still come after us?”

  “If there are no more of my children left, there are no more beings to fight for the earth. It’s not just about the life. It’s about the soil, the water, the fire, and the air. That is us. We are the elements. Should even one of us rise against them, and demand they retain the balance, well, it is something neither of them wants.”

  “What do I do? What can I do?”

  Gaea took Ari’s hands in hers. “Learn. Talk to Nasya, ask her for the nitty gritty, as they say now a days. Listen, and when the time comes make your choice.”

  “But…” Ari couldn’t think. “I’ve never been what Ghita wants and there’s no way I could be what Lyris is…”

  She kissed Ari’s hands. “You’re already half way there. You need more faith in yourself.”

  “What happens to us? Say, if by some miracle I don’t die, or get digested by one of them?”

  Gaea’s smile widened and her hands gripped Ari’s tighter. “Then we will finally be whole. Together we will defend the world. You will no longer feel broken and I will no longer be alone. We are two pieces of the same coin.”

  She looked up at the sky and frowned. Her hand ran gently over Ari’s hair. “Time is running out. You will always be you. Never fear you will lose who you are. Now, I have a gift for you. Name anything you’d like. Within my power I will grant it.”

  Ari thought about it for a moment. “Knowledge. I want to know. I’m tired of guessing.”

  Gaea nodded in approval. “I can give you some, not a great deal, because it could kill you before you are ready for it. But certainly enough to take some of the confusion out of your life.”

  Before Ari could ask how, Gaea rested her forehead against hers. Ari felt an electrifying bolt of energy that left her limp and her hair standing on end. It intensified to the point of blindness and when Gaea pulled away Ari fell against her. Numb was a weak description of the feeling.

  “That was,” Ari coughed, “uncool.”

  Ari could feel her nose running. She had enough strength left to deduce it was probably blood. As her body shook and quaked with the left over energy spasms her brain felt like it was in melt down mode.

  “Sleep now.” Gaea’s hand stroked gently over Ari’s hair again. “And have faith in yourself. I am here always.”

  It wasn’t as if Ari had a choice. She couldn’t fight the sensory overload and the energy zap had been taxing to an extreme.

  “When you wake, you’ll know what to do. Of that, I am sure.”

  The sun streamed through the window brightly and Ari could hear the sound of birds. And the unfamiliar sound of traffic. Startled, she jerked awake the rest of the way and found that she couldn’t move.

  The room was completely white, so was the metal bed frame that the leather straps held her down to. Ari recognized the scent of a hospital easily enough. There was no mistaking where she was.

  Before Ari could begin to panic she heard footsteps and hastily closed her eyes as the door opened.

  “It’s a shame really.” A man was saying. “There’s no way to know the damage until she wakes up.”

  “I want to know she’s completely okay before we move on. It’s so great for her to be going to college out west, and where she goes I go. I’m just so stressed this happened.” Ghita’s voice was part excitement, part worry, part tired. She played her role well.

  “All the tests look normal. All she may suffer is a bump on the head.”

  “I just can’t believe… well, I suppose I’ve been too lenient, but she’s such a good child.”

  “You shouldn’t blame yourself.” A pen scratched across a piece of paper. “I really think she’ll be fine once she wakes up.”

  “But why has she been asleep so long?”

  “It’s only been three days since you found her. Until she wakes up we won’t actually know if she was trying for suicide or if it was an accident of some kind.”

  Ghita sighed. “I guess you’re right. I just… I’m worried she’ll be like Lyris. There’s nothing wrong with her tests either.”

  “Everything looks okay here, still. Let’s go to my office. We can discuss some stimulants to try and wake her up.”

  “Very well.” It sounded like her feet dragged and she was being led out.

  Ari counted to ten and listened to their footsteps recede before slitting her eyes open to see if someone stayed behind. The room was blessedly empty.

  She studied the straps and tried to recall everything she heard Kleisthenes tell Sasha when they were tanning animal skins. Heat hardened, they sometimes boiled the skins to strengthen them. Cold water could damage it. It would expand. Ari had no idea how to accomplish such a feat strapped down as she was.

  “We are the elements.” Gaea’s statement came back to her unbidden.

  Then theoretically she should be able to make the leather cold. Somehow. Ari racked her brain for ideas and stopped.

  It was like she had cargo containers of filing cabinets overflowing her mind. It was the only way she could describe it. If she had to explain it, it was similar to how books were categorized. Horror here, romance here, history there, Gaea back there. How did she access what she wanted? Did she have to go through everything just to find one piece? Or could she scan through them?

  Maybe if she thought really hard on what s
he actually wanted the way one thinks really hard to recall a memory it would come forward. Ari didn’t know how long she lay there, thinking really hard on how to create ice. It was kind of like channel surfing. Or flipping through a card catalogue.

  She gave up when there was no end to the information. It wasn’t the information she was looking for, but interesting none the less. Gaea used the ice age to cleanse the world the same way the good book tells of a flood. She had intended for some of the creatures to die as they were getting out of hand.

  There was other stuff on ice. It was generally the third or fourth thing a Wiccan learned to do, fire was always first but it didn’t exactly say how or why. Druids could, with Gaea’s help, adjust their body temperatures to the cold and not be bothered by ice. Fascinating really, but not what she needed.

  Ari huffed out a breath and gasped at the sudden cold on her lips. Was that all she really needed? Intent?

  Testing she turned her head towards the leather strap and while she thought really hard about ice, she blew out a breath. And amazedly watched the frost form. Ari repeated the process.

  The leather warped before her eyes. As it continued to warp it began to crack and split until it finally snapped. Ice crystals tinkled to the floor with some bits of leather.

  Ari didn’t cheer. She sat up quickly and undid her waist and legs. Then she looked around.

  There was no wheelchair in the room. She had no escape. Something Ghita had probably seen to.

  Ari turned her hands over to look at the tops and two graceful tattoos stared back at her. Ari pulled up the nasty medical hospital pant legs and tattoos stared back there as well. Leonidas had finished. She had lines of script wrapped and swirling all over.

  Ari yanked her shirt up just to make sure. Four tattoos marked each of her chakra points. They were beautiful, but she didn’t think she had time to study them at the moment.

  She used her arms to move her legs to the side of the bed. Moment of truth. Ari let her feet rest on the floor then pushed herself up.