All Light Will Fall (35 page)

It would haunt her, I knew. The same way it had sought for
me, it would try to reveal itself once again, and I have come to realize, from
this world and from the other, that the truth is a living thing, with a voice
louder than war, and perhaps more vicious than death. It lives in the spirit,
with the fire of freedom or the heart of destruction.

As for ARTIKA, I would show them the grave. The very tomb
they created, I would bury them there. Not for me, but for the children they
had stolen, and mutated, and enslaved. I would do it for Corrine, for the
lively child my mother had lost. I would do it for Ellis, as his friend and as
his enemy, even if he was truly gone and forever beyond his memory.

I missed Ellis deeply. I loved him deeply, and the scar he
had given me was only a testimony of that love. But the moment my heart had
abandoned him, I knew that my love was weak and perhaps as selfish as any other
pledge of human love.

“Love is patient,” Mother had said. “It never gives up and
when the truth overcomes, it sings of freedom.” But my love was none of these
things. I did not wait for Ellis. I had hid the truth and traded blood for
blood. The Ellis who I knew, and loved, and had lost, I could not honor him. I
could not honor his respect for life, because I had killed and would kill
again. I would do so in rage and in vengeance. Not for justice. The human heart
bears no justice I have seen. There was only God now, and His wrath and His
judgment was without bias and without mistake.

I remembered how cruel my father’s leaving had been. Still,
I dreamt of my father. I longed for him, and I now discovered that all of my
hatred was nothing more than a grieving and tormented love.

I remembered the day I killed my final memories of him. It
was the moment I stopped wondering why he had left. I thought I was numb to
him, but a heart of hate is too full of passion for numbness. It never forgets,
and so I can never forget. I cannot lie now and say that in the grave of my
heart there exists no vengeance for him as well.

Mother and Fern were my duty to protect now. My father no
longer had that privilege, and if he sought to reclaim it, I would not stand
aside without a challenge.

It would be war with him, anger and contempt. We would never
agree. We would never be at peace, because even in all of my shame, I could not
ignore the truth. My father and I were the same. Our love was self-serving. We
were reckless in our strength, and our hearts hardened by a strict and worldly
wisdom.

He wanted to know of my suffering, but there would be no
sympathy from him. The horror I survived was nothing but a fact to him, an
impersonal report of the hidden truth.

I would tell him nothing of ARTIKA, nothing of Niaysia, and
nothing of Uway Levíí. I could hardly confess it to anyone at all, the
existence of a divine Earth, a war between two worlds that shared an ancient
past.

The Ardent, charmed by plenty, and the Defiant, cursed with
knowledge, would deny it in fear. All of the earth was in a dream, knowing
nothing and happily oblivious. My father desired this truth, but it was a truth
he could not endure.

ARTIKA was moving, strengthening. Their desires were no
longer a concern for survival. It was for prestige, for human legacy, because
the glory of man could not be outdone by any other nation, by any other creed
in existence.

Again and again, war would come. ARTIKA would collect their
slaves, the Defiant would resist, and the Meridian would kill, against their
virtue, to guard their world of Eden.

We were far apart, but our worlds were destined to collide,
and the Ardent, so beautifully ignorant were doomed to awaken. No one would
dream through what was to come.

Uway Levíí, I felt, had already knew. The way he spoke of
humanity with such intuition and disdain, I was sure he knew of ARTIKA’s
greater ambitions.

I learned a great deal from Uway Levíí, but there was still
much for him to reveal, and I felt that when I returned for Fern, we would meet
again as enemies. The girl I had killed threatened his search for New Eden, yet
he showed me mercy, but that mercy did not equal forgiveness.

In fact, perhaps he had cursed me instead. That night I was
with him, he cursed me with something. I was never to ask, and I was never to
know. I remembered the darkness within me then that holy blaze of light
blasting through the blackness. I remembered the blade that cut his hand, the
same blade he took to my flesh. He pressed our wounds together and summoned the
power of light with a prayer, and I was healed. With his blood, he had healed
me.

It was forbidden he had said, a great sacrifice to share his
blood with me, with an
igle
. It was inside of me now, and it was no
wonder why I could feel him, why the voice of Niaysia was so steadily with me.
I knew now why that bullet to the neck had nearly killed me. It was
umbarra
,
and I was weak to it now.

I couldn’t understand it, why Uway Levíí would risk honor
for mercy. What was it that he saw in me? Pity? A potential greatness perhaps?
I wasn’t sure, but he would sympathize with me no more.

Still, he was in need of a knowledge only I could give him,
because only I knew the truth of ARTIKA. They wanted New Eden, a Niaysia on
Earth. Those hills of white and great sands of sapphire, those trees of gold
and those healing waters of blue, they would seek to claim it all, by blood and
by death.

Before that day arrived, I thought to rescue Fern from it,
return her to this dark world of dreams. I could not save her from ARTIKA, but
perhaps I could save her from shame, from vengeance. It would be cruel of me to
steal her away from that holy Niaysian sun, from those amber springs, and bring
her back to Earth. But her innocence was mine to protect, and perhaps if I
could, saving Fern could be my salvation.

Weeks passed. The world around me seemed slow and silent. I
thought of Fern every hour, with the shadows of her voice in my sleep and in my
heart. It was misery. Because I knew what would happen to her. The horror of
transformation. That bleak and tormenting emptiness of one with no name, no
dignity, and no freewill. I knew it all.

And I could see her innocence and her ignorance drowned in
the black of forgetfulness. I chased her often. My memories were a force of
their own. They were flying loose, escaping from the grave, from the truth, and
the lies, and all the insanity in between. I found myself swept away by my very
own madness, wandering the dim of Jordan Starlight.

There were shadows, as there were so many nights before. The
jungle surrounded us. A rhythm of drums beat through the trees. Laughter danced
all around. It was a dream, the sun warm on my skin, bathing the forest in a
crystal light. The laughter grew louder, rich as the morning star.

Then it was so hot my veins grew cold and stirred an animal
hunger in my chest. I had never felt so starved for death. Then suddenly the
sun turned to red and the laughter turned to screams.

I killed them.

At least I thought I had, because my hands were soaked in
blood by the end of it. Then I stood alone, silently facing a dark wall in wait
for my sanity to return.

Suddenly, out of the stillness, there was someone behind me.
And we were but shadows in the tender glow of the light.

“Corrine?” he said.

It was Gwen. I turned to face him. He stood a safe distance
away. I heard him inhale and it sounded as strong as the winds of the earth.
His heart beat fast, but he wasn’t afraid. I knew fear when I heard it.

“What are you doing?” His voice was soft as it slipped
between the dark.

“Nothing,” I said.

Gwen sighed. He knew I had lied, but he understood. I wasn’t
the only one who wandered these halls chasing nightmares of the past.

“You look spooked,” he said.

“It’s the lack of sleep I suppose.”

Gwen nodded. “It happens to all of us.”

He stared at me a while longer. There were dark questions in
his eyes he knew not to ask.

“Follow me for a second. I want you to see something.”

Gwen guided me down a labyrinth of halls until we reached a
wide open hanger. All of the Defiants’ armaments and vehicles were stored here.
He took me to one of the sky lifts that led to the surface. It felt like a long
way up.

When the hatch slid open, a gray beam of light fell over us.
And I felt the face of God turn from the earth. It was more like a grave than I
remembered. Everything had turned to dust. Everything was death. The dark wind.
The skeleton trees. The rotted hills. There was only rock and the broken buildings
of an old nation. For miles there was nothing but the gray until a black and
mighty city rose up from the ash. The buildings, sleek as ebony, stood high
above the land. It was a throne almost. An immortal empire, unshaken in the
wind of death.

“What do you see?” Gwen wondered.

My eyes roamed the hills, the bombshell craters, and the
dusky skyline. Debris was everywhere. A man’s tie was knotted in stone. A
child’s doll sunk in the mud. A grandfather’s watch shattered beneath the
rubble. There were stories, the ghosts of yesteryear taking the shape of my
imagination. I saw them all so clearly and how merry they were in life. Then
they were gone, waning back into the grave.

I looked to Helix City again. “I hardly see anything,” I
said. “But if you want to know, I see a city of mourning.”

Gwen knelt to the ground and scooped up a hand of dirt.
“That’s not what I see.”

I sighed. “What do you see then?”

I watched the dirt run from his hand.

“Resistance... hope. A city without resistance is a city
without hope. A land void of hope is a land of nothing. But as I stand here to
the west, I see pillars, and lights, and movement. I see survival... ”

“Which is sometimes worse than death,” I grumbled. “Having
to endure pain and suffering is far worse. Survival is like lying in a tomb
with all of your sins and regrets suffocating you to a point beyond death. It’s
a curse.”

Gwen’s eyes were on me. He seemed shocked to hear the words
I had spoken. He was silent for a while. My head began to ache all of a sudden,
and it reminded me why I came to hate the quiet.

“I see a day when we finally rise from that grave, Corrine.
I see a new beginning.”

The ache in my neck returned.

“I don’t believe it,” I hissed, “We’re passed new
beginnings. We’ve destroyed ourselves. Our greed, and our blindness, and our
pride. It killed everything. Everything innocent. Everything beautiful. And
now, there is this. This life of death we must live. That’s all there is, Gwen.
That’s all there will ever be.”

“I can’t believe that. What the hell kind of hopeless life
is that?” Gwen said.

We were silent again and the head ache returned with a
vengeance. The quiet was far too loud.

“Look around you, Gwen. The world is dead! You think you
know, but you don’t know.”

“But I do, Corrine!”

“Do you? Do you really?”

“Yes!”

“So you know what happens to all your people they kidnap and
hold hostage behind those God forsaken walls?”

He said nothing.

“Do you know what they did to me? They killed me, Gwen! They
made me their slave! And I killed for them. I took lives, Gwen! The blood on my
hands, I can’t be rid of it! You have no idea who I am. You have no idea what I
am!”

Gwen gripped me by the shoulders. He was furious, with a
painful look of rage on his face.

“So what about Fern then!? Do you plan to bring her back here
to die!?”

He was right. There was no fortune in bringing Fern back to
this dead end world. But there was something of hers I could never forsake. She
wanted to see the sky, our sky. That was her pure and impossible dream, and
that dream of hers still lived, still thrived even inside of me.

Gwen went to speak again but decided against it.

“But I’m glad,” I said. “I’m glad there’s such a strong will
in you, Gwen. It’s that fire of life within you that reminds me.”

“Reminds you of what?”

I placed my hands on his shoulders, holding tight as if I
were drawing the very life from him.

“That even though we are frail, we are not weak. That our
strength does not lie in our bodies, but in the spirit in which we speak, and
act, and live. You remind me that perhaps there is a light still shining, still
singing of love and freedom, still urging us to carry on. Even in the dark.
Even when the shadow is around us and we can hardly see ourselves.”

“Corrine.”

“But I’m not worried, Gwen. I’m not afraid. I believe in the
light. Perhaps not for me, but for Fern... and that’s all I need to keep
going.”

Gwen gripped me by the neck and drew me in.

“Believe me, Corrine, you don’t want to live that kind of
life. I’ve seen too many of my comrades do the same thing. Turn themselves into
some kind of martyr for the sake of others. It’s a cheap road. In the end, it
means nothing. Only that you weren’t strong enough to stick around for the real
fight... that you didn’t have the courage to live. It’s cheating life.”

I closed my eyes. “Promise me you’ll keep your light, Gwen.
That it never dies.”

“Fern wouldn’t like this.”

“Promise me, Gwen,” I said sternly.

Gwen sighed. He shrugged as if my words no longer concerned
him, but his voice trembled slightly when he spoke. “Sure thing, babe.”

“I’m serious.”

“Sure I’ll swear it... only if you aren’t so quick to give
in.”

He came closer. “If you’re in need of the light, borrow some
of mine.” He took my hand. “We’ll see the stars again, and when we do, we’ll
take that breath of freedom together.”

I leaned into him. Listening to Gwen speak was always
tiring.