All Living : A Seedvision Saga (9781621473923) (34 page)

Kole’s
seedvision
confirmed that the water was pure and cold and perfect. He dipped his hand into the pool again and brought it up to his mouth, slurping it out of his palm a bit louder than usual. He felt it as it wet his tongue and lips, then enjoyed the sensation as it slid coldly down the back of his parched throat.

Cain watched him for a reaction, and when Kole displayed none but sheer ecstasy at the act of drinking, Cain leaned over and put his lips to the water and sipped, then gulped.

“Not too fast, Brother,” said Kole, “or
you
will throw it up.”

Cain stood up straight and laughed. “Oh, that is good.” Then he yelled out names, and women and children appeared from inside the buildings carrying buckets and bladders and pitchers. They each dipped their containers into the pool and hurried back to their homes. Each of them spared a sidelong glance in Kole’s direction from under their black lashes. Kole did not see Kesitah.

“Come, Brother,” said Cain, taking Kole’s elbow with a firm hand. “Let me show you to a private room where you can rest and refresh yourself until tonight’s feast.”

Someone had poured clean water into a copper bowl. Kole dropped his pack on the floor and bending over the bowl, splashed some on his face, rubbing his hand down the back of his neck. He ran his wet fingers through his hair and felt better than he had in days. His conversation with Cain had gone as well as could be expected and tonight maybe they would reconcile their differences and truly become brothers again. It couldn’t hurt to be hopeful.

The room was sparsely furnished with only two objects of interest. One was the small table with the water basin placed along the wall opposite the door and the other was a wooden, rectangular framework on round legs sitting in the far corner. It was about the length of a man and had a large animal skin, maybe more than one skin, sewn together and placed over ropes that ran back and forth through holes in the longer sides of the wood. A split in the seam allowed some of the stuffing to spill out, dried grass and feathers. Kole walked over to it and sat down carefully, marveling at its softness. He stretched out upon it and sighed, feeling his eyelids grow heavy. He forced himself to get up before he dozed off to sleep.
Time for a nap later,
he thought.

He took the knife that Cain had given to him from his belt and set it on the water stand, then knelt down in front of the bedding and prayed, thanking the Creator for being ever-present, ever-aware. He prayed for strength and patience, mercy and forgiveness. He apologized for his own vindictive nature and asked for guidance and direction. When he rose, his knees ached from lack of blood, and he paced around the room, walking off the tingling sensation in them. He glanced out the window and saw people, men and women and children, all busily tending to chores.

The City of Enoch certainly was a fascinating place. Kole regretted the reasons that had brought him here. Under different circumstances he would have liked to have stayed here for a while, roaming its streets and exploring its mysteries. Several of the things that Kole had seen had sparked thoughts in him, ideas that he would like to invent. Maybe someday, but first things first: to repair the breach between the two halves of his family.

“Kole?” It was a woman’s voice, spoken very softly, no more than a whisper, but unmistakable.

He spun toward the door, which had opened a sliver without him hearing it. His blood was racing. He saw one beautiful eyeball and a tendril of soft, brown hair through the crack.

“Kesitah!” he shouted, leaping over to the door and flinging it wide. In one second, to use Cain’s word, she was in his arms.

Time seemed to stop. Kole felt himself falling into a dream, or waking from one. He laced his fingers behind the small of Kesitah’s back and felt the tips of her hair brushing the backs of his hands. He pulled her into him. He felt her grip on him tighten as well; the small, slim muscles of her arms crushing him, pulling him closer, tighter into her, as if somehow their flesh could absorb each other, and they could become one complete person as the Creator had intended.

Kole could feel the ripe swell of her breasts crushing themselves against the hardness of his chest. He could feel her belly against his own, radiating warmth into him. She smelled like honey and cinnamon and freshly baked bread recently removed from the glowing embers of a dying fire.

She was a full head shorter than him, and her face fit comfortably into the hollow of his neck. The warm wetness of her breath tickled his throat and sent shivers down his back, causing his skin to gooseflesh. Kole’s eyes were closed and he explored her body with his senses, feeling more than seeing the rich, amber glow of her essence, hearing the mellifluous melody of her love for life and for him.

The sun no longer poured through the window as it had moments before, but neither was there darkness. Kesitah became the only thing in the room, in the world. The softness of her skin, the cling of her hair in his beard, it was every moment of laughter that he had ever lived. Every contented sigh, every mother’s smile, or father’s approval, all focused upon one man, one moment. There were no sounds from outside the walls of this room, no people to make the sounds. Kesitah alone was existence, and Kole felt alive.

They clung to each other for days, years it seemed. Afraid to let go, afraid that the other might slip away like a gust of wind, briefly felt but containing no promise to cool their vehement ardor. But the days were only seconds and the years only heartbeats. Gradually they separated but did not let go of each other. Instead, they stared into each other’s faces, counting time in the increments of their smiles.

Kole could see each individual eyelash on Kesitah’s lower lids. He felt the curve of her waist and her hips through his fingertips. He saw the radiance of her irises, first blue and then green, sparkling like a sun-dappled lake in a secret mountain valley. A movement pulled his gaze to her lips. They quivered with her unspoken emotion. Her eyes glistened with moisture, and he felt his own eyes stinging with salty realization that she was real and here and finally his.

She took her hands from his waist and pulled his hands into hers, gripping them fiercely. Kole was reluctant to let her body go but hesitant to resist. Her fingers were soft and small and perfectly made to fit around his own. How he loved this woman. His heart ached in her presence, his knees weakened, and his breath caught in his chest.
Perhaps loving someone so much is easier with one less rib,
thought Kole absurdly. His blood throbbed in his temples like an answered prayer. The silence echoed between the two of them, yearning to be heard but leaving little room for anything else. Kole struggled to speak. The words in his mind overwhelmed him, constricting his throat, yet fighting for freedom.

“I missed you, Kes,” he finally managed to say, his mouth suddenly dry again.

She nodded, pensive with understanding. A tear slid down her cheek and rested on the pink of her lower lip. She stared at his mouth, as if trying to divine whether the words she had heard were more than mere imagination. She licked her lips nervously and tasted her own tears. Her hands were delicate baby birds inside of his, afraid to fly for fear of falling. When she spoke, it was no louder than a whisper.

“Where were you?”

Kole peered deeply into the questioning look of her gaze, the lump forming, growing in his throat. He was afraid to speak, afraid that his voice would betray his longing. Anguish and elation battled within his breast and he sought to choose his words with care and gentleness. He gave her a tender smile.

“Where were you, Kole?” she repeated softly, so sadly that Kole felt something breaking inside him. “I waited for you. I waited seven years for you. I waited so long. I thought I would die without you. I knew you would return, but you never did. I would have waited longer. I would have waited forever. I wanted you to come back so bad, Kole, to come back for
me
.”

Her words poured out in a threnody of misery. The pain she had sealed away in the depths of her soul for a century burst forth in an uncontrollable cascade of lament. Kole could feel her body shivering, trembling. He could feel his own muscles twitching uncontrollably. Their fingers still tangled together, their eyes unable to look anywhere else.

“Kole,” she said again, as if that one word, spoken often enough, had the power to wake them from this reality and allow them to live in the land of their longing. “Kole, where were you? Didn’t you know I was waiting for you? Didn’t you care about me?”

Kole could not see through the blue blur of tears that brimmed his eyes. He squeezed them shut, felt them slide down the channels of his cheeks to pool in his beard. “I tried, Kes. I didn’t know…didn’t know it would be so long.”

“Why?” she implored. “Why was it so long? What took you a hundred years to remember me, to come back for me?”

Kole felt speechless, yet words tumbled through his overwrought mind. There were too many things to say, too many truths, and all of them seemed to require at least another hundred years to explain. Kesitah slipped her fingers out of Kole’s. He desperately wanted to hold her again, hold her and disappear with her and never look back. She touched the sleeve of his tunic, running her cupped palm over the material.

“This is beautiful,” she said.

“It’s nothing compared to you.”

She drew in a battered breath as if a sob lodged in her throat. Kole watched her, admired her courage at that moment. What suffering she must have endured over the years, to have been torn from her life and thrust into another, and yet to stand here so bravely, trying to change the subject for him, trying to ease
his
agony. He stepped toward her and held her elbows. He pulled her closer until their faces were nearly touching. She did not resist.

“I will take you with me,” he said.

“Where would you take me?”

“Anywhere but here, Kesitah, anywhere in the world, as long as I am with you. We can start over. We can have the life we were meant to have. We will find happiness together. We can forget the years we were apart. They will fade into nothing compared to the years that we will have with each other. We can start over.”

“Kole…”

“Kesitah, please, take my hand. We will leave now. We will walk away and never look back.”

“Cain would never allow me to leave.”

“I’ll deal with Cain,” said Kole gravely. “Can you pack some things? Pack them quickly, and flee this place with me?”

“I could have bore you children, Kole.”

“You shall still bear them, Kesitah.”

“Beautiful children with your bright blue eyes and thick dark hair. Little flaxen girls and ruddy-faced boys. We could have watched them play together, Kole, watched them smile and giggle, take their first steps, call you dada.”

“We will, Kesitah.” Kole could feel the emotion once again building in his throat as he watched the distant look on Kesitah’s face become more distracted. Her eyes glazed over with a faraway look, and Kole felt an urgency as the moments slipped away.

“Kesitah.” He said her name again, watched her eyes refocus on his. “I’m here for you now. Can you ever forgive me? Forgive me for not being there for you?”

“Forgive you for going to the garden without me?” added Kesitah.

“Yes, forgive me for even that?”

“I forgive you,” she said, and her weeping took her hard then, shaking her shoulders as she sobbed, as if releasing her forgiveness created a hole in her heart through which everything she had ever felt could now flow.

Kole felt more than saw the sunlight return to the room. It rippled into the gloom like lambent water, soothing and brilliant. Kesitah’s loveliness captivated Kole as the rays of grace from its beams burnished her hair with heavenly highlights and her eyes with divine radiance. Her forgiveness freed him from a pit of guilt he had not known he had fallen into. He swept her into his arms once more and held her until her sobbing subsided.

When she pulled gently away from him, he let her go. She used the sleeve of her dress to wipe her eyes and face. Her breath still caught as she tried to draw it in, but she gave him a thin smile.

“I love you, Kesitah,” he confessed. “I always have. It amazes me that I can be so happy and still be standing here, crying like a little boy. You have always possessed the ability to elicit emotion in me, and you have not lost your touch.” He stopped as she slowly shook her head. Her smile faded, and regret filled her eyes.

“Kole.”

Just one word…but enough to penetrate the illusion that he had wrapped around his reality. Just one word, a prelude to a pronouncement that he was petrified to perceive. Just one word, that speared into his gut with an icy coldness and left his skin feeling clammy despite the heat of the desert morning that engulfed him. Just one word…his own name had betrayed him.

“I love you as well,” she said, and for a brief flashing moment he allowed himself to hope again, “but these are not happy tears, my beloved. These are tears of mourning. The future that was ours no longer exists. The plans and hopes and promises that we talked about and looked forward to are all dreams that we have now woken up from. The children that we would have had together all died a hundred years ago, before they were even born. I am so sorry, Kole,” she said, seeing the look of utter loss that melted his smile into a pool of despair. “We cannot be together, my love. It is not meant to be. It may once have been, but those days have long been lost to us. This is my life now. My home is here with my children. Once I could not imagine my life without you, now I cannot imagine my life without them.”