The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure - By Storm Constantine Page 0,260

and cast Tyson from her. She couldn’t risk taking him there. The moment was so close. Part of her was estranged from her flesh, waiting and calculating, while another swooned in the beauty of touching another har once more. If only she could have this. If only…

Now. She had to call to her body as if it was a reluctant younger sister. Come! Leave this place! The portal appeared like a flight of shining stairs, where angels would walk between the worlds. The dust in her hand was the link to it, the contact between her and Tyson the vehicle. Joy filled her being. There was no better way to leave this world for the last time.

Then she saw him, strolling down the path to the lake. His face was troubled, but because of her heightened sense of awareness, she could perceive the flame inside him, the flame that had never flickered or faltered: the flame that burned for her alone. Terez. She cried out, and her body pulled away from Tyson. Terez had come to her. The radiance around her became brighter and brighter and there was a sound like the limbs of trees breaking off and falling to the forest floor.

A mighty flash of light erupted as the portal opened wide. Lileem was drawn to it, as a spirit is drawn to death. Now, she was fighting it, howling like a maddened ghost. The pull was too strong. She opened her closed fist and the remains of the bowl spun about her, like stinging shards of diamond.

Terez and Tyson would be blinded by the light, but only for a moment. When their vision cleared, Terez would see only Tyson by the lake and drifting over him would be a strange dust, the ancient sand of a far and unimagined world.

Epilogue

There was once a festival night that surpassed all others. It was the night when the world of Wraeththu changed, when hara, consciously or not, turned purposefully to approach their potential. Because of that night, Ulaume and Flick came together. Because of that night, Lileem had a childhood and youth spent with hara. It changed her, and made her the parage who could step out of reality to search for truth.

Looking back over the years, Flick often thought about how so many events had been initiated by the night when Pellaz had left his first physical body: lives had been touched and turned, dehara had come down from the heavens. A harling had been born: a very special one. Flick could not mourn for Lileem again, because Opalexian had told him Lileem had made the choice to go back to the otherworld. Her own special festival night had changed her in such a way that she could no longer live happily in this reality. Flick did not want her to be unhappy.

It occurred to him quite abruptly one afternoon as he worked in his garden, that when the shaman Itzama had spoken to him about gates between the worlds, so long ago, he had meant more than the otherlanes portals opened by sedim. Flick wished he could remember in detail the brief conversation they’d had about it. He was bothered enough about his recollection to speak to Opalexian on the matter. He’d never confided to her before about his strange time with Itzama. Telling the story aloud to her made it sound completely improbable, but she appeared to take him at his word.

‘With the benefit of hindsight,’ she said, ‘it seems likely this spirit form you connected with was referring to rather more than an otherlane portal.’

‘It’s all so dim,’ Flick said, ‘but I seem to recall I just knew it wasn’t my task to learn about the gate. I wish I’d paid more attention and hadn’t been so scared.’

Opalexian smiled, gestured with both hands. ‘As I said, with the benefit of hindsight… Don’t punish yourself for it, Flick. You just weren’t ready for such knowledge. Perhaps none of are.’

‘Perhaps you send a parage to that place,’ Flick said, ‘try to find it again.’ He frowned. ‘But then I couldn’t find the entrance again afterwards.’

‘It won’t help Lileem, Flick,’ Opalexian said. ‘She walks her own path, and I am quite sure it is meant. Perhaps Itzama sensed something of what was to come, how you’d be her guardian. Maybe he felt the gate was relevant to you, in some way, without understanding the whole picture.’

‘You knew she’d try to go back, didn’t you,’ Flick said. ‘You always knew.’

Opalexian nodded.