Guardians of the Light (Book One of The Nebril Riverland Chronicles)

  Chapter 10

  "You, my dear, are a bei clu. That is very special." Lovis beamed at me. The other sun seekers nodded in fervent affirmation. I looked at him skeptically; I did not feel very special.

  "Trust me...it’s a good thing." He looked at me sympathetically. "Though it probably doesn't always feel good to you, does it? Tell me, do you suffer with pain in your head...on the left side?" His fingers stroked the corresponding side of my head and my skin tingled under his touch.

  I nodded and looked again at Jalya. "Did you..."

  "I didn't say anything about that." She looked as confused as I felt.

  I turned back to stare into the enormous purple eyes. "How do you know about that? What does this all mean?" I could barely get the words out. Lovis had said it was a good thing, yet I feared whatever atrocity I was about to find out about myself.

  "Ah yes, let's see...well, sometimes there are disturbances in the bei," Lovis continued. "This can be caused by severe weather, flares from the sun, that kind of thing; doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it throws the bei off balance momentarily. Now, the bei is the dominant presence in our world, and as such, it is very strong, therefore it doesn't take long for it to come back into balance. For this brief moment, however, this disbalance has enormous repercussions." He shifted his position on the rocks and studied my face as if looking for confirmation that I was ready for the truth.

  "You see, when a child is born at this moment of imbalance, there are effects on his or her bei. Sometimes, a child will receive more than his fair share, which sounds like a positive thing, but the body cannot handle this overload. Such children tend to be weak, sickly and have mental and emotional problems. Yet they also have powers that are beyond the ordinary: powers of perception, intuition, telepathy and a connection to the land and their fellow souls that others lack. Sometimes the opposite happens, which is particularly tragic. Some children are born receiving no bei at all, or such a minute amount that the body cannot survive. These children are what you would call stillborn, never having a chance of life at all. Because you see, my dears, without bei, there is no life. Your body is just a shell; we are all only bei."

  Lovis stopped for a moment and stared across the valley. I could see the blue haze of twilight forming behind his head and wished he would hurry up with his explanation. As fascinating as it was, I knew Jalya was impatient to begin searching for Ashel, and I had to admit that I was a little worried as well. However, when I glanced at Jalya now, she didn't seem anxious to go any longer, but rather appeared to be riveted by the story we were hearing.

  "Are you saying that Emerin has something wrong with her bei?" she queried. "She doesn't seem weak or sick, and she's definitely not dead, so what does this have to do with her?"

  "Ah now, patience, young one; there is more to this story." Lovis lay his hand upon her head and raked his long fingers through her hair. "This is a particularly interesting occurrence, one that is extremely uncommon, yet it does happen on occasion. If, during one of these pivotal moments, two babies are born simultaneously, then a portion of the bei that was meant only for one, will be split and shared between the both of them. A child with a cut bei like this is called a bei clu."

  I stared off into the beginning hues of dawn. Orange light peeked through misty clouds just above the landscape and fought for dominance of the sky with the ever brightening blue that lay above it. I tried to digest what Lovis was telling me, to put together the scattered pieces of information in my brain. Could this be true or were these just insane mountain top dwellers who were having a bit of fun with us? However, Lovis had known about my headaches somehow. I opened my mouth to ask a question and many more came spilling out along with it.

  "Are you telling me that I only have half a soul? Who has the other half? If those children who only had a small amount of bei died, then how is it that I am living? How could you tell that I was one of these...bei clu? And what does this have to do with my headaches?"

  Blon returned at this moment, trudging up the mountain side with his bounty, orange light glowing behind his back. He must not have wanted to make the trip again, because this time he had brought three heart fruits with him. He set them in front of us, broke one of them open and handed each of us our piece, then took a seat near Lovis on the rocks. He curled up into a little ball, with his arms wrapped around his legs and stared at me.

  "Thank you," I said and smiled at him. Jalya nodded her thanks, as her mouth was already full of sticky fruit. I scooped much more slowly this time, my hunger having been replaced by burning curiosity.

  "Well, well, so many questions indeed," Lovis purred, "and I will get to them all. Let’s see, where to begin? Oh yes, half a soul...why yes, my dear that is what I'm telling you. You have half the amount of bei that is generally housed in the body of a human. Half is the minimum amount that a body needs to survive. However, although you continue to live, there are side effects that are quite noticeable and well...disturbing. There are headaches; a bei clu will always have headaches. You see, the half bei will mostly stay on one side of the body. The other side, which we refer to as 'the empty side', will ache; it is aching for the other half, the missing half. Tell me dear Emerin, do these headaches cause yearnings in you? Do you feel the need to go somewhere, to walk in a particular direction? Do you long to be in another place, yet you know not where?"

  I was speechless and tossed a look over at Jalya again; she must have said something. She answered my confused glance with an equally confused shrug of her shoulders. The sun seekers shuffled about on the rocks, adjusting themselves for what apparently would be a much longer explanation. Since I could not find my voice with which to answer Lovis, I only nodded and scooped another mouthful of ecstasy from the heart fruit's shell.

  "Your bei is desperately trying to find its other half. Once you do, these feelings will stop; the pain will stop and the longing. Together, you and he will become a mighty power. However, we do not know where this person is, only that he is also desperately trying to find you."

  "But how do you know it's a 'he'?"

  "It always is...two matching bei clu, or 'bei clu va' as they are called, are always the opposite sex. When the bei splits, it appears that it separates into male and female energy. Even we are unsure of why or how it works, but we know that it does. Your bei clu va is a man who is exactly the same age as you."

  My chest tightened that instant and I feared for a minute that my heart would stop. Suddenly everything began to make sense. I finished chewing the soft fruit and swallowed hard as I was unsure that it would pass through all that tension and make it to my stomach. When I sat forward to address Lovis, I noticed I was shaking.

  "Two days ago I had a headache," I began. My voice trembled, the words catching on the tightness of my throat. "There was this man on the hills just down there." I turned my head to indicate the direction in which we had come, the hills which now looked so small.

  "I needed to get to him; the feeling....I just don't know how to describe it....it was unbearable. So I ran, I ran toward him, and the headache got better....but, but I just couldn't get there in time. Some other men took him away; he didn't want to go, but they dragged him off away from me....then my father found me...." I wanted to say more, but I couldn't go on any longer. My words had been overtaken by great, racking sobs that I could not control. I could still feel the pain, the physical horror of him being ripped away from me, when he had been so close.

  "They were Natki." Jalya's voice broke as she shifted over on the moss and put her arm around me. "The ones that were on the hills. The men of our village chased them off."

  The sun seekers fell silent and looked at each other with their wide, penetrating eyes. "She's already found him," said one of the females in a hushed voice. The others then began to babble amongst themselves and a bubble of excitement grew over the crowd.

  Lovis looked at me gravely, his features serious for the first time since we'd come. "Do you know where he
went my dear? Or who he was?"

  I shook my head, still unable to speak, unable to control the gasping sobs that erupted from my body. I now knew that I wasn't crazy. I knew why I had these problems, why I had felt this way my entire life. And most of all I knew how to fix it, yet I couldn't because he was gone. Would I ever be able to find him again?

  "Do the Natki have any bei clu among them, Lovis?" asked a female sitting nearby. "Besides Mejalen?"

  "Not to my knowledge," he answered, "but we have not seen them all Darlus. Usually only their leaders and great warriors come to see us on our mountain. Emerin's bei clu va would be barely a grown man now, not yet high enough in their ranks to be sent to us."

  Darlus shook her head, sending her long, spiralling tendrils swaying across her back. "Yes, but if they had one, would they not suspect it, then bring him to see us for confirmation?"

  "The Natki travel in small tribes, which are scattered across the woodlands. Perhaps they went to another mountain for confirmation and the information has not yet reached us." Lovis turned back to face us. "You see, dears, all these mountains about us? Each one of them has a small colony of Lumeai living on its peak. Except, of course, for the ones in the far north; there is only so much cold that we can tolerate." He smiled brightly. "We do get a lot of visitors here, though, as ours is a relatively low mountain."

  I was finally able to stifle my weeping, and wiped my tear streaked cheeks with my shawl. This last bit of information was intriguing. "You mean that you know more people like me? And what do you mean by confirmation?"

  "Do you remember, Emerin, when you asked me how we recognized you as a bei clu?" I nodded and Lovis smiled, his serious expression now replaced by one of friendliness. "You see, we, the Lumeai of the mountains, have a very special responsibility. We are the keepers of the bei. We feel it. We understand it. We protect it from harm. This is important, because if any harm were to come to the bei, it would have devastating effects on our world and all life within it. When you awoke and saw us in the circle, we were communicating with the bei, feeling its energy, wading through it for imperfections and deterioration. We can see it; it appears to us in colors. We see it in the air around us and we see it in all living creatures...yourself included. When we look at you, we see the colors of your bei shimmering inside of your body's shell....but in your case we only see half, your right half. Your left side, well, it’s empty."

  I looked down at my body, comparing my left to my right, not noticing any difference. I lifted my left arm for inspection and it looked the same as always, but this knowledge gave me a creepy feeling nonetheless. How could I be half empty?

  Lovis apparently noticed my concern and reached out his long fingers to rub my left arm. "Don't worry, my dear, the bei that you do have compensates by sending some of its energy to the other side. It's enough to keep you fully functional, but just not dominant enough for us to perceive. Your body will not fail you anytime soon." He chuckled at my dismay. "The woodland clans know all about the bei and the signs of a bei clu. If they suspect that there is one in their midst, they will bring that individual to the Lumeai for confirmation. We are the only ones who will know for sure, as no one else can see the bei."

  "What about me?" Jalya chimed in. "Can you see my bei? How does it look?"

  "Yes, I can see it and you, my dear, are completely normal."

  "Oh." She looked so disappointed that I almost laughed. It was almost as if she was now jealous of the affliction that had haunted me my whole life.

  Our discussion was interrupted by a soft moan from the other bed of moss. The sun seekers diverted their attention from me for the moment, to observe that their sleeping friend was stirring. He rolled over to face us and fluttered his eyelids as though fighting to open them.

  "No, no.....no," he murmured, softly at first then with increasing intensity. He raised his hands and clawed at the air like he was fending off an invisible enemy, but did not wake up.

  "I'll go see to him," Darlus said and rose from her place in the rocks.

  "Oh my, I do hope that he's okay," Lovis said. "We are so vulnerable when we are away from our blessed mountain top. We sent him down in the early morning and he should have returned long before sunset. Whatever happened to him down there kept him away from the sun for too long. By the time we realized that he had not returned.....well, it was just too late for any of us to go after him. We must conserve our energy after dark."

  "Why did he leave?" Jalya asked.

  "Sharl was sent on a very important mission. We had information that needed to be sent, but we'll get to that later." Lovis dismissed the topic with a swoop of his fingers. The light that emanated from them trailed across the twilight sky. "Right now, we need to fill you in on your fellow bei clu. Let's see....there are two in Norad, in the southern woodlands. They are much older than you, so old in fact, I'm not sure if they still live. Then there is Claradon. Yes, yes, her's is a sad story indeed. She's almost sixty now and has never found her bei clu va. We know he still lives as she still has the head pain and longings, yet she has wandered the riverland colonies for more than forty years without any indication of him. All of the Lumeai communities know her. She has travelled from mountain top to mountain top to seek our aid in finding him, yet last we heard she was still wandering. She was here just last year."

  "The poor dear, such terrible head pain she gets too," Blon said sadly. "She enjoys coming to see us, as she has no pain while on the mountaintop. It is good for her to get some reprieve from it."

  As I listened to this story, I wondered fearfully if this was my future. To spend my life aimlessly wandering the land, seeking someone I could never find, being consumed by my own pain. I shook my head, unable to accept this possibility. Besides I had seen my bei clu va, or at least that's what the sun seekers seemed to believe. He had been almost close enough to touch. Maybe now that I wasn't oppressed by the rules of the village, I would be able to find him again.

  "Yes, Blon," Lovis said, "her's has been a tragic life. However, dear Emerin, that is an unusual circumstance, so do not fear. Most bei clu do find their bei clu va and usually fairly easily. When both of you are drawn to each other with such ferocious intensity, it would be very hard to keep you apart indeed."

  "You mentioned another," I questioned. "Or Darlus did....a Natki."

  "Ah yes, Mejalen, almost forty he would be...I think." Lovis scratched his chin in thought.

  "Thirty-five I believe." Darlus's soft voice tinkled across the air from where she sat with the sleeping sun seeker. Only when I looked over now, I saw that he was no longer sleeping, but sitting up listening to the conversation, his huge lavender eyes fixated on me, the same as all the others. Darlus rested her hands on his back, apparently giving him more energy.

  "Yes, yes, your memory is better than mine in these matters, Darlus." He looked at us with a smirk. "We Lumeai are blessed with wonderful memories that serve us well during our long lives. Nevertheless, age still wears it down. Darlus is much younger than I."

  "Let's see, let's see now," Lovis continued, "Mejalen found his bei clu va, oh, about sixteen, seventeen years ago, when they couldn't have been much older than the two of you. Must have been that long ago. How old is their boy, Darlus?"

  "Should be fifteen by now."

  "Fifteen...my, my, how the years have flown by! This is another sad story. Mejalen could not be with his bei clu va, at least not with any permanence. She was married to another man, but they were together on and off over the years, enough to....oh my....Sharl are you alright, love?"

  "I think I'll be okay, Lovis," a voice said from behind me. I turned and saw that Darlus was leading the weakened sun seeker over to the group. He looked much better, in fact, almost as good as the others, and his glow was much brighter now than it had been on the path. Whatever they had done to help him, it seemed to have worked. However, he still leaned a bit on Darlus for support as they walked gingerly across the rocks.

  "Come, come, sit by me. We were
just sharing a story," Lovis said and smoothed out the mess of stones next to him, while Blon arranged the area with moss. "As you can see, our new friend Emerin is a very special lady."

  "Yes," Sharl agreed. "When I first awoke and saw her, I thought I was still dreaming...or delirious." He approached Jalya and me and lay a hand on each of our heads. "I believe I owe you my life. I give you my most heartfelt thanks." I felt a rush of energy through my body. It was a nice feeling, as warm and fuzzy on the inside as the green glow was on the outside. For a moment I was breathless, as the intensity coursed through my veins.

  Sharl stumbled a bit and grabbed onto Darlus again. "Easy, Sharl," she admonished. "You cannot waste any of that energy now. You need everything you've got to last you until the sun rises." She glanced into the orange and violet streaked horizon. "And that should be very soon now."

  Lovis addressed Sharl again. "I want to hear all about what happened down there, love. But first, you must tell me, were you able to reach Hallen and the boy?"

  I perked up at the mention of this name and I felt Jalya's body stiffen next to me. "Hallen, he was going to see Hallen?" Jalya squeaked. "What did you want with her?"

  Lovis looked at her curiously. "Do you know her, my dear?"

  "Yes, of course. She's my mother."

  The crowd turned toward Jalya, their violet eyes finally leaving my direction. They stared at her and began to murmur quietly amongst themselves.

  "Oh my, well this is an interesting turn of events,” Lovis said, beaming at her. “Jalya, that is right; that was the little girl's name. Oh, my memory is not what is was...not what it was at all." Lovis stopped to ponder again, this time rubbing the side of his cheek. He turned to face the rest of the sun seekers with an enormous grin. "So many special guests on our mountain this morning." The rest of the sun seekers nodded in agreement, as their exuberant chatter grew louder.

  Jalya squirmed on the moss. "What do you mean 'that was her name'? Tell me why you sent him to see my mother?" She pointed at Sharl accusingly, obviously forgetting the closeness we felt with him on the mountain trail.

  "Oh dear, yes, well you see.....Hallen is Mejalen's bei clu va." Lovis watched Jalya closely, waiting for her reaction. There was none; Jalya sat frozen to the spot, undoubtedly trying to piece together what this meant. Lovis stroked her hair and looked at her with sad eyes.

  "You did not know, did you my dear? Your mother is also a bei clu."