Eternity's Edge

  Nathan hesitated. The question was a simple one, but he wanted to give more than a simple answer. “No. I want my first kiss to be when the pastor says, ‘You may now kiss the bride.’”

  She let out a low humming sound. “Actually, that's really romantic.” Her voice now came from out of almost total darkness, except for the weak glow in her eyes. “But is that your belief, or your father's?”

  This time he didn't hesitate. “Both. I know I was raised in a dome, like you said, but I want my wife to be the only girl I ever kiss, and the only way I'll know for sure is to wait until our wedding day.”

  As a whispered sigh drifted toward him, her glowing orbs blinked out. “I hope I'm there to see it.” Her grip on his hand tightened for a brief second, then loosened, but their index fingers remained curled together.

  Nathan lay back and closed his eyes, but Kelly's anguished face remained branded in his mind. Her voice replayed, “I'm not a harlot … In your eyes, I'm damaged goods … I promised myself I wasn't ever going to make the same mistakes again. Not for you. Not for anyone.”

  The words echoed over and over. Did he really think she was damaged goods? She made a promise never to do again whatever it was she had done. Could he treat her as though she were the untouched princess she had talked about? Could he ever stop wondering what she had done? Was Mictar right when he said, “You want to know every lurid detail. She is your dark shadow, and you will never find your parents while you entertain a harlot at your side.”

  He grimaced at the spiteful words. But were they true? Would his parents accept her? Or would his father see her as a harlot, a wicked wench to be despised?

  As the stalker's accusations echoed, Nathan replayed a scene from only a few months ago in London. He and his father were walking back from his mother's performance, but she had stayed at the hall for a reception, planning to take a taxi with Clara later.

  Fog shrouded his thoughts, the effects of sleep looming close by. His mind drifted, allowing the mist to dress a London street and bordering sidewalk, well-lit but with only a few people tromping over the wet concrete.

  His father strode with a lively gait. “Your mother was fabulous, as usual.”

  Nathan laughed. “Yeah, but the other violinist looked annoyed. He couldn't hold a candle.”

  “Oh, I don't think so. He was just … intimidated.”

  His father stopped suddenly and looked toward an alleyway. Nathan followed his line of sight. A woman had sprawled across the gutter, her legs in the alley and her head and torso on the dirty walkway.

  Nathan shrugged. “Probably just a —”

  “Be right back!” his father said as he jumped into a trot toward the alley. Stooping, he helped the young woman get up from the pavement. She was filthy, her skimpy clothes were torn, and makeup smeared her face.

  As Nathan walked closer, his father used his own jacket to wipe mud from the woman's arms and legs and brushed tears away from her face with his thumbs. Finally, he gave her money, at least three or four bills. One couple paused and stared at them, then walked on, shaking their heads.

  After talking to her for a couple of minutes, he hailed a taxi and helped her get in the back, then paid the driver. When he finally returned to Nathan's side, the two again headed toward the hotel.

  Nathan stared at him, trying hard to keep his tone in check. “She's a prostitute.”

  His father stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I know.”

  “You rubbed her arms and legs, and you gave her money.”

  He glanced at Nathan, then refocused on the sidewalk ahead. “Yes, I know that, too.”

  “Everyone else on the street will think you were her last customer.”

  His father lifted his head higher. “And everyone who knows me will realize that couldn't possibly be true, no matter how it looked.”

  “But what about propriety? How many times have you told me not to touch a girl if she's not my wife?”

  His father stopped and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Propriety can be a wise tutor, Son, but it can also be a cruel taskmaster. The key is to know when to dismiss propriety. It is good not to touch a woman who is not your wife, but to refuse a touch when a life is at stake is cruelty. It is a great sin against God and against humanity.”

  “But what if a life isn't at stake? You didn't know if that prostitute would have died. Maybe she was just drunk.”

  His father let out a sigh but kept a gentle smile. “She was drunk, Nathan. She is a slave to her body and to those who use her body for their pleasures. She sees no light in her dark prison, so I gave her a glimpse of the light that you and I follow.” He laid an arm over Nathan's shoulders, and the two walked on. “Sacrificial love is a light that shines in the darkest places, no matter who is watching.”

  Nathan opened his eyes. The two glowing orbs had returned. Kelly was looking right at him, close enough for her injured eyes to focus clearly. He didn't dare turn away from her. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Reading your mind again.”

  “But I wasn't playing music. I —”

  She set two fingers on his lips and let out a quiet, “Shhhhh.” Then, interlocking her index finger with his again, she curled up and closed her eyes. “Sweet dreams, Nathan.” After letting out a long yawn, she added, “You're the best.”

  He released a long breath and let his eyelids droop. Kelly's cool, soft hand sent more prickles across his skin. Her closeness felt good, too good, but he had work to do, and his exhaustion would kick in before long. He yawned, then sighed. Sleep would soon come.

  After what seemed like a few minutes, he opened his eyes and checked out his surroundings. He lay on the floor, one finger still curled around Kelly's. The room was much darker than before. Had he awakened in the middle of the night, or was he dreaming?

  He sat up and looked back at the floor. His body still lay there, breathing rhythmically. Smiling at his own awkward fetal pose, he gave his sleeping body a light pat on the shoulder. So this was a dream, a strikingly realistic one, but definitely a dream.

  Something new lay on the floor near the mirror. A body? Nathan jumped up, leaving his sleeping form behind. He rushed to the mirror and knelt. The body appeared to be a man, a rather hefty one lying on his stomach. Craning his neck, Nathan listened. Yes. The man was breathing.

  With careful hands, Nathan rolled him over. In the dimness, he could barely make out the man's bearded face, yet, even with dark bruises blotching his skin all around his eyes, his identity was clear — Jack, his friend from the airplane crash.

  11

  THE FIFTH REALM

  Nathan shook the man's shoulder. “Jack! Can you hear me?”

  Letting out a groan, Jack fluttered open his eyelids, but it was too dark to see his eyes. “Who's there?” he asked softly.

  “It's Nathan. Remember me?”

  A weak smile shifted Jack's beard. “Remember you? I've been searching for you. But in my condition that has been a lost cause.”

  As Nathan leaned closer, a sick feeling boiled in his stomach. Jack's eye sockets were empty. “Did Mictar do that to you?”

  Jack reached out a hand. “Help me up, and I'll tell you about it.”

  He pulled Jack to a sitting position, glancing at Kelly to see that she still slept soundly. The sight of his own snoozing body near hers seemed too strange to be true.

  “This is really a weird dream,” Nathan said. “I've never had one so vivid … well, one other. But that was recent, too.”

  “As well you might expect.” Jack sniffed the air. “Ah! Kelly is nearby. I'll never forget her scent, a lovely vanilla mixed with strawberry.”

  “Yeah, she's here. She's sleeping.”

  “Then she will have to hear my story another time.” Jack pulled a crumpled fedora from underneath his jacket. As he passed the brim through his nervous fingers, his vacant sockets aimed toward Kelly. “When I rode on Mictar's back into the mirror, there was a sudden flash of light.”

  As i
f cued by Jack's words, the mirror in the room flashed. The reflection transformed into a movie screen of sorts, showing Jack riding the evil stalker's back. Mictar staggered under the weight in the same bedroom they sat in now, while a funnel-like swirl of mist spun in the center of the room. In the background, Nathan's parents looked on in horror. Although no sound came from the mirror, Jack filled the air with a vibrant storytelling voice.

  “A window opened, and a man who looked just like Mictar began to climb in. At the same time, your father tackled the real Mictar and sent us both toppling over a desk, breaking it into pieces. I leaped to my feet and tried to crawl over the bed, but Mictar kicked your father away, pounced on me, and covered my face with his hand. Light as bright as the sun scorched my eyes, so painful I can't describe it. From that point on, I couldn't see, so I can only tell you what I heard.”

  “Wait a minute,” Nathan said. “Maybe you won't have to. I hear something.”

  Noises erupted from the mirror. The movie's sound kicked in. His father lay on the floor near the bed, holding bloody fingers over the side of his head. Jack, still on the bed, groaned loudly under Mictar's scalding hand. Patar burst through the window and lunged at Mictar.

  The two stalkers wrestled on top of Jack, clawing at each other and ripping the mattress.

  Nathan's mother leaped to her husband's side. “Solomon! Are you all right?”

  He shook his head, and if he said anything, the grunts and strange sounds coming from the combatants drowned him out.

  Jack rolled off the bed, and the weight release sent one end of the mattress into the air. Mictar and Patar crashed to the floor, still wrestling savagely. They sang in bursts of harsh notes that sounded more like musical profanity than song.

  Nathan's mother helped Jack crawl to safety next to her husband, just a few inches away from the expanding swirl of mist.

  Jack blinked. “I can't see!” he cried. “It feels like my eyes are on fire!”

  Smoke poured from his eye sockets, creating twin black plumes that drifted toward the ceiling. Nathan's mother swabbed his forehead with her sleeve, but her anguished face proved that she had no idea what to do.

  Patar kicked Mictar in the groin, leaped up, and rushed to Jack. He laid his hand over the bearded man's eyes. “You will lose your sight,” Patar crooned, “but you will not die.”

  Mictar climbed to his feet and pointed at Jack. “I tasted his life force!” he shouted. “I must have the rest!”

  Scowling at his brother, Patar barked a reply. “A taste that leads to slavish lust should never be taken. You have struck the match, but you will not bask in these flames.”

  Mictar hurled another musical obscenity. “… with your trite moralisms! His life energy seal is broken. He cannot survive.”

  “Not in this realm.” Using his free hand, Patar scooped some mist out of the swirl. He sniffed it, then, after letting some of the mist filter through his fingers, he sniffed it again and applied it to Jack's forehead. He now seemed to be talking to Nathan's parents. “I am sending him to a place where he can survive — the realm of dreams. His only hope will be to find the healer of the broken womb, and when the crack is sealed, perhaps he, too, will be restored.”

  Patar lifted Jack to his feet and guided him into the swirl.

  Mictar pointed a stiff finger at his brother. “Your healer is a fool! A chicken with no head! He is so enamored with selfish infatuations, he will never find his parents or this eyeless rescuer!”

  As the mist enveloped Jack, Patar stayed outside the swirl and looked back at Mictar. “Perhaps you are right. The road ahead of the healer is cruel and heartbreaking, far more difficult than he is now able to endure, but I will never give up hope. He is the only one remaining who can complete the duet.”

  The mist seemed to eat away at Jack's body. Within seconds, he was gone.

  “I must have more!” Mictar roared and lunged at Nathan's parents. A scream shot from Patar's mouth, a visible lightning bolt of sound, black and jagged. Just as Mictar reached Nathan's parents, the bolt slammed into his body and covered him with darkness. Mictar grabbed each parent and screamed. “I will take them with me!”

  Patar dove headfirst and clutched Mictar's ankle. “Into the mist!” he yelled. “I will keep my brother here!”

  Nathan's parents jumped up, breaking away from Mictar's grasp. His father staggered, but his mother held him upright as they hobbled toward the swirl. Both had splotches of black on their arms that dripped like sticky tar down their bodies.

  Another musical note sounded from Patar. He followed it with a shout. “Solomon, I set you free from your manacles.”

  A sizzling crack broke apart the metal bracelets on Solomon's wrists, and they fell to the floor. Nathan's parents leaped into the swirl, and, in a few seconds, they, too, disappeared.

  Patar released Mictar and jumped away. He brushed his hands against each other, sending crumbs of black down to the floor.

  Slowly rising to his feet, Mictar coughed and wheezed. When he finally straightened, he let out a spiteful laugh. “They have been anointed with dark energy.”

  “Not enough to harm them,” Patar said in a matter-of-fact tone. “They will resist it.”

  “Perhaps, but they cannot escape from where you have sent them.”

  Patar laid a hand on the outer perimeter of the swirl. White mist brushed against his fingers. “I sent them where you cannot accost them. You are transforming into material dissonance yourself, so you will be a living specter until you find a way to revive.”

  Mictar, his face now a mass of black, looked down at his equally black, formless body. “I am able to refuel, and I know just the place to restore myself. There is a certain girl who does not even yet know how gifted she is. I tasted her, and now I must have her.”

  “She is of no concern to me,” Patar said, waving a hand of dismissal. “I will keep this portal open long enough for the healer to find it, but by the time you are reenergized, the path Solomon and Francesca have taken will no longer be available.”

  “True enough, but I will find another path.”

  “Not unless there is substantial healing.” Patar picked up a clump of mattress padding and squeezed it tightly, letting the crumbs fall to the floor. “The paths are fragile, so the catalyst you desire for your machine is out of your reach.”

  Mictar laughed again. “This is a delicious irony, indeed. If your healer does his work, he will be the reason I am able to capture his parents.”

  “True enough. But there is another way, a way that will make your Lucifer engine impotent.” A sad frown sank the lines on Patar's face. “You know what that is.”

  Mictar spat a wad of black goo onto the floor. “The boy would never do it. He is a romantic, too dependent on emotions to perform such a selfless act.” He gazed at the dark club that was once his hand. “If I could get to her safely, I would do it myself. Such a source of energy would make me invincible. Lucifer would no longer be necessary.”

  For a moment it seemed as though a smile was about to break through on Patar's face, but he suppressed it. “Is it not strange that a mere wisp of a girl has chilled your heart and painted a stripe of yellow down your back?”

  “Laugh on, my brother. Since you enjoy the human euphemisms, I will counter with, ‘he who laughs last, laughs best.’”

  Patar nodded. “We shall see. Perhaps the healer's journey will teach him the wisdom he needs to carry out what you and I cannot bear to do ourselves.”

  “You overestimate his character.” Mictar set a dark foot on the windowsill. “He is human, and he will die with all the other ‘rodents’ that populate the planets.”

  As soon as Mictar jumped out the window, the mirror dimmed, and the image transformed into a normal reflection of the room.

  Now in near darkness once again, Nathan let out his breath. How long had he been holding it? The scene before him had held him so transfixed, he had lost all grip on reality.

  He looked back at his sleep
ing body. Of course, not sensing reality should be no surprise. After all, this was only a dream.

  He turned to Jack. He seemed real enough, frumpy clothes stained with blood, thinning hair with a bald spot in the back, and skin reeking of body odor and cologne.

  “Did you hear all of that?” Nathan asked.

  Jack continued to thread his hat through his fingers. “I did. Much of it for the second time, though the discussion between those stalkers was new to me.”

  “Okay,” Nathan said, holding his hands against his temples, “my brain is officially overloaded. If I'm dreaming, then maybe nothing I saw really happened. But if it did happen, then you were sent to the realm of dreams. Does that mean that the Jack I knew is really here? I mean, you're not just dreaming this?”

  A wide smile brightened Jack's blackened face. “I'm not dreaming, but if you are, how can you possibly be sure that I'm telling the truth?”

  Nathan lowered his hands. “That's the problem. Dreams aren't real, so I can't count on anything I see or hear.”

  “And I can't prove I'm real, at least, not until you wake up.”

  “Why when I wake up?”

  Jack blinked his vacant eye sockets. “I could tell you something you don't know. Then you could check on it after you wake up.”

  “Okay,” Nathan said, nodding. “I'm with you on that. What do you have in mind?”

  Jack stroked his beard for a moment. “When you passed by me while I was kneeling at a cemetery plot, did you see me?”

  “Yeah. I was in a hurry to get to the funeral, but I saw you there.”

  “If you get a chance to look at the tombstone, you can read my name inscribed there: John Alton Flowers. Or it might be easier to call someone and search the death records. Then you'll know that I'm really here, because you couldn't have dreamed my name.”

  Nathan nodded again. “Okay. Fair enough. If I can remember. I'm not too good at remembering dreams.”

  “All I can do is pray that you will.” Jack pushed up to his knees. “And pray that you can help me leave this place.”