Book 5, Chapter 49: The Outside Land
Sharp shards of tiny crystals bit into my palms, bare knees, naked toes. Hard stone pressed these into my skin. My heart beat. Again. Again. No stopping, one beat after another. The air was dry with the scent of paper from books, various carbons from burning wax, and it was cool on my skin, sharply bit into my nose. Ears pained as sounds thumped against them. Eyes shut and it was still too bright.
I breathed . . . breathed.
It slowly became less and less bright. Less and less loud.
Yelling.
“Captain! Kill her, kill her now!”
“Don’t! Don’t touch her.”
The last voice was familiar. Tired, he, it was a man, I was sure, was tired. Raspy voice. Different echo, bouncing along the ground and not above it. I heard the drops falling through his fingers as they hit stone. Another, another, and a gasp. That man didn’t have life long in him.
I opened my eyes against the candlelight, not too bright now, leaving me seeing hard and raw stone, tiny bits of rock and dirt scattered over it. On my hands and knees, staring at the stone of the ground – the floor? – cool air tore raggedly across my bare skin. Yes, the clothes. They’d burned away with the body. Along with the other dimensions.
I was again moving on a single point along a line of time. If I could focus, find my focus, it’d be much easier to comprehend my surroundings.
Yet I could still perceive them. The other dimensions. Even greater now, my perception. They curled in on themselves here, in this universe. I had escaped, passed the trials, the trap. If I could get my bearings, I could go back for my brother. We could destroy the other deities locked away in there, take this world for our own.
“Perhaps we should listen to her dying bodyguard. Wait for her to stand. Say something.” A woman’s voice. I remembered her older. Was I mistaken about time?
A banging sound, too loud for my new ears. The first man who spoke fleeing out the door, down the hall. Because he touched the divine, I knew him as a thief. The other, the woman who spoke, was backing up footstep by footstep.
Breathed in slowly. Yes, I was in three-dimensional space, one of time. These were people. Many people around. Some I knew, had known, before. One off in the corner dying, men on each side of him. He had a sword through his belly, out the other side. He struggled to look at me, but blood poured out of him and his life with it.
What was his name, the stabbed man? That he was in pain, that he would soon cease, hurt. This state of affairs was not enjoyable.
All this, I knew, yet my eyes stared at the stone floor.
I was a multidimensional being and so time’s march meant something different. Different to me. Something sideways, something up, sometimes down, and straight only with my choosing. Or my laziness.
Morrentz! His name. They must have stabbed him. I had the memory of it! There were many men around, no longer paying attention to him. He was so thirsty, and I well knew this feeling.
Sword through him. It was mostly iron, though plenty of oxygen was locked within, too, and he was breathing in more and all the nitrogen I needed. I turned that blade into useful molecules, combined them with the others and stitched him up, repairing his stomach, the torn muscle tissue through to his back, shredded arteries and veins, cut tendons and ligaments. The remaining iron was ideal for heme.
The handle of the sword sticking out one side of him and its point out the other side clattered to the ground and the big man took his first healthy breath. Since I arrived.
“With her reappearance,” beads of sweat rolled down her back, arteries narrowing, “we should clothe her. Appease her. Get me, bring some food and wine. And clean clothing.” Two ladies quickly left the room, heading in a different direction than the fleeing thief.
A man on each side grabbed my arms by the elbows, lifted me to my feet. I’d almost forgotten how to stand. So, they were helpful, but rough. And they laid hands on me without my leave.
“What are you doing? Don’t touch her!” shouted the woman, heartbeat racing.
Now fully healed, the man named Morrentz was feeling his stomach, his back. I didn’t know how long he’d be surprised. He’d probably attack soon and that would be distracting.
A different man approached my naked body held up by these two, by my arms, “You killed many of my friends.”
I said nothing.
“You idiot!” screamed the woman, whose voice I now recognized as the abbess. “She returned from an impossible trap. You are speaking to a goddess!”
“I keep my own counsel.” He, too, laid hands on me, lifting up my chin, hand on his sword.
I tried to speak, my voice hoarse. “Ah . . . Ah . . .” but the words wouldn’t quite come. It was the first time this body had spoken.
He squeezed my chin, “Yes?”
“I,” the air was dry, my tongue stumbled, “am naked.”
“You are.” He faced his troops, raised his voice, “It seems you’ve returned to this world as you entered it.”
They laughed.
“Put your cloak on her!” Morry yelled at them, tensing. Getting ready to attack.
“All of you.”
“What? All of us what?”
I found the word. “Blind.”
“Blind?”
“Without her permission,” I struggled in time, the order of words, “are blind. You who look upon a deity.”
Shouting. Yelling. Some of them sat down, touching their faces. Others waved their hands in front of themselves.
These ones were going to drop me in a panic. I decided to give them long lives. “You two, holding me, are free from my wrath. You are olive trees.” Their feet twisted into ropes of bark, extending into the dirt, their backs became wooden, arms the branches holding me up, their fingers tripled, nails expanding into leaves, hair likewise. They may have screamed before their internal organs became the spongey tissue to transport water and their skin, bark.
I took my first directed breath, expanding my chest cavity, inhaling deeply.
He, of course, was not blind. Morry pushed through the struggling soldiers, some shouting about their lack of vision, concerned look on his face, and punched the captain who touched my chin into the ground.
He knelt before me, “Princess, you came back to me.” He put his hands under my arms, “Are you enfeebled? Can you walk?”
“Yes. I cannot walk. Now. Yet.”
He took me into his arms, lifting me off the trees. “We have to get you some clothing.”
I nestled into his arms breathed in the big man as if for the first time, wrapped my hands around his neck and hugged him, “Morrentz.”
A whisper and intake of breath. “Cayce.”
A wetness fall onto my torso. I touched his face, wiping under his eyes, then ran my hand along his flawless jawline. “You taught me how to build fire. To ride horses, draw a sword. Threw my torturer out the window. Protected me from so long ago.”
“Yes, Princess. I am with you now.”
I suddenly felt overcome, buried my face against his neck, hugging him tightly. “Take me, take us out of this awful room.” And this time, as he wore no armor, my kiss touched his neck.
“What of the soldiers beyond?”
“They won’t notice us.”
He kicked the doors open, and we left the building.
***
The big man turned around.
I pulled a simple white cotton shift over my head, “You just carried me naked all the way here and you’re suddenly shy?”
“You’re ok to put those on yourself now?”
“I don’t know, I might need a strong chef to help me out with my clothing.”
“A chef? I’m not sure we have one of those around.”
I took the dress, another white cotton affair the nuns had brought, pulled it on. “These are so much easier than the dresses Brin forces me to wear. Maybe I can convince her to let me keep them.”
“As the princess, that’s unlikely. She will put you in regal and beautiful dresses, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, beautiful you say?”
“Excuse me,” said one of the de-aging nuns, “forgive the interruption, but I brought supper.”
I still didn’t like them and didn’t want to speak to them. But I was feeling more like myself, less like a standoffish god, and didn’t turn her into a toad, though it was tempting.
Morry said, “Set it down on the table. Also, I’ll need my weapons.”
“The soldiers have those, likely. I’ll see about getting them.”
After she left, and I was finished dressing, I looked at the food, “I wonder if they poisoned it.”
“I can’t imagine they’d test your anger.”
“My holy and just wrath!”
“Wrath?”
“It sounded good.” I did a little jump, ran over to the big man and embraced him, “I almost feel myself again!”
He hugged tightly, too, “You look like the Princess I knew. But,” he sounded shy, “don’t take this the wrong way, your scars are gone.”
“Oh! Morry, were you peeking? You bad man!”
“Princess, I, no, it was impossible not to notice.”
“I’m teasing you.” I stepped back, waved at my figure, “This is an entirely new body before you. I, uh, well not me, but the physical part of me, died both entering and exiting that place.”
“Died?”
“I remade the body upon exiting.” As I said that, I wondered to myself, why I picked this body. A little girl. I could have chosen anything, a giant of a man like this body’s deceased brother, a taller, adult woman, or anything really. But I knew the answer.
“You really are a deity.”
“Blinding all those people didn’t tip you off? The trees in the library?”
“Why olive trees in particular?”
“Oh, ah, first thing I thought of, I guess.” Perhaps later, I’d tell him about how a certain god back on my world got angry at olive trees, cursing them to never bear fruit and causing them to wither. That always irked me a little, I guess. Hopefully, these new ones will make up for it.
“You are strange.”
“On this, we agree. Let’s get out of here.”
“You don’t want to eat?”
“I don’t like these nuns and I reject their offerings. Let us return to Carlisele and check in on Brin and Tread. I have much to do, Morry.”
“They’re days away, Princess. Perhaps you are a little confused?”
“Eat if you like while we wait for your weapons. Then, we head to the roof of the keep. Besides, the sooner we get out of here the better. You’re becoming a boy.”
He went to stand in front of the mirror and touched his own face, “On this, we agree. What is happening here?”
“It’s this temple. While I am in it, entropy flows in reverse for humans.”
“Entropy?”
“You grow younger. Why the nuns fought the wizard to keep me here. They wanted their youth back.”
“Who can blame them for that? But this is enough for me, I think.”
“A couple days longer and you’ll be teenager again! The same age as me and Brin and Tread! Just imagine all the dancing we can do at the next ball.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Princess, but let us quickly be away from this place.”
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