Kristie Cook - Purpose

“Where’s Tristan?” I asked another time.

“He’s with Owen, honey,” Mom said.

“Why isn’t he here? I need him.” I blacked out again before hearing her answer.

“Mom?”

“I’m here, honey,” she answered.

“Tristan?”

“He can’t be here,” she said. “I’m sorry, honey.”

I struggled against something holding me to the bed. I couldn’t feel any straps or bindings, but I couldn’t move either. I thought maybe the dead weight of my own body held me down.

“Did he leave again?” I asked.

She didn’t answer me for a long moment. “No, honey, not exactly.”

What does that mean? I didn’t have a chance to ask, though. I slipped out of consciousness again.

“I think I’ve got him contained for now, but I don’t know how long it’ll hold,” Owen said from the doorway another time.

“Who? What’s going on?” I asked. Panic rose in my mind. I heard the bedroom door close.

Mom’s face moved over me. “Shh. Nothing for you to worry about.”

“How are you feeling, Alexis?” Rina asked.

“I don’t know. Scared.” I tried to take an assessment, but I couldn’t feel much. Every part of me just felt heavy and deadened, like my body had died but forgot to tell my brain. “Kind of numb, actually.”

“Do you feel hot or cold?”

“No, nothing. Nothing at all. Am I okay? I feel almost dead.”

I could hear and talk and see, and I could sense something was wrong. It seemed as though I had no sense of touch anymore, no feeling. I consciously focused on trying to lift my hand but if it even twitched, I felt nothing. Am I paralyzed? I wondered if and how such a thing could have happened.

“I think your body is just resting, preparing for the next wave,” Rina said.

I blacked out again.

When I came to, I first noticed the variety of intense smells. Freesia, lemon and vanilla first. Mom’s natural scent. Then orange blossoms and fresh rain. Rina. From farther away came pine and sea air—Owen. And then mangos, papayas, lime and sage. I smiled inside, knowing Tristan was still here. The smells of coconuts, salt water and stale sex also lingered on the air.

Next, I noticed all the sounds. The blood and energy pounding and whirring through my head came loudest. I could hear the whispers of fabric rubbing against itself and two heartbeats, besides my own, in the room. From the background came a low, rumbling growl, like a faraway train, and heavy breathing from somewhere else. And from even farther away, I could hear the waves on the beach.

I briefly opened my eyes. The dim light in the room made me think it was day time and the shades were drawn. Then it became painfully bright, as if a strobe light hit my face. For one surreal moment, I thought someone had taken a picture with a flash to commemorate this horror I suffered. I squeezed my eyes shut. The reverse images of Mom and Rina’s heads glowed on the backs of my eyelids.

The sense of touch and feeling came last. My skin burned, everything against it feeling arctic, even the air. I felt each thread of wet terrycloth and each droplet of cold water on my arms, around my neck, across my face and forehead as Mom sponged me. Rina’s hands felt like blocks of ice on my chest. Her breath felt cool on my face.

The energy traveling through my body earlier began to build and separate at the same time. My muscles felt on fire and the nerves twitched under my skin. Electricity charged through my veins, currents jumping from cell to cell. The gradual coming on of my senses escalated to a high crescendo, everything—the smells, the sounds, the touches—intensifying to an unbearable level. My ears rang and throbbed. My heart pounded. My breathing became shallow. My body trembled from the onslaught.

“Something’s happening,” I gasped.

Every single muscle, every tissue fiber tensed at once, pulling at each other in opposite directions. My body convulsed, every muscle pulled taut. Lightning shot through my veins and I felt as though I was being electrocuted from within.

An angry, moaning sound ripped through the room. It came from me.

Rina’s icy hands pressed harder and I thought my skin would freeze and crack under them.

Then I felt the two streams of power—fire and ice—flow up through my limbs and course through my body, both rushing to my chest. Two angry rivers raging toward each other. Agonizing pain exploded through my chest cavity as the two energetic powers crashed against each other. I screamed with the pain. My back arched uncontrollably, throwing Rina back. The two forces twisted and pushed at each other, tearing through my lungs, ribs and muscles as if splintering them into pieces. A warmth surrounded my heart, like a shield, while the energies clashed ferociously. The Amadis mark seared and blistered painfully.

“Oh, my God, it hurts so much,” I cried. “Make it stop!”

“What’s happening?” Mom gasped.

“It seems the two forces are battling,” Rina answered. She sounded like she stood at the other end of a long tunnel. “We have to let this happen. There is nothing we can do.”

And then the bedroom vanished.

Perhaps I passed out again. I didn’t know what happened. I just knew I was no longer there. Not in mind and spirit anyway.

I felt a sense of both familiarity and disorientation at my new surroundings. Where am I? I sat up and found myself in that strange meadow again, surrounded by mountains, and the lake in front of me. But the place looked and felt different once again. Not a warm, happy place, nor steel-blue-gray and desolate. I slowly rose to my feet as I focused on the tree with the constantly falling leaves.

But only half of it possessed actual leaves. Golden petals filled the branches on the right. They sparkled and glinted as some fluttered to the ground. The branches on the left half, however, were barren of any leaves, any life. Instead, that half looked as if an ice storm had come through, wrapping every branch and twig in a coating of crystal. Snowflakes floated to the ground, as if falling from those branches.

My vision pulled out and I realized I aligned perfectly with the center line splitting the tree between ice and gold. And I realized the whole world was split in half. To my right, the tall grass waved in a warm breeze that caressed my right leg, right arm, right half of my face. Green pines covered the mountain and the sun shone in the sky, reflecting off the lake. Flowers bloomed and turned their faces toward the sun. Birds chirped from their hiding places in the tree branches and I heard soft footsteps of wildlife on the forest floor.

To my left, snow blanketed the field and the trees on the side of the mountain. The left side of the lake had the pseudo-transparent look of water frozen solid. A lone white wolf sat near the base of the tree, watching me carefully, though I didn’t feel afraid and it didn’t look concerned. The left half of my own body felt cold, but not uncomfortable. In fact, there was nothing chilling at all about any of the scene. It was a beautiful, wintry landscape, just as lovely as the other side, but in a different way.

I considered the strangeness of my environment. How did I get here? What am I doing here?

“You need to decide,” said a familiar, accented voice. Unlike last time, when it had sounded flat, it now resonated across the field like soothing music. I peered to my right and saw Rina and Mom standing far off, near the base of the mountain.

“Decide what?” I asked. I didn’t yell, not feeling the need to, although they were several hundred yards away. I somehow knew they would hear me even if I whispered.

“Which way you want to go,” said another voice, this one unfamiliar. A male voice with a different kind of accent. With surprise, my head twisted to my left. A man, perhaps in his late twenties, stood almost directly across from Mom and Rina, at the base of his mountain. His hair and goatee were snow-white and his eyes ice-blue, the same face I’d seen earlier in my mind. But now it came attached to a body, clothed in black slacks and a tight-fitting black shirt that emphasized his powerful build. He smiled, but his teeth now looked bright but normal, not icicles as I’d imagined. In fact, the beauty of his smile stunned me. “You can come with us….”