A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3) (15 page)

he hilly trails above Grove Hollow extended into a forest labyrinth as winding as Tiva’s mind. The other Hollowers had families, academy, or jobs in the lower valley during most days. Only Tiva dared not show her face in the village. She wandered the trails from morning to early afternoon, alone with her thoughts. She had come to hate the long silences.

I wonder what Tsuli and Weri are doing? They must have broken down and told my father something, else how would he have known to visit Farsa?
Tiva couldn’t blame her old friends. Henumil could be imposing, especially when he was angry or wanted something.

She turned and headed back through the greenery. The birdsong in the trees kept the silence from becoming total emptiness. When she reached the Hollow, she looked down the side path to find that nobody was there yet. Normally, she took a nap this time of afternoon, but today she wasn’t sleepy. Instead
, she kept walking toward Q’Enukki’s Retreat and beyond.

Occasionally when Tiva felt restless, she would go down the trail almost to the Shrine. The little branch path she and Farsa had used to avoid Yargat’s haunt on Tiva’s first trip to the Hollow wound around a grassy overlook before crossing the brook toward the Immigrant Quarter. Today Tiva risked climbing the knoll to get a look at the village and her old life.

She lay on her belly in the grass, with her head propped on her hands and elbows to peek over the gentle ridge. In the distance below, the academy ziggurat released its students. Some of them ought to reach the Hollow in about an hour or so.

Her eyes wandered past the ziggurat to the Altar Square. A pang of loss almost brought an involuntary tear at the sight of her father’s house.

“Stop it, you silly rag!” Tiva hissed to herself. “Why should you weep for such a dungeon?”

She had to turn her head and slide a little down the opposite slope to head off the emotions. She got to her feet, brushed herself off, and trudged down the backside of the hill to the path back up to the Grove Hollow.

It was stupid to come down this close to town! What was I thinking?
Then it dawned on her that in daylight Yargat might actually see her rejoin the main trail, if he stood outside the Shrine cave as he often did, and faced the right direction.

Terror froze her in place less than fifty cubits from where the paths met. Something rustled in the bushes behind her.

Tiva wheeled around and peered down the way she had just walked. A gentle breeze moved the trees overhead. The lighting seemed odd, but she saw nobody behind her.

She continued toward the main trail, trying to catch a glimpse of the Shrine through the leaves. Reassured that a green wall masked her approach; she tiptoed up the slope to the junction.

She had just about made it to the main trail, when again she heard motion in the bushes behind and to her right.

Tiva stopped. Sweat dribbled down her spine between her top and bottom wraps. She felt the same as when Yargat used to stare at her from behind—a frozen panic that always left her helpless.

She turned, but again saw no one.

Taking a minute to regain her composure, she crept up to the main trail and bolted until the path wound upward away from the Shrine’s line of sight. She kept a brisk pace until she had climbed past Q’Enukki’s Retreat, where the forest hemmed in on both sides again. Only then did she hear the rustle once more and the snap of a twig in the greenery behind her.

Tiva turned and shouted, “Who’s there?”

The ferns moved. She was sure Yargat was going to jump out at her
, and pull her into the green. Instead, a small hand appeared, and then a face Tiva did not expect.

Tsulia stepped onto the trail
, eyes wide with a quivering chin.

“Tsuli! You scared me to death!”

“I’m sorry,” cried Tiva’s old friend, “I didn’t mean to.”

“Why
did you sneak up on me then?”

“I was afraid. If my father knew I’d wandered all the way up here, he’d absolutely kill me and feed my body to the wurms!”

“You still didn’t have to creep behind me all the way up from the Shrine, girl!”

Tsuli scratched her head. “I didn’t follow you from the Shrine. I left academy early and was wandering the hills all afternoon looking for you. I got lost
, and only found the trail again when I came out of the trees just now. I didn’t know it was you at first, Tiva—honest!”

Tiva’s heart almost stopped.
Who was following me then?

“Sorry I jumped at you, girl. I’ve missed you.”

Tsuli asked, “You’re not mad?”

“No
; just startled.”

“‘C
uz, I guess you’d have figured that I told your father you went with Farsa a few months back. I’m sorry, he was so angry…”

“It’s okay, Tsuli. You were scared. I would have been too.”

“Did he come up here?”

Tiva laughed. “No. He caught Farsa at home. She told him I ran off to the Farguti Girl’s Shrine or something. I figure he’s given up on me.”

“I don’t think so.”

“At least he hasn’t been up here. Come on, I’ll show you where I live now.”

Tsulia hesitated. “I better not. If my father finds out…”

“Go to! You’ve already left academy early. Why worry now?”

“I told them I was sick. They hardly ever check up on that anymore. I can’t get home any later than I normally would, though.”

Tiva pitied her. “I want you to know that life is good for me now. Better than it ever was before.”

“Really? You seem so different. I was afraid they’d be making you do stuff.”

Tiva smiled. “They don’t make anybody ‘do stuff’ up here. I’m much better off, really.”

Tsulia looked down. “I-I better go now. I can’t get caught.”

“Who’s going to catch you?”

Tsuli shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t be friends with you any more if you don’t come home. I’m glad you’re doing better, though. Don’t be afraid. I won’t tell your father we talked.”

Tiva watched her old friend turn and scurry back down the main trail. It was all she needed to remind herself that life at the Hollow really was better—even during the long
empty daylight silences.

iva’s world exploded again with the enhanced colors of the woodland glade. She floated in the afterglow of Khumi’s sleeping embrace, and tried to find her way into what should have been satisfaction.

Frustration lurked, a subtle creature, like a pair of eyes peering out at her from a
tree-root-forced crack in a lonely corner of her personal fortress—small, but all too real.

What can possibly be wrong? I’m in control now
—
I have the perfect weapon for my tug-of-war with A’Nu-Ahki built right into me! I am that weapon! Khumi might miss his family, but he’s chosen me!

Then it came to her.
Is it taking us more seers’ buttons to experience the “Forest Wild,” or is Khumi starting to lose interest?
The second possibility made the crack in her fortress widen, as a tentacle-like tree root pushed inside. Khumi was less responsive to her today and in too much of a hurry. They had barely talked.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Moon-chaser, always hard-up for silver, had taken to selling the buttons rather than giving them away as friendship tokens. Tiva had once tried to follow him out to one of his little patches. Farsa’s brother didn’t just go to great lengths to throw her off his trail. He had also confided to her some “friendly advice” that night
, by the campfire, as if he had known she had tried to follow him all along.

“Unless someone knows what to look for, the button is almost identical to a fatally poison
ed kind,” Moon-chaser had explained with an air of botanical erudition that would have sounded strange coming from anyone else at the Hollow. “I know what to look for because my father used to sell them back in Erdu. He had to give it up by law when we moved to Sa-utar, just before coming here. Tell me something Tiva; don’t you think a little expert protection from a deadly mistake is worth a tenth-skel of silver?”

She had felt it in her best interest to agree
—at least for now. Khumi had silver saved up. Carpenters rarely lacked work in Akh’Uzan.

Tiva shifted her position carefully, afraid of waking Khumi. The sleepy surreality of the seers’ buttons they had eaten about an hour ago had somehow dissipated too fast.
That’s stupid—we each took four big ones.
Maybe the buttons are wearing off sooner because they’re not as potent as the ones Moon-chaser had before.
That didn’t make much sense either.

Khumi had still gotten tired and fallen asleep too fast, as if four buttons were more than he could handle. She suddenly regretted her insistence on taking that many. They had agreed always to eat the same portion when together
, and she had thought that more would be better.

She flipped herself away from him to sun her back, once she realized how deeply he slept.

Frustration grew into boredom—boredom in the midst of a fantasy brought to life. She couldn’t understand it. The forest panorama should have been enough for anyone. Suddenly, it wasn’t.

Despite the fact that she still felt a quiet glow from the other buttons, an overwhelming urgency to take just one more hit her like wildfire on dry grass.
He doesn’t even know I’m here, all snoozy like that! So we’re not really together—are we? What am I s’posed to do all afternoon, anyway?

It dawned on her why she felt dissatisfied. The mushroom’s effect was supposed to last four to six hours, at least three of which should “move her halfway into the upper realms,”
according to Moon-chaser.

What if I can move all the way up?
What would I see?
The name
seers’ button
invaded her mind with its glorious epiphany.

Aren’t seers the
nearest men on earth to divinity? Can I move above the earth-reality into the one revealed by the buttons? Maybe I might find power there to hold on to Khumi—maybe even the secrets of Aeden!

There was only one way to find out.

She sat up silently, and reached across his snoring face to their outer clothing piled at the edge of the blanket. Slowly, she lifted Khumi’s satchel from his belt and drew it back over. Inside were over two dozen mushrooms they had recently purchased from Moon-chaser. She took one out, looked at it intently, and then popped it in her mouth.

She felt a twinge of guilt for sneaking it like that. The guilt flared up into a blaze of slinking thrill as she fished out another, ate it, and then another. Khumi would notice if she took more, so she resealed the satchel and placed it back on his belt, careful again not to arouse him when she leaned over his body to replace them with his tunic.

Tiva smiled at her own silly fears. Nothing short of World-end could have brought him out of such a slumber.

She laid back to watch the orange skylight sprinkle through the trees, trying not to give in to the itchy boredom while waiting for the buttons to caress her consciousness. She was about to sit up and reach for the satchel again, when all sense of time dissolved into a flood of disjointed images.

A swell of immense satisfaction rolled over her, swallowing up the boredom and frustration in the snap-jaws of a white-hot gryndel of star-flame. The forest flew into flaming glass splinters and then reformed itself again before her eyes. She moaned softly, as she sat up to see the results.

Charming little animals and deliciously green plants with bright blue and orange flowers speckled her world. The piecemeal sky through the boughs and leaves far above began to take on the pinkish-gold of late afternoon. A chicken-sized striped scamper rushed into the clearing at her feet. It paused on two bird-like legs with its
lizardy tail held stiff up behind, and peered at her through bright sunshine eyes.

“Hello little fern sprite,” Tiva said softly, as the tiny creature began to chirp to her its pleasant greeting.

“Welcome to your Aeden!” she clearly heard in the reptile’s twitter.

The little fern sprite cocked its head at her,
and then rushed off into the bush. Tiva called, “Good bye,” after it, and lay down again on her back.

Everything swirled into a multi-colored vortex. All things became one as she felt herself linked to the earth, to the forest, to her orchard, and to her Khumi.
Aeden really is mine!

She had no idea just when or how everything changed again.

Perhaps she just forgot that in Aeden—where Atum and Ish’Hakka ate of the forbidden tree—a God had also promised death.

Two shadows loomed over the resting couple, blocking out some of the gold-green woodland sun. Tiva didn’t notice them for a long time, thinking they were trees that had bent over to greet her
as the scamper
had. When she became fully aware of them at last, their blackness touched her with spiraling dread.

Her entire world spun upside down, until she felt sure it would drop her off through the trees into a sickening black void that
had somehow swallowed the sun.

A wrath-filled god blasted the darkening trees with the shadow-wind of his fury.
“So this is where you hide!”

The ground shook. Crows flew
squawking from blackened branches stripped of greenery.

Tiva rolled away from Khumi’s body to clutch the ferns on the other side of the blanket, convinced that she would fall up into the sky
through the clawing tree-limbs; ejected from her orchard into a howling emptiness of outer darkness.

Eyes.

Huge bloodshot orbs—crimson fire rings around two pairs of black holes—brooded down on her from out of the shadows. A new fright surpassed even her panic of falling up. Though she was partly covered by one of Sariya’s pelt wraps, to those eyes she might as well have been naked. She lunged for the edge of the blanket to pull it over herself, but Khumi’s weight pinned it to the moss. He sighed in his deep hallucinogenic sleep.

The voice of Henumil
roared like a lanced gryndel
dragon.
“I search all of Akh’Uzan for you, only to find you up here doing this!”

Another voice hissed from the second shadow, the very tongue of the Basilisk. “I didn’t want to admit it—even to myself, out of hope—but I suspected we would find her up here playing whore,” Yargat said.

For a second Tiva was terrified that tongue would coil around her entire body and pull her into some snake-stretched maw. When it did not, she merely shuddered.
That’s it all along!
E’Yahavah and the Basilisk are together! They’ve got it rigged! It all makes sickening, horrible sense now!

The shadows coalesced into Tiva’s father and brother. She squealed, uselessly trying to cover herself with crisscrossed arms.

Henumil’s dark face became a rage-contorted clay mask with bulging eyes. His voice roared mountain thunder, while the forest hillside trembled under his dire pronouncement.
“You’ve defiled yourself, you whorish bynt!”

Tiva tumbled over into the ferns, curled into fetal position. Sobs convulsed her body with internal blows that felt like angry kicks. She had thought herself finally immune! Now all her control—all her Aeden—violently tore itself away from her like a poorly-healed scab.

“I should have said something,” the Yargat-Basilisk said in mock sadness. “But the sanctity of the counseling chamber should only be violated as a last resort. Forgive me, Father, I have miscalculated. You should know a few things now, since she has chosen to wallow in her uncleanness.”

Oh E’Yahavah, no!

Other voices taunted her from far below, “
Sow-wallow! Sow-wallow! Tiva-suuee!”

Yargat’s words ripped into her like all
of his secret intrusions put together. “It started at the new Girl’s Academy, Father—which you have rightly opposed—sadly, to no avail in Tiva’s case. She learned to behave lewdly from the immigrant girls. Instead of praying to Atum-Ra for deliverance, and pouring out her error in front of the Treasures, she let it take her. I tried to turn her back in the counseling chamber, but she only pretended to listen. You are so right about that school, my Father.”

Tiva heard her father’s breath puff like some giant flesh-eating
wurm’s, and somehow knew even in her horrified incoherence that no thinking person could believe such a ridiculous fabrication.
Then again, who could have ever accused Henumil of being a thinking person?

For an eternity
, he seemed to hover there, huffing and puffing.

Clarity briefly embraced Tiva—a tiny sip of water in Under-world’s flames.
Is he wrestling with his conscience or just thinking up more words?

When her father finally spoke, his voice shook both mountains and sky. “You are disowned, Tiva! As priest of the Divine Name, I declare you banished from the Comfort of Q’Enukki by your own whoredom!”

The moment of clarity dissolved. Tiva didn’t have to look up to feel Yargat glaring down on her, still raping her with his eyes. “I told you this would happen,” he said. “And now E’Yahavah and your family have cast you away. It’s out of my hands.”

“Shall we take her back to the village, and make an example of her?” Henumil asked, sounding unsure for the first time in Tiva’s memory.

“Oh, Father, let’s not,” Yargat said, with just a hint of fear in his voice. “It would be more humiliating for us than for her. She obviously has no shame. And the boy—is he not a son of that heretic, A’Nu-Ahki? Best not to antagonize his house, now that he’s returned. We have the Three Gifts with the Cask of Atum Ra to think of. The Ancient could legally take them from the Shrine.”

Even in her fiery inner void, Tiva relished his hint of fear—Yargat knew that if
they took her into town, or if Khumi were hurt, she could expose her brother’s “counseling methods.” What more had she to lose?

Henumil said,
“You could be right—at least for now.”

“Let us go from here and leave her to her desolation.”

Tiva could hear the underbrush rustle as her father and brother walked off, back to their Lit world. A world in which one barely ‘tween-aged girl would hardly be missed.

Blackness enveloped the once golden glade, as tangible demons raked at her huddled body like a cloud of web-winged amphipteres. She crumpled into herself, a slug shriveling in a pile of salt. Her only consolation was that Khumi had somehow slept through the whole encounter, unharmed.

E’Yahavah suddenly became very real to her. She felt his terrible rejection shredding her psyche with all the fear and disgrace drilled into her since infancy. It sucked her down, a leaden force that pressed her out of fetal position, against the ground. She wanted to sink into the soft earth toward Under-world, just to get away from the face of the dark sky beyond the trees. Tiva wailed as her same old nightmares returned—this time made solid by the mushroom. She pulled herself onto her side, against the leaden force, to gaze at Khumi’s sleeping form.

She recoiled at what
lay on the other half of the blanket.

Yargat faced her, also lying on his side, his eyes aglow with that dreadful anticipation. Somehow
, he had replaced Khumi.

Her brother sat up, grabbed her around the shoulders, and shook her.

“You went away, and now you’ll always be a whore!” He laughed as he throttled her. “But don’t think you’ll ever escape me—oh no! I’ll always be with you wherever you go! I’ll always be there, no matter whom you love, and whom you marry! Because deep down inside, whenever you give yourself to him, you’ll only be giving yourself back
over
to me!”