Ellas
Alex
We sat around the fire, my sister, Carthia, on my right, David and the old man, Jain, sat opposite us, the flames of the fire between throwing dancing shadows across their faces.
Jalholm sat back from all of us, with us but apart. He had listened to our talk but so far not deemed to join in. He seemed moody of late.
We were arguing, as had been he norm since Jain had returned from, what seemed to the rest of us, his very brief visit to Earth.
It was all bicker, bicker, bicker about what we should be doing next. And my newfound sister was no better than the rest of them. She constantly berated David, or Kane as she called him, at every opportunity she got.
Jain was little better with his constant questioning of almost every word that David uttered. The man’s appetite for knowledge was insatiable.
Carthia’s words brought me back from my musings. Something that she had just said struck a chord with me and set my nerves a jangle.
I sat up straight and looked directly at Carthia as she spoke across the fire to Jain.
‘I have know you but a short while, old man, and yet despite all that he,’ and with that she pointed a finger toward David, ‘has said of you, I find that your constant interruptions and questions bore me… no not bore, they drive nails into my very skull. Can you not just listen to what is said to you and accept it as so?’
Jalholm spoke for almost the first time since we’d sat, ‘She is your twin in more than just looks, Alex.’
Jain laughed, a deep belly laugh. ‘But a short while ago, you threatened to slice me to pieces with that sword of yours, Carthia. I now think that a preferable fate to death by that so very sharp tongue of yours.’
All laughed at Jain’s retort. All but me. I wracked my mind for the words Carthia had spoken, the words that left my tongue dry and my hands clammy with sweat.
What was it she had said… something about Karum, or something that sounded like Karum. Where had I heard that before.
‘We know where his lair is, he is at Karum.’ Yes, that was what she had said, as near as damn it anyway. Where had I heard that before, almost the whole phrase?
As the thought completed, my mind almost shut down at the revelation that came to it.
Not just the words, nor the phrase even, but in that voice. Carthia’s voice, my sister. Sarah’s voice. Sarah had said those words, as she read from our book what she had just finished writing. And I had read those words a thousand times since. And it wasn’t just that sentence that she’d spoken, it was the whole conversation that took place around me now.
Slowly I looked at Carthia. Took in her face, her eyes, the words she uttered and her voice as she spoke them, and I knew that Sarah was there too. With her dreaming of all that took place before me.
‘Sarah,’ I gasped. ‘It’s you, isn’t it? It really is you. You are there with Carthia… Carthia is you. She truly is my sister.’
All eyes turned to me at my outburst. Carthia grasped my arm. ‘Are you well, sister? What is it?’
Tears ran down my face as I saw Sarah stare back at me from Carthia’s eyes. ‘Sarah, you are Sarah… you are my sister. Truly, you are.’
Carthia hugged me close. ‘Yes, we are sisters. But what has brought this on, Alexandria? What brings you to tears?’
I pulled back from her, and reached for my backpack – it was never far from my side. I grasped the book inside, felt its comfortable binding in my hand, and smiled as I took it out and held it in front of me. I ran my hand lovingly over the cover.
‘It’s all in here, all of it. ‘Read it,’ she said, Sarah my sister, my dead sister, said, ‘Read it. It will keep you safe.’ It was her… she was with me all along.’
Sobs wracked my body and I shook, but it was not with pain or sorrow, it was wonder and amazement at the gift my sister had given me.
I grasped the book in both hands and held it up to David. ‘It is all here. It was here all along… We just couldn’t see the connections because they didn’t exist when we read it… Sarah dreamed of the future, David. All this is in here is about what is to come.’
David’s mouth was open wide, Carthia held around me tight, and Jain grinned like a fool across the fire. ‘The lost tome,’ he said, awe clear in his voice.
‘Are you sure, Alex? I mean, how do you know? What happened for you to tell us this now?’ David blurted all a rush, his questions almost tumbling over one and other.
Jain still grinned like a fool, and as I turned to Carthia, Sarah again stared back at me. ‘She’s with you now, Carthia,’ I sobbed. ‘She’s dreaming now, looking through your eyes. She wrote of us sitting here, arguing as we have been.’
‘She is not looking through Carthia’s eyes, Alex. She is Carthia. Sarah is Carthia, and Carthia is Sarah… they are one and the same person. They are—’
‘It is as Jain says, sister. I have seen through your sister’s eyes. I have been your sister, Sarah. I am she and I am Carthia. We are one.’
We hugged each other fiercely as we both cried, our quiet sobs the only noise to be heard around the campfire.
Finally Carthia spoke, ‘I never doubted that we were sisters from the first we met. I know not how, nor do I care. Call it a miracle or fate, call it what you will. But all we two need to know is that is simply is. It is now as it should be.’
Slowly we parted, each with a smile on our lips and tears on our cheeks. I turned to David with a grin. ‘Karum,’ I said.
‘Karum? What of it?’
‘You asked how I knew… Karum is in the book, David—’
‘But—’
‘No wait. Hear me out. There’s more. Carthia spoke of Karum and it was so familiar to me, the word, the name, that my head began to pound. And then I realised what it was, I realised what was happening all around me.’ I looked at each of them in turn with what I knew was a ludicrously manic grin on my face.
‘You don’t understand, do you? But then, how could you?’ I opened my book, my oh so precious book, and flicked through its pages until I came to the passage that I knew I would find there.
David began to speak but Jain put a hand on his arm. ‘Wait, Kane. Patience. Let her show you.’ Impossibly his grin was almost a mirror to my own.
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I looked up and began to read aloud the words that I had no need to see. Long since the whole book, all of its myriad stories, was indelibly imprinted on my mind. How I hadn’t realised what was happening in front of my very eyes sooner was a mystery.
‘I sat, my beloved sister, Alexandria, at my side. The fire crackled before us, and beyond sat the ever questioning old man, and he who had been as a father to me. The other, the one whose name I still fear to speak, sits apart from us, but still close enough to partake of the endless argument that raged tonight as it had each night since my sister’s return. ‘He is at Karum,’ I said again for the third time. ‘We should strike there. What we do now, striking indiscriminately, only depletes our forces—’
'I ask again then, what is it that we will do when we reach Karum? How will we defeat him—’
‘Old man, I have known you such a very short time, and yet your questions… your constant questions and interruptions wear on me. Father has spoken of you fondly, but I doubt now that he had remembered true…’
‘Need I go on? It is not word for word with what was said… it is the words of a young girl as she puts to paper the recollection of her dream. But it is enough, isn’t it?’ I asked of the startled faces before me. Only Jain looked composed and at ease with what I’d read.
‘Your sister wrote those words?’ Carthia asked, her voice excited and somehow in awe. ‘Only now it has happened… and yet she put it to paper before she… before I dreamt through her no more?’
‘You are my sister, Carthia. You wrote these words. I too do not understand how, but as you said, it just is… and it is wonderful. I see Sarah in your eyes now… You are Sarah. You two are one. ‘ Tears again came to my eyes.
‘The Unwitting One will return, and he will bring all that is needed for the End Day. He will unite the Sisters, proclaim the name that must be known, and bring and end to all that can be foreseen,’ Jain said reverently.
‘What was that?’ David asked of Jain, but the rest of their words were lost to me as I held my sister close and wept with happiness.
###
It was a little while before I composed myself and was ready to speak once more of my discovery to the others.
Jalholm had now moved in closer, and he, David and Jain made up a huddled group across the fire; their quiet words not reaching across the intervening space between us. Carthia and I sat quietly watching them, no longer embracing but holding hands, and waited for them to complete their whisperings.
It took a little while before our attention was noticed. It was Jain who spoke first. ‘How are you now, Alex, and you too, Carthia? Is all resolved? Do you understand what it is that has happened?’
‘More questions, old man? Do you never tire in your quest for answers?’ Carthia asked light-heartedly, a smile broad across her face.
‘Yes, we are well,’ I answered for both of us. ‘But no, we do not understand what has happened… but neither do we care.’
‘What of your book then, Alex? What do you now believe your writings are?’ David asked, with a glare at Carthia as though daring her to challenge his right to ask a question.
‘You’ve read it, David. What do you think?’
‘That was a very long time ago for me, Alex. I recall that there were sections that I then believed might have some ties to Ellas… but I don’t remember what they were. Too much has happened in my life since then.’
I paused a moment. What did I truly believe? Was what I had witnessed moments earlier – a live rendition of the events that my sister had written so many years ago – truly an example of all that was recorded in her dreams? Deep inside I knew that there could only be one answer. I did not understand how, but what Sarah had dreamt and then recorded in our book was of events to come. Events seen through the eyes of Carthia, the sister returned to me.
‘My sister’s dreams, and hence most of what is recorded in our book, tells of events still to come, David. Of that I have no doubt.’
Jalholm spoke then for the first time since we had sat near the fire. ‘Would it be presumptuous of me to ask if I may look at the book?’
‘Alex,’ Jain said, ‘Sorry to interrupt you, Jalholm, but what I have to say may have some baring on how Alex answers your request.’
‘Go ahead, my friend,’ Jalholm responded. ‘I Bow to your judgement in such matters.’
Strange I thought. They suddenly seem as best friends, and yet not so very long ago an air of suspicion and mistrust constantly filled the air when they were in each other’s company.
‘Alex, you seem well versed in what is written in your book. Does it anywhere refer to itself… I mean do you or your sister as characters in the stories read from or refer to such a book as you now hold?’
I nodded slightly. ‘Yes. Mainly we read from it together, although it is sometimes only Carthia… But what is read is vague or skipped over completely. Very few words of what was read are recorded in our book; it merely a reference as to why a certain direction was taken. ‘It is as the book says,’ or ‘The book will guide us, sister.’ That type of thing.
Even so, Alex, do you think that sharing the contents of your book with anyone other than Carthia is wise? Do you share the contents of your fictional book with anyone other that Carthia in your stories? Anything at all?’ I ask because were you to indiscriminately share what is written you may well change or even negate what your sister has foreseen.’
‘Here we go again,’ David said in an exasperated tone. ‘Not content that you believe that what Alex holds is your legendary Seventh Tome, you feel the need to censure what it tells and confine it to those of this inner circle of yours… which amongst our small little band is just yourself, if I am not mistaken.’
‘Not so, Kane,’ Jain barked irritably.
Kane. I still couldn’t get used to calling him by that name. He was David to me, and always would be.
‘I merely wished to council Alex to caution with what she does and does not share.’
‘Enough, both of you. I have cherished this book and my sister’s words ever since her passing. Now, today, I have been given a gift beyond imagining.’ I clenched Carthia’s hand tightly. ‘I have my sister returned to me… and her writings are now shown for what they are… glimpses of what is to come—’
‘Of what may come,’ Jain interrupted.
‘Whatever, Jain! I now know where her dreams came from… and I plan to act upon what they tell us.’ I paused a second to slow my pounding heart, and gather my thoughts. ‘Always when the book is mentioned, it is one or both of us who has read it. No other, and so—’
‘Can I be the voice of reason here?’ Jalholm asked. ‘I understand what you have told us, Alex, and I see what is before my eyes… That Carthia is your twin is beyond doubt, and that it would seem that some mysterious force drives what happens here, but to say that your sister somehow dreamed that she lived within Carthia, will live within Carthia, and has witnessed through her what has not yet happened… Is such a thing even possible?
'I know nothing of foretelling… or of your prophecies, Jain. What say you, can this be as Alex says? And what of you, Carthia? Do you believe this? Do you somehow feel Alex’s sister within yourself?’
I had expected doubt from the old man, but not from Jalholm. Not after all we had shared and been through in our attempt to be here now. ‘Jalholm—’
‘No, Alexandria,’ Carthia said as she squeezed my hand gently. ‘Let me explain to Jalholm what it is that I have seen… what I have dreamt since my very first memory.
‘I was born with a sister, Jalholm. She was with me every night, every night when I dreamed. We grew up together, played together, laughed together, wrote a book together even…’
I gasped at her words. ‘You remember the book? You were there when we wrote this?’ I held up the book.
‘Yes. I do not truly remember the stories we wrote… It was so very strange when I awoke to remember being with you as Sarah and writing about myself as Carthia. But yes, I remember the book.
'So you see, Jalholm, for long years during the day I was alone, but when I slept, my sister was with me, my sister here, Alexandria. We have talked of this, Jalholm, my sister and I, and we have laughed and cried over shared memories. This is not a thing to be questioned.
'Somehow, by some miracle, I was there with Alexandria, truly with her… as her sister, Sarah. I was her sister, she was mine. We were inseparable…’ Carthia choked on the last word. Slowly she composed herself.
‘We were inseparable until that last dream. The dream when Alexandria faded from my sight, and I dreamt of here no more. I believed that she had died…’ Again her voice trailed off.
‘Sarah died that day. We have talked about it,’ I said as I held Carthia tight, the book now resting between us. ‘Sarah was seventeen… and so was Carthia.’
‘I dreamt no more of Alexandria until a few months ago… I believe it was when she and Jalholm first came to our world. The dreams were not the same. I no longer saw her through another's eyes, I just dreamt of her and saw some of the things she did and said. I could not talk to her, and she was not aware of me… but it was enough. I knew that somewhere she lived… and that was enough.’
There was a hush for a moment, only the crackling of the fire to be heard above our breathing.
‘So what now?’ David asked. ‘Do you do as Jain has suggested and keep a tight rein on your book or—’
‘I will let my sister read it through first… and then together, we will decide.’
Carthia smiled and nodded. ‘I would like that very much, sister.’