CHAPTER THIRTY SIX: A STRANGE PLACE OF ...VISIONS

Extreme vertigo assaulted Calin, as the cosy colours of the caravan was tearing apart.

Then, all sense of feeling disappeared for a few seconds. He floated in a lake of swirling pictures. One picture was of the caravan and the woman watching over him. He could almost swear Kara was there; the scarlet red of her hair seemed to flow into the swirling mass, but then the picture broke into shards dissolving into a current that swept him away.

He clawed at anything and everything in the mass to find footing, but there was nothing. He almost screamed at his stomach twisting and turning with intense butterflies.

The spinning stopped almost as fast as it had started.

Somewhere in the dark waters appeared a globe untouched by the masses of water around him, in its dry centre there was a fire licking at some wood. Its whole essence spoke of peace; it drew at him almost as much as the deep waters around him drew him to their black depths. Then Calin remembered the words of Mictoria, ‘find the fire within, then you will find your way back.’ He pushed the swirling mass around him out of his mind and focused on the scene of the fire. Alright Calin, pull yourself together. How do I get to the fire?

He stopped struggling and thought about the situation. Find the fire within...what did she mean?

Then a thought tugged at him. Maybe I’m within my own mind, not somewhere physical. He tried to clear his mind and thought about the fact and willed himself toward the area with the welcoming fire hanging in the air. He smiled as he floated through the waters towards the fire.

Flashes of light illuminated the dark waters for brief spells above. It was like a storm was brewing over head as he willed himself faster towards the fire. It’s almost over.

Just as his foot left the water into the globe, to step onto the hovering rock with the fire; his shoulder erupted in pain from the lightning scar, not from the wound in his arm.

He screamed out as a sensation washed over him as if the flesh on his shoulder was shifting unhindered. Gritting his teeth, he tried to ‘will’ himself that little bit further. The fire was almost within reach. As much as his body had been ghost like within his mind a moment before, he started to feel as if he was shifting into his physical form. His shoulder jerked as it seemed like it was forcefully rearranging itself. His whole body lanced with pain as it resisted.

Pushing at his legs, he stepped forward onto the ground in the globe, sweat started dripping from his brow, his hands and legs were shaking, his eyes hurt like as if looking into a light too sharp, but the fire was gentle as he inched towards it. Only a meter to go.

Without warning, the dark waters surged through the ground and swept away the part of the untouched globe he had stepped on.

It broke away under him and he started to fall away from the fire into a whirlpool.

In a last ditched effort he grabbed at the fire, but it disappeared from his reach. Within a second he was falling. Hundreds of scenes formed in the sweeping current as he fell past them. Some of them were things he had already seen; the running away from the massive Nighthounds, the fighting with the small one in the fort and then forests of the Morning trees floated past him, but still he fell.

Through the jumbled mess, the caravan picture came back into view and hope surged in him, hoping the ordeal was almost finished, but Mictoria was rushing about in the small room, her features were taught with tension as she said, “Something is wrong, Madam. He shouldn’t be in the fever this long.”

He watched as Kara kneeled towards the picture, her face full of worry as her scarlet hair stained the swirling water like blood. “Calin, come back!”

There was something that shone in Mictoria’s hand. There was a moment she paused; reluctance was strong on her face. But the gypsy bit her lip and scrambled towards him and placed something on his chest.

The second she did, the whole picture and the swirling chaos disappeared and Calin sat in a dark cave.

The course ground shifted under his weight in a grate as he sat up. Severe aches pulsed through his mind and he shook his head before rubbing at his temples, his body at least had settled down, the quaking had ceased. A short while later, his headache eased and he took in his surroundings.

It was definitely a cave, and a relatively large one at that. The roof of it was at least five metres up.

Calin unfurled his legs and stretched his muscles. Through the whole area there was something like soot in the air, but surprisingly he didn’t choke from it.

It only seemed to obscure the further reaches of the cave, but there was a light. Intrigued, he stood up from behind a rock. A tree presented itself in the centre of the cave. It was adorned by several oval shaped lanterns, casting out rays that bathed the cave in light.

The tiny lantern adorned tree was fed by a little stream of water that came from beneath the rock in a fountain, but disappeared again a few metres later.

The lanterns, being few as they were, still gave their light to the cave in its dim green light, but what it lit up was another sight he had not ever seen in his life. The walls were covered in remarkable looking stone carvings. The precision of them was ridiculous.

Calin moved closer to them as his curiosity got the better of him, the more prominent ones featured in the larger area of the cave looked younger somehow, opposed to the ones that lined the small tunnels in the back of the cave, which had an ancient feel to them, but not a single detail had waned. It was impossible to say the least. He was sure there was no place on Earth that people could create the type of things that would last through the ages.

After a minute, he dared to approach one of the older ones in the first small tunnel that was slightly overgrown with moss and vines. It depicted a great city that looked to be of immense size. At the edge of the city there were carvings of ruins where great battles had been fought. The carving seemed like it was going to burst forth in motion. Yet it did not. There was an air of mystery around the ancient scene. A sense of the city waiting...

His eyes only lingered on it for a short while before a throb settled back into his head. He shrugged and walked back to a larger part of the cave to the other and certainly younger looking carvings in what looked to be a series of carvings around the fairly round cave, but that one had a city under siege, great medieval like war machines stood on the field and so did those next to it, but these were all quite different to the first carving in the small tunnel. They were all less alive.

As he followed the order of carvings different cities came into view and all were under siege, all were worse for wear than the previous. The colour schemes were always the same in these younger ones. The cities were depicted as dark blue colours and the screaming people were fending off forces that shone with yellow and red colours. Calin studied the wall closer and could see a banner in the attacking forces.

The image shocked him to the core. Stumbling back he studied the other battles. Each battle had the same banner over the attacking force, a crimson red sun that looked like it was bleeding.

It was the same red sun from his dream, the same red sun from his attackers from the barn and the fort in the valley.

Each carving onward grew darker. Screaming people running from the invaders, every depiction seemed more hopeless. The children were crying in their mothers’ arms as they were shielded from the cruel men pointing for their beasts of war to attack. It was as if the picture was sculpted from a frozen memory.

Calin started to dread the sight of that red sun as he studied, of what he sorely hoped was not the real history of this world. Then without knowing, in his almost frantic observation of the frozen events, he had ended up in another small tunnel with another scene. This one was the oldest of the lot and almost no light found the moss covered event. Calin tentatively picked up a flat rock and gently scraped away the moss as it slowly revealed the great city from the first carving, yet somehow it was very different than before. More sinister.

Dark blotches marked the mass of black twisted figures flowing against the walls. Cold crept up Calin’s skin as he continued to watch the scene that wanted to play itself out on the wall. He couldn’t understand why it was suddenly so cold; there was no wind, nothing to fuel the unearthly chill.

He wrenched himself away and stumbled to the entrance of the small tunnel and his hand settled on a newer carving as he tried to catch his quivering breath. When he looked up there was a circle of twelve people standing next to a ball of light and even more stood right behind them. Their faces seemed grim as if they had to decide a terrible thing. The story in the wall coaxed him into continuing, even though Calin did not wish to see the death and destruction this cave so clearly painted. The next picture, however, was a wall of light shooting away from the ball.

Immediately he recognized it as the same silver colour as the wall he had passed through on that cliff, yet in a way different, less prominent. What it was for could have been anybody’s guess.

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He looked back at the next scene hoping to see peace, but there were young people crying at the feet of the prominent figures of the twenty three. He wasn’t certain if the colour of the figures had faded, but the sickening feeling that formed in his stomach told him that the people who had formed the circle made a great sacrifice to save their people.

It was almost too much to take in. He stepped back and sat on a rock. He looked at the entire wall with mixed emotions. A wonder at the workmanship and a deep sadness he didn’t expect.

He sat there watching the history of this land and something sparked in his mind. Tyas had said this place is the Moons’ Hemisphere. He watched the scenes and the more he thought on the matter the more he was certain the other Hemisphere must be that of the red sun or something. It was the north against the south... a war that shook entire nations...

Calin shook his head heavily. Even these lands had fallen prey to those who want to see the world burn. He remembered the history he was told by the people he grew up with. About the two world wars in the nineteen hundreds, it had taken him such a long time to even grasp the concept of how far the structures of a world must have fallen to erupt into something that touched millions, something so unnecessary.

Even the idea of it brought a sickening feeling to him, he shook it off then as he cast his attention back to the picture of those that tried to stop such a war, he silently inclined his head to them for their sacrifice.

A hundred different questions floated through his mind. He wanted to ask Tyas now, to know what had happened, why he was being hunted by those who wear the same banner as those who waged this terrible war.

But the notion made Calin groan. Tyas had been a kid when he left through the World Barrier. With some frustration Calin picked up a rock and threw it across the cave. It clattered against the wall and came to rest on the floor.

To his surprise, a small girl stood there, her cheeks wet with tears.

***

Calin jumped back at the unexpected stranger and staggered backwards.

After the initial surprise he studied the little girl. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old. She had one thick braid that hung loosely over one of her shoulders down to her waist. Her hair was blue as a dark night. Calin tried to place the strange hair colour, but finally decided it as midnight blue.

The dim light and the soot like air obscured some of her features, but her eyes were bright even in the diminished light. It was hard not to stare at her eyes. They all but drew him in, as if asking for him to divulge secrets he didn’t even know. She stood there watching him with her mouth open.

Not sure what to say to the little girl, Calin cleared his throat awkwardly and to his surprise asked the oddest of questions, “Uh, do you speak English?”

The girl eyed him as if she didn’t understand and Calin dragged a hand through his brown hair and sat down on a rock. “I guess not.” He didn’t expect everybody in these strange lands to speak his language.

But then the girl surprised him as she said, “I speak the language you speak, but what is this ‘English’ you speak of?”

Calin’s gaze shot back at the girl. “Oh sorry I thought.... wait... I recognize your voice.” He narrowed his eyes and studied the girl more carefully. The ghostly girl that had been in the wall was about this girl’s age and size. His eyes popped open and he said, “Yes! You were the girl in the wall.”

The girl was frowning deeply as if she tried to place something, then she said in an adamant voice, “Sir, I have never seen you in my life.”

He was confused now, although still certain this was the same girl. “Yes you have. You came to me in the wall, picked me up and said sometimes you hear me laughing, but your mother says sculptures can’t laugh.”

The girl gasped and her hand shot up to her mouth. “It cannot be...”

With a groan Calin shook his head. This is going to be more difficult than I thought. He was just about to start to explain to her step by step how he had first seen her when she said,

“I didn’t think it possible. I was starting to believe the laughing was a figment of my imagination.”

The affirmation sent his thoughts on a different course and he looked around the cave again, for the first time he really wondered where on earth he was.

Sudden movement made him spin back to the little girl. A groan escaped him as he was somewhat dismayed at his own reaction as he realized the girl was just jumping up and down with excitement. With a frown, he almost reprimanded the girl for her attitude. But he kept himself in check.

“Yeah yeah I know you’re glad and all that I was not just your imagination,” Calin said before asking. “But can I ask you a question?”

The girl was walking towards him, smiling broadly, her glowing eyes were disconcerting to him, but she quickly eased his tension as she politely said, “Yes you may sir, but I want to ask one as well then.”

Fair enough to him, he nodded and kneeled before the girl and asked, “So what is your name, and where is your mother?”

She smiled happily and said, “That’s easy sir, my mother is away on travels, she said she will be back soon. My name is Savine.”

A smile tugged at his lips and he stretched his hand out and said, “What a pretty name. I’ve never heard it before. My name is Calin.” The girl blushed slightly and thanked him before Calin tried to shake her hand. But as his hand touched hers it passed right through. The girl jumped away from him in fright. Her voice quivered as she asked, “Are...are you a ghost, sir?”

Calin first response was to laugh at that, especially at the irony of the reversed roles. But for her sake he calmed himself down and said, “No, I’m not. I’m as real as you probably are, but it seems I’m here, but not really here. Where ever this is.” It was an alien feeling. For one, he could feel the ground under his feet. Yet his hand had passed through her hand. It bothered him.

Savine regarded him seriously for a moment before the uncertainty started edging from her young forehead.

Slowly, a slight smile started to splay across her lips as she said, “That explains why you look a bit too dark to see, maybe.”

Calin raised an eyebrow and glanced at his own hands and true enough, he looked as if he had been painted with a dark grey colour. He was still uncomfortable by the fact that one moment he had been in one of the Floating Caravans with Mictoria and the next, he was lost here in this extraordinary cave.

It reminded him of the question he had wanted to ask, so he asked, “Where is this cave? I think I’m lost.”

“Not lost,” Savine said innocently. “I think you came because I was wishing for help. I came here directly. Your statue always calms me.” As she was speaking she walked up some stairs of the cave to a higher dais.

It was such an odd statement considering the situation, but Calin spotted the sculptures she was pointing to and followed the girl up the stairs. When he came to the top there were eight sculptures, each one having one aspect the same except for one. Seven of them were of men and woman with bows and knocked arrows with various other weapons strapped to their bodies.

The eight was of a man with only a sword in his hand, but even on the stone it was clearly visible that there was a mark on the man’s shoulder.

Calin circled around and even from a distance, the side of the man’s face was one of complex emotion. The sculptor, Calin surmised, must have wanted to portray the deep emotions of some unknown choice.

He couldn’t help but marvel at the workmanship of the piece. “This is remarkable... Michael Angelo would have stared at these for hours to figure out how it was made and what was portrayed.”

The girl’s frown caught his attention as she said, “Michael who?”

Calin laughed and said, “No, don’t worry; it was just someone who was really good at creating sculptures.” Looking at the statues Calin asked, “Which one fell that day that you picked me up and said I sometimes laugh?”

The girl chuckled sweetly and pointed at the one that had caught most of his attention. “That one of course.”

Calin walked around to see that specific sculpture’s face more clearly, and as it came into view in its entirety, an intensely unsettling fact made itself known to him. It reminded him of himself in a strange way.

The more Calin looked at its face the more a very uncomfortable feeling started settling into his stomach. It was impossible. These statues looked hundreds of years old.

But there it was, a statue that resembled him.

He couldn’t handle it anymore and marked it off as pure coincidence that there had once been a person who looked quite like him as he stepped away, looking rather at the sculpture of a woman closest to the one with the sword. This one had a look of intense determination on her face, yet it masked the pain in her eyes as she aimed her knocked arrow to a scene that he could never guess at, but which he desired to know regardless.

If Calin pressed himself to say what he thought about the sculptures, he would immediately have said it’s as if a moment incredibly important to the people portrayed was captured in the stone, to forever be remembered to tell others of the choices they would have to make. Each was a fundamental decision in the lives of each of these men and women, frozen in time to be recounted.

As if dispelled from a trance, Calin shook his head. In a way he was terrified of the idea of someone capturing a moment so personal and so profound into stone.

To take his mind of it he turned to the girl and asked, “So why were you crying then if you came to sit by the statue?”

Savine’s eyes fell and he could see her lip quivering. He almost jumped forward to stop the girl from bursting into tears again; he wanted to pat her shoulder, but he remembered he was ghostlike. After a moment the girl took a deep breath, locking away the tears that had threatened to spill, as she said, “Some other kids were always my friends, but now they keep on ignoring me and when I shout at them to talk to me, they run away scared.”

It was a strange notion and Calin wondered what could scare other children from this girl. She seemed happy, polite and spontaneous.

After thinking about it he said, “Maybe you shouldn’t shout at them, ask them nicely why they don’t talk to you−”

The moment he said that, Savine’s eyes lit up. “Oh! OH! That might work.” The girl dashed down the stairs and shouted. “Thank you, thank you! Stay right there, I’m serious! I’ll be right back, sir.”

In a last attempt he threw up his hands to tell her there was more to his suggestion, but he quickly realized there was no stopping her.

He chuckled at the girl and for but a moment he was envious of the child, a child that’s only worry was for why her friends were ignoring her.

It was already decided for him to stay until she got back. There didn’t seem to be a choice in the matter, but he didn’t feel worried. He would wait for the girl. Besides she still hasn’t told me where this place is. Then maybe I could find my way back to the caravan.

While Calin waited he studied the scene of the archers and the man with the sword, the sculpture that kind of looked like him. He was completely freaked out that there was something that looked like him on another part of the planet. He couldn’t resist the urge to touch the thing.

The moment his hand came in contact with the statue, the cave shattered around him dissolving into chaotic waters that he had faced before the cave. An enormous force all of a sudden grabbed at his shoulders like talons and hauled him up.

Before he could make sense of anything he landed next to the very fire he had tried to reach before he fell. The maelstrom of water swirled around the small area waiting to swallow him the moment it gets the chance.

A quavering voice that seemed to come from the fire broke the threatening silence in the bubble. The words were too soft to make out. But upon crawling a little closer some words became somewhat clearer. “Calin... please... I don’t know what to do anymore. Come back to me.”

It was completely uncertain who had said it, but he decided it was now or never. He would answer the plea.

With determination he reached for the fire, but his body twisted in pain again as he approached it. Finally it brought him to his knees as he screamed at the fire, “Why won’t you let me touch you!! I WANT TO WAKE UP!” The dark watery world burst into light as he sat up in bed.