The girl sunk back through light and dark, through the shining web, the spinning cosmos. She sunk backwards into time, through the clear black water, until it covered her chest, her neck, her head, her hair drifting cool and free and silent. Further and further down, beneath the surface where eternity waited. Soft glow, soft rush. For once, the life threads did not pull at her as she slid through, simply rippling softly, a forest of glistening kelp shimmering gently all around, as her body sunk deeper and deeper. Down, down, down. Into utter, clear glass blackness – into the very tapestry of light.
The cold, soothing water washed against her eyes and the colours stopped flickering, fading back, releasing. They melted together, and it was her own eyes that awaited. Eyes which finally knew the path once travelled. Eyes which saw her circled footsteps. Eyes which saw the world.
She lifted her head and righted herself, and the veil of time spun free from her, and she stepped out unseen into a moment, onto a swathe of verdant grass. A willow tree. A carpark. Garbed in flowing white, her eyes clear, her lips closed, soft skin glimmering in the sunlight.
She drifted with silent steps into the hospital, angel, wraith and godmother, come to take, come to bless.
Bare feet padded on the linoleum. Down corridors and around corners, free from sight, unintrusive, flowing in soft white waves. When the nurses turned, the doctors glanced, their eyes found only space emptied by seconds, perhaps a shimmer, the air left faintly aglow. But her trail hung no more than dust suspended in sunlight, a feeling of warmth for them – of safety.
Jane glided through the world as if a vision in a dream, ceaseless songs singing soft inside her.
She found them in a room behind the glass – a viewing panel. Two dozen lives, two dozen lights. Here was one who would love many. Here was one who would soar amongst the clouds. Here was one would carry others’ burdens. Here was one who would keep faith.
Little light. Little soul. She drifted through the window like it was never there, and she stood, eyes floating over the rows of cribs, auburn hair and white robe waving with the kiss of wind unseen and distant. She gazed down at them – at all of them – as she waded between the rows, one by one, until she found him. The one she had chosen. She surveyed him, soft and loving. Unseen, she bent down and kissed him, the barest touch of her lips against his tiny forehead. For a moment, the child glowed. Then the glow faded – hiding fate.
The goddess rose. She turned and drifted from the nursery and back out into the hospital, as if she was never there. She left no footprints, no ripple or change behind her.
Save one.
A tiny, pink‑skinned baby, shifting beneath a cotton blanket, bearing the barest wisp of newborn hair, its tiny fingers curled. Looking, for all the world, completely normal. Distinguished from others only by its bassinet’s label.
Matthew Callaghan
August 24, 1982
*****
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Outside, in the sunshine, her bare feet slid once more atop the grass. And then all she had to do was look. Look up. At the sky, the sun, the clouds-
And suddenly Jane was flying. Soaring, free, heart racing, white cloth whipping around her, flickering against the sky.
She rose, further and further, through layers of white and blue and indigo, back through the singing darkness, the star‑spun shining sea. The endless expanse opened to greet her and there was music waiting in the abyss, a song of purpose, life and joy. She rose into space and the currents of time rose with her, the life lights spinning, swirling heavens as her guide. There was no more sadness. There was no more grief. Only an aching sense of purpose, and a fulsome life well spent.
She knew what she must do. She would do it. It was already done.
With eyes open she flew forever, into the abyss, to weightlessness, to tranquillity. Bathed in distant sunbeams, her head swum with infinity and oblivion, with togetherness and solitude. She flew and flew and flew, a floating shining pinprick, until all sense of place was lost to her, until she was but another speck amongst the stars. Alone, but never alone, amongst the great cosmos. Flying further than any man had flown.
And finally she stopped. Finally, her journey ceased. The returning road, the destiny, stretched starlit out behind her. And a million miles away, the Earth. A mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. Hers to love. Hers to keep.
In the deepest reaches of space, Jane Walker closed her eyes, her white robes rippling in the void, hair floating out in silent wisps. Free from constraint, free from longing – free to save the world she’d always known.
Jane’s shoulders clenched and she curled in on herself, hands clutching to her breast, becoming foetal. Her fingers tightened around the light in her chest, and from between them, in a ball of barest threads, a power began to grow. A golden orb, smaller than a thimble, yet dense, thick and molten, shining brilliant like the sun. Her hands squeezed, the ball grew, and her body shook with power.
And for the last time, Jane Walker’s eyes shone gold. A gold the world would know.
Everything Jane had poured into it. Everything she’d been, everything she was. Every hope and dream and passion, tearing from her chest and into the sphere, a light which grew ever larger, on and on, spreading between her hands in opaque waves of liquid gold, impossibly powerful, impossibly dense. Her hands drew back, the power growing, and the very fabric of space rippled and shimmered as Jane unleashed into this power every fragment of her soul.
The golden orb grew. And in the centre of the white fabric flowing atop her heart, Jane’s body began to fade. Inch by inch, atom by atom, pieces broke off from the core of her, leaving a growing, drifting hole, a pit deepening in her centre. Yet still she gave. Still she poured every piece of herself into the gold. And when the pain of it became too much to bear, when the song became too loud, Jane ripped back her hands with a wordless roar, and the cosmos exploded in light.
A titanic veil, a rippling cloud, like a sheet of golden fabric billowing and transparent, a hundred feet high, a thousand, shot out from the shining figure at its centre in waves of radiance and joy. It spread and spread and spread, until you could barely see the girl within it, her arms held high, light flowing from her hands, every piece of her consumed . In the depths of space there swelled a wave of shining brilliance, greater than anything ever imagined-
And in an instant, it was set free. Hurtling off into the nothingness, no trace of its creator there remained. Only motes of light, ash, amongst the stars – as the goddess’s work rushed forward, now and forever done.
*****
The Earth stood unaware.
Silent and alone, a blue-green marble floating in the black. Across its surface teemed humanity and everything humanity brought; chaos and noise, movement and life. But out here, from far enough away, mankind’s machinations faded into irrelevance. Watched from afar, the Earth was peaceful.
A silent sphere swimming through an ocean of stars.
The date by human time was July 6th, 1963.
And a wave of golden light was billowing towards the Earth.