Chapter 3: The End of the War

 

            Katie was silent.  I’ve never told anyone about this.  How I treated Jason right after Skye died.  He had basically shown himself to be the best friend that I could ever hope for, and I just plain ignored him, didn’t even let him into my room, let him down.  The agony is still there, too.  How can I function with all of these things seething around inside of me?  She was still walking around in fast little circles.  Leonard just let her stomp her feet and get herself all out of breath.  Finally, she walked close to his invention again, not sitting down.  Skye’s face started to swim in the water, foggy and indistinct.

            “I want to believe,” Katie murmured to Skye’s picture.

           

Once upon a time she had said those same words to Skye—while Skye’s older cousin Lenora was in the room, way back in the Strenobell’s house once upon a time .

            “So you shall,” Lenora had answered pompously.

            “She’s just finished her oral storytelling lessons,” Skye had whispered conspiratorially.  “Don’t get her started…It’s bad enough when…”

            “She tells that story,” Katie and Skye said in unison.  Lenora had left in a huff, much to the amusement of the two younger girls. 

 

 “What do I believe?”  Katie said louder, agonizingly to the unmoving picture.  What does this all mean?  What do I mean?

There was no answer.  There will be no answer.  Skye is dead.

 

“Are you ready to sit down?”  Leonard gave her another of his concerned looks.  “You have to experience the moment in order to change it; the moment and and many more.  Are you sure?  I could just make you forget.”

Forget that…?  I couldn’t…I wouldn’t be Katie without the memory, no matter what he says, and I don’t think I could live without it, even though it’s impossible to live with it…

The beach appeared in the pool with Skye’s face still indistinctly behind it, and Katie helplessly fell into the old dream.

 

She stood on a sandy white beach.  She could never quite remember the path she had taken to get there, but her destination was always the same.  The same ice-blue water in the distance, the same sandy path, the same temple ruins before her.  She had once played that it had been a church, one she could get to by herself, where the congregation had welcomed her with open arms…

 There was only one person to welcome her this time, but it was more than enough.  “Where have you been,” Skye said with a laughing voice.  “I’ve been waiting for you for ages.”

“I was writing,” Katie retorted.  “You’re the only one since I came here who I could show it to.

“Show me.”

“Maybe,” Katie teased.  Skye’s golden eyes glittered back at her, as if to say that she could hold out for as long as Katie could.  “All right.  It goes, ‘Lonely—longing for another’s ears/Listening fully, honoring quiet tears,/Dispelling shame, as weeping slowly clears,/Share expanding worlds and soothing fears.’”

            At most moments Skye’s elfin face held an expression of strained interest, but there was nothing strained about the utter fascination in her eyes as Katie read the words.  “That’s beautiful…” she said.

            “I wrote it for you.”

They had been running, but now their feet slowed.  Their shoes clattered on the smooth stones.  They walked on a path—not a gravel path but a path composed of regularly placed pastel rocks.  The rocks may have been artificial, but there was nothing artificial about the sand dunes stretching in every direction, nor about the strong winds whipping from one end of the landscape to the other.  Katie closed her eyes and leaned against the wind.  Skye leaned right along with her.  Somehow this place was theirs.  They were going somewhere.  Faith was waiting for them. 

 

            “That is beautiful,”  Leonard said.

            I’m not going to cry anymore, and I’m not going to let this absolute longing consume me.  Katie only managed a nod.

            “Why does it hurt you so much?”

            “The bad part comes later.”  Leonard waited.  “I was on another world.  So was she.  It was her home, but not mine.  Suddenly we were both pulled out.”

            “How?”  Leonard interrupted.

            “Really…I haven’t the foggiest idea.  I just know that there were these kinds of portals; it was like doors that had previously been familiar became gateways to other places…Leonard, I was only fifteen years old, and I had just found another person who I loved, someone besides my childhood friend Jason who could share my heart.  I wasn’t really looking around for all the technological details.”

            He nodded and smiled.

            “Anyway, we had quite an adventure looking for our return portals.  Jason found us too.  I guess he got there the same way we did, but I still don’t have any idea how the whole thing happened.  All three of us were there together.  The system started to crumble.  Just like the stupid treadmill system in my room—“ she and Leonard both laughed, “technology never works forever.  So Jason and I both tried to work the return portals, and Skye knew that she’d have to go home first.  We both risked our lives to get her home…”

            Katie stopped talking, because the water of the machine had pictures flickering in its depths again.  She and Leonard both looked, and then the pictures took over. 

 

Pain didn't even register—she couldn't move, and everything was falling.  Jason's console triumphantly changed from yellow to green, and their own home appeared in a wavy circle.  But she couldn't leap for it, couldn't push the rock keeping her trapped, not even a fraction of an inch.  "Jason, go!" Katie cried.

"I'm not leaving you," he said, and the determination in his voice matched Katie's of earlier.  It was his chance to be Prince Jason, and she knew it.  But they were barely children, frightened, rushed, and the portal would close in a few moments.

"I'm not leaving you," he said again.  He ran into the rock—he slammed into it with all of his strength, but it didn't move—and then he pivoted tightly and took Katie's hands.  "Hold on," he said.  Miraculously another portal appeared, this time right around the two of them.

And it was over.  They were home.  And together.

            Only another picture wouldn’t leave Katie’s mind.  Skye had vanished.  Katie had thought, and intended when she had opened Skye’s portal, to Skye’s own world.

            But Skye’s portal had changed.  At the last minute.   To a planet probably colder than Pluto, and just as unlivable.   Skye’s face was frozen in ice, frozen in an expression of agony…and Katie’s last memory of her was of those haunted eyes, forever open, forever haunted.

 

Katie pulled slowly back on the reins, as she steered the horse back toward her house.  She had slipped in early and taken out the first Synthetic Steed for a little bit of exercise for her before she faced her family.  The schoolbags that she still carried thudded against her back.  As her childhood home sprang into view, she was suddenly three people all at once.  This is where little Princess Katie of Avalon pranced proudly back and forth on her steed Lightning.  This is where Space Officer Candidate Katia formed her loyalty pact with her lifelong friend from another world come home with her for a week.  Now…who am I?

She jerked Lightning’s reigns hard and slid off the horse’s side.  Hot tears were spilling out of her eyes, rushing down her cheeks and all over her hands.  I’m already dirty and grubby, and I’ve blown it to kingdom come.  I can’t let them see me like this.  Their first vision of their Prodigal Daughter would not be of a blubbering wreck.  Yet she just could not stop crying.

“Katie?” The voice was male, without that warbling that she had remembered, but with a color that she would recognize anywhere.

“Dad?  Did I really blow it so bad?”

There was no answer.

 

            Ice.  Blinding ice, cutting off her fingers, tearing her skin…

            Skye’s face surrounded by ice, covered with ice…

            Why do I have to see this?  Why does Leonard have to see this?