The Captive Twin Page 9

  “Augh! Poor girl.”

  They sensed Alessa, Nastasha, and Nikoleta eyeing them impatiently. “Our special moment is over, isn’t it?” Elaina whispered to Jaimin. “At least we’re back together.” They rejoined the others.

  Elaina greeted Nastasha with a tender hug. “Thank you for watching over him,” Elaina said in her ear.

  “I’m warning you, Elaina,” Nastasha said, “Jaimin is an overachiever. I had to drug him each night to get him to sleep at all.”

  “You what?” Jaimin said, shocked.

  Nastasha smirked.

  Elaina bent slightly to hug Nikoleta. “Panuse,” said the girl, “You are so very lucky. Your prince is extraordinary.”

  Elaina told her this: “When you find your own prince, he’ll be just as wonderful. And I can teach you secrets about how to make him happy.” Nikoleta giggled as her envy toward Elaina quickly turned to admiration. “Where are the other children?” Elaina asked Nastasha.

  “We’ve sent them up to Three Falls Caves. Just yesterday we discovered a passage connecting Black Tubes and Three Falls. It’s a tight squeeze, but a person can fit through.”

  Alessa and Elaina learned they would be bunking in Nastasha and Nikoleta’s chamber. They brought their things in there, shed their uniforms and armor, and tried out their cots. “I’m exhausted,” Elaina said. “I didn’t realize how tired I was. I don’t know if I can even stay awake to contact Eleonora.”

  “If you can’t, you can’t,” Alessa said. “We’ll try in the morning.”

  “Maybe a short nap…” Elaina said. She lay back, and within a minute of her head hitting the pillow she was fast asleep.

  “I’ll…wish Jaimin good-night for you,” Alessa said, covering Elaina with a blanket, and tucking it in around her.

  Elaina awoke when Nastasha came in much later to go to bed. By then, Alessa was asleep. “Have you really been drugging Jaimin every night?” Elaina asked Nastasha.

  “No. I was just teasing. Drugging him wouldn’t work, anyway.”

  “I know how clever you are with potions and medicines,” Elaina said. “Is there something we could give my father to bring him close to death?”

  “Sure. It’s called poison. Why?”

  “Because only when he’s close to death can I fully heal his mind. He could become our ally. We could change the course of the war.”

  “I like it. Have you discussed this with the queen?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  Nastasha sat on the edge of her cot and took her boots off. “I can help you,” she said. “But I would need access to the castle’s archives, and to Isabel’s lab, if I were to prepare something like that. Your plan must wait until we recapture the castle.”

  “I understand.”

  Despite the late hour, Elaina felt renewed, and so she woke Alessa. “Hey, I don’t want to wait until morning,” Elaina whispered.

  “What?” Alessa groaned.

  “I want to contact my sister now. Please help me.”

  “Sorry, you two,” Nastasha said, getting into her cot and pulling her covers over her, “I’m checking out for the day. Let me know how the family reunion turns out.”

  Alessa was a good sport. She collected herself, got up, and found robes for them to wear, and extra blankets for them to sit on. “All right. Let’s go find a good place to meditate.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A lessa and Elaina needed to find a suitable spot where they wouldn’t bother anyone or be bothered by anyone. The guards led them to a cavern almost completely filled with a clear, shallow pool. The grand space was useless to the army, but beside the pool a sandy “beach” was just wide enough for the two ladies to sit on their blankets. The guards twisted torches into the dark sand, and retreated to a respectful distance.

  “Straighten your back a bit more,” Alessa said, as Elaina settled into a cross-legged position. “There. Do you feel that position? You can hold that position forever and it won’t bother you.”

  Elaina closed her eyes and breathed the cool, muddy-smelling cavern air in and out slowly. Her head buzzed a bit.

  “Now, I’m going to teach you a new breathing pattern,” Alessa said to Elaina. “This one is called saaue.”

  “Saaue,” Elaina repeated.

  “Right. Saaue means ‘mature fog.’ It’s the heaviest fog the coast sees. It seems to replace the air in which it hangs, and no one can see through it. The breathing is dense and slow, resonating through the nasal cavity and actually making a sound.” She demonstrated.

  Elaina tried it, and found it wasn’t that hard to do.

  “Saaue has a commanding personality, but it’s gentle—like the purr of a huge cat. At first, it’s a sound you make, and then it becomes a sound you hear. Listen to it. Familiarize yourself with it. Because before long, it’s something you’ll become.” Alessa demonstrated again. The vibrations of her heavy outward breath resounded off the cave walls. Elaina copied her once again.

  It didn’t take much purring for Elaina to achieve a deep meditative state. As soon as she did, a glimmering archway appeared before her. She tried to ignore what she knew to be the entrance to the world of the spirit. What? I’m looking for Eleonora, she thought. Focus on my sister, not the archway. Eleonora’s not in the spirit world. She’s in my world! Still the archway loomed, beckoning.

  “I see the archway,” Elaina announced, “but I know Eleonora isn’t through there. She’s alive. She can’t be through there.”

  “Who knows? It may be a different way to get to her,” Alessa said. “When you see the Kel-sei archway, it often means there’s something you need beyond.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense. What could be in there?” Elaina was worried something or someone was trying to distract her from contacting her twin. Maybe her own spirit was resisting, afraid of confronting Eleonora with the truth?

  “Go through, dear,” Alessa said. “You’ll be on your own, though. Don’t expect to be able to speak with me until you return.”

  “Are you sure it’s okay?” Elaina asked.

  “Yes.”

  Reluctantly, Elaina willed herself into the uncomfortable, tingling fog of the archway. Her soul tore completely from her physical body.

  When the fog dissipated, Elaina found she was lying on her back, gazing up at a daytime sky through a web of bare branches far above her. A cloud drifted, revealing the sun, which bathed the forest in a gleam and made her squint. She shifted her weight. Crisp leaves crackled beneath her, tickling the skin on her back.

  She lifted her head to see what she was wearing. A silky white band covered her breasts. Below, she had on a short white skirt, tied on at the side. Her feet, legs, and midsection were bare.

  She sat up and looked around. Pungent, yeasty smells wafted around her, like those of the meaty fungi she often used in her cooking. She stood slowly, brushing the crushed leaves and dirt from her skin and her skirt.

  Elaina had been in the spirit world before, both in a fully physical form and in an ephemeral ghost-like form. On this journey she definitely had what seemed a normal body.

  But why had the divine spirit brought her here? What was this place?

  There was only forest in all directions. She couldn’t discern any trails, but the undergrowth looked thin enough to walk through. Which way should I go? she wondered.

  As if in response to her question, she felt drawn to move up a broad hill. And so she walked, following the feeling that called her, lightly touching her hands on the ends of the twigs and branches as she passed. Sighting an unfamiliar mushroom, she stooped to admire its myriad milky caps, which were spread out like a city on a crumbling, decaying log. Another new mushroom, a powder blue one, was coming up near it. She moved on, trying not to get distracted by the novel natural wonders around her.

  She reached a point where the forest floor fell off into a white sand gully with a pooling stream at the bottom. As Elaina looked around, hundreds of plant species burst into bloom one after another! Flo
wers of all colors and sizes—tiny, average, huge, spring flowers, summer flowers, autumn flowers—came into their fullness, hit by a wave of life that seemed to pour forth from Elaina herself. She was dumbfounded by the spectacle.

  That’s when she noticed a young woman standing on the far bank of the stream, facing away, with an empty basket at her feet. A small, white horse stood beside the woman, drinking from the stream.

  Elaina didn’t call out to the person; instead, she descended toward her, approaching quietly and cautiously.

  Who could this be? Elaina thought—which, in the realm of the spirit, she may as well have spoken aloud. Eleonora?

  The young woman turned and Elaina recognized her in an instant. It wasn’t her sister at all.

  It was her mother, Princess Andienna.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A ndienna smiled and spread her arms wide to welcome Elaina. Elaina hopped over the small stream and ran into her mother’s embrace.

  The woman’s warm hug was new, yet familiar. “Mama,” Elaina said—a word she never imagined she would utter. “It’s…like I know you,” Elaina said.

  “I’ve never left you,” Andienna whispered.

  “That’s why I’ve never really felt alone.” Elaina drew back to see her mother’s face again.

  It was a face no older than her own: Princess Andienna had been killed at nineteen. Andienna’s hair was long, dark brown, and curled, and she let a single long curl hang down just outside of each eye. Her eyes were narrower than Elaina’s, and her irises remained a deep brown—almost black—even in the glare of midday. Her skin, even-toned, almost seemed to glow. She wore an elegant white dress of lace, and a necklace shimmering with white diamonds on which a sea star pendant hung, decorated with tiny garnet-red stones.

  “Wha…I…I have so much to tell you, so much to ask you,” Elaina said, nervously. She didn’t want to waste a moment, in case the divine spirit decided to send her back.

  “And I have much to reveal,” said Andienna. “But, calm yourself, my lovely child. I’ll always be here. You’re not going to lose me again.” Andienna took Elaina’s hands.

  “You’re so…young,” Elaina said, “to be my mother. I mean, look at you! You’re my age.”

  “My face may be young, but I’ve lived my lifetime and yours. I’ve seen so much in this realm while I’ve waited for this day. I’ve even had the pleasure of watching you grow.”

  Elaina hugged her mother once again and clung to her. She recognized the scent of her mother’s hair and skin. It brought her back so many years—to the very beginning.

  “And I’m so proud of you,” Andienna said. “Proud of all you’ve done.”

  Elaina smiled, pulling away shyly. “I really don’t feel like I’ve done anything. I’ve just followed my feelings.”

  “Most people have trouble trusting their feelings,” said Andienna. “You excel at it.”

  The horse lifted his head toward them, his mouth dripping with fresh water from the stream. “This is Loma,” Andienna said. “He’s one of my closest companions here.”

  Elaina stepped up to the animal and ran her fingers through his mane. “We’re on Celmarea, aren’t we?”

  “Yes,” said Andienna.

  “But isn’t this the spirit world? How does this work? How do we shift between worlds? Which world is real?”

  “I’ll let you in on a secret. There’s only one world,” Andienna said. “What you call the physical world is simply the way your brain can best make sense of the true world. When you’re separated from your physical body, you see the world as it truly is—timeless. Even the soul can interpret the world in different ways, and that’s what you call shifting between worlds.”

  “But if the true world is so much larger than we know, why do we have brains and bodies? Why do we live physical lives?”

  “It’s…an adaptation. We live physical lives to accomplish things we can’t accomplish unless we focus our energy into a sequence, where time flows at a regular pace in one direction.”

  “So having a body and a brain is artificial?” Elaina asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Andienna said. “It’s just as real and important as anything. It’s just one of the forms we can take. It’s…practical.”

  “Sounds like the stuff I’m learning in higher-dimensional physics.”

  “You’ll find many of the answers in the textbooks, and in the libraries. But the best way to learn is to experience the true world, as you’re doing now.”

  “You’re so smart,” Elaina said.

  “I don’t know about that,” said her mother. “But I’ve been called many things in my time: rebel, idealist…”

  “Yes, I understand you were quite the troublemaker,” Elaina said.

  “And that still can be, when there’s trouble that needs making. You want to know where you got your fearlessness? Your impulsiveness?”

  “You must tell me all about it. I just…can’t believe it’s you. Mama, I’m so happy right now!” The horse nudged Elaina’s shoulder. Elaina smiled and scratched Loma behind the ears. “Hey there, boy.”

  “This pool has always been one of my favorite spots,” Andienna said. “I used to come here once a week to see what was in bloom. Now they all can bloom at once. Come, sit with me.” Andienna led Elaina over to a flat rock surrounded by a huge blanket of groundcover flowering white. They sat, and Andienna held her daughter’s hand.

  “How could Denda do what he did to you? To me? To everyone who needed you?” Elaina asked.

  Andienna sighed. “Your father, as you’ve already discerned, was not the source of the evil that drove him to kill me. As difficult as it may seem, I’d ask you not to blame him for what he did.”

  “Who was behind it? It was the tutor, wasn’t it?” Elaina asked.

  Andienna shook her head. “Not really. It was something the tutor holds within him. A hatred that goes back thousands of years—back even to the old world. Our people were not kind to his ancestor, and the memory of that deed has been an endless source of trouble.”

  “Who is the tutor?”

  “He’s just a man,” Andienna said. “Just a man. But he’s a man who carries a terrible burden.”

  “Where can I find him? What must I do to him?”

  “My dear, it’s not for you to seek out the tutor—others will do that. Your task, as you have so brilliantly discovered, is to heal your father. Along the way, you must support your loved ones. And carry on my ideals just as you have been: bring together the nations in peace. Be who I didn’t get the chance to be.”

  “Am I on the right track?”

  “Yes, yes! You’re doing everything exactly as you should. Just press on. Next, you must speak with your sister. You’ll need her help. And it’s time for you two to meet. But I warn you: even though she’s your twin, she’s not like you. From the day you were born, your differences were apparent. Eleonora is much more…demanding. She’ll need time to warm up to you, but one day her hand will be in yours, and the two of you will see me.”

  “How do I find her? Where is she?”

  Andienna stood, and Elaina followed her lead. “Your clever mother’s going to teach you another secret. Something from the old knowledge. Something only a few can know—only those entrusted with a task as important as mine and yours.” Andienna took hold of Elaina’s hand and raised it toward the pool. “Pay attention and remember how this feels,” she said. “Once you are in the spirit, find any water that’s reasonably still. Now, feel for your sister.”

  “But I don’t know her. I don’t remember her,” Elaina said.

  “Don’t be silly. Of course you remember.”

  Suddenly, Elaina felt a presence over the pool. It was as if the essence of a person she couldn’t see had appeared there. And this presence—this person—had attributes and characteristics, and even a personality. It had a fragrance. It had breath. Andienna was somehow showing her the essence of Eleonora, and it brought back memories Elaina never knew she had.
Of watching her infant sister lay beside her on the floor. Seeing her cry. Wondering about the way she was interacting with Mama…

  Next, Andienna guided her daughter’s hand in pulling from the pool’s surface a three-dimensional image of a young lady sleeping on her side on the ground. “There she is,” said Andienna. “Look! Your sister. Contact her in this way every time you need to speak with her. The more you get to know her, the easier it will become.”

  As Elaina stared at the image of the adult Eleonora starting to form, she felt herself falling toward her, and away from her mother.

  “What? Wait! It can’t be time to leave already! I love you, Mama!”

  “And you mean everything to me, dear. Don’t worry. I will see you again soon.”

  Elaina didn’t want to look away from her mother, but Eleonora commanded her attention. One reunion was coming to an end, and another was about to begin. Elaina’s surroundings darkened, changing from the island forest to somewhere else entirely.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “ E leonora?” Elaina called out softly to her sister. In what was a rare event, a spirit was seen by a living human.

  Eleonora’s eyes flew open. She hadn’t been that deeply asleep. When she looked up and registered the ghostly image of Elaina, she let out a short, sharp scream. She scrambled backward toward the corner of her cell, her heart racing.

  Elaina didn’t want to chase her sister, but she didn’t have much control over her movements. She drifted ever closer.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Elaina said, noticing now how heavily pregnant her sister was.

  “You’re me, but you’re…over there! Oh, I’m losing my mind!”

  “I’m here to help,” Elaina said. “Please, calm down.”

  “My grief has spawned visions,” muttered Eleonora. “I really have gone mad!”

  “I’m real,” Elaina said. “You’re not mad.”

  “How is it that you float above the floor like a spirit?”