Blakeshire (Insight #9)(42)

I could only nod and lean in to him as his arms went around me. Moment by moment, the anger and jealousy I’d had was fading—but I knew, just as he did, that those emotions were just waiting for one reason to erupt. One shred of doubt.

We walked past the dark gray shades that I knew led to his dimension. A few others were passing through the passages. Each of them was from Chara, but they still slightly bowed to us as they passed by us.

We were approaching a haze that was a deep purple with what looked like diamonds moving across that shade.

“Ready?” he asked. I offered a simple nod as he pulled me through.

You never really knew what to expect when they pulled you through these passages. I had found myself in cellars by generators, in fields, inside the palace. My understanding of the passages was that at some point, or even currently, a large source of energy paved the path. Also that in theory everyone should be able to see these said passages, but only a select few do.

After the tingling sensation of the purple haze passed over us, I found myself standing at a crossroads. In every direction, there were mountains and rolling hills.

“Crossroads. Oh, the irony,” I said with a shy smile.

I heard him laugh as he adjusted his grip on my hand. “The real irony is that I made that passage.”

“You made it?”

He nodded once. “Storms in the string were insane when I first traveled through them. My father could sense them long before they ever manifested. He had us turn back as he felt one coming that first time in here. We weren’t fast enough, though. Right as it approached, he covered my body with his as I struggled to pull him to that passage. He fought with me, but the wave of energy forced us through.”

“Why didn’t he want to come in here?”

“He couldn’t see it. He thought we were walking into the wall of the string, that we would be burned alive and my mother would pay the price for that.”

“Was this the brighter passage you could see, or the dimmer one?”

He furrowed his brow, questioning why I assumed that he was taking me to one or the other. It was just a lucky guess. I mean, I doubt he would have mentioned it unless that was in his plans. “The dim one. But you see, my father believes in following signs. He thought because the storm came out of nowhere and I found this passage that it was connected to me. That the universe wanted me to have this anchor.”

“Well, you are kind of at a crossroads, so maybe he had a point.”

“Perhaps,” he murmured as he tenderly pulled my hand and encouraged me to walk forward.

The road had a sharp curve just ahead that led around a massive hill. I kept my stare on the horizon. Even though the mountain was sharp and looked daring, there were colors of lush green and random wildflowers. Danger alongside of beauty.

I assumed that this was nothing more than a walk through nature and was cool with that, but I was so wrong. Right as the road turned, a town came into view. Not an ordinary town; one glance easily showed how eccentric every building was. They were all random colors that ranged from rust to vibrant shades of blue, green, even purple. Some of the buildings were built into the hills, others stood alone, but the structures were not like the ones at my home. There were no sharp lines, at least not many of them. Some of the buildings looked like waves, others would curve here and there. It was wild to stare at.

The streets were lined with people. They all seemed ordinary enough to me. It was rather cold out, so it was hard to judge the individual personalities under their long jackets. Like us, each of them had a long scarf on; the women wore them on the outside, and the men on the inside.

“This is awesome,” I said as a wide smile came to my face.

“You think?” he asked seriously, judging my expression to see if I were being polite.

“Are you kidding? I feel like I just walked into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.”

“Who?”

I moved my head from side to side. “We’ve got so many movies to catch you up on.”

I could see him trying to compare the I Love Lucy show we watched to this place.

“One day, we’ll watch it. I meant it as a compliment. I swear.”

He must have believed me because he nodded once. “These people, their ancestors anyway, were nomadic, great explorers that moved everything and everyone with them.”

He pointed to a mountain ridge around the town. “There is a dark forest that is nearly impossible to pass through on the other side of that range. Once they reached the mountaintop and found their way to the valley, they lost the urge to move on. They were in love with the land; everything was in abundance, at least for the small of amount of them that were there at the time.”

We had reach the beginning of the town, and now I could see that the reason the buildings looked so odd at a distance was that they were not complete, or they looked like they were in progress. Parts of them would be in detail, where others were still rough-hewn stone.

Seeing how mesmerized I was, he went on. “The early records state that as soon as they set up camp all illness left them; even little cuts or bruises from their travels healed instantly. Youth and vitality was felt in every soul. All at once, instead of looking for land that would perfectly fit them they started to look for their soul, a soul that would fit their vessel perfectly.”

“I could so analyze that history for hours.”