Part 31 (1/2)
Bored me to death. Ha! I think the Watcher had just made a joke. I suspected I was dead, and although it was nothing like I had imagined, it was not bad. Where I was and who I was felt pretty perfect. Still, a sublime restlessness swept over me. The Watcher wanted to communicate with another Watcher. The Watcher thought of tracy and just like that I flew to her.
Chapter Twenty-Four.
tHe next tHinG I KneW I was sitting in a hospital room beside a patient. The woman was lying on her back in bed with a tube down her throat and another tube attached to her belly. She also had an iV line dripping a clear solution into a shunt in her left arm. The woman on the bed was tracy. She had once been beautiful, but years in a coma had eaten away her fat and what was left was the proverbial bag of bones. Still, there was something in the contours of her sunken cheeks, in the color of her hair, and especially in the glow that lit her sleeping face, that said her beauty was far from exhausted.
”Do you think so?” a woman across from me asked. She was sitting on a chair on the other side of the bed. Her s.h.i.+ny blond hair was cut short, her nose was cute, small like my own. She had blue eyes like mine, too, but hers were pure cobalt.
”Tracy!” I said.
”Hi Sara.”
”Are you alive? Did they lie when they said those were your ashes?”
”My sister didn't lie. She thought I had been cremated.
Your father lied.”
”He's not my father.” tracy chuckled. ”Don't you think I know that?” I laughed with her. ”this is amazing, sitting here, talking to you. It's something I've dreamed about for years.” I paused.
”It's not a hallucination, is it?”
”Does it feel like a hallucination?”
”It feels real, more real than the life I just came from. You wouldn't believe what I've been through.”
”I wouldn't believe it? Sara, I've been watching you.”
”How?”
”How do you think? through the carpet.”
”You can see through the Carpet of Ka?” she nodded solemnly. ”I can speak through it as well.” I almost fell off my chair. Honestly, I was the ghost who almost fell.
”Are you saying I've been talking to you this whole time?”
she grinned. ”Who else would have taken the time?” she teased me to keep the mood light. But this new information didn't just fill me with joy. It made me want to explode. The carpet was so dear to me and here we had shared it in such an intimate way. No wonder when I had found it, I had felt like I had found my best friend. I wanted to run around the bed and hug her. She must have read my mind. She made a gesture for me to remain seated. ”I don't know how much time we have. And there are things you must know.”
”What sort of things?” I asked.
”The rules have not changed. I can tell you many things but it is still better if you ask the right question. Then I'm free to say more.”
”Who gives you permission to answer any of my questions?” she smiled. ” I'm sorry, I can't answer that one.” I considered. ”You're acting like I might survive this ordeal.”
”You can survive but you must act soon.”
”But I'm dying in a pool of freezing water, never mind the fact I'm surrounded on all sides. I've got Lova waiting to change me into a thrall. And I've got the three Anulakai sitting around with their pashupas.” I paused. ”How am I to escape?”
”What do the temples on the island and the shar temple have in common?”
”Cold water?”
”True. What else?”
”They're both djinn temples.”
”excellent. They're connected-the djinn connected them.
Your fake father said as much. But what he doesn't know is that at the height of the war with the Anulakai, the djinn created a gateway between the temples.”
”But my father said the devices the Anulakai installed in the cavern are there to keep the djinn out.”
”This gateway is secret and is not affected by those devices.”
”Are you saying I can use the gateway to reach the island?”
”Yes. Lova knows about it; the others don't. But she doesn't imagine for a second that you'll be able to use it to escape.”
”How do you know about it?”
”I've used it in the past.”
”What do I have to do?”
”Swim.”
”Swim where?”
”Down and out. You've seen how the pool deepens as it approaches the rear of the temple. You have to swim to the center and then down. If you swim deep enough, a powerful current will take hold of you and sweep you to the island.”
”But the island is a hundred miles out at sea,” I protested.
”Time and s.p.a.ce are not constants.”
”You're saying this gateway is like a dimensional doorway between the shar temple and the island?”
”If you like. Humans have yet to invent the words for these things.”
”Hold on. Don't start talking like the carpet again.”
”The carpet did not talk to you. I did. It merely gave me permission to talk through it.”
”Why did you need permission?”
”It's very old, ancient, and it's sacred.”