Between ascension, p.9
Between Ascension, page 9
part #9 of Levels of Ascension Series
Daven rushed down the hall and out to the landing field. He wished there were someone else he could have sent to handle this particular situation. Any other Elder would have sent their successor, but Riccan was spending some much-needed time alone with his new bride. Besides, being Sabtu, he would not have asked anyone else to handle such a delicate task.
Once he was settled in his telepod, he began the start-up procedures. The telepod rose from the ground several inches and hovered, unmoving. Instead of concentrating on his current task, Daven found his mind wandering back to the scene in his office. There had been a tension around the two girls which Daven tried to understand. He wondered if the girls were homesick, or if they had some other problem which he should try to resolve for them.
Daven shook his head in resignation as he realized trying to understand a teenage girl’s mind was almost impossible and he had another task at hand. With a gusty sigh, Daven pulled up the coordinates of his destination, focused his mind to only completing the transfer, and then he touched the activation button which immediately sent him on his way.
The darkness surrounded him, and his mind maintained the necessary focus. The landing area was detailed in his thoughts, and he could feel himself moving through space, even though he knew it was most likely a figment of his imagination. Who knew? Maybe it was a special talent of his, to be able to feel space moving around him. Three seconds passed, and then the site he had noted in his head was directly ahead of him. Daven shifted the telepod into manual mode and used the yoke to navigate over to a perfect landing.
Several of the people from the small town were already waiting for him at the edges of the field. Daven could see their anxious expressions even as he worked through the steps to deactivating the telepod. The strange epidemic the town was experiencing was troublesome to his mind since they had never encountered such a widespread sickness before. He had to discover the source of the problem to prevent a second outbreak after he healed the first round of the ill.
He picked up his healer’s bag as he passed through the back of the telepod on his way out the side door. He barely had time to turn around to press the button to close the hatch before the people began to advance upon him. For some strange reason, he felt uneasy about this situation, even though he had been to this town several times and personally knew most of the residence. There seemed to be an air of evil surrounding him, and rapidly he spoke a prayer for safety before he smiled at the advancing crowd.
“It’s gotten worse,” a man called out across the distance between them.
“Take me to the first person to have fallen ill,” Daven said as he identified the speaker and stopped in front of him.
“She’s in the market square,” he said cryptically.
Daven’s eyebrows rose at the odd location. Something was definitely amiss with this situation. He followed the man and felt the crowd of people press around him on all sides as they tried to hurry him to their loved ones. They had walked for several minutes before they reached the middle of town. Once there, the leader stopped and stepped to the side for Daven to witness the strange actions of the people.
“We can’t make them stop dancing. You can see they are exhausted, but they won’t stop moving.”
Daven watched for several seconds, entranced by the clumsy swaying and weaving of the men and women of the town. Their cheeks were flushed bright red, and they were all sweating profusely. Their motions were jerky, and they often bumped into one another without seeming to notice. Most of all, the blank expressions on their faces was the most bothersome.
Wishing he could make one of them stand still so he could examine them, Daven dismissed such an idea as he looked at the feet of the first woman to come down with the ailment. There were bloody footprints everywhere she stepped. She had shuffled her feet so long that she had worn through the soles of her shoes and was now scraping the layers of skin off of her feet.
Once he saw the devastation the dancers were doing to their own bodies unknowingly, Daven immediately went into action. He set his bag on the ground and held his hands out to his sides to catch the onlookers’ attention and yelled to the crowd. “I’m going to begin working on these people. Please do not interrupt me or touch me. If you see any of the dancers fall, please pick them up and remove them from the market square, so they won’t be trampled by any of the other people affected by this strange sickness.”
“How do we know we won’t catch whatever ails them if we touch them?” A male voice called out from the crowd.
“I promise it will be safe once they stop dancing.” Daven could no longer wait for any more discussion, and he closed his eyes and gathered elemy from under his feet. Thinking of the number of people twirling in the market square, he pulled more elemy than ever before and searched for the woman whose feet were bloody. He tapped into her life-line and immediately felt the flow of something terribly wrong coursing throughout her body. There was a darkness surrounding the illness which puzzled him. Never before had he encountered anything as insidious as this new ailment, and he wracked his brain to find a cure.
Daven felt as though he were chasing the sickness coursing through his patient and he soon realized he would have to figure out another way of treating the problem or he would be too exhausted to work on the other victims. He stilled his thoughts and allowed the healing energy emanate from him. Without conscious direction, Daven felt his touch on the patient’s life-line spread throughout her body, and all of the affected cells seemed to snap back into perfect health. Just as he had predicted, the woman dropped to the ground in exhaustion, able to rest now that her ordeal was over. He swiftly healed her feet even as the onlookers surged forward to pick her up and take her back to her home.
Having a better understanding of what he was working against, Daven shifted his attention to another dancer; an old man who seemed on the verge of collapse. Again, he tied into the man’s life-line and cleared the infected cells from throughout his body. This process was repeated until all of the gyrating dancers were healed and removed from the square. Daven was both relieved and exhausted from his efforts, yet knew he was only half done with this work. Now he had to discover the cause of everyone’s sickness.
He turned to the left and found the community leader standing by his side. “Lukon, can we go to your house and talk about all of this?”
“Certainly! Right this way,” he spoke with alacrity. He bent and picked up the Elder’s bag for him and led the man to his house. It was apparent that Elder Daven needed some refreshment, so he called out to his wife, upon entering the house, “Scarola, please get food and drink for Elder Daven.”
Once the three were seated at the table with glasses of cold steena tea along with a platter of cheese and bread, Daven felt up to the task of talking. He picked up his tea and took a long drink while he composed his thoughts. “We need to find out what each of those people had in common to make them all display the same symptoms. Do you have any ideas?”
The couple looked at one another with expressions of inquiry as they both considered the Elder’s question. They knew every person who had been affected, yet they could not come up with any answers.
“I’m sorry, we just don’t know,” Scarola finally said quietly. She felt a deep despair, as though she were letting the Elder down in some manner.
“It’s okay,” Elder Daven consoled as he picked up a piece of cheese and placed it on a chunk of bread. He enjoyed the sharp taste of the cheese as he chewed his bite until something strange happened; he felt a tingling in his mouth. In an instant, his body registered the same feeling as he had discovered inside the sickened cells of the other residents. He spat the bite out into his hand and looked at it to see if he could see something amiss. “Where did you get this cheese and bread?”
Scarola stammered in confusion as she watched her guest spit out his food. “I made the cheese myself, from the milk of our foxl. I bought the bread from the vendor earlier today. I don’t understand. Is something wrong?”
“I think we might have just discovered the source of the problem. How many people get bread from the same vendor?”
“Almost all of us. It’s something we’ve become accustomed to doing ever since he came to town.”
“How long has he been in town?”
“Just short of a mesan. Why?”
“Where did he come from?”
“I don’t know. Do you, honey?” She turned to her husband hoping he would begin talking so she would not feel as though she were being interrogated by the Elder. Tears were beginning to form in her eyes, and she desperately wanted to hide in shame for what had just happened in her home.
“Please don’t worry yourself, Scarola. Believe me when I say this was the best possible scenario, and quite possibly the quickest diagnosis I’ve ever encountered.” Elder Daven tried to soothe his host since he did not want to create any bad feelings because of his hasty reaction to the food. Upon reflection, he should have simply used his own ability to heal, to purify the taint in the food and just swallow it.
“Are you saying there’s a problem with the bread?” Lukon asked, finally comprehending the Elder’s questions.
“Yes, I believe so. Can you take me to the bread vendor?” Daven pushed away from the table and stood up. His mind raced with thoughts of how widespread this epidemic could be if everyone from the town had purchased their bread from the same street vendor. He was first to the door and opened it in his urgency to find the unknown man.
The three of them almost ran through several streets before Lukon stopped in front of a shanty house and knocked on the door. The flimsy wood shook on its unstable hinges with the force of Lukon’s blows. Several tense seconds passed while they waited for someone to answer the loud summons.
With no sounds coming from inside, Lukon flung open the door and marched through the opening, ready to do bodily harm to the breadmaker. He was further frustrated to find his quarry was already gone. He turned rapidly around in a circle to see if the man were in any of the corners of the small room.
“It looks as though someone left in a hurry,” Daven commented as he surveyed the scattered items in the dim interior space.
“I’ll gather men to begin a search for him right now,” Lukon spat out as he pushed past Elder Daven.
“Don’t bother.” Daven put his hand on Lukon’s arm to keep him from following through on his plan. “I imagine he is long-gone by now and it would be a waste of time. Our most pressing concern is how many other people are currently eating the tainted bread.”
Lukon’s flushed face instantly turned an unhealthy ashen color as he realized what Elder Daven was saying. Thinking about his community’s welfare, he said, “I’ll go to the market square and ring the meeting bell.”
“We can all go together,” Daven offered as the three of them made their way out of the abandoned house.
Daven approved of the speed at which the community returned to the center of town at the summons of the bell. He scanned the faces in the crowd for any evidence of sickness beginning and was pleased to see everyone appeared to be in good health. He raised his hands to help ensure silence from the crowd and bellowed, “We have determined the source of the illness has come from the bread sold from the new street vendor.”
The noise from the gathering was instantly deafening as the people called out for the man to be brought to justice for what he had done to their loved ones.
Lukon finally yelled for silence, allowing Elder Daven to continue.
“The vendor has already left town, and I doubt you will have to worry about seeing him ever again. The more immediate concern is for anyone who currently has bread, or has consumed bread, from him in the past few days. If this does not apply to you, then I ask you to please return to your homes and allow me to examine and heal those who have ingested the bread.”
The volume of the crowd increased momentarily as the people shifted and grumbled. Finally, after about five minutes, only the affected people remained in the square. More people stayed than Elder Daven had anticipated and he knew he would have to call on a large amount of elemy just to get himself through all of the exams he would be performing.
“Form a line, and we will begin,” Daven called out to the remaining crowd even as he gathered elemy for his use.
Chapter Thirteen
VALENTINA MOPED AROUND her house on her first full day of Christmas break. Normally, she would have been excited for the time away from school where she could catch up on reading some of her favorite books. Instead of being content and lost in a good story, she was living her own real-life soap opera where all she could think about was hurting one of her best friends while she plotted to steal her boyfriend; even worse, he was her best friend’s fiancé.
Try as she might, she could not help but wonder what Willian was doing and if he had been thinking about her as well. More than once she had picked up the phone to call him, only to chastise herself for being too forward.
Maybe if they spent some time apart, they would realize their mutual attraction was just…just what? An accident? No, that definitely was not right. What she felt for Willian touched the core of her being, even more than her triplet connection had ever been. No amount of time apart was going to lessen the desire she felt just at the thought of Willian.
Giving up, Valentina sat at the desk in her room and picked up the phone. She stared at the buttons for several seconds before she finally mustered the courage to dial the number. Holding her breath, she put the phone to her ear and impatiently listened to the ring tone on the other end. She silently prayed for Willian to pick it up since she had no idea what she’d say to his foster family should they answer.
“Hello?” a male voice asked.
“Willian? Is that you?” She really did not need to ask since she could already feel Willian’s energy coursing through the phone line.
“Yes. Hey, Val, I’m so glad you called. I couldn’t get you off my mind.”
“I know what you’re saying. This is too much, Willian. What are we going to say to Jena when she gets home?”
“I could probably get a message to her before then if you wanted me to.”
“What would you say to her? I found someone new. Sorry…oh, and it’s your best friend! Really, Willian, there’s no good way to write it to her without sounding terrible.”
“Well, when you put it that way, it does sound pretty bad.” Willian sat on his bed, picked up Pesi so she would quit making growling noises to be lifted up, and leaned back against the wall, content just to listen to Valentina speak to him. Pesi climbed onto his outstretched legs and plunked herself down, throwing her back feet out, and taking up as much room as she could. Willian looked fondly on the furry pet and began to stroke the soft hair along her back.
Valentina let out a deep breath and suggested, “Why don’t you tell me about your family?”
“Well, let’s see, my dad is the First Elder…”
“Why do you say it like that? Is there a second and third Elder?”
Willian chuckled before replying, “No, but I can see where you might think that. He was voted in as the First Elder; I guess you could say he is the leader of the Elders. Does that make sense?”
“Yes. Okay, I’m sorry to interrupt. Go ahead.”
“It’s alright. I’d rather you ask me your questions than you discover something in an embarrassing way when you get back home.”
Valentina’s mind immediately thought about the prospect of going back to Tuala permanently. Certainly, she had entertained the idea of visiting the place now and again to see her mother, but she had not actually decided she would move there. This notion of uprooting her life was going to require some serious consideration.
“Anyway, my father is the First Elder, and he’s forty-nine anons old and the second youngest Elder.”
“How old are the other Elders?”
“Senjin is the youngest at forty-three, while the other thirteen range anywhere from mid-sixties to one hundred and thirty-seven anons.”
Valentina sputtered slightly and thought she probably did not hear correctly, so she asked, “Did you say one hundred and thirty-seven as in years old? Are anons somehow different than years?”
“No, they’re the same. Elders and their families physically age slower than other people in Tuala. It helps to keep continuity within their Districts to have fewer changes of leaders.”
“Oh,” Valentina said lamely. “But what about your extended family? How would the difference in aging affect them?”
“Elders’ families aren’t typically large, but if they do have siblings, then they can opt to live at the Residence and age at the same rate as the Elder. No one really thinks about it much because it’s always been this way. My father doesn’t have any extended family, so we haven’t had to do that.
“My mother’s name is Chelesa, and she met my father when they were in a post-study class together. She’s awesome; you’ll love her, and I’m sure she’ll love you, too.”
Valentina kept quiet since she was having a hard time reconciling the idea of moving to Tuala permanently.
“My mom is a wise-woman as well as being the wife of an Elder, which has a lot of duties attached to it already. Her days are completely packed with patients and petitions from the community for favors and help with civil matters too small to bring to the Elder’s attention. Tell me about your family?”
“My family on Earth or the one in Tuala?”
“Both, if you don’t mind.”
“On Earth, my father’s name is Oliver Wilson, and my mom’s name is Zoey. They met at the bowling alley. My dad worked there, and when my mom came in there with a group of her friends, she thought he was cute. After having him retrieve her fourth gutter ball from the lane, he decided he should ask her out. They’ve been together ever since.
“As for my Tualan family, my mother is Vinia who was raised at the Roanoke Colony and is now the interim leader of the community. She sent the three of us away to Earth when we were eight to keep us safe and to get medical help for Jon since he was deathly ill and the leader of the colony continually refused to allow medical attention.”
