The Magic Hour

Chapter 24: The Labyrinth

 NATHAN STOOD WITH his hand against the pillar. The carving had disappeared. The face of the stone was blank.

    “She knows about us.” It was Naliv’s voice behind him.

    “Wait,” Nathan began, but he couldn’t manage beyond the one word. Coming back from the shaman’s world was more difficult this time.

    “Nathaniel, thank you. We understand what we need to know. This woman Jinsaih is our key. She is going to help us, and we her. We will be able to find out what is changing in her world. She is already aware of the unease that is growing around her. Adjustments in her world will alter our experience. We can help her with those now.”

    “How can you be sure these alterations you’re talking about will help either of you?” Nathan asked, finding his voice again. “What’s to keep her from changing everything so much you aren’t even on the radar anymore?”

    “All probabilities exist. Nothing is ever destroyed. Our intent is only to return to what we were before,” Marn said.

    “Our worlds are connected, ours and yours, and now we are both connected to Jinsaih’s world. We are intertwined, just as our Soran’s creation is a part of what others in his group will bring into being. There is no separation, Nathaniel,” Naliv said, “so in this way, you have given us the chance to discover how we can save Elaimat. We can create a different beginning, a path before the alterations became real in Jinsaih’s world.”

    Nathan put his hands on his temples. He felt a pulsing in them as relentless as the drums he had heard greet the shaman.

    “You want to manipulate her?” he said. The idea seemed in such contrast to what he had seen of Elaimat.

    “No! We just need to see what happened in her world, so we alter what happens in ours, erase our connection to her experience. That is what we mean. We erase that part of the link to us. Never do we want to change her or her people. I know it all seems complex. It is to us, as well,” Naliv said.

    “We have to take him away from here,” Marn said. “This effort has drained him too much this time.”

    Naliv’s touch. A warm breeze. They were in a small garden outside a one-story stone house. White petals fell from an apple tree in full bloom. The grass beneath his feet was thick and soft. To his right was a wooded combe. Other stone houses were nearby.

    “This is our home, where Marn and Soran and I live,” she said. “There is something here I would like to give to you.” She smiled at him and walked past the house to a wide section of the land that was laid with stones in the shape of a spiral.

    “This is our labyrinth. Everyone builds their own, although we also have a much larger one in the center of Elaimat where we all gather to walk together at times. It is a very soothing thing, such a place. Will you walk it with me?”

    Nathan looked at the polished blue stones before him and the luminous path that lay between them.

    “The path is ground crystals. We find they enhance balance,” Naliv explained.

    His dream seemed to have no end. “I want to go home,” he said. “I mean, I want to wake up now.”

    “If you go now you will feel too exhausted, you see. Marn is right. This will help. Let me show you?”

    She waited. He felt the tiredness go through him in waves.

    He stepped into the path and Naliv followed him. At the first turning he felt something change. At the second he felt a heaviness leave him.

    “This is your reality, too,” he heard her say in a soft voice behind him.

    Each turn and twist of the path took him further away from the weariness and fear that had begun to consume him in the cave.

    “You have been afraid you will not wake up at all,” Naliv said. “You shouldn’t be afraid. You always will. Ask for what you need.”

    What did he need? Jenny. His old life in the city. Freedom from the dreaming. Healing of his brain. All of the above. The thoughts hurried through his mind.

    Naliv waited. They were at the center of the labyrinth.

    “Go on. Is that what you want?” she said.

    “I don’t want any of those things,” Nathan said, puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

    “Everything offers illumination, if we choose to see,” Naliv said. “What do you want, then, instead?”

    “I want to be where I was before this dream began, in my room at Sierra’s. I want to be with Sela.” As he spoke he realized both things were true. “I don’t want to go back to the old life. Or to the memories of it.”

    “Come. We have to finish the journey here, to follow the path out to the edge.”

    As they walked further away from the center he sensed a shift. The pain that had resided deep inside his heart for as long as he could remember was gone.

    “You will carry this with you, Nathaniel, what you feel now. Walking the labyrinth both offers and explains a mystery.”

    Nathan looked at her in the bright sunlight and felt the soft wind and nodded. “Something else has been lost.”

    “Lost? Are you sure?”

    “Wrong word,” Nathan said, smiling at her. “Changed.”

    “Resolved.” Naliv said. As she touched his temple, he felt a vibration run through him and the darkness came yet again. This time, he wasn’t afraid.