The Tessellation Saga. Book Two. 'The One' (7 page)

‘Dreams will
always be pleasant in this bed coz of the love that’s gone in ter
it,’ he had said. Time passed, Sonal said no more. Jed, assuming
his friend had fallen asleep glanced through the still night air at
his friend shrouded in darkness and shadows.

‘We all ‘ave
our secrets me friend…,’ he whispered, sighing deeply as he closed
his eyes once more and began re-living the awful night of the young
girl’s death and Gideon’s birth. ‘
What was it she said?’
Jed
asked himself as a lump built up in his throat and his eyes began
to burn. In his mind, he again saw her lying awkwardly in the wet
and cold gully with blood dripping steadily out of her frail form
and soaking deep into the ground as the wind howled and the rain
beat down around them.
She must have been in such pain
, he
thought,
but she thought only of the baby.
His memories
changed and he saw his late wife with her glorious hair a burning
mass of orange flame, she stood at the upstairs window of what had
once been their home.
…only of the baby
, the thought came
unbidden as again he watched her throw a small smoking bundle into
Jack’s waiting arms before she turned and looked at him with eyes
full of sorrow and pain. Jed swallowed hard trying to avert the
threatening tears and for an instant, his memories merged. The
young girl became his Mayan, still standing in the flame-filled
room but this time she smiled at him as the flames played with her
long blonde hair and ate up her body. In her arms, a baby chuckled
happily; she kissed it on the forehead and wrapped it in a
smouldering shawl. Reaching for the window the girl extended her
arms and threw her precious bundle out into the cold night air,
this time Jed himself caught the child, it was alive and had
piercing blue eyes that smiled up at him.

‘
He still
wants my baby, Jed,’
the girl said sadly,
‘and he can feel
him, now, when he travels, please, save my baby…’
she added as
the vision began to fade.

‘Who wants him
girl?’ Jed whispered aloud, somehow knowing they were talking of
Gideon. As the vision became faint he added, pleading, ‘who must I
save him from?’ He was still pleading as the vision
disappeared.

Sonal listened
to his friend knowing something was occurring, having been around
magic all of his life, he knew the signs. The temperature in the
room had dropped sharply and his skin had been itching crazily.
What’s happening…?’
He thought knowing Jed must have felt it
too. As the itching faded and Jed asked his question aloud, Sonal
sat up, twisted his fingers over the small white candle on the
bedside table and he watched as it burst into life, the temperature
lowered a little more. Jed turned to his friend suddenly awash with
pale yellow candlelight as smoke from the candle curled slowly
upwards to the low ceiling.

‘Well Jed,’
said Sonal quietly, well aware that the other members of the
household were close by and sleeping. ‘I thought a little more cold
wouldn’t hurt as you have frozen me bones rigid already,’ he smiled
at his friend to take the sting out of the words. Jed lay in bed,
his head back on the pillow.

‘Gideon ‘as
never been away from the forest afore,’ he began. ‘Sommat ‘as
always come up ter stop ‘im leavin’,’ he looked over at Sonal.
‘Gid…, Gid be special like,’ he said and carefully watched Sonal in
the pale light to gauge his reaction.

Sonal remained
silent, the silence seemed interminably long and it was absolute.
He can probably hear my heart beating,
Sonal thought as it
thumped wildly in his chest. Still he said nothing leaving the
silence as an open invitation for Jed to speak. Jed lay back and
watched the flame on the candle as it began to dance. The candle
flared brightly as Sonal mutely sent a warm, calming spell, full of
love and compassion toward his friend.

At first as Jed
began to speak, he talked of how happy he and his wife Mayan had
been together. How they had longed for children and how as each
tiny, perfect child had been born, it had also died shortly after
taking its first breath, if it had breathed at all.

Sonal could
hear the pain and heartbreak in his friend as he told of the
children’s successive deaths. Suddenly the room temperature
plummeted,
Gideon
, thought Sonal, as again his skin began to
itch as if ants were crawling over his body. He wanted desperately
to scratch but refused to move in case he interrupted Jed who
seemed not to notice either the magic or the cold in the room. His
breath became white plumes of vapour as he exhaled.

As Jed spoke of
his late wife, their last child and the fire at his old home, a
solitary tear slipped from his eye and lay glistening on his cheek
in the candlelight. Sonal watched the tear sparkle and shine and
remembered the cottage as he had first seen it, a burnt out husk
with only a partial roof to give him shelter from the rain but how
by the next morning it had been transformed, droplets of water were
everywhere and they had glistened like diamonds in the early
morning sunlight. He smiled at the memory as the candle flickered
and the smoke began to waver, twisting and curling, spreading out
in places and thickening in others. His mind returned to Jed with a
snap and the breath swelled in his lungs as he tried desperately
not to breathe too fast or too deeply, tried not to disturb the
smoke drawing its fine and delicate pictures in the frigid air.
Tendrils of smoke floated across the room toward the source of the
magic, Gideon, who stood outside the door listening intently to the
whispered conversation.

As Gideon had
lain on the lumpy sofa downstairs something had disturbed him,
something seemed wrong, his head was spinning and he had felt as if
insects were crawling on his skin. Thinking it was the return of
the headache that had plagued him for the last few days he had gone
to see if his father had any more willow bark knowing he was awake
from the muted sounds of conversation drifting down from above him.
Quietly he climbed the stairs and watched as shadows danced and
played under the bedroom door and he gently pushed it open. Sonal
sat on his bed watching a candle flame dance and draw pictures and
despite the burgeoning pain in his head, Gideon smiled to himself
knowing how Sonal always liked to show off his tricks.
Da be a
captive audience,
he mused wryly.

As his father’s
words became audible, Gideon stopped and listened, he had never
heard his father speak of those times before. Suddenly he was
seeing pictures in the smoke, he was mesmerised, the words seemed
to get louder and louder, vibrating around his skull, each word
merging with the last, echo after echo. He thrust the heels of his
hands into his ears trying to prevent the sound from penetrating
his head any deeper as the whispered voices grew to a crescendo,
reverberating around the room screaming. Finally the scream became
so high pitched Gideon could no longer hear it, he sank back
against the doorjamb and listened, as Jed told of his previous
drunkenness, how the fire that had killed his wife and son on the
night of the child’s birth had been entirely his own fault, how he
believed he had killed them. Pain filled every word Jed whispered
and sorrow as real as the candle flame itself filled the room.
Gideon, with Sonal felt the pain and anguish of the man as they
watched the smoke weave and play drawing lifelike pictures dancing
to the spoken words. They saw Jed’s wife at the upstairs window and
watched as the flames danced around her, Sonal gasped as she threw
open the glass and tossed the baby out straight into the arms of a
waiting man.
Jack,
Sonal thought, though Jed himself had
never told him this was so. Jed was now speaking so faintly that
Gideon and Sonal could hardly hear but the smoke played out the
story faithfully. They saw Jed as he tied to kill himself and they
watched as the wolf saved him, watched as the pictures showed him
finally reconciling himself to a hermit’s life within the vastness
of the Green Home Forest.

Jed was silent
for a while as the smoke drifted once more back to a long plume of
silver grey, a ribbon reaching out into the night. Gideon’s tears
ran unashamedly down his face, his heart full of love and
compassion for his father.

When Jed began
to talk once more, his voice was louder but still full of sorrow
though love and pride were audible too. He told of how the weather
was wild and wet, how the trees were screaming in protest at the
sheer velocity of the water raining down from the heavens. He
talked of the cold, the damp and the restlessness of the animals in
his care and again, the smoke drew the pictures in the air as if
Jed were the conductor, directing each plume and fragment of smoke,
some light and some heavy, each wisp having its piece to play in
some heavenly composition.

As Sonal
watched the smoky pictures, a steady stream of tears began falling
from the corner of Jed’s eye leaving a sparkling silver trail where
it ran down his face. Sonal closed his mind to the tears and
concentrated on the pictures themselves, they told of Jed throwing
open the door of his home and running out into the wet, wild night.
Both Sonal and Gideon watched in silence as they saw branches hit
Jed’s face causing scratches and scrapes, they saw Jed fall more
than once as he continued his flight after Blue, his wolf. They
watched as a low growing branch swept Jed’s hat off his head
causing it to fall into the wet undergrowth only to be abandoned as
Jed ran on without a backward glance. The pictures only slowed as
Jed’s voice slowed, Sonal with Gideon could see in more detail now
as Jed relived the sight of the young girl lying at the base of the
gully and they watched as Jed tenderly gathered her into his
arms.

‘I’ll stay with
yer girl, you’ll not be alone…,’ Jed whispered to the smoky figure
before him, the silent men watched as in the picture Jed cradled
the girl to his chest and Sonal somehow knew Jed was thinking of
his lost wife Mayan, dying all alone, scared and in such pain.

‘I’ll not let
yer down again,’ they heard Jed say as the young girl spoke once
more and took her last breath. They could see the tears rolling
down Jed’s face just as he realised the child in her belly was
still alive and they watched as Jed took his knife and there in the
wet gully sliced the girl open and birthed the child, a boy. ‘
By
the Journey...’ Gideon!
Sonal thought as he tried to calm his
racing heart as rapidly the pictures moved on through Gideon’s
life, each one showing Sonal how much Jed grew to love the boy and
as the pictures slowed again and began to fade, Jed once more
looked at his friend.

‘Was I wrong,
should I ‘ave let the boy die?’ He asked. ‘I would die mesel’ ter
protect ‘im from, from, whatever is out ter get ‘im,’ he stated and
with such force, Sonal was in no doubt his gentle friend would kill
for his son.

Gideon, still
outside the door stood up, his mind in a whirl, slowly he crept
downstairs and returned to the sofa with his headache forgotten,
sitting quietly he stared out at the moon.

‘Who am I?’ He
asked the huge silver disc. ‘Who am I?’ He whispered again as he
lay down and closed his eyes visions of the white haired old man in
the forest came to him.

‘This is who
you are my boy,’ the man had said. ‘This is who you are.’

As the itching
stopped and the flame returned to normal Sonal realised Gideon,
unbeknownst to Jed had heard every word.

‘No my friend,’
Sonal replied quietly. ‘You were not wrong,’ he answered as the
other members of the household turned in their sleep and settled
once more, the strange dream that had affected them all, over, just
as suddenly as it had begun.

Gideon awoke
still feeling tired; it had been early in the morning before a
disturbed sleep had finally claimed him. Dragging himself from the
sofa and out to the small wash room to freshen up he stared at the
figure before him in the mirror.

‘I still be
me,’ he said aloud to the tired and drawn looking reflection,
wishing all he had heard and seen the previous night were a dream.
Washing quickly he walked into the kitchen to find his grandmother
sitting alone at the table her teapot and an extra cup close
by.

‘There yer be
lad,’ she said as she pulled out a chair. Gideon sat beside her,
‘everyone else be out walking ‘cept you ‘n’ me. ’ she added,
smiling sadly. ‘Yer know boy, last night I think we all ‘ad funny
dreams…I don’t know ‘ow we saw the pictures yer Da and Sonal made
but see em we did,’ she continued as she poured him a cup from the
small pot.

‘Me Da…,’
Gideon started, trying to make some sense of what he had seen in
the smoky images. His grandmother hushed him.

‘Yer Da…,’ she
interrupted pushing the cup toward him, ‘‘is still yer Da, iffen ‘e
as any faults, ‘is, is that ‘e loves yer too much an’ ‘e should
‘ave told yer from the beginnin’.’ She stopped and sipped her tea
looking at him pointedly.

‘Yer granda an’
me, we ‘ave known ‘ow yer was birthed from the very first…’ she
said, matter of factly, her eyes doing little to hide her fear of
rejection. ‘Now don’t yer go ‘ateing us,’ she said as the tears
formed in her eyes. ‘Yer me grandson Gideon and I love yer now as
much as I will on the day I die. ‘Journeys will’ brung Jedadiah ter
find the poor young girl that carried yer and ‘Journeys will’ let
‘im keep yer alive. ‘E’s yer Da, always been yer Da an’ ‘e
‘specially don’t deserve yer ‘ate fer that.’

Gideon looked
sadly at the old woman he had known and loved all his life.

‘Where is ‘e,
gran?’ He asked, standing without touching his tea, ‘I need ter see
‘im,’ he added as his grandmother pushed her chair back.