WILDly (14 page)

The burning and
the bubbling stopped immediately.

Everything was
bright around me, bright white; so bright that I squinted. There
were two figures; one was holding me and the other stood close by.
Both of them were shining brighter than everything else and I could
see I was shining as well.

“Great, now I’m
all white again!” the one said disgusted. It sounded like
Benjamin!

“Aaawh, you’ll
get over it,” the other one answered.

My brain was
still a little slow and tried to interpret the scene around me.

“Alex?
Benjamin? Is it you?” I asked doubtfully.

“Hey
Sleepyhead! You awake now?” Alex asked.

It
was
Alex. Tears welled up in my eyes and I closed them, unable to get
any words out. Alex was alive! My Alex, alive, my heart rejoiced.
That was all I wanted, for him to be alive. Even if he hated me
forever and a day, at least he was fine.

And Benjamin
was alive too! I wanted to hug them and hold them and scream with
joy. But I controlled myself just in time. I didn’t deserve to
live. I had betrayed them both, and they could have died because of
my betrayal.

“How is it
possible that you are both alive? And Alex, weren’t you in a coma?
And kidnapped?”

“Yes, it’s
possible. Yes, I was in a coma. No, I wasn’t kidnapped,” Alex said
and then he turned to Benjamin. “You can put her down now, it’s
safe again,” he said irritated.

“Yes, my great
leader. Anything you say, my great leader,” Benjamin mocked, but
then did as Alex told him. He bent over and put me on the hard
rocky ground of the grassy plain. I pulled up my knees and wrapped
my arms around them.

Alex’s car was
standing next to the road and we were about fifteen meters from it
into the veldt.

By now, the
tears were flowing over my cheeks. Benjamin sat down next to me and
put his arms around me, holding me. Mixed feelings were tugging at
my heart. I was ecstatic about them being alive. But on the other
hand, the shame of betraying them was eating me, swallowing me
whole. The feelings were too strong, I felt as if I was going to
burst through my skin.

“You’re fine
now, don’t worry. You’re safe.”

His words only
made me cry harder. He was comforting the biggest betrayer of all
times, the very person that almost had him killed.

“How... how...
can you hold me? I....be....betrayed you? Don’t you ......hate me?
I almost had you ....killed.” I stuttered through my sobs.

“Poor girl.
There’s so much to tell you,” he said, holding me even tighter.

His reaction
didn’t make sense to me. I took a few deep breaths and calmed down
a little. “You shouldn’t have rescued me. I’m the biggest betrayer
of all times. I betrayed my own.... friends.” I couldn’t keep it
together.

“Valerie, calm
down. We need the weather to stay clear, all’s not safe yet. Calm
down immediately!” Alex ordered sternly.

Now I was only
making everything worse, endangering everybody once more. But I
couldn’t control my emotions. His words upset me all over
again.

“You’re not
helping, Alex,” Benjamin scowled. Then he lowered his voice and
whispered in my ear. “Valerie, none of this is your fault. It’s all
Artemis.”

“No, Benjamin!”
I shook my head and struggled with the words through my
overwhelming emotions. “It’s not... Artemis.
I
betrayed you,
I did! Me!”

“Listen now,
please? Will you just listen for one second?” Alex sounded cross
now. “I know Lisa told you about... about us and... and who we
are,” he stuttered, looking uncomfortable. “Well, Artemis or Duncan
is also from this solar system. To be more precise, the moon.”

My sobs stopped
and my eyes grew wide. Of course! It was so obvious, right in my
face.

Benjamin
removed his arms from me and stood up.

“Duncan has the
power of deception, or manipulation. He has the ability to ‘plant’
thoughts into your mind, he can even overrule your own thoughts and
instincts. He did all of this,” Alex continued.

“And his powers
are strong! After all, the moon is closest to earth. His link is
the strongest apart from yours, even though he’s relatively small.
If you look up at the sky, the moon and the sun appear to be the
same size. Well, that’s why solar eclipses are possible, because
from earth they are exactly the same in size. But anyway, back to
the point. He probably told you that we’re all...” he stopped. “Are
you following?”

I nodded
weakly.

”Just think
about it for a moment. He manipulated you into thinking that he had
been helping you. Isn’t it true?”

Alex was
serious now. He bent down to his knees in front of me, so that he
could face me.

“He told you
not to trust us, didn’t he? So it’s really not your fault,
Valerie.”

I wasn’t all
bad? I wasn’t the worst betrayer in the universe? I didn’t respond;
it was a shock to my system, this sudden change of my
self-image.

“Do you believe
me now?”

“But why? Did
he want to use my power for... for money?”

“No.” Alex
sighed. “Look around you. It’s all about life. Life on earth.”

I couldn’t
believe my ears.

“Life?” I
repeated.

“Life is so
precious and so rare in this huge universe that it causes extreme
emotions. Some would kill for it, others are proud of it.”

I chewed his
words over for a moment. I could understand that, having seen and
experienced it myself. It was true.

“Earth, you…
really are one unique little planet out of all the billions of
planets. Actually several billions,” he said, staring into my eyes.
I could feel the emotions starting to well up, his eyes were
intense and it seemed that he wanted to say something else... and
then his eyes dropped. “Me on the other hand…I am the same as
several billion.”

I did not like
that fact at all. He was special to me, beautiful. The sun!
My
sun
, I thought. In my heart, he would always be my personal
sun, literally.

Benjamin felt
the tension we were generating, because he abruptly interrupted the
silence by clearing his throat. “We need to get going, guys. The
area is not safe and who knows what they’ll try next.”

His words
yanked me from my haze.

“Let’s get
going then,” Alex agreed.

I tried to get
up but was still weak in the knees and fell back again. They both
extended a hand to me to help me up. Without thinking, I took
Alex’s hand even though Benjamin’s was closer. Alex turned round
immediately after I was up, walked away and climbed into his
car.

The emotions
inside me that had been so strong moments ago disappeared, so that
I felt like a burst balloon. But the damage was already done. It
was definitely going to leave a scar. At least they were both
alive, and that made me happy. Alex was alive and with me.

I looked down
to my feet. “Hey, wow! My knee doesn’t hurt anymore.” I removed the
torn piece that was wrapped around it and all that was left was a
thin, pink scar beneath the white glow. This scar was visible.

“I absolutely
looove how the earth heals me! I want to get down and kiss the
ground, I’m so happy right now!” I yelled, feeling better
already.

“This time it
wasn’t earth, Val. It was Alex. But you aren’t entirely fit yet, he
was still very weak himself. So you need to thank him,” Benjamin
said.

“Alex healed
me? I didn’t even know that was possible,” I mumbled. I wasn’t
keeping up any more. By now I should have known to expect anything
new, no matter how impossible it seemed.

Benjamin opened
the back door for me and helped me into the car before climbing in
next to Alex.

I waited for
Alex to start the car. “Alex, Benjamin, I want to thank you both,
for rescuing me. Honestly, thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
I meant it.

“Off course,
that’s why I’m here,” Benjamin answered.

“Sure,” Alex
said bluntly.

I still
couldn’t believe how things had turned out and how lucky I was. I
had the two best guardians in the whole wide universe.

“And Alex,
thank you for healing me just now.”

“Anytime.”

I didn’t
understand why he sounded so curt, but nothing could extinguish my
happiness.

“How does it
work, by the way? Can I heal you guys as well?”

“I’m not sure
how much you know, but maybe I should start from the beginning. But
I have to warn you, we don’t have all the answers. We’re learning
as we go, from personal experience and from others,” Benjamin
explained.

Alex wasn’t
listening at all, he concentrated on the road. Benjamin turned
sideways in his seat to face me.

“It may come as
a shock to your belief system, but hear me out. We believe that
everything
is alive. As in everything: from the smallest
little quark to the biggest galaxy out there. I don’t want to get
too philosophical, but it boils down to this: something alive
cannot be born or developed out of something dead. So if we
classify ourselves as alive, then everything must be alive; with
varying degrees of intelligence, of course.”

He looked as if
he was gloating as he explained, but I didn’t react to his
words.

“So basically,
we are each here on earth as ambassadors of our host planet or
star, manifestations of the conscience or intelligent part. My star
is a red dwarf star called Barnard’s star, not far away from
earth.”

“But why are
we... or rather you all on earth then? Why not on Mars, for
instance?” I asked, absorbed by the logic, trying to make his truth
my truth.

“Well, it is
such a rarity to be able to host other forms of life, as the earth
is capable of. We are here to experience the beauty and
magnificence of life on Earth.”

Wow
! No,
wow wasn’t big and strong enough. Awesome! Or incredible, maybe. No
part of my studies had prepared me for any of this. Except maybe
that one philosophy lecture on Tuesday. If only that Professor was
a fly on the wall. He would have asked how it all worked, I was
sure.

“Okay. So how
does the connection and power work? If I am the earth’s conscience,
shouldn’t I be able to hear its thoughts?”

“Her thoughts,”
he quickly corrected.

“Her thoughts.”
It would take time to really get used to the idea, even though
Duncan had told me the same.

“Like I said,
we don’t know everything, only what we have experienced. But we do
know a little about how the connection works. We believe it’s a
combination of things, but the biggest contributor is obvious:
gravity. Gravity keeps everything together. You see, the great
thing about gravity is that it doesn’t travel at a finite speed
like light for instance. Gravity is a property of space and matter
itself. So no matter how far you are away from your planet, you
have a connection. But the strength of the connection does depend
on the distance. So we Reds have a weaker connection than the sun,
for instance.”

I tried to wrap
my head around his words.

“You with me?”
He saw that I was frantically thinking about everything, but I
didn’t want him to stop talking. I was busy hearing the most
incredible revelation of all times.

“Yes, the
further you are from your planet, the weaker the link. Easy. Go on,
go on,” I said. “So when the earth ‘heals’ you, it actually uses
some of her gravity, or mass. The energy transforms, and you
receive it in the form of... uh... spiritual energy

“It’s very
important that your link never exceeds its capacity during a
transfer of energy. You can imagine what energy could be unleashed
by a star connection, but it would exceed the capacity of the link
and the human body could not tolerate that.

“In your case,
if big amounts get transferred, you run the risk of disturbing the
balance. That’s why Alex healed you just now, why it wasn’t safe to
let the earth heal you. Your glow was flickering, like a dying
ambassador’s.”

I was slowly
starting to understand what had happened to me just now.

“But why would
the earth risk it all to heal me?”

“The earth
loves you, Valerie. You are a part of her. She will try to save you
even if it kills her.”

“Duncan almost
managed to get that right,” I grumbled. “I still can’t believe how
easily he fooled me!”

“Yes, well,
apart from his power, there are additional aspects that work in his
favour. For one, the earth only sees one side of the moon. It’s
locked in rotation with earth in such a way that earth never sees
the other side, the dark side.”

I was about to
ask what Duncan had planned, but Alex interrupted my train of
thought.

“Okay, that’s
enough for now. You can continue with this later. I think Valerie
needs some rest. And I think I need some rest as well. Would you
mind driving, Ben?” he asked, still sounding irritated.

I figured
that’s why Alex had been so reserved – he was just tired.

Benjamin was
enjoying our conversation and looked as if Alex had stolen his ice
cream out of his hands.

“Sure,” he
said, obviously peeved.

Alex stopped
the car and they switched places. I wanted to know more, but I had
to admit that I was extremely tired as well.

“Where are we
going, by the way?” I asked as I shifted around for a comfy spot. I
had the whole backseat to myself.

“A safe house.
It’s best for now, ‘till we’re all properly rested,” Alex answered.
He switched on the radio and let down his chair.

“What day is
it? Isn’t it test week already?” I couldn’t afford to throw away a
year of studying.

“It’s Saturday
today. We’ll go back tomorrow, but we need to recover properly
first.”

Then I thought
about something else.

“You never told
me what was wrong with you, Alex. Why were you in hospital?”