Alisiyad Chapter 23 ~ Mother’s Day (Part 4)

“The Chaiorra Falls,” Alisiya said, breaking Liseli from a dream, which Liseli forgot as soon as it ended.  The sun was flooding the valley, pale but insistent.  It was Sunday morning.

She looked up, and saw that they’d come to a rocky plateau up above the village, where the river ran down from the mountains into the valley.  Alisiya stopped the dog on an outcropping near the side of the waterfall, and slid off its back.  Liseli followed, standing on sore legs, looking down over the ledge and wondering if she could escape Alisiya by jumping.

“This is where I had my vision,” Alisiya said, stretching her arms and smiling, her eyes as clear and blue as a cloudless sky.  “Time opened before me and showed me what would happen . . . what will happen now.”  She held out a hand.  “I can feel the spray of the water,” she said, with wonder.

“Where’s the gate?” Liseli crossed her arms.  “Let’s get this over with.”

Alisiya turned back to her, fixing those eyes on her for a few moments.  “There’s a cave,” she said finally, “behind the waterfall.”  She reached out to take Liseli’s arm and draw her along, but Liseli jerked it back.

“I’ll follow,” she said coldly.

Alisiya shrugged, and walked toward the edge of the waterfall.  She paused, pointing.  “Do you see the space under the ledge?  The fall juts out, so you can walk under it without hardly getting wet.  The cave is under the ledge, in the back.  Go on.”

Liseli stared dubiously at the narrow space between the rock and the falling water, but she didn’t want to listen to Alisiya any longer than necessary, so she took a step onto the lower ledge, sliding out under the falls.

She could hear nothing but the steady drum of water over her as she pressed herself against the rock and looked around.  Alisiya followed close behind her, and said in her ear, “There, you should be able to see it now.”

Between the ledges, behind the waterfall, was a room made of rock, large enough for perhaps a dozen people to stand inside if they were careful not to jostle each other.  It went back a little ways from the water, and in the back there was a dark, narrow opening.

“I see the cave opening,” Liseli replied, raising her voice over the water.

“Yes, do you see the Gate inside it?”

Liseli saw only blackness, but she moved toward it.  On the other side is another world, she told herself, and braced for the transition.  She remembered that when she’d left the Mill it felt like falling . . . like sand falling through an hourglass.  She put her hand on the edge of the opening and peered in, still seeing darkness.  She wondered what would meet her on the other side.  Another wooded glen in the sunshine of a May afternoon?  Darkness?  A road of endless gray, like in her dreams?  She shook her head, and looked back at Alisiya.

“Hold my hand, and take me through,” the pale woman said eagerly, her eyes glowing white with excitement.  Liseli reluctantly took her hand and stepped into the cave.

She found herself in cool darkness.  The waterfall still hammered its way down the mountainside above and around her, sounding distant and muted.  Water dripped steadily into puddles on cold stone; she heard the gentle plop, plop, plop.  She put out her free hand and felt damp rock.

Alisiya’s fingernails dug into her wrist and she gasped.  “We are in the cave,” she said in a low voice.  “We passed the Gate but did not go through.  Don’t think that you can deceive me, Liseli Luenford.  Do not skirt past the Gate!”

“How could I have?  The opening was too narrow for me to—” Liseli broke off as pain lanced through her head.

“You shut your eyes to the Gate and passed it by,” Alisiya insisted.  “I told you, I can see the Gate, so it’s no use pretending.”

“I can’t see it.”  Liseli tried to twist her arm free.  She was sick of Alisiya grabbing her, leaving bruises all over her arm.

“Of course you can.”

“No, I can’t.”

Alisiya blew out a sigh.  “Come back,” she said, “and try again.”

Liseli did as she was told, again.  And again.  And again, again, again, again.  It didn’t work.  Over and over they entered the cave and over and over Alisiya dragged her back out, sending pain through her body and digging into her arm, yelling at her in increased frustration.  Liseli hit back and tried not to cry out, insisting that she was trying as hard as she could to see the Gate and walk through it.  Dark thoughts pelted her like stones and made her want to jump from the fall and end everything, the pain, the guilt, the sadness.  But then Alisiya would drag her out from the morass, threatening that next time it would be worse, and next time it always was.

Finally Alisiya took her back out into the sunshine beside the falls, and sat her down on a rock, then lectured her at length about fate, destiny, obedience, and letting go.  Liseli barely listened, staring at the blue eyes as they changed color, flashing and fading and swimming from one shade to another.  She closed her ears and mind to everything, wanting just to be left alone, in the quiet, where she could sleep and dream again.

Alisiya began to pace.  “I don’t understand it,” she muttered.  “Years, and years, I watched you.  No one else came to that Mill, but you; you were drawn to it, like a Key to a Gate.  I know that it is more difficult for a female Key to realize her gift, so I was patient.  But now I have done away with your distractions, you believe . . . you . . . .”  She paused, turning back to Liseli.  “It is more difficult for female Keys, according to my father’s writings about other Keys he met. You must attain the right state, make yourself an empty vessel to float through the boundaries of nature.  Men, on the other hand, are born invaders, and take to it more naturally.”  Her mouth twisted into a grim smile.

Liseli didn’t like the thoughtful tone to Alisiya’s voice, or the darkening of her eyes as she bent down to look into Liseli’s.  “Stand up,” she said, taking Liseli by the hands.  “Let me look at you closely.”

Liseli allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.  Alisiya held Liseli’s arms out to the side and stared into her eyes, holding them unblinking in her steady gaze.  Liseli stared back impassively, trying not to think, or feel.  She felt dizzy, as if she were drowning again, but it was only in Alisiya’s eyes.  She saw herself in the blue, standing with her arms spread out and a blank, helpless look on her face.  At least, she thought it was her.

Alisiya dropped her hands.  “It’s as I thought.”  She nodded, crossing her arms and surveying Liseli with a raised eyebrow.  “You have conceived.”

“What?”  The words didn’t register at first.

“I know when there is life in my world, and I see new life growing in you,” Alisiya frowned at her, as if she’d done something terribly wrong.

“You mean I’m pregnant?  How can that . . . you can’t . . . it would be too soon to tell, you can’t,” Liseli sputtered, then broke off abruptly.  “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true.  Your child grows rapidly, much faster than a normal child.  It’s the River’s doing — I was the same way.  Fully grown after just five months.”

Liseli sank back down and crossed her arms over her abdomen, not knowing what to think.  If Alisiya told the truth, if she was pregnant, and it was growing unnaturally fast, what did that mean?  Fear gripped her.  She couldn’t handle something like this, not now, not all alone and reeling.  I’m going to have a baby.  And soon.  I’m going to be a mother; no, I’m a mother right now.  She ran through each thought again, testing them.  They were foreign thoughts, ones she hadn’t even begun to plan for.  Fear grabbed at her, but unexpectedly did not hold.  Suddenly the thought lifted her.  Life.  There is life in my world.

She knew then that every dark thought Alisiya had flung at her was not true — she had something to live for and it was not to fulfil Alisiya’s destiny and be discarded.  She would soon have a child.

“You were not thinking,” Alisiya was saying.  She had begun to pace.  “I should never have let you go to him, I realize this is partly my fault for thinking I could make you come to me voluntarily, but still.  You were not thinking.  And now here we are, and this is what comes of not thinking.”  She stopped pacing.

Liseli looked up.  I shouldn’t have come here.  Fear grabbed and took hold.  Alisiya crouched down in front of her.  I should have fought harder against the pain.

“You have only just begun to feel it,” Alisiya said grimly.  “But it’s your own doing.”  She peeled Liseli’s arms away from her womb — Liseli tried to fight, but found her arms weak as gelatin.  “I wouldn’t have to do this if you hadn’t slept with him in the first place.  If you’d gone to the River that night like I told you to, this would be completely unnecessary.”  Alisiya’s eyes were black as she held Liseli’s gaze frozen on her.  She placed one thin, pale hand against Liseli.

The pain was small.  A prick of burning, slight discomfort.  A small pain for a small death.  But in that moment she was lifted high above the earth to glimpse all the could have, should have, would have beens that were dying in an instant and would never be.  Just as soon as she knew there was life to be killed, it was gone, and she was flung back to the hard rock ground.  There everything seemed to break at once; mind, spirit, body, bones, life, and she was on the gray road again, staring down into the swamps of gray and the rivers of gray, and the nothingness of what good she’d ever done.

The girl with the smile who was a rock in a field of rocks was there. She cried into the rivers, weeping gray tears, saying, You did not save me, and now a vision is all I will ever be.  But you will always see me as I would have been, could have been, should have been.  As I am.  As I always will be.  We the River Children never die, and never lived, not really.  Not really.

Liseli turned and ran.  She did not think, or feel; there were no thoughts or feelings in the deathworld.  The river of tears seemed foreign to her there, it mocked the stillness and threatened her — threatened her with what she didn’t know, but she ran from it.  She ran from the unknown feeling.  The child crying the tears was not hers anymore, if she ever had been, if she had ever belonged to anywhere or anyone but the gray river, the road, whatever it was, Liseli didn’t know. . . .  She just ran.  But even as she ran, through a sea of nothing, she knew she was dreaming, trapped, and going nowhere.