To Make Things Right Again
“You will have to tell me what’s going on,” I said. “And I’m not a child anymore. You can’t just think I’m going to accept what you want me to believe. You have to tell it to me straight.”
“Indeed,” said the stalky creature who asked me to call him Guardian what seemed decades ago. “As I said to you earlier, you will have many questions. Let me bring you to my gardens and we can sit down with some refreshments after your long journey.”
“Long journey?! I’ve had an entire lifetime on a planet in a vast solar system that seems more real than this place here where I grew up. Here I’m in limbo. What is this place?”
Guardian opened the door and we were back in the cavernous tunnels of the Library and as we passed the stories in stained glass, they were different now, somehow alive and moving, each seeming to lead to whole worlds, whole lifetimes. How many hundreds and thousands of worlds were inside this place? How many lifetimes would it be possible for one person to live?
The paths led into a large space. It was still inside, still roofed far, far above, but there began to be green vines and flowers of peach and violet and blue and white. Soon, we were surrounded by green from above and all sides and below and my steps felt soft like I was walking on soil. There was a table with chairs and a young boy sitting at the table.
“You will remember Anches,” said Guardian.
I did not remember Anches at first, but there was something familiar and I nodded to him politely and a took a seat. Guardian did not sit and I wondered if perhaps it was impossible for him to do so. I was struck again, like I was when I met him as a child, by how much he seemed to be a wandering plant looking for a place to take root.
“And so, both of you have had some adventures,” Guardian began. “Let me get some refreshments for you while you speak with one another.”
His long, thin strides made a raspy sound like stalks of corn in the wind. I was older and my perspective was framed by the world called Earth. Everything looked and sounded different to me now.
“I don’t know what to say,” said Anches.
“Tell me what you experienced,” I said.
“When I first arrived here from my home, Guardian brought me to a room with a beautiful pool filled with large, luminous fish. They were so white that they shone in the dark. It was a bit unsettling actually, but more unsettling was that I had seen these fish all my life in dreams and now here they were in this strange sort of prison cell with me. And there were racks of colored glass. I had never made a glass painting before, so I didn’t know how to begin. My first attempts were terrible and it took me forever to figure out how to use the tools. It seemed I was in the room an eternity. I suppose Guardian must have had compassion on me because he took me out of the room and showed me around and gave me some tasks to help him. I had a navigator device so that I wouldn’t get lost and strict instructions not to touch any of the stained glass. I believe that is when I met you. Not long after that, he said that it was time for me to go back to the room with the glowing fish and finish my task. He’d talked to me about the making of glass pictures and given me some pointers, so I was ready. I made the world I’d dreamed of with the luminous fish, set it on the ground, and it opened up and I stepped inside and before I knew it, I was swimming underwater with those fish and I needed to find the surface so I could breathe. I stretched up and up and up and found a surface in a world where the sky was violet except at the setting of the suns when it turned blue and there were beings there that were nothing like you and me, but they had a system of life in honeycomb cells, like bees. They could fly, so they easily went from one stacked cell to the next. They didn’t look like bees or produce anything like honey. I don’t know what to say they looked like. Sort of like rabbits, actually, with the long ears, but faces a little more like humans. Maybe they seemed a little more human because they had advanced thought and were self-aware, like we are. They didn’t have a spoken language or make any sounds. They had a system of sign language that included the use of their wings and the stance of their bodies at times.”
“They didn’t know what to think about me, so they gave me a bit of curious distance. I found some glass pieces in a cave, mercifully, so I put them together into a painting of the pool with the fish. I had the idea, correctly it turns out, that I could get back here that way. It wasn’t very good, but good enough that when I set it on the floor, the ground opened up and I stepped inside and I was back in the pool with the fish in the room I came from and emerged wet and hungry and full of questions.”
“You were there a few days?”
“Maybe one or two.”
“I spent a lifetime in another world.”
“But you look like a girl!”
“Do I? I don’t feel like a girl. I lived a complete life, got married, had children. I didn’t expect to come back. I’m in a bit of shock right now.”
“So, there were people in the world you went to?”
“Yes. People just like you and me. It might be the place we’re really from. In any case, we have some kind of common origin.”
“And here are your refreshments,” Guardian said, placing tall, thin brightly colored drinks in front of us. Anches and I looked at each other and I know that we had the same first thought. Was it safe to drink the beverage? And then, the same second thought, we’d have to drink something and we were at Guardian’s mercy. So, at the same time, we drank. It was sweet and fruity and cold and we both immediately felt better.
“There you are,” Guardian said. “And so, what have you answered?”
“The colored glass becomes portals between different worlds,” I said. “And something within us knew about the places we were going to visit long before we were there, so there is something outside of time at work. We were always going to do this. Do you have to create it yourself to enter a portal or are all these glass paintings portals? Is this actually a library of worlds?”
The words rang after they were spoken while Guardian considered how to answer.
“It’s different for everyone. The world choses you rather than the other way around. It is a matter of how you’re going to find your way there and your way back.”
“Has anyone gone to a world and not come back?”
“Again, I don’t know, but it seems that there is a balancing principle in place that returns those who embark.”
“What are the principles of time?” I asked.
“That’s a big question. Tell me what you’ve learned about time.”
“Well,” I said, “there’s something outside of time. And I think that our people, Anches and I, come from Earth, the world where I just lived a lifetime. Is that true?”
“There’s a good possibility.”
“Do you know how our people got here?”
“Yes, I suppose I do. It’s a very old story in a new dress. Too much power in the hands of people looking to cleanse their nation. Give them the tools to send people they don’t like very far away and they will use them, I suppose. Human beings have complicated things.”
“We’re human beings? I know that sounds obvious, but I want to clarify.”
“Yes, Althea and Anches, you are human beings.”
“And our ancestors come from planet Earth?”
“It seems so.”
“And you’re hoping we’ll help you make things right again?”
Guardian seemed surprised by my words. “You do give me hope, Althea.”
“I know it must seem that I’m not really answering your questions,” he said. “This is all going to take time. It’s important that you find many of the answers yourselves because labelling with words diminishes the meaning. Perhaps you can understand that now, and if not, you will come to understand. It’s important that you have a deeper understanding than words can provide.”
Guardian paused and looked at each of us and I had the sense for just a moment that perhaps Guardian did genuinely care about what happened to us and it gave me some comfort.
“There is much ahead in order to learn the answers to your questions so that you can know what to do to make things right again, as you say Althea. First, Sabbath. You must rest and nourish yourselves to prepare for the next journey. I know you are restless for answers. Please know that they will come, but must come through experience.”
“You will be pleased to know,” he continued, “that instead of staying in your old rooms, two little cabins are prepared for you here in these gardens. I think you will find this more pleasant. I know you will be tempted to press the boundaries of the gardens and burst out of here, but I ask that you trust me and have patience. Do you understand?”
This time, Anches answered. “We’re eager to get all the answers at once, but you’re advising us to have the wisdom to strengthen ourselves and rest before going back into more worlds and learning more. Is that it?”
“Yes. And now, do you agree?”
We looked into each other’s eyes and said at the same time, “Yes,” and we both knew what the other was thinking.
Next: Escape From the Library
This is the eighth in a series of stories. Following are the previous installments starting with the first:
1. The Library
2. Listen, Move, Hide, Repeat
3. A Necessary State of Alarm
4. Anches
5. A Question in Colored Glass
6. How a Lifetime Friendship Began
7. In the World I Created