Chapter Fifty-Four
Friends Part
A tall, graceful figure descended the stairs carved into the granite bluff. Silhouetted by the amber light, her features took on greater clarity as she neared the beach. Her raven-black hair reached the small of her back, and she walked tall and proud with the ivory and gray splayed feathers of her headdress rustling in the breeze. She wore ceremonial garb befitting a priestess. Unadorned tawny deerskin, brown moccasins, leather leggings turned down just below the knee. She was the color of the earth: rich, brown, and full of life. She smiled in recognition of us and celebration of the reunion.
We two ran as best as we could upon the uneven shore and reached her as she descended the final granite step. “Isabel!” we shouted in unison.
The three of us embraced in a tight circle. The tower of light flashed above us. The sky softened to salmon pink, and a ball of yellow was visible above the blue marble slabs of the circle.
“You are just in time for sunrise,” Isabel informed her travel-weary friends. Indeed, the air around us had cycled from scarlet to indigo. I did not need to ask how such things were possible in a world that remained central to but distinct from my own.
A procession of children descended the stairs to greet Isaac and me. Over a dozen children, some blond-headed and blue-eyed, others dark-haired with eyes of chestnut or green, encircled the three friends in a joyful celebration of their arrival. They called it “the return,” and one girl led Isaac up the carved stairs toward the revolving beam of the Center Island Light.
Halfway up the bluff he stopped and looked down upon Izzy and me. “Aren’t you coming?” he shouted.
The seagulls did not wail here, and the waves of the bay lapped at the bleached stone. Isabel looked at me and shook her head sadly. “You cannot stay,” she whispered.
I looked up and waved farewell to Isaac. The tears blurred my vision and when they cleared he was already gone.
I looked at the copper dome of the tower, and my heart filled to bursting. Gabe and Billie stood upon the lantern deck, his hands resting on the black iron railing, hers waving to me against the backdrop of the rotating light. When he saw me, his hands rose as well.
“Hello,” I shouted excitedly as I waved back. I closed my eye against the brightness of the morning and when I opened it again, Billie was next to me. The brilliance of the sun forced my eye to close again. I pulled her in and breathed deeply her jasmine scent. “You are the only sunlight my life has ever known,” I whispered. My tears fell upon her shoulders as I embraced her tighter.
“I will come back for you when the time is right,” she replied softly.
“You need to go now, Paul,” Isabel interrupted. Billie disappeared from my arms.
“No!” Something tore inside. “I need to feel her again, Izzy.” I begged.
Tears filled Isabel’s eyes as she embraced me.
“Please, Isabel,” I implored, “please do not send me away from here. Everyone I love is here. I’ve lost everything back there. Everything…” I collapsed upon the pale stones, each one bleached by the Center Island Light. Without releasing Isabel’s hands I stayed on my knees and looked up into her eyes.
“There is nothing for me back there.”
Isabel, in turn, dropped to her knees. “The first of the Great Deceiver’s four Pillars has been broken, thanks to you, Fire Walker.”
I turned my head away, and she gently wiped the tears from my cheeks and smoothed my tussled hair. “You have returned Isaac to us. Umbra’s cards and the power of the black walnut have been destroyed.” Isabel lifted my chin to make me face her. Her hazel eyes took me in with no mirrored barrier, and her dark skin and full lips radiated health and wholeness. All ties to the frail child she had once been were severed.
“We are still warriors, you and I,” she told me.
“I thought the war was over,” I answered. “Didn’t we just win?”
She smiled and then pulled me to a standing position. She pointed out the mainland that encircled us. Center Island, it appeared, floated in the middle of a pristine sea of infinite beauty whose distant waters lapped against bronze grasses. The water was deep and green here, clean and clear. The morning smelled of damp rose petals, and the air was warm and slightly humid. On the horizon a line of hemlock and spruce came into focus as the sun ascended higher into the cloudless blue sky.
“We are in the Center, Paul, but not all look our way.”
I regarded the mainland and considered the towering trees of its distant shore to imagine the world I knew. That world most certainly was filled with love and kindness but also riddled with disease, greed, disharmony, and separation.
“Has that world not been changed by us?” I asked.
“In many ways yes,” the priestess replied. “If left unchecked, who knows what devastation would have been wrought by Umbra. Two centuries ago an entire continent was deforested and polluted. An entire people were enslaved or exterminated. The black walnut was dormant for some time but awakened to begin this final war.”
Isabel paused, and within her silence lay the tension of an unfinished crusade. “Three Pillars remain. The war will not end until they have been destroyed and the children of the bay have been brought home.”
I looked away from the mainland and then upward toward the rectangular panes of lighted glass adorning the dome of the tower. Neither Billie nor Gabriel was there. I felt tired and hungry and plain world-weary.
“One of the Miskenupik followers told me something.”
Isabel looked at me warily.
“Written upon my soul are the names of the Center but also of the Nizad.”
Isabel understood the root of my fear. “You would not be here unless you learned you are capable of walking both the True and Broken paths. You are the only one alive who can enter both the Kesemanetow and the Miskenupik. The Fire Walker follows a razor’s edge.”
“You don’t know how close I came to losing Isaac. I’m not pure enough for this job, Izzy. There’s no alchemy powerful enough to right my course. Only a fool believes lead can be changed to gold.”
She grabbed my hands and led me to the semicircular perimeter of the rotating light.
“The All-Father has not abandoned us. The Great Deceiver does not yet know this.” She lightly caressed my cheek and kissed the place where my right eye had once been. She brushed her fingers against the raw part of my neck, but her touch did not hurt. “You were born with free choice,” she said. “The true path is always yours to follow, if you so wish. When in doubt, look to the Center.” I was several feet from the arc of lighted granite and understood what she was asking of me.
“How do I even find these forsaken Pillars? Maybe just this one time you can actually give me a direct answer.”
“They will find you.”
Nothing with her was ever easy.
“I no longer have a life back there.” This was my final protest, implying more than a loss of livelihood.
“I know,” she answered, “but you have friends there, Paul. You are not alone. Besides, the Travelers know how to find you.” She meant Amanda and other children like her. “They can be surprisingly helpful.”
Isabel handed to me three gifts, two of which were the stolen Kesemanetow, now returned to me. I wanted to ask her how she had retrieved them, but my time was at hand. The third gift I tucked within my coat’s inner pocket. I stepped into the path of the Fresnel light and disappeared from the bleached shores of Circle Island.