And suddenly, I’m moving faster than ‘she’ can!
*
After a while, ‘she’ stops trying to leap around after me.
She knows she’s not going to catch me now that, like her, I’ve mastered using the Wyrd in this way.
She rushes towards one of the braziers, reaching for one of the protruding pieces of blazing timber like the incredible heat and the danger of burning has no effect on her.
She wrenches the timber clear, knocking it a number of times against the bin’s side to douse most of the flames. She bangs it a few extra times to forge it into a charred, roughly sharpened point.
She spins around, striding across the bed of curtains.
In one effortlessly fluid move, she shifts the timber in her grip until she’s holding it like a spear ready to be thrust home, its blazing point hovering just short of Jake’s heart.
‘Jake dies if you don’t land now!’ she screams wildly.
*
Chapter 29
I’ve no choice.
Whoever she is, I know she’ll do it.
I begin to flutter down towards the floor.
Mary looks as confused as I feel.
But at least she knows Jake needs saving.
She charges across the stage, violently barging into whoever now possesses my body.
Taken by surprise, my body is knocked off to one side, sent sprawling across the wooden floor.
The blazing timber flies out of her hands, wheeling through the air until it lands with a clatter against the blazing bins.
My body is back on its feet in an instant, crouching in readiness for an attack. It throws itself into the air, grabbing hold of poor, stumbling Mary even as she tries to regain control after her headlong charge.
With a simple wheeling of an arm, my body whips Mary high into the air, throwing her hard against one of the walls.
Mary is no match for her.
I have to do something, quickly!
I rush down a connecting thread.
I land on my own shoulder.
I let my soul spread throughout the fibres of energy I’d seen sparkling so brightly when I’d first left my body.
My body tries to dash the butterfly away; but I have enough control of my own body once more to confuse it for a second, letting the hand uselessly slap against my upper arm.
Who’s here?
Who’s taken over my body?
I furiously yell out my questions.
‘Twice!’ Chris says. ‘It’s so nice to be back together again, isn’t it?’
*
Chapter 30
‘Chris? What the hell are you doing here? Your own body could be dying right now!’
‘No, my body’s fine thanks, Twice! I mean, we’ve always been here for each other, haven’t we?’
‘Not like this Chris! This is weird beyond belief! You can’t stay here! You have to leave!’
Gawd, I’m saying it like I’m asking an old boyfriend to leave my apartment.
Thing is, I want to kill him!
‘Ah, but you can’t kill me, can you Twice?’
‘What? You can read my mind?’
‘Well, not really your mind, is it? But yeah, there’s no need for all this screaming and shouting Twice!’
‘No need?’ I scream. ‘You’re in my body Chris! You don’t belong here!’
‘Don’t belong here? How long is it going to be, Twice, before you remember how I helped you save your parents, eh?’
‘Save my parents?’
What’s going on here?
Just how crazy has Chris been all these years without me knowing?
‘Chris, my parents died long before you even showed up in my life.’
‘And you’re calling me crazy? I get it, though; you’re thinking of when they died when the traffic was at a crawl, yeah? You know, horrific lacerations, signs of drowning; just the sort of things we all suffer in a mid-town accident right?’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Because, obviously, it was all just payback time, when everything they’d suffered in their first accident finally caught up with them, yeah?’
‘First accident? You mean, when I was knocked over?’
‘No! I did say their first accident, Twice! They were almost dead. They were crying out for you down through the Wyrd. Remember?’
‘Chris, aren’t you confusing this with that story about the guys who drove into the river and– wait! You’re saying that it was my mum and dad?’
‘You’ve got it at last Twice!’
‘So that was me, the girl swimming towards them! And you – you were the angel? You’re my guardian angel?’
‘Ohh, so close Twice! You’re still not taking into consideration that you’re Half-Life.’
‘If you’ve always thought that Chris, why didn’t you just get your murderous golems to kill me, eh?’
‘I haven’t always thought it Twice! It didn’t dawn on me until a while ago. As for the golem question – well, I wasn’t quite sure what complications that might cause, me being involved in your killing.’
‘Complications?
‘See, it’s just so difficult to get you to accept who you are. Twice! Which is why I thought, heck, I’m sure I can make it all work by myself anyway, if it’s just your shadow soul that gets lost out there!’
‘But my soul Chris; where the heck is my soul? Have you done something with it?’
‘Me? Why would I want to hurt your soul, Twice?’
‘I don’t know; would you?’
‘Twice; I would no more hurt your soul than I would hurt myself.’
‘Then what’s going on Chris? Who are you?’
‘Twice; I’m your soul!’
*
Chapter 31
My soul.
Chris is my soul.
Hah – my real soul mate!
What had happened when I’d died?
Had we been apart too long to fully come together once more?
Had the love of my dying parents been so strong that, somehow, it had managed to bring us partly together once more?
To re-forge connections in the Life-Force that had previously been broken?
What is this body surrounding me but a temporary layer defining my worldly existence?
Isn’t it really just an entrapment of my soul?
Isn’t it just acting like a dam, preventing the Life-Force flowing through me?
Preventing me from flowing along on all its gloriously invigorating energy streams.
And we fight to preserve it (as if death is a terror we can avoid), this dam blocking the stream’s movement.
Turning it into a stagnant pool.
Shouldn’t the body be a valley, letting the streams flow through, drawing off its energy?
Accepting what it can grant us.
Even in our deaths.
Why be scared of death?
Why not accept it as a part of life?
If death takes you, so be it.
I no longer accept this imprisonment of skin.
I accept the power of the Wyrd.
My fibres crackle once more, as they had when I had undertaken my trip into the underworld.
The ends sparkle, like universes in miniature.
No; not like. They are universes in miniature.
The Life-Force floods through me, connecting me with the world, with the worlds, and beyond!
‘Chris; you don’t belong here – not all of you, at least!’
A small part of him is so much easier to remove than all of him.
What had Chris himself said? That
he could manage without a shadow soul!
I cause a surge to ripple along every glowing fibre, pushing him back as a surging river pushes the flotsam before it.
I push him up and out into the paper butterfly that’s still mingled with our spirit.
Before Chris has a chance to respond, I dash him off my shoulder.
‘I’m back,’ I say proudly.
*
I don’t know what Chris is thinking now.
I could reconnect with him, using one of the strands.
Too dangerous.
Instead, I’m making sure the connecting strands he’s trying to reach out to me with are blocked by surges of energy.
He’s weak; I left him very little of the Life-Force he had originally been formed of.
I’d taken it from him, for my own use.
To reconstitute my own soul.
Mary’s coming round. I don’t know how long has passed since she was cast so hard against the wall it had knocked the breath out of her.
She observes me warily.
‘It’s okay Mary,’ I say, raising a placatory hand. ‘It’s me; Twice. Something had come back with me from the underworld. I’ve got rid of it.’
I’m worried if she’ll buy it or not.
I’d just made it up on the spot.
Mary grins, rubs her head like it’s sore.
‘Yeah, it happens,’ she says. ‘Sorry,’ she adds, like she’s responsible.
Catching a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye, she turns to look up at the weakly fluttering butterfly.
‘The butterfly?’ she says.
I nod.
The butterfly dips, rises, like it’s a dying butterfly.
Chris isn’t giving up even now, however.
He’s heading for the blazing bins.
He’s hoping to draw off the concentrated Life-Force, as the origami butterfly had originally, staying alive for far longer than it should have.
He bathes in the fire’s glow, like a phoenix rising from the flames.
A flame licks at a wing.
He’s too close.
He hasn’t got the strength to move away.
The flame greedily spreads along his wing.
Suddenly, in a sharp burst fire, he’s gone.
Did I hear a scream?
‘Mary, I need to rescue Jake!’
‘Jake? So you did meet him?’
‘Yes, he came for me. But he’s in trouble.’
‘Trouble? But how can you go back so soon Twice? I might have a strong enough connection to find him–’
‘No, Mary; there’s no need.’
While we’ve talked, I’ve been looking about me,
Looking with my soul, not my eyes.
The underworld isn’t below us. It isn’t above us. It isn’t even someplace else.
It’s here.
It exists right here, right amongst us.
Just as, I now realise, in the underworld the world of living exists right alongside it too.
The underworld exists in the spaces between the glowing, three-dimensional web of the Life-Force. And the living world exists in the spaces between the glowing, three-dimensional web of the Life-Force that makes up the underworld.
The webs are interconnected, intertwined, interdependent.
One world could no more destroy the other than a man could strip out his blood vessels and remain whole.
I reach out to the fainter glow of the web defining the underworld.
I feel it drawing me.
I draw on it too, as Chris’s fisherman would draw in his net.
I let myself feel its vibrations. Let myself become one with the vibrations.
I risked my life because I loved Chris, my soul.
Jake risked his life because he loved me.
His love is rippling along the strands, building and building as I draw all those vibrations towards me.
I am the vibrations.
I am his love for me.
I step through into the world where Jake is still fighting Franky.
I draw the net in tighter, bringing Jake close by me, swinging Franky safely off to one side, like a fish with its fins caught in the netting.
‘I’ve come to take Jake back Franky,’ I say nonchalantly.
‘Twice?’ Jake can’t believe that I’m here. ‘But how–’
‘The connections, Jake – they drew me back.’
He nods, like he’s trying to understand.
I open up the net on one side, letting Jake step through to the world of the living.
I turn to follow him, but not without first turning back to Franky and releasing her.
‘I was wrong, Franky,’ I say. ‘And you were right.’
*
Chapter 32
I hadn’t completely left the world of the living.
As far as Mary was concerned, I had been with her all along, apologising for worrying her, saying that I was sure Jake would be here soon.
Even so, she had breathed a sigh of relief as Jake had stirred amidst the cocooning curtains.
Now we were all dousing the fires. Jake had made a call, arranging for a team to get here as soon as possible and clear everything up.
Before she left, Mary gave us a hug and kiss.
‘Just what had you brought back, Twice?’ she whispers as she holds me close.
‘Oh, I’m not sure,’ I quietly lie. ‘But, he’s gone now, right?’
‘Right!’ she says, giving me one of her beaming smiles as we pull apart.
The smile fades.
‘Sorry about Chris,’ she says. ‘Sorry you couldn’t find him.’
I shrug.
That’s what I’d told them both; that I hadn’t been able to find Chris.
As I wave bye to Mary, Jake comes up behind me, casually slipping an arm about my waist.
‘You know Twice, when you came back for me, I can’t remember much about it all – but you did mention a connection between us, right?’
I turn to him, wrap my own arms around his waist, slip my hands into the back pockets of his jeans.
‘I think I might have.’
His other arm slips around me.
He grins.
‘You know, the way you came back for me like that – and Mary says you still managed to beat me back here too! – well, perhaps I’ve got to give you a reappraisal on your average ability, eh?’
‘What, you mean I might be better than average after all?’ I say cheekily.
Those beautiful eyes of his are studying me carefully once more.
This time, though, their wondering, asking, if we might just, well, make a little bit more of all this and…
Kiss.
For a long time
‘Wow!’ he says breathlessly when we finally pull slightly apart. ‘Much much better than average.’
‘Hey, just how many girls have you been appraising?’
I jerk him towards me playfully.
Yeah, but I wonder; just what kind of emotions did I pass through to him in that kiss?
Was it just the pleasure I felt in being together?
Or was it also the pleasure the other me is experiencing; sitting by a sea with no horizon, a waterfall that stretches as high as a mountain, a sky bluer than anything I have ever seen?
Where will we go next, a dazzling, fluttering butterfly asks?
Even in the world of the living, I now realise, there are more beautiful things than I could ever have imagined.
Everything is linked; me, us, the trees, rocks, mountains, the moon, the sun, the stars.
Everything is alive; but the breath of a rock takes a human lifetime, that of a mountain a thousand lifetimes.
A change of power within ourselves is reflected in a change in everything we falsely believe lies outside of us.
r /> We kiss again.
Slower, longer.
More tenderly this time.
Yes, I’ve found my connection to the world.
Found my connection to every other world too.
*
You’d think there could be nothing more terrifying than the dead.
But the dead, they fear a war with the world of the living, which could tear the Wyrd apart.
And so everyone fears the factions, who want to set that war in motion.
But Franky was right.
There’s something more powerful, more frightening, than all these things.
Something that could tear every connection apart with an angry squint of an eye.
It’s me.
I am Half-Life.
End
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You may also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.
The Caught
The Rules
Chapter One
The Changes
Sleeping Ugly
The Barking Detective Agency
The Healing
The Lost Fairy Tale
A Horse for a Kingdom
Charity
The Most Beautiful Things
The Last Train
The Dream Swallowers
Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night
Jonah and the Alligator
Glastonbury Sirens
Dr Jekyll’s Maid
The 500-Year Circus
P
The Endless Game
DoriaN A
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