Queen Of Hearts (Part Four Of The Wonderland Series)
Robert Hill
Copyright 2015 by Robert Hill
She was staring into the eyes of Jesus, her hands clasped together so tight that her knuckles were white.
“Help me, Lord,” Lupita whispered as she leaned forward in the pew. “I don’t know what else to do.”
Jesus continued to stare down at her, silent, his eyes displaying the misery of crucifixion. His depiction, as uniform as any other rendering of that moment two thousand years in the past, was as the same right there hanging above the altar as it would be in any other church on the planet. Lupita could almost pretend she was back home at her church in Corpus Christi; the likeness was so much the same. But she wasn’t back home. She was stuck here, kneeling in St. Mary’s Church on Gorlitzer Strasse in Rothenburg, Germany - alone, abandoned, and without food, money, or even a passport.
“I don’t know what else to do,” she repeated, bowing her head low, pressing it against her clasped hands upon the back of the next pew as she felt a stinging tear trickle to the crest of her left cheek and just dangle there.
Lupita had made many rash and stupid decisions in her forty years, but leaping through an ancient alien device portal that allowed one to communicate and teleport through common everyday mirrors, taking her from her bathroom in Corpus Christi to Antarctica to Germany, was beyond a doubt the dumbest thing ever. Even getting pregnant at nineteen wasn’t anywhere near as foolish as this.
Well, at least, she thought, out of that pregnancy she had Alejandro, the one joy in her life.
A smile drew upon her face despite the tear suspended from her cheek, thinking of Alejandro, all grown now, but still a baby in her eyes. As for the teenage boy who got her pregnant, Ramon, he never truly became the father he should have been to Alejandro. Ramon had been in and out of Alejandro’s life, but never in Lupita’s. Nor had she wanted him to be. Ramon had gone down a dark path of drugs and thievery, and he never found his way back. The last Lupita had heard he was in Huntsville doing ten years for aggravated assault.
A life with Ramon would have been just as bad, if not worse, than the life she had with Raul. It would have been just another bad choice in a long line of bad choices.
And now this foolishness! That one evening when she found in her bathroom mirror reflection the face of an Antarctic geologist who had discovered an alien device buried beneath the ice, had led her from one misadventure in her sad, miserable life to another.
What was she going to do? Who would possibly help her? What was she thinking teleporting to Germany?
She wanted to get away from Raul, that’s what she had been thinking. Knowing that the government had finally arranged for her transportation from Antarctica back to America, she had no desire to go back with Raul now that she had a taste of what it had once been like before he came into her life – and controlled it. Raul had dominated everything in her world, including Alejandro. Although, she had to admit that part of it had not been such a bad thing. At least Raul had been a father of sorts to the boy, even if he had not been the best she could have asked to have for him. Other than the fact that she had no working skills and no means to support herself over the years, what with a growing boy attached to her hip, Raul’s mediocre attempt at being a father was the only reason she had not run away from him years ago.
Well, that had not been entirely true. She had tried once, but then learned the lesson of what happens when a woman runs from a possessive, alcoholic macho ...
Something touched her left shoulder.
Lupita flinched, thinking it was a policeman, and she looked over her shoulder to see … nothing.
Well, not exactly. There was something, but it wasn’t really a thing or a person that she clearly saw. It was more like …
Lupita drew the sign of the cross.
“Do not fear, Lupita Espinoza,” said the wisp of something whose translucent outline suggested a being or a spirit the size of a person. It stood there, or rather hovered just above the floor in the aisle of the church, gazing down upon her.
“Are … are you – “
“No, Lupita, I am not,” said the wispy, glowing being. “Although throughout the ages of your kind we have been mistaken for such – angels, gods, spirits. But, no, we are of the ahel, from a place far, far away from the Earth.”
“Martianos!”
What appeared to be the glowing translucent outline for the being’s head nodded, and it seemed its tone of voice was smiling at the word she had spoken. “In the language of your ancestors, yes. We are beings from a place two thousand light years away in distance, and existing within a sub-dimension of the universe located there. It is our home. My name is Gebrihl.”
Lupita could hardly grasp what the alien was saying to her. Sub-dimensions of the universe? Light years away in distance? Whatever it meant, it sounded like some place altogether different than anything she could possibly …
“Yes, it is,” Gebrihl said, interrupting her thoughts. “It is a place of perfection, harmony, and joy. It is a place where anything is everything to us, and we exist in a state of bliss and peace. And it is a place we have been waiting for thousands of years upon which to return.”
“We?” Lupita asked looking around but only seeing Gebrihl.
“Myself and - the best description in your language that I can use - my brother, Mikhil,” he said.
Then hovering next to Gebrihl, Lupita noticed another being. Where once no one stood, now glowing translucently appeared another being the same as Gebrihl. Mikhil and Gebrihl remained silent for a moment, just hovering in the aisle, staring at her.
Lupita could not speak, could not breathe, could not even think clearly, so overwhelmed her mind became at the sight of these celestial beings. Where had they come from? How had they come to be here with her at this time? Had she gone crazy? What was happening to her?
She closed her eyes, hoping to blink them away, but when she opened them an instant later they were still there hovering before her. Both appeared to be similar – roughly the same size as her in height, and also nearly human in their shape, yet they were almost invisible except for the faint glowing outlines of their bodies. What appeared to be heads, however, glowed much brighter as if surrounded in the glare of …yes, they were just like halos! And, although she could hardly believe it, there also appeared to be the faint outlines of what could only be described as great folded wings emanating from behind their shoulders.
No wonder, as Gebrihl had said, these martianos had been mistaken for angels in the past …
“Exactly,” he said, once more interrupting Lupita’s thoughts. “And also the reason why we have for the most part remained camouflaged and obscured from humanity throughout the years of our stranded existence upon your planet. At first, thousands of years ago, we were not as careful, and our appearance amongst your ancestors led to many misunderstandings as to our true nature.”
“Stranded?”
“We are explorers,” then said Mikihl, “much in the same way that your own kind has a natural curiosity to discover new things, new places within the universe – new beings. It is the reason we came to your dimension and to your planet by way of the paa’riel, that which you refer to as the Mirror Anomaly.”
“I don’t understand,” Lupita said. “You said you were stranded. But it’s right there in Antarctica.”
“We know that now,” said Gebrihl. “But until recently it had been lost to us for thousands of years when a third one of our own chose a wrong path and attempted to subvert humanity for purpos
es of domination rather than to merely explore your world. The attempt led to betrayal, sabotage, and the loss of the paa’riel. Only recently we have become aware of its discovery by your kind as we have sensed the various openings and closings of the portal only it can create. We are very sensitive to its tremendous power, but until we found you, we were not certain of its general location.”
“So that’s how you found me?” Lupita asked.
“Yes, we noticed the first uses of the paa’riel, but we were unable to be present at an opened location. Only the paa’riel can create the opening, not the other way around. When we sensed numerous openings in this general location on the planet, we journeyed here, where we located you and have been with you ever since you entered this church.”
“But how did you know to find me? I don’t understand. The mirror I came through is not with me here right now.”
“It is not, but it is nearby, correct?” said Mikihl.
Lupita hesitated for a moment, remembering how it was she came to Germany, and her disappointment once she arrived here. Johann had been such a liar. Lupita had communicated with him numerous times using the Mirror Anomaly in Antarctica, thinking he had been a handsome single man. During the numerous times she had secretly talked to him, she had found him interesting, and it appeared he was interested in her,