The Sleeping City

Chapter Five: River Crossing

She heard Whillion all around her. "I love you Ketua. You are the little white flowers growing in the shade beneath my window. You are the moon on the mountain's face. You are the song of waking. Ketua I wake for you. I leave the kingdom of sleep each night for you. I would fight death itself for you. When your empty hand hangs lonely by your side know in my heart I am holding it." Ketua sighed, her heart crying, her eyes dry.

When she looked for him, he was far away. Far along down the path that disappeared behind her as she ran after him. Thick red trees growing up on either side. "Where are you going?" She asked as the blood seemed to rush out of her face.

Whillion's voice changed as he spoke. He no longer sounded like himself. "To the Kingdom of sleep."

"No, Whillion, not death!" Ketua shouted out even as she noticed his eyes begin to change from black to amethyst.

"No, Ketua, not death; to Aumbria."

"Stay with me here. Knit my fingers over yours. Show me the place on the mountain where you will build us a house.Aumbria is far from here and I have never been before."

"I want to, but I can not. I am too far.", His voice faded, and she was looking into the eyes of a man she did not know by sight, but in her heart, Ketua realized that she was glaring at the image of an ancestor.

The color of his eyes was foreign to her, and yet there was something about the shape of the face, the bridge of his nose, the downward curve of his mouth that remind her of herself."You have been there before. You were born in the white halls of life to a woman with eyes like mine.Call my name. Wake me. When you call for me I will be there.It is not so far when you already know the way."The man spoke without moving his mouth, and then he too faded away into the darkness. She was alone again.

The wood melted away to darkness and wet. There was nothing, only silence as if the whole world was sleeping. Then her aunt's voice rang loudly in her ears."Wake up! Wake up Ketua!" and she sat up gasping as she did, startled by her dream.

Her sister lay beside her. She rolled over to bury her face in Leita's hair breathing in the familiar scent of home. She prayed quietly over her and fought back the tears as she thought of Whillion and auntie and her mother and all the others. What had become of them?

She and Leita had spent yesterday running down sharp paths. She had tried to close them behind them, to move the stone so it would be difficult for the horses and hide any signs of their having been there. Ketua did not know where she was taking her sister. She knew she had to get to the sleeping city to do gods knew what. Wake it with the eye somehow, but she knew she could not take Leita with her. It would be too dangerous. She led her sister to a quickly moving river where she made rocks pile up like stepping stones.

She knew that the water would cover any traces of energy she had left in the stones as she raised and lowered them to form paths. Then she forced them to walk in a direction away from the sleeping city and hid them at night in a dry sand well she had dug out from under an obliging tree. They dared not to make a fire and ate nothing as they ran, not wanting to strip the wildlife around them as any sign of their being there, now she could hear her sisters stomach gurgling in her sleep. She felt bad but knew there was nothing for it. She was hungry too. She held her sister until she felt she had emptied the whole of her feelings. Then stretched herself out of the well and into the world again.

The birds were singing, and it offended her. The sun was bright, and she wished it would rain like in her dream. She wanted to be unhappy, and she wanted to know Leita would be safe.She didn't know anyone outside the village and had already walked as far as she'd ever been before. She had remembered from lessons with her aunt there was another little river to the west.