That thought alone opened all kinds of doors for Ara.
THE VISITOR
Chapter One
It was bitterly cold at the head of Long-Pass, and even the shaggy bison-hide robes Chief Tlantar Two-Hands of the Matan Nation had provided us didn't entirely keep the chill away. I'd found a fairly well protected place in Gunda's fort, and after the sun had gone down and I'd finished eating supper, I decided that it might not be a bad time to catch up on my sleep. The Malavi had held back the Creatures of the Wasteland, so there was nothing much for me to do, and, though I wouldn't admit it to my outlander friends, the days and days of running down along that tired old mountain range and through Long-Pass itself had taken a lot out of me. Evidently, the years were catching up with me.
I drifted off to sleep, and, as had been happening more and more frequently here lately, I had a dream of the time when I was very young and I was living in the lodge of Chief Old-Bear. In those days the only thing on my mind had been Misty-Water, Old-Bear's beautiful daughter, and in my dreams I saw her again and again, and just the sight of her made me go weak all over. Even when I was asleep and dreaming, I knew that one day something would happen that would come very close to destroying me. I always pushed that aside, though, and fixed my attention entirely on my vision of she who would one day be my mate.
"Wilt thou hear me, brave warrior?" the now familiar voice of my "unknown friend" reached out to me. I knew who she really was now, but just her interruption of my dream irritated me.
"Now what?" I demanded harshly.
"Be nice," she scolded me.
"I'm sorry," I apologized. "I had something else on my mind just now. Was there something you wanted to tell me?"
"Nay," she replied. "I come to thee to ask, not to tell."
"That's unusual. Is there a problem of some kind?"
"One whom thou dost know quite well hath done that he was not supposed to do as yet."
"I suppose you could spank him and send him to bed without any supper," I suggested. She still had me a bit irritated.
"I don't find that particularly amusing, Longbow," she told me, lapsing out of her antique formality. Her familiar voice confirmed what I had come to realize back at Mount Shrak.
"I'm sorry," I apologized. "Just exactly was it that this friend of ours did that he was not supposed to do?"
"He dreamed," she retorted, and her irritation was fairly obvious.
"One of those dreams?"
"Not exactly, no. He didn't cause a flood or set fire to a mountain as the children do. He reached back instead and discovered his true identity. He's not supposed to do that yet."
"And why is that?"
"You don't need to know that, Longbow."
I shrugged. "Then I guess I won't need to talk with him. Those are the rules, unknown friend. If you don't talk to me, I won't talk to Omago."
"How did you know—" She left it hanging.
"You're fairly obvious, Ara. Omago's your mate, and that's why you're so upset. Why is it that Omago's not supposed to know who he really is?" Then something came to me. "You two have been mated since the beginning of time, haven't you?"
"Before the beginning of time, actually," she replied. "Time began when we both said 'now' at the same moment. That's when everything started—and that lay at the core of Omago's dream, and he's not supposed to know about it yet. That was the whole idea behind what he was trying to accomplish. We needed to know about the true nature of you man-things, so Omago blotted out all his memories of the past so that he could live the life of an ordinary man-thing. But now he's sneaking around things he's not supposed to know about. Curiosity is one of his great failings."
"Just exactly when was it when you two ordered time to begin? I mean, how many years?"
"There's no word for that number, Longbow. A million millions doesn't even come close."
"Just exactly what was happening back then that you two found so important?"
"It was when the universe began."
"The universe has always been there, hasn't it?"
She shook her head. "There wasn't anything back then. Not even Omago and I existed in our present forms. We were awareness only, and it took us a long, long time to even find each other. We can talk about that some other day. The important thing right now is that one of our children will try to do something that's forbidden, and she will cease to exist when she does that. I fear that Omago will not be able to bear her obliteration."
"We're talking about Aracia here, aren't we?"
"I did not say that."
"You didn't have to. It is fairly obvious, you know." Then I suddenly saw where this was going. "She's going to try to kill the little girl named Lillabeth, isn't she?"
"I do fear that you are correct."
"She can't do that!"
"I know, and her attempt will obliterate her." There was a kind of agony in her voice.
"Can't you stop her? As far as I can determine, there's nothing that you can't do."
"That's in the world of things, dear Longbow. I can't do that in the world of thought. When Aracia tries to destroy Lillabeth—or Enalla, actually—she'll step over the forbidden line."
"And she'll die?"
"She can't die, Longbow. She'll just cease to exist."
"Isn't that what dying means?"
"No. It goes quite a bit farther."
"And it's that you're afraid of, isn't it, Ara?"
"How did you come to know who I am?"
"You're extremely upset, so you've been letting some things slip. I probably should have realized that from the very beginning. You are Aracia's mother, after all, and just the thought of her obliteration is tearing pieces out of your heart."
"I think that maybe it's Dahlaine who needs a good spanking. His 'Dream' idea seems to be working quite well, but it appears that it's setting off some other Dreams that aren't supposed to happen just yet."
"Such as the one I'm having right now?"
"This one's altogether different, my son."
"Maybe someday you'll get around to telling me just exactly how it's different, Mother."
All right, it was a silly thing to say, but it was just too good an opportunity to let slip by. "Am I supposed to go to my room now?" I asked her.
"No. You're supposed to go to the place where Omago's sleeping and try to keep him from going all to pieces."
"I'll get right on it, Mother."