Finding Home - 2

She traveled eastward as the sun rose higher in the sky, but she didn’t make it far on so little sleep. She bedded down for a few hours on the forest floor.

She awoke with a start. Her heart raced a little as she propped herself up on her elbows. She felt as if something had awoken her, but as her eyes flashed over her surroundings she saw only the forest. It must be a few hours into the afternoon she thought, given the sun’s position. Wide awake now she decided to continue on into the forest. She hoped to come across a road that she might be able hitchhike. Recovering the ground that she had lost kidnapped in the van might take days to make up on foot.

Suddenly, she froze overcome with a chilly feeling. She whirled around to see who was following her. She backtracked just a little and searched around the bushes but didn’t find anyone. She hesitantly continued.

The forest turned to jungle. She wondered if she would have done better following along the river rather than simply taking off east. She regretted that her frustration had clouded her judgment.

Finally, as the sun was threatening to set, the jungle started to thin and her feet occasionally walked on what seemed to be an overgrown brick road. She tried to follow the road but kept losing it. It didn’t seem to matter. The brick started to appear all around her the further she walked. She spotted a house, two houses opposite each other actually. A whole street of houses, in fact, she realized upon traveling closer. She was certainly worried that the inhabitants of this town would be less than friendly to her but with any luck they would help her get home. She considered knocking on the door of the first house but instead started walking down the street in the fading sunlight. She started to frown realizing that not a single house on the street had a window lit. It was a ghost town. But then she saw someone in the distance sitting with his back against one of the houses. She approached cautiously. He was digging at some large fruit with a spoon, one knee bent and one straight.

“Excuse me,” Priscilla called but he didn’t raise his head from the fruit. “I’m trying to get to the Eastern Prairies. Do you have any advice?”

He looked up and the look on his face made Priscilla recoil a step. The man rose setting the shell of the fruit to this left. He wiped his hands on his pants and walked towards her.

Priscilla backpedaled. “What do you want?” she asked him. She felt a pair of hands on her shoulders. She tried to whirl around but someone else seized her and the next thing she knew he and the man who had been eating the fruit were dragging her up several flights of stairs.

They brought her kicking and screaming into a room and threw her on the ground in front of a woman in a billowing blue dress. The room was dimly lit with an orange glow. They tied her arms and legs as the woman came close enough for Priscilla to see her face. The woman smiled at her and Priscilla relaxed a little until she realized that the woman was cutting into her forearm with something. Priscilla’s blood trickled to the floor. She screamed and cried out for help. The woman attached a tiny tube to Priscilla’s new wound that Priscilla traced back to a table which had containers of orange liquid on it. The orange liquid began flowing into Priscilla’s arm.

The woman moved to Priscilla’s other arm. There was a thud outside the room. At the time, only one of the men was in the room. The woman looked up at him in the room as if to say, “What in the world was that?” He responded by cautiously creeping over the threshold into the dark hallway. A figure jumped at him and spun the man around switching places with him. The intruder slammed the door in the man’s face and swiftly locked it. Startled, the woman gathered her big blue skirt and scurried into a large air duct that was exposed in the wall.

It was Paul. He untied Priscilla’s arms and legs. She saw his mouth moving but couldn’t understand what he was saying. She sat up slowly and felt very dizzy. He reached out his hand and touched her shoulder which caused a whirlwind of confusing sensations to rocket through her mind. Paul handed her a large bottle of water and motioned for her to drink which she did.

After a few moments she started to hear him speak. “I took one of them down and locked the other outside, but he’s going to pick the lock soon,” he said.

Priscilla felt her senses restarting. She was processing more clearly with every passing moment.

“We need to get out of this room,” Paul said.

“It’s you,” Priscilla whispered.

Paul walked over to the air vent and peered down it.

“How are you alive?” Priscilla asked.

“Come,” he beckoned. “There’s very little time.”

Priscilla rose and walked unsteadily. She extended her arms trying to balance. She knelt down and slid into the darkness of the metal air duct. Paul entered right behind her and they began scooting down the air duct, Paul encouraging her to move as fast as possible.

They heard the door unlock in the room behind them. Someone else entered the air duct and began chasing them. Paul guided her right or left through the air duct system. The hands and knees pursuit was a loud clamoring. She heard rainfall begin outside. They came to a section that was sloped and started traveling without intending to. Soon they found themselves sliding helplessly down a wide slide. Their velocity increased. The slide had a fork it in. Priscilla and Paul were separated. Priscilla screamed a little as she rocketed down the air duct on her back. Eventually, the slide leveled out. She came to a stop. There was moonlight at the end of the tunnel. She hurried to the end of the tunnel hearing their pursuer’s body sliding towards the landing. Paul had gone down the fork to the right but their enemy had evidently followed Priscilla down the left. Priscilla reached the opening and ran wasting no time. She hoped to locate a hiding place before the man behind her emerged from the tunnel. She darted behind a house but right before she did she looked over her shoulder towards the opening of the air duct. She saw him see her as he struggled to his feet. She fled past one house and around another still not fully cognitive. He gained on her rapidly and reached out his hand.

She mentally braced herself for his grasp but instead heard the wall smash behind her. Paul had intercepted the chaser and checked him through a wall. But in the darkness, Priscilla’s momentum carried her body right over a guardrail. She tumbled down steep concrete and splashed into a body of water at the bottom.

Paul’s arms were around her. He pulled her to the opposite bank. “Put your arms around my neck,” he said. They shifted about until she was on his back. In a strong motion he raised his foot onto the concrete bank and began walking up the incline laboring under her weight.

He swung her around in front of him and leaned her against one of the houses. When he tried to rise she clung to his neck and kissed him. “Sadier. How did I not recognize you all this time?” she asked. “I must have been under a reaction, a very powerful spell. I didn’t even know your face. But why didn’t you tell me it was you?”

“I did,” he replied. “I told you so many times it was me, but your ears were not allowed to perceive it.”

“How is this possible that you are alive?” she asked. “You were dead. We buried you.”

“I’m not able to tell you,” he said sitting down on her right with his back to the house.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because you’re not completely out from the reaction yet,” he replied.

“However this is possible, it’s you,” she said. She threw herself into his arms and wept. Tears sprouted in his eyes too.

“Where have you been the last year? Why haven't you reached out to us?” she asked.

“I’ve tried so many times to tell you the answer but you apparently haven’t been allowed to hear it,” he replied beginning to wrap her bleeding forearm in a bandage. “You have to realize it on your own.”

“How could I come up with an explanation for this?” she asked. “Your body was cold. You were not breathing and you did not have a pulse. Rhonda tried to restart your heart just to make us feel like we had done everything we could. How could you have possibly lived?”

He was silent.

“I should have known all along it was you by the way I felt about you,” she said. “And somehow, I knew you would come for me. I felt something in me I have never felt before and I don’t even know if it was okay for me to feel it but there was a very small part of me that was glad they were hurting me because I wanted you to rescue me.”

Suddenly, she stood up and walked forward trembling. The reaction lifted from her eyes, ears and mind. She looked up at the sky and said, “You did indeed pass into the next life, Sadier. And so have I.”

"How did this happen?" she whispered.

"You said the last thing you remember before the prison was being kidnapped and put into the back of a van," Sadier stated. "They let a vapor into the back of the van to put you and the boys asleep. It was meant to knock you out for a few hours while they transported you, but when they tried to wake you they couldn't."

"I’m in the afterlife," she said her eyes scanning the dark town with new wonder. “This is not what I expected.” Then her eyes fell to the bandage on her elbow. “There is fear here," she said. When he didn't say anything, she whirled around and faced him.

"Did you think we would just sit around?" he said.

"Well, I don't know," she shrugged.

He was silent.

"I know you have more to say," she urged. "Don't leave me in suspense."

"You explained it yourself," he said. "And that's why the reaction lifted from your eyes. This place is designed to make us come alive in all the ways we were designed for. You said that there was a part of you that wanted to be captured because you wanted to be rescued. In the previous life we think that all we want is peace but when you get here you find pretty fast that peace is not everything you want. We were made to go deep into where it is not safe, where it is unpredictable. Adventuring together, sacrificing for each other, it’s the way we connect the deepest. Fear, passion, pain, comfort, sadness, it's all part of what it means to be alive.”