Chapter 1
Frieda Evans ran her hand through the tall waving grasses and wildflowers of a sun-drenched meadow. The summer wind blew her short dark curls back from her face and filled her with bliss. The pungent smell of sun-baked earth and grass imbued her with comfort and contentment.
Sunlight flashed across her eyelids from above, and she raised her face to the sky. That sky wasn’t blue, but an iridescent kaleidoscope of shimmering color and prismatic sparks. Every now and then, a dark shape wiggled across it, or a tear-drop shaped shadow interrupted the light.
Across the meadow, a high wall of white stone cut off the view beyond the grass. Groups of people milled around its base, but Frieda couldn’t make them out at that distance. Behind her, the meadow ended at the edge of a dark forest, but the tree trunks slithered back and forth in the wind with slow waving movements.
Someone broke away from the crowd by the wall and a woman with long black hair hanging down her back walked toward her. She didn’t stand as high as Frieda’s chin, but she smiled in such a kind way that Frieda couldn’t help smiling back. The woman wore a plain white dress that trailed the grass. She stopped in front of Frieda. “What is this place?”
“You’re in the deep ocean,” the woman replied.
Frieda stared at her. Then she looked around her again. “How can I be?”
“You’re with the Aqinas,” the woman replied.
Frieda blinked. “The Aqinas? But you....you’re human.”
“Yes, I’m human,” the woman replied. “But all the Aqinas look like this. Anyway, I’m Aqinas, too.”
Frieda couldn’t clear her thoughts. “Who....who are you?”
“My name is Sasha. Sasha Marquez,” the woman told her, “not that it matters much. I’m human just like you, but I’ve made this my home and the Aqinas my people.”
“But I’m not with the Aqinas.” Frieda glanced over her shoulder. “I was just.....”
Sasha waited for her to continue.
Frieda rubbed her forehead. “It’s so hard to remember what happened before....this.”
Sasha waited another moment. Then she sighed. “I’ll help you out. You were with the Avitras.”
Frieda frowned. “I was.”
Sasha pursed her lips. “The Romarie abducted you from Earth, along with a couple hundred other women. They were going to sell you in the slave markets, but they crashed here. You were rescued by the Lycaon.”
Frieda couldn’t take her eyes off the woman.
“You’re on the planet Angondra,” Sasha went on. “The Lycaon faction rescued the women from the crash and took them to their village, but quite a few of them travelled to the other factions to find homes and mates for themselves.”
A light came on in Frieda’s mind. “I remember now! I went to the Avitras faction with my sister Anna. We were visiting somebody, and I fell off the balcony, but I don’t remember anything else.”
“You fell into the stream,” Sasha told her. “Actually it was more of a rivulet, but the water transmitted your signal to the Aqinas, and they brought you here, to their world.”
Frieda narrowed her eyes. “How do you know so much about me?”
“The water forms a link between everyone here,” Sasha told her. “We all know everything about each other. Everyone here knows about you, but the truth is, I know about the Romarie ship crashing because I was on it.”
Frieda’s mouth fell open. “You were?”
Sasha nodded. “I never went to the Lycaon like you did, though. One of the Romarie survived the crash long enough to attack me and try to kill me. When the Lycaon showed up, they thought I was dead and left me at the crash site along with all the others who died.”
“So how did you wind up here?” Frieda asked.
“It rained the night of the crash,” Sasha told her. “I don’t know exactly how it happened, but the rain transmitted my signal to the Aqinas the same way it did yours, and they rescued me.”
“But Anna,” Frieda protested, “she won’t know what happened to me. She might think I’m dead.”
“You can go find her later if you want to,” Sasha replied. “You’re not a prisoner here anymore than you were with any of the other factions.”
Frieda gazed across the meadow at the people walking back and forth below the wall. “Who are they? Who are the Aqinas?”
“They’re people just like you and me,” Sasha replied. “You don’t have to fear them. They’re the most peaceful, gentle people on Angondra, and they have the same code of honor and hospitality the other factions do. They welcome newcomers as their own. I’m proof of that.”
“But look at this place.” Frieda waved her arm at the meadow. “We’re breathing air. We’re standing on dry land.”
“A black algae surrounds our bodies and transmits oxygen into our blood so we can breathe underwater,” Sasha told her. “And this meadow is part of the collective memory of all the Aqinas. We’re creating it with our minds to give us a frame of reference we can live in underwater.”
“How is that possible?” Frieda whispered.
“What you see is a remnant of your memories of Earth,” Sasha told her. “I really don’t know what you’re seeing and experiencing, but the water makes a composite of your fantasies and memories and combines them into one single reality. It makes them real for you. It also gives all the people here a human appearance so you can relate to them.”
Frieda’s eyes widened. “So the Aqinas don’t really look human? Is it all a fantasy?”
“They have two arms and two legs and two eyes, just like humans,” Sasha replied. “But they have some other features unique to them. They have a webbing of skin between their fingers and toes, and the algae forms a film over their skin to form a seal with their cells, but you can’t see any of that down here. They look like real people, and they are.”
Frieda looked around again. “I just can’t believe we’re in the middle of the ocean. This place is so....so Earth like.”
Sasha pointed up at the sky. “Do you see that? That’s the upper surface of the ocean. Those shapes are the big sea creatures swimming around above us. That one is like a giant eel, and that one is like a whale. And those trees over there—do they look like any trees you’ve ever seen before? Of course not, they’re giant seaweed. Look at the way they sway with the current. You’re underwater, but that won’t stop you from enjoying the place and making it your home.”
Frieda shook her head in wonder. “I never thought people could live like this. It doesn’t seem real.”
“It’s real, all right,” Sasha replied. “It’s just as real as the lives the other factions live on land. The Felsite have their cities on the plains, and the Ursidreans have their giant cave cities deep in the mountains. The Lycaon live in their nomadic hut villages in the woods, and the Avitras live in trees in the high forest canopy. We live here, and we have much less strife and unrest than the other factions. They’re always warring and killing each other. We stay away from all that.”
“I’d like to meet some of the others.” Frieda set off walking toward the wall.
Sasha walked at her side. “You can walk that way, but you can’t meet people by walking there. You have to wait for them to come to you.”
“Why?” Frieda asked.
“You can walk that way all day,” Sasha told her, “but you’ll never reach that wall. It’s a construct of your mind, and so are the people there. If you want to meet someone, you have to stay where you are. The water will transmit your desire and bring them to you.”
Frieda frowned at her, but she kept walking. Sasha’s words made no sense to her. She walked a long way, but the wall continually hovered just out of reach. The people near it never got bigger or appeared clearer. “I don’t understand this.”
Sasha stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Take a look around you. You’re still in the center of the meadow.”
Frieda looked around and frowned.
“You’ll always be in the center of this meadow,” Sasha went on. “It’s the center of your own mind. The water keeps you here all the time and you can never leave it. If you want to talk to someone, you have to transmit your desire to talk to them through the water, and they will come to you. Here, I’ll show you.”
Sasha turned to the wall, and in an instant, another figure separated from the group and walked through the grass toward them. He was a young man, taller than Frieda, with black hair twisted in ropes down his back. Frieda had to admit he was perfectly formed, even stunningly handsome. He smiled at Sasha and bowed to Frieda. “Welcome to our world. I hope you will find yourself at home here.”
“This is Fritz,” Sasha told her. “He’s my mate, and he’s leader of this faction. He’s what the other factions call the Alpha.”
Fritz half-closed his eyes. “I’m not really the leader. We have a more egalitarian social structure than the other factions, but someone has to represent us to the other factions, so I have the job.”
“It’s a very beautiful world you have here,” Frieda remarked.
Fritz bowed again. “We think so, too. It is designed to give each of us everything we need and desire with a minimum of friction. It’s too bad we can’t convince the other factions to come and live here. Then there would be no more war on Angondra.”
Frieda snorted. “That’s not likely to happen.”
Fritz smiled. “No, it isn’t.”
At exactly the moment when Frieda started to wish he would leave so she could talk to Sasha alone again, Fritz bowed to her again and walked away, back toward the wall.
“You see?” Sasha told her. “They’re exactly like us.”
“How can you be sure anybody is who they say they are?” Frieda asked. “If your mind makes everyone the way you want them to be, they could be anything in the world and you would never know. The Avitras and the Lycaon say the Aqinas can’t be trusted. They say the Aqinas fomented wars between the other factions to take advantage of them and then negotiated peace agreements to further their own interests. How can you be sure that’s not true?”
“I’m not sure it isn’t true,” Sasha replied. “I can’t say what the previous leaders of the Aqinas did or didn’t do, but like I said, the water keeps nothing hidden from any of us. You’ll see when you start meeting other Aqinas. You’ll see for yourself whether you can trust them or not, and you’ll understand that Fritz and the other Aqinas want only peace for all Angondra. That’s all any of us wants.”
Frieda shut her eyes tight, but the swirling mass of conflicting images threatened to overwhelm her even then. “I don’t think I can handle all this.”
Sasha took her by the arm. “Come here. I want to show you something.”
Frieda let Sasha lead her back across the meadow the way she came, but she didn’t bother to look around her. What was the point, if all her surroundings were just a pop-up of her own thoughts? What was the point of talking to people if the water made them exactly the way she wanted them to be?
She wasn’t watching where Sasha led her until shadows darkened out the light from above. When she looked around, she noticed the forest looming overhead. The undulating trees—or whatever they were—blocked out the light.
Frieda hesitated, but Sasha pulled her forward. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s perfectly safe.”
Frieda followed her into the shadows, and a moment later she stopped in a little clearing between the towering seaweed trunks. A perfectly round little house sat between the trees with strange colored plants surrounding the front door. A ray of sunlight shone down through the dense forest and lit up the domed roof covered in moss.
Sasha pushed the door open. “Come on in. This is my house.”
Frieda hesitated on the doorstep and squinted into the house. It was one small room with a shelf on one side made up into a bed, and a table and two chairs on the other side. When she saw no danger, Frieda stepped into the room. Light flooded down into the room from somewhere overhead, even though the roof was solid with no windows or openings.
Frieda gazed in every direction. “You....live here?”
“Well, Fritz and I do,” Sasha replied. “And we don’t really live here the way most people live in houses. Most people spend all their time in the meadow, but you can go back to your own house whenever you want to relax or sleep or do whatever you want to do.”
“My house?” Frieda asked. “I don’t have a house.”
“Every Aqinas has their own house,” Sasha told her.
“But I’m not Aqinas,” Frieda pointed out.
“You are now,” Sasha replied. “The moment you arrived here, the water gave you a house of your own. Since you’re human like I am, it will probably be a lot like this one. Anyway, you can go there to rest whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed. Maybe you’d like to go there now.”
“Maybe I would,” Frieda murmured. “Where is it?”
“Only you can find that out,” Sasha replied.
Frieda stared at her. “Why can’t you take me there the same way you brought me here? Is it some kind of secret?”
“It isn’t secret,” Sasha replied. “But it’s yours. Your mind creates it, so only you can find it.”
“How do I do that?” she asked.
“You go back to the meadow,” Sasha replied. “Then you think about going home to your own house, and then you go there. It works the same as calling one of the people to come and talk to you, only the other way around. It’s your house, so only you can go there, unless you want to take someone there.”
“What if I wanted to take you there?” Frieda asked.
Sasha smiled. “I’ll go with you, if you want me to. That way, you’ll be sure you really get there, and you’ll know how to get there in the future. Would you like that?”
Frieda blushed and nodded down at the floor.
Sasha took her hand again. “Come on.”
They returned to the meadow, and when they got back to the same spot in the middle of it, Sasha let go of her hand. “Now set your mind to take you to your own house.”
Frieda looked around. “How am I supposed to do that when I don’t know where it is?”
“Your mind will make it where your mind says it is,” Sasha replied. “Now stop talking and think.”
Sasha laid her hands on Frieda’s shoulders and turned her around in a half-circle, so Frieda stood with her back to her. Frieda took a deep breath and wondered. She would never have found Sasha’s house if Sasha hadn’t led her to it. She could never find any other Aqinas house if their owners didn’t show her where they were. Where in this strange world was her own house?
She scanned the surroundings with her mind. It wasn’t toward the wall where all those people hung around. Nothing else differentiated the landscape but meadow and forest.
Sasha’s voice murmured in her ear from behind. “Now, start walking.”
Frieda didn’t know which way to walk, but her legs moved of their own accord. They swished through the grass, going nowhere. She shut her mind off from everything else, the same way she did when she followed Sasha to her house.
The sky darkened with shadow again, and she found herself at the edge of the woods, standing in front of a different house. This one wasn’t set in a clearing between the trees, though. It sat in the meadow’s waving grass with the trees behind it. Other plants decorated the doorstep, and more colored plants brightened the windows.
Sasha patted her on the shoulder. “I knew you could do it.”
Frieda stepped inside, but the whole scene appeared surreal and hazy to her. This couldn’t really be her own house. Inside, though, something changed in her mind. A deep sensation of rightness and comfort welled up inside her. She would have sat down in the chair at the table if Sasha hadn’t been standing there, but this was, really and truly, her own house. She could live here and never feel out of place.
Sasha moved toward the door. “You’ll be all right now. You can go out to the meadow again whenever you want to, and if you want to talk to me, all you have to do is think about me and I’ll come.”
Frieda whirled around. “Wait a minute. Not so fast.”
“What is it now?” Sasha asked.
“I still have some questions for you,” Frieda replied.
“Well, fire away,” Sasha told her.
Frieda shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t like the idea of bringing someone to me against their will. What if they don’t want to come when I call them?”
Sasha turned toward her with a sigh. “It doesn’t work that way. You’re not bringing anyone against their will. It only looks like they come to you because the water forms a seamless connection between your mind and your body and your spirit and theirs. The other person never leaves their own meadow. To them, it looks like you came to them.”
Frieda blinked. “It does? So you’re in your own meadow right now?”
Sasha laughed “Of course I am. Think about it. Do you know anything about bees on Earth?”
“Bees?” Frieda repeated. “You mean like honey bees?”
“Exactly,” Sasha replied. “In their hives, they communicate through the smell of their pheromones. Their chemical signature tells all the other bees in the hive exactly what they ate that day, where they’re going, what they’re doing, even how old they are and how healthy they are. The smell, the temperature, the chemical composition of the wax, even the vibration of their wings against the hive box communicates to every bee in the hive exactly what the rest of the hive is doing. It creates one homogeneous chemical solution.”
“Are you telling me the Aqinas are the same?” Frieda asked.
“They are the same,” Sasha replied, “except it’s the water that creates the homogeneous solution. The chemical action of your body, even the electrical signals in your nervous system, are transmitted through the water to every other Aqinas. That’s how they communicate with each other, through the water. We aren’t standing here in a house talking to each other. That wouldn’t be possible in the middle of the ocean. The water creates the illusion we’re doing that because our minds can relate to that frame of reference most easily.”
Frieda really did sink into her chair then. “It’s awfully complicated.”
“Don’t make it any more complicated for yourself than you have to,” Sasha replied. “We’re standing here talking to each other, and that’s as real as anything. I’m not an illusion. I’m a real person, and I’m showing you around your new home. That’s real.”
“What else is real?” Frieda asked. “How can you tell where real ends and fantasy begins?”
“It’s all real,” Sasha replied. “Even the parts you’re calling fantasy are real. You can have the same relationships with people that you had on land. You can make a home for yourself here the same way you did on land. All the parts of life that make it worth living are here. It’s only the window dressing that’s different, and it isn’t even different, either. It’s the same as your life on land. It’s just different than it would be if the water didn’t make it the same.”
Frieda closed her eyes again, and her voice croaked out in a hoarse whisper. “Stop.”
Sasha took her hand once more. “Let’s go back to the meadow. Everything makes a lot more sense there.”
Frieda got to her feet. “What do you eat?”
Sasha shot her a glance over her shoulder. “What?”
“What do you eat?” Frieda repeated. “Do you hunt shellfish or something?”
Sasha’s face brightened. “The algae that moves oxygen into our blood also moves microscopic nutrients into our bodies so we don’t have to eat. But you can eat some of this stuff if you want to, if it makes you feel better.”
She waved her hand toward the table. A wooden tray Frieda hadn’t noticed before sat on the table, and a dozen different objects covered it. Some looked like moss. Others looked something like crabs. Still others looked like bright purple apples. “What is this stuff?”
“It’s food,” Sasha replied. “It’s Aqinas food, but you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to. You’re not really hungry, are you?”
Frieda thought about it. “No, I’m not, now that you mention it.”
“You won’t get hungry, or thirsty, or tired, except maybe mentally tired,” Sasha told her. “The algae and the water take care of all our bodily needs so we can live in this world indefinitely. The only thing they can’t provide is the company of other people. We have to do that for ourselves, but this world works remarkably well for that.”
Sasha led her back to the meadow. Frieda turned a complete circle and took in the whole view in the light of her new understanding. “Now what?”
Sasha took a step backwards. “I’ll go now. You know everything you need to know, and if you need me for anything, you know how to find me.” She turned and started walking back toward the wall. “I’ll see you later.”