Christina
“So remember, you only have ten to fifteen minutes maximum to get out and get going, okay? There’s no time to be afraid or fly slowly. You have to push the accelerator if you want to get Athena to the border before we catch up to you,” Boulder said in a solemn tone.
“Okay.” I nodded with a serious expression.
“And Christina…” He placed both hands on my shoulders. “When we catch up to you, I’ll be in a furious mood. Don’t be scared, it’s for show.”
I understand.
“But if you wreck my hybrid and something happens to you, I’ll be furious for real, do you understand?”
“Yes. I’ll be careful.”
“Good. Be careful but fast.”
“Got it!”
“All right.” He drew in a sigh and we flew the last stretch in silence. Boulder was back behind the panel to avoid anyone’s knowing what we’d been doing.
He parked the drone with the nose to the road, making it easier for me to get away fast.
“Let’s do it,” he said and shot me a serious glance.
We walked in together and up the staircase to our room. Making sure no one was close we took a turn and headed toward Finn’s room, and quietly knocked on the door.
Finn opened it and took a look at both of us. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey, Finn,” Boulder leaned a hand against the doorframe. “Christina wanted to visit Athena; maybe we could give them a minute to talk. I brought you a beer.”
Finn looked at the beer and smiled. “I can’t say no to that, but I’m afraid Athena is gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean she’s gone?”
“Magni took her back to the Momsies.”
Yes! It was like sunbeams and rainbows were dancing around his head. “That’s wonderful,” I exclaimed. “I’m so happy for her.”
“Yeah, Khan took an offer from the council,” Finn said.
“What offer?” I asked eagerly.
“They haven’t found Laura, but one of your council members took Athena’s place.”
“What?” My joy evaporated. “Who?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see her. She’s in Khan’s office.”
I turned around and ran down the corridor with Boulder at my heels. My feet wouldn’t move fast enough down the stairs, and he caught up to me. “Stop, Christina.”
“No, this changes nothing. I won’t allow an innocent woman to be held hostage,” I hissed, low.
“Think for a moment. You can’t barge into Khan’s office without a plan.”
I was too upset to think rationally and stormed ahead, Boulder cursing loudly behind me. I didn’t knock on the door or wait for permission to enter, I just walked right in to find the least likely scenario.
Councilwoman Pearl and Khan both looked up at me to see who the intruder was. They were sitting quietly opposite each other with a chessboard between them.
“Councilwoman Pearl,” I cried out. “What are you doing here?”
Khan gave me an annoyed glance but Pearl stood up and moved to take my hands. “May peace surround you,” she said and looked into my eyes.
“May peace surround you too,” I replied and poured all my worry for her into that look.
“What happened?” Boulder asked from the door.
Khan waved him closer. “Pearl here offered herself in exchange for Athena.
“Would you mind if I talked to Pearl alone?” I asked Khan.
“I suppose you could do that, but not until our game is over. It shouldn’t take too long. Chess is a man’s game, after all.”
I caught the minuscule smile on Pearl’s face and felt easier at heart when she met me with a calm and relaxed expression. “Lord Khan is right, it won’t take long. Maybe you could show me the park after we’re done here; it’s a beautiful day.”
Boulder and Khan exchanged glances.
“We’ll see about that,” Khan said.
“Tell you what.” Pearl smiled softly. “If I win, you’ll allow me a walk in the park with Christina.”
He was amused. “I like your optimism, but you won’t win.”
“Then it should be an easy promise for you to make,” Pearl said sweetly.
Boulder and I pulled back but didn’t leave the room as the two rulers returned to their seats and quietly resumed their game.
I never played chess, so all I could do was count the number of pieces that stood on each side of the board. She had seven of his pieces and he had nine of hers.
Khan was quick to make his moves while Pearl took a little longer. When she took his queen, he squirmed in his seat but didn’t say anything.
The game went on for five minutes until he proudly said. “Check.”
“That was a nice move,” Pearl acknowledged in a friendly tone.
“I know.” He looked over to us and smiled with satisfaction. “Told you it wouldn’t take long,” he said.
“Checkmate.” The word came soft and unhurried but made Khan swing his head back to the board and frown.
“What?” he spat out.
Calmly Pearl pointed to her move and he grew visibly paler.
“Beginner’s luck, I suppose,” Pearl said. “I’m sure you were just distracted.”
Khan pushed his chair back and stood up with his lips in thin lines. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
Pearl turned toward me. “Should we take a cup of tea in the park?”
“Tea sounds lovely.” I smiled and bit back a chuckle.
Taking my arm Pearl glided gracefully out of the room and spoke over her shoulder. “May we ask for some tea and a bit of privacy?”
Khan pointed to Boulder. “You follow them and make sure they don’t do something stupid.”
With a nod, Boulder followed us – offering us enough distance to have a private conversation.
“It’s so nice to see you again, Christina,” Pearl said and squeezed my arm. I couldn’t understand how she could look almost delighted in this grim hostage situation.
“I want to say the same, but given the circumstances, I’m not sure,” I admitted.
Pearl’s brows dropped. “We couldn’t let one of our priestesses be here against her will.”
“But surely you could have imposed harder sanctions and used your political powers, couldn’t you?”
“Yes” was her short answer. “We might still do that.”
With eyes scanning the area, I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I was going to help Athena escape today, and I can help you.”
Pearl stopped and seemed to be thinking.
“We’ll take Boulder’s drone and fly to the border before they find out. I’ve planned it all out and learned how to fly his hybrid manually.”
“I’m impressed,” Pearl said softly. “But there’s no need.”
“No need?” I asked incredulously.
“I chose to come, and I stand by my word that I’ll take Athena’s place. Khan won’t harm me, I’m sure of it.”
“You don’t know him,” I warned. “He might be cordial and even charming at times but he’s ruthless and barbaric. He’ll watch men kill each other and find it entertaining. The man has no heart.”
“No heart?”
“No. You can’t trust him.”
“And Boulder, do you trust him?” She gave a discreet glance in his direction.
My answer came quickly and surprised us both. “Yes. I trust him.”
Pearl furrowed her brows. “Why?”
“He protects me and he…” I couldn’t say it.
“He what?”
“He likes me,” I forced out.
“Christina, what is your relationship with that man?”
I chewed on my lower lip, unsure how to tell her. “Maybe we should sit down first,” I suggested.
The weather was nice, and warm enough that we didn’t mind the breeze. We found a place to sit and thanked the man who brought us tea.
“It needs to sit for a few minutes,” he said with a smile and walked away. Boulder leaned against the mansion wall and lifted his face to the sun. He was too far away to hear our conversation but close enough to keep an eye on us.
“In order for me to do my work and be safe, I was informed that I needed a bodyguard when I first arrived,” I started. “They never realized that I was a woman until I actually arrived, and at first they wanted to send me back.”
Pearl listened attentively.
“I didn’t fully comprehend what they meant by a bodyguard until I had to choose my champion. You see, Khan arranged a tournament where the men fought each other to show their bravery and strength to me.”
Her eyes narrowed but she didn’t interrupt me.
“Some men died and I was horrified, but in the end, I was left with four men to choose from. Boulder was out because he broke his arm so I chose a younger man, who looked like a suitable bodyguard, but then he started referring to me as his wife, and I realized they had tricked me.”
“Go on,” Pearl said, lost in my story.
“They were all strangers, except Boulder, whom I had spent three days with.” I looked down. “I told Khan I would never marry in my life and he said I was free to leave, but that he doubted I would make it to the border without protection.”
“He didn’t,” she breathed.
I nodded. “He did, and so I hid behind Boulder, who only knew one way to protect me.”
“How?”
“He married me and made me untouchable to anyone but him.”
Pearl gasped. “You’re married to that man.”
I closed my eyes, realizing how horrible it must sound to her. “Yes,” I confirmed.
It took her a moment to regain her composure but when she did she asked, “And how is he treating you?”
“He’s…” I thought about it. “Different, but nice.”
“Different how?”
“Well, for one, he curses a lot and he has bad manners. He eats meat and he… well, look at him. He’s not very concerned about his appearance, is he?”
“I don’t know. They all look kind of scrubby to me,” Pearl mused. “Maybe that’s how they like to look.”
“I’ve seen a few without beards and some with braids but most of them look savage,” I said and waved a fly from my face.
“I agree.” Pearl frowned. “I was picked up on the border by a man that scared me a lot. His name was Magni and he introduced himself as Khan’s younger brother.”
“Magni is Laura’s husband. The woman who ran away,” I explained.
“Ah, yes, I understood that much.”
“Have you found her?” I asked worriedly.
Pearl’s eyes looked back to Boulder and in an almost-whisper she said: “Of course.”
“How?”
“Did you think we don’t keep an eye on the border? Laura walked right up to the checkpoint and was handed over to the right people. We’re trying to help her acclimatize to her new surroundings but she’s fine.”
“But if you know where she is, why are you here?”
Pearl blinked at me. “My dear, we couldn’t in good conscience return her to a place where none of us want to live, could we?”
“But then why not simply tell Khan that Laura doesn’t want to be returned?”
“Because that would set his brother off, and Magni seems volatile enough as it is. Besides, this has given us a great opportunity.” Pearl lifted her hands to brush back her blonde hair and rolled it into a loose bun.
I scrunched up my face. “To do what? Beat Khan at chess?”
She chuckled. “Did you see his face? I have to say I rather enjoyed winning.”
“I saw.”
While I was speaking to Pearl, I noticed her piling the sugar cubes on top of each other in the large sugar bowl.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“You asked what opportunity I was referring to so I wanted to explain it to you.”
“Okay.”
“In the beginning of the twenty-second century there was a woman named Martha Beck, who came up with a theory which you might have heard of.”
The name Martha Beck rang a bell, but I couldn’t remember the name of the theory.
“The pyramid represents the kind of power structure that ruled the world for thousands of years and still rule here in the Northlands. The people on top,” she said and pointed to the highest sugar cube, “are the ones with the highest ability to force, harm, dominate, kill, amass wealth, and hold power over others.”
“Lord Khan,” I said and stared at the pyramid as Pearl continued explaining.
“Martha was one of many to point out that rebellions will never work as they only serve to create a new pyramid of power.”
“Okay, so what are you saying?”
“My colleagues in the council and I would love nothing more than to include the Nmen in our society. It’s silly that we can’t all live together and that we have millions of men living isolated up here.”
My eyebrows arched upward. “But we have rules that men can’t be in power, and I don’t think you understand how different they are from us. They practically break all our laws on a daily basis.”
Pearl smiled. “I know. It’s understandable with centuries of separation that we will be very different culturally.”
“So what do you plan to do? Take out Khan and force the men to be part of the Motherlands?”
“Oh, Mother of Nature, no!” she exclaimed. “We are pacifists and peacekeepers. Violence and oppression is not our style.”
“Then what?” I asked confused.
Pearl picked up the teapot and poured a cup for me and her. “Our society is the opposite of a pyramid. We have a flat structure where everyone has value and no one is above others.” She pointed to my cup of tea. “Our society is flat like a pool of water. No one is above or below others, and our system works because we are like concentric circles of waves that energetically connect and overlap.” She held up the teapot and let drops from the spout form rings in the surface of the tea to illustrate what she had just said.
“I know this,” I said. “But the men aren’t interested in that sort of life. They compare it to communism and think we’re being treated like children with all our protective rules. I guarantee that they won’t give up their hierarchy easily. They look down on us, Pearl. I know they do.”
She smiled. “So let’s say that they see us as inferior, as nothing; we’ll start from the lowest point.” She held the pot of tea over the sugar cubes that she had formed into a pyramid. “Do you know what happens when a pool of water forms around a pyramid like this?”
“No.”
“Then observe.” She said and poured the tea around it. “All we need is a group of people to become enlightened and from the bottom up dissolve the power structure.”
I watched the sugar cubes soak up the brown tea and melt.
“It’s the people on the bottom who are more likely to give up their old way of living first, because they have less to lose. The pool of enlightened people won’t destroy the pyramid,” she said and tilted her head while looking at the pyramid of sugar cubes tilting down as the sugar melted. “We just absorb the people around us because we’re made of inclusion and love. We’re not planning a revolution, more like a dissolution, an inclusion.”
I sat quietly and stared at the dissolved pile of sugar where only a few cubes were still melting away.
“The ones on the top,” Pearl said quietly, “are usually the last ones to know what is happening.”
“But how?” I asked in a low voice. “How do you plan to do this?”
“With patience and time. My being here and your being here represents a great opportunity to shine a beam of enlightenment, wouldn’t you say?”
“But then why did you come instead of Athena? If anyone is enlightened it should be a priestess.”
“True.” She tapped her lower lip. “But Athena didn’t choose to come and we worried about her.”
“Have you met her?” I asked.
“Only when I crossed her by the border.”
“She’s a strong woman and very wise,” I said.
“I’m glad to hear it; maybe she has planted a few seeds in the time she was here.”
“Maybe.” I paused. “But how will you get access to the people on the bottom as you talked about? Seems to me you’re dealing with the highest point of the pyramid.”
“For now. But I’m sure Lord Khan will get tired of playing my host and hand me over to some guards that I can influence.”
“No. He’ll find a protector for you. Probably one of his powerful friends.” I sighed with frustration. “Let’s just hope you get a nice protector and that Khan won’t pester you too much.”
She smiled. “Remember what I said. Powerful people tend to underestimate you if they see you as inferior.”
“If you planned to make him believe you were inferior, you shouldn’t have beaten him in chess, Khan would be a fool to underestimate you now.”
“He would,” Pearl said with a soft smile. “But he’s a man blinded by greed and pride, and I can work with that.”
“So you don’t want me to free you?”
“No, I don’t,” Pearl answered firmly. “I have important work here.”
I sighed and raised the teacup to my mouth. “Well, in that case, welcome to the Northlands. I’m glad to have you join me here.”
Pearl raised her own cup and we respectfully looked into each other’s eyes when we drank.
“Thank you, Christina. And now, tell me about your project.”