Chapter Nine

“Are you thinking about them?”

Angela looked over her shoulder, slightly startled by the sound of Jem’s voice. He walked up behind her and leaned down to wrap a blanket around her shoulders. She hadn’t realized that she was cold, but now the weight and warmth of the blanket around her felt wonderful. She grasped either side of it and pulled it closer around her as Jem settled into place beside her.

“Thinking about who?” she asked.

Jem looked up at the sky toward the meager scattering of stars that she had been looking at. They were sharing the building that they had chosen to be their home while they were in the compound with two other warriors and when she found the small hatch that allowed her up onto the roof, she had felt like she had been given a small space of peace where she could be away from the noise and the chaos of the rest of the compound and all of those on it. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be there or that she was regretting the decision that she had made, but she had become accustomed to the quiet of the planet that she shared with Jem and having so many people around her at all times had become overwhelming. Being able to sit on the roof, guarded from view by walls that rose several feet around all of the edges, gave her time to feel as though she could finally breathe.

“When you stare up at the stars like that, I always feel like you are thinking about the other people on the excavation team who went through the portal with you.”

Angela let out a breath and turned her eyes back toward the stars. She was still getting used to having someone know her as well as Jem did, but there were moments like these where it was at once unfamiliar and incredibly reassuring. It made her feel more secure to know that he was there and that he seemed to be able to see what was within her, even if he didn’t completely understand it. She nodded.

“Where are they?” she asked. “What could have happened to them? I know now that the portal sent us to different places, that we actually went through more than one portal, but where did they end up? I wish that I knew where they went and what they found when they got there.”

“Is Jacob the only one that you saw again after the portal?” he asked.

“No,” Angela said. “When Jacob and I were exploring the frozen stream that we ended up in, we found one of the others. He was already dead. One night I thought that I saw someone else running across the open field in front of our shelter, but when we chased them, we didn’t find anyone. Jacob thought that I was just hallucinating because I was so cold, and we hadn’t eaten in a few days.”

“I hate that you went through that,” Jem said.

She heard the tension in his voice that was always there when they talked about the time that she and Jacob spent struggling to survive. He never resisted her talking about it or tried to get her to stop, but she knew that it hurt him to know everything that she had to suffer in the early times before they got used to being in the frozen, snowy world and learned to live.

“I know you do,” she said, turning to rest her chin on her shoulder so that she could look at him. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He leaned forward and kissed her softly.

“Sometimes I feel guilty for how easily I got through that,” Angela admitted.

“What do you mean?” Jem asked. “You didn’t get through those five years easily.”

“But I got through them,” she said. “I survived. I’m here. There are others who were standing there with me in that cavern who didn’t. They never made it through those years. Even if there are some who did, they still haven’t made it back to Earth. We have no idea where they are or what they might be dealing with right now. They could be suffering unimaginably and there’s nothing that I can do to help them.”

“You can’t think about it that way,” Jem told her. “You can’t let yourself think about what they might be going through. Like you said, there is nothing that you can do for them. Besides, the planet that we shared was at the end of one of those portals. They might have found somewhere wonderful and are enjoying a new life now. Just think of that.”

Angela smiled and nodded.

“I’d like to think that they are as happy as I am.”

“Are you happy?” Jem asked.

“Of course, I am,” she said. “I’m here with you. That makes me happier than anything else.”

“But with all of this going on,” he said, gesturing around them. “How are you dealing with it? I know this isn’t what you expected when you said that you were going to come with me to help my kind back on Uoria.”

“I didn’t really know what to expect,” Angela said. “All I cared about was getting you back to the Denynso and making sure that you could do for them what you know that you should.”

“But now that we’re here, are you sure that you made the right decision?”

“Any decision that ensured that I could be with you is the right decision. I’ll admit, though, that this has been strange and overwhelming. After five years with only Jacob, this is so much more than I have been living with and some of it has been hard. At the same time, though, this is exactly the type of thing that I would have signed up for if I had had the opportunity before I went through the portal.”

“It is?”

“Absolutely. If I had known that there was something like this happening and that I could be a part of it before I signed up to go on the research trip, I would have wanted to be a part of it. Unraveling something like this and being able to do my part to defend Earth and the rest of the Universe would have been exactly what I would have wanted to do if I had had the opportunity.”

“Why did you decide to be a part of the research project?” Jem asked.

“It was something to do,” Angela said. “I know that’s an awful response and it makes me sound useless, but it’s the truth. I wanted to do more. I wanted to do something impactful. But I wasn’t in the University, so I couldn’t be a part of any of the departments that handled any intergalactic projects or even excavations on other planets. Working in the research halls and attempting to recreate sites had become so incredibly tedious. I needed to do something else. I needed to feel like I was actually doing something that mattered. The HM-1313 wall was a major discovery and it raised so many questions about our understanding of the ancient civilizations. I knew that there was more to it than our existing understanding and I thought that if I was a part of the excavation, maybe I could uncover something.”

“Well, you certainly achieved that.”

Angela chuckled.

“That is definitely true. That portal was something that I never would have expected, but I suppose it was exactly what I was looking for. I made an impact. I just didn’t know how at the time.”

“How did you survive?” Jem asked. “You had so little with you.”

“I barely know myself,” Angela said. “It was necessary. We survived because we had to. It was so hard at first. There were plenty of moments that I didn’t think that we were going to make it. I didn’t know how we were going to find the shelter that we needed or how we were going to eat. As much as I had wanted to get away from the tedium of my life, I wanted nothing more than to get back to it. I couldn’t imagine carrying on in a world like that, especially with only Jacob to see me through. But then we did. We kept going. We learned new skills and we discovered strength inside of ourselves that we didn’t know we had. We kept going for the same reason that I can now tell you that we survived. Because we had to. It got easier over time. Then I met Galadriel and Vyker.”

“I didn’t get much of a chance to interact with them,” Jem said. “What little time we were together we were too focused on what we were trying to do to really get to know each other. What were they like?”

“I didn’t know them well,” Angela said. “They were intense. I remember that. Driven. It was obvious how much they loved each other, but they were so focused on finding the stones that Vyker needed. They helped us out of the frozen stream and brought us back to Vyker’s stream.”

“It seems strange to talk about them like that,” Jem said.

“Like what?” Angela asked.

“In the past tense. Like they don’t exist anymore.”

“In this time, in this stream, they don’t, Jem. I know that it’s hard to think about, but in this reality, they have been dead for many years. I’ve come to terms with that, but…” her voice trailed off and she felt unsure of whether she wanted to continue the thought.

“But what?” Jem asked. “Tell me.”

She sighed and looked up at the stars again, remembering what Galadriel and Vyker had told her about the origins of the stars and the lives that they represented. Here on Penthos there were so few stars, the pinpricks in the sky even seeming paler and less sparkling than they did on Earth or on the planet that she and Jem had shared. It was a stark reminder, a painful underscore of what she knew about Galadriel and Vyker, and what she had begun to think of herself.

“What does that mean for me when I was in the frozen realm? I don’t know when or where that realm was. It could have been far into the future or even further in the past than Vyker’s stream. So, when I was there, for those five years that I lived in the snow and the ice – was I dead, or I had not even been born?”

It was a painful thought that she hadn’t put voice to until that moment and Angela didn’t know how Jem was going to respond. She looked up at him and saw him gazing at her with his intense orange eyes, the shade so vibrant and unusual, and yet so familiar to her now. Finally, he spoke.

“When I first arrived on the other planet, I had no idea where I was. I didn’t know what had happened or what I was supposed to do. Growing up in the Denynso compound, I was always with the rest of my kind. We ate together every day. We trained together from the time that we were young children. We spent nearly all of our time together. The concept of being along for any length of time was something completely foreign to me. Then suddenly found myself totally and utterly alone. There was no one else on the planet as far as I knew, and the longer that I searched, the emptier and alone the planet felt. It didn’t take long for me to realize that not only was I far away from Uoria, but that the clan was going to think that I had died. They had no way of knowing that I had just somehow been transported to another planet and that I was fine but didn’t have a way to get back to them. I knew that in their minds and in their hearts, I had died in that battle. Then that was how I began to feel. If they thought that I was dead and in their hearts believed that I was, then for all intents and purposes, I was dead. I no longer had the life that I had been living or the life that I thought that I would live into the future. So, what did I have?”

“But you were still alive,” Angela protested. “You had simply found another, amazing planet and were doing just fine on your own. By the time that I got there, you had already established so much of a life there. It was almost as though you had been there all along.”

“Yet everyone on Uoria still thought that I was dead. The point is that you don’t have to rely on the perceptions and beliefs of others. All that matters is what you are experiencing. When you were in that frozen stream, you existed. You were alive. It doesn’t matter what time or place it was, because you were nowhere but there. People here might not have known where you were or what happened to you, and the other members of the team that disappeared at the same time might have even thought that you were dead, but that doesn’t matter. That doesn’t make any impact on what really happened or your existence. I can promise you, though. You will never have to question anything about yourself or your existence ever again. You are here with me now and as long as we are together, there is nothing that can ever make us question ourselves.”

“What are we going to do when this is all over?” Angela asked.

“What do you mean?” Jem asked.

“We never talked about what we were going to do when we found your kind on Uoria. When all of this is over. When the war is over and Ryan has been taken out of power, what are we going to do?”

“What do you want to do?”

“At first, when we were on the jungle planet together, I thought that that was it. I had resigned myself to the reality that I wasn’t going to go back to Earth and that we were going to live out of lives together there. Even before you and I got together, I was contented to be there and to discover a new life. But now that we’ve been able to move so easily between the streams, I’m more conflicted.”

“Why?”

“There’s so much possibility out here, Jem. There’s so much that I’ve never seen or done, so much that I could never have even imagined. I love what we were creating there on our planet together, but I don’t know anymore if that is enough to keep me fulfilled.” She looked at him with worry, concerned that he might misunderstand what she was saying. “Please don’t think that I mean that I don’t want to be with you or that I no longer like the home that we built together there.”

“No,” Jem said. “It’s alright. I understand. It’s the same way that I feel about the Denynso compound on Uoria.”

“It is?”

Jem nodded.

“The warriors never left the compound. At least not in my lifetime. We were expected to stay there and to live our lives in battle, protecting the compound and the rest of Uoria. That was something that I never questioned or thought strange. Then I was transported to our planet and saw that there was so much more to the Universe than just the compound. That doesn’t mean that I don’t love the compound where I grew up or being with my kind, but it does mean that I can’t imagine going through the rest of my life staying within the confines of that stone wall. I need to do more, to see more, to feel as though I’m making more of a difference than I could just being there. I can’t expect any less of you.” Angela saw his eyes scan her face more closely. “Do you want to return to Earth when all of this is done? Go back to your life there and try to put it back together?”

Angela sighed and shook her head.

“I have no idea,” she said. “I can’t even imagine what it would be like to go back there and try to live that life again. What would I do when I got there? The company told my family and everyone who knew me some story about where I went. What would I tell them? Would I go along with what the company said and try to keep that going, or would I tell them the truth about what happened and where I’ve been? Is there any way that I could even explain it? How do you go about telling someone that they’ve been lied to for five years and that what really happened to you is far more difficult to understand than anything that they could ever imagine? I don’t even know if that’s what I would want. I’ve gotten used to being away from Earth and everything and everyone that I’ve ever known. Would I even go see my family? If I did, would they accept me and my explanation? Would I even want them to?”

“I can’t answer those questions for you,” Jem said. “I don’t know what would be right. I wasn’t gone from Uoria as long as you were gone from Earth, but I know that it was difficult for me to think about facing the clan and trying to explain what happened to me. I knew that they thought that I was dead and that they had gone through the mourning process for me. Encountering them again and trying to explain seemed impossible, but it was something that I had to do. You have a very different situation, though, and I don’t know what’s right for you.”

A painful thought went through Angela’s mind and she felt her body draw closer to his.

“If I did want to go back to Earth,” she started cautiously, “would you consider going with me?”

“Of course, I would,” Jem said without hesitation. “I would go anywhere with you. There is nothing that would keep me from wanting to be with you and from doing anything that I could to be with you.”

“I guess there isn’t really any point in me thinking about it now,” Angela said. “We’re stuck here and there’s nothing that we can do about it until this is all over.”

Jem wrapped his arm around her shoulders and drew her up against him so that he could hold her. She felt him kiss the side of her head and rest his forehead against her.

“We’ll make it through this,” he said reassuringly. “For now, let’s just focus on what is in front of us right now and then when the time comes, we can decide what to do from there.”