He sighed inwardly.
Maybe his grandfather was right. Maybe today was as good a day as any to meditate on all there was, to be alone and in tune with one’s own thoughts and no one else’s for a change.
There was nothing else to be done.
With a sinking feeling in his chest from watching Ardim with Alyssa, Jaden forced himself to turn around, and then walk slowly home.
Chapter Five
When the end comes, to whom will they call?
January 14, 997 R.E.
Jaden was restless. He needed answers, but there was no way of getting them, not while his grandfather was taking time to recover. As a distraction from the waiting, he had tried to speak with Alyssa many times, but had so far been unsuccessful. Ardim was continuing his usual prevention methods of starting fights with Jaden at every meeting, while her father did his best to keep her occupied, preventing any possible time with the boys in the village. Jaden's friends offered a minor deterrent from the boredom, but they all seemed to be busy with their families too. It had all become so frustrating that Jaden found sleep almost unbearable. He wanted to take action, to learn more about the sharp movements in the ground, but he knew he couldn’t. He was left in solitude, away from the only one that seemed to understand what he was feeling, away from the guiding wisdom of his grandfather, and away from the friends who, while not understanding, would make light of the situation and make him laugh. It seemed his only companion was the dark-haired boy, the one that came in the haunting dream, making the little sleep he had uneasy.
He had been losing sleep nightly, most of his hours spent in thought. It felt as though he had been awake all his life; no longer able to remember a night in which his sleep was undisturbed, the memories strangely erased from a past he was no longer sure he had.
Things were changing all around him. There were only slight differences at first, then greater as time went on. It seemed each time he woke, he had become someone else. He would feel as if he were decades older, wise and experienced, able to converse with the elders as if they were children, only to feel like a newborn the next day, brought into an alien world of uncertainty. His health was fluctuating just as rapidly, various illnesses coming and going in no particular fashion. One morning he had sat up in bed coughing badly, all of his limbs aching so much that he wasn’t able to move any further. Yet minutes later he emerged feeling in perfect health. This morning he had woken feeling drowsy to the point he had to go back to sleep. His mother, Sayva, woke him in the afternoon so that he could have some soup she had made for him, but as he got up, the drowsiness had gone and he felt full of energy. He wanted to tell her that he was not hungry, but didn’t like to refuse when he knew his mother had worked hard to help him.
He ate in silence at the dark wooden table, ignorant to all else as he tried to analyse everything that had happened. By the time he had finished, he had decided that to find the answers he needed he had to return to the waterfall, where he had first felt the strange motions that seemed to fuel the dreams. Thanking his mother, he left the house and made his way to the elevated flat piece of land that had been lost in the game of tennagen. He was not sure if they would stop him from going there in the future, perhaps when they wanted to build there, but for now he could still claim it as his own.
As he sat on the edge, he crossed his legs and took a shoot of grass with which he could fidget, then closed his eyes and searched all around him. After several intense minutes of concentration with no reward, he turned his attention to the air, where only a soft breeze existed. It calmed his breath as it gently drifted about him, while the wind that it came from pushed bands of cloud in front of the sun, leaving him in a cooled shadow.
The change in light didn’t deter him. Whatever it was must have been here, somewhere. He could feel that it hadn’t left him, but he was unable to call for its presence to surface. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to have it come to him. The curiosity could easily have led to his death. But there was a void in him now; a longing that needed something to fill it, a feeling, a piece of knowledge, something that would reveal to him what had happened.
I can't let this go, he repeated to himself. He had to find it, no matter what the consequence.
‘Those who search beyond here know greatness can be found out there,’ came a husky yet warm voice. ‘But where will one search first, when out there is beyond all they know?’
Jaden kept his eyes closed. He recognised the voice. It was Vennoss, finally returning to him.
‘One can dream,’ he replied, still in his meditative position.
‘Yes, it is thought dreams are limitless, but how can one know of what they can dream if they have not seen?’