Zoe Thanatos (28 page)

It was the second prisoner’s face
that caught him by surprise, a face so familiar and unexpected that Evan had to
fight the sudden urge to audibly gasp. It was the King, hands bound behind him
and surrounded by Crown Soldiers. 

Zoe and Eva walked the distance in
silence, each of them taking in the view like thirst to water. The thicket of
trees had thinned significantly as they walked - at least two miles in Zoe’s
estimation. The rich forest was intensely colored around them, every shade of
green imaginable blooming from every trunk, leaf and stem. The trees, once so
tightly packed together that their tops formed a thick canopy, had grown
thinner and farther apart, allowing light to stream down in sharp rays. A small
meadow of grass started beneath their feet, stretching out towards the horizon
of light until the ground was a blanket of emerald-colored blades.

Silence lingered between them. Zoe
often looked to Eva for any hint of conversation but often found her staring,
absorbing the greenery around them. Her hand was still softly coiled with
Eva’s, though she imagined it was more for Eva’s benefit than her own.
Irrespective of who had been on Terra longer it was obvious that Eva never once
stepped foot in any part of Terra that wasn’t a fabrication or a desolate
wasteland. For her the forest must have been like exploring another world
rather than her own home.

The light they’d followed formed
into an oddly-shaped ball, a sun of fire bringing the land to life. She
remembered the absence of any sun on the transport ride to Last City, wondering
what was so different about the two sides of what seemed to be a small planet.
It was the proverbial greener grass on the other side and Zoe wondered why
anyone would willingly live in the grey drabness when the
other
side was
so rich with color and life.

“Why do you think you all don’t
live here?” Zoe asked, breaking the silence. “I mean, if I had my choice
between the two Terras I know which one I’d pick,” she claimed.

“Honestly, I’m asking myself that
very question right now,” Eva answered.

“If this is where the souls of dead
people go to live then sign me up.”

Eva looked at her strangely. “To
what, die?”

Zoe let out a laugh so quiet she
was sure only she could hear. “Yes, well it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She sighed a little and thought of
Evan. “Your brother didn’t tell you?”

“No? He never really told me much
about you to begin with. He’s like that.”

“He probably didn’t know how to
start a conversation about preventing a stranger’s suicide.” The audible gasp
from Eva did not surprise her one bit. “I took a running leap off a cliff
towards the Pacific Ocean and Evan caught me.”

“He
caught you
?” she asked.

“Jumped right after me and brought
me to the beach shore three miles away.” She felt Eva’s hand tighten in her
own, their interlocking fingers like a vice.

“Why’d you do it?”

“I was empty inside, Eva. My life
felt like, well like the other side of Terra: devoid of anything meaningful,
drab and ugly. I had a completely different life before Evan caught me and I
wanted it to end.”

“I don’t understand,” Eva shrugged.
“You must have been in Gaia for hundreds of years. How do you not remember any
of that? You must have known somehow that there something different about your
life?”

“As far as I know I’m 25 years old
and have lived my entire life in Santa Barbara, but obviously there is a lot
more to it than that. As far as I’m concerned, I may as well have died the day
I met Evan and every day since has been some version of an afterlife.”

Eva clicked her tongue and took a
sweeping look around at their surroundings. “If there is such a thing I hope
it’s as beautiful as this.”

Zoe was taken aback. “You don’t
believe there is an afterlife?”

Eva paused, seemingly to choose her
words carefully. “I think that’s an attitude shared by people who don’t know
much about the universe.”

“Ah.” As far as everyone back home
on Earth was concerned the existence of other universes, let alone an alternate
one, was based strictly in theory and suggestion. Compared to everything she
witnessed so far in Terra, her own people were eons behind when it came to space
exploration.

Oh, right.
Those weren’t
really
her
people.

“What is that?” Eva asked, her arm
extended out to point at what appeared to be a very wide staircase built into
and from the ground, leading like a spindly, moss-covered pathway up and out
further than either of them could see. Crops of bushes thick with small green
leaves and little white flowers lined the stair pathway on both sides.

Zoe unrolled the map concealed in
her hand and watched as the ink changed before her eyes. The crown and laurel
stood at the edge of a double helix drawn in bright green ink, the forest
dissipating around them into blank paper. She understood they were meant to
climb the stairs and follow them wherever they may lead, but what was beyond
them? How much farther did they need to walk before finally arriving at their
destination?

Without preamble they began the
ascent up the stairway, their boots sinking into the land as they climbed. The
light dimmed into an ambient glow that lilted above the greenery so that
everything was drenched in twilight, the leaves just touched with light. The
moments passed as they climbed higher, the light never changing as they moved.

“I wasn’t exactly prepared for all
this exercise,” Zoe chuckled. Despite the levity her calves had begun to cramp,
the hamstrings in her legs over-stretching enough to make the movements
uncomfortable.

“I think it’s almost done. Look,”
Eva pointed to the map. Indeed, the crown and laurel moved along the length of
the double helix, the end of which was met with what appeared to be a coil
curled around into a large empty space.

Zoe released a breath of air as she
saw the last few steps and climbed them eagerly. The earthy land ended with a
cobblestone path that spread out before them. Light ascended into brightness
again, lifting the dark of their surroundings to reveal an aisle with two-story
white walls on either side of them with half archways arcading around on both
levels. Tall trees with the thinnest of trunks grew like solid wood vines up
the sides of the walls until their branches and leaves fell like a canopy at
the top, forming a green ceiling. Within the canopy a smattering of lights came
to life, illuminating beneath the foliage like stars in a sky.

There were no doors in the walls
that Zoe could see, and the archways merely engaged into the building itself to
create a facade of ledges.

“I’ve never seen anything like this
before,” Eva whispered. She looked to Zoe with wide and astonished eyes. “It’s
almost primitive looking.”

“I was about to say it looks more
like Earth,” Zoe interjected. She felt there was something oddly familiar about
the place. If she didn’t know any better she might think she was walking down
an old alleyway somewhere in Europe, lost in the charm and history of a city
built long ago.

She consulted the map again. The
double helix representing the staircase was replaced with the coiling aisle
they stood in, a series of geometric shapes sitting in the center.

They continued through the aisle,
the echo of their footsteps bouncing gently off the walls and back at their
ears. There was no other sign of life around them but Zoe had the sense that it
was the place itself that was alive and responding to their presence. She had
the distinct feeling that their destination was close by, and that they were
expected.

Eva must have had the same feeling.
She adjusted the strap of the bag on her shoulder and fidgeted with her
clothing, pulling her top down farther, her pants up higher, and smoothing the
tendrils of hair around her face that had fallen loose along the way. Both
slowed their pace as they walked the wounding pathway, each concentric arc
identical to the one that preceded it. Whether it was abandoned or merely
forgotten in time, the architecture of the building was unspoiled by the elements.
Any blemishes, cracks or scrapes, appeared largely purposeful, like a pair of
brand new jeans that already had holes and fade marks. It was an eerie silence
away from being a total ghost town.

As they rounded yet another corner
the walls tapered off into a vast rotunda the size of a football field. Smaller
buildings scattered about in the middle, each of them crawling with vines and
plumes of large lavender flowers that climbed to the terra cotta hipped roofs.
Each building was a different height and width, most of them resembling small
versions of homes.

High above the rotunda a convex
glass ceiling was a window to the universe above, the deep amethyst and blue
colored sky dappled with tiny pinpoints of bright light. Beneath them the
cobblestone ground receded and returned to a meadow, soft blades of grass
spread out over the field that fed green into the crawling vines. Nothing apart
from the walls lacked the deep hue of a fantastic jewel-tone color, everything
deeply saturated like a fantasy landscape.

Neither of them moved from where
they entered. Zoe dared not move and risk spoiling the perfectly kept and
untouched environment. She looked to the map again and noticed the crown burned
its shape into the paper; the lightly singed edges a golden hue while the
laurel continued to pulsate like a heartbeat.

“I think this is it,” she
announced, handing the map to Eva for confirmation.

Eva took only a moment to look at
the map before rolling it back up and unzipping the bag to place it back
inside. “Now what?”

Before Zoe could answer a door from
one of the center buildings opened and a figure emerged. It was a man, roughly
the same age as Zoe and who seemed to share her brown eyes and dark hair. He
was tall and fit with a distinct posture as he walked. Though he seemed
relatively harmless, Zoe still found herself reaching for Eva’s now familiar
hand and squeezing it tightly.

The closer he approached the more
Zoe realized there was something
off
about his appearance, like a
photograph that was taken slightly out of focus. He seemed to almost be fading
out as though he weren’t a real person at all, but a hologram. The closer he
approached the more in focus his image became.

“Hello?” Zoe called out. She did
not want wait for him to close the distance between them before finding out whom
or what he was. The stranger stopped before them and moved his gaze from Eva to
Zoe, smiling as though he recognized them both.

“I have been waiting to look upon
your face again, Zoe Thanatos. You have been absent from Terra for a long time,
but you still have grown into the woman your mother and I always imagined you
would,” he pronounced. His voice was thick and mellow, the sound as comforting
as rain. His face settled into a proud smile, his eyes crinkled just so at the
corners.

Her hand relaxed in Eva’s. “Who are
you?” she asked quietly.

“My name is Zopyros. I am the
former King of Terra, husband of Thea Thanatos, and most importantly, your
father.”

Eva squeezed her fingers, not from
fear but as a gesture of support. Zoe knew in her heart he was telling her the
truth, but she need only look at his face to know he was indeed her own flesh
and blood. The more she tried to recall any memories of a family on Earth, the
more she realized they did not exist, and that she’d never really questioned it
before.  Yet looking at him, she felt a loss she had not known before. She
missed him, and there in the Forgotten Gardens she began to realize the vast
part of her life that was truly forgotten.

“This place is my real home, isn’t
it?” she asked.

Zopyros nodded. “You were born and
meant to live your life as our Queen here. Unfortunately, the course of our
lives veered off irrevocably.” He turned then to Eva and smiled at her. “I
assume either you or your brother is responsible for finding my daughter?” he
asked.

“My brother. Though until recently
I thought that was nothing more than a coincidence,” Eva admitted.

“Hardly,” he chuckled. “The Nero’s
have been friends of the Thanatos family long before I met and fell in love
with Thea. We hoped that you both would one day join our family and bring about
a new era of the Crown. Again, our plans were not as we made them.”

Zoe and Eva exchanged looks. A
Thanatos-Nero family to rule Terra? They knew their families were connected but
not quite to that extent. Were they not far away from arranged marriages? Would
Zoe and Eva have eventually been sisters?

Sisters. Family. The thoughts
brought Zoe’s attention back to her father. “Are you the only one here? If
you’re married to Thea then why are you here when she is in Royal City?” she
asked.

“Because this is where their souls
come to rest,” Eva gasped as though the thought had just occurred to her. She
must not have realized the full extent of just what that entailed until seeing
Zopyros with her own eyes.

“She’s right. I was the one to send
you through the gate to another universe and I have been here ever since,
waiting for you to return.”

A shiver resonated down Zoe’s
spine. She remembered how he appeared to her at first, like an out-of-focus
photograph, rough around the edges. Zopyros must have sensed her sudden
uneasiness because he reached out and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. The
sensation was strange, like a spark of electricity rather than a corporeal
form. Her skin vibrated beneath his touch, warming from the contact of energy.

“It may help to think of me as a
program rather than as a ghost, Zoe. That is what you refer to those who are no
longer living but stay around, right?”