She nodded once and awaited the inevitable.
“Did you, in fact, have them on backwards when you came through the first time?”
Her answer shone in her eyes. Jade’s throat went dry. Unable to control the tide of emotion, her bottom lip quivered and her gaze dropped to the floor. She could not speak her faux pas aloud nor even acknowledge it physically.
“I think it’s possible…” He didn’t finish his thought. He didn’t have to.
Jade had sealed her own fate by not heeding what the walls of the temple room had shown her. Both planets, Earth and Eden, had existed along parallel time lines, until she crossed over and drew a line in space like a boat cutting across a lake, effectively causing a permanent rift in her wake.
Again, panic welled up inside her. “What if I put them on backwards again?” She reached for the bracelets, put them on the wrong way and stepped toward the pillars. “What if I—”
Ageit blocked her path and gently took hold of her upper arms. “I can’t let you do that, my dear.”
She felt her throat go tight. “But why?”
“Because they told me under no circumstances should this rule be broken. Who knows where the twisted loops of time and space would send you next?”
“So. I’ve sent myself on a one-way trip across space.”
“And time, I’m afraid.”
Much to her embarrassment, Jade fell forward and wept like a baby in Ageit’s arms.
* * * *
There wasn’t a circumstance Elydian’s memory in which he’d had trouble falling asleep. Until he’d met and lost the perfect woman in the duration of eleven nights. He’d tossed and turned so much in the last six or so hours that his legs and a few pillows lay tangled in Jade’s blanket.
“Omari?”
A voice from the entrance to his tent pulled him from his thoughts. “Who calls?” he said and struggled to stand, entrapped in his bedding.
“It is Ageit, son.”
Ageit
. A spark of hope flared in his chest. In the span of two heartbeats, he flew into the greeting room and flung wide the flap. Somehow he expected to see Jade standing there, as if she’d changed her mind, as if she’d decided to stay here on Eden with him and not return home. But his logical side tossed him an
“
I told you so”
when he saw with his own eyes that she wasn’t there with his old friend.
Elydian prepared himself. He knew he’d have to accept the news he didn’t want to hear. “How did it turn out?”
Ageit sighed. “Can we sit?”
Elydian’s breath caught. “Did something go wrong? Is someone hurt?”
“It’s nothing like that—well, not entirely.”
“What do you mean?” Elydian ground out, not intending to convey his irritation in such a way.
“Son, let us sit.” Ageit indicated to the cushions upon Elydian’s floor.
Knowing Ageit the way he did, Elydian wouldn’t be successful if he tried to force the old man to get to the point. Ageit was an eccentric scientist who reveled in the art of storytelling. Everyone in camp knew that conversations with Ageit could sometimes lean toward the tedious. He stepped aside and let Ageit make himself comfortable. Elydian sat down across from his guest and pressed his lips together determined to let the old man convey his news, however painful.
“Elydian, it is my greatest wish for you to be happy.”
“Thank you,” Elydian said tightly. He clutched a small pillow in his fist.
“The Planetairians never intended to hurt anyone.”
“M-hm.” Dawn would break soon. He sincerely hoped he possessed the patience for this discussion, as it was likely to continue well into the day.
“One of their goals was to unite like beings. Beings who would be biologically compatible so that there would not be the kind of jealousy and spite they’d experienced with others like themselves.”
“I see.” What Elydian should have been doing was sitting on his hands before he strangled his friend.
“The reason Jade came to us—why the doorway could be opened between our two worlds—was because the Planetarians knew she and her kind could live among us and we among them. Even unto the point of breeding together.”
At the sound of Jade’s name, Elydian had felt a shock from head to toe. “Did something happen to her? Because if it did, you’d better tell me immediately.”
“It wasn’t her fault, you must believe me, Elydian.”
Elydian stood. “What? What wasn’t her fault, Ageit? I’ve had just about enough of this torture. Now answer my question. Is she hurt?”
“Not physically.”
“What does that mean—what are you trying to say to me?” His voice grew louder but he didn’t care. In a moment, he’d be shaking the information out of the man.
“She’s very distraught, you see.”
“Distraught?”
“Yes. She’s quite embarrassed. She said she’s made a terrible
flub
.”
Jade and her strange words
. Even now, when she was gone, her odd phrases haunted him. “What does that mean?”
“From what I gather, it means that she thinks you will be upset with her.”
“Upset with Jade? She was the one who departed from me, Ageit, not the other way around.”
“So it’s true then, you are angry with her?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know—and I don’t understand what this has to do with her being hurt.”
“It doesn’t. You see, the first time she came through the doorway her bracers were on wrong. Even if it hadn’t happened that way, she said she would have tried to come back to you.”
“Ageit, please—”
“Now hear me out. I suppose it was more my fault than hers—”
“Ageit!”
“Well, I didn’t exactly leave that information in the room along with the other doorway apparatuses. I simply left the bracers upon the table. She accidentally twisted time and space. That’s how she ended up here on Eden. Her world, as she knew it, couldn’t be recaptured.”
Elydian took a mere second to digest the information. “Wait. Are you saying she went back to a different time than the one she’d left?”
“Precisely.”
“And you
left
her there?” Elydian couldn’t have been more appalled. The man should have known better.
“Well, no. She came back here with me.”
“She’s
here
?” Elydian’s heart leapt to his throat. His stomach wasn’t far behind.
“No.”
It was like an invisible foot stomped his organs back to where they belonged. His anger deflated, but his trepidation remained. Elydian’s teeth clenched together. “Then. Where. Is. She?”
“She’s at my tent. You see, she’s terribly concerned—she cares a great deal about—”
Without waiting for Ageit to finish another enigmatic statement, Elydian flew out the door and across the sands to Ageit’s tent.
Elydian stopped short when he found Jade in front of Ageit’s tent, standing on a large flat rock in the pale light of dawn. She looked so beautiful, it hurt his eyes. He rubbed at one and then the other, watching her with the opposite eye so she wouldn’t disappear. He swore not to let her out of his sight ever again.
As if she’d heard his silent oath, her head turned, and her gaze landed on him. The air left his lungs.
“Eli?”
He swallowed. “Jade.”
“Did—did Ageit speak to you?”
“Yes, in far too many words.”
She smiled. And a glorious smile it was. The dawn would have a difficult time out-shining his Zsa-ninah.
“The old man can really chew the fat, can’t he? He told me how Eden exhausted its fossil fuel supply and was forced to return to archaic living. He told me that water is your most precious resource and just how bloody old this planet is—” She shook her head. “He gave me some seriously nutzy rumble about this joint.”
A sound tore from his throat—a half-laugh, half-sob.
“So. Did Ageit tell you I mucked things up pretty badly?”
“Is it true?”
Jade’s gaze fell to the ground for the briefest of moments. But to Elydian, it felt as if the stars had all gone out on a moonless night. When she looked at him again, he strode forward and came to a halt before her. If her attention fell from him again, he might cease to exist.
“Yeah, I can’t go home.”
He’d heard the catch in her voice and felt her sadness sprinkle his chest like pebbles from a fierce sand storm.
“Neither can I let everyone know I’m living a swell life on another planet with a man who looks and loves like a god.”
He allowed a brief grin to cross his features—it was the greatest compliment he’d ever received.
“The good news is, Eden is safe.”
He pushed aside the urge to reprimand her for thinking he couldn’t protect his own planet. “Then there’s nothing stopping you from becoming my Omari-Nah.”
“Honey, neither time nor space could keep me apart from you.”
She opened her arms to him, and he went to her. His beautiful Jade. His forever.
About the Author
By day, Genella deGrey is a creative assistant for The Walt Disney Company, by night she is a romance author. She’s had stories rattling around in her head since high school, and has been writing off and on ever since.
Genella also has a keen interest in the spiritual. She loves wandering around in graveyards and haunted places, the older the better. New Orleans is one of her favorite haunts, as is Tombstone, AZ.
Genella loves to talk to her readers and can be found at
http://genelladegrey.wordpress.com
.
Also Available from
Resplendence Publishing
The Trouser Game
by Genella deGrey
Miss Jillian Kelley, a young woman on the brink of a new millennium, has just returned from University in the States. Her new knowledge of the world—and its endless possibilities facilitates a desperate need to break free from her mother's old-fashion Victorian parlor ideal of proper behavior.
As Miss Kelley avidly pursues her childhood crush—a traditional Brit with property– a handsome American with whom she shared a passionate night comes to call. The insufferable intrusion is annoying, however, his irresistible seductive ways draw her cravings to the surface like the rise of a tide.
Bradley Townsend accepted with pleasure the bequeathed gift of Miss Kelley's virtue the very night they met, but the adventurous blue-eyed beauty stole his heart, leaving him holding nothing but a note in the morning. There's no way in Hell he's going to let her slip through his fingers—even if he has to hop on a ship, follow her home and seduce her all over again.