This is the end. I felt it the moment my eyes set upon my brother. The hollow cheeked, opal eyed, hideous creature raging in the middle of a small war. A small war that would determine the fate of the realms and the fate of the world. I could not let what my brother had become infect those innocent and happy, those with a chance to live and to discover what the world is and what we can become.
This is the end.
This is the end of me.
I now come to realize this will be the last time I touch Gemma, the last time our lips will intertwine in a seemingly unbreakable embrace. Perhaps the last time I will ever see her. I pull her closer to me, feeling her strong heart beating steadily through her chest. Her lips are warm, and I have a fleeting image of the first time we kissed. A long time ago, in a warm gypsy camp, in another world. I feel her lighten in my arms as though she has been released from heavy chains.
"Kartik," Gemma kisses my cheeks. "It's let me go."
"That is good," I say. A sharp pain ripples through my body and I cry out. I break from Gemma and my body seems to break open like a blooming lotus flower. The pain is unbearable, it tears through my heart and I feel myself losing resistance against it. I feel the roots of the trees claiming me.
In a white haze I can see Gemma lunge for me, I muster all my strength to keep the roots away. I am not ready to say goodbye.
"If I could go back…undo it…" She is sobbing, her cheeks wet with tears.
"There is never any turning back, Gemma. You have to go forward. Make the future yours," I take her once more in my arms. I kiss her softly and she clings desperately to me, knowing as well as I that we have only seconds left.
I feel the roots circle around my neck, my breath comes short. I give her one last kiss before they twist around my body and take me away.
"Gemma…" I say, just above a whisper.
The tree claims me and I'm gone. I can feel the weight of my body rip away from me as my soul melts into the tree. The blinding pain is gone with my life. I cannot hear, see, taste, smell or touch. I am in a place where it is blankness, not white or black or even coloured. I am where there is no life or death. But still, I am existing.
Abruptly, the nothingness is gone and I am whipping over a foreign landscape, over majestic mountains and lakes. My senses are exploding with the vividness as I soar over everything; I am the clouds, drifting in the palest of blue and feeding the land. I am the earth, saturated and warm like a cozy, protective blanket. The land is becoming something new, fresh green buds peak out from melting frost and bare trees bloom the beginning of a future. The wind carries a sweet warmth that lightens even the darkest of souls. The land is free. I am free.
Somewhere, deep in a lone tree, beats the heart and soul of a young man. A man who, for eighty four years, will be the heart of the realms.
Every night of the first year, when her presence calls me, I am there. I feel myself lift from the tree and the realms and return to my former self standing at the edge of a wide lake. The water is still, as if it is a sleek layer of glass waiting to be shattered. This is the most commonly used part of the realms, but it is unknown whether it truly exists for it cannot be found, it can only be used. It is a part of the realms for seeing, for living.
Across the lake I see her, growing older and stronger each day. I smile to her, giving her reassurance whenever she needs it. And the older she grows, the less she needs me and I'm happy for it. However, at the same time each week, she comes to my tree, sits gingerly on the roots and places her hands to the softest of bark feeling our connection buzzing at her fingertips. Gemma talks of her life, knowing I will always be listening.
When she was twenty two, she told me of Richard. The sky was a hazy orange and pink melting together, as it always was when she came. She sat at the tree trunk and told me of the man she was to marry. He was sweet and charming with golden blond hair and pale blue eyes. He was from America but Richard and Gemma were to move back to England while he pursued his career in financing and she began her writing. But Gemma was guilty and pained, confessing to me that she could never love anyone as much as she had loved me. It was even more painful for me to hear this.
Nonetheless, her life went on and her calls for me in the night decreased and eventually vanished. But her visits were always the same. When she was twenty six, the year after publishing her first novel, she had her first child. Susanna Felicity Thompson, who stayed to true to her middle name, was as wild and fierce as her Aunt Felicity. Two years later, Jacob Kartik was born. As he grew older he turned out to be quite the opposite of his sister. He was shy and artistic, spending hours in the garden of Gemma's summer home in Surrey. Lastly, when Gemma was thirty eight she gave birth to Isabelle Ann. A rosy cheeked little girl with flaming red hair and wide green eyes, becoming just like her mother, brave and true.
When Gemma was one hundred years old, she came to me at night standing far across the lake. I smile to her, unsure why she has come. She smiles back but something is different, I can see her more clearly than I ever have before for she does not have the shining white glow of the living. The earth begins to rumble and Gemma's smile falls. The untouched water of the lake swirls and licks at my ankles. I look far across to Gemma's panicked face but when I look back down the water is dissolving, seeping into earth and leaving a wide berth in its place.
But the ground does not stop quivering and soon the gap is filling with rich, packed soil. As the empty pit rises, brilliant grass blooms quickly through the ground until the gap closes with a soft crunching noise. Gemma and I stare at each other, realization dawning on us.
And she is running to me. The scenery falls away and with it her hair obtains red colour, her shoulders rise, and the creases in her face soften. We are in the garden and she reaches me, the Gemma I had known eighty four years ago.
"Kartik," she whispers my name like a note on a harp.
I reach my hand up to the creamy, freckled skin of her cheek. "Gemma."
I weave my hand through her soft red curls and lean forwards until my face is an inch from her own.
"I love you," she says kissing me softly on the lips.
"I will always and forever love you Gemma Doyle."
I take her hand in mine and together, a perfect silhouette against the pink and orange sky, we walk through the arch into the pleasant unknown of our future.