12 – The Whole, Part 1

"Can we trust him?"

In the softest of whispers, Rachel voiced the question they were all thinking. They had to decide quickly, they knew – Saavedro was not a man to be trifled with, and though he was outnumbered, he was also armed, and holding an entire civilization hostage.

"No," replied Maddy immediately. "And I'll tell you why, too. Just because his people are alive doesn't mean he hates Atrus any less. He still wants revenge on Atrus."

"He said he'd give us Releeshahn," murmured Jordan.

"No, he didn't!" hissed Maddy. "He said he'd give up Releeshahn. He didn't say he'd give it to us!"

Jordan and Rachel paused. Maddy was absolutely right. Saavedro had never said that he would give them Releeshahn in return for his freedom.

"What's the bet," Maddy pressed on, "that he chucks the book over the edge the minute we switch the shields?"

"You could be right," breathed Rachel. "But then, what do we do?"

"I know exactly what we do," muttered Maddy, her voice resolute now. "Come on, quickly."

She scurried up the stairs silently. Jordan and Rachel followed without a word. Miraculously, Saavedro failed to notice.

At the top, Maddy wasted no time in darting silently over to the red lever. At this point it dawned on Jordan and Rachel exactly what she had in mind, a split second before Maddy turned the lever back to the neutral position.

The hum in the air died immediately, and the inner ice shield reappeared with a hiss as Jordan and Rachel ran up to stand behind Maddy. From here they had a perfect vantage of Saavedro as he dashed out from near the lattice root grate and looked at the inner shield, then the outer shield, then up at the three of them. The expression of confusion on his face was replaced immediately with one of anguish.

"Oh god," they heard him say. "You idiot. Oh, no..." At this point, Saavedro had finally hit his breaking point, and something deep in his mind seemed to snap even as Jordan, Rachel and Maddy looked on. He began shouting, louder and louder, one word over and over again.

"No! No! No! No, no, no! No, no, no, no..." Clutching the Releeshahn book tightly, he dropped to his knees and slammed the book into the ground, making Rachel jump slightly. "No! No, no, no, no..." He bent over, clearly struggling with his sanity.

"It had to be done," said Maddy grimly, and led the way down the stairs.

Atrus emerged from the elevator feeling refreshed. Writing helped to clear his mind. He was still worried about Releeshahn – of course – but he was feeling better now.

On the way to the sunroom, he ran into Brittany, who was on her way there as well. She was clearly thinking about something, and was muttering under her breath. As a result, she did not see Atrus, and he had been looking at a bird that had landed near the lake. As a result, they did indeed run into each other.

"Oh!" exclaimed Brittany, jolted back to reality. "Sorry, Atrus."

"That's quite all right, my friend," replied Atrus. "I was just going to do a little more cleaning in the study."

"Oh, I'll come help you," said Brittany, who had nothing better to do. "Got to get it cleaned up soon, I suppose."

"Well, quite." The two of them proceeded together into the sunroom in silence. When they reached the study, Catherine was already there, still cleaning and already covered in soot. She was very appreciative of the help.

Despite their best efforts since the fire, the study still looked dreadful. The entire room was black, and the soot was very thick simply because of the sheer amount of flammable things that Atrus had had in his study. Brittany and Atrus looked at each other, shrugged, and rolled up their sleeves.

Maddy led Jordan and Rachel up to the lattice grate. Sitting not six feet away, still bent over and sobbing, was Saavedro. Even with his less ragged-looking clothes, he looked pitiful, bent over the dark red book. After a few seconds, he looked up at the three of them, and his face was marked with despair. Slowly, he got to his feet, picking the book up off the ground.

"Oh god," he breathed, and his voice was pitiful, "no. Please... please... don't do this to me. Not when my family could still be alive out there." He was pleading now, and Rachel was beginning to feel terrible.

When his captors were silent, Saavedro sighed slightly and looked down at the Releeshahn book. In a split second, he had decided that it was his only hope.

"You want the book?" he asked, desperate. Maddy nodded, resolute, and Saavedro continued, his voice now barely more than a whisper. "Here... I'll give you the book." He passed the book through the lattice. Rachel took it from him and stowed it safely in her satchel. Saavedro fell to his knees again.

"Just please... please..." His voice broke, and he only whispered the rest of his sentence. "Don't do this."

Rachel was beginning to be very moved by this. Maddy, however, remained resolute, and Saavedro, desperate, began to get more forceful.

"Please. I can't – do this again." As the three of them watched, terror began to take hold of him again, and his voice began to rise, seemingly uncontrollably. "Please don't leave me trapped here like this! I can't!" He searched the faces of his captors one last time, desperate, and finding no sympathy in Maddy's face, finally broke down and fell back to his knees, sobbing again. Maddy, still resolute, turned around.

"Well... we have what we came for."

"How can you say that?" hissed Rachel. "We can't – we can't just leave him there."

"What are we supposed to do?" muttered Jordan, who was somewhat moved but still rather on Maddy's side. "He was prepared to betray us well and truly. Even when we were prepared to help him, he would have destroyed Releeshahn."

"Come on, Rach," urged Maddy. "Surely you want to see Jane?"

At Maddy's mention of Jane, Rachel's mind clicked slightly. But not in the way Maddy wanted it to.

"We've got the book, Rach."

Rachel pursed her lips. "No," she muttered, "I've got the book." Dodging Maddy, she swung the lever around to point to the second dome. It moved silently, with the slightest of whispers. Now determined, Rachel turned and climbed the stairs to the upper level. Maddy and Jordan glanced at each other and went up as well. Rachel was standing by the red lever, waiting for them. She pointed down at Saavedro.

"He doesn't deserve that. Nobody deserves that. He thought his family, his entire people, were dead. Twenty years he thought that. Because of Sirrus and Achenar. And now, he finds out that his family is alive, and you want to leave him there, so close and yet so far away from them? If we did that, we'd be worse, far worse than Sirrus and Achenar. Shame on both of you." Maddy and Jordan were beginning to see Rachel's side, and Rachel pressed on, seeing the chink in their armour. "Jordan. How would you feel if you were in his place, and Jane and I were out behind that shield?" Jordan swallowed, casting his eyes down. "And Maddy. If you were in his place, and your mother, brother and sister were out there, how would you feel?"

Silence fell over Narayan, broken only by Saavedro's sobbing. Jordan looked at Maddy. She sighed.

"I suppose... you're right, Rach. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise to me," replied Rachel, now smiling, "apologise to him." She gripped the red lever and pushed it.

The hum of power filled the air again, and the outer shield dissolved with a roar, flooding the chamber with orange light again. Down below, Saavedro looked out over the clouds, astonished, and got to his feet. He turned and looked up at Rachel, Jordan and Maddy. Touching one hand to his heart, he raised the other hand and waved. Rachel waved back, smiling, as Saavedro turned and boarded the gondola. With one last look up at them, he sailed off towards the distant tree structure, out of his twenty year nightmare and back into his life.

Brittany sighed deeply and stretched. By this time, all three of them were covered in soot. Atrus had uncovered a few more burnt books and was examining them, trying to determine what they were. Catherine was sitting by the door, trying to clean the soot off the glass, with very little success. They were all getting rather tired.

"How much of this do you think is salvageable?" asked Brittany.

"At a rough guess," said Atrus, "I'd say... none."

"Maybe some of this glass," said Catherine, "but I doubt it."

Brittany bent down and scooped something up off the ground. "Oh hey, here's the fire-marble holder. You might be able to polish this up a bit."

Atrus took the small piece of metal. "I could," he said, "but this is only half the holder. It must have -"

"Shh!" exclaimed Catherine suddenly. The hair on the back of her neck was standing on end all of a sudden. They fell silent. For a moment, all they could hear was the wind chimes.

"What -"

From outside in the sunroom came a sudden ringing roar – once, twice, three times. Catherine scrambled to her feet and threw the doors open.

Jordan, Rachel and Maddy had barely touched their feet to the ground when the doors of the study were thrown open and Catherine came running out. She saw the three of them standing, waiting, and gasped, both in surprise and relief.

"By the Maker... you've returned!" She turned and called into the sunroom. "Atrus, Brittany, come quick!" She turned back to the three of them, stumbling forward into the light. "The fire burned the linking book you used; we had no way of following and thought -"

Interrupting her mid-sentence, Atrus and Brittany stumbled out into the courtyard to join Catherine.

"You're back!" cried Brittany.

"You've returned!" exclaimed Atrus at the same time. "But where's Releeshahn? Did you bring back the book?"

Rachel opened her satchel and produced the dark red book. A relieved smile broke across Atrus' face, and he reached forward, taking the book from Rachel. Catherine produced a small silver key. Atrus quickly unlocked the book and examined the panel. Another smile broke over his face.

"Thank the Maker... it's fine." Catherine and Brittany smiled as Atrus continued. "We are in your debt, my friends. If this book had been destroyed... everything we've worked for, all the people of Releeshahn, would have been lost to us forever."

"You must tell us everything," smiled Catherine. Rachel looked at Jordan and Maddy, then smiled.

"First things first. Stick the kettle on."

Catherine poured out copious amounts of tea, leaving the milk and sugar on the table for everyone to pick and choose from.

"So," said Atrus, sipping at his tea, "tell us the story."

Jordan, Rachel and Maddy glanced around at each other. After a second, Maddy started.

"Well, we chased Saavedro to -"

"Saavedro?" exclaimed Atrus, spilling his tea. "Ow! That's hot. Of course it was Saavedro. I knew I recognised him. Sorry, go on."

Atrus, Catherine and Brittany listened intently as Jordan, Rachel and Maddy told the story. Atrus in particular was enthralled by how the three of them had worked their way through the lesson ages that he had crafted. Maddy told of their time on Voltaic, Jordan of Edanna, and Rachel of Amateria. Then the three of them told of Narayan, and it was here that Atrus finally saw fit to interrupt again.

"Saavedro thought that Narayan was dead. Is that right?"

"Yes," said Rachel. "He had never been able to open the outer shield. So he just assumed what he had always believed – that the civil war started by Sirrus and Achenar had destroyed his entire people."

"It was only when we reached Narayan," Maddy proceeded with the story, "that Saavedro realised that we had come after Releeshahn, not you, Atrus. When we figured out how to open the outer shield, he was stunned, and he realised that his people were still alive. He offered to give up the book in exchange for us letting him out into Narayan, since only one of the shields can be powered at a time."

"Yes..." muttered Atrus. "I did that so that it wasn't too easy. You need two people to get through that shield, even if you can open them both."

"Anyway," said Jordan, taking over from Maddy as storyteller, "Maddy was skeptical that he might just chuck the book off the edge as soon as we dropped the shield. So, we turned the power off to trap him between the shields and make him give us the book."

Catherine made a slightly protesting noise under her breath. Atrus frowned. Brittany, however, nodded grimly.

"That sounds like a good call," she said. "Twenty years, did you say this man had been alone on J'nanin for? He was desperate for revenge on you, Atrus. I think he would have thrown the book off the edge."

"Hmm... you may be right," mused Atrus. "But go on."

Rachel took over. "Well, we got the book off him. And then these two," she indicated Jordan and Maddy, "wanted to leave him there!"

At this, all three listeners frowned. Jordan and Maddy both looked ashamed.

"But," Rachel pressed on, "I convinced them otherwise. We let Saavedro go back out into Narayan."

"Oh, good," said Atrus. "If you said you'd left him there... that really would have been cruel. And there would have been no way for us to amend that, either. The descriptive book for J'nanin was lost in the fire, and I have no other linking book there. And Narayan's descriptive book was there on J'nanin. So we would have had no way of getting to Narayan. So... I'm very glad you didn't leave him there."

"No," replied Rachel, "that would have been very cruel."

"But tell me," chimed in Brittany, "how did Saavedro ever get here to Tomahna in the first place? I mean, he was stranded on J'nanin for twenty years. You only built Tomahna a few months ago."

"Yes..." said Atrus. "When I was writing Releeshahn, I was struggling to find the right basis for the age. The right mantra, I suppose. I tried the first three out in my head and they didn't seem to work – energy, nature, dynamic force... and I settled on balanced systems. But the point is, I had forgotten about J'nanin. Catherine picked up the descriptive book when she revisited Myst. It frustrated me so much that the age that I had built especially to teach the values of those mantras was the only one I never got around to revisiting. So I paid J'nanin a flying visit when I finished Releeshahn. Just for old time's sake. And I left a Tomahna linking book behind me. Saavedro must have found the book."

"Yes, he did," replied Jordan. "It's all in his journal. He saw you link in. You didn't see him, though. He thought you were a spirit, or Death come for him, or something, because you just appeared out of the air. He was still completely insane at this point. But he says that some time later he found the book you left behind. And discovering that it was real – that he could touch it – was what brought him back from madness. And he remembered everything. He remembered you, Atrus. And Sirrus and Achenar. And all about the books. Eventually he built up the courage to link through the book. I think he read your journals, and he saw -"

Atrus spilt his tea again. "He read my journals? Ow! Of course. That's why I found them out of place like I did. I did wonder... of course. Anyway, go on."

"He read about your restoration of the D'ni," said Rachel.

"But I didn't really -"

"Yes, yes, Atrus," sighed Catherine. "Let them finish."

"Sorry."

"And he thought that if he could force you to come to Narayan, you could restore them, too. The Narani. Since he thought they were dead."

"He just wanted to see his family again," mused Brittany.

"Just think," said Maddy, "if you had never gone back to J'nanin, none of this would have happened."

"You could think like that," said Brittany, "or you could say that if Atrus hadn't gone back to J'nanin, then Saavedro would never have been reunited with his family."

"Mother!"

The woman looked up from her weaving. "What is it, my dear?"

The girl was about twenty, a beautiful young woman with a talent for weaving admired by the best of them. Right now, however, she looked a little distressed. So did her sister, very similar in appearance and age, and just as talented.

"Look!" She pointed, up, off the edge of the tree and across the void. In the distance, a small dot was winding its way towards the dock. The woman squinted, then got to her feet and walked towards the edge.

"Oh god... it can't be..." she breathed. "Not again..."

As the three women stood and watched the dot draw closer, they saw that only one figure stood on it, clad in roughly-sewn red and gold robes. And as the gondola finally approached the dock, and they saw his face, the older woman drew breath sharply again.

"No... not after all these years..." she whispered, hardly daring to believe it. The man stepped off the now stationary gondola and turned to the waiting women. He, too, looked like he could hardly believe what he was seeing. Finally, he spoke, calling out to them."

"Tamra?"

The older woman took a step forward.

"Saavedro..."

She ran forward, clutching him in an embrace which he returned, now crying unreservedly.

"Oh, Saavedro... after all these years..."

"I know... I know..."

"I can't believe it," said Tamra, now crying herself. "I thought you were dead."

"And I thought you were dead," said Saavedro, "all of you... after the war... It drove me insane."

By this time, a crowd had gathered, the news spreading that Saavedro had returned at last. There was cheering and applause from the crowd, particularly from some of the old friends that Saavedro recognised. He smiled.

"But, Saavedro," sighed Tamra, "what happened? Where... where here have you been all these years?"

Saavedro paused. "I've been in a nightmare, my love. A nightmare from which I could not awaken. But I'm awake now. I'm alive again. I'm home."