Oracle--Solar Wind Read online

  Ret stared at the hanky, not sure if he wanted to touch it.

  “Don’t worry,” Rado told him. “It’s clean.”

  Taking the handkerchief, Ret asked, “Did the First Father say anything about what the relics are for?”

  “Not to me, he didn’t,” said Rado. “All he said was to give it to the one with the scars and that you would know what to do with it.”

  Still clueless, Ret said sarcastically, “Great.” He stuffed the handkerchief in his pocket and moved on to his next question: “Do you know—”

  “Wait!” Rado interrupted. “Here it comes!”

  The Guardian glared up at the ceiling with childlike fascination. The sun had set over Antarctica, but a new light was dawning—a light in the night. The aurora australis was slowly twinkling to life, and already its reflection was getting caught in the ice crystals of the glacier’s dome. The ceiling lit up like a kaleidoscope, continuously scattering the light to pieces and shining them on the scene below. Flecks of green appeared on the walls, whose shiny surfaces reflected the light yet again. But unlike the ceiling, which rained down its bits of light with no particular order, each different face along the round wall had been hand-crafted to reflect light at a very specific angle. Like a series of mirrors, they all directed their unique reflections to the same exact spot, just above the hole in the center of the room.

  As the night progressed, the Southern Lights intensified. When new colors emerged in the sky, their reflection entered the prisms of the sparkling dome, where the streams of light were reflected over and over again before eventually being splashed on the walls below. Brilliant shades of red, yellow, and blue transformed the glacial chamber into a laser light show. Like a disco ball, the ceiling painted the room in a dazzling display of dancing lights. It didn’t matter where the bits of light struck the faces of the wall, however: the faces always reflected the light they received at a constant angle. Like the dimples of a golf ball or the facets of a cut jewel, each section of the wall shined its reflection in a different direction but all toward the same location.

  But where was the element? Ret searched the vertical space above the hole where he knew the element should be. He saw a magnificent glow there. It was much brighter than all the other lights in the room because this was the spot where they all met. The room had been designed to focus all the light that entered it into a single, concentrated glow. But was this the element?

  “Isn’t it beautiful, Ret?” Rado beamed with pride, putting his large hand on Ret’s shoulder as he admired the silent spectacle.

  “I don’t understand,” Ret told him. “Where is the element?”

  “Why, it’s right there,” Rado said, pointing at the glow, which had just changed from a dark red to a light purple. “Don’t you see it?”

  “Yes, I see it, but what exactly is it, Rado?” Ret asked. “I was expecting it to be like the other elements—earth, fire, ore—something I could touch and hold. But this? This is just a…just a glow.”

  As if his efforts had been underappreciated, the Guardian sighed heavily and said, “Do you have any idea how long it took me to figure this out, Ret?” There was a hint of firmness in his tender voice. “What is the wind element, you ask? I might say it is the sun, or at least the energy of it. The wind element is different from the others because it resides on the sun, not the earth. All physical life on this earth—all light, heat, energy—can be traced back to the energy of the sun. That is the source. The wind element is but a tiny bit of the sun’s energy and, by extension, is also that original source. So tell me, how would you go about collecting something like that?”

  Ret was silent at the conundrum.

  “Thankfully, in her infinite wisdom,” Rado continued, “Mother Nature not only provided a way for the element to be blown to earth as solar wind but also created the aurorae to make an otherwise invisible medium visible to the natural eye. That’s what the Northern and Southern Lights are: the transmittal of energy from sun to earth—the personification of solar wind. But how was I supposed to take something as far and wide as the aurora and get it into the palm of your hand? How could I concentrate it and confine it so that you could easily capture it?”

  “I think I see your point, sir,” Ret said with growing understanding.

  “Just look at it!” Rado gloried in the glow. “It’s brilliant, not only in the way it looks but also in the way I got it here. It requires an innumerable quantity of microscopic solar wind particles to create this marvelous glow. The wind element wasn’t a large ray of light I stumbled upon one day. No, I had to piece it together, bit by bit. Even then, I still don’t really know what it is, but at least I know where it is, and that was my assignment—not to fully understand it but to find it, protect it, and prepare it so that you could collect it. Such was my calling as a Guardian, and I literally moved heaven and earth to fulfill it.”

  Clearly, to serve as one of the Guardians of the Elements was no easy task. Little wonder, then, why Rado viewed the completion of his life-long assignment with joyful expectation.

  “Did you ever want to give up?” Ret spoke from his heart.

  “All the time,” Rado replied right away.

  “Then why didn’t you?” Ret asked. “Didn’t you ever feel like the Oracle was asking too much of you?”

  “Occasionally. But there’s really only one thing the Oracle asks for,” the Guardian taught. “It asks for you. Sure, I had to scour the world from pole to pole, brave this bitter cold day in and day out, spend years tediously carving these walls just right, all while waiting for you to come along. I gave my life for this cause. I sacrificed myself—my self. That’s the real test in life, Ret: self mastery.”

  In just a few words, Rado had summed up the last several months of Ret’s life.

  “Now, on with the show,” Rado clapped his powerful hands. “I think you have an element to collect.”

  “Wait,” Ret protested, “I have so much more to ask you.”

  “Young man, I’ve told you as much as you need to know,” said Rado. “Now hurry up. I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment.”

  It was with bittersweet emotion that Ret stepped forward to fulfill his duty. He grabbed Paige by the hand, and together they moved toward the chasm in the floor, stopping a few steps in front of it. They stared at the element, which currently was a bright shade of green. With renewed appreciation, Ret’s eyes swept the room, taking in the architectural feat that had brought the light of the aurora to ground level. Rado looked on with such sweet anticipation that Ret wondered if the Guardian knew he was about to die.

  While Ret was gazing at the element, however, he saw something strange just beyond it. He shifted his focus and found a person there, standing about as far from the gaping hole as he and Paige were. Ret looked harder. When the lights feeding the element changed from green to red, the light in the unknown person’s eyes also changed accordingly. Ret glanced back to see if the clone was still lying on the floor, but it wasn’t there. The aurora had brought it to life, and it was now standing across from Ret, staring him dead in the face.

  CHAPTER 21

  SELF MASTERY

  Ret stared at the clone, unsure of what he should do. A few streaks of yellow entered the room, adjusting the glow of the element as well as the color in the clone’s eyes. Since the clone had been lifeless up until the appearance of the aurora, Ret assumed it had some sort of affinity for the phenomenon, drawing energy from it. Ret glanced back at Rado for assistance, but the Guardian simply shrugged.

  “Wait,” Paige whispered to Ret, her eyes fixed on the clone. “Look back at Rado again.” Ret obeyed, after which Paige observed, “The clone did it, too—it moved just like you did.”

  Curious, Ret faced the clone. When he leaned to his left, the clone simultaneously leaned in the same direction (which was to its right). Then Ret waved at the clone with his right hand. At the same time, the clone waved at Ret with its left hand. Whenever Ret moved, the clone moved. It
was not copying Ret’s motion but mimicking it. It was as though Ret was standing in front of a mirror, except the reflection was a tangible thing. As if they were of the same flesh, there was no time lag between their movements, and the clone never did anything independent of what Ret did.

  Soon, however, their silent version of “Simon Says” grew old, and Ret wanted to get on with collecting the element. He held out his hand and asked Paige for the Oracle. Ret was relieved when no Oracle appeared in the clone’s outstretched hand. He stepped forward to the void in the floor. The clone did likewise without the least variation, and Ret could see it quite clearly now. The energy of the aurora surged in its eye sockets, duplicating the color and intensity of the lights in the sky. There was nothing original about the clone; it was solely an imitation that could do nothing of its own freewill.

  Ret cupped his hands together and rolled the Oracle onto his palms. Then he raised his hands toward the element. But there was a problem. As Ret tried to move his hands into place under the element, so did the clone. Their fingertips collided. The clone was blocking Ret. With some force, Ret tried to push the clone’s hands away, but the clone pushed back with equal force. Then Ret used his right hand to try and hold the clone’s hands at bay, but the clone tried the same thing with its left hand.

  Ret was getting frustrated. Maybe they could compromise: Ret’s left hand for the clone’s right hand, supposing it didn’t really matter whose hands were being used so long as all the scars were represented. But this didn’t work, for Ret’s left hand kept bumping into the clone’s right hand, and he could never get them side by side. Then Ret thought he could trick the clone, putting their fingertips together and then quickly trying to shove his hands over the clone’s hands. But this didn’t work either, for the clone was just as fast.

  Now Ret was thoroughly annoyed. Then he got an idea. Like many times before, he put his hands together and extended them as far forward as he could until they met the clone’s hands. When their fingers met, he slowly raised his wrists and lowered his fingers. The Oracle rolled from his palms and landed where their fingers touched, partly in Ret’s possession and partly in the clone’s. Finally, the Oracle began to come to life. It rose above the many fingers below it and started to turn in its attempt to align itself with the scars. But it never did. It just kept spinning. The sphere found itself among twelve scars—not six, as usual. It was confused and didn’t know what to do, so it just kept spinning without ever opening.

  “I can’t believe this,” Ret complained as he returned to Paige’s side. “Whatever I do, that thing does it, too. It’s so annoying.”

  “Never fear,” Rado stepped forward with confidence. “I’ll just refreeze this meddlesome miscreant.” The Guardian blasted the defenseless clone with a terrible frost, which, unfortunately, was also experienced by Ret.

  “Stop! Stop!” Paige protested. “You’re freezing Ret, too!”

  With a disappointed frown, Rado revoked the wind. Ret fell to his knees in pain as Paige tried to rub some warmth into his cold back.

  “I’m sorry, Ret,” Rado said sincerely.

  “It was worth a try,” Ret told him.

  “The clone was frozen when we first saw it not too long ago,” Paige observed. “I wonder why it didn’t affect you then, Ret?”

  “Probably because it hadn’t been brought to life yet by the lights,” Ret supposed.

  “It looks like we may have to hold off until morning,” Rado theorized. “If the aurora is what brings the clone to life, then it should go back to being a lifeless mold as soon as the sun comes up.”

  “But if we wait until morning,” Paige astutely pointed out, “then the element will be gone, too.”

  “Good point,” the Guardian submitted. “Well, I’d say we’re in a bit of a pickle, wouldn’t you?”

  “That only leaves one option,” Ret said, glaring at the bothersome clone with a face of stone.

  “What are you going to do, Ret?” Paige wondered, a little worried by his definitive tone.

  Ret made no reply. He strode to an open area, away from the wind element, the clone mimicking his every move on its unofficial half of the room. Ret stopped and turned to face the clone. Standing across from each other, with a considerable gap between them, it had the makings of a classic shootout from the Wild West. Slowly, the pair came together until they were face to face, their noses almost touching. Ret glared into the clone’s eyes, now a bright blue color. Despite Ret’s growing displeasure, there was absolutely no emotion on the clone’s part, which only added to Ret’s irritation.

  Ret raised his right hand with the palm forward and brought it out in front of him until it met the clone’s left hand. Each of their other hands followed. Then, as if with a stick of dynamite, Ret ignited a fiery explosion in each of his palms. The clone did likewise, of course, and the blasts repelled each other, flinging both of them backwards.

  Ret was back on his feet in an instant. He sent dozens of fireballs at the clone, but each was met by one of its own, colliding into the invisible mirror that seemed to separate the scene down the middle. With his mind, he searched underneath the glacier until he felt bedrock. He cracked it, broke it, and sent it up through the ice. Huge slabs of rock came crashing through the floor, sending ice chips in all directions. Paige fled to Rado for protection as the same scene played out on the clone’s side of the room.

  Ret hurled the rocks in all directions and at varying speeds—lobbing some, rolling others, fast and slow—but each was met by a twin from the other side. With a mighty leap through the air, he charged at the clone and, just before they met, sent forth a powerful wind, which blew the clone away, yes, but himself also.

  This wasn’t working. It was like trying to fight fire with fire or use wind to blow out a tornado. Ret knew there had to be a difference between him and the clone—a strength to assert or a weakness to exploit. Apparently, they both possessed the same powers over the same elements, but perhaps the clone’s limited genetic maturation made it more vulnerable to things that Ret wasn’t as susceptible to—things like lava.

  Ret mentally searched the bottomless pit below the wind element until he found a deposit of molten rock. Like a geyser, it shot up through the hole and into the air. An identical stream rose with it, being the work of the clone. Ret let his lava stream fall on the clone, well aware that the same thing would happen to him. Without resistance, Ret allowed himself to become engulfed, certain the clone was melting amid the scorchingly hot magma.

  When the lava finally flowed from off Ret’s face, he was dumbfounded to find the clone still intact. Now furious, Ret erupted in a flurry of vicious moves. He was giving it all he had, throwing everything he could think of at the clone. But it was all to no avail.

  Paige watched from the sidelines, desperately wanting to help but not sure how to do so. From her point of view, it seemed like Ret was fighting with himself. In fact, the whole scenario looked a little ridiculous to her, like trying to outsmart your own shadow. She quickly realized Ret would never conquer himself by himself. It couldn’t be done. He needed help from someone else. Even the slightest bit of aid would give him an advantage and tip the scales in his favor. But what could she possibly do?

  The room had turned into a battlefield, with bangs and bursts filling the air. The lava had melted portions of the floor, only adding to the mess and confusion. Ret was growing weary. His nonstop assault was exhausting him. He looked tired and weak. Paige could tell he wanted nothing more than to collect the wind element, which he was so close to doing, but it was his clone—himself—that kept getting in the way.

  Running out of ideas, Ret reached for something that he knew there was only one of in the vicinity: the blade of the guillotine. He summoned the sharp metal blade toward him. It came soaring into the room, with no sign of an identical one on the clone’s side. Ret’s heart took courage; he was certain he had the upper hand now. Then, when the blade reached the midway point between them, it abruptly stopped. As
soon as it crossed into the clone’s territory, the clone had control over it. Ret tried to push it onward, but it was met by equal and opposite force.

  Ret’s tactics turned frantic. His desperation was eroding his rationality. He was now flinging dagger-like pieces of ice on a wind that he blew toward the clone, hoping to put an end to its existence, but the sharp chunks simply collided into identical ones flung by the clone. Then, in his great extremity, Ret picked up an icicle at his feet and pointed it at himself. Perhaps the only way to end the madness was to sacrifice himself.

  “Ret, no!” Paige cried.

  Paige’s plea brought Ret back to reason. He stared at the icy spike in his hand, which had nearly been turned into an instrument of death, and dropped it. Then he fell to his knees and broke into tears.

  Paige flew from the Guardian’s side and ran to comfort Ret, her path hedged up by the piles of debris that were strewn across the deformed floor.

  Ret held the Oracle in his hand and, while looking at it, said, “Why are you doing this to me? I’ve done all I can do, but it’s still not enough. What am I doing wrong? What do I need to do differently? What needs to change?”

  Ret heard a noise nearby. It was Paige, trying to climb over some rubble on her way to Ret’s side. For a split second, Ret thought she looked like someone else he knew—or had known until Lye killed her. And yet, Ret could still see Virginia, coming in from the trailer’s small kitchen that day and sitting on Lester’s knee, then putting her arm around him as her husband explained how it was love that had made the difference in bringing about the great change in him.

  Paige arrived at Ret’s side and wrapped her arm around him.

  “It’s okay,” she told him tenderly. Ret glanced back at the clone, which was also on its knees with its hand extended but was alone. “You did your best, and that’s what matters.” Paige took Ret’s other hand and placed it on top of the Oracle, then lovingly put her hands around his. But, to Ret’s surprise, the clone’s corresponding hand did not move.