THE SLIDE
Chapter 28 | Kaleidoscope
Part 3 : Mystery, Supernatural, The Churn
“How many months has it been this time?” Farha asked Tem.
“Not that long. Nine hours. They, the specialists, said that the damage to your brain was severe, and they did not expect you to survive or regain consciousness. That was six hours ago. And then it happened your brain began to regenerate itself,” Tem said. “Again, you are lucky to be alive and even luckier to be in such excellent shape. It’s a miracle. Is there anything you want to tell me before the SS agents arrive?”
Farha snorted. “Everything, but they’re not coming. Well, they are coming, but they won’t find us,” she said.
“Are you — ?” Tem stopped himself from saying ‘delusional’. “What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know, I just know,” she paused. “But we need to go below in order to continue to escape them.”
“Where’s that?”
“Please unhook me, Uncle Tem. I’ll show you.”
Q and K from Central, a more public presence of the SS on the second-floor southeast corner of the castle, looked in what they thought was Farha’s hospital bed in the new wing of the fort. There was no one there. K called the office for the scanners. Q secured the perimeter. A search was called in.
Tem and Farha transversed an underground passageway to the area below the basement and gallows at the eastern wall of Fort Normandy. Sophia was there, meditating in a diaphanous region between the dim space and dreamtime.
“What’s your burning question?” Farha asked Tem.
“Once you find François, will your mission be complete?” Tem began, “Or do you need to solve the mystery of the Slide? If so, then what’s after that?”
Farha was looking up above the Churn, just before she was thrown up into the air and out into the desert at ground zero. Her impulse suggested lifting her arms to the center of the center of the funnel cloud overhead. She hesitated.
Then — the ejection.
Did it happen twice?
“Where are you, Farha?”
She turned and looked at Tem.
She entered the flow of Tem’s questions as if nothing had happened:
“I used to think it was about finding out what happened to Papa, but now that doesn’t seem to matter as much. The Slide will always have his mysteries, but I want to only know a few of them. Like what happened to Ra? And finding the man-boy? And going where the light directs me.”
“What man-boy?” Tem wondered.
“If I knew who the man-boy was, I wouldn’t need to find him as much as I feel that I do,” Farha turned her head, rolled her eyes, looked back at Tem. She continued, “There is so much more to the Slide than I thought.”
“Some day I hope you will explain about the light directing you,” Tem said solemnly. “Could the light have something to do with you being ‘the anointed one’?”
Farha gave him the sarcastic eye.
“I hear things… Rumors, I guess.”
“You know better than to pay attention to rumors. Right? Where’s the scientist in you, Uncle?”
“If I knew about how the light directs me, then… Interestingly enough, I was provided many answers on this last visit. But… they were fragments of answers and more questions, questions enough for several lifetimes maybe…”
“And then there is the more public presence of the SS. They are so obvious in their choice to send blocks of the worst criminals into the Slide. Their motives seem so obvious to me…” Tem was on one of his long diatribes about the dangers of secrets and so on…
He’s not wrong, she thought.
Nine Months Previous
Her mind drifted to the end of the trail and the bits of information that had become clear.
Sophia and Farha used several feints to catch data from reports — some coded, some not.
Tem’s DNA confirmed it was Tem, only about twenty years younger than he was when he entered the Slide. And that both Tem and the deceased male child were twins that Farha had given birth to in the Slide. The two male twins were born fourteen days apart. Tem was born second. Ivanovich and three middle-aged women tended to the birth, the care of the children and Farha.
The charges against Farha were dropped. Even though Farha knew vaguely that her hand shot the older Tem in the head, the information was too much. After she discovered it, something in her blocked it out along with the birth of the twins. The Magistrate ordered therapy and memory recovery as a mandatory action. While Farha complied, her cooperation was minimal.
Instead, Sophia had arranged clandestine meetings with Hrez Azyuy, the Berber Shaman. He said little. She felt comforted by his presence and saw lines of luminescent rays weaving through her body. They met in a cave on the way to Sophia’s old house, in a small oasis to the far north near an out-cropping of rock, and at the praying boulders at ground zero.
Present time
“They are so obvious in their choice to send blocks of the worst criminals into the Slide. Their motives seem so obvious to me…” She clicked into Tem’s, thinking aloud. “If the criminals succeed in their mission and return, they are good candidates for super soldiers. If they fail and die horrible deaths, good riddance, no longer the Confederacy’s problem, no cost in jailing them…”
Farha tuned him out as the Berber Shaman filled her thoughts with his words. “Do you seek my teachings as a Masamuda, advisor to the council of ten?”
“I do not know of what it is you speak,” Farha said in the in-between space between the ordinary world and dreamtime.
“You visited me last night in the dreamtime to ask if I would teach you. Please do not take this lightly,” he said.
“I thought it was an ordinary dream,” Farha replied.
“Ah. You have much to learn. Do you seek teaching from me? Yes or no?” He wavered on the edge of patience and impatience.
“Yes, please, may I be a follower of your teachings?”
Hrez Azyuy made his nod of acceptance known to her and faded. Tem’s words droned on:
“The public rise of the SS could portend a coming autocratic rule…” Tem concluded. “And I do not know if there’s anything that can be done about that.”
For a complete index of all chapters Parts 1 and 2 see Part Two: Chapter 14 Secrets and Love (continued).
Thanks for reading. Part 3 of The Slide is (pardon the pun) sliding together.
Rebecca Romanelli | Blaine Coleman | Spyder | DL Nemeril | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Melanie J. | Joseph Lieungh | madmess’s thoughts | David Price | Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀 | Ravyne Hawke | May More | Marcus aka Gregory Maidman | Ilis Trudie Palmer | Winston | Libby Shively McAvoy | Lee David Tyrrell | Margie Willis | Nombuso Makhubu | Noorain Ali | Lady Dr. Gabriella Korosi