The Journey to Eternity — Chapter Forty-Eight: What Remains of Eternity

Chapter Forty-Eight of my book, The Journey to Eternity, shared here chapter by chapter as I write it. Earlier chapters: Chapter One · Chapter Two · Chapter Three · Chapter Four · Chapter Five · Chapter Six · Chapter Seven · Chapter Eight · Chapter Nine · Chapter Ten · Chapter Eleven · Chapter Twelve · Chapter Thirteen · Chapter Fourteen · Chapter Fifteen · Chapter Sixteen · Chapter Seventeen · Chapter Eighteen · Chapter Nineteen · Chapter Twenty · Chapter Twenty-One · Chapter Twenty-Two · Chapter Twenty-Three · Chapter Twenty-Four · Chapter Twenty-Five · Chapter Twenty-Six · Chapter Twenty-Seven · Chapter Twenty-Eight · Chapter Twenty-Nine · Chapter Thirty · Chapter Thirty-One · Chapter Thirty-Two · Chapter Thirty-Three · Chapter Thirty-Four · Chapter Thirty-Five · Chapter Thirty-Six · Chapter Thirty-Seven · Chapter Thirty-Eight · Chapter Thirty-Nine · Chapter Forty · Chapter Forty-One · Chapter Forty-Two · Chapter Forty-Three · Chapter Forty-Four · Chapter Forty-Five · Chapter Forty-Six · Chapter Forty-Seven.

Chapter Forty-Eight: What Remains of Eternity

The next morning I wrote to my daughter.

Good morning, my love. As I promised, I am writing to you. I hope you slept well.

I read the message before I sent it.

It was like thousands of messages I had written her in the past. It was precisely its simplicity that moved me.

I sent it.

I put the device on the table and opened the window.

Outside, the sun was already shining on the garden. I heard footsteps on the path, the sound of flowing water, and two birds calling to each other among the branches of the tree.

After a few minutes a short sound came.

I didn't really sleep.

I looked at the words.

Another message appeared.

I have more questions.

I sat down.

Ask anything you want.

Some time passed before she answered.

I don't even know where to begin.

I wanted to write her that we could talk later, that there was no need to hurry, that I understood.

In the end I wrote:

Then we'll start slowly.

She did not reply at once.

I put the device by the window and went out into the garden.

Naama was working in the passage room.

I found her standing on a low stool, trying to reach a connection fixed above her head.

"Can I help?" I asked.

"Hold this panel. It keeps slipping."

I held it with both hands while she tightened the screws.

"I want to talk to you about the passage to my world," I said.

"Did something happen?"

"No. I want to know if it can be used over a long period."

Naama came down from the stool.

"How often?"

"I don't know yet."

She wiped her hands on a cloth.

"The passage is stable for now. We can plan regular openings, but it requires maintenance. I can't promise it will be available at every moment."

"And if I want to stay there for a while?"

"You could. We would just need to coordinate the return."

I looked at the panels spread out on the table.

Once I saw in them gates to places I did not know.

Now I thought of them also as a way to reach my daughter.

"There is something else," I said.

Naama raised her head.

"I don't want all of this to depend only on you."

She studied me for a moment.

"You mean to learn to operate the passage?"

"Whatever can be learned."

A small smile appeared on her face.

"I thought you would never ask."

She cleared a space at the table and placed one of the diagrams before me.

"We will begin with the things that must not be done."

I sat down beside her.

At noon I passed by the pool.

The seventh stood barefoot on the narrow stone edge and tried to walk along it without falling into the water.

"You will fall," I said.

"I have already fallen twice."

"And still you keep going?"

"I want to get to the end."

He spread out his arms and advanced another step.

For a moment he swayed, then managed to steady himself.

"Did you see?"

"I saw."

He smiled and went on walking.

When he reached the end of the stone, he jumped onto the grass and raised his hands in a gesture of victory.

I laughed.

"Naama told me about a forest with very tall trees," he said. "I want to go there."

"When?"

"In a few days. She says the way is long."

"Take good shoes."

He looked at his bare feet.

"I already know how to tie them."

"True."

He ran to the path, and a moment later came back to take the shoes he had left by the bench.

I watched him move away.

I thought about the place where he had been imprisoned, about the fear of leaving it, and about the long road he had traveled until he could stand here, play at the water, and plan a trip.

I did not know if he would ever be able to speak with the six consciousnesses he had left behind without feeling the old pain.

But now he had days of his own.

In the evening I found Liara in the dining room.

The bandage on her arm was smaller. She managed to hold a cup in both hands, though she was still careful with her movements.

I sat down facing her.

"I asked Naama to teach me to operate the passage."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Are you planning to move to your world?"

"I want to be there more. But I don't want to leave this place."

Liara put down the cup.

"Then don't leave."

I looked at her.

"You say that as if it were simple."

"It isn't simple. But you already know how to pass between worlds. Perhaps the time has come to learn to live between them."

I smiled.

She looked at me for a moment.

"Do you think you will tell your daughter about me too?"

"I have already told her a little."

"What did you say?"

"That you are my closest friend."

Liara lowered her gaze to the cup.

"And what did she say?"

"That one day she might want to meet you."

She raised her eyes.

"Really?"

"Really."

Liara smiled.

We sat a while longer and I told her about the messages I had received.

When I got up to go, she asked me to help her lift the plate.

"This hand still doesn't do everything I want," she said.

I took the plate.

"It is improving."

"Too slowly for my taste."

"You sound like me."

"That is what worries me."

We both laughed.

In the following days I began writing to my daughter every morning.

Sometimes she answered at once.

Sometimes only in the evening.

On the third day she asked whether I ate, and whether there was ordinary food in the place where I was.

Yes. And even good bread, I wrote.

She replied:

At least one thing remained normal.

On the fourth day she asked about Liara.

On the fifth day she wrote that she still did not know whether she believed me.

I answered that I was willing to go on answering her questions, and also to help her check the things for herself.

On the sixth day she did not write at all.

I waited.

I wanted to send another message, to ask if everything was all right.

But I restrained myself.

The next morning a message appeared:

I was busy yesterday.

And after it:

There is no need to worry every time I don't answer.

I smiled.

Even before the journey she used to say such things to me.

I wrote:

I will try.

In those days life at the station went on.

Ayla went out into the garden every morning, and sometimes stayed there for hours. She still did not agree to meet Ora, and no one pressured her.

Mala gradually began returning to her work, though she needed help with some of the tasks she used to do alone.

Naama spent hours repairing the passages, and between one task and another taught me to recognize the signs on the panels.

Sometimes I made mistakes.

Once I closed a channel that was supposed to stay open, and Naama had to begin the check all over again.

"You are learning," she said when I apologized.

"I think you say that so I won't stop."

"Absolutely. I need another pair of hands."

I laughed and went back to the panel.

There were days when nothing unusual happened.

We ate together, worked, walked in the garden.

Liara recovered.

The seventh went out to the forest and came back full of stories about rain, about soft earth, and about the first night he slept beneath the open sky.

I listened to him and thought how little is sometimes needed to fill an entire day.

After two weeks my daughter asked that we meet again.

This time she suggested we walk in the grove.

When I read the message, I sat for a long time without moving.

She had chosen the place where my journey began.

I did not know whether she had done so deliberately.

I wrote that I would come.

We met by the old path.

She stood beneath an olive tree, holding a bottle of water.

When she saw me, she raised her hand in greeting.

I approached her.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi, my love."

She did not flinch at the words as she had flinched the time before.

But this time too we did not embrace.

We began to walk.

The path was narrow, and in some places we had to walk one behind the other.

She told me about her work, about a friend who had moved to another city, and about small things that had happened in the past week.

I listened.

Sometimes I asked a question.

Sometimes she stopped to show me something on her phone.

At one place we sat down on a flat stone.

"I still think about what you told me," she said.

"I know."

"I spoke with someone about the possibility that a person could change completely in body and still remain the same person."

"What did he say?"

"That it depends on what one means when one says 'the same person.'"

"And what do you think?"

She looked at me.

"I think I cannot decide by your face."

I was silent.

"But not by a few things you know about me either."

"True."

She picked a dry leaf from the ground and turned it between her fingers.

"I need to see who you are over time."

"That is fair."

She nodded.

We sat in silence.

A light wind passed among the trees.

After a while she asked:

"Are you really happy there?"

I thought of the station, of Liara, of Naama, and of the seventh.

Of the places I had seen.

Of the things I still did not understand.

"There are days when I am," I said. "And there are days when it is hard for me."

She looked at me.

"I thought eternal life was supposed to solve that."

I smiled.

"I too once thought it would solve many things."

"And it doesn't?"

"It gives time. But you still have to live it."

She looked at the path before us.

"I am not sure I would want to live forever."

"You don't have to decide."

"And if I had the possibility?"

I looked at her.

"I would want you to think about it carefully."

"Would you recommend it to me?"

I fell silent.

It was a question I did not want to answer hastily.

"I would tell you about the beautiful things and about the hard things too," I said at last. "And then I would listen to what you want."

She nodded.

"That sounds more like my mother."

I looked at her.

She did not smile.

But she did not look away either.

We went on walking until we reached the place where I had sat years ago, on the evening I spoke with the bird.

The stone was still there.

The tree too.

I sat down.

My daughter remained standing a moment, then sat down beside me.

"Is this where it happened?" she asked.

"This is where it all began."

She looked around.

"It looks like a completely ordinary place."

"It really was an ordinary place."

A light wind passed among the branches.

A small bird landed on a low branch, hopped a little, and looked at us.

I smiled.

"What?" my daughter asked.

"I once spoke with a bird here."

She looked at me.

"You talk with birds?"

"Sometimes."

"Do they answer you?"

"Not always."

She laughed.

It was a short, surprised laugh.

But real.

I laughed too.

For a moment we sat there as we once sat in other places, when she would tell me something amusing and I would add a remark that made her laugh even more.

And then we fell silent.

Not because it became sad.

We simply ran out of things to say at that moment.

The sun began to go down.

My daughter stood up and shook some dust from her trousers.

"I need to go back."

I rose after her.

We walked together to the start of the path.

By her car she stopped.

"Will you come back here?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Whenever you want to meet."

She looked at me.

"I don't want us to have to arrange something big every time."

"Neither do I."

"Maybe next time we will simply have coffee."

I smiled.

"Gladly."

She opened the car door, then stopped.

"Wait."

I turned to her.

She came one step closer.

She stood before me.

I saw the hesitation in her eyes.

And then she reached out her hand and held mine.

Only for a moment.

I felt the warmth of her fingers.

She let go of me.

"We will talk," she said.

"We will talk."

She got into the car and drove away.

I remained standing until she disappeared beyond the bend.

I went back to the stone.

The sun was already touching the edge of the horizon.

I sat down in the place where I had sat before the journey.

The bird was still on the tree.

Or perhaps it was another bird.

I could not know.

"I came back," I said quietly.

It tilted its head.

I smiled.

Once I sat here and asked questions I did not dare ask aloud near other people.

I wondered what lay beyond the world I knew, whether existence had a limit, whether a person could understand the place he occupies in the universe.

I did not expect an answer.

Certainly I did not expect the questions to lead me so far.

I picked up a small stone from the ground and held it in my palm.

It was warm from the sun.

I turned it between my fingers, examined the fine lines on its surface, and then put it back.

I remained sitting until the light began to fade.

I thought about the way back to the station.

Liara was surely already waiting to hear how the meeting had gone.

Naama had asked me to come early tomorrow so we could go on learning the passage system.

The seventh had promised to show me a smooth stone he had found in the forest, which he said looked as if someone had drawn a river on it.

And my daughter had said that perhaps we would have coffee next time.

I smiled to myself.

I did not know when the next time would be.

But she was already speaking of it.

The wind strengthened a little.

The bird on the branch spread its wings, flew to another tree, and disappeared among the leaves.

I looked at the place where it had stood.

Years ago, when I first sat here, I was a woman who thought about time passing and running out.

I counted years, seasons, birthdays.

I wanted to manage more.

To see more.

To understand more.

Now years I did not know how to count stood before me.

I could go on to worlds I had not seen, learn languages I had not heard, meet beings whose lives are longer than mine.

The thought still stirred curiosity in me.

But that evening I did not want to be anywhere else.

I took the small device out of my pocket.

On the screen a new message from my daughter appeared.

I had a nice time today.

I read it twice.

And then another message arrived.

And write to me when you arrive.

I looked at the words.

After everything that had happened, after the distance, the years, and the face that had changed, she still wanted to know that I had arrived safely.

I wrote:

I will write, my love.

I put the device in my pocket and rose from the stone.

The sun set behind the trees, and the last light remained on the path.

I knew the passage was still a little way off, and that I would have to hurry if I wanted to arrive before dark.

I began to walk.

After a few steps I stopped and looked back.

The tree stood in its place.

The stone lay beneath it.

Nothing remained to testify to what had taken place here, except the woman who stood on the path.

I walked on.

For years I asked the universe to reveal to me the secret of eternity.

Now, when eternity lay before me, I no longer hurried anywhere.

End of Chapter Forty-Eight

---

FOLLOW ORORGANI    Website · Blog · YouTube · Instagram · Facebook · Threads · Medium · Substack