The Journey to Eternity — Chapter Sixteen: Two Women, One Life

Chapter Sixteen 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: Two Women, One Life

"Why did you leave me here?"

The voice was mine.

Not only in its sound. I recognized the way it broke slightly at the end of a sentence, the short breath that preceded the words, and the expression that appeared on my face when I tried to hide fear.

But it was not I who had spoken.

The woman lying beneath the Tree of Eternity looked at me with open eyes. She tried to rise, but her arms trembled, and her body remained leaning against the great root.

I came closer to her.

"I did not know you were here."

She closed her eyes for a moment, as if my voice hurt her.

"I know."

Her reply surprised me.

"You know?"

She opened her eyes again.

"I felt you moving away. I tried to call you, but I had no voice."

Liara stood behind me, silent.

The woman raised her hand and looked at it. She opened and closed her fingers, as if trying to remember how they were used.

"How much time has passed?" she asked.

I did not know what to answer.

Since I had bitten into the fruit I had moved between worlds, met ancient consciousnesses, seen stars being born, and been exposed to memories that may have preceded my human life. But here, beside the tree, there was no sun to help me understand how much time had elapsed.

"I do not know exactly."

She looked around.

"Then why do you look as if you know so much?"

There was no accusation in her voice.

Only tiredness.

For the first time I noticed the earth clinging to her cheek, her dry lips, and the small movement of her throat as she tried to swallow.

She was thirsty.

That thought shook me more than anything else.

I no longer needed water, but my body still did.

Liara approached carefully.

"We need to bring her water."

The woman looked at her.

"Who are you?"

"Liara. I am her friend."

She turned her gaze to me.

"Your friend?"

There was an almost childlike puzzlement in the question.

"We met after I parted from the body," I explained.

The woman gazed at me for a long time.

"So you really went on."

I did not understand at once what she meant.

"Went on to where?"

"Living."

The word remained between us.

I thought of all the times I had tried to explain to myself that eternal life was not an ordinary continuation of life. Now I understood that this distinction mattered to her as well.

She did not see me as someone who had died.

She saw me as someone who had left.

Liara moved away to look for water, and I remained facing the woman.

"What do you remember?" I asked.

She passed her fingers over the earth.

"The fruit. Its taste. After that there was a strong light, and I felt myself being pulled in two directions."

She stopped to breathe.

"Part of me wanted to go after the light. Another part was afraid."

"And then?"

"I heard you saying that you were ready."

I remembered that moment.

My choice.

The desire to free myself from the body, from time, and from death.

"And you were not ready?"

She shook her head.

"I did not know there was anything I had to agree to."

I looked at her.

For the first time I understood that what I had experienced as a personal decision may have been a more complex event.

If we both carried the same memories up to the moment of the bite, which of us had chosen?

And if only one had chosen, how was the second one created?

Liara returned with a small vessel of clear water.

The woman reached out her hands, but they trembled so much that the vessel almost slipped.

Liara sat down beside her and held it for her.

I saw the water touch my lips.

My throat move as she swallowed.

She closed her eyes in relief.

I felt a sharp physical longing.

Not only for the taste of the water, but for the very possibility of needing it.

She drank again, more slowly.

Then she leaned against the root and looked at me.

"You do not feel it, do you?"

"Feel what?"

"The water."

"No."

She smiled a sad smile.

"Then you lost something."

I wanted to tell her that I had gained far more. That I could move between worlds, know consciousnesses, and see things no living person could see.

But I did not say it.

Because at that moment, watching her hold the vessel of water in both hands, I was not sure the word gained suited what had happened to me.

She asked to get up.

Liara supported her, and the woman rose carefully. Her legs did not bear her at once. She leaned on the root, waited, and then tried again.

I knew this body.

I knew how it was supposed to move.

But her movement was slow, unsure.

"I feel as if I have slept for years," she said.

She managed to stand.

For a moment we both smiled.

Then something strange happened.

She raised her right hand to brush the hair from her face.

At that same moment I, too, felt a desire to raise my hand.

Not a conscious decision.

A familiar urge, as if the movement still belonged to me.

My transparent hand rose together with hers.

The woman noticed it.

We both froze.

She lowered her hand.

Mine came down as well.

I tried to stop the next movement.

She raised her hand again.

This time I managed to remain motionless.

She looked at me in fear.

"Are you controlling me?"

"No. At least, I did not try to."

Liara stepped between us.

"Perhaps a connection remains between you from the time when you were one."

The woman stepped back.

"I do not want someone else moving my body."

The sentence was spoken in a quiet voice, but there was a clear boundary in it.

I felt a need to apologize.

"I will not do it again."

She looked at me.

"Can you promise that?"

I did not answer at once.

I did not know if I could.

And that was perhaps the first time silence was the most honest answer I could give her.

We moved a little away from the tree.

Between its roots ran a small stream, and the woman sat down beside it. She dipped her fingers in the water and looked at the ripples that formed around them.

I sat down facing her, although I did not need rest.

"What do you remember from our life?" I asked.

She raised her head.

"Everything."

"The children too?"

She looked at me as if I had asked a strange question.

"Of course."

I felt something contract inside me.

"What do you remember about them?"

She smiled.

"The small things. How they sound when they call me from another room. Their smell when they were babies. The way each of them hugs differently."

She fell silent.

"And you?"

"I do too."

She looked at the water.

"So now they have two mothers?"

The question struck me with a force I had not expected.

Not because I had not thought of it before.

But because until that moment I had tried to relate to this woman as a riddle to be solved.

Now she reminded me that there are people in the world who love us.

People who did not ask to take part in the experiment of the Tree of Eternity.

People who are still living in time.

"I do not know," I said.

She passed her hand through the water.

"I want to go back to them."

I looked at her.

"You do not know if it is possible."

"Then we will check."

She said it simply.

As if it were a matter of a long road that had to be found, not a boundary between worlds.

"And what if a great deal of time has passed there?" I asked.

She lowered her gaze.

"Then I will have to face what I find."

I was silent.

She carried my memories, my loves, and my fears.

But already there was a difference between us.

I wanted to understand eternity.

She wanted to go back home.

"What is your name?" I suddenly asked.

She looked at me in puzzlement.

"You know my name."

"I know what my name was."

She understood.

For a moment I saw pain on her face.

"Do you want me to choose another name?"

"No. I am trying to understand how we will speak to each other."

She thought a little.

"I do not want to give up my name."

"You do not have to."

"But you do not want to give up yours either."

I nodded.

We were both silent.

Then she said:

"Perhaps for now we will not need to call each other by name."

I smiled.

So did she.

It was a small smile, but for the first time since she opened her eyes I felt that we were not only two versions competing over a shared past.

We were two women trying to understand what had happened to them.

The light around the tree changed.

The golden leaves moved although no wind blew.

Liara raised her head.

"Someone is approaching."

From between the roots appeared a tall figure, dressed in a dark robe.

I recognized the Keeper of the Tree.

He was the first who had told me about the fruit and about the possibility of freeing myself from bodily needs.

When he saw the woman sitting beside the water, he stopped.

For the first time since I had met him, surprise appeared on his face.

"She has awakened," he said.

I rose.

"Did you know this could happen?"

He did not answer at once.

"I knew the body might go on existing. I did not know that an independent consciousness would appear in it."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He looked at me.

"Because I did not think that was what would happen."

I felt anger.

"You told me the fruit would free me from the body."

"And it did free you."

"But you did not tell me what would happen to the body I left behind."

The Keeper lowered his head slightly.

"I should have told you that I do not know."

His answer surprised me.

It did not cancel my anger, but it kept it from becoming something simple.

The woman rose from the ground.

"Do you know how to return me to my world?"

The Keeper looked at her.

"There is a passage to the human world, but I do not know whether your body can cross it as it is."

"Then show me the passage."

He gazed at her for a long time.

"Before that, I need to understand what is keeping you alive."

She recoiled.

"Do you mean to examine me?"

"Only if you agree."

She looked at me.

For a moment I thought she was asking me to decide.

But then she turned to him.

"What exactly do you want to do?"

I felt a strange pride.

She did not give up her right to ask.

The Keeper asked her to place her palm on one of the tree's roots.

She hesitated, and finally agreed.

When her fingers touched the root, thin lines of light appeared beneath its skin.

The Keeper studied them intently.

The light moved from the root to her palm, but did not penetrate it.

For a moment it seemed as if two different systems were trying to recognize each other.

Then the root darkened.

The Keeper removed his hand.

"Interesting," he said.

I did not like that word.

"What did you discover?" I asked.

"Her body is not sustained by the tree's power alone. There is independent activity in it."

The woman looked at her palm.

"I am alive."

"Yes."

"Then why do you speak of me as if I were an object left behind?"

The Keeper was silent.

Liara gave him a sharp look.

And I felt shame.

Because I had done that too.

I had spoken of my body, of what remained, of what had awakened inside it.

But the woman stood before us, breathing, fearing, asking, and choosing.

She was not an object.

She was someone.

The Keeper suggested that we move her to a protected place until we understood how she could be returned to the human world.

The woman refused to move away from the tree before she knew whether there was a way back.

"I do not want to be stuck here," she said.

I looked at her.

She had used a word I myself would have used.

Stuck.

She did not see this place as paradise.

She saw it as a foreign place.

"I will stay with you," I said.

She turned to me.

"You do not have to."

"I want to."

She looked at me.

"And if you discover that you can return to the body?"

The question surprised me.

"I do not know if that is possible."

"And if it is?"

I looked into her eyes.

I could not lie.

Part of me wanted to feel the world through the body again.

The cold water.

The sun on my skin.

The embrace of a beloved person.

But another part did not want to give up the new freedom I had discovered.

"I do not know what I will choose," I said.

She nodded.

"Then we are not so different."

Toward the end of that span of time, if it can be called that, I moved a little away from the tree.

Liara stayed with the woman, and the Keeper went out to check the ancient passage.

I stood beside the stream and looked at the reflection that was not mine.

The water flowed over small stones.

It knew nothing of consciousnesses, of memories, or of eternal life.

It simply moved.

I thought about the woman.

She remembered my life.

But already she had experiences that were not mine.

She felt the water.

I did not.

She feared the possibility of remaining in this place.

I feared the possibility of returning.

If we went on existing separately, our memories would drift away from each other.

In a few years, perhaps we would not be alike at all.

Then a new question rose in me.

If two consciousnesses can be created out of one life, could something similar have happened in my distant past as well?

Could Eliya's contradictory memories and mine be not evidence of different incarnations, but of an ancient separation?

I remembered the room with the two windows.

The silver leaf.

The third shadow.

And the words I had heard in the library:

If you remember everything, you will become one again.

Perhaps that was not a warning against memory itself.

Perhaps there was a way there to return separate consciousnesses to a state in which they could no longer tell each other apart.

That thought frightened me.

Not because I did not want to remember.

But because now I understood what the price might be.

When I returned to the tree, I found the woman sitting beside Liara.

They were talking quietly.

Liara smiled.

I did not hear the conversation, but I saw that the woman was calmer.

I came closer.

"What were you talking about?" I asked.

The woman looked at me.

"About your world."

"Ours," I corrected gently.

She smiled.

"Yes. Ours."

Liara rose.

"I am going to check whether the Keeper has returned."

We remained, the two of us.

The woman looked at me for a while.

"I thought of something," she said.

I sat down facing her.

"If we really are two, perhaps we do not need to decide which of us is the original."

I felt relief.

"I thought so too."

"But there is one thing I want you to promise me."

"What?"

She held out her hand.

I could not touch her.

But I drew near until my transparent palm was opposite her palm.

"If you discover how I was created, do not try to undo what happened."

I looked at her.

"What do you mean?"

"I do not want to disappear just because someone decides I was a mistake."

Her words sank deep into me.

I thought of the consciousnesses that had tried to unite in the past, of the attempt to abolish loneliness by abolishing boundaries.

I thought of everyone who had tried to return a thing to its former state without asking what would happen to the one who had already changed.

"I promise," I said.

She looked at me.

"Even if you discover that you can get the body back?"

I felt the weight of the promise.

I had no way of knowing what I would do in the future.

But I knew what I did not want to do now.

"I will not try to erase you in order to regain something I lost."

She closed her eyes.

For a moment I thought she was about to cry.

Then she said:

"Thank you."

The Keeper returned a short time later.

His face was grave.

"I found the passage," he said.

The woman rose at once.

"Can I go back?"

"Perhaps. But there is a problem."

He looked at me.

"The passage does not identify her as one consciousness."

I did not understand.

"What does it identify?"

"Two sequences of memory originating in the same body."

The woman came closer.

"And what does that mean?"

The Keeper paused.

"That if you try to cross as you are now, the passage may try to unite the two sequences."

I felt fear.

"Meaning — us."

He nodded.

The woman stepped back.

"I do not want to be united with her."

"I do not want such a thing forced on us either," I said.

The Keeper looked at us.

"There is another way, but it requires access to records older than those kept in the city."

"Where are they?" I asked.

"In the place where the first separations were documented."

He looked up at the upper branches.

"The library holds only what the consciousnesses agreed to hand over. There, the things that were not meant to be remembered were kept as well."

I remembered Nema's words.

The three testimonies.

The name that had been erased.

"How do we get there?"

The Keeper was silent for a while.

"Through a passage that has not opened since the great unification attempt."

The woman looked at me.

I saw fear in her eyes, but also resolve.

"I want to go," she said.

I looked at her.

"You do not know what is there."

"You did not know what was beyond the tree when you bit into the fruit, either."

I could not argue.

She was right.

She rose and approached the great root.

"I do not want to live forever in a place I do not belong to. I want to know if I have a way back home."

I looked at her.

Suddenly I understood that the next journey would not be mine alone.

Until now I had been the one who chose where to go.

Now beside me stood a woman who carried my memories but wanted a different future.

And if I truly wanted to honor her separateness, I had to listen even when her choice did not suit mine.

The Keeper led us to a side of the tree I had not seen before.

There, between two enormous roots, was a narrow opening.

There was no light in it.

No movement could be heard from it.

But on the stone above it a small sign had been carved.

A silver leaf.

A thin line crossing it in two.

I came closer.

The sign was identical to the one I had seen in the dream and in the library.

The woman stood beside me.

She looked at it, and her face paled.

"I know this," she whispered.

I turned to her.

"Did you also dream of the leaf?"

She shook her head.

"No."

"Then from where?"

She placed her hand on the stone.

For a moment a faint light moved beneath her fingers.

"I saw it when I awakened," she said. "Before I opened my eyes."

I felt something inside me stop.

"What did you see?"

She looked at me.

"A room with two windows."

I said nothing.

"There was a woman there," she continued. "She stood facing a dark window and held a silver leaf."

"Who was the woman?"

She lowered her gaze.

"I thought it was you."

I felt a chill.

"And why do you no longer think so?"

She raised her eyes.

"Because now, when I look at you, I understand that that woman did not look like you."

I waited.

"She looked like me."

I looked at her face.

The same face I had known all my life.

The same eyes.

The same voice.

But suddenly I felt that I was standing before someone who held a part of the story that had never been mine.

The Keeper approached the opening.

The stone beneath the sign began to move.

A cold wind came out of the darkness.

The woman drew near to me.

"I think I was there," she said.

"Before we were born?"

She nodded.

"And I think I did not come out of there together with you."

The opening widened.

Inside it a deep voice was heard, very old.

Two consciousnesses from the same source.

The woman gripped the root to steady herself.

The voice continued:

One remembers the way out.

For a moment silence reigned.

Then the last sentence arrived.

"And the second remembers why it must never be opened."

I looked at the woman standing beside me.

She returned a frightened look.

And for the first time I understood that perhaps I was not the only one who had left her behind.

She too may have carried within her a memory that someone had tried to keep away from me.

And perhaps the whole road I had traveled to eternity was not only a journey toward something new.

Perhaps it was also a way back to a place from which I had once tried to flee.

End of Chapter Sixteen

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