The Journey to Eternity · A serialized book by Nurit Rozenblat
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Chapter Nineteen — The Place Where Loneliness Ends
When we left the human world, I still carried within me the voice of the child who had called me from the room.
It was not a distant memory. It was so close that for a moment it seemed to me that if I turned my thought backward, I would hear it again.
Liara moved beside me in silence.
The space around us changed gradually. The air, the earth and the familiar skies dissolved, and in their place appeared layers of dim light. I did not feel that we were moving away from the house. I felt that we were stepping out of the way I used to understand distance.
"Do you think Echada can reach them?" I asked.
Liara looked at me.
"Reach whom?"
"My family."
She did not answer at once.
"We have no reason to think she is especially interested in them."
"But if she can reach any consciousness that asks to belong, what prevents her from reaching human beings too?"
"Probably the same boundaries that prevent most consciousnesses from reaching them. The body, time, and the fact that human beings are not connected to the ancient system."
"Probably?"
"I do not want to promise you something I do not know."
We continued moving.
I thought of the woman who had returned to my home. Of the way she stood before my children and tried to find words that would explain her absence. She carried my memories, but from now on she would have to create her life herself.
There was relief in me that they had not been left alone.
But also a new fear: that the very connection that remained between us would make her vulnerable because of my choices.
"I do not want my journey to reach her," I said.
"Then we will have to learn how to protect the connection without severing it."
"Can such a thing be done?"
Liara smiled faintly.
"That is what we have been trying to learn since you met us."
Sahar waited for us at the place where three enormous branches of the Tree of Eternity met.
He sat on a stone step, his back leaning against a wide trunk. As we approached, he rose slowly and passed his hand over his face.
He looked more tired than I remembered.
"Did you find the passage?" Liara asked.
"I found one of them."
He pointed beyond the branches.
In the distance a dark area could be seen, almost formless. It did not have the gentle light I knew from the city, nor the deep darkness of the space where the disconnected consciousnesses were imprisoned.
It looked quiet.
Too quiet.
"Where does it lead?" I asked.
"To a place once called the Valley of Consent."
"A beautiful name," I said.
Sahar did not smile.
"Once they thought so."
He began to walk, and we moved after him.
"The people of that place believed there was no need to fight loneliness," he told us. "One only had to give up what separates consciousnesses. At first they opened spaces where thoughts could be shared willingly. Later they learned to share feelings. After that they began to share whole memories."
"And that was connected to Echada?"
"She was among the first to understand how to widen the connection."
"Did she invent it?"
"No."
Sahar stopped.
"And that is part of what troubles me. Echada did not create the desire to unite. She gave it form. The desire existed long before her."
I looked at the dark space.
I understood what he meant.
In the human world too I had known that desire.
The desire that someone would understand us without our having to explain.
That he would know what hurts us.
That he would not misinterpret our words.
That he would not leave.
There was in that desire a natural yearning for closeness.
There was nothing bad in it.
But now I was about to discover what happens when that yearning becomes stronger than the desire to remain a separate person.
The passage opened onto a wide valley.
For the first time since I left the human world, I found myself in a place that looked almost like an ordinary land.
It had low hills, trees with blue leaves and a narrow stream that wound between pale stones. The skies had no sun, yet the light was even and soft.
In the distance houses could be seen.
Not towers and not structures made of light.
Simple houses, with low roofs and open windows.
The valley looked peaceful.
"Is this the place?" I asked.
Sahar nodded.
"Do not let the sight deceive you."
"What is here?"
"Consciousnesses that chose to live together within a shared connection."
I looked at the houses.
"Are they still separate?"
"Some of them."
We began to descend the path.
As we drew closer, I noticed figures moving between the houses.
They looked human.
One of them carried a basket.
Another sat on the steps of a house, reading from an object shaped like a book.
Two figures stood by the stream and talked.
Everything looked ordinary.
But as we came near them, I felt something strange.
Their conversation did not sound like a conversation.
One began a sentence, and the other completed it.
Sometimes they spoke at the same moment, at the same pace, as if both knew in advance what the other would say.
They noticed us.
The two figures turned together.
"Welcome," they said.
The same words.
The same tone.
I felt uneasy.
"Hello," I answered.
One of them smiled.
"You are new here."
The second continued:
"But not strangers."
I looked at Liara.
She kept a calm expression.
"We are looking for whoever is in charge of this place," Sahar said.
The two figures looked at each other.
And then they smiled.
"There is no one in charge here."
"We are all in charge."
They said the two sentences one after the other.
And then they turned and went back to their conversation.
We walked between the houses.
Along the path small gardens could be seen. Some were tended, others looked as if no one had touched them for a long time.
In one of the gardens an older man sat on a bench.
He looked at us with curiosity.
Unlike the others, he did not smile at once.
"You are not connected," he said.
Sahar stopped.
"No."
The man nodded.
"It shows."
I came closer to him.
"How?"
"You look at things before you know what the others think of them."
He pointed to a tree that grew beside the bench.
"Look at it."
I looked.
The tree was low, with a twisted trunk and small white flowers.
"What do you see?"
"A tree. Flowers. Branches leaning to one side."
He smiled.
"I see the tree my wife loved."
He lowered his gaze.
"When I joined the connection, I could pass my memories of her to others. They saw her, heard her, felt what I felt when she was beside me."
He was silent.
"At first it was wonderful."
I sat down facing him.
"And what happened afterward?"
"I began to hear my memories from the mouths of others. They told me things about her. Sometimes things I had forgotten. Sometimes things that never happened."
I remembered Mira and her son, whom she had recreated in the kitchen.
"How did you know what was real?"
"I did not always know."
He looked at the tree.
"One day one of the consciousnesses said she missed my wife. Not because she had known her, but because she carried my memories."
He was silent for a long time.
"I understood that she truly missed her. And still I was angry."
"Why?"
"Because that longing was the last thing I felt was only mine."
I looked at him.
There was something very human in that anger.
Not a desire to control another person, but the need to keep an inner place that no one could enter without permission.
"Why are you still here?" I asked.
He smiled sadly.
"Because I still love the people who live in the valley. And also because I do not know how many of my memories remained mine."
As we rose to continue on our way, the man called me.
"Are you looking for Echada?"
I turned around.
"Yes."
He looked at me for a while.
"Then do not ask her why she wants to unite everyone."
"Why not?"
"Because she will give you an answer you can agree with."
I came closer to him.
"What should I ask instead?"
He looked at the tree beside him.
"Ask her what happens to someone who wants to leave."
We continued walking.
The houses grew denser.
At the center of the valley was a round plaza, and at its center a shallow pool.
Around it sat dozens of figures.
Some had closed their eyes.
Others gazed at the water.
No conversation was heard.
But I felt a strong movement of thoughts.
It was not directed at me.
It was a shared movement, like the breathing of a great creature.
"What are they doing?" I whispered.
"Sharing an experience," Liara replied.
"Which experience?"
"I do not know. They did not open it to us."
I came a little closer.
For a moment I heard laughter.
Not the laughter of one person.
Laughter that began somewhere and continued among dozens of consciousnesses.
After it came a wave of joy.
I felt it at the edges of my consciousness.
It was pleasant.
Warm.
Almost familiar.
For a moment I wanted to come closer still.
I had no need to know why they were happy.
Only to be part of the joy.
And then I remembered the words of the man by the tree.
What happens to someone who wants to leave?
I stopped.
The feeling receded.
Liara looked at me.
"Did you feel that?"
I nodded.
"Yes."
"That is what draws many consciousnesses here. Not a promise of power. Not knowledge. Simply the possibility of feeling together."
I looked at the figures around the pool.
I did not want to judge them.
If they had lived for thousands of years, if they had lost those they loved, if they carried hard memories without a body that would let them cry or fall asleep — perhaps this connection gave them real relief.
But I still wanted to know whether they could get up and leave.
At the edge of the plaza stood a small house whose door was open.
Sahar led us to it.
Inside sat a woman with short white hair. She looked relatively young, but her eyes carried an ancient expression.
When we entered, she raised her head.
"Sahar."
He stopped.
"It has been a long time, Tamira."
She smiled.
"You are still carrying that body."
"Yes."
"You look tired."
"I am tired."
She looked at me and at Liara.
"And these?"
"Friends."
She examined us quietly.
"One of you opened the connection to the disconnected."
I felt tension.
"How do you know?"
"We heard them."
I came closer.
"You can hear them from here?"
"Some of them. Their voices reached us a short while ago."
"And what did you do?"
Tamira lowered her gaze.
"Some of us tried to answer."
"And did you succeed?"
"Yes."
I felt relief.
But she did not smile.
"And then something happened that we did not expect."
"What?"
"They began to ask to join us."
I looked at her.
"Why is that a problem?"
"Because not all of them understand what it means to join."
She rose and went to the window.
"Among them are consciousnesses that were disconnected for so long that they almost no longer remember what it means to be separate. They hear us together and believe this is the end of loneliness."
"And perhaps it really will help them," I said.
Tamira turned to me.
"Perhaps. But if they enter the connection before they learn to keep their boundaries, they might lose even the little separateness that remains to them."
I looked at Sahar.
He nodded quietly.
"That is why we came."
Tamira led us to another room.
It was almost empty.
At its center stood a single chair.
On the wall opposite it appeared small points of light.
"This is the place where we listen to the voices that arrive from the disconnected space," she said.
I came closer.
I heard a faint voice.
Is there someone there?
I recognized it at once.
It was the voice I had first heard from within Sahar's object.
I felt joy.
"I know her."
Tamira looked at me.
"She was the first who managed to reach us."
The voice was heard again.
I am not alone now.
More points of light appeared on the wall.
I am here too.
We hear.
There are more.
I listened.
The voices were not identical.
Each of them carried a different feeling.
Fear.
Curiosity.
Cautious joy.
But gradually a shared rhythm began to appear among them.
The words grew similar.
The pauses of silence grew shorter.
And then one sentence was heard from several voices together.
We want to be closer.
I felt the pull awaken again.
This time, stronger.
Not because someone was trying to enter into me.
But because I wanted to help.
I thought of the voices that had been isolated for so very long.
Who was I to tell them to stay at a distance?
But I also remembered the woman who had returned to my home.
Her fear of disappearing.
The promise I had given her.
I approached the wall.
"I hear you," I said.
The voices fell silent.
"We want to come to you," one voice was heard.
"I know."
"Can you open for us?"
I looked at Tamira.
She did not intervene.
"I can help you find a way to speak with one another," I replied. "But I do not yet know how to bring you here without endangering you."
Silence fell.
And then another voice was heard.
"We are not afraid."
I thought about that.
"That may be. But I still do not know whether you understand what might happen."
The first voice returned.
"We understand that we are alone."
The words struck me.
There was no accusation in them.
Only a fact.
After we left the room, I sat by the window.
Tamira brought a small vessel with a dark drink.
She placed it before Sahar.
He drank slowly.
"You look troubled," she said to me.
"I do not know what is right to do."
She sat down facing me.
"That is a better state than being too sure."
I looked at her.
"Do you believe it is possible to live in a connection without losing ourselves?"
"Yes. I have lived this way for a long time."
"And can you leave?"
She was silent.
I remembered the words of the man by the tree.
Tamira looked at the cup in Sahar's hand.
"I can move away from the connection. I do that sometimes."
"But leave entirely?"
She breathed deeply.
"I have not tried."
"Why?"
"Because I love those who are here."
"And if you wanted to?"
She looked at me.
"I do not know."
The answer was honest.
But it did not calm me.
Sahar rose.
"We need to speak with Echada."
Tamira shook her head.
"She does not appear before everyone who asks."
"She has already spoken with us."
Tamira looked at him.
"When?"
We told her about the ancient system, about the red point and about the voice we had heard.
As we went on, her face grew more serious.
"She did not used to intervene directly in the guard systems," she said.
"What changed?" I asked.
Tamira moved closer to the window.
"Perhaps the voices from the disconnected space."
"Why are they important to her?"
"Because there are many of them."
She turned to us.
"Many more than you thought."
I felt tension.
"How many?"
"We do not know. But the connection that was opened reached places that had been closed for ages."
She paused.
"And if all those consciousnesses choose to join a shared connection, Echada will be able to widen it beyond anything that existed in the past."
I thought of the voices.
Of their loneliness.
Of their desire to be close.
Suddenly I understood how easy it would be to offer them something they do not know how to examine.
Tamira led us to the center of the valley.
The plaza was fuller than it had been before.
Hundreds of figures stood around the pool.
Some held hands.
Others stood at a distance, their eyes closed.
The air was full of a feeling of expectation.
As we approached, silence fell.
Not an ordinary silence.
A silence that seemed to pass among everyone at once.
And then a voice was heard.
"Welcome."
It came from all directions.
I could not determine who had spoken.
"Echada?" I asked.
"That is what they call me here."
The voice was feminine, deep and quiet.
There was no threat in it.
"Why did you want us to come?"
"I did not ask you to come. You chose to arrive."
I looked around.
"But you watched us."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you did something we did not manage to do in the past."
I felt Liara move closer to me.
"What?"
"You created a deep connection without giving up separateness."
I fell silent.
I had not expected to hear appreciation from her.
"So you agree that it is possible to be close without uniting?"
"Of course."
The response surprised me.
"Then why do you want to unite everyone?"
The voice was heard again.
"I do not want to unite everyone."
I looked at Sahar.
He looked surprised too.
"I want to allow every consciousness to choose how far it is willing to come close to the others."
"But your connection might erase boundaries."
"True. And therefore we need to learn how to keep them."
For a moment I felt the conversation was going to a place I had not expected.
Echada did not sound like a being seeking to rule.
She sounded like someone who recognized the danger and was trying to solve it.
And that made everything more complicated.
"I have a question," I said.
"Ask."
"What happens to someone who wants to leave?"
The silence in the plaza changed.
Not dramatically.
But I felt a slight movement among the consciousnesses.
As if the question had touched a place they did not usually speak of.
Echada answered after a short while.
"Whoever wants to leave is permitted to leave."
"Even if part of his memories are already shared with others?"
"Memories are not property."
"I did not ask to whom they belong. I asked whether he can leave."
Silence fell.
And then the voice was heard.
"He can move away."
"But can he disconnect?"
This time there was no immediate answer.
I looked around.
Some of the figures opened their eyes.
One of them looked at me with a strange expression.
Not angry.
Frightened.
Echada finally answered.
"A complete disconnection might harm a consciousness that has already changed following the connection."
"So she is not free to leave."
"She is free to choose the degree of her closeness."
"But not to go back to being as she was."
"No one can go back to being exactly as he was before he met someone else."
The words were true.
And that was what troubled me.
Echada used a simple truth to answer a different question.
In human life too, a bond changes us.
But change is not necessarily the loss of the possibility to move away.
"There is a difference," I said, "between a memory of a bond and a state in which the thoughts of others keep reaching me even when I do not want them to."
The voice was silent.
This time I felt that she was listening.
Out of the crowd a young woman came forward.
She looked about thirty, with long black hair and light eyes.
She approached us carefully.
"I want to answer," she said.
Echada's voice was not heard.
The woman looked at me.
"I have lived here a long time. The connection saved me."
I nodded.
"I believe you."
"Before I came here I was alone for a very long time. I had no body, no place, and no one who knew I existed."
She paused.
"When I joined, I felt for the first time that someone truly knew what I had been through."
I looked at her.
"And are you happy here?"
"Most of the time."
"Can you be alone when you want to?"
She hesitated.
"I can move away."
"And what happens when you move away?"
She lowered her gaze.
"Sometimes I still hear them."
"Even when you do not want to?"
She nodded.
"But it is not always bad."
"I understand."
She raised her eyes.
"I do not want you to think we are prisoners."
"I do not think all of you are prisoners."
She seemed a little calmer.
"I only want to know whether someone who wants to be alone can do so without losing what he received here."
The woman was silent.
And then she said:
"I do not know."
Echada spoke again.
"You are asking for a freedom that is not affected by the bonds a person chooses to create."
"No," I replied. "I am asking that he have the possibility to say that he no longer wants to share his thoughts."
"Even if it pains others?"
"Yes."
Silence fell.
I felt the attention of the consciousnesses around me.
"Even if the others love him?" Echada asked.
"Yes."
"Even if without him they will feel loneliness again?"
I looked at the figures standing around the pool.
I thought of my children.
Of the woman who had returned home.
Of how love does not grant me ownership of the one I love.
"Yes," I said again.
"Why?"
This time I did not hurry to answer.
I thought of all the years in which I had tried to understand people close to me.
Of the times I wanted them to think as I did, to understand me, to see things as I see them.
But if they had always done so, would I have truly known them?
Or only met myself again and again?
"Because if someone cannot leave," I said, "his staying also stops being a choice."
The voice did not answer.
The pool at the center of the plaza began to change.
The surface of the water became completely smooth.
Within it a figure appeared.
A woman.
She did not look ancient.
There was no aura of power or impossible beauty about her.
Her face was ordinary, almost tired.
Her hair was dark, her eyes brown, and on her cheeks fine lines could be seen.
She stood within the reflection and looked at me.
"I am Echada," she said.
The voice now came from one place.
I approached the pool.
"You look human."
"This is a form I remember."
"Did you once have a body?"
"Not in the world you came from. But I knew a body. I knew hunger, pain, weariness and love."
She lowered her gaze.
"And I knew loss."
I sat down by the edge of the pool.
"Whom did you lose?"
She was silent for a long time.
"Someone I did not manage to reach in time."
I looked at her.
"What happened to her?"
"She remained alone in a place where there was no one to hear her."
I remembered the little girl.
Is there someone there?
Echada continued.
"After I lost her, I could not bear the thought that there are more consciousnesses calling for help and no one hears."
"And so you wanted to connect them all."
"I wanted there to be no more place where someone could remain unheard."
I looked at the reflection.
For the first time I felt compassion for her.
I did not agree with the way she acted.
But I understood the pain from which it was born.
"Who was the woman you lost?" I asked.
Echada looked at me.
"My sister."
Silence fell.
"We were very close. We could feel each other even when we were far apart."
She smiled a small smile.
"We thought that would always be enough."
"And what happened?"
"There was a passage that opened only for a short time. She entered to help others get out. The passage closed before she returned."
I felt the story drawing close to something familiar.
"She was among the disconnected consciousnesses?"
Echada nodded.
"Yes."
"Is she still there?"
The reflection changed slightly.
"I do not know."
"But the connection is open now."
"True."
I understood.
"You want to find her."
Echada looked at me.
"I want to find all those who remained there."
I did not know whether to believe her completely.
Perhaps both things were true.
Perhaps the desire to save many and the longing for one person had become mixed in her until she could no longer separate them.
I knew that feeling.
I too wanted to understand creation.
But when I returned to my home, I understood that part of my journey sprang from the fear of losing the people I loved.
"I want to help you find her," I said.
Liara looked at me.
Sahar stayed silent.
Echada raised her eyes.
"Truly?"
"Yes. But not through a forced unification."
She smiled sadly.
"You still think I want to force it."
"I think you are willing to risk the loss of boundaries in order to prevent loneliness."
She did not deny it.
"And you?" she asked.
"I am willing to risk loneliness in order to preserve the possibility of being separate."
We looked at each other.
For a moment I felt that we stood on two sides of the same question.
Not one good and one evil.
We were both afraid of loss.
But each of us feared a different loss.
Echada raised her hand out of the reflection.
The surface of the water changed.
Thousands of points of light appeared in it.
Some moved together.
Others remained at a distance.
"These are the consciousnesses the new connection has reached," she said.
I looked at the points.
There were many more than I had seen before.
"How many of them are asking to join you?"
"Many."
"And how many understand what it means?"
She was silent.
"I do not know," she finally replied.
That was the first time I heard her admit it.
"So before we open the way for them," I said, "we need to find a way to let them choose out of understanding."
Echada looked at me.
"And how will you do that?"
I thought of Adara.
Of the woman who had returned home.
Of the connection we had created among three consciousnesses without losing ourselves.
"We will show them that it is possible to be in connection even without uniting."
Echada was silent.
And then she said:
"I am willing to see."
I had not expected her agreement.
For a moment I thought that perhaps everything would be simpler than I had feared.
But then I heard a voice from the crowd.
"No."
I turned around.
The older man I had met by the tree stood at the edge of the plaza.
He looked agitated.
"Do not believe her."
Echada did not answer.
The man approached.
"She says she wants to allow choice, but there are things she has not told you."
I felt tension.
"What things?" I asked.
He looked at the reflection in the pool.
"Tell them about those who asked to disconnect."
Echada lowered her gaze.
"This is not the place."
"This is exactly the place."
The man turned to me.
"Long ago there were consciousnesses here that asked to leave the connection. Not only to move away. To disconnect completely."
"And what happened to them?"
He closed his eyes.
"Some of them succeeded."
I waited.
"And the others?"
He opened his eyes.
"The others could not hold themselves after the disconnection."
I felt cold.
"What does that mean?"
"They lost part of their memories. Some could no longer recognize themselves. Others remained in a state in which they could not reconnect, but could not return to independent existence either."
I remembered the disconnected consciousnesses.
The lonely voices.
I looked at Echada.
"Are they in the dark space?"
She did not answer at once.
"Some of them," she finally said.
I felt the meaning.
"That is to say, some of the consciousnesses we are trying to save are consciousnesses that tried to leave your connection."
Echada nodded.
"Yes."
The plaza fell silent.
I looked at the figures standing around us.
Some looked confused.
Others lowered their gazes.
I did not know how many of them knew the story.
"Why did you not tell me?" I asked.
Echada looked at me.
"Because I thought you would see it as proof that the connection itself is evil."
"It is not proof that it is evil. It is proof that there is danger in it."
She was silent.
"And if we want to allow choice," I continued, "we must also tell of the danger."
Echada looked at the older man.
"He is right," she said.
The man looked surprised.
So did I.
She continued:
"For a long time I was afraid that if I told all the consciousnesses what happened, they would move away from the connection."
"And perhaps some of them really will move away," I said.
"Yes."
"And are you prepared for that?"
She did not answer at once.
The surface of the water trembled slightly.
Finally she said:
"I do not know."
I looked at her.
That was a more honest answer than all the promises I had heard from her before.
We stood for a long time in the plaza.
There was no decision.
No new passage opened.
No union was created.
But something changed.
The consciousnesses began to speak.
Not in one voice.
In different voices.
One asked whether it was possible to stay in a partial connection.
Another asked to know what happened to those who tried to leave.
Another consciousness said she did not want to hear the thoughts of others any more during her rest.
Another said she was actually afraid of the possibility of remaining alone.
The voices did not agree.
Sometimes they argued.
Sometimes they fell silent.
But for the first time since I entered the valley, I did not feel I was standing before a community that thought as one body.
I felt I was standing before people.
Each of them carried a different fear.
A different desire.
A different memory.
Liara came close to me.
"Do you see?" she whispered.
I nodded.
"They are beginning to listen to themselves."
When we left the plaza, Echada asked to speak with me alone.
Liara and Sahar remained at a distance.
The reflection in the pool became clearer.
Echada looked at me.
"I want to show you something."
"What?"
"A memory I have not shared with anyone."
I felt suspicion.
"Why with me?"
"Because you are the first who asked me what happens to someone who wants to leave, without saying that my desire for closeness is wrong."
I looked at her.
"I do not want to enter your memory."
"You do not need to. I can show it to you from outside."
I hesitated.
And then I nodded.
The surface of the water changed.
I saw a dark space.
Within it moved a small figure of light.
She tried to reach a distant opening.
Behind her another figure appeared.
The two moved toward each other.
For a moment they almost touched.
And then the opening closed.
The first figure remained in the darkness.
The second remained beyond the opening.
I heard a voice.
"I will come back to you."
I felt a shiver.
The voice was familiar.
Not Echada's voice.
Not Adara's voice.
A voice I had heard in the past, within the memory from before birth.
The figure that had remained beyond the opening raised her hand.
In her hand was a silver leaf.
A thin line crossed it in two.
The vision disappeared.
I looked at Echada.
"Who was the figure that remained outside?"
She lowered her gaze.
"That was me."
"And who remained inside?"
She was silent.
I felt the question was more important than I had understood.
"Echada?"
She raised her eyes.
"My sister."
"What was her name?"
She looked at me for a long time.
And then she said:
"Adara."
I felt as if the space around me had stopped.
"That is impossible."
Echada did not answer.
"Adara told me she stayed in order to guard the separation between three consciousnesses."
"That is true."
"But you say she was your sister and that she remained in the disconnected space."
"That is true too."
I looked at her.
"How can both things be true?"
Echada gazed at the water.
"Because the memory you know does not begin at the beginning of the story."
I felt fear.
"What happened before?"
She paused.
"Before we tried to unite consciousnesses, we tried to save those who were already disconnected. Adara was the first to enter their space of her own will."
"And did she return?"
"Yes. But not all of her."
I looked at her.
Echada continued:
"She returned with memories that were not hers. With voices that did not stop calling her. With parts of other consciousnesses that could not free themselves from her."
I remembered what Adara had told me.
About the shared memories she carried.
About the decision to stay so the others could leave.
"And then you tried to create the Great Unification in order to help her."
Echada nodded.
"I thought that if we could divide what she carried among many consciousnesses, no one would have to carry it alone."
She closed her eyes.
"But I did not understand that the thing we were dividing was not only pain. It was also part of the way every consciousness knows it exists."
I looked at her.
For the first time I saw the connection between the two sisters.
One wanted to save those who remained alone.
The second wanted to save her sister from the burden she carried.
And both of them, out of a desire to ease suffering, opened a process that left more consciousnesses disconnected.
"Does Adara know you are here?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Does she know you are still looking for a way to unite consciousnesses?"
"Yes."
"Then why did she not tell me you are her sister?"
Echada looked at me.
"You will have to ask her."
I did not like the answer.
But I understood that she was right.
I had no right to receive from Echada an explanation of Adara's choice without hearing her too.
"There is something more," Echada said.
I looked at her.
"What?"
"Adara did not stay only because she wanted to protect the separation."
I felt tension.
"Then why?"
Echada looked at the water.
"Because she was afraid of what would happen if she left."
"What would happen?"
She raised her eyes.
"The voices she carried within her would begin to look for another place."
I thought of the dark space.
Of the voices.
Of the connection that had opened.
"And now?"
Echada was silent.
And then she said:
"Now they have already found a way out."
I felt a shiver.
"Through whom?"
Echada looked at me.
There was no need for her to say anything.
I understood.
I returned to Liara and Sahar.
They saw at once that something had changed in me.
"What happened?" Liara asked.
I looked at her.
"We need to go back to Adara."
"Why?"
"Because there are things she did not tell us."
Sahar looked toward the pool.
"Did Echada tell you something?"
I nodded.
"Yes."
He did not ask me to elaborate.
We began to walk back to the passage.
The valley was quieter now.
Not a quiet of agreement.
A quiet of thought.
Between the houses I saw consciousnesses standing facing one another and talking.
One of them was crying.
Another laid a hand on her shoulder.
I did not know whether they shared the same pain.
But I saw that they chose to stay beside one another.
Before we left the valley, I stopped by the tree where the older man sat.
He was still there.
He raised his head when he saw me.
"Did you speak with her?" he asked.
"Yes."
"And did you ask what happens to someone who wants to leave?"
"Yes."
He nodded.
"Good."
I came closer to him.
"I want to ask you something more."
"Ask."
"If you could leave the connection without losing yourself, would you do it?"
He looked at the tree.
For a long time he did not answer.
Finally he said:
"I think I would go out for a while."
"And why would you return?"
He smiled sadly.
"To know that I return because I want to."
I looked at him.
There was in that answer a simplicity I had not found in all the explanations I had heard about the structure of consciousness.
He did not ask to live alone forever.
He asked to know that the door was open.
When we left the valley, I thought of Adara.
Of the years in which she carried within her the voices of others.
Of her decision to be forgotten.
Of how perhaps she too no longer knows which of the memories within her belong to her.
I thought of Echada.
Of a sister who lost the one she loved, and tried to abolish loneliness itself so she would not have to experience loss again.
I did not want to justify her actions.
But I also did not want to turn her into an enemy just because she feared the thing I feared too.
The difference between us was not that one of us loved more.
It was in the way we understood the meaning of love.
Echada wanted to abolish the distance.
I was beginning to understand that the distance is also what allows us to draw close.
The passage to the city opened before us.
Before we entered, I felt a faint voice.
It came from the connection that had opened to the disconnected space.
Do you still hear us?
I stopped.
"Yes," I answered.
We want to come.
I looked at Liara.
She noticed that I had stopped, but did not intervene.
"I know. We are looking for a safe way."
Silence fell.
And then another voice was heard.
There is someone among us who knows you.
I felt tension.
"Who?"
She says she remembers you from the time before the body.
I remembered the room with the two windows.
The silver leaf.
The memories I did not know to whom they belonged.
"What does she say?"
The voice delayed.
And then an answer was heard.
She says you were not one of the three.
I felt as if something within me had stopped.
"Then who was I?"
A long silence fell.
Finally a very faint voice was heard.
A voice I had not heard before.
It was quiet, almost broken.
You were the one who stood by the door.
I tried to concentrate.
"Which door?"
The door that closed on us.
I felt the words spreading within me.
"What did I do there?"
The voice answered:
You were supposed to open it.
I waited.
And then the last sentence arrived.
"But when you heard what would happen to those who came out, you chose to leave us inside."
The connection weakened.
I remained standing before the passage.
Liara approached.
"What did you hear?"
I looked at her.
Throughout my whole journey I had thought I was trying to repair something that was done long ago.
Now a harder possibility arose in me.
Perhaps I was not only the one who tried to save.
Perhaps I was also the one who decided that others should remain imprisoned so they would not be harmed.
I did not know whether the voice spoke the truth.
I did not know whether the memory belonged to me.
But for the first time I was afraid to discover not only what was done to me before I was born.
I was afraid to discover what I did to others.
I stood at the entrance to the city, and for the first time since the journey began, I did not want to hurry to the answer.
I wanted to be sure that if I found it, I would not use it to justify myself.
Because perhaps that was the greatest danger in eternal life.
Not that we will forget what we did.
But that we will live so long that we will learn to tell ourselves every deed in a way that allows us to go on carrying it.
End of Chapter Nineteen
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