Free Derive by Jamie Magee

I whispered into her ear.
    “I felt it. When I was in the water. I felt how cold it was.”
    My arms clenched around her as I remembered the vile evil I’d had to fight to reach her at dawn today. That seemed like a lifetime ago. She shuddered in my embrace. I knew then that I had to ensure that she was strong. That she knew how to defend herself.
    “Can you see into the waters?” Her stare rose from the emerald sea and gazed forward. When she took in a sharp breath, I knew that she was seeing visions. If I needed any more proof that we were made from the same soul, she just gave me that. It was not an easy task to see something that was not entirely corporeal, that was moving as fast as the life on that side.
    “It’s not all cold. There is bliss there. It lingers on lovers’ lips, in music, in sunsets, slow rains, in the laughter of children. You have to see the logic of the evil before you can understand it, before you can choose not to fear it, to worry for your safety.”
    Her hands braced my arms as if she were afraid she would fall in. I didn ’t want her to feel that way, so I wrapped my energy around her and moved her to the balcony of my quarters. When she noticed the move, she jolted back.
    “I ’ve got you,” I said with a smile as I breathed across her neck.
    “I moved like that before, but not the same. Just before I found you earlier, and just now.”
    “Seneca told me it was a porthole.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “A path you create from one point to another. It takes more energy than moving with vim, and the paths never perish; they are now hallways.”
    She glanced over her shoulder through the glass of the balcony to the door of my quarters. “Then there is a hallway from your room to Seneca ’s, and one from your grandfather’s study to the shore.”
    I smirked. “I doubt Seneca will ever use the one you made, but I ’m sure Tarek will enjoy a simpler way to reach us if he needs to.”
    “It was just a thought, though. I just wanted to see you. I knew everyone was worried and that you had been gone for so long.”
    My stare drank her in. “I think your soul is calling on powers that you had in those visions.”
    “What happened? What were the alarms for?” she asked.
    “Someone jumped; two, actually. They left for the other side without warning.”
    “How bad is that?” she asked, reading the wretchedness in my eyes.
    “I’m not sure,” I said, glancing to the guitars on the shore. “We are doing all we can to find them, to find a safe way to bring them back.”
    “Coming back is dangerous, too?”
    “Mostly more confusing than dangerous, but we don’t know what they meditated on, how long they intended to stay, so it’s hard to judge when they should return. We always know when to pull except for now. We are just trying to find a way not to destroy what they are,” I said as my eyes moved to those spinning circles of ice.
    “They have to focus on what they want? Is that what you do? I don ’t understand the instruments.”
    “Honestly, I don ’t either. Something that light and moveable should not have been able to anchor them. It is a focus. The passage over there is a spiritual journey. You have to feel with all that you are that you must go.”
    I didn ’t need her attention on this. I knew what you focused on, you brought to you—power of attraction.
    “I ’m going to change, then I want to show you this palace,” I said as I guided her inside.
    I took my time leading her through the halls of the palace. I don ’t think I had ever really walked them at all, at least I had never really noticed them. I always had my gaze toward the nearest window, toward The Fall.
    The artwork on these walls was created by those that had traveled to the dark reality in the past. They showed the troubled times and the positive ones. They captured emotions, images of families and souls. We stopped at each one, and I told her the stories I did know of them; others we simply