~ 1 ~

I have always wondered why they picked Tel Aviv.

Even then, back before the real problems started up again, it was not a place that you would think a person would chose to abduct someone. Or, as Kari would say, to steal someone. All things considered, stealing someone inside Israel doesn't make very much sense.

But I'm beginning this search into my own past precisely because we do things that don't make sense. And as Kari pointed that very first day, 'the absurdity of the story will ensure that the authorities, should you report it to them, will dismiss it completely'. Or something like that. It's hard sometimes to capture the nuance of his rather formal English.

Maybe he picked there and then because I was so far from home. Even as an absurdly independent and self-sufficient (or so I was certain at the time) young woman of just a few weeks shy of my 18th birthday, being so far from your family and friends and usual world can bring a powerful sense of isolation. I had only been there a couple weeks, no time at all to start to feel comfortable in a place that was so different from any place I had been before. Perhaps he knew that the strangeness of location that I was already dealing with would be a good setting for the strange story that he wanted to tell me.

Maybe he knew that if I did believe him it would be that much easier to get me to the forest from there.

Possibly, and most likely, that's just where I happened to be when he found me. Or when Jess found me. Or whichever of them it was.

I've never bothered to ask Jade. I doubt he'd know. That's not the type of thing he cares much about. He'd give Kari a hard time about hauling his ass to the Middle-East on short notice and about the how much crazier the logistics would be in such a volatile place, but he wouldn't ask, ' Why there?' Or 'Why then?'

Ultimately, it doesn't matter. I was there at that time, and that was the time that Kari decided we needed to talk.

The memory is still so clear. I had woken very early - as I'd been doing ever since arriving at the hostel where I was staying - and had gone for a long run along the beach. I started and ended my run at the same places I had on each of the previous days. A pattern. I'd know better now.

After my run I cut through the middle of an apartment block, cooling down on the way over to the Levinsky Market. On my second day there, I'd found a place that sold a good selection of fruit along with their excellent selection of spices and had been going there each day since.

I bought a couple bananas and oranges for my breakfast, the usual, and left the market by its quiet east side. The sun was just cresting the horizon. There was enough light to see by, but not enough to pull much color from the brick and stone all around. Everything was that light grey-blue, the same color as twilight in a city. Quiet and still; not even the sound of the surf fairly close behind me.

I clearly remember thinking how completely alone I was on that street, how I felt safer here, in that solitude, than I had often felt in Atlanta or even Cambridge. I remember, too, that as I stepped from the street onto the sidewalk of that last block a cat broke the stillness, crossing my path and darting into the narrow alley next to a cobbler's shop. It was a tabby cat, missing half its tail.

I was in the middle of that block as the white van came up even with me. A couple other vans had passed me that morning; bread trucks, flowers, the usual early morning traffic - so this one didn't make me think twice. As I've said elsewhere, I can't be sure whether the white van had pulled far enough ahead for me to notice the open side door. Even if it had, and even if I did, I did not react.

At that exact moment the pain exploded in my gut, and Jade pushed me into the van.

~ 2 ~

I’ve always assumed that there was no one else in the van’s driver’s compartment with Kari. If there was they never said anything. I only know Kari was up there because he called back at one point asking if everything was okay. Whenever I think back to that day I always imagine Kari driving the van, but that’s an assumption on my part.

There’s no question, though, that it was Jade with me in the gutted passenger compartment. He had come up silently behind me; whether on foot for some distance or slipping from the van just behind me, I can’t be sure. All things considered, I think he must have been on foot for a while. I know now, first hand, that silence like that is possible.

I still think it was more shocking - more disorienting - to realize that a person was right next to me where it was ‘impossible’ for someone to be. It was that haunted house shock, one that literally makes you jump and gasp. That threw me off balance much more than the punch to my solar plexus. But it was the punch that doubled me over, and it was my own jack-knifing momentum that he directed into the van.

By the time my gasping had subsided enough that I could have screamed for help the van’s panel door was closed, my hands and ankles were cable tied, and, in the faint light of the passenger bay (the only windows were the small ones in the rear doors and they were tinted almost opaque), Jade had smile his completely sincere and very happy smile and said, “Sorry about that.” - the overall effect was so odd that the scream stopped somewhere in my chest.

His tone was completely conversational, exactly as if he had just accidentally jostled me while getting on an elevator. “You okay?” he said. “A shot like that can feel like getting kicked by a horse if it lands right. But I guess that’s the point, huh?”

And he chuckled. Not like some sort of half-wit, though, just even more like a polite guy in an elevator. “You’ll be fine in a second. If you’re not already. Would you like to sit up? Lean back against the side of the van? Sorry about the lack of seats. Makes it easier, you know.”

That was about as much as I could take. My breath was back and the pain had faded out, so I went with the first thing that came to me, “Easier to do what?! Fucking kidnap people?!” And I went with it loud.

He looked down at me with that look, the one I’ve mentioned before, the one where he truly wonders about your sanity, and he said, “Well, yes, obviously.” He thought for a second and then added, “You’re perfectly safe. No one is going to hurt you…”

“What about my goddamn stomach!”

“As I said I’m sorry about that. Just to distract you. Won’t happen again. Seriously.”

Not “I promise”. Not “I swear”. Just “seriously”. That’s about as solemn as it gets with him, and I’ve come to realize over the years that when he says that he means “I swear” more than anyone else I’ve ever met.

“Friend of mine just wants to talk with you,” he said.

“What about! Who are you! Who are you with!” I was still yelling these outbursts. It felt good.

“You really should sit up. That can’t be comfortable.” He leaned over, taking a multi-tool from his belt, and clipped the plastic band from around my wrists. He picked up the little piece of plastic and put it in the cargo pocket on his left thigh. I considered launching myself at his throat or eyes. I was no martial artist then, but my dad had sent me to a couple of basic self defense classes and I knew enough to go for the important targets.

But I didn’t do anything.

I still don’t know for certain why I didn’t, but obviously, in some strange place in my mind, I believed him. I accepted the possibility that something odd was going on but that I wasn’t in danger. And in some other place in my mind, maybe not so strange, I knew without a doubt that any attempt to hurt him would be futile. So I simply sat up and leaned against the side of the van.

“My name’s Jade,” he said as he took a new cable tie from his belt (just a formality, he said), “as for your other two questions, you really don’t want to hear that from me.”

~ 3 ~

Time doesn't mean much, when you're tied up in the back of a van. It seemed like we drove for about an hour. It could have been much shorter than that, but it probably wasn't a lot longer. Jade didn't try to make too much more conversation (probably figured that I would keep screaming), but he did snip my hands free once more and offer me a two liter bottle of water from a black bag in the rear of the van. I wouldn't take it at first, but he tossed it at my head and I caught it. I drank about half of it and threw it back.

He fumbled it and it flew back and landed on his pack. He laughed at that and said, "Geez, it's been a long 5 days." Then he tied my hands back up.

When we arrived at the house I heard the garage door close, then I heard Kari get out of the van. Jade clipped the tie around my ankles and helped me out and up the stairs. The garage was completely bare. And grey. The stairs up from the garage opened directly into the room. It was just one big space, about 40 by 40, like a loft. Nothing in it but a white table and two white, wooden chairs.

Kari was in the process of pushing the table away from the wall; not centered, still closer to the East-facing windows. He stopped as we came into the room and looked at me, and smiled one of the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen. Beautiful because it was sincere and happy, but also beautiful because he is. He slid one of the chairs around the table as Jade took the multi-tool off his belt and clipped the cable-tie around my wrist. He - Jade - told me to have a seat. I just stood there while he closed the door, then he sat down on the floor next to it, back against the wall, feet folded up under him in that odd way he does sometimes. He closed his eyes, but I could tell he was still paying attention.

"Please," Kari said, his voice not at all what I expected; not deep, but the kind of voice that fills a room, that carries even in a whisper. "do take a seat."

"Please," I said, as conversationally as I could, "do go pound sand up your ass." It was something my father said occasionally. I didn't know what it meant, and I still don't, but it was the only thing that came to me, and I remember thinking even at the time that it didn't work.

I was still scared, but they were both so...I don’t even know what they were...that I was also simply pissed off - but I didn't know what to do. There was nothing to do, I suppose.

Kari laughed that laugh, then, and sat himself down and spread his hands on the table. I stood there and stared at him while he stared back. I turned and looked at Jade, who appeared to be asleep. I'll never know why, but I pulled the chair a good three feet away from the table and sat down.

Then he told me his story.

No - I always forget this part - first he told me that he was going to tell me a story. A story that would ultimately have something to do with me, but that would at times seem far-fetched and even ridiculous. And by ridiculous, he said, he meant very ridiculous.

He also said that I was free to go at any time. That if I was not the kind of person who could deal with this situation, or who would care to try to deal with it, then they would be happy to take me back. "I fully expect that you you will go to the authorities," he said, "but, in the light of the unique nature of this situation, I am confident that they will laugh you on your way."

Sounded pretty good to me. So I stood up and walked to the door. I fully intended to walk out, and walk back to my hotel if I had to, and I really didn't care if he was lying about letting me go. No one made a move to stop me, though, so I kept going.

But when my hand touched the doorknob I couldn't turn it. I think because it was real. Real and solid; cool brass with a big dent right on the top. It, the door knob, was so real, but there I was, barely an hour after these two had snatched me off the street, and now they were saying I could just go. It was all completely crazy.

And I couldn't leave.

Because of that one comment; maybe I wasn't the kind of person who could deal with it. At the bottom of everything, these strange people had made me feel that there was something wrong with me if I walked out. Everything I was at that time in my life was based on the premise that I could handle anything. Graduating young from high school. Scrapping my way into a scholarship to a good art college. Traveling all around God knows where because I was tough and smart and because my parents, far from not caring about me or wanting me out of their hair, truly believed in me. Had complete faith in the fact that they had raised me to be able to handle just about anything.

None of it made sense. That was the point. That was why they stole me in that way, to mess with my reality, to prime the pump for dealing with the even weirder stuff that followed. I didn’t understand their method then, but it worked just the same.

So I turned around and walked back to the chair and sat down. Then he told me his story.

"Long ago," he started, "beyond the edge of history, there lived a tribe of people in the far north of what is now considered Europe. They were fair and beautiful, lithe and full of joy, with amber-colored eyes and voices like song. They were of the forest and they..."

"Hold on," I said, louder than I intended, "you can't seriously be about to tell me a fairy tale?"

I could tell that Jade was trying not to laugh, back there behind me, but he clearly wasn't trying all that hard.

~ 4 ~

“...With amber-colored eyes and voices like song. They were of the forest and they were not human. They were not human in the exact way that a wolf is not a dog."

That is not how Kari told it. As far as I know, Kari has never spoken that particular line when he slips into the preamble of this, his fundamental story. And honestly, I don’t think Kari believes that. At least not in that way.

No, the first time I heard that telling of the story was soon after the first time I met Feyn. That one line defines him. It justifies everything that he is and does, in his own mind, at least.

Everything changed, that first day in the white room with Kari and Jade. I heard the whole tale. I asked my questions and made my arguments. I protested and I almost walked out. Twice. But in the end I stayed.

It’s easy now, with the years that have past and the things that I have learned, to rationalize that first day as a textbook case of cult indoctrination; the shock, the violence and pain of my abduction, the disorienting movement to an unknown location, the disconcerting friendliness of my captors, and, ultimately, the semi-fantastic frame story with the pseudo-scientific foundation. Knowing what I know now, I could almost make the case that by the time they were done with the whole show it would have been odd if I had not gone with them.

But that justification would be a lie, and the whole purpose of this is to look honestly and deep into everything that has happened.

In the end I just wanted to believe him. I wanted to be special. I wanted to be different in a way that brought with it a unique imperative, that gave my life an entirely new meaning.

Isn’t that what everyone wants?

There was one thing, though, that made it possible for me to believe this thing that I wanted to believe, to truly accept that I had become involved in something that was beyond what I could argue against or find explanations for. In the course of telling me his story Kari told me something about myself that was impossible for him to know. I’m not using that word lightly now, just as I didn’t discount the meaning of it then. I had never, ever told another person. I had never written it down or even drawn a picture of my experience of it.

It was impossible, but, even so, Kari knew about The Sorrow.

~ 5 ~

The Sorrow is what I called it, up until that point, anyway. For most of my life that was the only word I had for it. We all had our own words, before we met Kari. Jade says that he still usually thinks of it simply as The Fit.

It is my very first memory. Me as a five-year-old little girl, playing alone in the back yard of our house outside Charlotte, North Carolina. The soft murmur of the leaves above me and the too-blue of the sky above that. A September day (it is the only one whose exact date I don't know) sitting in the grass, and the grass is soft and yielding as it is in the long shadow of Summer. My mom always called days like that ‘sweater weather’, when the breeze brought the chill down from the Smoky Mountains, and I had one on, bright red with yellow cuffs.

It is no easier to describe that first time than any of the others. There are the tears, of course, which are so much a part of the strangeness and which cannot in any way be controlled. They don't come on fast, but when they do come they are real and hard and there is nothing you can do about them. The tears, though, are just the physical part. The part that you can see.

The thing that is so shocking is how suddenly it hits you. How literally 'out of the blue' it comes. Always a perfect day, a day when everything is just right, and it is the incongruity of it, more than anything else. It's not as if you have spent the whole day sliding into a personal darkness over your boyfriend or your life or even the generally sad and scary state of the world (if you happen to believe that). That would make perfect sense and the tears, when they came, would be an expected and welcome release. No, the first punch is how out of place it seems at the time.

But the bright and shining sadness itself is the second punch, and it just knocks you on your ass. It feels like the loss of every single thing you have ever loved and, at the same time, the crystal memory - sweet and beautiful - of everything that made you love it in the first place. But worse, it is the pure understanding that even the things you haven't lost yet are only going to last for so long.

By the time I was ten I knew that something strange was going on. Enough years had come and gone for me to see the pattern. Although I had never mentioned it to anyone, I had kept my ears open and I knew by then that either none of the other kids felt this thing or it was something that absolutely no one mentioned. Ever.

By fourteen I was pretty sure that it wasn’t a little kid thing that I was going to outgrow. Veiled sleep-over talks with quite a few friends had made me almost certain that no on else in the whole world had ever felt The Sorrow, as I had started thinking of it by then.

By around seventeen I had accepted the mystery of it and had more-or-less come to terms with dealing once a year with another of my life’s small anomalies. But right around then is when I got dropped into the biggest anomaly of all.

The funny thing is that this ‘thing’ on that one day of the year is just about the only time that I ever felt anything like real sorrow. Or sadness. For all my seriousness and independence and devotion to my art (and science) I was never a gloomy or moody girl. I knew plenty of people like that, some of my friends, an older uncle, a couple of my teachers; people who just tended toward sadness as their default state. But I never felt that dark weight. And I still don’t.

As far as I can tell - and this may be another of the common oddities that I think we all puzzle over occasionally - we are all that way. Jade and Jess and, believe it or not, even Feyn (in his own way); fundamentally content. Happy. (I think I would stop short of joyous, though, especially in the case of Feyn.) Even with everything that has happened over the past several days, I am still not swamped in sadness. Or sorrow. Confusion, maybe; but that’s what this is for.

So, the thing that tipped the scale that day, the thing that I was able to grab hold of and hang on to while so many other things kept saying ‘get away from here as fast as you can’ was the simple fact that he knew. And that he was able to give it a name.

Autumn.

~ 6 ~

If it weren't for that one thing, the strangeness of it and it's consistency and the fact that he knows everything about it down to the color of the sky; if not for that, I know the rest of it would not have been enough.

The left-handed thing made no impression at the time. As a matter of fact, I'm not entirely sure he even mentioned it that day. I noticed it. I had noticed that both he and Jade were left-handed – I always noticed things like that, even then – but that, on its own, wasn't anything. I'd had a small study group in my junior year where six of the eight people in the group were lefties. Big coincidence, but that kind of thing happens sometimes. It wasn't until later, after I had met Feyn and Jess and the others that I have met in person, that I realized that we ALL are. Odd, sure, but no kind of proof.

This one's sketchy anyway, though, because from what I can tell we are all very comfortable with our off hands. I've seen Jade do that thing he does with his credit cards when he is bored, the one that always reminds me of David Bowie in Labyrinth, equally well with either hand. I do things like that sometimes, often without even thinking about it. Maybe we're all just very ambidextrous – but I guess that wouldn't be any less odd.

More interesting, but still no kind of proof, is our eyes. Like I said, I've always noticed little details. I’d noticed Jade’s eyes right off, from the time he leaned over and said, “Sorry.” Light brown. Golden. But again, lots of people have eyes the same color as mine.

You cannot not notice Kari’s eyes, and probably least of all for their color. You hear people described as having sparkling eyes - and yes that’s just an expression - but if anyone comes close, he does. So much life. So much joy. Even when he is being deadly serious, even in light of everything that has happened (assuming that everything is true). Sparkling and golden; like the color of mine and Jade’s, but more so.

Maybe I gave it a thought before he started with the story, but it was like nailing your funny-bone when he got to the line about ‘amber-colored eyes’, because that was the very first thing that tied everyone in the room together; the thing that linked us all to whatever craziness he was about to say. The craziness that had the cadence and tone of a fairy tale.

I don’t think I had ever used the words ‘amber-colored’ to describe my, or anyone else’s, eyes, but like so many words that Kari uses, once I heard them I knew that was just what they are. And that something about them brought me into that story.

It’s stranger than simply being left-handed, I guess, but still within the realm of what we currently know about genetics. Both my parents have brown eyes, much darker than mine, but that happens. Jade’s dad has bright blue eyes, but his mother’s are hazel, so nothing too crazy there.

I think I’ll see what I can find out about the others. Maybe I’ll get lucky and both of Jess’s parents will have brilliant sapphire eyes (although that would be more likely to raise questions of fidelity than to bring me closer to any conclusions about my own situation). I’d ask Feyn, but he would just shake his head and walk away.

~ 7 ~

Feyn.

He’s walked into this a couple times now and, as is so often the case with him, he walks right back out again. No indication that he’s coming and no tracks once he’s gone.

It’s like trying to hit him, this attempt to pin him down in words. I try to get ahold of him, to grab him and get some meaning from him, but he just slips away. He moves one inch to the left, but somehow, through his own peculiar brand of magic, he ends up 60 feet away. Completely out of reach.

That is figurative, of course. There is probably no magic involved, but the effect is no less beguiling. Even now, as I sit here and try my damnedest to get something about him written down, to try to glean something of myself in him, I run up against that wall. The one image that keeps looping through my head is of me, on my back, gasping for breath because all the air has been knocked from my lungs when I hit the ground hard (and wrong), yet again. He flows through the rest of the movement, the technique that caused me to be on my back again, and as his body completes the perfection I see the disappointment in his eyes. Mingled with just a touch of distain.

Over and over again, in real life and in my memory.

No hand extended to help me up (as Jade would do), no explanation or illustration of the form (which is common with Kari), just stillness and silence and calm (with that flicker of contempt) as I pick myself up and brush myself off. It’s infuriating, and I’m honest enough with myself to admit that most of my anger is directed at me.

Even within the framework of what we do, what we are all able to do, he is special. He is the most like Kari in so many ways; his looks, the way he moves, the way he fights. All the physical aspects. And I think it is because of that, the fact that he is so close to being what Kari is, that Feyn hates, all the more passionately, the parts of himself that remind him that he is NOT what Kari is. The human parts. The parts that, even if he is very lucky and lives to a natural end, will die all too soon. The parts that are, as he would say, more dog than wolf.

No family. No real friends. Something like acceptance (with that touch of distain) for us; for me and Jade and the rest, because we are almost like him. Close enough. But for the rest, for everyone else who is not one of us, he has no use at all. Actually, it is much worse than that.

His entire world - even more so than Kari, I think - is the Forest and the hunt and the fighting.

In that last, the fighting, I see that he and Jade have something in common. But where I am starting to understand that Jade revels in it to feel alive, to be in that eternal moment as much as he possible can, Feyn just wants to dominate. To prove to himself that whatever he is truly is better than everything he faces.

Whereas I just want to be able to keep myself alive through all this. I know there will be another envelope eventually and, for better or worse, I know what I’m going to do when it comes.

I need to start pushing myself like I used to. I need to call Jade, like I said I would.

Tomorrow.

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