Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
“Insane?”
He knows what I’m thinking? He can read my mind? This is like the abusive relationship from hell.
Josep chuckles. “I’m not reading your thoughts, Little Baby. I’m part of them. I’m part of you. I’m inside you. Both as the Darkness and as the Seed.” His hand, I realize, is caressing my stomach.
This is when I remember what happened earlier and what he said. We’re expecting a Dark Baby, Little Baby.
Immediately, my heart begins to thump inside my chest and I start sucking in air in short frenzied gasps.
“Shhhh,” he says, petting my head as he continues to caress my stomach. “Don’t panic. I’m going to show you what this all means and how beautiful it is. And then we’re going to drink, and fuck, and sleep, and grow old together.” He laughs again. “Well, we won’t grow old. Ever. We will be the same pretty demons we are right now in a thousand years. Because you are the Dark Mother, Echo.”
When he says my real name, something inside me changes. Some little part of me—the part that was dying—starts to come alive again.
“Echo.” He repeats my name right into my ear, causing another inexplicable shiver of delight. “You’re my Dark Queen, Echo. You’re my Dark Mother. But first and foremost, you’re my Little Baby. My one and only. Forever and ever. For all infinite eternity.”
Despite the fact that I know better—that I understand what this thing is and what it has done to me—I relax and begin to feel… safe. I guess.
I must be drugged. Because the one thing I am not is safe. Not with him.
“I understand your misgivings, Little Baby. I am quite a spectacular creature, after all. But look around. Look at what we’re a part of.”
I let out a sigh and refocus on the roots all around me as they glow the gentlest of purples.
“Are you looking?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you think?”
“It’s… pretty?”
“It is. I really like being in the earth. It’s so soothing, isn’t it?”
I want to deny this, but I can’t. He’s right. The glowing roots are soothing. It’s something out of a fantasy. Like a fairy realm in a movie.
“Do you know what they do?”
“The roots?” I ask.
“Yes. The roots.”
“Well… they… feed the tree? I’m really not a science geek, OK? I dropped out in eleventh grade. I failed biology, so—”
Josep’s laugh is loud and it startles me into silence. “No. Forget about the trees. These roots aren’t part of the trees. Well, they are, in a sense. But these are the roots of time, Little Baby. And for us, they are a highway to go places.”
“What? What are you talking about?” I’m so confused.
“The Tree of Life, Little Baby, isn’t a tree. It’s a timeline. We can use the roots to go anywhere we want. Just like we use the purple to conjure up new realities.”
“Purple?” What he just said did not enlighten me in any way. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Of course not. You were born a human. This is what I’m trying to explain. Humans are… boring, and powerless, and limited. You can’t see the purple mist that surrounds your pathetic and contained reality, so you can’t use it to conjure up a new one. But you, my dear Dark Mother, are no longer human. When you took my blood, you took my magic. And this is what you’re looking at. The magic is purple and showing you how to use it properly is my birthday gift to you. Come.”
The moment he says ‘come’, we’re somewhere else. A dark and empty place with no light at all. No roots, no earth, no purple. It’s—awful and even though I can’t sense any movement at all, I feel this dark emptiness pushing in on me. Encroaching. And then suddenly, I remember that I was in a place like this before I woke up.
“Yes,” Josep says. “I put you in the Dark Place so you could understand. We are part of that Darkness, Little Baby. It is us and we are it. And in this Dark Place there is no time. And if there is no time, there is nothing but…” I wave my hand at the emptiness all around us, but of course she can’t see this because we are the Darkness now. “There is nothing. It is insanity for a sentient being. Which we are, obviously. Because we are still communicating.
“In order to bring sanity back, and with it a clarity of vision,” Josep continues, “we must have time. Because the Darkness is the eternal infinity. Or infinite eternal, if you prefer. Darkness, Little Baby, is… well, nothingness. And it’s quite boring. In fact, if we stay here too long we’ll get lost in the insanity. Because if there is no time in the eternal infinity, then there is no existence. Do you see?”