Coming Back

“I don’t know why you would want to leave this place,” her friend, Babu said with finality. “Silly Scilla, silly Scilla,” he taunted as he left her room and went outside to greet the guests that had already arrived. She plopped down on the small velvet chair and gazed at her 24 year-old image in the wavering mirror.

“I will so leave this place,” she said turning to throw the words over her shoulder. She sniffled and lifted her head and gazed into the misty reflection of her uncertain eyes.

“Do you have it in you? Do you really have it in you?” she asked her beseeching face.
A brisk knock on the door pulled her from her reverie, and she knew she had just seconds to answer her own question.

“Yes,” she said to the mirror, pushed back her chair, and dashed around the room, searching for any tool or amulet that would help in the contest.

“Come in,” she said after concealing her finds among the folds of her dress. The door was slowly and deliberately pushed open. “It is time,” Mamm said, filling the doorway with her commanding figure and flowing dress.

Walking through the cavernous granite hall, she passed by the two lines of smiling faces and well wishers. “Good luck,” one said. “I know you will succeed,” another said. She smiled at these wonderful souls, but had to force back tears, for she knew she might have to wait a long time to see them again.

Then she and ten others were released into the garden. She watched as some sang, danced or stood still and chanted. Then she remembered the seeds she’d taken from her room. The mustard seed she said to herself. All of life’s answers can be found within that tiny seed. She let each seed fall onto the earth, blessing each one with a heart-felt prayer. She plucked a few violets and placed them in her hair. My own reward, come what may, she said to herself. She absentmindedly poked the ground with her toes as she strolled the garden and watched the others.

Then she felt it. Something hard in the dirt. She knelt and scooped aside the dirt. A small purse, she whispered, her eyes widening.

Mamm walked around the garden, enjoying the contest, then glanced over at Scilla. “It is time,” she said.

Scilla rose, walked to the revered hall and joined the line of ten that stood before the Grand Seven. The well wishers, thousands of them, sat around the hall. Each of the contestants in their turn now had the coveted opportunity to present their find to the grand seven.

Why am I doing this? Scilla asked herself. But, she knew the answer. It was her destiny. She knew the purpose of the contest. And she knew her reward was one of the most coveted in the universe. She also knew that among the innumerable rewards, the challenges would sometimes appear impossible to confront.

Am I really going back? Will I really have to forget all this, except for just a few fleeting moments?How could I ever forget this?

“Next,” said the Grand Seven in unison. She stepped forward.

“Little Scilla, you understand what you have chosen?” they asked. She nodded.

“Then show us all what you have found in the garden,” they requested.

She pulled the tiny purse from the folds in her dress. It shimmered as if alive. The whole crowd gasped.

“Open it,” the Grand Seven requested.

With trembling fingers, she undid the clasp. She peered in, but as she did, a rainbow of colors and gold light flew from the purse, throwing her hair back and nearly blinding her. The crowd gasped again, as the brilliant light swirled and coalesced, becoming an all encompassing vision.
It was a life. A little girl’s life. They all watched as the girl was born, grew, became old and wise, then lay down to pass over – and return.

“We’ll see you in eighty seven years, Scilla,” they all said.

And she was gone, like the memory of a kiss in the wind.

THE END

Summary of Love Never Dies

This is a story of love, death, history and war, where love transcends earthly boundaries and spans lifetimes; where Alexi Kowalski, a young peasant boy, fueled by love and honor will affect his homeland’s future.
Alexi and Katia are soul mates whose love will guide them to reunite after reincarnation. Their lives will see trial, anguish and separation. And redemption.
We begin within moments of Alexi and Katia’s demise. They’ve escaped deadly combat with enemy Russians and bob helplessly in a rowboat on a lake. They relive years of endearing moments shared before their eighteen-month separation. A sharpshooter sights the two, takes aim and fires.
We now revisit what has led them to this place.
The date: winter 1854. The place: Terraminsku forest, Soviet-ruled Poland.
Ambling along a path en route to Katia’s cabin, Alexi is followed by mounted Cossacks. He escapes and ends up at Katia’s doorstep.
Alexi convinces Katia to join him in an innocent scout of a forbidden region of the forest, the swamp. A powerful Russian prince, Leonid, has tracked the two, and watches as Katia falls into the swamp and nearly drowns. The prince desires Katia, confronts Alexi and a looming trilogy of power, will and love has formed.
Change permeates the forest. Alexi’s father, Pietrov has had enough persecution and decides to take his family away. Pietrov secures illegal travel papers but Alexi is compelled to rally one last time against his country’s oppressors. He refuses to say good-bye to Katia without a fight.
Alexi chooses one stormy spring night to revisit the swamp and teach the Russians a lesson. He comes close to Leonid’s camp, but falls into quicksand and is saved by a Polish freedom fighter, Ludmilla Petrashevsty. Ludmilla leads Alexi to the cabin of renowned Polish poet, Zygmunt Krasinski.
Leonid and his Cossacks close in, and Alexi and Ludmilla escape. Krasinski is captured, and Polish freedom fighters (with Alexi in tow) wage equestrian battle in the forest by the swamp in the pouring rain. Krasinski is rescued, and Alexi has had his first taste of battle.
Prince Leonid is incensed by this misstep within his domain. He plans retribution. Will Alexi’s village suffer?
Alexi’s plan to dispel the Cossacks didn’t work. He sits Katia down and tells her their lives together are over. He vows to succeed in America and prays his inner strength will return him to her arms. She promises to wait.
The Kowalskis’ cart their belongings out of the forest, to a dirt road, toward a small town and train station fifty miles away.
After disposing of his family’s lifetime of belongings, Pietrov’s false papers are accepted on the train, and the family rumbles toward the North Sea, eight hours away. The dreams and telepathy between Katia and Alexi persist, hers of savior, his of rivalry.
A tiny sloop, their home for nearly three months, bobs off a rickety pier. They climb the plank and then descend thirty feet down a ladder – and enter the hold – dark, cold, and incessantly moving.
Out at sea, Alexi is handed pencil and paper and appointed the voyage’s journalist.
His new job forces him to assess the society and condition in which he finds himself.
He reads an inspirational letter from the poet, Krasinski, and finds the courage to venture up top, to the deck, where he butts heads with the ships’ skipper, Billy Bang.
Billy takes Alexi on a dangerous shark hunt. A shark is caught, bites Billy, and Alexi ties a tourniquet around Billy’s leg, saving the old salt – for now.
Throughout the crossing, Alexi interviews and observes fellow travelers and sailors. He begins to realize his responsibility – to himself, those around him, and those he loves.
Alexi still dreams of Katia, and it seems the further they drift apart, the more they merge in spirit.
Just after the skipper, Billy Bang succumbs to his wounds, a birth is announced, and the frail newborn lifts his head around the dreary hold – and Alexi scribbles it down in his journal, witness to all.
The ship finally docks at Crystal Garden, quarantine station and last stop before the New York City streets. Alexi tries to view his adventure from on high. He senses a shift, an impending growth within, like a wave nearing a ship at sea.
Love and death. Fear and bravery. Heart and head. He writes in his journal that he now knows these are conflicts he will confront as long as he is strong enough to answer his call. And across the sea, Katia wonders if her love will ever return, as she sees her small village coming apart at the seams.

The above description is a condensation of my first novel of three. In the next two novels, Alexi will become entangled in New York gangland society, flee out west, and eventually sail back to Poland alone, where with a new friend and sidekick, he will pursue and rescue Katia from Prince Leonid.