They Who from the Heavens Came (The Wisdom, #1)

That night, Itzy slipped up the stairs as quietly as she could and fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

And she had a dream.

Aidan was with her. They lay together on a hill. All around was black space, dotted with throbbing luminous stars on the verge of jumping down on them.

She kept repeating his name, like a song: Aidan. Aidan. Aidan.

He drew her against him. He was dressed in his night clothes, his chest bare. She wrapped her arms around his, intertwining them, and laced their fingers together. She brought them to her lips and kissed each of his fingertips.

When she had finished, he brushed the hair out of her face. He kissed her lips, then each of her eyes, her forehead. Then he just looked at her. His wolf eyes flickered in the starlight.

‘Whatever I do, I want ye by my side,’ he told her. ‘The only reason I’m here is for you.’

‘Here?’ she said.

He lifted one of his arms and swept it around the room and then out the window, to indicate everywhere. ‘The world. The universe. I exist for ye. Don’t ye know that?’

He slipped his hand under her top, his fingers tickling her stomach, her waist, her spine. They slid up her back, reaching her neck and wrapping around it, massaging it and pulling her closer to him as he kissed her more.

She threw one of her legs around him and pulled herself on top of him, kissing him everywhere she could. He threw his weight against her and knocked her onto her back once more, so he was on her. Everything about him spoke of power. He radiated it like a magnetic field, calling her to him.

They rolled over together, and Itzy saw that the hill wasn’t a hill at all, but a cliff –

and Aidan was inching precariously near to the edge.

Aidan! she thought, but she couldn’t say it. Her voice had stopped working and he was too busy kissing her to notice anything was wrong.

He leaned back –

and fell abruptly off the cliff.

Too late, she found her voice.

‘Aidan!’ she screamed. Her heart broke into fragments the number of which might have matched the number of stars in the sky.

The cliff rose into the air, growing taller and thinner, like the spire on a cathedral. Space grew fatter around her, dizzying in its endlessness.

No, she couldn’t lose him. She would save him, she decided.

So she rewound the scene.

There he was on the cliff top, kissing her. It looked like a hill again, but she knew better.

‘Aidan,’ she said before her voice could escape her. ‘Aidan, stop. There’s danger. You’re in great trouble.’

He drew back to look at her –

and the world dropped away once more, taking him down with it.

‘No,’ she said. Her hands clenched into resolved fists and her voice hardened. ‘No, I will not lose him.’

She stared into the dream the way she did when she was about to compose one of her stories. Her mind flooded with letters that danced like constellations flying through space.

Then he was back.

But not like before. She hadn’t rewound anything, this time. It was more like…she had re-written it. Now, a great golden bird appeared and Aidan rode on its back, flying out of the black depths and landing on top of the shard-like cliff.

She rushed to him and stood beside the giant bird. She threw her arms around his neck. ‘Aidan!’ she cried with relief. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’

Then she saw the strange look on his face, like he knew some terrible secret that she didn’t. He hunched forward helplessly, his arms outstretched at his sides and the palms up in the shape of surrender.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, unable to meet her eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even know.’

‘Aidan,’ she said. She shook her head in bewilderment. ‘What are you talking about?’

He looked at the bird, a powerful eagle shimmering in gold, and said:

‘Quetzal has the answers.’

* * *

Quetzal stood just at the edges of her subconscious, and watched. His cube worked by tapping into the ethereal realm, where the unconscious mind dwelt. It enabled him to travel to that realm himself. In that way, he witnessed her dream first-hand.

The girl was a powerful lucid dreamer. To rewrite her own visions demanded a degree of consciousness while unconscious, which meant her mind never shut down, even in sleep. It was rare to develop such power – but it was clear that Itzel Loveguard was not an ordinary girl.

Quetzal was startled by the dream’s content. Sometimes he forgot Aidan was a real person. It had never been in his plan for the boy to fall in love. But more than that, how could Itzy know Quetzal? Did she somehow sense his presence in her mind? Was she telepathic?

Or was it something more?

Quetzal pulled out of the dream and slumped to the floor. He noticed the large rug woven into the image of a mandala. All around the girl were ancient symbols. They had enveloped her world all her life. He could see it in his cube. It was as if the imagery had been following her – just as the Wisdom had followed him.

The Wisdom.

He had to remind himself that was why he was there.

Millennia ago, the Grand Ancients, who were even more ancient than Quetzal and Horace, had disappeared into the stars. Religions had been founded around them, prophecies of their eventual return, in which many had ceased believing.

Then one day, they had surprised everyone by coming back for Quetzal’s generation. They had returned to Earth in their great spacecraft and asked for volunteers from across the globe to help them scour the universe for the Wisdom.

It was an old legend, even for them. Quetzal couldn’t recall a time when the whereabouts of the Wisdom had been known. Of course there had been rumours, the odd megalomaniac claiming he held it and was in direct communication with their Creator. But it had always been a ruse.

It was getting so that many, like Horace, no longer believed the Wisdom was a real thing, but the stuff of mythology. It had been relegated to the realm of dreams, where idealists hoped someone might return it to them, thus initiating a new, better era; while cynics said there was nothing more to life than met the eye.

The mystery had held Quetzal in its grip for centuries. The questions cycled endlessly in his mind:

Was the Wisdom real?

Was it tangible, seeable?

Or was it some abstract metaphoric substance they were all overlooking within themselves?

Where was it?

Who had hidden it?

Was it waiting for them to find it?

What could the person who claimed it do?

Now, as he watched the girl sleep, he wondered if she held the key to unlocking the answers he sought.

She tossed and turned in her bed. ‘Aidan,’ she said, still unconscious. ‘No, Aidan….’

She looked so fragile – so human – but Quetzal was not convinced. There was something about her…he just wasn’t sure what.

‘Who are you, Itzel Loveguard?’ he asked from within his bubble. ‘Who are you really?’