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FOREVER I - ISRAEL

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Disclaimer: Assuming anyone actually bothers to read this... I did not 
invent these people. I think we all know who did. Don't bother suing me. 
It isn't worth your while.

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I'm sorry if I made any mistakes. I don't know much about ancient 
Israel. Please email me at ***eagles@surf.metro.net.au*** if you have 
any comments.

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__A small, isolated village in Israel, circa 3500 BC__

Rachael patted her long red hair and sternly told herself not to tamper 
with it anymore. She glanced again at her husband, assuring herself that 
he was asleep.

She tiptoed out of the house and made her way quietly through the 
village, keeping to the shadows. Not that she thought anyone would be 
about at midnight in the middle of winter when it was absolutely 
freezing - she pulled her cloak more tightly around herself, glad that 
it wasn't storming, at least - but one could never be too careful. She 
tried very hard not to think about the evil spirit which the villagers 
said haunted the well in the village green - Rachael had never really 
been able to believe in magic and evil spirits, despite growing up in a 
village that accepted it without question - but nighttime seemed to have 
an entirely different atmosphere. It almost took on a life of it's own.
[Don't be silly,] Rachael said to herself. [You've never seen any 
evidence of that so-called evil spirit. This whole town is full of 
cowards, that's all!]

How could grown men shiver under their bedsheets for fear of a *myth*, 
she wondered, when Rachael, a young and beautiful woman, only nineteen, 
had no problems walking through the streets alone, at night?

She jumped as the wind picked up and started to howl. Well, almost no 
problems. Rachael began to hurry. She had to get to the river soon.

***

Adlai sat by the river, shivering and hugging himself. He was waiting 
for his lover, his beautiful Rachael.

He had loved her for a long time, and she him, but their fathers had 
been outraged that they even spoke to each other, let alone wanted 
permission to marry. The two families had feuded from time immemorial - 
Rachael's mother had fainted from horror when Rachael had finally 
gathered together the courage to ask.

Their families had agreed - and *that* was definitly a first - that they 
be forbidden to see each other. They had both been married off as soon 
as possible.

But they still loved each other, and met secretly, every week, down by 
the river in the forest at the edge of the village.

Adlai was jerked out of his thoughts by a cheerful voice.

"Adlai!" Rachael whispered loudly.

He turned. "You came!" he exclaimed joyfully.

She threw her arms around him. "Of course I came," she giggled. "Oh, I 
missed you."

He held her close, stroking her hair. "I missed you too, Rachael, 
sweetheart," he whispered softly.

They stayed like that for a long time, breathing each other in.

Finally Adlai stood, pulling Rachael up with him. He kissed her 
passionately.

Rachael giggled again. "That was nice," she murmered into his chest.

Adlai laughed. "Come with me, love, I've something to show you," he 
said, tugging at her hand.

Rachael looked up, eyes shining. "And what would that be?" she asked in 
a low, husky and incredibly sexy voice.

Adlai smiled lovingly at her. She was the most beautiful woman in the 
entire world, he thought. "I want to show you forever," he whispered.

"Forever?" she breathed, gazing into his eyes with such an expression of 
love and trust on her face that it made him want to cry.

"Forever..." he tenderly kissed the tip of her nose. "Come with me..."

***

Rachael looked around, bemused and a bit frightened. Adlai was smiling.

"Adlai...?" she licked her lips.

"Yes, love?"

"What are we doing here?"

He smiled at her. "You know where we are..."

"We're in the one place we really should not be! The ancient place of 
the dark rites that our ancestors performed!"

"Yes."

"*Why*?" she exclaimed.

"I have done some research, Rachael... I found a spell..."

"What spell?" whispered Rachael, aghast.

"It will bind our souls together forever... We will never be separated."

Rachael took this in. "That's very sweet, Adlai... but you must be 
MAD!!!"

Adlai looked at her. "I didn't think you would want to," he murmered. "I 
will not do it if you don't wish it."

Rachael was shivering. "I think we should go back now," she said. Her 
voice was shaking. Was he completely crazy?

"Please! At least hear what I have to say, sweetheart," Adlai begged. 

Rachael eyed him warily.

"I suppose I should," she muttered.

"I thought you found idea of supernature "absolutely ridiculous", 
anyway," he reminded her, "so why are you so shaken?"

"I - I don't know," she said, faintly confused. "This place makes me 
feel..."

"Like the Ancient Ones are watching?" Adlai suggested softly.

"Well... yes. But that does not mean anything. It is the atmosphere of 
this awful place."

Adlai slid an arm around her shoulders. "No, it's not," he sighed. "It's 
real."

A pause. "Then tell me about this reality."

***

[I must be even more insane than Adlai is,] Rachael thought. [I can't 
believe I agreed to do this. What if we actually *do* wake something - 
some *power* - that should be left to itself?]

Rachael stood and shivered while Adlai performed the rites. He had a 
whole sack full of the necessary embellishments that theses things 
seemed to need. Rachael had always thought that candles and sacrifices, 
et cetera, were just for added drama.

She closed her eyes and willed Adlai hurry up.

He finally finished chanting and dramatising (and Rachael really did 
think that he had been much more melodramatic than was necessary) and 
walked over to her side. He held her tightly. "Now..." he whispered.

A wind sprang up from nowhere, and Rachael's eyes sprang open. She moved 
closer to Adlai.

"What on earth...?"

"Or what not on earth..."

Rachael could find no words for the strange sensations that filled 
her... she felt immortal, she felt... she didn't know how she felt, but 
she knew that it was... *supernatural*...

She suddenly had an inexplicable feeling of being *connected* - not 
alone inside her body. Had she not been born over five thousand years 
before the discovery of electricity, she might have compared the 
sensation to being plugged into three different sockets at once.

One socket was hers, but she felt her soul... merge... with two others.
And then she felt a scream inside her mind. Two male voices, separate to 
the souls she had just merged with, were arguing inside her head.

"Come now, my pupil! Do not succumb to your cowardice, overwhelming 
though it may be!" came one voice, who sounded - if sounded was the 
right word - old, and unpleasant.

"No!" yelled the other - youngish and rather nice, Rachael thought, if 
terrified and angry. "Please, let me GO!"

"I will not! You will come now, Talmai, or I will destroy your very 
soul! NOW!!"

Then everything went black.

***

Rachael awoke with the dawn. She felt terrible. Every fibre of her being 
seemed to have been stretched beyond breaking point.

She could hear Adlai groaning next to her.

"Adlai?" she rasped. "What did you do, you idiot?"

"I merged our souls for all eternity," he informed her matter-of-factly, 
as if he did it every day. "Just the two of us. What I want to know is: 
where did that third soul come from? You felt her too, didn't you?"

"Yes. And you are right, it was distinctly female. And those two men..." 
Rachael struggled to her feet, then helped Adlai up. He was swaying 
unsteadily. She grabbed his arm. So was she.

Adlai spun around, and felt a wave of dizziness wash over him.

"Wha... uh, yuk..." he held his head, stumbling about for a minute 
before finding his balance.

"What men?" he gasped eventually.

"Didn't you hear?" Rachael was surprised. "I very clearly heard two men, 
one old and the other young, arguing. The old one was coercing the young 
one to come somewhere with him. The young man seemed to be the older 
one's pupil, although I doubt it was by choice. I think he hated the old 
man. I did not like him, either."

Adlai shook his head. "I heard nothing last night. But I heard something 
just then," he groaned. "Behind that tree." He pointed.

Rachael, who seemed to be slightly steadier on her feet than Adlai, went 
to investigate. She didn't know what she was expecting, but it wasn't 
what she found.

"What are you doing here!?"

A dark-haired girl about Rachael's own age looked up from where she was 
lying on the forest floor and groaning in obvious pain. "Urg? Er... oh. 
It's you." She sounded decidedly unenthusiastic.

"Come here, Adlai!" Rachael called. "It's Zillah!"

Adlai stared at her in shock. "Zillah? What is she doing here?"

"That's what *I* said."

Adlai moved over to where the women were and helped Zillah to stand up. 
"You are stupid, Zillah!" he yelled. "Why are you here?"

Zillah placed a hand against the tree to stop herself from falling. "I 
was spying on you," she mumbled, not bothering to lie.

"Why?" Adlai demanded.

"That woman you married paid me to," Zillah sighed. "Two times she heard 
you get up and leave in the middle of the night. She was too much of a 
coward to follow you herself, at that time of night - " Zillah's lip 
twisted contemptuously " - so she paid me to follow you and report what 
I saw. She thought you were unfaithful to her with that Rachael bitch' 
as she put it. I see she was right." Zillah gave Rachael a filthy look. 
Rachael returned it with a passion.

"Am I betrayed by my own sister, now?" Adlai shouted. "It's none of your 
affair, Zillah!"

"I would not have told her anything," Zillah said defensively. "It was 
nice of her to offer me that necklace, though." She smiled innocently. 
"But it is your own folly if you wish to consort with scum." Here she 
gave Rachael another look, which Rachael once again returned. Rachael's 
love for Adlai did not extend towards his family, who had never shown 
her anything except rudeness. She would have been quite willing to patch 
up the old feud, which she viewed as pathetic and pointless, but Adlai's 
family did not seem to share this opinion. It was a shame, Rachael 
thought. She thought that she and Zillah could have been friends, if 
Adlai's sister hadn't been born and raised with such a prejudice to her 
and her kin.

Zillah continued. "Besides, Adlai," she snapped, "this *is* my business 
now. Didn't you just bond our souls together forever?"

Adlai cursed. "So I did."

"What a fate," Rachael murmered.

Zillah favoured her with another look.

"Will you two stop it!" Adlai roared. "This is serious!"

"It was your idea!" Rachael barked at him.

"I hardly expected Zillah to be caught up in it!"

"Well, you should have checked the surrounding woods for little spies 
first!"

"Oh, hark who's talking!" Zillah retorted. "It was you and your 
irritating brother who spied on Adlai and I in our garden so that you 
could throw water bombs at us!!"

"I was five!" Rachael shrieked. "You are nineteen!"

"SHUT UP!" Adlai bellowed. "THIS IS NOT - " he paused, and let himself 
calm down somewhat. "This is not the time to be arguing over 
trivialities. We are all becoming a little hysterical, I think. We - Oh, 
no!" 

"What's wrong?" Zillah asked, anxiously.

"The prophecy, Zillah. The prophecy of your life that was spoken when 
you were born. She will live forever in the shadow of folly and evil', 
or something along those lines, am I right?"

"Oh... yes, that's right. Ah. That's why I was named Zillah. Shadow..."

And suddenly all three collapsed to the ground, screaming and convulsing 
in agony. They didn't know what was happening, but they were in fact 
dying. Adlai's spell had put their present physical bodies under 
enormous stress.

And so Rachael, Adlai, and Zillah left their first bodies behind.

***

A search party was sent out went none of them returned home. It was 
Rachael's father who found the three of them, lying on the ground. He 
touched his daughter's hand, noting that it was holding Zillah's in an 
iron grip.

Rachael had been searching for some comfort in her pain - what she 
really wanted was her mother, and when she found a woman's hand, she 
didn't question but held on as though it was her lifeline.

Rachael's father smiled faintly at the irony. It was the hate that the 
two families harboured that had driven the youngsters to the deaths out 
here - one glance at the scattered "dramatic embellishments" told him 
that it was some sort of dark rite - but in their death, they were 
united at last.

He kissed the top of Rachael's head and broke down into sobs.

*****