Betsy Meriah’s Note:

Author’s Note:

When Albert gets to The Dark One’s lair, he says the following line. “I’ve walked over the highest mountains and under the deepest seas. I’ve traveled through fire and ice. I’ve been both the captive and the captor. I’ve learned more in twenty days than I ever did in the last twenty years. I’ve done my part, so now Hades, you must do yours. Take me to Aleria.”

This line is what inspired me to begin writing In a World Apart. If, for whatever reason, I am not here to finish it, please use the quote as an outline for the book.

In a World Apart

Chapter One

A Winter Goodbye

The story of my life began when she kissed me, but the story of my journey begins with goodbye. Aleria and I were together all through high school. She was a cheerleader, and I was captain of the chess club. After high school, she worked as a model, and I worked in my dad’s bookstore. I don’t know what kept her with me for so long. We were as different as two people could be. I was short and pale with thick glasses and perpetual acne. She was tall and dark with sea green eyes and a cascade of black hair that ended just past her slender waist. She moved through life with a dancer’s grace while I bumbled along uncertainly like some kind of over-grown, two-legged insect.

I loved watching the way Aleria changed with the seasons. Summer meant swimming from morning till night. Sometimes I would stop mid-stroke, squinting through the water in my eyes to watch her gliding along on her back like some ethereal mermaid. If she caught me, she would laugh, splashing me out of my reverie.

“Albert,” she would say “what are you staring at? I know this swimming suit is ugly, but come on! The little whales on your trunks wouldn’t win you first place in a beauty competition either, you know.”

“Hey!” I would object, splashing her back. “I happen to like whales.”

The water fights we had always ended in a kiss. Nothing ever came close to kissing Aleria in the middle of a public swimming pool. Kids cavorted around us, the lifeguard frowned, but for one moment, nothing existed for us beyond the meeting of lips and eyes.

Sometimes she would sigh, shaking her head and running her hands through my short red hair. “Albert,” she would say “you really should grow your hair out long.”

“Nah,” I would say with a waggle of my eyebrows. “I’d look like a girl.”

“No you wouldn’t,” she would argue. “You’d look great! Try it!”

“Okay,” I’d agree “I’ll do that, babe, just as soon as pigs fly and birds walk on stilts.”

“In some places, they do,” she would say. “In some places, dogs are gigantic while elephants are so small you could fit them in your pocket if you wanted.”

My girl was always saying strange things like that. Some people thought she was a little crazy. Some thought her small eccentricities were due to an artistic nature. For my part, I didn’t care. Aleria fascinated me. In spring, we would scan the sky for angels, unidentified spacecrafts, and the woman in the moon. She always insisted the moon must be female to balance her husband, the sun. I remember the fat sketchpad she would carry on our skyward investigations. Those emerald eyes were so intent on the horizon, and yet they still managed to hold that distant dreamlike quality that set them apart from any other. The fountain pen, held lightly between three slender fingers, seemed to move of its own accord, bringing from its tip all manner of strange and beautiful things none but its wielder could see.

“Have you ever stopped to wonder, Albert,” she asked me one summer night “what exists beyond the sky?” I shook my head. “I have.” She sighed, resting her head on my shoulder in that way that made me feel so strong, so protective. “Sometimes, I look past all the clouds swimming in their blue sea, past all the stars shining around their mistress, the moon, and I am homesick.”

Autumn meant long moonlit walks through the park. It was then that Aleria would collect colorful leaves, carrying them in a large burlap sack. She would take this home, painting each leaf in perfect detail on a piece of cloth before cutting it out. These she would sew to her clothing, giving herself a strange yet somehow beautifully natural appearance. She would sew them to my clothes as well, and though people stared at us, I felt as well-dressed as any king. She was a little bit innocent, a little bit wise, and maybe in part, a little bit insane too. Oh but I loved that about her. I wanted to drown in that madness, submerging ever deeper until I became less and less while she became more and more. It was a kind of worship, I suppose, and my mother hated her for it.

“That girl is no good for you, Albert!” she would rage. “Oh sure she has a pretty face, but her mind is gone! What do you see in her? I thought I raised you better than that!”

Often she would go to slap me then, but I, being used to this treatment could grab her wrist, flicking it away as though she were a small child. In a lot of ways, my mother was a small child. She had none of the innocence that Aleria possessed, but the raw simplicity with which she viewed the world left little if any room for error. If a thing was perfect, then it was good. Once it fell short of perfection, it was bad, and Mother would rage. I could never fully hate her, but my love for Mother had long since trickled away, carried away by the rivers of tears left me by Mother’s uncompromising nature.

I never met Aleria’s parents, but she talked of them with great fondness. It seemed strange to me that they never came to visit their daughter, but when I asked Aleria about it, she only laughed and shrugged, her bright eyes turning just the slightest shade distant. Her distance scared me, and I did not ask again. Perhaps one day I would meet her parents and at last thank them for the miracle that was her life.

In winter, Aleria painted the canvas of my mind with a mural of fanciful musings. Dreams fell thickly with her, as deep and abundant as the snow under our feet. Mornings were spent outside, running after snowflakes, building snow people and drawing pictures with our fingers on the windowpanes in the frost that collected there through the night. Aleria never wore gloves, preferring instead to hide her cold hands deep within the warm depths of my jacket pockets. Her head was bare as well, leaving the blackness of her hair exposed to the freshly falling whiteness of the snowflakes. They clung to it like priceless gems, sparkling in the half-light of morning. How regal she looked then with her hair adorned with points of light and her cheeks painted a deep rose by the winter wind. She was a goddess, an icequeen, my maiden of all seasons, and I adored her. In the evening while my mother was at work, I would light a fire in our stone fireplace, and Aliria would sit before it, basking in its warmth and planning the next day’s adventures.

“Albert,” she said softly one night in early December “I have something to tell you.”

“What is it?” I asked, bringing her a ””steaming cup of hot coco and sitting beside her with one of my own. “Is everything okay?”

“My father is very ill,” she said sadly. “I must go to him tomorrow at Dawn.”

“Babe, I’m so sorry,” I told her, placing an arm around her. “How long have you known?”

“My uncle sent me word this mornig,” she replied “but I wanted to spend one more normal wonderful day with you before I left.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this morning!” I told her. “If I’d known you were leaving, I would have made today perfect.”

“Oh Albert,” she beamed, gently resting her soft cheek on my forehead. “Don’t you know by now? You make every day perfect.” She took a long drink from her coco mug, staring into its depths as though they held some secret. “True happiness,” she said a length “is when the ordinary exceeds in perfection all contrived splendor.”

“Huh?” I stared at her, wishing as I always did that I could be that mug from which her lips and fingers took warmth.

“My father says that,” she explained. “He and Mother are so in love and always have been. She must be beside herself with worry.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “She’ll be glad to have you back home, babe. They both will.”

She nodded. “Poor Father. My uncle Hades will be by to bring me home tomorrow at dawn.”

“Hades? I asked. “Hmm. And I thought I was odd for having an Uncle Bjorn. Will you call me when you are safely at home?”

“I cannot, my sweetest of Alberts,” she said regretfully. “We have no telephones, but when I am safe, I will send word.”

“You mean you’ll write?” I asked.

“Something like that,” she replied. “But for now, just hold me,” she said imploringly. “I will miss you so while I am away.”

In life, the moment when a boy becomes a man is the most defining. Prospectives shift, worlds meld and merge, and the world revolves around the meeting of souls, flesh, and raw emotion. Making love with Aleria shook me to my core, sending me heart first over a threashhold of reason I had never before dared to cross. I can never forget how her body looked in the firelight or the way her eyes opened wide, reflecting my passion like twin mirrors of star-flecked jade..

Afterword, when whispered promises of eternal love had been exchanged and the molton flame of passion turned to a warm, sleepy glow, we shared a bowl of strawberries, feeding them to each other between soft chaste kisses. We slept there, stretched like two cats on the warm harthstones. I can only imagine what would have transpired if my mother had come home from work and found us thus entangled, but, as luck would have it, Mother did not come home that night, choosing instead to engage in drunken passion with a total stranger.

In the morning, Aleria was gone, leaving only the ghost of a parting kiss and a soft cheek pressing fondly against my forehead. The first bird began her sleepy overtures to the rising sun. Dressing, I walked outside to watch the sunrise. Bands of red and gold unfirled like a royal banner across the sky. The splender of morning combined with the pure beauty of the little bird’s serenade was enough to bring tears to my eyes. Aleria would have loved this, and though I knew she had been gone less than an hour, I missed her terribly. Things wouldn’t be the same without her, but even gone, her presence remained, hanging heavily like the dew that crowned the tops of every blade of grass. I vowed to notice every detail, no matter how slight and write them all down in a notebook to give Aleria upon her return. She would like that, I knew, and if I knew her as well as I thought I must, she would be doing the same.