Pathways - Jeri Taylor [227]
Curious. What was he to make of this? It was certainly pleasant up here, far more so than down in the roaring, rasping Winds, but there was something amiss about it. How could he reach Seleya like this? Was it possible to fly? The idea held a certain appeal, but he was definitely not in control of his path and was not moving in any direction— just drifting, languorous.
He tried to make himself heavy, so he would float downward, but his efforts accomplished nothing. He summoned all the concentration of his mind’s powers he could, and willed himself to return to his body.
But still he wafted, effortlessly, suspended in this strange union with his body, equally unable to move from, or return to, the prostrate form.
It occurred to him that he might be dead.
Such experiences had been recounted by some who had experienced death, only to be snatched back through medical intervention or sheer happenstance: this same watching from above, seeing one’s inert body below, a condition which existed until the fact of death was accepted and one’s katra moved on to—wherever it went. There were, of course, no accounts of where that was, for the reporters had, by definition, returned before getting there.
Tuvok considered the possibility of his death, and was not inclined to accept it. He had come too far and endured too much to countenance failure this close to realizing his quest. “I am not yet done,” his mind said to whatever forces might be at play here. “I must finish the journey to Seleya.”
Below, he saw the sehlat move its nose to his face and snuffle at it for a moment, then begin to lick at his cheeks, his mouth, his eyes. He pondered the improbability of this particular sehlat’s nature. The beasts were known to be vicious and cunning, driven by predatory instincts and primal urges. In their feral state they did not behave as house pets, docilely trotting alongside a master and snuggling up to him in times of strife. Nor were they known to procure food for anyone other than themselves. This sehlat was indeed puzzling.
How to explain that? Several options came to mind: perhaps it was simply his good fortune to have encountered an animal with domesticated tendencies. Or it may be that he had simply hallucinated the beast, even as he now seemed to be hallucinating this strange hovering above himself. It was even possible that the sehlat was, in some way, divine, a messenger sent to him from some unknown dimension, in order to impart—
—an unpleasant odor assaulted his nose, and his skin was being grated with an abrasive object, over and over. He frowned and struggled upright, opening his eyes slightly.
The sandstorm wailed around him, fierce and biting as ever. But he was safely returned to his own body, a fact which was a source of surprising comfort to him. The sehlat crouched over him, peering at him with what Tuvok might—had he chosen to anthropomorphize this animal even further—term anxiety. Some instinct made him reach out and scratch the sehlat gratefully on the head.
“We must leave this place,” Tuvok announced, voice raised against the shriek of the Winds. “We must keep moving. We will die if we stay here.” He struggled uncertainly to his feet (how much easier it had been to hover, weightless, in the air) and forced his body forward, driving it against the formidable resistance of the swirling sand. The sehlat followed and, step by difficult step, they proceeded, Tuvok hoping that whatever providence had sent him the animal would also guide him in the right direction.
In what seemed one more day the gale began to diminish, the sound abating first; then the swirling sand began to lose some of its sting, and gradually it passed by them, roaring off across the desert and leaving him and the sehlat exhausted, covered in sand, and desperately thirsty. Tuvok brushed what sand he could from his face, dusted the sehlat’s with the hem of his robe, and looked around.
Seleya was a triangle on the horizon, white and tiny, but most definitely