Chapter 160: Twin Rings

Saturday, June 19, 1971

I sat on my berth, absently fiddling with the second ring as I considered the situation. It wasn’t long before I felt both of the rings begin to pulse.

“Could the rings somehow be connected?” I wondered. On a hunch, I slipped the second ring onto the same finger as the first ring. I watched as the rings vibrated with a different kind of energy. Almost as if they were excited to be together again.

Suddenly, I could feel Tabita and Wilheinda’s conversation. What’s more, I could understand what they were saying. Looking down at the rings, I noticed that they fit together so perfectly, they looked like a single ring.

The girls had moved Tabita’s limp body, stretching her out on the plush carpet. Deedee had come in to treat the cut that ran down the front of her chest, and had draped a light blanket over her. I knew she was aware of what Deedee was doing, and that she could still communicate with her mother somehow, but there was not much I could do, short of killing her, to stop it. Wilheinda was massaging her wrists as she sat there silently, listening to her daughter.

” ... didn’t have to tell him about Kemall,” she said. “He will send his troops for us soon.”

“That remains to be seen,” Wilheinda replied. “You know how he feels about us. I believe he would just as soon assume we had crashed and return home to rule beside his mate. He’s as ambitious as you are.”

“He won’t return without her ring,” Tabita said. “And when he finds out that Don’rahall’s ring is here, too, he’ll come in full force.”

“Will you shut up about those rings! Oh, if I had known that was all you were after, I never would have let you talk me into coming to rescue Don’rahall,”Wilheinda snapped at her daughter.

Tabita didn’t respond as they both became quiet.

I scanned for Anna.

“Oh, Michael,” she said when I tapped her mental shoulder. “You have got to do something. The medical facilities here are positively barbaric. I have four females with gunshot wounds, plus the four males you hit with lightning bolts,” she half stated, half asked. “At least that’s what the eyewitnesses said. The males all have large bruises on their sternums, along with the cuts from your sword. I treated the cuts, yet they all appear to have had the life sucked out of them and seem to be barely hanging on.”

“Just do the best you can and keep them comfortable. I’ll be there later to see what I can do. I have a little challenge here,” I told her.

“Okay, Michael. But try to hurry. I don’t know what’s wrong with them and so I don’t have any idea how much longer they will last,” Anna thought to me.

“I will,” I replied. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” she replied. “Now I have to get back to work.”

Next, I connected with Dawn.

“How’s it going?” I asked her.

“Is it always going to be this exciting when you come to town?” she asked with a weary laugh.

“Sorry to create so much trouble,” I replied.

“Don’t be. I think we have everything under control,” she told me. “Your man guarding the spacecraft has some of my people stripping everything they can from the ship. We’re storing it in the village warehouse for now. We’ll have to come up with somewhere else to put it when the harvest starts, but we have a month or so yet.”

This was news to me, so I immediately connected with Kip.

“I hear you’ve gone on a scavenger hunt,” I said.

“Oh. Hey!” Kip replied. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good. Just trying to figure this out. It keeps getting deeper and deeper though,” I told him.

“Well, Penny figured you might be interested in some of this stuff, and if this ship is like American spacecraft, it’s probably got a self-destruct on it that could be activated at any time. So we started with anything that looked like a weapon and then just about anything that was loose or could be pried out. Penny’s started removing some crystal-like things that she says appeared to be some kind of circuits.”

“Kip, I think you’re right about the self-destruct. I want you all out of there. NOW!” I told him.

“Roger that, Boss,” he said. I could detect some hesitation in his mind.

“Spit it out, Chief,” I said.

“Well, it’s just that I had to shoot Unevia in the leg. I didn’t want to, and I don’t really think she wanted to do what she did. I got the feeling she was being forced to do it. Actually, I think she’s a good kid. Anyway, I was wondering if you could do your thing and make her okay,” Kip finally got it all out.

“Get everyone away from the ship. Tell them it could blow up any minute,” I told him. “Then bring Unevia to the train. Tell Anna I said it’s okay.”

“Yes, Sir!” Kip replied with a smile.

“Dawn, did you hear all that?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’ll see that my people stay away, for now,” she replied. “Are you coming back to the village? I know that Eve was really looking forward to you staying with them tonight.”

“Doesn’t look like it. There’s still a lot going on here,” I told her. “Give Eve my apologies and tell her I’ll make it up to her soon.”

I scanned the train again. Wilheinda and Tabita were still quiet. Almost as if they we meditating. There was no communication between them.

“Kalani, would you try talking to Wilheinda and Tabita?” I asked her. “Tell her about the Protector.”

“Okay,” she thought back. “That might be a good idea.”

Soon I heard them talking.

“Michael suggested I tell you a story about my ancestors, and our most famous deity,” Kalani began. “We called him the Protector, and he washed up on our shores...” As Kalani relayed the old story, it dawned on her that she was telling the story of their vaunted Protector to his very own mother.

I sitting on my berth, studying the pair of rings on my left hand. I was amazed at how they seemed to have become one, so closely did they fit together. Suddenly, I felt a connection that I had not created.

“So, you now have them both. My mate had calculated there was a possibility of this,” the voice said.

“My name is Michael. You must be Kemall,” I thought.

“Very good. Don’rahall is my mate’s brother,” he supplied. It was interesting that he did not mention that he was Tabita’s brother-in-law as well. He may have assumed it was understood, but I suspected he just didn’t consider that the relationship was worth mentioning.

“With her mother away, my mate is the acting ruler of our world. One day, when Wilheinda steps down, my mate should become the Supreme Ruler...” Kemall paused as he let that information sink in, then continued.

” ... but my mate’s younger sister has always been the proverbial thorn in her side with her foolish notions of the rings’ powers. My mate believes that Tabita wants to use those powers to try and take the throne. So when this hair-brained idea came up, my mate felt that giving up her ring was worth the sacrifice to get her sister out of the way for a while.

“Personally, I don’t believe the rings have any real powers. But Tabita has always felt that if she had both rings, she could become the Supreme Ruler. The sad truth is, no one amongst our people can even recall the last person who could wield the power of the rings. It’s one of the reasons their father gave the first ring to my mate, and the second ring to her brother. He wanted to keep them away from Tabita and her foolish notions.”

“So Tabita was never anxiously searching for a lost lover?” I asked.

“Not unless you count the ring as her lover,” he replied with a grin.