The Nexus

By Oleander Main

Readers of The Vigil (2015) asked for a sequel. The Nexus is the story of the seven generations of humans that parallel our bears. The polar bears believe they are the guardians of the souls of all creation, maintaining a constant vigil over the polar ice. Join Juvante is a polar bear who dies but doesnt join the sacred vibration in the ice. Follow his journey as he tracks the descendants of the hunter who killed him and grapples with his own experiences as he comes to terms with the changes in our world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984513182

Oleander Main

Oleander Main is a novelist whose writing encompasses themes of relationships, belief systems, personal authority, and societal and global shifts. The name Juvante in The Nexus was inspired by the motto Deo Juvante which she learned of during her fi rst visit to Monaco. She is grateful to the Principality of Monaco for the inspiration and leadership they steadfastly provide to the world in the areas of environmental concerns and protection efforts.

Book preview

THE

NEXUS

OLEANDER MAIN

Cover photo by Oleander Main, of the jewelry art

design of Àsdis Frimannsdóttír. www.asdis.dk

Copyright © 2018 by Oleander Main.

ISBN:                  Softcover                        978-1-9845-1317-5

                           eBook                             978-1-9845-1318-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/06/2018

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

772096

Contents

Family Genealogy

First Generation

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Second Generation

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Third Generation

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Fourth Generation

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Fifth Generation

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Sixth Generation

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Seventh Generation

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Pilamaya, Bernice

The Exordium

In the beginning there was the silence of ice

with no beginning or end.

The ice gave way to thought and the joy of this

gave rise to movement.

All life sprang forth from there.

The ice itself shifted, cracked and moved

to carry forth the vibration of life within it.

All of life and every being in it

was so overjoyed for the adventures of the moving ice

that they jumped and swam and flew

to be a part of wherever it would go.

But the ice bears stayed behind.

Go, they said.

"We’ll stay here because we remember where we began.

You can look to us to know where you began, too."

And the Creator of the silence and the ice,

of the thought and the joy,

and of all of creation,

including the ice bears

was pleased.

"For your constant Vigil, I will send back

all of your relations to you.

Every soul on earth

will return to you once more."

"You will know they have returned

because you will feel their vibration

in the ice."

And it was so.

Family Genealogy

42002.png

First Generation

CHAPTER 1

My name is Juvante. This is important for me to remember because of what comes later. One moment, I was swimming for my life, and the next, I felt nothing. I don’t know what happened to me. I no longer feel the ice beneath my paws. The cold I was well fashioned for no longer surrounds me. I see nothing and everything all at once. Think back! Think back! I’d been with my family. My partner, Isa had remained back with the others. I was hunting and eventually hunted separately and was further from the other bears. I was hunting seal when the humans and their dogs surprised me.

Somehow, I can now understand some of their human language. One human called out to another Ugalik! which I presumed to be the name of the human nearest me. He stood with the bear harpoon poised nearest me. I remember his thrust and how he plunged it deep into me. I remember the pain. I ran blindly, seeking to escape. Flying down a fjord, I crashed through the ice and into the sea water below.

I’d escaped them! A rapid undertow pulled me down further. The harpoon embedded in my side impeding me. Down further, I was caught in the water. I swam with all my might, yet my frenzy lessened as the waters embraced me and sucked me down further into her frigid depths. Then, she spat me free from her cold embrace, or so I thought.

The last thought I remember was that it was my time, and like all other polar bears before me, I too would join the sacred vibration of the polar ice. I would become one with it and would be a part of the vibration of all creation. That is what we do when we die. It is what I was prepared for, and I had been prepared throughout my life to be the guardian of the souls of all creation as my kind were meant to be. We maintain the constant Vigil over the ice that contains the vibration of the souls who return to it upon their death. I had been prepared to maintain the Vigil just as all my polar bear ancestors have done before me.

This is what I knew, and then, nothing.

I do not know what happened to me. I am not one with the ice. I am not a part of the vibration. I am nothing and everything all at once. I am still in the Homelands of our polar ice cap and nothing about it has changed, except me.

I see the humans and their dogs still, but they do not see me. They have no smell detectable to me anymore. They are talking, but I am having a hard time understanding what they are saying. They speak rapidly to the one who harpooned me, Ugalik. It is evident they are unhappy with him, but it takes me some time to understand all their words.

I experience a sense of how the one they call Ugalik feels, which is new to me, as it has never happened before. Frightened, dissatisfied, bad. These resonate within me like the dying life-force of a seal as it shudders its last movement before death. I don’t like this and don’t know where it came from. I stare at the other hunters, but get no sense of their feelings from them.

The one they call Ugalik appears to feel morose. He is sad because the bear is dead and the body irretrievable. The undertow of the sea swept it away. It was a big male bear, a beautiful bear, and now the kill was for nothing.

The kill was me.

But I am not dead! I cannot be! If I were dead, I would not be here now. Would I? Yet, I am not a part of the sacred vibration. In fact, I can no longer feel it beneath me at all, as I had before. This monstrous human, Ugalik whose feelings I experience as if they were my own, has done something awful.

What have you done to me? I cry out in rage. He does not hear me or sense my presence at all. There must be some explanation. I cannot be in this in-between state of being neither dead nor alive. Ugalik’s thoughts offer me nothing, and so I will return to my family and Isa. They will know what to do.

I see Isa first and run to her. Like the humans and the dogs, she does not see me. I reach out to touch her and my paw passes right through her. She does not acknowledge me when I call out. I don’t sense her feelings or that of the other bears the way in which I did with Ugalik.

My family is looking for me. They call my name across the Homelands, down icy fjords, and up to the blue gray skies. My name rebounds as echoes that shatter my soul. I have not returned, they say. I am right here! I call out, but they do not hear me. My sense of self has exploded like some great ice shelf calving off and crashing into nothingness. Everything I once was is no more. Everything I trusted about myself, my body and my capabilities is rendered futile in the face of it.

I run to each of them, my mother, my father, Isa, my friends. Oh, clan of mine, why am I subsumed by this fate of silence? Can you not feel me any longer? Do you not know me? How can this be? The silence is deafening. I see them clearly, walking upon the ice of the souls, ancestors of all creation and yet, I am not where I should be. How can this be? Why am I in this place in-between what I once was and where I should be?

I follow them until I lose track of time. The only sense I have of the passage of it is in the ever-increasing span of silence between hearing them say my name. Their search for me slows until it eventually stops.

They never see me, never hear me and believe that I am dead. Perhaps I am. They say it among themselves often enough that I begin to believe they must be right. My father and mother console Isa and each other, saying they only need feel the vibration of the ice to feel my presence once more. But I am not there! I am right beside them when they sleep, and I watch them while they hunt. They do not feel my love, my warmth or my sorrow.

They share their stories of me among each other, and once again my name is spoken. Juvante, the greatest of bears! Juvante, most loved among us! Juvante who will be remembered in the hearts of all bears! They share their memories of me in a way that is so different from my own recollections.

The facts of it are true, to be sure, but the meaning they have attached to it has taken on a life of its own. I am no longer me in their eyes. Not who I knew myself to be. I was wise and gave great thought to every action, they say. In reality, I often acted without thinking. I was driven by a curiosity and interest in everything around me. They speak of the ways in which I contributed to their lives.

Some stories I recall, and I want to join in and let them know, No! It was not that way at all! Let me tell you…but they cannot hear me and do not see me. They construct a bear that was not me, but has vestiges of my own memories and experiences. The only similarity remaining is in my name.

They speak of how my life exemplified the guardianship we are entrusted of the ice. They talk among themselves of my Vigil over the ice that contains the souls of all creation and my faith in our traditions. They console each other, saying that now I have reached the place of being one with the ice itself. They recount noble attributes of my countenance and the fairness and justice that characterized my life.

A fine tribute, but this is not me. I am, or was, a bear like any other bear! I call out, I growl, I try to touch them and still, there is nothing. They do not understand that I am still among them. I am mourning them, yet they are right here before me, continuing with their lives. They look to the ice and believe that I am there, a part of the vibration. Everything in what I was taught would have led me to believe the same, and yet, it is not true.

I watch them but cannot reach them, nor can I reach the elusive vibration of the ice I seek to become one with. Every day, I become more despondent and my feeling of futility grows. When Isa comes to my father to let him know that she has found a new partner, I realize that much time has passed. My father comforts her, explaining that this is what I would have wanted. His explanation was that above all things, his son Juvante was a just bear, and would have understood her decision to take a new mate.

There is a familiarity that resonates in me as my father speaks of this. He is right, I am a just bear and would not want Isa to spend the rest of her life alone. He shares stories of times when I exemplified this quality of justice in relation to other bears. My soul is weeping when I hear him recount this. The irony of being a just bear and living in the most unjust of circumstances is a gaping void of great and inescapable enormity.

My aimlessness has been replaced by a newfound sense of purpose. I will track down the human who has done this to me. I will hunt him as he did me, and I fill find a way to destroy whatever makes him happy. He eradicated my future, and I will do the same for his now. Ugalik.

Ugalik, I think, and I fly to his side.

Remembering his name has its benefits. I no longer need to cross the vast ice of the Homelands to reach him. I simply need to think his name. He is much the same as I remember him. No matter, I’ve made it a point to do a study of him. I wish to know everything about Ugalik and see if I might use this not-afterlife to destroy his future as he did mine.

Ugalik is surrounded by the other humans, I see their females now and their homes in a way I could never have approached during my life. They do not see me nor sense my presence. I see the men hunt and the women prepare the meat and make their clothes of the skins. Every part of the animal they use.

Absolutely nothing goes to waste. Our fur, teeth, fat, bones…everything is used. I see the remnants of what was once my polar bear kin adorning their homes. Parts of us are used as charms around their necks. Still, that polar bear’s spirit is nowhere to be seen. Those bears are one with the ice and a part of the sacred vibration. It seems none but I have this fate.

I watch Ugalik, hoping to find my way to cut his future to the quick, the way he did to me. I know of no way to accomplish this, but have no doubt that I will, as my hatred of him increases each day. I walk between the women wondering which one is his partner. Who does he claim as I claimed Isa? I want to rip them apart the way he did to us. Alas no, none lay claim to him that I can tell, nor is his mind on any of them.

Occasionally, he thinks of a woman he loved. It is evident he loved her as I did Isa, but she died several winters before. No other woman interests him, except to tend to the human-cub she left behind. One human-cub. He has one more than me, cut short as I was in my life by him.

It would suit me well to take this from him, his very life. His cub represents his future. I watch the human cub closely. He is a male, like Ugalik, like me. All the more fitting for my revenge. I am thinking that revenge would serve as justice and restore the balance to me if I might take from Ugalik the very thing he values most, as I most assuredly did my life.

I see Ugalik participating in the seal hunt, laughing with the other human males. All these things are lost to me now. I cannot hunt, and there is no one to hear my laughter, if I had anything left to laugh about at all, which I do not He walks the ice without any regard for the souls within it, there beneath his feet. He has no awareness of the one soul that should be there and is missing from it, mine. I track him, stalk him and still, there is nothing.

This son of his he calls Turak. I watch the human cub grow and play with the other human cubs. I see him grow in height and form until such a time when Ugalik begins to treat him like an adult. Turak sits with him, learning to hunt for the seal and creating harpoons and learning to tether the dogs. Together, they sing their song to their drum beat and talk of things I do not understand. I sense them more than hear them, or at least my feeling of them is more accurate than the words that they express to each other.

They sing their songs, and although I cannot understand all of what they mean, I know they sing of the ice, relationships and love, all of which are lost to me now. They face each other in playful competitions, making bird sounds with their throats, mimicking, pacing to each other in harmony. They do this, and even were I inclined to participate in their strange game, I cannot. They are raising their young human cubs in these efforts, much the way my own parents did for me, bent on ensuring survival. I did not survive, and the preparations my mother and father did with me did not ensure that I would live. They did nothing to prepare me for my predicament now.

I see Ugalik with his son, Turak and I watch him grow into the killer I am sure they will make him. I see the others prepare their sons and watch them hunt the seal and sometimes us, as well. There is nothing I can do during these times. I call out and try to warn the bears, Run! Get away while you are still able! But the bears do not hear me. A strange part of me wants to see what will happen. Will another once-alive bear become like me? I see them hunted, watch them die. It does not happen too often, but when it does, I find myself transfixed. I see the life slip from their bodies, and into the ice.

As a living bear, I had never seen this before. I only felt the vibration, as all bears do. This new sight is disturbing yet mesmerizing. In the absence of feeling the vibration, I can now see the soul sink into the ice. Their movement and breath become something more. It moves and becomes a glittering glow in the ice momentarily before it spreads to join the rest.

My first moment of witness to it filled me with an awe of the sacred so great that for me, the world and time stood still. It was everything I’d been taught to believe, made manifest. It confirmed the purpose of our being that we are the guardians of the souls of all creation, who enter into the ice upon our passing. It was beautiful, timeless and affirming.

The impression did not last. It was soon filled with an unbearable aloneness. There, brother, you have gone to join the ice, but what of me? How are our fates so different? Why you and not me? Why have I

Reviews for The Nexus

[maryann12_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Engaging and enriched with surprises, Nexus shares an exhilarating blend of action, suspense and horror. With fascinating characters and an intoxicating plot, this book will definitely adhere to those who enjoy a good dose of the bizarre and the unfamiliar. Once you start reading it's hard to put down. Very well written and a great read. I was given this book from GoodReads.