Emily's House: Book 1 of the Akasha Chronicles

Chapter 30: Riding the Waves

Chapter 30: Riding the Waves

If I’d had any sense about me, I would have kept my eyes closed and thought of something – anything – else. But it was like driving by a car wreck and looking even though I knew I’d see something gruesome.

I opened my eyes and I was in my mom’s hospital room. The last one. The one she died in.

My dad sat in a chair beside her bed. And on the other side of the bed was a little girl. Her long red hair looked unbrushed. Her eyes were wide open with fear and they sparkles with tears, but she looked completely focused on something. The room was silent except for that awful sound. What’s making that horrible sucking sound?

The machine that looked like a bellows pumped up and down. It was the source of that awful sound. The contraption was hooked up to the little girl’s mother by the tubes that ran into and out of the woman. The machine whooshed and pumped in a smooth rhythm. Below the bellows contraption was a clear plastic container that held a disgusting black, tarry substance. What is that tarry stuff coming out of the woman? Or is it being put in?

 No kid should ever see her parent die. Yet there I was, reliving the nightmare again.

It was unbearable. The long seething wound deep within me was ripped open again. The horrid sight of the tar being sucked out of my mom. My dad, eyes red-rimmed, his face ashen gray. The little girl – my child self – focused on her mother’s station, picking up her frequency for the last time. And present through it all, that incredibly irritating sucking sound.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I rushed over to the machine and ripped at it like a mad person. “Stop sucking the life out of her!” I screamed at the machine as I knocked it over and pulled at the cords and wires.

“I won’t see this again!” I swung madly at the air, trying to make the ghosts go away.

I fell to the floor, the plastic tubing still gripped in my hands. I sobbed great, heaving sobs. I cried so hard that I thought I might drown in a river of tears.

I’m no warrior priestess. I’ll drown in my own tears before I have a chance to help anyone.

Warm arms wrapped around me. I was afraid to open my eyes for fear of what I’d see. The touch was small and soft yet unfamiliar.

I opened my eyes. Madame Wong’s arms were around me and she cradled me in her warmth. She was the last person I’d expected to comfort me. She’d stood as still as a statue for so long, I’d begun to think maybe that’s all she was. A statue. But her arms were substantial and warm around me.

I didn’t speak and relaxed into her arms. My wailing gave way to soft sobs. As I relaxed into her, I almost heard her voice in my head. Pictures began to form in my mind’s eye but they weren’t pictures from my own life. Without speaking any words out loud, Madame Wong spoke to me of her life. Within a few seconds, I understood that Madame Wong knew more about my suffering than anyone I’d ever known. The human part of her knew.

In my mind, I saw a group of ancient Chinese houses. Rice paddies. Beautiful mountains in the distance. But the houses were on fire. I heard the sound of anguished cries.

There were other pictures flashing before my mind’s eye. A baby that looked still as a stone. Another baby – no a child – being held by a gentle looking man. The child didn’t move either.

I saw men and women dying by the hand of a sword and felt the anguish of a heart that had known considerable loss. And great anger. I saw an old woman finding her way through the mist of the portal and into the Netherworld. I saw her struggle with the lessons that I too struggled with. Of letting go of anger and of sadness. Of finding peace and happiness.

All this was a flash in my mind, like a movie being shown at super high speed. It was more like a knowing than a seeing.

Madame Wong. The tiny woman holding me had known enormous suffering in her human life. And she had come to the place of mist and fog and learned how to forget.

“No, Miss Emily. Not forget. You never forget. If you live to be as old as Madame Wong, you never forget.”

“Then why did you choose to live so long – to allow yourself to go on – when you had such immense pain inside?”

“Ah, yes, choice. I chose to let ghosts stay in past. Past is history. Living is now. I sat. I breathed. I let past go. I let future go. I am. That is all.”

“But didn’t it take you many years to learn how to do that?”

“Have you not understood yet? Time here – it is slippery, no?”

“It seems not to exist at all, and still ... It’s odd, in some ways, I feel like I’ve been here my whole life, but it also feels like I just got here.”

“It is difficult for humans to stay in Netherworld because no watch, no rising sun, no setting moon. No markers for human mind to gauge its ever present need to know time.”

“So if there is no time here ... ”

“It is eternal.”

“Then what is happening back in my own dimension? Has a great amount of time passed?”

“Miss Emily, you need only know that you need not worry about time. That is one you must let go like the ghosts of your past. Plenty of time to sit. To breathe.”

Back to sitting and breathing.

I sat on my chair again and got comfortable, closed my eyes, and began again to breathe. I thought only of my breath. I opened my eyes briefly, and Madame Wong was back in exact same statue pose I’d seen her in before. It was like she had never moved. Did I dream it? When she comforted me, was it a vision?

But I let those thoughts go too and paid attention only to my breath like the waves of an ocean. Tide coming in. Tide going out. My breath was like the gentle roll of the waves, up and down my body.

I sat in meditation for a long, long time, reckoning as best I can about these things in a place with no time. I had more visions come to life, but they weren't as frightening or as momentous as Muriel or the hospital room.

Eventually I found that I was fully in control of my mind. Mostly I thought nothing at all, which I hadn’t thought possible. For long stretches of time, known to me by the large amount of breaths I had followed like a wave through my body, I thought nothing at all. At other times, there were small thoughts that popped in, like the little birds Madame Wong had talked about. I told them to take flight and they did. It became easy to have a mind free of the distraction of a thousand thoughts and ideas crowding all at once like a busy market filled with people. My mind was instead like a vast, still meadow, waiting to see what would appear.

After immeasurable breaths into and out of my body, my long meditation was broken by the sound of Madame Wong’s voice.

“You ready to become warrior priestess now,” she said. “But first, Miss Emily sleep.”

I opened my eyes and felt underneath me the rustic bed of Madame Wong’s cottage. It took me no time at all to drift off to a dreamless sleep, my mind already so empty that it didn’t have the material left to create dreams.

But just before waking I had one dream – or was it a vision? I couldn’t be sure. In the dream I stood before a dark haired man with eyes like two lumps of coal in his skull. He was gaunt, his fingers bony, and his body was like a skeleton covered in thin skin. He looked smug and satisfied with himself.

The man’s face was menacing and I knew instantly that he’d do me harm. I thought, “I should be scared.” But I wasn’t scared. Instead, I felt pity. Why would I pity him?

My eyes fluttered open and the dream faded. But I recalled the image of myself that I’d seen in the dream. At first I didn’t think it was me. The girl seemed strong and powerful. She had a halo of buttery yellow light that glowed around her. Her face was determined with no hint of fear or smirk about it, just calm self-assurance. And in my dream the girl held a dagger in her hand. Can this be me? But I don’t own a dagger, and I never look that confident.

I rose from the bed, ready for a new day with Madame Wong in the place of mist and fog, of dreams and shadows. I had a vision in my mind of a girl with a dagger that I wanted to meet.