The Magic Hour

Chapter 12: Immersion

IT WASN’T THE desert, or the courtyard. For a moment he wasn’t sure if he was in the dream again at all. But he was, for in the distance were mountains and he recognized them. They were the ones that surrounded Elaimat. He began to walk in that direction.

    “To understand you are dreaming, engaged in lucid awareness of your dream, requires an act of will, and an open channel into your own deepest awareness. It can be frightening unless you are prepared.” How do you prepare for something you didn’t ask to have? Where had he read that, anyway? Or was someone here feeding the thoughts into his head? No. It was his dream. He was the creator.

    The sky ahead of him was overcast, but brilliant sunlight from behind streamed in rays across the landscape. He was in a field of orange poppies, their color striking against the gray sky before him, backlighted by the sun.

    “It is beautiful, is it not? We spent some time on this one, before leaving only the one flower. In its essence, the Eschscholzia holds a special significance.”

    “I can’t see you.”

    “Yes, Nathaniel, here I am.”

    She was standing beside him. Her black hair was longer, he thought, and her face seemed a little older, the suggestion of lines around her eyes and mouth.

    “We have waited a long time for you to return. I had hoped perhaps to see you before this.”

    It wasn’t long enough, as far as he was concerned. The price of his dreams was too high.

    “I am sorry you must go through the pain you experience to get here. We did not intend that, but the bridging to your world is not easy to manage, even with the conduit we gave you. That is why I did not want to call you to us this time, either, but Marn and the others said we must, and I knew they were right.”

    “Why?” Nathan asked. He noticed that hawks had begun to circle above the field where they stood, though their wings were cobalt blue, reminding him of macaws he had once witnessed gathering in the vast, inundated savannah of the Pantanal in Brazil. They made no sound. Their color above the orange field mesmerized him.

    “They are here,” Naliv said.

    As she spoke the birds moved closer to the ground until they hovered only a foot above it. In a moment they were gone and in their place stood Marn and the company of people who had been with him the last time in the mirrored hall. As the group walked toward him Nathan took a step back.

    Marn went to Naliv and they both reached out and touched Nathan’s arm.

    “We have something to tell you. If you will let us. It matters to us that you do, but not here. There is a better place to do this.”

    “Why not. It’s still my dream. What difference does it make?”

    Yet as he spoke Nathan looked out over the field where they were. He had never seen anything that had brought him so much serenity. In the color and light that surrounded him he thought he could stay there forever.

    “This is what Elaimat is like everywhere,” Naliv said, smiling, reading his thoughts again. “Everything we have created has been to offer the feeling you are experiencing now. It is what we are. That is important for you to know. Come now.”

    The air around him thickened and the field faded from his view. He felt a sudden shifting of the ground beneath him and then nothing. He was suspended in a colorless place neither dark nor light, empty of all sensation.

    “This is where we create,” Naliv said, “where the source brings us so that we can build Elaimat as we want. Here, we are able to configure all our reality, and there are no limits. Nothing hinders us, for in this place we work without boundaries. When we are done, we have yet a new version of our city to enjoy.”