He began to count, and when he told me to open my eyes I looked around to see Stephen across the room, watching me with a strange expression. Vivian looked happy and pleased.
“That was wonderful, Lynn!” she cried. “You really found out about another life.” Her words sounded frivolous in comparison to the depth of my experience.
I sat up as Julian removed the blanket, feeling a little spacey when I moved. And when I put a hand to my face, I could feel the drying traces of tears I had really wept.
“How long do you think that took?” Julian asked.
I guessed about thirty minutes, but I had been in another life for an hour and a half, and the afternoon was waning.
Stephen wheeled his chair over beside me. “Did you learn anything useful, Lynn? Any of those answers Julian thought you might find?”
“Only that I was married to you once before, Stephen. You were Jim Lampton, and I lost you in that life, too.”
Some restriction, some inhibition seemed to have been lifted from me, and I could speak openly and let my feelings show. Feelings that belonged to this life.
Stephen seemed to withdraw a little, as though what I’d said disturbed him. The picture I’d drawn of Jim might not have been too flattering, and he wouldn’t want to make comparisons with the present.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Only that the man, Scotty, who murdered Jim, was someone I believe I know now. But I can’t place him. If I could, that might point a direction we could look into. The answer stays just out of my reach, so that I can’t grasp it.”
Now I was beginning to feel upset, and Julian hurried Vivian and Stephen out of the room. He brought me a Herkimer diamond to hold, and I seemed to draw some healing power from the crystal that stopped the frantic searching I’d begun in my mind.
“Just let it all go, Lynn,” Julian said. “Hold on to that feeling of peace. The answer you want is there inside you, and when it’s time, you will remember.”
I had to accept that. I seemed to be drifting in some space between past and present. Now I wanted only to be alone. At suppertime I fixed a bowl of soup for myself and carried it to my room. The others didn’t bother me—perhaps because Julian had told them not to.
As I began to go over the strange experience Julian had led me through, I felt dreamily uncertain. How much of it had really been a dredging up of a past life that I had really lived, I didn’t know. The skeptical part of my mind suggested that I’d simply been making up answers to Julian’s questions. Yet whenever that brown emptiness had appeared, words had come voluntarily out of my mouth. Words I seemed to have nothing to do with. They seemed to rise from some deeper space inside me that I’d never tapped before.
I lay on my bed with a comforter over me and my window open to an evening grown cooler. Because I couldn’t help myself, I ran again through those events that I had seemed to experience in Julian’s study. I wasn’t seeking or striving now, but just letting the sense of what had happened wash over me. Alice Lampton had not led an unhappy life, except for her times of tragedy. I knew that two of her children had lived, and there had been a grandchild.
For the first time I was able to focus on the face of the little girl of four who stood beside her mother when Alice lay dying. Though she didn’t look in the least like Jilly, I knew that Jilly had taken her place as my grandchild in that other lifetime.
When the real Jilly came to my door—the only one who intruded on me that evening—I invited her in. She sat down quietly, asking no questions, sensing my need to be still.
A deep love rose in me toward this little girl—more than anything I’d felt for any child before in my life—and I knew I must find a way to help her and keep her safe. I owed that to Stephen, and to myself as well. And to that faraway Alice Lampton, who might or might not have existed.
If only I could place the man, Scotty, who had played the villain, and who must be unmasked if he—or she?—had a counterpart in my life now. Tomorrow, when my strength to live in the present returned, I must find the way to an identity. As Julian had said, it would come.
Had there ever been a Genessee, Colorado? That might be interesting to learn. Perhaps it had been one of those little ghost towns of the mining era, long since blown away in dust.
I tried to rouse myself to make contact with the present. “Has your Aunt Meryl gone home, Jilly?”
“Just to the farm. She wants to take me away with her, but I don’t want to go. Anyway, tomorrow morning, if the weather holds, we’re going up in Air Dancer with Dad. You’re to go too. Isn’t that wonderful? Did you ask him to, Lynn?”
“I threw out the idea. I’m happy if he’s accepted it.”
Her eyes were shining as I’d never seen them. “If we go early that’s the time when the shadows will make everything especially beautiful.”
“It will be cold up there, won’t it? How do we dress?”
“Dad says the lighted gas that shoots up into the balloon keep the air warm.”
A strange apathy still filled me, as though I drifted without force or purpose toward something inevitable that lay just out of sight in the future. Though perhaps a little closer now. Too close. Something that no will of mine, no effort, would help me to avoid. It was the real world that I must deal with now—and I wasn’t ready. I didn’t really believe in the foreshadowing of events, yet I couldn’t help the conviction that Jilly would never make this trip, and that was appalling.
“Sometime will you tell me what happened when Uncle Julian took you back?” Jilly said.
“Of course. When I get it all sorted out. Right now I feel as though I’ve had a very strange experience that I’m still trying to figure out.”
She seemed to accept this, and in a little while she went quietly away. Though it was still early, I got ready for bed and tucked myself beneath the covers, feeling strangely tired, both physically and emotionally. After all, I’d lived a whole other lifetime today! Outside, the wind had risen again—that night wind that so often blew along this mountaintop—and with it came the eerie singing of the Stones.
With the same clarity that had come through my vision of Alice’s life, I saw myself standing on the ridge where the old men in long black capes had leaned toward me. Whether they meant to help me as they had helped Julian in another life, I couldn’t tell. Somehow I knew this was the future, but whether I would be sacrificed as Vivian had been, I had no way to tell. I hated my sense of premonition about Jilly, and I pushed the vision away. The future could be changed. I needn’t fear it, because I would never climb to that ridge again. Nor would Jilly, if I could help it. There would be no need, ever, to go up there.
At last I went peacefully to sleep, having ordered my thinking to some extent. Whatever dreams came to me were not disturbing. The time must have been past midnight when I opened my eyes to find moonlight streaming through the windows, and Stephen sitting quietly across the room from me, his crutches leaning beside his chair.
When he saw that my eyes were open, he spoke to me. “I didn’t like what happened in Julian’s study,” he said. “I was afraid you might wake up and be frightened.”
“Thank you. But it was all right. I didn’t really feel what seemed to be happening. And I’m still not sure where it all came from.”
My breathing felt suddenly irregular and my heart was jumping. Alice Lampton’s story had left me vulnerable, with no means of putting up a defense against Stephen. All the love I felt for him rose in me as strongly as it had for Jilly. But now for the first time in all these years it was an emotion in which anger played no part. Nor forgiveness either. Forgiveness was no longer necessary, for him or for me. In the past we had behaved in ways that were very different from the way we would choose to behave now. Youth was so sure of itself—so certain that it knew the right way. I was glad to have reached another, slightly wiser decade.
“Oriana is leaving this morning.” Stephen spoke evenly, his voice betraying nothing.
Oriana no lo
nger mattered to me—my perspective took in another century, and I couldn’t bear to lose Stephen for a third time just because of stiff-necked silence.
“I suppose I have always loved you,” I said. “Even while I was hating you. That’s not a burden I am handing you. I just want you to know that I’m not terribly young and angry anymore. I suppose we all did the best we could with what we had at the time.”
I could sense his stiffening, and knew he wasn’t ready to love again, or to be loved. Perhaps he never would be. In that other life I had been loved by Jim Lampton until the time of his death. But that memory had been lost to Stephen, and he was dealing perhaps with a karma that was different from mine. This might not be the lifetime when we would work it all out.
Even as these thoughts drifted through my mind, I marveled a little. What had happened in Julian’s study had changed me in some way—perhaps made me more accepting of the unacceptable.
Stephen got up on his crutches. “I’m glad you’re all right,” he said and went out through the open door. I could hear him on the deck, where the ramp made the going easier for him.
It was something that he had come. Something to treasure. He had sat beside my bed, guarding me while I slept. Once more there were tears on my cheeks, but this time the emotion was mine, and not something as far removed from me as Alice’s feeling for Jim Lampton had been.
I slept again, and wakened when pale light touched the windows. I rose to see sunrise flaming across the mountaintops, leaving the hillsides and valleys still in deep shadow. A beautiful morning for the balloon! Nothing evil could touch us up there. I would be with the two people whom I cared about most in the world, and of course Jilly, Stephen and I would be going up together.
I hurried with my dressing and went downstairs to fix myself toast and coffee.
19
Vivian and Julian weren’t yet up and around, so when I’d eaten breakfast I hurried down to Stephen’s room, expecting to find Jilly there. Stephen was waiting for me, wearing a crewneck sweater and lumberjack coat. Apparently Paul was still asleep and Stephen had managed very well by himself.
“Shall I call Jilly?” I asked.
Stephen looked annoyed. “Meryl took her off last night without a word to me. Oriana persuaded Jilly to go to the farm with Meryl, and promised I’d take her up another time. Apparently Meryl convinced Oriana that Jilly is in danger, and that she mustn’t go up in the balloon. Oriana has left as well, to catch an early plane out of Charlottesville. She borrowed one of our cars.” He sounded as empty of feeling as he had last night—as though he had gone emotionally numb.
I wondered whether or not to be relieved about Jilly. Perhaps this was all my premonition had meant.
“Maybe we’d better forget about the balloon,” I said. “It would be a shame to do this without Jilly. I’m sure she didn’t want to go with Meryl. Stephen, how sure are you about Meryl?”
“I trust her as far as Jilly is concerned,” he said. “Maybe she can be a rough diamond at times, but I don’t think she’d ever hurt Jilly.”
I thought of Meryl’s attitude that night in Charlottesville, and wondered.
“Anyway,” Stephen went on a bit grimly, “all the arrangements have been made, and the van and open trailer that carries the equipment will be on their way, so I couldn’t cancel now if I wanted to. Can we take your car, Lynn? It isn’t far to where they’ll pick us up.”
“Of course,” I said, not sure whether I wanted to do this or not. Stephen seemed to be acting almost by rote, and I hated that. Nevertheless, we went down to where I’d left my car at the side of the driveway and got in. I knew better than to try to help Stephen in any way.
We drove farther on along the road that passed his house, and down a winding side road to where a field leveled out among the trees. The Air Dancer van was already there, with its Flights of Fancy sign on the side, and the crew had unloaded the basket from the trailer and were unrolling rainbow-striped cloth on the ground. I drove across the grass and we got out.
Bill and Tony Roscoe greeted Stephen as an old friend, and were introduced to me. Tony would go up with us to fly the balloon, while Bill would head the ground crew.
The crew had already spread the rainbow cloth—Stephen called it “ripstop nylon”—out on the ground to its full seventy-five feet. A gasoline fan pumped cold air into the folds, and they rippled gently and began to swell. The wide bands of color ranged from pale blue and green to yellow and orange to red and lavender and dark blue. The field was filling up, with people seeming to come out of the hills where I hadn’t known anyone lived, just to watch the preparation and ascent of the balloon.
The great mound of color swelled still more as air inflated it from the portable fan, and those who stood about watching were quickly dwarfed as the balloon took shape, flat on one side where it still contacted the earth. When enough air had been blown in to round the huge mound, the burner was activated to shoot flame into the growing mass of the balloon. As it filled further with hot air, the entire envelope rose gently to float in place above the basket. I’d watched the little rattan carrier as they’d lifted it from the trailer, and it seemed alarmingly tiny beside the enormous parachute of color overhead.
Bystanders rushed to hold the sides of the basket so that it would stay on the ground. They were ready for us now, and Stephen and I went over to where the little carrier waited impatiently, ready to bounce into the air the moment it was released.
I’d wondered how Stephen would get on board, but Bill and Tony Roscoe simply picked him up and lifted him over the low side. A stool had been placed in the basket for him to sit on, but for now he stood erect. One of the uprights that supported the metal burner at the top center beneath the balloon offered him a handhold. I was able to climb in easily, and Tony took his place where he could reach the trigger of the burner overhead. Bill and the rest of the crew would remain on the ground to follow us with the van and empty trailer.
When Tony triggered the burner valve, flame shot twenty feet up into the shell of rainbow cloth, its noise deafening. Somehow I had pictured a balloon trip as being totally peaceful, but the roar of flame was shattering, though, thankfully, not continuous.
Those on the ground released the basket and we floated gently into the air, our rise gradual. Spurts of flame took care of our upward and downward movement, while the wind itself—fairly mild today at this level—guided our direction.
Watchers on the ground waved as we floated over nearby treetops, flame roaring again so that the hot air would lift us over. I clung to an upright and tried not to shift my weight too often, as that made the basket tip uneasily. The rattan side came up to my waist, so I could look out over the countryside easily. I felt no sense of height or dizziness, and it was wonderful not to speed over the land so swiftly that everything became a blur. We were close to the mountains, as birds were close.
Below us I could see the blue and white van with its trailer following a strip of road. Tony was in regular voice contact with the radio in the van, so we could keep track of each other. Whenever and wherever we landed, we would need the crew promptly at hand.
We topped a mountain ridge, and now I could look out over sculptured mounds of autumn color rolling in all directions. The trees seemed molded into soft forms that were dressed now in full burning color. Russet and garnet and deep ruby gave way to patches of brilliant maple flame. Stands of yellow poplar fluttered like gold coins in the light of a rising sun. Evergreens offered patches of rest from a brilliance almost too great to bear. Beautiful as all this seemed from the ground, the mountains from the air were something to catch the breath in wonder.
Because the sun had not yet reached into deep valleys, still lost in shadow, the chiaroscuro of light and dark added to the magnificence.
Always, every moment, I was aware of Stephen close beside me in the little basket. He had relaxed into a more peaceful state than I’d seen since I’d come to Virginia. This floating away from the earth was good for both
of us, and I was only sorry that Jilly couldn’t share it with us.
Once as we floated along for the moment in peaceful quiet, I reached out and broke a sprig of pine needles from the top of a tall tree. Had the wind been stronger, Tony said, he’d have kept farther away from the trees, but this light draft made it safe. Winds, however, could blow at different speeds at different levels.
The mountains looked so rounded and soft that a landing would surely bounce us into a featherbed. Deceptive, of course, since spiked branches lay beneath that quilted covering.
The highway, with its reassuring glimpses of the van and empty trailer following us, was still in view. Sometimes a voice on the radio told us we were in clear sight. But there were times when we were hidden from the ground, and voice contact became all the more important.
During those quiet moments when the burner wasn’t being activated, all was still and calm and utterly peaceful. Only once when the burner was on did I look up into the fabric overhead where deafening flame speared toward the top, though never touching anything. That was a bit frightening to watch, and I didn’t look upward again. At least all that hot air kept us warm, as Jilly had said it would.
Streams flowing between the hills still smoked with early morning mists carrying their own air currents. Sometimes we followed a stream for a distance. Sometimes as we rose over a ridge, I could look down upon isolated houses that must be almost inaccessible from the ground—little pockets of habitation I hadn’t known existed.
Once when I looked at Stephen, he smiled at me. An easy, natural smile that told me we were sharing an “adventure”—as we’d have called this in that young year of our marriage. For a little while I could relax and let this almost mystical experience of drifting above the earth, far removed from ugly reality, fill me with the strength I would need when we returned to the ground.
“Look where we are,” Stephen said and pointed.
We were floating gently along a ridge, and as Tony touched the trigger of the burner to lift us over, I looked down to see that we were directly above the Singing Stones. It seemed strange, and far less menacing, to look down on them from this height. The old men in their black capes seemed huddled close together, and no longer very tall from this perspective. Sudden movement below startled me.
The Singing Stones Page 25