by J. R. Rain
Where do you come from? I asked.
I come from neither here nor there.
What does that mean?
Nothing, actually, I’m still trying on your language for size. Perhaps that wasn’t the best expression to use.
Maybe it was. I thought. Except I don’t know exactly what you mean.
I’m still playing with your language. Your concepts, forgive me.
Forgiven, I thought. And quite frankly, you speak English very well.
Actually, I “think” English very well. Mostly I’m drawing from your knowledge of the language. We have after all, been connected for a very long time now.
Why haven’t we spoken until now?
You tell me, Samantha.
I thought about that as I flew faster and faster. Higher and higher.
I guess I didn’t understand who you were or what you were. Or are. I guess I still don’t.
Perhaps that makes two of us, Samantha.
You don’t understand what’s happening to you, either?
Yes and no. I understand that a part of me is summoned here, into your world.
Just a part of you?
Yes, Sam. Mostly, I stay in my world.
I don’t understand.
In a way, I don’t either. But I’m trying to. Every time I’m summoned by you, I think I understand a little more.
Help me understand what you understand, I thought. Please.
Where would you like for me to begin?
I thought about that as the icy wind thundered over me. Or over us. I didn’t know.
I thought: Where do you come from? You said “your world.” Where is your world?
Ah, yes, my world. It’s not very different from your own, Samantha.
We don’t have giant flying bats!
Perhaps not, but you have giant other creatures, sea creatures. Any number of which would be far greater in size than me. Your giraffes and elephants would “raise eyebrows,” as you would say.
How do you know our expressions and idioms? How do you “think” in English?
We are one, Sam. In this form, at this moment, we are one.
Fine, I thought. Tell me more about your world.
There are many like me.
Giant, scary-ass flying bats?
The voice inside my head chuckled lightly. Yes, something like that.
Are there humans?
Yes, Sam.
I want to go to this place, I thought.
I figured you might.
Because you know me so well?
I felt a smile appear in my thoughts. Something like that.
I’m fascinated by your world.
I imagine you are, Samantha.
I have a million questions...
But one of them is more pressing than the others, correct?
Correct, I thought.
You want to know how I appear in your world.
Yes.
That’s the million-dollar question, Sam.
You mean you don’t know?
No, Sam.
But...how do you appear in my world?
You know how, Sam.
I thought about that as I continued angling up through the atmosphere, higher and higher.
I summon you, I thought.
True. I do know one thing, Sam.
What’s that?
I know I don’t fully leave my world, and that I am, in fact, in two different worlds at the same time.
I don’t understand.
Neither do I, Sam.
What are you doing, presently, in your world?
I’m sitting on a ledge, overlooking our cities.
You have cities?
Not like yours, Sam. But in a way, yes. “Cities” is the best way to describe where I live.
I wish to see your cities.
I know, Sam.
How would I do that?
You don’t know?
Know what?
You’re there now, Sam, with me...
* * *
The Earth receded, far below.
Up here, there was only darkness. Up here, there wasn’t much separating me from the stars. No, that wasn’t true. There was something very significant: there was the Earth’s atmosphere. That which held the Earth together; that which kept us all bound together. Earthbound.
We are sitting together on a ledge? I asked after a moment.
In a way, Sam. An aspect of you is with me. A soul fragment, if you will.
That makes no sense.
Then let me try again. We are all souls, Sam. Some older than others. Some further along on our journeys. We each come from the mind of God. I believe you understand this.
I do, I thought. I think.
You do, he thought. I see you have more than sufficient understanding of the One concept.
We are all One, I thought. Because we are all from the same source.
Yes, he thought. Good. As souls, as children of the one source, the Creator, if you will, we can do many wondrous things. Your world is only now beginning to discover such things, but mostly, you will deny yourselves your birthright. Or, as we call it, your soulright.
You’re talking about miracles, I said.
Much more than miracles, Sam. But, yes.
And your world is further along than our world? I asked.
In a nutshell, yes. You see, we understand that we are much more than our physical bodies. We also understand that we can be in two different places at once. Or more.
More?
Yes, Sam. The soul is limitless, as is the Creator.
And if we are part of the Creator...
Then we, too, are limitless.
But why do we limit ourselves? I thought. Why do we accept our current state?
That is for your world to figure out, Sam.
And your world figured this out?
We did. Many millennia ago.
And what did you do with this information? I asked.
We flew, Sam. We grew wings and built cities in the sky. We removed poverty and disease and war and hate. We removed death.
You are immortal?
Yes, Sam. If we choose to be.
I want to see this world, I thought.
Then open your eyes, Sam.
I don’t know how, I thought.
So be it, then.
No, wait. I want to know how. I want to see your cities.
Before me, hovering brilliantly in the sky, was the full moon. It seemed bigger than I had ever seen it before. It should be bigger. I was, after all, closer to it than I had ever been before.
As I flew, I felt a sudden truth spread through me, and as it did, I felt myself nodding. Yes, the great head of the beast I had become nodded, too.
I have to first believe I can fly to the moon, I thought, before I can believe I can see your world.
They are, as your world calls it, baby steps.
It’s a helluva baby step, I thought.
Not as hard as you think, Sam.
I would have to break through our atmosphere. We would have to break through it, flying faster than any creature has ever flown before, or could ever fly. Defy gravity.
You are speaking truths, Sam.
But you just said that, as sons and daughters of the Creator, we can do anything.
I did.
But how? How do I fly fast enough to break out of our atmosphere? And once done, how do I fly through the vacuum of space?
How indeed, Sam.
Then once in space, how do I survive reentry? I mean, iron-ore comets burn to dust while entering our atmosphere.
Indeed, he thought. And I see that you’ve been doing your research.
I Googled it, I thought, wondering briefly if the creature I had become knew what Google was.
I do, Sam. We are more connected than you know.
Of that I had no doubt, and as I flew, as I studied the glowing moon before me, I began to see the absurdity of all of this. I had kids far below. I had a parent/teacher
conference in two days. I had a client meeting tomorrow with a man who, of all things, claimed his wife had disappeared off the face of the Earth.
We’ll see about that, I thought.
I had no business being up here. I had no business dreaming of the moon. And why did I dream of the moon anyway? What was the point?
There wasn’t a point. I had no reason to want to fly to the moon, to imagine soaring over its bleak and uninhabitable landscapes, to soar over its craters and crags and valleys and steppes.
And yet...
Yet, I did. I very much wanted to.
I thought about it often. Indeed, I often imagined myself flying to the moon...and leaving all my troubles behind. I had no reason to think this. It made no sense.
It makes more sense than you give it credit, Sam.
I considered his words as I flew now just below what I knew to be the outer limits of the atmosphere. I knew this because the oxygen was scarce and ice had long ago formed on my wings. In fact, great chunks of it broke loose and cascaded down into the night as I flapped.
Yes, I wanted to do it. Simple as that.
But it was, of course, impossible.
Oh? thought a voice inside my head, a voice that was either myself or the beast I presently inhabited. Or maybe a little of both. And you know this how?
Truth was, I didn’t know if it were impossible or not. I truly didn’t know the limitations of the creature I had become.
I wasn’t sure how fast I was going, but it was certainly faster than I had ever gone before. Still, not fast enough to break from the Earth’s gravitational pull.
Probably not, Sam.
Then what’s my answer?
But he didn’t respond and I knew it wasn’t his job to provide me with the answer.
Can you maybe give me a hint? I thought.
What makes you think I have the answer, Sam? I am but a simple giant bat.
I nearly laughed. I doubted the creature I had become could actually produce the sound of laughter. More than likely, it would have come out as a high-pitched screech.
The answer. I thought about that as I flapped harder and harder, flew faster and faster. I suspected my job wasn’t to know the answer. I suspected my job was to simply...believe.
How I would get to the moon, I didn’t know. How I would navigate through the vacuum of space, I didn’t know that, either. Hell, how I would even return to Earth again, was beyond me, too.
But I knew the answers would come.
And they would come soon.
They had to.
* * *
Far, far below, through the cloud cover and smog, I saw city lights twinkling. No, I didn’t know where I was, exactly. And no, I didn’t know the names of cities below. But an inner guidance system told me exactly how far I was from home, and how exactly to get home again.
Pretty cool, I thought.
Yes, I am, came the voice.
I smiled as I flew—and considered everything I’d been told tonight, and as I did so, one thing became abundantly clear: I was in two places at once. And perhaps even three.
Very good, Sam.
I had been told before—by entities far greater than I—that the majority of my soul resided in the spirit world, wherever that was. That our physical bodies were but a living, breathing extension of our bigger souls; in fact, our physical bodies were but a temporary vessel to be used for personal growth. Now I was being told that a part of me was with this creature, in another world. How this was possible, I didn’t know. How much of me was with him, I didn’t know that either.
An essence of you, Sam. But it can become much more of an essence, if you choose it to be.
A picture appeared in my thoughts. It was of myself and the creature...and we were indeed sitting together on a rocky ledge, although the creature wasn’t exactly sitting. Perched was more like it. Myself, I was squatting near the ledge, naked as the day I was born, looking down at a mist-covered landscape that was hazy at best.
Why am I sitting next to you? I asked. I mean, I thought our bodies were sort of, you know, joined together?
It doesn’t have to be that way, Sam.
Then why isn’t it this way now? Here in my world?
Would you prefer we part ways now? asked the creature. It would be a mighty long drop for you, although, I suspect, you would survive it well enough.
I shook my head at the absurdity of it all, and then asked: Why do you come here? I mean, you obviously have free will. Surely, you aren’t being compelled to come.
More ice broke free from my wings. Stronger winds than I’d ever experienced before rocked me. Rocked us. Still, we powered through the mighty winds which, if I had to guess, had reached well over 300 miles per hour.
I see it as an opportunity, Sam, came the creature’s reply.
An opportunity for what?
To be with you. To, perhaps, help you. To, perhaps, guide you.
But I thought the dark masters forced you into this role, I thought. The ‘dark masters’ were, of course, the entities who fueled vampires such as myself, who gave us our powers and our immortality. All they asked for in return was, of course, total possession of our bodies. Something I had been fighting, and so far, successfully.
Not forced, Sam. We saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.
An opportunity for what?
To give balance to the darkness.
You work with the Librarian? I asked.
We do, came the creature’s reply. He and others like him.
So, there really is a war going on out there? I thought. A war for mankind?
We do not see it as a war, Sam. We see it as an ebb and flow of energy. Presently, your world is ebbing away from negativity and toward something beautiful. The dark masters, as you refer to them, fear this natural progression and seek to stop it, or slow it down.
We continued flying, and I was curious to note my new use of the pronoun “we.” Yes, I now thought of the creature and myself as a sort of weird hybrid team. As we fought through a storm of wind that was surely strong enough to collapse the sturdiest of skyscrapers, I thought, We can’t fly fast enough to escape the Earth’s atmosphere, can we?
No, Sam.
So, there’s no way for us to fly to the moon?
I didn’t say that.
The answer was close. I could feel it. I just had to figure it out. No, I just had to believe.
And so I flew, high above the world below. I quieted my mind and flew in peace, easily enduring the screaming winds, the freezing cold and the lack of oxygen.
I was no longer a mom, no longer a sister or even a private investigator. I was something huge and forgotten, something at peace and...happy.
And as I flew, a single image appeared in my thoughts.
The flame.
It was, of course, the same flame I saw each and every time I summoned Talos...or when I summoned my own human body. I suspect he and I were forever linked by that flame. A flame that connected worlds.
I gasped suddenly.
There was something to this. The flame. Yes, the flame. It was the key to it all.
Now, with the creature remaining frustratingly silent and the high winds of the upper atmosphere somehow increasing, I suddenly knew the answer. I was sure of it.
The flame is a portal, I thought, excited. A doorway to anywhere.
An interesting concept, Sam.
Don’t give me that concept crap. I thought, Am I right?
There’s only one way to find out, Sam.
Indeed, I thought, and summoned the flame.
* * *
Within it, I saw myself.
My human self, that is. Normally, I would move toward her, and she toward me, and we would join again. But not now, of course. Unless I wished to fall for eternity, which I didn’t.
Now, with a nod toward that spunky gal I loved so much—that gal who had put up with so much and handled life and death as best as she could—I dismissed her.
She r
eturned my nod and stepped out of the flame, vacating it.
Now, it was just a single, empty flame.
Okay, I thought to myself. That’s a first.
The flame continued to flicker. Why it flickered, I didn’t know. But there it was, in the center of my thoughts, flickering and burning bright.
Now what the devil do I do? I thought. The creature, of course, remained mum on the subject. Fat lot of good you are, I thought grumpily.
Small laughter just inside my ears. You’re doing good, Sam.
I grumbled some more and continued focusing on the empty flame. So what was next?
Easy, I suddenly thought. Something had to fill the flame. Something had to appear within the flame. I knew just what that something had to be.
Now, as I flew high above the West Coast of the United States, a streaking, hellish beast from another world that cut through the high winds faster than most fighter jets, I saw the surface of the moon.
Within the flame.
The surface took on more shape and detail—craters and rocks and dirt all appeared in perfect clarity. As they did so, something happened. Something startling. Something that would forever change my life.
I felt myself rushing to that image.
Rushing to the moon.
* * *
This isn’t happening, I thought.
It can’t be happening.
I can’t really be here.
I’m dreaming.
Dreaming...dreaming...
* * *
I considered pinching myself, slapping myself...anything to awaken. Anything to prove that this wasn’t happening. That I wasn’t where I now found myself. Where I now found myself perched.
I was, I was certain, on the surface of the moon.
* * *
The creature remained silent as I grappled with what stretched out before me: a rolling sea of bone-white hills. Silent, I suspected, so that I could soak it all in without distraction.
Yes, I had always had an affinity for the moon. I was almost—almost—not very surprised when I finally married a man named Danny Moon.
Often, I gazed up at the heavens. But not just to the heavens. To the moon itself.