by B. Roman
At the stroke of Midnight marking the New Millennium, none of the terrible things people feared would happen, happened. No computers crashed, no violence occurred, no disasters manifested. Worldwide, people came together in unity and love, tolerance, and an unbridled celebration of life. Any tragedies that occurred did so before that 12th stroke of the clock, and would be remembered as history, remnants of a previous year, a bygone century.
As usual, the TV news media focused on the sensational and the absurd. Over and over again, they replayed an ironic video showing a man falling from the clock tower terrace and landing on an expansive canvas awning that broke his fall. With each bounce Ramirez took on the taut cloth, a silly sound effect would accent the rhythm.
“Amazingly,” newscasters reported satirically, “the man only suffered abrasions and a broken clavicle, but otherwise will recover fully. At least, physically.
“When asked how he came to fall,” the story went, “he said he was waiting to take pictures of the ball drop at the stroke of midnight, when a UFO in the shape of a clipper ship appeared in the sky, startled him, and his camera fell out of his hands. He tried to reach for it and, that was that. It was a miracle that he fell onto the awning of the Town Square restaurant. His camera was not so lucky; a passerby found it smashed to bits after a delivery truck ran over it.”
Or what they thought was a camera.
“Needless to say,” the news stated, “the man, identified as Professor Ramirez of Port Avalon City College, is being held over for psychiatric observation.”
* * *
At home in her room, Dorothy Nickerson had watched the festivities of the Millennium celebration on television. As the shimmering miracle of the Moon Singer appeared in the ebony sky, she realized that David had the Singer back and, under her nephew's stewardship, the miracle crystal had done its job. The magical crystal that she had discovered on one of her archeological digs and gave to her nephew - knowing he was the Singer's rightful owner - had worked miracles for everyone she loved.
With a shaky hand, Dorothy signed upward to the heavens, “I'm ready to go home.” Then she closed her eyes, and in that ethereal knowing that comes with the imminence of death, she knew her family would be all right. Taking one last breath of life, Dorothy drifted off peacefully to her next incarnation.
* * *
On the first morning of the New Year, David visits his sister in the hospital. She is sleeping peacefully, and without waking her, he is finally able to do what he longed to do since returning home: place the Rose Crystal Pendant around her neck.
When Sally's eyes flutter open and she speaks to him, David cannot hear his sister's voice. He doesn't need to, for he can read her lips. It is something he knows he will have to do the rest of his life, for he gave up his ability to hear so that Sally could be cured. She will never know the sacrifice he made for her. According to his doctor the cochlear implant inexplicably failed. A rare, but not unheard of, occurrence.
“Can you help me get up out of this bed?”Sally asks her big brother. “I can't stand lying here another minute.”
David holds her arm as Sally slowly gets out of bed and stands on her own two feet. When she takes wobbly but promising steps, he knows he has made the right decision, the only decision.
“Are you okay, Sal? Is it too soon for you to get up and walk? Don't rush it.”
“Yes, I'm good. And no, it's not too soon. Mom said it was about time.”
“Mom?” David looks at her, puzzled.
“Yeah. I had the strangest dream about Mom. I mean I think it was a dream. It was so real. I could see and feel her just like she was here in this room.”
“Really? What did she say?”
“She said she came to say goodbye, and didn't want us to be sad or hurt anymore. I really got the feeling she meant it was time I stopped being a pitiful cripple and get up and walk again. Weird, huh?”
“Yeah. Weird.”
“It's okay that you can't hear, David,” Sally adds. “If you can hear in that other world and that makes you happy, then I'm happy, too.”
Surprised by her words, David asks, “Why do you think I can still go to that 'other world' and can hear there?”
Sally touches the glistening pendant around her neck. “Because you found the Rose Crystal.”
Thirty-eight
At the Nickerson home, the family makes arrangements for Dorothy's funeral. They read her will and discover she has bequeathed her sloop Moonsinger to David. Her wish is that she be cremated and her ashes spread in the ocean beneath the cliff of the family cemetery. All she wants in the family plot is a small stone with a photo of her aboard the sloop, and the inscription: “To my beloved Isaac, Sally and David. Thank you for a glorious life journey. May yours be as smooth sailing as mine has been.”
For Isaac, having his daughter completely well is more than he could have ever hoped for. But along with that precious gift, he is finally able to put his feelings for Billie to rest. The guilt he suffered over her fatal accident has finally been assuaged. The car crash was fate. There was nothing he did to cause it and nothing he could have done to prevent it. This revelation surprises him, but he welcomes the relief from the nagging hurt.
So, Isaac and Janice finally set a wedding date - to be married on the exact day that they celebrate Dorothy's life.
“I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Jan,” Isaac declares, placing the engagement ring back on her finger. “And I want it to begin now, as soon as possible.”
“So do I, Isaac. But tell me, why the hurry when you've been so hesitant to set a specific date?”
“I had this very vivid dream recently that Billie came to me and told me it was time to move on with my life, with you, and stop feeling guilty about her death. She was so right. And I want our wedding to be something special.”
What could be more special than a wedding aboard the beautiful, sleek Miracle Ship that Isaac had designed and that he and Janice had raised millions of dollars to fund. Yes, it had been badly damaged in one of Ramirez's self-created storms, but an anonymous benefactor donated the money for its repair so it would be ready in time to be used for Isaac and Janice's humanitarian cause – and for their wedding voyage.
But it's all bittersweet for David. He is overjoyed that Sally can walk again, that the Rose Crystal worked its magic and healed her body, mind and soul. But he cannot forget the promise he had also made to his aunt, that he would find a way to get her well, to have her recover fully from her stroke. With a heavy heart he must bid farewell to her, in a ceremony of her choosing. Did she also choose the time and circumstances of her death? Like mom did? Or the way I chose my deafness? David wonders. Could I have even done anything to help her? Was it my place, part of my mission?
Obviously not.
On a brisk sunny January morning, David, Sally, Isaac and Janice board a small pilot boat that will take them to the Miracle Ship. From this little boat that bobs joyfully beneath the cliff where the Nickerson family cemetery stands, David scatters Dorothy's ashes in the calm water. Secretly in the palm of his hand is the Singer, and as the ashes spill from the urn, David lets the crystal slip into the sea with his aunt's remains.
She was the one who found it and gave it to me, David muses. Maybe it will bring her happiness in a whole new life. If she wants me to have it again, it will find its way back to me. She'll see to that…
“It's called a Singer,” Dorothy had said those many months ago, signing the word Singer, referring to the boat-shaped gem she had discovered on one of her archaeological digs abroad.
“Why do they call it that?”
“Each crystal in the cluster contains its own unique vibration,” she told him, “but joined together like this they create a symphony of sounds that literally sing the answers to all the mysteries in the universe. Or so the legend goes.”
“I bet it's thousands, maybe millions of years old,” David figured.
The crystal sparkled pure and translucent one
minute, a rainbow mosaic the next, a jigsaw arrangement of atoms, a harmonic conversion of energy and matter. Yet, it looked amazingly like a primitive sculpture fashioned by someone in love with the sea.
“It's incredible. Look at it, Aunt Dorothy. Its microstructure is so complex. But what really amazes me is its shape. It looks like a miniature ship. Here's the mast where the sail would go, and here's the bow, the stern and the rudder.”
Dorothy added more impetus to the Singer's mystique. The crystal was destined to have but one owner, or so the legend went. “If its owner believes in it, and works with its energy, he will develop extraordinary powers of communication, clairvoyance and prophecy…”
As important as his ownership of the Singer has been, affording him amazing gifts through what he had considered his “disability,” he realizes now that it was also his vehicle to self-discovery. For some it is found in prayer or meditation. But for David, his silent world has been made audible and meaningful through the power of this precious crystal. His mission is now complete. His mother is at peace, his father is happy and successful, his sister has been healed of her infirmity, and Port Avalon is safe and secure.
Thirty-nine
Onboard the Miracle Ship, preparations are being made for Isaac's and Janice's wedding. The deck and salon are lushly adorned with lilies, orchids and tulips in red, white and yellow. A wedding cake in the shape of the Nickerson family's historic Victorian home is splendidly iced in white cream, with a rooftop and shutters fashioned out of fresh red edible flowers. The ship's crew wears winter white suits with red boutonnières, with the Captain in full dress as the officiator of the ceremony.
Heather, who has been ferried over for the wedding festivities, giggles with delight along with Sally over their dusty rose colored silk organza bridesmaid dresses and helps Janice with the elegant floral spray in her shiny ebony hair fashioned in a beautiful ribboned braid.
There is no need for David to help Isaac with a bow tie, for he has opted instead for a cool blue silk tunic and white pants as a complement to Janice's ice blue linen sheath.
David wears the blue monogrammed shirt that his mother made for him, the one he wore to visit her at the cemetery where he went to talk with her, to find out why she died and left him all alone.
Just as now, it had been a day of celebration as well as a day of mourning…
Isaac, David and Sally laid flowers on Billie Nickerson's grave and after some sentimental tears and memories, they then enjoyed a dinner at their favorite restaurant on Lighthouse Point to celebrate what would have been Isaac's and Billie's wedding anniversary.
But sullen and maudlin, David needed more from his mother that day. He needed to actually talk with her. Listening to his Aunt Dorothy who suggested David needed to get back to working with his crystals again, he gathered them up along with the Singer and headed for the cemetery. In front of his mother's grave stone, he paced back and forth, kicked up some loose dirt, and teetered back and forth on his heels.
Finally David blurted out, “Why is this so hard. All I want to do is talk to – “ David choked on the words. “Just talk to you, Mom. But how do I know you can hear me now? You didn't hear me in the hospital when I begged you not to die. Maybe you don't want to. Maybe it's so great where you are that you don't want to know about us anymore. You don't want to know about our problems and how much we need you. Is that it? Did you get tired of being needed so much, of always having us on you about something? Mom, fix my lunch. Mom, ask Dad if I can stay out late tonight. Mom, I'm not a kid anymore. Leave me alone…leave me alone…”
David dropped to his knees and cried all the tears he hadn't let himself cry for months, rivers of tears, flowing in torrents, so many tears that his eyes swelled up and his nose ran. He wiped it with the back of his hand.
“Damn it! Why didn't you listen to me,” he had yelled, pounding the ground with his fist. “Do you have any idea what's happened since you left? Dad nearly died himself from the guilt. Sally's legs are useless. And me - I'm a mess. I don't know what happened to me. I went to some strange place on this mystery ship and had all kinds of insane things happen - a storm, and monsters, and…and all kinds of wonderful things, too. There was a girl there. I think I loved her and I think she loved me…
“Mom, I could hear there. I could hear everything, but I don't understand how or why. And I can't talk to anybody about it. Not Dad or Aunt Dorothy, though she'd understand probably more than anybody. Not to Sally - she'd believe anything I said, she believes in me so much. But I let them both down. I don't have any special gifts,” he sobbed softly, “except in my dreams. The worst part is that I'm so mad all the time. Aunt Dorothy thinks I'm mad at you. She told me to come here today, to talk to you about my crystals, and maybe I'd stop being so mad.”
David removed his crystals from the silk pouch and laid them out on the grave by the headstone in the mystical Star of David gridwork pattern with the Singer crystal at the apex.
“The last time I did this, I was taken far away. Maybe I can do it again. Only this time, I want to be with you, Mom. I want to see you face to face again so I can understand why you left and what I have to live for!”
The relentless sun bore down on the cemetery and on Billie Nickerson's grave. The Singer glinted and sparkled, creating a glare so strong that David had to shield his eyes.
Encased in a mantle of white light, obscuring his view of everything around him, David heard a soft hum that built to a frequency so shrill he squeezed his hands over his ears. The unbearable tenor persisted and David protectively pulled out his hearing aid. But instead of total silence, the piercing tone became a celestial voice, unlike anything David could ever imagine, sweeter even than Saliana's song. David looked up and the marble angel guarding his mother's grave was with him in the light. He swore she was singing to him. In the intense, blinding radiance, the angel's wing cracked as though struck by a bolt of lightning.
The vision before him was more than David could comprehend, holographic at first, an image from a distant dimension, shimmering and ephemeral. But a vision so warm, so embracing that David moved toward it, willingly, longingly, unafraid. It took shape, form, content. Her gold hair moved freely in the gentle wind. She was more lovely, more serene, than he'd ever seen her. Had it not been for the dress, David would not have been so certain who she was. The pink sheath, the one she made, the one they buried her in, caressed her body demurely. She was vibrant, breathtaking, alive, and her touch was real. And she spoke:
“I'm here, David. I'm here. I will always be here, though you won't always know me. Take the journey, David. Take the journey and I will take it with you…”
That was months ago, before David's transport to Coronadus on the Moon Singer, and before he met Bianca, his Mother's spirit image; before he discovered the Wind Rose in the Coronadus Emporium, the mystical compass that magically brought to life a city that was caught in a windless, stagnant time warp.
That was months ago, before he had any notion of why he was chosen - or did he choose? - to allow his life to intertwine with the lives of others on planes of existence that most people believe are merely a fantasy. In doing so he came to know that karmic debts actually are accrued, that the decisions one makes in one moment have a rippling effect on every moment thereafter.
Forty
The gleaming white Miracle Ship, in David's mind an earthly clone of the Moon Singer that transported him to amazing times and places, is now fully staffed with volunteer physicians, medical personnel and supplies, engineers and agricultural workers, and rehabilitation equipment. It will travel the globe to bring medical care, surgeries and medicines to thousands of people in disadvantaged and remote countries who would otherwise die from lack of even basic health care and vaccinations. The volunteers will help to build schools, clinics and orphanages, and dig water wells to provide a village with water for the very first time.
But on this day, it is time to celebrate new beginnings, the marriage of Janice Cole to I
saac Nickerson.
After the sweet and brief ceremony, lots of food, music and dancing - and Sally really dancing, not just being carried along by her brother - David and Heather take a walk on the inside deck, rekindling their friendship.
The turning point for David came when Heather, now a bit more assertive about where their relationship is going, told him he needed to open up a bit more, to be available to love. Perhaps the romance of the wedding, and the fact that his family is now happy and hopeful, allows David himself to feel serene enough to contemplate a relationship with someone.
They walk around the beautiful white polished decks, aglow with thousands of tiny lights strung across the banisters. The moon is high and silvery in the sky, visible through the spotlessly clean windows.
“I'd really like to have the kind of relationship my dad and my mom had. Where do you find someone like that, you know, a real soul mate?”
“You know David,” Heather reminds him, signing that he is to look at her face, “love is right under your nose, but you can't see it.”
David stops in his tracks. “That's what Saliana said.”
“Who's Saliana?”
“Huh? Oh. Just someone I …once knew… someone who helped me see that I should appreciate what's right here at home.”
“Smart girl. I'd like to meet her,” Heather says, trying hard not to be jealous of some unknown woman.
“Well, she's gone now,” David reassures her. “I doubt I'll see her again.”
Heather smiles. “Good.”
“I'm not so sure it's good,” David replies wistfully. “She was a very important part of my life.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Heather asks, her heart fluttering with nervousness, as they walk on.
“It's too complicated. I'm not sure I could explain it, how we met and what we meant to each other.”