See Me

by Michelle Lee

  Smitty had a stunned look on his face. “He doesn’t even know your name, but he knew it was you. I get how you knew who he was, you’ve seen him on TV,” he worked it out in his head. “Did you feel anything?”

  “We had a pretty damn strong connection between us. I may have pushed him a little, but I could see the darkness trying to take over, his face kept changing and I could feel it in him trying to break free. No doubt that it doesn’t like me.”

  “He must have felt you come in the room, you have a certain presence about you,” Smitty talked through it. “You pushed him? Physically?”

  I laughed at that thought. “No, verbally. I got pissed after the seduction comment and ran my fingers over his face, that’s when I felt the connection. But I also may have said something along the lines of he’d know if I was seducing him because I walk my talk.” Blushing, I shoved more food in my mouth as Smitty roared in laughter.

  Ronnie came over at that and Smitty filled him in, making Ronnie laugh too. “You can certainly hold your own with him,” Ronnie declared and left to go get food. Smitty followed behind, still laughing. I kept shoveling food in my mouth

  They came back and ate like normal people while I rushed, realizing my time was shorter than it had been the day before. Smitty put a few granola bars in front of me to take with me and asked me for my cell phone. I handed it over without a thought as I put the bars in my purse and pushed my now empty plate away. He handed my phone back and I dropped that in my purse too.

  “I programmed our cell numbers in there. When you get back today, let one of us know. Also, let us know if you need help,” Smitty chastised, his blue eyes sparkling pools I wanted to drown in. I nodded mindlessly, not sure where my head was. I saw Ronnie nod behind me and glanced back to see the driver standing there.

  “Off to another fun filled day of hellish crap,” I mumbled. Smitty gave my hand a squeeze before I walked off. To my surprise we went to the same building as I was at yesterday and I was led back upstairs to the same room.

  Dr. Stone was there, looking furious, which I admit, made me slightly happy. “Good morning Airiella, I trust you slept well?” He didn’t pause to let me answer. “I will not be going with today, but each of the members will be debriefing me when they return. We will meet tomorrow morning again for a recap to see where things stand. You will be taking a helicopter with the remaining members to a mountain cabin today where the tests will be concluded. Do you have any questions?”

  A helicopter? I was excited now. I shook my head no and stayed silent though. Father Roarke walked in right then and ignored Dr. Stone to head over to me. He handed me a card in a subtle move as he shook my hand and asked if I was alright. I nodded that I was, and he left. A befuddled Dr. Stone looking at him as he left, and I palmed the card and slid it in my pocket out of sight.

  Dr. Stone gave me a questioning look to which I ignored and smiled. Pompous jerk. Taklishim got up and walked over to me, gesturing at me to follow him. As I got up so did the remaining council members and we all went out onto the roof where a big helicopter sat.

  The pilot got us all loaded up, buckled in and ear safety on and started the rotors up. Exhilaration shot through me, I’d always wanted to go on a helicopter ride. As we lifted off and flew over the city, my head was glued to the window, watching everything pass underneath us. I wasn’t a fan of heights, but I loved this.

  I watched the city fade into rocky terrain and mountainous landscape, and I felt something shift inside me at the thought that I would be in nature, a more comfortable element for me, less emotions of random people to pick up on. I smiled at the beauty that reminded me of home. Rivers glinted off the morning sunlight, small hidden lakes sparkled in bright blue tones. I loved it.

  I suddenly remembered the card in my pocket and without Dr. Stone here to see, I pulled it out and looked at it. It was a business card for Father Roarke with his cell number on it. I glanced at the back of it and saw he had written a message on it for me. “Lass, I have more information for you, call me at your earliest convenience. I’m actively searching for more in the meantime.” He signed it Roarke.

  The good of the day, so far, outweighed the bad with Jax in the dining room. I put all my attention into the happy feelings and just lost myself in the landscape below me, ignoring everyone else on the helicopter. Until we landed, it was just me, the landscape and my happiness.

  Kalisha came up to me once we were all out of the helicopter and it was safely out of the way. “You will be with me first,” she said, her accent captivating and her beauty oddly alluring. I nodded at her and reinforced my walls before following her to a large wooden log house. Hardly a cabin, closer to a lodge. There was smoke coming from a couple of chimney stacks on the roof already which meant it was warm, compared to the bitter chill of the mountain air. Oh, but that fresh crisp air lifted my soul.

  Taklishim brought me over a heavy fleece lined jacket that I was thankful for and immediately put on. He then handed me some lined boots that were too big but were much warmer than my tennis shoes. I gave him my heartfelt thanks and buried my icy hands in the pocket of the jacket and followed Kalisha.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kalisha led me off to the side of the house into a dense forest area, but she kept walking in an almost straight line until we came to a quiet clearing. There was a rug on the ground and a small fire pit in an area that was free of grass, weeds or plants, it was just dirt. There was a distinct feel of energy here that I could feel without my senses being opened and it hummed through me.

  “Airiella, sit please,” she told me, pointing to the rug, her voice was light and musical. I was thankful the coat was long because that rug and my thin leggings weren’t going to keep me from freezing to the cold ground. I sat down and watched her light a fire in the pit. I was really looking forward to my time with Kalisha. I didn’t know very much about hoodoo, only what popular myth said.

  Kalisha settled down in front of me, both of us an equal distance to the fire, the warmth already seeping into me. She gazed at me in silence like she was expecting something from me. Since I didn’t know what, I just sat there and took in her beauty. She wore bright colors in what I had always assumed was traditional African clothing, but instead of sarongs, she had on a type of pants and long-sleeved shirt on under a coat.

  Her hair was long, black and dreadlocked. At the meeting yesterday, she had the dreads pulled back in a band, today they were loose around her face and I noticed some beads in some of them. Her face was narrow, skin ebony dark that glowed with life. There was a pink tint to her cheeks, and her plump lips. She had a straight nose, a small piercing on the left nostril. She wore no makeup that I could see but had thick eyelashes that curled perfectly and framed deep charcoal colored eyes that glimmered with a sparkle when the sunlight hit them. Her cheekbones were high and defined, but not sharp. Her neck was long and graceful, her ears plain with no piercings or adornments.

  She had on a necklace that had some charms hanging off it, as well as some on her wrists as well. Her hands were long with slender fingers. She was taller than me, gracefully slender and moved like a gazelle. She also had that nice round butt giving her a very sensual look, coupled with high rounded breasts. She smelled of cocoa butter and an earthy scent I couldn’t place.

  “My name, Kalisha,” she started, “it means sorceress. I come from Ghana, a city called Sunyani. It’s clean there, and I live on the edges near the Ashanti Uplands. It’s a beautiful forest area filled with life and energy. Mystery and spirits.” Her voice and accent had me riveted. “In hoodoo, the guardians of the forest taught us about the plants around us, to help us heal. Those guardians we call Azzizas. From them we learned how to heal our tribes and conjure the spirits to help us fight what you here call evil.”

  “You don’t believe in evil?”

  She ignored me. “Today I am going to teach you some of our ways. You learning is my test. I can already see in you what I need to see. You are rare, a gift to us. I
want to help you learn how to protect your tribe.”

  “Thank you Kalisha, I am eager to learn,” I bowed my head to her.

  “In hoodoo, there is no evil. There is good, and there is bad. It is determined by what you wish to accomplish with the conjuring or poultice you make. If your intent is not set and a mix you made caused someone harm, then it is bad. If your intent is to harm and it comes to fruition, that is bad. If what you conjure has intent to harm, it is bad. Now if you conjure something bad to help you do something good, that is different. But it always has a cost. As above, so below,” she said.

  As above, so below. I had heard that before. “So, if it happens here, on this plane, it happens on the other side too?” She nodded at me.

  “A priestess of hoodoo can be anyone that practices it, but only a few of us have powers. Some things I cannot tell you about. Legba is a spirit that is a messenger for the gods. He delivers messages to me that allow me to help in ways that others can’t. But if I conjure him to ask for help, I must pay him. The most common form of payment is rum, they all want blood as well. Therefore so many people over here think hoodoo is dark magic. They don’t understand we don’t bring the dark, it’s already here.”

  I nodded my agreement, it was one of the problems I had with organized religion. There were too many double standards that allowed ignorance and hate to breed.

  “In hoodoo,” she continued, “we use the earth and it’s gifts to us, minerals, plants, animals, water to make medicine, or Gbo,” she pointed to her charms on her necklace and bracelet. She reached into the pack she had carried with her and handed me a small pouch, maybe the size of two fists. “Please open it,” she instructed me.

  I opened it and pulled out a book of Psalms, and various containers of herbs, and an amulet and stone. I held them in my hands and looked at her with a question in my eyes.

  “We use the book when we feel something is wrong and we read a psalm. Your Moses, to us he was a Mountain Man. He performed much magic, and he freed the slaves. When you need the psalm, it will help you. Read them. The amulet I made for you to wear as protection from the bad. You have too much power in you for the amulet to stop it, but it will help. The stone we are going to use today and make a talisman, what we call Gbo. This Gbo will be for you to use to help absorb some of that energy you take, and it will be purified in this stone. It is not an easy task to make this. Also, because your own power is so strong, what this will hold will seem like very little in comparison. It is just meant to help in a fast moment of need. What I teach you today, you will be able to recharge it for use again but you will have to do a cleansing ritual as well.”

  Kalisha pulled out some candles and herbs from her bag, a knife, some water and a bowl. Then she pulled out some more stones and set it all in front of her. “The priest, he showed you a circle, yes?”

  I nodded, “Are we doing one here too? Will you teach me how to do that?”

  “Aminda will teach you the circle, but I am going to put one up since I need to conjure a spirit to help me.” She stood up and began placing candles in particular positions and quietly chanting, and then she spread some salt and herbs around them. “Salt injures the bad energy, it can’t cross the salt lines. Some energy the salt can kill. If you are near a sea and need help, simply sitting in the water, or dunking yourself can cleanse you, restore you. It carries great power.”

  “But won’t the bad energy infect the water and harm the life it contains?” I asked.

  “Not salt water. The salt cleanses the bad leaving only good. Fresh water, yes, it can leave the bad intact sometimes. It depends on the energy,” she explained. “Water can be very powerful, it magnifies things. Makes it stronger, or makes it weaker, it can heal, it can kill.”

  I told her about my experience with the river and how the wildlife got infected and how I needed to go back and pull the energy back in, and then what happened with the holy water. She listened carefully and had a somewhat astonished look on her face.

  “You can do this? Pull the energy from water, from animals?” I nodded. “You are indeed rare. It tells me a little bit about this energy that you will be dealing with. I understand it has affected one of the tribe that you will be joining.” I nodded again. “It’s strong and sentient then. The flowing water didn’t dilute it like it should have. It stayed together. But the holy water destroyed it.” She paced looking thoughtful.

  “Does that mean that salt water will not work?” hoping like crazy it would.

  “That would still work, though it does lead me to believe that it might still be painful for you to some degree. Water itself holds a certain energy, it’s filled with life. Salt water holds even more. Holy water is water conjured with a holy spirit, the spirit is essentially in the water. I believe that means that the spirit in the water is what cleansed the energy in you. Salt water may take a little longer to work since that will be outside your body, while holy water you take inside you where the energy resides,” she gestured to her middle, thinking out loud.

  She was knowledgeable and I was soaking it up. As far as I was concerned any information and brainstorming was welcome since I didn’t know the first thing about what I was dealing with other than how it felt inside me, and when it left me.

  “We are going to make two stones,” she decided, pulling what looked to me like a gemstone of some sort from her bag. “This stone has grounding properties as well as protection properties. We will conjure Damballah and Ezrulie. I will need a sweet dessert and a piece of silver,” she said to herself rooting through her bag again and pulling out a silver chain and a wrapped cupcake. “This second stone we will be asking Ezrulie to bless with an abundance of love, which you embody, and to allow that love to flow through the stone to the holder of it. Damballah we will ask to bless the stone with his love of the earth and all that reside on it and allow the pure energy to flow through to the holder. Both will take us some time.”

  “So how do I use them then?” I wondered.

  “You will hold them, feel for the energy in them and allow it to release. Like what you describe doing when you let go of the energy you need to cleanse out of you. To recharge them, you will need to feed your energy into them under the moon and burn sage to clean it,” she told me.

  “How can I help you?” I desperately wanted to be a part of this.

  “First you need to open yourself to the area, allow the energy to flow through you, and you to flow through the energy. Ground yourself to the earth and let love flow,” she spoke, her tone light. I dropped my walls and opened myself, feeling the ground below me and allowing the energy to fill me and seep back in. “You glow,” wonderment filled her musical words. “Legba has touched you already.”

  She handed me the bowl and a rock. “Use this rock and crush these herbs into a fine powder,” she told me and handed me a bag filled with different little baggies of herbs in it. “As you crush the herbs, feel the energy they release, and seek out what they contain. Feel their power in your blood as you breathe in the scent.”

  That was a bit more mystical than what I was used to, and I divided my attention. Part of me maintaining control of the energy flowing between me and the earth, and the other now focused on the herbs I was crushing. I was starting to pick up on the energy they contained and felt a buzz in my veins as I crushed them.

  “Chale,” Kalisha spoke, “I can feel Ezrulie.” She looked at me and gasped.

  Confused, “Chale? What is that?” I didn’t know what was happening.

  “You have Ezrulie’s blessing,” she said. “It’s in your glow.”

  “Um, okay, but what is chale?”

  Distracted, she replied, “It means friend.”

  I had the herbs crushed into a fine powder now and handed them back to her. She went about mixing something else into them and chanting. I felt the air around me change and sat absolutely still, my eyes glued to the chanting priestess in front of me.

  It looked like the very air around her was vibrating, which d
idn’t make sense to me because you couldn’t see air, and then I saw out of the corner of my eye, all the candles around us light up. I was most definitely in the presence of something I didn’t understand as I felt energy being drawn from me.

  Kalisha got up and placed the silver and cupcake on the other side of the fire pit. “They are here chale, show respect,” she told me reverently.

  Kalisha spoke rapidly in a language I couldn’t identify as she bent in supplication facing away from me. Suddenly I saw them, two figures in front of her, a man and a woman. The woman was pale, ethereal and stunning. Wearing a pink and white dress and adorned with gold jewels. She smiled at me and I felt love fill my body. “You have the power of Balianne,” she said to me.

  I bowed graciously now knowing what else to do. “Thank you.”

  The man shone as all white, I couldn’t depict any specific features, but he moved like a snake. I did my best not to recoil and watched as they both picked up the stones that Kalisha had laid before them. They flared bright and then they put them down again. I heard a hissing sound and watched in rapt attention as Kalisha pulled out her knife and slashed open her hand, bleeding over the rocks and down into the earth.

  She motioned me forward and I figured I wasn’t going to like this much as she took my hand and did the same thing. Our blood combined in the soil beneath the stones, a new energy pulsing in the air. The blood on the stones vanished as if it had never been, and in a flash the cupcake and silver were both gone, along with the figures.

  Kalisha pressed herbs into my palm and the gash healed before my eyes. She did the same to hers, and then all the candles went out. “Our offerings were accepted, and blessings bestowed. The gods favor you.”

  She stood up and motioned for me to pick up the stones. I picked them up and held them in my palms, one in each hand. They felt alive. “Those are very powerful, treasure them, keep them safe from those that would wish to use them for bad.”