The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series

by Natalie Wright

  “Akasha.”

  “Yes.”

  I felt like I had to sit down. A sturdy chair appeared behind me. I fell into it and sat in a brain fog stupor.

  “Your bodies and all your creations seem so solid, permanent and real to you. So hard for you to accept that you can cast it aside whenever you like and be wherever and whenever you want solely by your desire to do so. And even harder to comprehend that, with practice, you can even take that body with you. This lesson has been the hardest for the humans I have met.”

  I was barely listening to the Goddess at that point. My mind raced. If I could be anywhere or anytime that I wanted I knew exactly where I wanted to be. Home. And not the one that included Muriel the Mean and Zombie Man. No, I wanted to go to the home with a mother singing and painting vibrantly colored flowers and making Sunday breakfast.

  “Yes, you can go there. But the past is a tricky business for the soul traveler.”

  Her voice brought me out of my reverie. What is she saying about tricky business?

  “What do you mean ‘tricky business’? I though you said I can go wherever and whenever I wanted to?”

  “Oh you can but that does not necessarily mean that you should.”

  “But I was happy then. I want to feel that way again, if only for a minute or two. To see her smiling face. To hear her laughter, like a million bells ringing. To feel her hug … ”

  Tears sprang from my eyes. My longing to see my mother again was so great that I don’t think Brighid herself could stop me even if she wanted to.

  “Perhaps the best way for you to learn the tricky business of which I speak is to experience it for yourself. Yes, humans do seem to learn best by doing, even if it is painful.”

  “So I can go there now?” I could barely contain my excitement.

  “You are already there.”

  “But how do I go?”

  “The same way you let yourself be one with the web of all that is. You simply let go of your conscious mind. Be one with all that is and choose your time and place. You will be there instantly.”

  I still sat in the chair that I conjured. I sat back and relaxed my whole body. I followed my breath as Madame Wong had taught me. I focused on the in and out, in and out. My breath like a gentle wave. Once I was in a deeply relaxed meditation, I imagined a stream and I pictured myself in a rowboat. I paddled my rowboat slowly. The water lapped at my boat and the paddles made little ripples in the water. I traveled down the stream. I imagined that the stream was a path to the house of my childhood. As I relaxed and focused on my breath and the stream, I felt the chair beneath me disappear, but I didn’t fall to the ground. Focus Emily. I knew that if I lost focus, I was likely to fall on my keister.

  The boat followed the current down the placid stream. Soon I was enveloped by a thick fog and couldn’t see more than two feet ahead of me. It seemed like an eternity that I drifted slowly in that fog, all the while I concentrated as hard as I could on the house filled with my mother’s laughter.

  The mists cleared and the fog lifted. I was no longer in a boat floating down a gentle stream. I was walking up a very familiar sidewalk toward a very familiar house.

  It was like déjà vu all over again. Will I finally have what I’ve hoped for?

  51. THE SLIPPERY SLOPES OF TIME

  As I walked up the wooden steps and onto the creaky porch, it felt different than when I’d first met the Goddess. The house was no longer shrouded in mist. This was utterly familiar. Same red door. Same snapdragons and sweet William in the front flowerbed.

  My face lit up in a huge smile. I was home.

  I opened the door and the smell of chocolate chip pancakes filled my nostrils. Coffee, bacon. Sunday morning breakfast at my house.

  I practically ran to the back of the house and to the sunny kitchen. I couldn’t wait to hug my mom once more. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and bury my face in her hair, all earth and spice. And I wanted to hear her laugh.

  But as I neared the kitchen, I stopped and listened to their voices. I heard my mom laugh as if at the funniest joke ever. My dad chuckled and flipped the page of his newspaper. My dad chuckling? I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard my dad laugh.

  And another familiar voice. I knew the voice as if it was my own. It is my own.

  I crept down the hall and peered around the corner to get a view of the kitchen scene. My mom stood with her back to me and flipped a pancake on the griddle. My dad was hidden behind his paper with a cup of steaming coffee in front of him. He wasn’t a zombie back then, but he did bury himself in his paper every Sunday morning.

  And sitting at the breakfast bar counter was another familiar face. It was a seven year old me. I was holding court, trying my best to make her laugh. I loved to see her smile. And from the looks of it, I was doing a good job of it. I had my cheeks stuffed full of pancake and was acting like a monkey while eating. I loved making her laugh.

  A dilemma occurred to me. If I barged into the kitchen, they were going to wonder who I was. They may not believe me. And if they did believe me, I couldn’t very well pick up my life where I left it off. I’m fourteen now, not seven. The past already had a me in it.

  What do they always say in science fiction movies? If you go back in time, you can screw up the whole time line and change the future. What if my little seven-year-old self saw me and that screwed up her head to know her future?

  My heart thumped loudly in my chest. I wanted to run into my mom’s arms. She was so close. And it was really her, not a goddess or ghost of her. Her arms would be warm and soft and real, just like I remembered. I wanted just one more hug. One more look into her eyes. One more smile on her face just for me.

  Maybe there is a way.

  I crept back down the hall and outside. I took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. I knew my dad wouldn’t take his nose out of his paper to get the door. And my mom didn’t let me answer the door when I was little. She has to come. She just has to.

  I closed my eyes and waited. I tried to remember to breathe so I didn’t pass out.

  I heard the door open. I opened my eyes. There she was.

  “Hello. Can I help you?”

  “I hope so.” My voice cracked.

  “Do I know you? You look familiar.”

  “You know me very well, Mom.”

  She lost her easy smile and all the color drained from her face. She didn’t exactly look frightened, but she took on a serious tone.

  “Emily?”

  “Yes. It’s me. Seven years from now.”

  She yelled back into the house, “I’ll be back in a minute. Liam, can you take your pancakes off the griddle?” She shut the door behind her and stepped out onto the porch.

  “I’m not even going to ask how, but I do want to know why. Why have you come here?”

  What to tell her? If I told her the truth, she’d know she was going to die. That seemed a heavy thing to lay on someone. And then there was the rest. If I told her the truth, she’d know her daughter would be in such grave danger.

  “I had to see you again.” Tears began to roll down my cheeks.

  Then it came. It was the thing I’d missed most about her and the thing I’d most longed for. She enveloped me in her arms and wrapped me in her warmth and her scent. I had grown a lot since I was seven and was almost as tall as her. My head came to her shoulder and I rested it there. I breathed in the warmth of her body and the earthy spiciness of her. She held me for a good long time and I let her. I let her hold me and stroke my hair as I cried and cried and cried.

  I didn’t want to learn more about streams of time and Dughall and the Netherworld. I didn’t want to save the world or be a warrior or a priestess. I wanted to stay there, in that place, with my mother.

  I wanted to find a way to stay. I could be a long lost cousin. That’s it! A cousin that they took in.

  “Emily, tell me the truth. No lies between us, ever. Right?”

  “No lies.”

  “Okay
then. Why are you here?”

  I couldn’t get the words out.

  “Does something happen to me in the future?”

  I nodded yes.

  “I see. And you came back here to see me again because you miss me?”

  Again, I nodded my agreement with her words.

  “But there’s more, isn’t there? You’re involved in something. It must be something big. How else could you do this – I mean be here?”

  Again I nodded.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Not exactly trouble. Danger maybe, but I’m not the one causing trouble.”

  “Good. I mean that you’re not in trouble. But danger, I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “I don’t want to be in danger anymore. I don’t want to go back and save the world. I want to stay here with you.”

  “Oh Emily, I know you do. I know you do sweetheart.” She lightly stroked my cheek. “But you can’t stay here. This isn’t your time any longer.”

  “I know, but I can be a cousin or something. We can make up a story, no one will know any better.”

  “But if you have a mission in your own time and you don’t go back, who will complete that task in your place? And what if the task isn’t completed at all?”

  I didn’t have answers for those questions. Okay, I had answers, but I didn’t like them. The truth was, there wasn’t anyone to take my place. I can see it now. I’m the only one in my own time and space with the knowledge to take Dughall down.

  “But … I miss you so much,” I sputtered out through huge tears.

  My mom’s eyes misted too. This was pretty heavy stuff for her to take in. But she handled it with grace as always.

  “Emily, listen to me.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “You are my daughter, and no matter what time or place we’re in, we are always with each other. Don’t you know that by now? Don’t you know that I’m always here?” She put her hand on my heart.

  “I know, I know.” Tears spilled down my face. “But it isn’t the same. No amount of enlightenment is going to take away the fact that sometimes I just want a hug from my mom.”

  She hugged me tightly to her again. “I know, dear Em, I know. It must be so hard for you. We’re so close.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” I remembered in a flash my years of torture at the hands of Muriel.

  “Muriel? Oh no. Well, please try to remember that you are stronger than her Emily.”

  “I don’t know about that. She packs a pretty mean back hand.”

  “I don’t mean just physically. I mean your spirit. It’s strong. Inside, Muriel is quite weak.”

  “I don’t think I have to worry about her anymore. Before I left, I think I taught her to back off from me.”

  “So you’re going back?”

  “I’m going to have to do the right thing here, aren’t I?”

  She simply nodded and her eyes filled with tears.

  “Don’t cry. Oh please, I don’t want to see you cry.”

  “These are just a mother’s tears of joy and pride. Look at you! What a beautiful and radiant girl you’re growing up to be.”

  “I don’t feel beautiful. Mostly I feel awkward and out of place.”

  “Oh, that will pass. You’re almost through that, I promise. Stand tall and remember who you are – the real you – in here.” She again pressed her hand gently to my chest. “And remember Emily, I’m always with you.”

  “I know. I know that now.”

  “Good. Now, I have to go back inside and tend to a precocious young girl and what is probably a pan full of burnt pancakes.”

  “Yeah, he didn’t take those off, did he?” I said with a chuckle.

  “Emily, take care of yourself. You’re stronger than you think.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  We hugged for a long while and finally our tears subsided. She stepped away, turned her back and walked into the house. As she closed the door, I saw her smiling face one last time.

  I stood there for what seemed like an eternity. I wasn’t sure it was physically possible for me to move my feet, but eventually I got them to walk down the sidewalk.

  As I walked, I thought about my mom and how happy it made me to see her again. But soon my thoughts wandered to the Goddess and to Dughall and then to Fanny and Jake and Zombie Man. They truly needed me. They were counting on me, and I couldn’t let them down.

  As I was thinking that, I realized that I was back in the mist and fog. I looked up and there was Brighid, her shimmering face changing and morphing.

  “You found your way back.”

  “You sound a bit surprised.”

  “Perhaps. You long so much to be in the presence of the corporeal form of your mother. I admit that I doubted whether your devotion to your friends and father was enough to draw you back.”

  “I’m not sure what drew me back, but I’m here anyway.”

  “Yes, and I am glad that you chose to come back. Did you enjoy visiting your past?”

  “Well yes, in a way. But I see what you meant. It is tricky business. There was no place for me there. So I’m guessing if I go to my future it will be the same. I’ll already be there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m afraid I gave my mom too much information. She knows that she’s going to die. Will that affect the timeline? Will it change things?”

  “It unfolds how it unfolds.”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready, Goddess, to take on Dughall. I don’t know what to do yet. I feel lost.”

  “You will know when it is time.”

  “But that’s just it, we don’t have time. I need to act now. I’ve already been here so long.”

  “Emily, you know and yet you do not allow yourself to see. Did you not just experience with your own senses your ability to slip into any time that you want?”

  “Yes, but if I’m already there – well, I hardly see the sense of it.”

  “Ah, but for many months of your Earth time, you have been here, not there. Here in a place of no time.”

  The realization of what she was saying took root in my brain. She just said many earth months.

  But then that second part. If I had been in the Netherworld, then I wasn’t really in the human world. Will the mind trip of this place never end?

  “So you’re saying that I can just slip into whatever time I want since I left and voila! Problem solved?"

  “Yes. You know this to be true.”

  It was like a large weight lifted off my shoulders. I didn’t have to hurry. I could take my time. There was no time in the Netherworld. All the time and yet no time.

  “Okay, so now what? What else must I know before I can take care of our Dughall problem?”

  “Now fair Emily, you must rest. It has been a long time since you allowed your body to sleep. Rest and when you wake, we will complete the training you need for your task.”

  The Goddess pointed to a door that appeared out of the mist. I opened it and went inside to a cozy room with a large bed covered in pillows and a plush duvet cover. I crawled in, covered up and drifted off instantly to a deep sleep.

  I needed that rest. It was the last time I slept for a very long time.

  52. DUGHALL AT THE LHC

  “Sir, I think there’s a bit of any error in your instructions for the experiment.”

  “There are no errors,” Dughall coolly replied.

  “But Sir, if we enter the codes you wrote, it will pulse the particle streams at a very high frequency.”

  “Yes.”

  “But Sir, we don’t know what will happen to the machinery at such a high frequency pulse.”

  “I do.”

  The young man stood with his mouth hanging slightly open. Was his boss a mad man? Or was he as in command as he seemed?

  “Are you going to input the program or shall I find someone more capable?” Dughall asked.

  “I … I can do it. I will do it. It’s just … well I have to tell you my concern here. No
one has tested this. We don’t know what will happen down there.”

  “Mr. … what’s your name?”

  “Schaeffer, Sir. Ted Schaeffer.”

  “Mr. Ted Schaeffer, I am well aware of the capabilities of this machine. I would not order this program if I was not sure of the outcome. Now, you have exactly one minute to get to your station and click at the keys or I will find someone to replace Mr. Ted Schaeffer.”

  Ted Schaeffer practically ran from the room. He was uneasy going about the day’s work, but he was even more uneasy staying in the room with his project supervisor. He knew it was crazy, but he had a strange feeling that his boss wouldn’t just fire him from the project, but meant to harm him if he didn’t comply.

  Once Ted Schaeffer had left the room, Macha said, “Dughall, you’re enjoying every minute of this, aren’t you?”

  “Why, whatever do you mean dear little Macha?” Dughall batted his eyes coyly at her.

  “You know what I mean. Toying with the humans.”

  “Toying with Mr. Ted Schaeffer? Why ever would you say that?” Dughall had a hint of a smirky smile on his face. When Dughall smiled he looked like a cross between a snake and hyena.

  “You enjoy sitting back, like the cat with a mouse, stringing them along, luring them step by step to your trap.”

  “Ah, I am not setting a trap for them, Macha. They are of no consequence to me one way or the other. But if they get caught in a trap, well so be it.”

  Dughall sat back and monitored the progress of Mr. Ted Schaeffer. He had never seen a human move his fingers so fast on the keys of a computer machine. The man typed as if his life depended on it. Dughall smiled to himself at this thought because, of course, Mr. Ted Schaeffer’s life did depend on it.

  53. HOSPITALITY, CERN STYLE

  Liam, Fanny and Jake arrived at CERN but made it no farther than the first security gate.

  Fanny had suggested that they arrange for a tour to get inside. But Jake said that plan was too ‘Scooby Doo’ and Liam had agreed with him.