by Rose, M. J.
As the mushroom invaded her bloodstream and altered her consciousness, Jac’s hearing became more attuned to the sounds of the forest. She listened to a chipmunk scurrying across a log, a bird chirping and water dripping. Her sense of smell, always intense and precise, was even more exaggerated. Resins, molds, the spicy and sharp scents of the woods, assaulted her. The Perfume of Dark, she thought, automatically playing the game she and her brother had indulged in for years.
“Shut your eyes,” Theo whispered.
He did. She didn’t. She wanted to be able to see. She watched Theo reach out, find and take her hands. As soon as he touched her and their connection was made, strange things began to happen. First she felt a warmth coming from the stones, as if heat were emanating from their cold surface.
Then the air around Theo began to waver, as if affected by another frequency.
They each had been given mantras to help them meditate and were told they were private—to hold close and keep secret and speak only inside their own minds. But Theo was chanting his, low and under his breath and just loud enough for her to hear. She listened to the foreign sounds. Felt compelled to mouth them also. She was chanting his mantra. Except the words didn’t sound Indian. They didn’t sound like any language she’d ever heard. These words had tastes.
Honey. Berries. Malt.
“Budh Vid Dru Budh Vid Dru Budh . . .”
Tastes of something bitter and burnt. Charred toast? Marshmallows crisped to ash?
Jac didn’t think this was the mantra the teachers at Blixer had given Theo. If it was, he was breaking yet another rule by speaking it out loud. Did that even matter anymore?
Jac felt the mixed emotions that came with doing something forbidden and risking danger all at the same time. She was exhilarated and scared. Theo had told her they were exploring Carl Jung’s shadow world. In search of something that would explain their strange connection to each other. That they needed to go beyond reality into the darkness where mystics and shamans quested for answers and find their own.
For several minutes, or a half hour, or even an hour—she didn’t know—the two of them sat on the pine-needle carpet and chanted. The sound became the wind. The birdsong. The rustle of the leaves. The roar of a distant waterfall.
Peace descended on Jac. Energy flowed out of her and into Theo through the tips of her fingers on her right hand into the tips of his left and back into her from the tips of his fingers on his right hand into the tips of her left. Centuries of understanding moved in them. She saw moving mandalas made of brilliantly colored yarn. Elaborately woven designs like the sacred Buddhist art she’d seen in books in her grandfather’s library and that Malachai used in their therapy sessions, but now come to life and given dimension.
And then she realized she wasn’t just looking at them, she was inside them. She was the red thread, Theo was the blue. They were each creating patterns as they circled each other, moving closer and closer to the center, where she knew they would become the very oneness the drawings were supposed to help the viewer find.
Sitting together in the sun, in the woods, Theo was taking her on a journey into the cosmic soup of eternity.
As these thoughts welled up in her, she felt as if she was finally understanding concepts she’d always been confused by. And being introduced to thoughts she’d never even contemplated before. Time was disappearing. In this new dimension everything that had ever happened to her and to Theo existed on the same plane. All their histories were present in the same moment. The two of them were connected through all these events, tied to each other through their overlapping pasts. Tangled up in the threads of each other’s lives.
And then he let go of her hands and broke the connection.
In a great rush all the sounds and smells and sensations left her.
Theo had left her too. He’d risen up and was running away from her, running through the woods. Fast, as if he were being chased. She ran after him, calling out his name.
She couldn’t catch up, but she managed to keep her pace steady so he remained in her sight.
At first she was so intent on following him that she didn’t focus on where they were going. Then she realized they were going up a staircase of rough stone carved in the mountain. Up. Up. Farther up. She hated that she couldn’t see where the steps were leading. All their hikes before had been on sloping hills with gentle inclines. But this landscape was different. They were on a rising path that hung out over the forest. At every turn Jac saw a threatening edge. But she kept going, following him.
And then he stopped. He’d reached the summit. He dropped to his knees. Knelt on an outcropping of rock. His head dropped into his hands. His back shook. He was in some kind of crisis. She barely heard his choked sobs over the sound of the rushing water. No, they weren’t sobs, they were two words he was saying over and over.
“I can’t,” he said, as he beat his fist on the dirt. “I can’t. I can’t.”
The heartbreak of a lifetime in just two broken words.
Slowly she climbed the last half-dozen steps, trying not to look at what lay beyond. How far a drop was it? If he fell would he survive? Would she? Panic washed over her. She couldn’t keep going. But she couldn’t leave him there. Her breath was shallow. Jac could feel her heart racing. She forced the last few steps and finally reached Theo.
The rock where he was kneeling was hanging out over a large pool of cool blue water being fed by a waterfall. Dizziness overwhelmed her. What if she lost her balance? Tumbled headfirst into the water? She retreated two steps. Three. Four. She was starting to panic. Wanted to run away. But she knew she couldn’t. She had to get him away from the edge.
Using the method Malachai had showed her, Jac took a deep breath, inhaling to the count of four. Held the breath in to the count of four. Then exhaled to the count of four. Then held to the count of four. And then repeated the exercise.
If she couldn’t control her anxiety, she wasn’t going to be able to help him. And he needed help. He had stood up now and was perched even closer to the edge of the rock.
Jac pushed herself back up those four last steps and approached Theo. Should she talk to him or not? Was he even aware of her? If she startled him, he might try to get away, fall over the edge, somehow take her with him. For a moment she was absolutely certain that his action was going to be her destruction no matter what she did. That by being with him she had doomed herself. But that was crazy.
Go, grab him, pull him backward, save him.
No, run the other way, down the hill and away from here. Save yourself.
It was as if she had two totally separate sets of emotions fighting a battle inside her.
Jac watched his hair wave in the breeze, his long, lithe body shake with sobs.
“Theo?” she whispered. “Theo, it’s me, Jac.” She inched closer. “We have to get off this ledge.”
She didn’t look down, just kept her eyes on him.
“Theo? We have to get off the ledge. Take my hand.”
He didn’t respond.
She crept closer, then reached out and very gently and slowly took his hand. He didn’t resist, but his fingers were icy. For a few moments both of them stayed like that, rooted to the spot. Her hand holding his. A skin-and-bones, flesh-and-sinew connection. She clung to his hand to bridge the gap between her fear, his survival and hers.
“Theo, what is wrong?” she asked.
His only answer was to take a single step closer to the ledge, pulling her with him.
She didn’t want to, didn’t mean to, but she let go of his hand. She couldn’t follow him. But if she didn’t, what would happen to him? She should grab him again, keep talking, and try to get him to retreat. But to do that she’d have to step out farther on the rock.
The sky rapidly and unexpectedly turned gray. Even though Jac knew the clouds had moved in front of the sun, it seemed as if Theo himself were sucking up the light. She was worried that in this sudden darkness, she might lose her footing, might ste
p off the ledge.
But she wanted to step off the ledge.
Suddenly Jac wasn’t afraid of the dizzying height. Instead, she wanted to accept its invitation and jump.
What was wrong with her? Whatever drug Theo had given her was producing hallucinations worse than any she’d suffered at home. Those were confusing but at least linear. They were fragments of made-up stories. This was just terrible chaos.
The sun was still behind the clouds. Jac was cold. Spray from the waterfall was blowing back on her. Soaking through her clothes. The rocks below her feet were slippery. Wet rocks, wet soles. Easy to fall. Wanting to fall. Fear. Longing. The push-pull of conflicting needs.
The part of Jac that was worried about the fall was not afraid of the water. She was a good swimmer, having spent endless hours at the beach in the south of France with her grandmother and brother. She loved the surf. The smooth sand. Even the waves when they were a little rough. She reminded herself of that now. Even if she did fall, it would be into water. She would swim. The drop really wasn’t that far.
There was no other option.
Reaching out, Jac took Theo’s hand once more. They were connected again. She felt safer. Then more terrorized. Safety. Terror. All that kept her from falling was his hand. What propelled her forward was his hand. Where their cold skin was touching felt suddenly hot, like molten metal, bonding them, soldering them. Even if she wanted to let go, she couldn’t anymore. They had merged.
Maybe he would jump and decide her fate for her. She was incapable of action. As desperate to step back as to step forward. To throw herself over the edge. To back up away from the edge.
Theo was talking to her now. Saying something, but she couldn’t make out what. The waterfall was too loud. It was too beautiful. She pulled away. Finally free. His fingers were no longer clutching hers. The water was coming up to meet her, and then it was cold. So very cold.
Twenty
Jac didn’t remember what had happened when she woke hours later in the infirmary at Blixer Rath. The images in her head were a mixed-up jumble. She knew she’d fallen. Had she really jumped? Why would she have done that? Yet that was what she remembered. That and the cold. The terrible cold of the lake. Of endings. Of loss.
There were no memories at all about how she got out of the water and back to Blixer. Or what had happened to Theo.
The nurse took her temperature and seemed relieved. When Jac asked why, she said the doctor had been worried about hypothermia.
Jac fell asleep again and when she next woke up, Malachai Samuels was sitting beside her bed. For fifteen minutes he asked her questions about what had happened. But she couldn’t remember most of it. She was tired. Her head hurt, she told him.
Had she hit her head?
She didn’t know that either.
When she woke up next it was daylight and her headache was gone. When the nurse came in to check on her, Jac asked about Theo and the nurse said he was fine. But she said it in an odd way that made Jac suspicious. When Malachai returned to visit with her that afternoon, she asked him about Theo too.
Theo had gone home, Malachai said.
“When will he be back? I need to talk to him about what happened. He’ll be able to help me understand.”
“He’s gone home for good,” Malachai said. “He’s not coming back.”
She’d asked Malachai if she could write to him and thank him because she’d finally remembered it had been Theo who’d jumped in after her and pulled her out and then half dragged, half carried her back to the clinic. But Malachai had said no, that it was best if she not write him just yet. He was having a hard time.
What did that mean? she’d asked.
“It’s confidential, Jac. I can’t talk about another patient with you.”
“He’s not another patient, he’s my friend.” She felt tears pricking her eyes but held them back. She never cried.
• • •
Since Jac arrived in Jersey, she hadn’t talked to Theo about his last day at Blixer Rath seventeen years ago. But she needed to now. As they continued walking on the beach, she said, “I felt lost without you after you left Blixer.”
“I’m sorry they made me go. I was terribly worried about you. I wrote.”
She nodded. “They never gave me any of your letters.”
He took her hand. Was it because the path was rocky and so hard to navigate without stumbling? Or was it a gesture of friendship? Or more? Surprisingly, the connection Jac had felt to Theo when they were young was still strong. It was a tensile thread that had stretched all these years. For a moment she thought of Griffin. How their connection too had lasted over so many years. And how she was never going to be happy with Griffin’s shadow in the way. Low down in the pit of her stomach she felt a sudden emptiness and thought about what had happened after the lightning storm. The baby had been conceived in love. It deserved to be mourned with love. But she wasn’t ready to give herself up to the grief, not yet.
They were almost at the top when one of the rocks Jac stepped on came loose. She felt as if she was about to lose her balance, but Theo’s grip tightened and steadied her.
She’d regained her stability but her heart was racing. Theo was still holding her hand.
“We’re almost there,” he said.
The ocean was on their right. They were only four feet off the sand. Nothing to be afraid of. She looked up. The summit was only another foot.
He noticed her assessing the height. “It’s not very high. And it’s all sand below. Nothing to be afraid of this time. I promise.”
So he remembered.
“Theo, when we were at Blixer Rath . . .” Suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out what had happened.
“Yes?”
“I know there was an accident and that I slipped on the rocks and fell into the lake. But why did you leave so suddenly?”
“Prejudice.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Even there in that bastion of alternative thinking, they feared what they didn’t understand. And they didn’t understand us.”
“What about us didn’t they understand?”
They’d reached the top. He sat down and dangled his feet off the edge. He was right, even up here it wasn’t a big drop. She sat beside him. This perspective offered a different view of the shoreline as it curved in and out, creating bays and harbors. So much of it looked unspoiled and undeveloped and very much out of time.
“My brother and I were always at each other,” Theo said. “Even though I’m a year older, he was always taller and stronger. He used to try to beat me up. He never managed to hurt me, but I’d go into some kind of state whenever it happened. For a few hours after be very much out of it. A dissociation, they called it.”
“They?”
“The theys who couldn’t help me with it.”
“That’s where the Clinic of the Last Resorts came in.” Using her old name for it, she smiled. Theo smiled too. “So did something like that happen at Blixer after my accident? Did you black out?”
He looked at her. “You really don’t remember?”
“Barely anything. I know we’d made one of those rock circles that looked like your drawings. And we sat inside and did our meditation thing. And then you gave me some kind of drug. Was it a mushroom?”
He nodded. “Not really smart of me, but yes, a mushroom.”
She told him what she remembered about the climb up the mountain and then the fall. “I woke up in the infirmary and found out you were gone. Why?”
“They threw me out, Jac. They claimed it was because I’d broken so many rules. The final straw being giving you that magic mushroom. But I think the real reason they threw me out rather than let me stay and continue to work with me was they thought I’d pushed you.”
“But you didn’t. For some crazy reason I jumped.” She closed her eyes. Tried to bring back more of that long-ago day. “I don’t know why, but I did. Why didn’t they ask me?”
H
e shrugged.
“Why would they say you pushed me? I don’t understand.”
“Growing up I was different, difficult, moody. Didn’t fit in. My brother was the opposite. The golden child with a million friends. Great at school, at sports. Well-adjusted. Never could do wrong. There was no reason for him to be jealous of me, but he was. He was always making fun of me and picking fights. You know how kids are, I didn’t want to go to my parents and tattle. I just wanted to win him over. But nothing I did ever mattered. Never. When we were young and he’d try to beat me up, I usually managed to protect myself. But then we had one fight that turned really bad. I was just trying to keep him off me, to stop him from hurting me. I pushed him away. He lost his balance and fell and hit the side of his face on a table leg. It was a horrible bash and he lost most of his sight in that one eye. I went into some kind of psychotic state after that, or so I’ve been told. I didn’t talk to anyone for over four months. Stopped eating. They said I was trying to starve myself. Saw a million doctors. Took all the pills they gave me. Even tried to take them all at once one night and do some real damage. After that I was sent to Blixer.”
“And what happened to you after you got home?”
“My father was furious and shipped me off to boarding school.”
Jac felt sick. Somehow this was her fault. “How was that?”
“Awful.” He stood. “And boring.” He held out his hand to help her up. She took it. Once they were both standing, he continued holding her hand. She felt a surge of sensation.
“Now this way,” he said leading her down the rocky slope.
The sun had broken through the clouds and the light over the sea was a liquid yellow—the kind of light the impressionists tried to capture in their plein air canvases. “Monet was a master at capturing this atmosphere,” Jac said, thinking of all the times her mother had taken her to see the painter’s work at the Musée Marmottan or L’Orangerie. She had a flash of the last time she’d been there, over the summer, with her brother.