by Ky Lehman
I allow my droopy eyelids to close and seal only to find myself back on the cramped, sea laden boat. I carefully listen to my surroundings and the people surrounding me. I know all of their names, but I am yet to match them with their faces. I lift my weary head and squint at my companions through the salty haze. Although their faces are gaunt and partially hidden by their dark hoods, one glance is all it takes for me to recognise the women in our huddle. They are known as Lady Mother and Lady Elder, but to me they are Mum and Aunt Romey. All those centuries ago, it started with the three of us and it seems it is going to finish that way.
Sitting between them is the older man we call Ari. His long, pinched face is warmly familiar: I know we have shared more than this boat ride, but I can’t place where. And sitting right beside me, with his long dark hair and beard to match is a shorter, skinner version of Mike, known to me then as Micah, with his arm around my shoulder lovingly protecting me as only he knows how.
Chapter 5
I wake up a couple of hours later with my head full of life and my mouth full of questions.
“Where’s Uncle Craig?” I ask as I burst into the kitchen. Before answering, Mike gestures towards the coffee pot and I shake my head no. The last thing I need is caffeine. I’m already so pepped up, I’m about to jump out of my skin.
“He has gone over to your place to bring Romey up to speed,” he answers, pouring himself a cup.
“Up to speed about what exactly?” I ask.
“About you remembering. It’s a huge deal. It’s really going to help things,” he says matter-of-fact.
“I know! I can feel it!” I squeal. I sit down at the breakfast bar out of habit for about all of two seconds. The last thing I want to do is sit. I want to move. I want to run.
“I can see that,” he says with a knowing smirk. “No matter how bad things are, you get like this every time.”
“So, how long ago did we first meet?” I ask, bouncing on the spot.
“Oh, God. Here we go,” he says, making out as if he is leaving the room.
I pull him back by the arm. “Mike,” I whine.
He turns to face me, mockingly sighs and clarifies, “On Earth?”
My head bobbles and nods.
“A little over two thousand years ago,” is his answer.
That I wasn’t expecting. “Wow….”
“I know. I’ve been putting up with your shit for a long time,” he says, no doubt only half-joking.
I punch him in the arm harder than I mean to, but he doesn’t even flinch. “You said thirteen earthly lifetimes,” I state as I start pacing in front of his planted feet. “I’ve gotten snippets of some of them. Was I a queen once?” I ask, stopping and screwing up my face in disbelief.
“You have been a queen in every lifetime,” he boldly answers, instantly embarrassing me. “But, in the history books, yes, you were once a queen of England.”
“But, not for long, right?”
“No. Not for long.” He takes a deep breath. “I was there when you were executed,” he says, grimacing.
“I remember,” I gasp, clutching my throat. “And I also remember that you have seen me executed more than once,” I regretfully say as my mind’s eye shows me snapshots that make it painfully clear that my deaths end up hurting Mike a lot more than they hurt me. He has witnessed every one of them, but I have yet to bear being present for one of his.
“I usually check out shortly after you do,” he mumbles, but before I get the chance to question him on it, he loudly clears his throat, changes his tone and announces, “You, Ren, have been everything: a priestess, a warrior, a princess, a queen, a sorceress, a matron and a famous actress, to name a few. You’ve been a busy girl,” he says, trying to match my pep.
“But… have I really helped things?” I ask, suddenly losing mine.
“You already know the answer to that. We wouldn’t all decide to keep coming back if we hadn’t made some headway.”
“What do you mean we decide?” I ask.
“We get to decide, here, there and everywhere,” he says, gesturing above and around him. “No matter where we end up, choice is every soul’s eternal privilege. But when it comes to shedding light on the truth, you, me, and a circle of others all make the choice to come here together.”
This group choice is not coming back to me. “But-”
“Ren, it will come. When you need it to, it will come back to you,” he says with a reassuring smile, pulling me into a bear hug.
Flustered with my heart beating a mile a minute and desperately needing to cool down, I peel myself away from his warmth, and when searching for something neutral to say, I stupidly make the counterproductive announcement that I could actually go for a hot chocolate.
To me, our friendship, our bond, has reached a new unfathomable, lopsided, intense, oxygen-sapping height with no gravity and no constant, leaving me strangely and terrifyingly aware that if Mike lets go of my sweaty hand, I will float away to God knows where and I’ll never be able to find my way back.
That, and my skittish understanding of the truth he is talking about is swaying from vague to clear, from wary to unguarded, from sun to shadow, from the here and now I can reach out and touch to trying to make out my face on the ghosts of the past; all of which takes me further away from a peace I have never truly known, but people say exists.
The peace I know: one of nervous energy fuelled by, what I have been told, is, at times, an unhealthy curiosity, has the power to both lull and motivate me, and is the polar opposite of this uncomfortable place I now find myself in: where the stiller I am, the more enlivened I feel, where I sit in the presence of a colourless glow that breathes and pulsates as I do, whose name dances teasingly on the tip of my tongue.
As Mike and I quietly sit on the couch nursing our hot beverages, I decide, for both our sakes, to try and find a restful place somewhere between the peace I know and this peace with no name, at least for a quiet cuppa’s worth.
I’m trying. I really am. But it seems that no matter if I’m sitting, resting, or running around like a headless chook, there will be no respite until I ask the one seemingly small, possibly huge, question that continues to taunt me. I gulp down the rest of my still too hot chocolate, losing the deal I made with myself in record time with a scolded tongue as punishment. “Which lifetime has been your favourite?” I blurt out.
Mike baulks, coughs, and nearly spits his coffee all over me. I pat him on the back, but he gestures for me to stop. When his coughing fit finally stops, he peeks over at me, grins shyly and shakes his head. “Give it a rest, Ren.”
Screw. That.
I pipe up. “You said that if I have any questions-”
“OK! OK! Keep your crown on!” he says with his hands raised like I’ve got a gun pointed at him. “It was during the nineteenth century. You were a nurse and I was a soldier,” he says, looking everywhere but at me. “You lived to be an old woman and I lived to be an old man. We got a lot done in that lifetime. People still call you the Lady with the Lamp.” He quickly jumps to a stand and turns to leave the room.
“Where are you going off to in such a hurry?”
“To the bathroom, if that’s OK with you, your Highness,” he answers over his shoulder.
As I watch him walk away, I think of me living as an old woman and it hits me. I was once a nurse and a very dedicated one. I remember my privileged upbringing. My parents’ expectations. My expectations. What the poor souls around me were reduced to. Our enemies, foreign and domestic. The constant battles. The wars. The suffering. The pain of life. The peace of death. My distrust of men, bar one. Finding solace amongst amber shards floating in rich brown pools. For a time, he was alone with those eyes wide open in a world that refused to see. His love. Our ongoing affair. Volatile and primal, but good. My body responds in agreement. Apparently, very good. Oh, God...
Thankfully, he takes his time coming back, but when he does, he is holding Georgie Pa’s box still wrapped up in paper.
“So, you do remember,” he says, smirking.
“Some, not all,” I say with a shrug, trying to diffuse my embarrassment. “Nice escape tactic, by the way,” I grumble, elbowing him as we both sit down next to each other on the rug.
“You want to escape now, don’t you?” he asks, still smirking.
I drop my head so my hair falls over my face. “Give it a rest, Mike,” I murmur.
Tapping his hand on the box, it seems he agrees to changing the subject.
“Do you know what’s in here?” I ask.
“I’ve got an idea. Open it,” he says.
I rip off the thick brown paper. It’s a small redwood chest I have seen many times before. It has always sat on Nanna’s dresser, locked up like it is now, but this time there is a chunky rose gold key taped to the top of the lid.
I look over at Mike who gestures to the box with his chin. “See the key on top? That goes in the key shaped hole at the front,” the smart arse says.
“No shit, Sherlock,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Thirteen lifetimes has at least taught me that.”
After a full clockwise twist, the chest unlocks. I lift its intricately carved lid, anxious to see what is inside.
I recognise everything inside the chest: the porcelain thimble, the rose gold ring with simple fish joined together like infinity symbols engraved in a continuous line around the outside of it, the yellow gold necklace with the heavy mother-of-pearl locket, the bees wax candles, and the small silver pocket watch. They all once belonged to me. As I run my fingers over my treasured belongings, recollections of my time with each of them come flooding back.
“You wanted to keep a piece from every life time to help you remember,” Mike says.
“It’s working.”
“It always does.”
As my memory goes into overdrive, I quickly understand how dangerous these possessions of mine are. “Why didn’t Nanna hide this stuff away? The Bloodstones could have easily broken into our house and taken it,” I ask, angrily surprised. My nanna was a clever lady. Why would she take the risk?
“The Avalon’s like to hide their treasures in plain sight. Over the centuries, it has worked really well. Most of the relics they vowed to protect are still safely in their keeping,” Mike answers, peering into the box. “Not all of it is here. The really old pieces and anything with DNA evidence on it is safely hidden away with the family.” His eyes suddenly grow big as he reaches for what looks like a long, rolled up bandage secured to the inside of the lid. “I can’t believe Annie kept this with her,” he says, seemingly shocked, as he starts to carefully untie the ribbons holding it in place. He slowly unravels the yellowing gauze and lifts from it a large, bright blue, ink stained feather.
“Remember this?” he asks, carefully holding the quill up to my eye line like a sacred offering. Yes, I see the feather, but my focus is drawn to the brilliant golden stare behind it. Mike is looking right at me. Right through me. The amber shards in his eyes are burning brighter than I have seen in this lifetime. I intuitively respond by reaching out and running my fingers over the feather’s soft, glimmering edges.
I sense, more than see, that a huge sacrifice was made for the intended recipient of this feather. I can smell burning flesh and hear the crackling of tendon and bone disintegrating into ash that rises, lightly falls and settles on my skin as the heat of the fire released from this charred body seeps into my pores and melds with my blood.
Surrendering to this martyr’s passion, I am taken back centuries to the humble home of an old holy woman patiently waiting on the threshold of life and death. In the presence of a man, a woman, and a young boy, her frail hands initiate a fatal crack, and the golden silhouette of a massively tall man with beams of light radiating from his back like wings rises from the large feathery corpse lying on her table.
This grand being of light descends to stand before the man and woman who are both sitting there shocked by the old woman’s unexpected actions, and he smiles and nods his approval. Acknowledging his wishes, the old woman plucks out the royal pheasant’s long blue tail feather, reverently hands it to my mother-to-be, and then turns to talk to the young boy standing beside her. The boy immediately does what is asked of him, and my father-to-be upturns his chair as he rushes towards the fire to save what was left of the fleshy body the feather was taken from.
A brilliant flash of light scores my closed eyelids forcing me to open them. Before me stands the same majestic being of light: Mike with glowing amber shards in his eyes, the shimmering, royal blue feather in his hand, and huge, breathtaking wings of golden light radiating from his back.
Chapter 6
Nanna always said that every living being on Earth has at least one Guardian: a supportive force of untiring love and strength who stays with you from the cradle to the grave, who, no matter how well you may get things right or how royally you may stuff them up, will never leave your side. I always believed they were angels, but as it turns out, they can also be human.
I can safely say that over the past eighteen years, I have witnessed snippets of beauty at its brightest: fiery sunsets streaked with cyan, charcoal and lavender, century-old churches illuminated by the candlelight of countless prayers, a field full of excited first-graders releasing the paper lanterns they had worked so hard on up into the starry sky, but these flickers in time don’t hold a torch to the radiance I see before me now. Mike’s golden light: so alive, so brilliant, so warm, pure and endless, pulsating with immeasurable time, never-ending space and love and life everlasting.
“You’re a…a…an…angel?” I splutter.
“I was an Archangel,” Mike answers, watching me intently as he reaches for my shaky hands. “Shortly after I first came to Earth, I became a Luminary, but just as I was yesterday, as I am today, and as I will be tomorrow and every day until the last of this earthly life, I am a man,” he insistently explains.
I stare down at our joined hands. His skin is glowing; in looking closer I can see miniscule streams of gilded light emanating from every pore, and his touch feels warmer and more familiar than ever.
“A Luminary?” I ask.
“A governing role I put my hand up for a long time ago,” he answers.
“But, the light…an…and…your wings,” I garble, frantically gesturing to and around him with my free hand.
“It’s the light of home, Ren,” he gently explains. He moves his large hands up to rest on top of my shoulders and locks his shimmering, amber-speckled gaze with mine. “Because I remember who I am and where I came from, I can show my light at will.”
Searching my dazed stare and seeing that no light bulbs are switching on in my head, he goes on to explain, “Every soul’s light takes on its own form. Its own shape. Its own colour. Just like the light streaming out of my back like wings helped you to identify me as an Archangel, the light you give off shows who you truly are too. And, the more you remember of home, the brighter your light will become.”
“Home?” I ask.
“Most people call it heaven,” he answers.
“Ah.” I figured as much.
I instantly warm to the idea of a heavenly home: one where Archangels like Mike come from, that is until a once inconceivable, now entirely possible question rears up and knocks the wind out of me.
Excited and bewildered by the thought, I stagger backwards and gasp, “But…I’m not an angel. Am I?”
He firms his grasp, stopping my retreat. “No, Ren. You are not an angel,” he says. “Far from it,” he throws in, repressing a smirk. “But, when it comes to remembering, to finding your light, it doesn’t matter who you are. Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter bec
ause we all come from the same place. We are all born of the light,” he explains, his gaze softening. “You know, after all of the lifetimes we have lived on Earth, in the moment you find it, yours is still the brightest, most beautiful light I’ve ever seen,” he reverently says, to me. “Sometimes I can’t imagine it getting any brighter,” he quietly adds, turning his face from mine.
“Can you see it now?” I ask, calling his fiery amber gaze back to me.
His dulled stare blazes the moment our eyes meet, and he slowly nods and says, “No matter how hard you try to hide it, I can always see it.”
Mystified by his words, by his soul searing look, by him in general, I search all around me; my search soon coming to a disappointing end when I look down at my feet and see a whole lot of nothing there too.
I cringe at how gullible I continue to be. How could I believe, even for a second, that I could possibly light up like the Archangel, shaped as the towering eighteen-year-old valedictorian football captain, standing toe to toe with me now?
“Ren?” he prompts, pulling my attention away from my self-flagellation.
“Huh?” And with that primal grunt, I go straight back to staring at him with my mouth hanging open. But surprisingly, I don’t care.
Before he lit up this room, “beautiful” is a word I never would have used to describe Mike’s looks. “Good-looking.” “Attractive.” “Masculine,” definitely. On the odd occasion, “hot” has even fit the bill. But as this magical glow permeating in and around him sheds light on all that he is, “beautiful” is the only human word I know that comes close.
Mike: my best friend bathed in golden light. A young man almost free of his teenage years. An Archangel who has lived for millennia. A stunningly bright, beautiful Archangel-Luminary-Man who cares enough to endure walking me through thirteen lifetimes.