by Smith, Skye
"Yeah, but at least you left him alive. Why am I hearing about this only now?" Maya asked, blowing a loose strand of dusty hair out of her eyes.
"But dearie, they are not the type of tales you could tell to a young virgin. This is the first time you have visited me as a woman."
"So what should I do, Nana," Maya whispered. "When I sleep with my guys in Vancouver, I wear fine leather gloves. I am terrified of touching them while I sleep."
"So, I am not just a crazy old lady anymore, eh? Eh?" Nana teased. "Now you want my advice. Well first off, surely these two men you live with are not rogue males."
"But don't you see? I don't know if my aura kills just the rogues, or whether it could kill anyone. It can certainly put almost anyone into a trance. Like knock them over and put them to sleep."
"Then what you must do is find out. You need to learn more about this sense, this power."
"But that means killing cats." Maya moped. "I don't want to murder cats to find out what my aura is capable of."
"I don't get it. Why cats?"
"Toxoplasmosis," Maya replied.
"Oh, right. I forgot."
"I mean, I just spent months in India, well India and Nepal, researching my aura. I know a lot more now. More about what it can do, what it is capable of. I even have a rare book of my own that is like an Aura User Manual."
"How rare?" asked Nana, suddenly very interested. Books were her passion, especially rare ones.
"Let me show you. Perhaps we should lock it up with yours for safekeeping." Maya went to her suitcase and pulled out a large zip-lock bag. "It is written on bamboo pages. I found it in two parts. The diagrams in one part, the text in another. Each was hidden in the base of two different Tibetan statues of the Buddha." She unzipped the bag and gently pulled the ancient bamboo out of it and laid it on the table.
"So this is written in Tibetan?'" whispered Nana as she ran her fingers over one of the diagrams, and then suddenly remembered and pulled her fingers back. Touching rare books without gloves was a no-no.
"Actually it is in Sanskrit, but in a Tibetan script. It took me weeks to translate it, even with the help of a Tibetan scholar." She pushed a wad of modern printer paper towards her great-grandmother. "This is my translation."
"You know Sanskrit?" asked Nana in awe.
"A bit. One of the things I learned about my aura in India is that if you sleep neck to neck with another aurista, that you exchange memories. An old holy man taught me Sanskrit while we slept together."
"Stars above!" Nana exclaimed. "If I had known that, I would have learned twenty languages before I was thirty."
"No, Nana. Both people must have strong auras. Strong auras are rare." Maya smiled warmly. "Hmm, Well I suppose it does mean that when I return to Vancouver I will learn Danish, German, Dutch, and Frisian. You know, the languages my guys speak."
Maya went to bed early, and every hour she would turn over and look up. Nana was still cruising the Internet in the light of a weak lamp and her laptop's screen. Finally, when the clock beside the bed said 3 am, she yelled at her to come to bed.
* * * * *
Nana was still cruising at 8 am when the sun decided to make a pitiful appearance over the peninsula before burying itself behind clouds. Maya put on her ski jacket and some boots and went outside to split wood. In a half hour, thanks to both the Franklin and the propane heater, she had the cottage warm enough that she didn't need to wear her ski jacket inside.
They both sipped their hot milky tea, Nana wrapped in a blanket, and Maya in her long sweater. "So, now are you going to go to bed, Nana, you have been up all night."
"Sleep is what I do when I am bored. Last night was exciting."
"What did you find out?" asked Maya.
"That your Erik in Vancouver misses you, and that he is a very wise man."
"You spoke to Erik?"
"Email, dear. We traded our collections of information about auras as attachments. His mostly seem to be about finding out what causes them, how to measure them, and what to expect of them. Mine are mostly about tracing the genealogy and marking historical references to them." Nana sipped her tea.
"What else?" asked Maya softly.
"He, they. They love you very much and fear for your safety. They know you have a smart phone and wonder why you don't use it, either to phone or to answer their emails."
Maya looked down into her tea cup. There were women in Mendocino who saw the future in tea leaves. She looked for the leaves in her cup and then remembered she had used tea bags. Was that a sign for her future? If she used tea bags she would have no future. Was there a lesson there for this high-tech world. Silly thoughts, because she knew the old lady was still staring at her.
"You are so like me," Nana said. "I hide on my island, and you hide by keeping your phone turned off." She pointed to an Indian prayer rug on the floor by the hearth. "Roll up that carpet for me dear. It is time I showed you something about yourself."
Under the rug was a trap door. Maya pulled it open. It must have been counter weighted underneath because it rose easily. She looked down into the cellar through a lace of cobwebs and shuddered. Spiders. She hated spiders. The Mendocino fog forest of giant cedars and giant redwoods had giant spiders. As the firewood girl, she had killed so many of them that it would probably be her karma to be reborn as one.
A shadow crossed behind her and for a moment she thought her great- grandmother was riding a broomstick, but it was just that the broom handle was hidden by a fold of her blanket. Nana and her witch's broom made short work of the cobwebs. She bent down and reached under the floor and flicked on one of the battery system lights. A pale weak light reflected from a polished stone slab below. "Go ahead, go on down. I'll tell you what you should bring up."
With flashlight in hand and her hair rolled up under a toque to keep the spiders out of it, she stepped down the creaky wooden stairs. There was a safe at the far end that was about the size of her high school locker. She looked down at the scrap of paper in her hand where Nana had scrawled the combination. It took her three tries, because she kept losing count of the number of twirls of the knob due to her heebee jeebees at the touch of the cobwebs.
"Do you see the scroll container with the red end? Bring that. And the small plastic box. Bring that too!" yelled Nana down the hole. "Don't bother locking it up. You will be putting them back within the hour."
When Maya's head appeared above the level of the floor, Nana grabbed the two precious items from her. "Now, clear our tea things off the table and make sure it is clean and dry." Maya did as she was told and then Nana took the red lid off the scroll container and carefully pulled out a long roll tied with a pink ribbon. Using whatever was handy as paper weights, she unrolled it onto the table.
It was not just one thing, but a half dozen, all different sizes. The largest one, now with its back stretched on the table, was obviously a painting. It was signed P.P. in the corner. The smaller ones were the artist's sketches from planning the painting. The sketches were of composition and of body parts. There were trials where the artist had elongated the look of the limbs, and had played with the shading and light.
Once they had taken the sketches away, one by one, and moved them to a chair, Maya saw the full painting. It was her. It was of her and her in the rapture of sexual ecstasy. The background that framed her body seemed to shimmer as it got close to the body. It was the artist's portrayal of her aura. "But..." she began to say.
"It's not you, dear. It is me, was me, when I was twenty-six, just before I got pregnant with your grandmother."
"I can see why you hide it. It's pornography. The sexuality leaps out at you."
"That's what my husband thought, but now, today, it would explode onto the art world. It is unique amongst all his works."
"He didn't sign it with his full name. They will never believe it is by him."
"You would be right, except for the sketches. You see the top one? The cubist one. The one I rejected. It is undenia
ble." Nana spoke as she opened the plastic box. It was filled with letters. Letters and one disk, a locket containing a miniature painting. She laid it carefully on the table for Maya to see.
"It is you again. Who was this artist?" asked Maya.
"The painter was Elizabeth Otis. The sister of Jim Otis who was the husband of Britta, who is the woman in the miniature. This was painted just after the Boston Tea Party. She was the first of our family to reach America. She landed at Providence as a redemptioner, both she and her brother Jon. They were Anglo-Frisians. "
"You mean Frisian, like Erik, from the north of Holland? " Maya interrupted.
"Yes. Britta could also focus her aura through her hands. In those days they called it the healing touch. These are various letters to and from her brother. They span decades. I am going to ask the Harvard manuscript team to scan them, so that our whole family can read them. And Erik sent me more information about where both he and Karl grew up. He was very interested that I had traced our family roots to the same area."
" What is a redemptioner?"
" A redemptioner is a person who went into debt to the shipping company for the cost of their passage to America. Established Americans would buy that debt from the shipping company, and the immigrant would become an indentured servant to them until the debt was repaid. A bond slave."
"She, we, all three of us, are like twins, I mean triplets," whispered Maya.
"And we all had auras. It makes a strong case that auras are somehow genetic. But not passed to every generation. It skips generations. Me, but not your grandmother or your mother, and then you."
"Then why is mine so strong? My Buddhist friends think that I am a reincarnation of a White Monk, from like, one of their legends. Some Japanese guys and some Nepali women told me that I am a Dakini, from their legends."
* * * * *
* * * * *
MAYA'S AURA - The Charred Coven by Skye Smith
Chapter 8 - Nana's Secret
Nana shivered. She really did need some sleep, but she would keep her eyes open until dark. She hated wasting daylight in the winter when it was in such short supply. "Remember you swore me to secrecy about the men you have killed? I now ask the same oath from you." Maya's nod was not good enough. She forced her to swear it.
"Your mother is seven years older than her brother, your uncle Rob."
"Eight," Maya corrected.
"When he was fourteen, he was cute, and blonde, and so very shy around girls. Your mother came home from UC Santa Cruz for a term break. She absolutely no longer fit into stuffy Boston culture. She was a new age surfer chick. A California blonde.
I believe. I don't know for sure, but I strongly believe, that she took pity on Rob, and showed him what women were all about."
"You mean, like, incest? Sister and brother," Maya's words dripped with accusation.
"If it did happen, I am sure it was more innocent than your tone," Nana continued. "Just a crazy, loving sister making sure that her little brother was okay. She went back to Santa Cruz. He became a blade amongst the local women. She quit school to have you."
With the silence, the thought dawned on Maya. "No!" she yelled. "What are you saying?"
"That life isn't easy. It is full of surprises. Often cruel surprises. Your mother never came home, never finished her degree, and went to live in Mendocino county. I think it very probable that your aura is so strong because your uncle Rob is also your father."
Maya had started screaming and throwing things. Anything that came to hand. "I don't believe it. I am well-formed. I don't have an extra toe or a hare lip or a hunch. It can't be. I don't have webbed feet."
Nana rushed forward to stand between her and the precious items on the kitchen table. "Maya, your powerful aura is instead of webbed feet. Think about it. You are a freak. An inbred child." She opened her arms and welcomed the girl into her hug, and let her cry there.
It took just a moment for Maya to realize that her great-grandmother was shivering so hard that she was shaking. She sniffed up her selfish tears and guided the old lady to her bed and tucked her in.
"You promised secrecy," Nana said, looking up at her. "You must never speak of it, never, to anyone, not even to Erik. And especially never to Rob."
Maya couldn't meet her eyes. She just nodded absently. She had to get out of this cottage, away from Nana, and think. "If we are going to have a bunch of Harvard types collecting these books, then I should lock the painting away, and my rare book, and then make a run to the village for sandwich makings and more milk. You stay warm in bed and catch up on some sleep. We can talk when I get back."
* * * * *
The aluminum skiff was just as she had left it three days ago. Without paying much attention, she rolled the tarp off it and hauled it down to the water's edge and then unclipped the wheels. With her lifejacket adjusted and her toque pulled down over her ears, she pushed the skiff out into deeper water and scrambled aboard.
"Ah yes, you, you scumbag," she said under her breath to the old motor. This time she checked everything first and then turned on the gas. There was a small piece of plastic wrap under the gas line. She picked it up to throw it overboard, but then looked at it. It had the indent of a round fitting in it.
She looked down at the fitting that held the gas filter. "That bastard," she cursed as it dawned on her that golf club man must have put this plastic in the filter to cause the motor to keep stalling out. She was about to curse him again when she remembered not to speak badly of the dead.
The motor started on the second pull, and she was away across the water towards the marina. The weather radar map on the Internet had shown no clouds in sight, and the bay was almost dead calm. Oops, the dead thing again. Make that crisp and calm.
She pulled into the guest slips at the marina and tied the skiff off. The dock cat, a big black and white cat, came to sniff the boat for fish scraps. Maya looked at him. She hadn't even touched a cat since the last one she had touched had died when she petted it. It had been very sick, of course, with toxoplasmosis.
Her theory was that her aura was trying to kill the toxoplasmosis parasite, but both the parasite and the cat had died. This dock cat looked very healthy. Slowly she reached out to him, hesitated, and then reached out again. She hovered her hand over him, and he arched his back to touch her hand. So far so good. She touched his head, paused, and then stroked his neck. Her heart was in her throat hoping, praying that he would not go all still and fall to the ground.
The cat looked at her the way all cats do when they haven't had what they thought was their due of stroking and adulation. She stroked him with both hands down the back and then started at the head again. She couldn't watch, so she closed her eyes as she stroked his neck with both hands. The cat purred deeply in appreciation.
She put her hands together to pray that the cat would stay alive, but also to raise the strength of her aura. Then she stroked him again. This time the cat went all limp, but not dead limp. Asleep, or in a trance limp. When she hiked up to the cafe, the cat woke and raced after her and tried to trip her on the steps by doing figure eights around her legs.
"Did you give that idiot catnip?" asked the pump jockey from the fuel float.
"No, I just stroked him." She looked up at the older man. "He's a big cat."
"Ought to be, the way he snarfs fish trimmings. Don't ever let him inside though. Everything he touches smells of fish afterwards." He was beaming because this pretty young woman in the toque was beaming at him. He had no intention of going back to work until she dismissed him.
"Er," Maya had been lost in the very happy thought that she could pat cats again, so long as they were healthy. There was the even happier thought that maybe she could sleep with Erik and Karl without wearing her gloves. The man was waiting for something. Just smiling at her and waiting. “Umm, where is the supermarket from here?”
“A mile that way,” he beamed at her eager to help.
“Is there a taxi or something?”
<
br /> “The shuttle. It’ll be along in about a half hour.” The man looked down at his rubber boots. “Uh, I could give you a ride if you want. Just wait here while I lock up the kiosk.”
“But, like, that’s not necessary. I don’t want to be a bother, honest.” She was not eager to accept the help of men. Not after what happened the other day.
“No bother. I doubt anyone will be fueling their boat today. They can wait. See, the company truck is just over there.” He pointed in the direction of the beaten up pickup, then turned to her. "I'm Joseph, by the way."
"Hi, I'm Maya. I'm staying with my Nana on the little island." She felt the need to establish a connection to someone local. Kind of like protection, she told herself.
They drove along the main road. It was more than a mile. “So that golf guy died, eh,” she said and realized how she had used the Canadian ‘eh’ without thinking.
“Yeah, too bad. A bunch of real estate deals are falling apart now. His bank is now involved. Apparently he was juggling a whole bunch of mortgages that he couldn’t afford.”
“But he looked so rich,” Maya replied, trying to sound casually interested, “and everyone was counting on him.”
“Well, I guess everything would have been okay if the golf resort deal had wrapped up in the next month or two. Trouble is, as soon as they found out he was dead, the banks sent out their auditors. Like the next day. Those guys didn’t like how he was juggling money and loans and promises. They have frozen everything while they call in the heavy duty auditors.”
“Jeez, so no construction jobs for next year then.” Maya suddenly felt very guilty.
“I didn’t expect any. As soon as I saw his boat I knew he was all about bullshit. Nobody but drug smugglers run that kind of cigarette boat. It turns out it wasn't even his. Short term lease only. It’s time they put all the high finance suits in jail while they audit them. All of them, every damn one of them. It’s always us Ma and Pa types that end up getting shafted by them wheeler-dealer types.”