Maya's Aura: The Refining

by Smith, Skye

  Paul stepped in behind her and walked in silence, watching for any stumble. There would be no stumble tonight. She was feeling stronger than she had felt for weeks, months. "My name is Gladys Muir, and you were Maya was it not? What, not impressed? Usually the name clicks in peoples' minds."

  "Of like, Muir Woods?" Maya asked as they stopped in front of the first photo. It was a black and white photo of two pre-teen girls standing with too few clothes and no boots in a few inches of snow and clutching their rag dolls. The caption said that the two were loaded on a freight train and never seen again.

  "A distant relative of my husband, rest his soul. How refreshing that you have not heard of me," Gladys pulled her along to the next photo.

  "Well, I grew up in a small town in Mendocino, and I have been traveling around the world for a couple of years. Are you the Muirs that own newspapers?" The next photo was of a freight train. There were many people in the freight cars but little evidence of armed guards. It didn't look like they were being forced onto the train.

  "Guilty," Gladys said, "and where did your travels take you?" She shuffled her feet to turn her body around and see the photos behind her. They were equally grim. Black and white, dark clothes and buildings offset by white snow.

  "Mostly to the high mountains of India and Nepal," Maya whispered. Everyone viewing the photos was hushed, like the gallery was a library, or even a funeral parlor. "I have this, sort of aura thing, that can make people feel better. I was there searching for someone to teach me about it."

  She hugged the old woman's arm closer and whispered, "I sort of used it on you just now because you didn't seem well. I can't let you go on thinking that was all the chocolate's doing, else you will gain fifty pounds in the next week."

  "There," Gladys said, quickening her pace. "That is the photo I came to see." She stared at it long and hard. It was of a man in his thirties with a dark suit and a hat. He seemed to be watching a stack of suitcases and trunks. "That is my uncle. My father got the rest of us away to England, while my uncle stayed behind to sell our house and our land. We never saw him again, that is, until now. This photo was found in his neighbor's house. They were great friends."

  Maya looked hard at the small photo, and then at Gladys. There was no family resemblance, so she said nothing. They continued past all the photos, occasionally slowing, occasionally pausing, but rarely stopping. The last stop was at the gallery's owner, where Gladys said her thank-yous for being invited.

  "Will you join me for dinner?" asked Gladys, "Of course you will. That is why you came, and don't you deny it. Do you have a driver to dismiss?"

  "No, I only booked a one-way limo," Maya whispered.

  "Such confidence. Paul, phone the house. We have a guest for dinner." Gladys waved Paul's arm away and hugged Maya closer to help her out the gallery door and across the sidewalk to where her Mercedes was parked safely in a tow-away zone.

  Once they were comfortable in the back of the luxury sedan, Maya asked "How did you know? About me, I mean."

  "My dear, you simply didn't belong at such a show. I would have had you ejected immediately, if you hadn't offered me chocolate and stood tall and proud in that antique gown. I probably knew the woman who first wore that in the late forties." She patted the young woman's knee as an excuse to feel the heft of the old silk. "So I take it you represent an orphanage in Kathmandu?"

  "What?" Maya chuckled. "How did you figure that out?"

  "Despite your youth and beauty, you are an eccentric. Since the only people who seek me out represent the media, the politicians, or the charities, you must represent a charity. Since you came alone and unannounced, you do not represent one of the large professionally messed-up, I mean, managed ones. You mentioned Nepal, so I assumed an orphanage in the capital city. How wrong am I?"

  "Now I feel guilty for not representing an orphanage in Kathmandu. It is so more worthy than my real purpose."

  "And what is your real purpose?"

  "To have you tell your editors to wake up and smell the coffee."

  "Then you are a reporter. My guess wasn't even close."

  "I am not a reporter. Actually I am an actress. I just finished filming a teen movie about vampires. I need to show you something though, but that must wait until we find a computer."

  * * *

  Gladys relaxed her old bones in the armchair while Maya pulled a table close by so she could open Paul's laptop and show her Chuck's video. She snorted when she saw the agent provocateur in a ski mask. She gripped her hands on the carved wooden ends of the chair arms when she saw the two young girls being virtually raped by pepper-spray.

  Maya motioned towards the screen of the laptop. "You see the counter? That is how many people in the world have viewed this copy. That is seventy million within two days, and that is only this web site. By now it has been loaded on hundreds of others. This is the 'why' of the flash demonstrations across the country, not because of foreign intrigue or terrorists. It is a reaction to brutes against innocents. This video could be a part of the gallery show that we just saw."

  "Paul," she called out. He was right behind her. "Oh, there you are. Call Ed Haskell right away and tell him to watch this video. Tell him to stop the presses and hold the news videos. I want our papers and stations to do a complete one-eighty and come out in full support of the demonstrators. I want the police commissioners to squirm and hurt as much as those girls did."

  Paul disappeared down the hallway with the laptop and was replaced by a maid calling them to dinner. They were seated at each end of a fifteen-foot dining table. There were to be five courses. The first turned out to be no more than a mouthful of salmon, but artfully displayed on antique dishes with garnish and narrow lines of a dark sauce.

  Maya stood up and moved her place setting to the space around the corner from Gladys, and then dragged a chair into place and sat. "I'm sorry," she said, "but when you asked me to have dinner with you, I assumed we would at least be sitting in the same county."

  When the next course was served, a few strands of spaghetti holding two green olives and two cherry tomatoes so that they could not roll, Maya started to laugh. "Gee, when my mom served me meat, peas, and potatoes she didn't realize it was actually three courses so she would put it all onto one plate."

  "Dear, please play along with the cook. She hasn't served a banquet in this room since my husband died, and my doctors restrict my diet to mere bitesfull," Gladys said. "At least this way we see how splendid the china is. That one under your spaghetti would buy you a new car."

  She looked down at the plate. She carefully moved the spaghetti to one side so that she could see the central pattern. Only then did she realize its age. "And you eat off them?"

  "What else do you do with plates? Hang them on the wall? I prefer my walls hung with paintings. That one over there is one of my most favorite Monets. My husband would give me a painting on each of our anniversaries. The only reason I haven't moved out of this gloomy old mansion is because it is the only house I own with enough wall space for my anniversary presents."

  Only now did Maya take a seriously good look at the art on the wall of the dining room. Before, she had been too busy finding and displaying the video. The third course arrived. They were each served a complete bird the size of a large sparrow. Maya couldn't contain her giggles and they overflowed into laughter.

  "My dear, I had assumed that by now you would be in my debt, perhaps for a check to an orphanage in Kathmandu," said Gladys, while she pulled her bird apart with her knife and fork, "I am completely unprepared to be in your debt for allowing my news empire to scoop my competitors."

  "And what if I were in your debt?"

  "It would cost you more of your chocolate and another demonstration of the aura thing that you studied in Nepal."

  "Should I send one of the chocolates down to the kitchen to be cut into quarters and, like, served to us on a desert platter?" She watched Gladys start to chuckle and then to laugh and then to cough and then to co
ugh quite alarmingly. She jumped up thinking that she may have swallowed a bird bone, and held the woman and gently patted her back. "Here, take a sip of water."

  After Gladys stopped coughing, she rang a tiny silver bell and told the maid that they were no longer hungry and that they would take tea in her bedroom suite. "Here Maya, help me to the elevator and we'll go and sit in my tower."

  The elevator had room enough for two and was from a different century. Gladys hadn't been kidding about the tower. The bedroom suite took up the whole top floor, like a penthouse, and had all around views of San Francisco. The maid had used the stairs and was already serving their tea. She had brought Maya's small box of homemade chocolates with her. Maya could tell by the brown stains on her wide smile that she had already tasted one.

  With the maid's help they got Gladys undressed and into a nightie. They settled her on a day couch that looked as if it had come from the stage-dressing of a play set in a psychiatrist's office. The type of play, Maya thought, that would be all talky and significant, and not much fun. From her perch, because of the inclined back, Gladys could watch the lights of Golden Gate bridge.

  Maya unhooked the back of her bodice so that she could both move and breathe at the same time. She pulled a chair up, opened the box of chocolates and popped one into Gladys's mouth. While Gladys was savoring the weave of flavors, she woke up her aura and used her hovering hand to explore the old woman’s legs and hips.

  The old woman’s face began to relax and softened. She began to look more like a grandmother with her favorite grandchild, than the famed battleaxe of the California media industry.

  "You know, I think a lot of your aches are due to your varicose veins," Maya remarked. The old woman’s legs were almost disfigured by them.

  "I know, but I have always refused to have them removed. I don't trust doctors."

  "In Canada, people use a Chinese remedy - well an updated Chinese remedy - to rid themselves of them. One capsule a day for a week should do it."

  "What, you are joking? Please tell me you are joking. After putting up with bad veins since I was first pregnant?"

  "I call it silkworm puke. It contains an enzyme, you know, like the papaya enzyme used in meat tenderizer. Anyway, the silk worm pukes out this enzyme to dissolve their cocoon, like, after they have changed into a butterfly. In us, it floats around in our blood system and helps our blood to dissolve debris and clots and fat."

  She looked at the old woman. "You aren't on blood medications are you? Because if you are, there is a risk that the release of too much of the debris might cause other problems, like a stroke or a heart attack."

  "Bloody doctors," Gladys said starting to realize that something was missing from her right leg. Pain. The pain was missing. "I won't let them put me on any drug that once you start it you can't stop, like those blood pressure meds."

  "Do you want me to see if I can find you some silkworm puke in Chinatown? In Canada they sell the capsules at the health food stores. My guys in Canada use it to heal injuries from sports. Like in the shoulder cuff, you know?"

  "Yes, find me some, please. It will mean you must come back," replied the old woman. "So that lovely touch, that inner touch that I am feeling, is your aura thing from Nepal?"

  "Yes. Do you want me to make it a bit stronger?"

  "Yes please, and a little higher too if you don't mind. My hips. Do my hips. Now I owe you doubly. Are you sure you don't want a check for an orphanage in Kathmandu?"

  "Okay, sure, but be careful which orphanage you choose. There is a lot of corruption in Nepals orphanages. That is why our government like, had to halt adoptions of Nepali children."

  "Give me a name girl, a name you trust."

  "Maiti Nepal, M-A-I-T-I" Maya spelled out, "They rescue girls kidnapped by sex slavery rings." She tried to keep her mind from wandering off to her adventures in India saving children from sex slavers, and prayed a little to make her aura turn milk white before continuing with her hovering hand.

  * * *

  * * *

  MAYA'S AURA - the Refining by Skye Smith

  Chapter 9 - Three years earlier in Kitsilano, Vancouver

  The guys both owned extreme, as in extremely expensive, road race bicycles which they never rode. Every time they went out on them, the tiny tires picked up something from the shoulder of the roads like a nail or a piece of glass, and went flat. Both bikes were way too tall for Maya, and besides, there wasn't a bike lock in the world strong enough to stop them from being stolen if you left them outside a supermarket.

  Luckily old Aaron next door had offered her a gift of his wife's old fold-up bicycle to cheer her up after the incident with his old cat. "Worth it," was his grumpy comment as he pumped up the tires for her and oiled the chain, wheels, and cables. "She hasn't ridden it in ten years. You saved me the three hundred bucks she would have paid to have that cat put down."

  He was sweating from using the old-fashioned tire pump. "I'm renowned as a grump, but I'll do anything to get a pretty young thing to smile at me," he smiled as he adjusted the bike helmet strap under her chin. "Gotta wear these now. It's the law."

  Bicycling was not one of her skills. She was a farm girl who grew up on a gravel road in California. She was driving her mom's pickup long before she ever tried to straddle a bicycle. In fact, she had to straddle the boy who owned it before he would teach her how to ride the thing.

  The first part of her route to the crystal shops on Granville island was the hardest. She had to first reach the dedicated bike paths that ran along the waterfront. The guys' house was on a five-block strip where the houses were on the actual waterfront, which meant the bike route was their street. She soon realized that despite it all being a playground zone, it was effing dangerous because of the impatient traffic. She nicknamed it the Bimmer gauntlet.

  She had two near misses in the first two blocks, partially because she rode so slow that she wiggled a lot ... the bicycle, not her bum. She was still trying to figure out the three-speed shifter. The only other bike she had ridden had been a BMX with no gears. Aaron had told her to pedal backwards while she changed gears, which she sort of feared doing because she was sure that would put on the back brake.

  Eventually she was completely unnerved by the Bimmer's whooshing close by her left shoulder, so she crossed the street and rode on the sidewalk facing the traffic. Finally, she figured out the gears and happily motored along in first gear while she figured out which lever was the front brake and which the back. She was just feeling very chuffed with herself when she heard a toot of a siren behind her and a police cruiser pulled up beside her.

  "Rats," she said under her breath. She was just getting going. She looked down at her little halter sundress and decided the cop must be just stopping her because halter tops on bicycles are such a visual delight.

  "You know, I can give you a seventy-dollar fine for biking on the sidewalk," said the policeman as he switched his flashers off.

  "But officer," she smiled widely, "I tried it on the road but it was scary. All these cars whizzing by."

  "Too bad, " he said, not lifting his eyes far from her halter top. "Under the traffic code you are a vehicle and you are not allowed on the sidewalk."

  "But this is a playground zone."

  "Doesn't matter."

  "So what is the fine for overtaking in a playground zone?"

  "One seventy-five."

  "Well then, this is your lucky day. You just walk beside me while I bike along this road, and you give a ticket to everyone who overtakes me."

  "But - "

  "But what? You just said I was a vehicle and there was a fine for overtaking in playground zone. The porscheholes pass me scary close and scary fast." She squirmed her bike close enough to the squad car so she could lean over his window.

  "Porscheholes? That’s a good one. That'll get me free coffee for a week from the guys. Tell you what. You ride on the sidewalk, and if anyone complains, you tell them that Sergeant Crawford said you could. Have
a nice ride."

  He watched her ride away and slapped his own hand, hard. She was the same age as his daughter. Would he want his daughter risking this street on a bike? Would he have had such thoughts about his daughter's cleavage? A BMW whooshed by him and he flicked on his flashers and hit the gas pedal hard. "Bastard porscheholes," he muttered under his breath as he roared by the girl who was wobbling along the sidewalk on a folding bike with her head back and a big smile, "putting good kids like her at risk."

  It was a relief to get off the Bimmer gauntlet and onto the quiet side street that took her to Kitsilano Beach Park. Now she could open this baby up, and she whizzed along in second gear at probably ten miles an hour, and even got into high gear. She had never been to Kitsilano Beach because she always went to Wreck Beach. It was a really nice place and just a short bike ride from the house.

  It had the biggest outdoor swimming pool she had ever seen, and lots of trees and grass and sandy beach, with logs as wind breaks. There was even a snack bar surrounded by beach volley ball courts.

  There were lots of old women walking old dogs. Why is it that the people that walk small dogs always pick up the poo and the ones with big dogs try to ignore it?

  There were lots of young girls sunbathing in bikinis, and lots of old men sitting on benches enjoying the view of the mountains and the bikinis. After she found some crystals, she would come back here and get some fries at the snack bar and join the sunbathers. Fries, how sinful. She must never tell Erik. Maybe she could sneak Karl here to share some one day while Erik was out.

  The dedicated bike paths went on and on through waterfront parks and finally got her to the market at Granville Island. It was underneath a giant old road bridge, and it still had train tracks embedded into the parking from the days before it had been turned into a tourist Mecca for people from as far away as Burnaby.