Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student (Kindle Single)

by Richard Bach

  “Just thought, not words,” she said. “Some of it was…impressive.”

  I laughed at her solemn words. “It’ll take me till I’m healed, Puff. Before then, you’ll be…your body will be, off to Florida. Then three months, or four, you’ll be flying again. Unless you’d prefer to vanish from Earth’s sky into yours.”

  “Not my skies, Richard, our skies. Earth’s sky is mortality, the lessons of illusions. The next sky’s…a step up. I prefer to fly with you again, though, here. We have a story to finish, don’t we?”

  “Of course. The crash was one paragraph in our story. An important paragraph, of course. Every story loves a test, a challenge that can destroy the story. The other side, though, that’s where we’ll be in a little while. My body healed, yours healed, too. And we fly.”

  “Your choice,” she said. “I’ll be asleep to mortals, just broken pieces. The real me, I’ll fly in spirit’s sky. But when you tell me to come back here, I’ll come back.” She smiled, “Perfect obedience.”

  She thought for a minute. “I may be a little different, with my new body. Take it slowly till I remember, till I know who you are. I may be frightened. Mortals, airplanes and humans, we’re slow to remember spirit.”

  “You as a mortal,” I said, a smile. “Sure enough. We’ll take it easy, for a while.”

  “Till then,” she said.

  “Do you want a different name, Puff? Something that says Determination, through this test?”

  “I like my name,” she said. “If I were a four-engine transport, and you were to fly me around the world…I’d still be Puff. You know what it means. So fragile, yet eternal, a perfect expression of love.” She smiled. “Do you want a different name?”

  I laughed. “No thank you. We shall have our same names. See you soon, Puff.”

  “Till then, Richard.”

  The colors faded, the hangar was dark again, Puff’s broken pieces were still.

  Her life, as mine, will continue after dying. What had Shimoda said?

  In every disaster, in every blessing, ask, "Why me?"

  There's a reason, of course, there's an answer.

  Chapter 7

  The world of space, time and appearances can be wondrous beautiful. Just don't mistake them for real.

  It was midnight, nearly a thousand midnights since Lucky had died, and all at once I felt his weight on my hospital bed. I had heard of it time and again, in accounts of dear animals once gone, come to touch us again.

  There was no body there just the belief of his weight, but I knew who it was.

  “Hi, dear Lucky!”

  Not a bark, not a sound, but I felt the familiar weight of him, I imagined him again in the dark, the soft charcoal and bronze of him, the spotless snow of his paws and his bright white scarf, always so formal.

  How many times we had run across the field and meadow near our home, Lucky the Sheltie, one second half hidden in the tall grasses, then in a bound flying over the green on his next stride, running to meet me. All so beautiful now in the night, his dark eyes watching me, thoughts for words.

  “Hi Richard. Want to run?”

  “I have a little problem…”

  He considered that. “I had one, too, on Earth. Not now. And you can run, now, too.”

  The land where I awoke then, was like my home, but not quite. It grew manicured, not the wild places I knew. As Lucky had said, I could run.

  He trotted along by my left leg, as we had so many times before.

  I slowed to a walk for him. The sun dappled the path, summer lights and shadows in the forest. A quiet afternoon.

  “What’s happened for you, Lucky? All the time you’ve been gone.”

  “Not gone,” he said. “Listen: Not gone!”

  Dying’s a child’s belief of location, of space and time. A friend’s real for us when they’re close, when we can see them, hear their voice. When they move to a different place, and silent, they’re gone, they’re dead.

  Easy for him, he was with me when he wished, wondering why I didn’t see him, touch him. Then he realized that was my belief. It will change, one day.

  For now he was not sad for the limitation of my understanding. Most mortals have that problem.

  “I’ve been always with you,” he said. “You’ll understand, some day.”

  “What was it like, Lucky, dying?”

  “Different for you. You were so sad. You and Sabryna held me, and I lifted out of my body. No sorrow, no sadness. I got bigger and bigger… I was part of everything. I’m part of the air you breathe, with you always.”

  “Oh, Lucky. I miss you.”

  “You miss me when you can’t see me, but I’m right here! I’m here! I’m all you loved about me, I’m the spirit, the only Lucky you loved! I am not gone, not dead, I never was! You walk every day with Maya, with Zsa-Zsa, around the meadows and with me, too!”

  “Do they see you, dear Lucky?”

  “Sometimes Maya does. She barks at me, when Zsa-Zsa sees an empty room, and you don’t notice.”

  “Why does she bark?”

  “I may be partly invisible for her.”

  I laughed.

  He looked at me as he walked. “Time for me is different from what it is for you on Earth. We’re already together any time we wish, like now.”

  “Not in Earth time. We call them memories.” I remembered. “You’d look at us, sometimes, I knew you were thinking about us all.”

  “I love you still.”

  “When you died, I found two animal communicators. One west coast, one east coast. Sent them your picture. Called them.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Thoughtful. Solemn.”

  “Not solemn!” He looked down the path. “Was I solemn?”

  “No. You smiled a lot, your last year. I don’t think, except in that picture, you were solemn.”

  “I smiled when you tried to hide from me. Remember? I’d go ahead out of sight, you’d stop, hide behind a tree I couldn’t see you.”

  “Yes. I closed my eyes. Didn’t breathe.”

  “Of course I found you. You heard me next to you. You heard me breathing.”

  “That was so funny, Lucky!” I laughed out loud, in the forest.

  “I always knew where you were. Didn’t you know that?” Humans, he thought, not the smartest animals, but kind to dogs. “They were wrong about solemn. Did they say anything I said?”

  “You talked about when you died. You left us, you said, and you got bigger and bigger.”

  “I was the size of the universe. I knew I was everything. Did she say that?”

  “They said that you were always with us. In every breath we breathed. You were part of us.”

  “Close. You were part of me. It felt as though you were with me. I thought of you a lot.”

  “They said why you died.”

  “That I didn’t want to be tired, and sick?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good communicators.”

  “They said you weren’t sad. You didn’t miss us.”

  “I didn’t have to be sad. I knew we’re always together. I didn’t have the sense of loss that you had.” He looked up at me. “Have.”

  “Lucky, it was so hard to watch you die, not have a word from you since.”

  “I’m sorry for that. That was a mortal’s limited sense of life. A mortal dog’s too. Maybe I would have felt the loss if you had died and I stayed on Earth.” He looked into the forest, back again. “I came back, time and again. You could never see me. But I knew you’d see me when you died. A matter of beliefs. It will be no time since that happens.”

  A matter of beliefs. What had happened? Has Lucky become a teacher for me?

  “The end of a lifetime,” he said. “We can’t help but learn when we cross the Rainbow Bridge.”

  “That’s a human’s story, The Rainbow Bridge.”

  “It’s a loving thought, therefore true. Other reunions, but the Bridge, too.”

  “I asked if you’
d come back. They said you didn’t know. If you did, someone would tell us of a little puppy, from someplace south of home.”

  “I still don’t know. You’ll be moving soon. I’ll have to see about your place. I need lots of room to run. This place has spoiled me.” He looked up, to see if I smiled.

  “I doubt I’ll be moving, Lucky.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “This place is your home. It’s mine, too.”

  “No place on Earth is your home. You know that.”

  We walked down the trail in silence, up to the house at the top. Lucky lay down on the porch. I sat close, leaned against the six-by-six support for the roof. He put his chin on my knee.

  “We’re together now,” I said.

  He didn’t move, didn’t change his expression, but his eyes, so serious, looked at me sideways.

  That made me laugh, as always.

  I smoothed the fur of his snow-bright neck, a brief loving touch.

  If Lucky says he’s always with us, I thought, what does that say about his consciousness? There is no time and space. Love is everywhere. He’s happy. He’s learning. He cannot be hurt. He sees and knows us. He sees possible futures. He can choose to live with us again.

  If it’s easy for a Shetland Sheepdog, why is it so difficult for me?

  The nurse flicked on the lights, moved me one way and another, began changing the sheets.

  “Thank goodness you came,” I said. “I was almost asleep!”

  “It’s two a.m.,” she said sweetly. “We change the sheets at two a.m.”

  I needed to leave this place. If I stayed, I was going to die. I missed my dog. I wanted to die.

  Chapter 8

  Someday I'm going to meet a person who never faced a test.

  I'll ask, "What are you doing here?"

  It was supposed to be a time for healing, in the hospital. Too slow. I closed my eyes, shifted away.

  I opened them flying. Shimoda was now my wingman, floating off to the left. Something different with their time, I thought.

  “It’s not fast enough,” he said.

  “The time?”

  “The healing.”

  “No. Not fast enough.” I climbed the Fleet a bit, circled a lovely hilltop. “I’m doing fine here, Don. I’m healed instantly here. Part of me’s back on Earth, in the hospital. Can you find me there, heal me, get my life going again?”

  He was quiet for a while. “So I guess you know what people wanted, when I was the Savior.”

  Oh, my. Of course, I knew: Heal me. Feed me. Give me some money.

  “Sorry.”

  No answer.

  I turned away toward the place we started, the hayfield. “Would you maybe just give me a speed course in how you heal folks? I’ve never asked you for the course, but my way, it’s so slow.”

  “Your way is the way you want to heal.” He moved closer, close formation. “You want me to do it for you, heal you instantly on Earth? You don’t have to learn anything. You’ll let me do it?”

  So easy: let him do it. Someone says, How did you heal from your crash? You’re well! Immediately! And I tell them, I don’t know, I had a Savior heal me.

  “Well, no,” I said. “Just some hints, so it goes faster for me, on my own.”

  “If I tell you hints, is the healing your work or mine? You don’t need to be healed now, you need know it when you’re back on Earth. You’ll wait for a savior to make you well, instead of listening to your own understanding? Your understanding doesn’t work?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll do it myself, thank you.” I know how to do it. I just need practice.

  “You need practice,” he said.

  I frowned at him, looking across the few yards between the cockpits. He smiled, innocently.

  Something he knows about healing, that I don’t.

  What do I know about flying, I thought, that a non-flyer doesn’t know? Is it the same?

  I know there’s a principle of aerodynamics, works in space-time. Airplanes use aerodynamics. Learn how airplanes work, how controls work, a few simple rules, flying an airplane’s easy.

  I know there’s a principle of spirit, I thought. It works without space-time. I am subject to that principle, in spirit and in belief of body. Learn how spirit works, a few simple rules, living a perfect spiritual life is easy.

  “Wires ahead,” said my wingman.

  Why do they use wires here? Wires not required, telephones not necessary, in a land of spirit.

  “Roger the wires,” I said. I’ll practice flying through them. They’ll be no problem.

  In seconds our airplanes hit the wires, flew through them all. Nothing happened.

  That’s all right, I thought. No disasters here. What do I need, on earth, for an instant healing?

  Practice.

  Chapter 9

  What'll be your biography?

  "At that point, life seemed pretty bleak. Then (insert your name) did a surprising thing..."

  When I was a boy, I’d lie on the grass and imagine myself to the edge of a cloud. They were fluffy warm places. Since my spirit was lighter than summer air, I could stay there as long as I wished, drift where they went, watch this place of Earth. I’d wonder what adventures I would meet, know I would live here till it was time to find different places and times.

  “Is this what happened, after the crash? I floated on a cloud?”

  “Felt like it.” Shimoda said. “Something like that.”

  “Why did it happen?” I said.

  “You forgot. Want me to guess?”

  “Yes.”

  “You wanted your life to end in chaos. You wanted it to make no sense at all, a beautiful life till a bunch of wires snagged you and killed you and wrecked your airplane. That was the end of your story, and this...”

  “Wrecked my airplane? End in chaos, maybe, Makes no Sense not like me, but the wires wreck little Puff? Not possible!”

  “I guess I’m wrong,” he said. “Why do you think you hit the wires after fifty years missing them, missing other airplanes, missing the ground, missing a world of ducks, eagles, vultures, thunderstorms, lightning strikes, snowstorms, engine failures, night, icing, fog, fires…“

  “I was lucky?” I said.

  “You were lucky for fifty years and then your luck quit?”

  “You want me to know, don’t you? You think ‘bad luck’ won’t be the answer. You think I’ll not happily live with ‘bad luck.’”

  “Lots of people live with ‘bad luck.’” he said. “Not you? Tell me why you hit the wires, nearly killed yourself. The injuries can still kill you, everyone says. You killed Puff…”

  What he said woke my silent, secret mind.

  “No, Donald. I didn’t kill myself, I didn’t kill Puff.”

  He shrugged.

  “Don’t you see? I’ve lived a charmed life,” I said. “Nothing happens without a good reason for me. Never had something that put my life, and Puff’s life, on the line. Never had to work hard against something that could kill me.”

  “So you thought you’d hit the wires, Richard, and maybe stop living?”

  “I knew exactly what would happen. I’d go off and talk with my spirit friends while my body struggled with death. No dying, though I knew I could change my mind if I got tired and gave up. I wanted to fight a long difficult fight, come out a year later the winner. I wanted Puff to come back, too. She did everything to keep me alive, and that worked, what she did. Her wing took the crash…”

  “A long difficult fight, isn’t that exactly what’s happening?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And when and if you fly again, your story will end?”

  “One part of it, sure enough.” Flying again is a lovely end for the story, from where we struggle with death, meet with spirit guides, characters of our books, strive to live again. “That’s why the crash. That’s why I met up against the wires, the big invisible high-voltage wires. I brushed against dying, to live again.”

  �
�And you’ll write what happened?”

  “Maybe. Puff took the crash step by step in the last seconds, so I could live, don’t you see, till we could fly again. My challenge is not to die before the story reaches its end.“

  “Lots of drama, in your life. Have you considered being a Savior?”

  “No. Listen.” For the first time, the chaos made sense. “My job, Don, is to rebuild myself, rebuild Puff again, come back from our beliefs, rebuild while we live our worst days, her worst fears, and my own.”

  “That’s why you’re a writer? To live through these adventures?”

  “That’s why I might live through this whole story: life and death, and live once again. That’s why I’m me, this lifetime.”

  “Dramatic, positive, non-fiction. You could have done it in fiction.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I could have done it in fiction!” I thought about it. “No. Fiction, no reader would believe it happened. Non-fiction, though, they might say, ‘Interesting story.’”

  “You did this all for an interesting story, Richard?”

  “That what mortals do. We love our stories.”

  Chapter 10

  If we agree that the world is not what it seems, then we have an important question: What shall we do about it?

  When I woke in the hospital again, I was alone. The place was dismal. A little concrete room, one window to see the city of Seattle. Concrete everywhere, save for a glimpse of the Sound, a few trees, and way in the distance, the airport.

  Was this part of my story? So much a struggle, this place. A year from now it would be a memory, but now it was now. I wanted to build myself up again, but not with these problems with doctors and nurses.

  Never lived in a little warren like this, no room to walk, if I knew how to do that. Hour after hour, day after day, a wall-clock hummed, one showed the time, which Sabryna had taught me to read.

  I was like an intelligent alien, knew nothing about this world, but I picked it up fast. Couldn’t stand up, didn’t have the strength to do that. Didn’t have the strength, thank goodness, to eat the hospital food.