by P. Z. Walker
Eating and sometimes talking they walked to the forest path. Beneath the trees the warmth lingered; according to Mike it would take days before it cooled down there and then only when the summer heat had gone. Wendy brought up Acaraho again, and asked if Sheila could make him talk to them.
"Acaraho, my friends want to talk with you," she thought to her spirit guide.
"I cannot talk to them, but you can tell them what I tell you, Shíile Isshiiá." Sheila told them.
"Wow, you do that just like that?" Mike was surprised. "No meditation or nothing?"
"All I need is pizza," Sheila joked. "It's very easy, really. I just need to talk to him in my head and he responds."
"Trippy," Mike stated. "So he hears what you hear?"
That was something Sheila had to ask her guide, as she had no idea.
"No, I cannot hear what you hear," he put her mind as ease. "You have to tell me things."
With that out of the way, Mike asked how old Acaraho was. Unfortunately the spirit guide had no real answer to that. "I have lived and died here long before the white man came."
Wendy was impressed. "That's over 600 years ago. How did he stay sane during all that time?"
Acaraho explained that for entities in his state, time passed in a different way than for living humans. "Time means very little. What you perceive as a week can pass by in the blink of an eye, I would almost say," was how he tried to explain it.
By the time they reached the Five Oaks, all of the pizza had disappeared and Wendy and Mike had been thoroughly introduced to Acaraho. Sheila tried to explain what she would do as she spread her towel on the ground in the centre of the tree circle. As she talked, it all sounded strange to her own ears, she wondered how it had to sound to the two who had no experience with all this at all!
"Right. So you are going to try and get into a trance here, and we'll keep quiet," Wendy understood the gist of it.
"That sounds about right," Sheila nodded. "And I won't see you as I'll be having my special eyes on, so you're behind that strange blue wall of flames."
"We'll be close by. Let us know if that is a problem." Wendy clearly hoped it wasn't. She and Mike walked off.
Sheila sat down, took a deep breath and did her little routine to summon the blue-flaming walls around her. For a moment she looked down at her skin, half expecting to see the blue light shimmer there, but that didn't happen. "Okay, Josy. Here I come," she whispered to herself as she closed her eyes.
Minutes passed and nothing happened, except for Sheila getting very annoyed with herself. Josy was out there somewhere, waiting for her to appear, and she couldn't reach her friend.
"Acaraho, I'm doing something wrong. I can't get anywhere," she complained.
"What do you do differently from the first time?" her guide asked.
"I don't remember what I did then," she muttered, feeling stupid for not having paid attention.
"I think you are trying to hard. Finding a trance, a dream-state is not perceived by going after it. You have to lure it towards you. Distract your mind."
"Okay, let me stare at the images in the blue fire for a while. Heck, that's what I did last time!"
"Are you okay, little sister?" Mike called out. She had spoken the last words out loud!
"All fine here, thanks! Sorry to scare you!" The laughter she heard from her friends made her smile, and it helped her relax. Then she stared at the blue shimmer in front of her and let her mind wander off to Josy, to the strange shape she saw that could be a mountain, and a few people with three legs... and suddenly she recognised Josy's face for a moment. "Josy?"
"Oh my god, Sheila!" Josy's voice came to her loud and clear, and frightened. "You said you'd be back the next day!"
"But it is the next day, it's Monday."
"Shit, shit, shit," Josy expressed her feelings, "to me it's three days ago! I was so scared, I thought you had forgotten me."
"Hey, I can forget my ass on a chair, but I'm not forgetting you, hear me?" Somehow Sheila knew that Josy was crying from sheer relief. "Acaraho, can you see Josy?" she asked her guide.
"What?" Josy had evidently heard Sheila as she addressed her Indian, so Sheila had no choice but explain to Josy what she was doing. "God, Sheila, you're something else! You have your own Indian spirit? That's way cool. I want one too!"
"Let's first get you back here. And now be quiet or Acaraho can't talk to me."
"Whatever you say, Sheila. I'm so happy to hear you I could wet myself."
Sheila then focussed on her spirit guide and asked if he could detect anything of Josy's whereabouts. He had to admit that it was very difficult to pick up Josy's location, but that it would not be impossible.
"I need to confer with other spirits here, ones that have been here longer than I have, because the vibration that surrounds her is not one that I recognise. She must have moved into the past."
"But you were here more than 600 years ago!" Sheila objected, "that's far in the past as well!"
"The past is much older than I am, Yellow Hair," Acaraho commented calmly. "You may have to come back here and locate your friend a few more times, before I know where she is."
"You mean she's not around this place either?"
"Hey, Sheila, are you still there?" Josy's voice interrupted her talk with Acaraho.
"Hush, you, Acaraho tries to talk to me. I think. But yes, I'm still here." Sheila noticed a distinct difference between talking to her guide and talking to Josy. She couldn't handle both at the same time as if she had to flip a switch in her head. It was effortless but felt like either looking left or right.
"Sorry, Acaraho, Josy interrupted."
"I understand. She must be scared. To answer your question, Josy is still in this area, but it has changed over time. Quite much even, it seems."
"Hey, Josy? Acaraho told me you are still here, where I am. You're only in a different time or so, in the past."
Josy remained silent for a while after that news. "In the past? Are you sure?"
"Acaraho is, and that's good enough for me," Sheila said, hoping she didn't upset her friend too much.
"But how can you be in my head then?" Josy wondered. She didn't sound very stricken by Sheila's words yet.
"Beats me, Josems, but it works. And we keep working on getting you back, even when we're not sure how that will happen yet." Not sure was quite the understatement here, but it sounded better than we don't have a clue.
Sheila sensed that Acaraho needed her attention, so she shifted to his voice. "Can you ask your friend where she was when she appeared where she is now? Can she remember seeing the rock wall that is close to here, the one with the waterfall?"
She switched back to Josy and repeated Acaraho's question.
"Jesus, Sheila, I don't know. I stumbled as I wanted to grab my bag, I know that. Then I fell and blacked out. Next thing I know is I'm sitting here in a patch of land with some trees and a head aching like a pro. Sorry, I didn't check where I was. But I have been near a waterfall, only it's not a rock wall, it's a complete rock range with lots of streams coming down. The water's great to drink but too cold to shower. That's also near where I have my sleeping-cave"
"Okay, let me talk to Acaraho real quick again." Sheila told her guide what Josy had said.
"Mountain range. That sounds very old then. Mountain ranges do not disappear in a few centuries."
"I should better not tell her that, huh?"
The spirit guide didn't feel the need to respond to that.
Sheila switched back to her friend. "Josy? It's good that you know the waterfall. I think we can use that to get you back." She was now bluffing without cards, but she had to do something to make Josy more confident. "How are you feeling, girl?"
"Yeah, the falls are nice. I'm okay I guess, just helluva lonely here. Nobody to talk to, no one to harass. Except you, and I don't want to chase you off, Sheila. I was really worried that something had happened to you."
"I'm fine, Josems. I promise I'll take car
e of me until you're back."
"Maybe doing that a bit longer is a plan." Josy sounded a bit down all of a sudden. "I hope I can come back, Sheila. I miss the world I came from, my friends, my home, everything."
"We're doing what we can, Josy. It takes some time, this is the first time we have to figure this out, but I'm coming back for you every day. You have my word."
Josy said she appreciated that very much. "I should let you go now, huh?"
"Probably." It was hard for Sheila to leave her friend alone again. "Stay safe and warm, Josy. I'll be here again as soon as I can."
"I know, Sheila. Thanks. See you in a few days..."
Sheila willed herself out of her trance. "Acaraho, we have to find a way to get to her and bring her back."
"Bring you both back," he calmly corrected her.
"Yeah, that would be nice," she agreed as she opened her eyes, disabled the sight and stretched her arms.
"How was she?" Wendy asked as Sheila started to get up and stretch some more. Sheila filled her friends in on Josy's situation and state of mind. "Scary that she goes through several days where we only do one," she added as she rubbed her arms and shivered slightly.
"She's cold again," Mike said to Wendy, "let's get her down again." He picked up the towel Sheila'd been sitting on, slapped a few leaves off it and put it around her shoulders. "That should help a bit."
The first few steps Sheila took made her feel dizzy, so she held on to Mike's arm. "Give me a moment, guys, I feel as if the hill is moving below me." It took a few minutes for the spell to fade. Then they made their way down and to the deserted lawn.
"It's gotten late," Wendy observed. "We should head home soon, too. You've been sitting there for about half an hour, maybe next time we should find out a way to get you out of it sooner."
Sheila agreed that would be better, but when Mike told her that they had talked to her and she hadn't heard, it would be difficult to get a signal to her. "May your Arapaho can help," he shrugged.
"Acaraho. And he has no sense of time. I could do with some coffee though," Sheila said as the reception building came into view. She got her coffee, and before Wendy and she left, she told Mike she'd be there again the next day. Wendy insisted on coming as well, and she wouldn't take no for an answer.
*
Later, back at home and in bed, Sheila pondered how she could get to Josy. She'd need a lot of help from Acaraho, clearly. He knew about the energy bits and so on; it had to be possible. After all, Josy had fallen through something like that, and it if happened once, it could happen another time.
All those thoughts and more kept her from sleeping well, so she awoke feeling horrible in the morning. "It's either a coffee-day or I should call in sick," she told herself. Calling in sick was not an option for her though, so she went through the day on a lot of coffee. After work she was almost floating on caffeine.
While driving away she debated if she should get a quick bite to eat somewhere or eat at the resort. She decided to be smart and stop somewhere along the road; at the resort she might be too rushed to get to the hill. As she sat there, her phone rang. It was Wendy, telling her that she'd be there late due to some emergency at work, so Mike and Sheila went up to the Five Oaks alone after Sheila had gotten there.
"Tell me something, little sister. You've been coming here for a while now. How do you like it?"
"It's great here," Sheila replied. "Nice and quiet, nice people, and so much fresh air. It would be even greater if Josy was back though."
"I agree," Mike said, "we all miss her. But what I meant was how do you like being naked all the time here?"
His question took her by surprise. She was hardly aware of it by now, so much had she gotten used to being nude, even at home. That response made him laugh. "That's good, really. You don't think about it any more. It's normal, natural. And it feels fine, until it starts getting cold of course." On her question what he did then, he simply answered: "Put on clothes of course. No good in freezing."
"Something your guru said?" she laughed and ducked as he mocked a slap to her head.
"I think you should ask your guru to keep an eye on you," Mike then warned her. "I don't like to see you wearing yourself out, and I can't reach you when you're sitting there, so ask your Indian to kick you out of it if he can."
Sheila agreed. Helping Josy would work best if she didn't overdo this. She asked Acaraho if he could interrupt her at times to remind her of the time, but as she feared he wasn't convinced he was a big help with that.
"I have found a few things though. There are ways to create an energy to bring you to her. It needs to happen on a specific moment, in a specific place. It can be done though."
"Wow, cool!" Then she thought for a moment. "Wait a moment. Am I missing something here?"
"Unfortunately I can't be certain that you can come back," Acaraho continued. "You will go to a time before I existed in a physical form. I don't know if I will be able to reach you there."
Sheila fell silent hearing that news. So silent that Mike asked what the matter was. He cursed when he heard. "That's tough."
Chapter 16.
"Josy? Are you there?" Sheila had found the trance again, staring into the blue shimmers around her.
"Yay! You're here! A day early even!" Josy sounded cheerful and happy. "What have you been up to?"
"Drinking a river of coffee," Sheila admitted.
"Ohhhh noooo, don't mention coffee! I'd kill a giant for one!" Josy laughed after that. "Joking of course. I know there are no giants."
They talked for a little while. Sheila didn't dare to tell her about the possible way to get to Josy that Acaraho had mentioned. It was too early for that. She did tell Josy about having to cut the talks shorter because of what they did to her. Josy's disappointment was clear, but she understood, so after not very long it was her that told Sheila to stop. "Do come back tomorrow please, I really need to hear someone once in a while, Sheila."
"I'll be here, Josy, even when it rains ice cubes."
"Cool. Hey, are you still butt nekkid there? Just curious, because I still have such a hard time believing you turned naturist!"
"Naked as a jay-bird, Josy. As a matter of fact, Mike asked me if I like it, and I do."
"Good old Mike. Give him a hug from me when you see him, okay?"
Sheila told her that Mike was nearby to watch over her, and then they said good-bye. The shorter talk left her feeling a lot better, but it pained her as well. It felt somehow as if she had deserted Josy. When she opened her eyes she noticed that Wendy had arrived as well.
"You'll have to forgive me," Sheila told her, "Josy wants me to give Mike a hug for her."
"Go ahead," Wendy grinned. After the hug Sheila told them about the talk with Josy, and also what Acaraho had said about her possibly going there and the uncertainty of coming back.
"And what do you think?" her friends then asked. "Sounds dangerous."
"I know. And I'm really scared, believe me. But leaving Josy alone there..." Sheila bit her lip. She picked up her towel and her bag. "Sleep well, Josy," she whispered, and then they left the Five Oaks on the hill.
"What would you guys do?" Sheila asked her friends as they sat on the lawn, basking in the last rays of sunshine, sipping a cool drink. "Would you let Josy stay there on her own, wherever it is, or would you risk not being able to come back?" Mike and Wendy remained silent. Clearly they had no answer either. Given the fact that they couldn't go there, that point would be moot anyway. "This sucks, you know," Sheila said, staring in the distance and not expecting an answer.
"Shíile Isshiiá," Acaraho then came to her. "Do not despair yet. There may be options. I am not aware of them yet, but give it some time."
"Josy doesn't have much time, Acaraho," Sheila complained as tears fell from her eyes. "She is going crazy there, so we have to do something as fast as we can."
"What?" Wendy asked. Only then Sheila realised that she had been talking out loud, and she told them Acaraho's
words. "I'm equal parts thrilled and spooked that you can talk to something we can't see or hear," Wendy confessed after hearing that.
Sheila forgave her referring to her guide as a something. "I guess it's up to him and me. I'm glad I don't have to decide now, but once Acaraho knows more I'll have to. For Josy..."
*
The rest of the week went by with more and more worries on Sheila's behalf, and the daily visits to Josy. She tried hard not to let her mood affect her work at the dentist's practice, but a few times she felt compelled to take a few hours off when things just became too much. Gary had asked if she was all right, and she had just nodded and said it was something personal. He wouldn't understand. No one would. He proved to be a really great boss though; a few times he sent her home a little earlier without taking that from her vacation time.
Each visit to the resort made her more anxious concerning Josy, and at times she felt like strangling Acaraho for not coming up with anything tangible, something they'd actually be able to do. Of course it would be impossible to strangle a spirit, even if she had been able to get her hands on him; he only was present in her head.
The Saturday came. Josy had talked to Jeremy and Lizzy; they would come over to the resort too. Wendy would of course be there, and Mike would be where Wendy was unless he had to handle an emergency somewhere. Assembly-point for the group would be Wendy's place this time, and once they all had arrived they didn't waste much time chatting: that could be done in the car as well.
Jeremy announced that he would take off all his clothes as soon as possible and not give a damn. Lizzy was a bit more careful, but once they had arrived at the parking lot, they all stripped. Jeremy and Lizzy left their things in the car. Sheila wondered about the locker room but as Wendy also dumped her clothes in the trunk, she did that too.
Wendy then ran off to find Mike, while Jeremy stole the occasional peek at Sheila.