by Devon Glenn
Dar shook away the thought of falling in love with Rahul. Finn seemed amiable enough during the reading, but his time away from Earth (not to mention a pirate’s general disregard for society) must have made him forget how things work here. The message had come from an unreliable source, and the messages Rahul was sending her now were too mixed to inspire her confidence. Did he want her, or did he want Lottie?
With limited options for comfortable dress, Dar pulled her cycling costume from her wardrobe. Her Swiss-belt-style corset stopped just short of her bust, giving her arms greater range of motion. Her bloomers, which looked like billowing trousers or a skirt with a split down the middle, would free her legs as well. On top, she’d wear a white shirtwaist with loose sleeves, a shorter skirt, and her most comfortable boots. She was about to lift her nightgown over her head when she heard a familiar rap at the door—which opened before Dar could even respond.
“Must you sleep the day away every morning?” Virginia asked with a sigh as she slid into the room, already fully dressed and carrying a suitcase. She looked at the outfit Dar had laid on the bed. “Tell me you’re not wasting your afternoon riding bicycles. It’s so unfeminine. Those seats practically ride right up your bottom!”
“Weren’t you the one who suggested that I should find a new hobby?”
“Right,” Virginia said. Dar could tell from the look on her mother’s face that she felt she was being magnanimous by changing the subject. “Which reminds me, since you dropped a not-so-subtle hint in your board game that you were looking for love—”
“I dropped a hint, Mother?” Darthilda said. “I was nowhere near the board when that happened.”
Virginia threw up her hands. “You know I never meddle in your parlor tricks. A magician never reveals her secrets.”
No one was hiding under the table, nor were any strings attached to the planchette, as anyone should have been able to see. Dar turned her head away from her mother and rolled her eyes.
Virginia pulled a balled-up piece of parchment from her skirt pocket and handed it to Dar. Smoothing out the paper, Dar saw her own words coming back to haunt her: diplomatic, eloquent, handsome. Virginia must have picked it up off the floor when she left. Dar silently thanked the spirits she hadn’t written Rahul’s name. “As I was saying, since you have finally taken an interest in finding a husband, your father and I are planning to pay a visit to Robert Digges in Washington, DC.”
“You’re hoping to lure him away from my bosom friend?” Dar said with a snort, thinking, He doesn’t have time for one wife, let alone two.
Virginia’s nostrils flared. “I am not suggesting you marry Mr. Digges, foolish girl,” she said. “I am going to invite a few of his colleagues to an intimate gathering at our home. Then you can finally meet some eligible men. I was mortified when only one single gentleman showed up for your séance.”
There were two, Dar wanted to scream, but she forced her grimace into a smile. “Well, have a ripping time and please make sure to bring home a clean-shaven man or two. I have seen far too many handlebar mustaches this summer, and I do not think men should curl the hair on their faces.”
“It’s no wonder that you haven’t found a husband,” Virginia groaned. “Of all the things you can’t change about a man—his vocation, his height, his temperament—you worry about the one thing you can easily remove with a straight razor.”
It wasn’t just that Dar hated mustaches—she hated that she was expected to swoon over a man just because he met her mother’s definition of eligible. Virginia had watched Horace insult Dar in front of her clients and had then sided with him instead of her own daughter just because he was a politician. That, in Dar’s estimation, did not bode well for her mother’s matchmaking.
Dar couldn’t confront her mother’s betrayal without sounding delusional—she’d be revealing that she had been reading her mother’s thoughts. So instead, Dar picked up the planchette from her Ouija board. “With the money I earn from my séances, I could afford to support myself without a husband. Why not leave me to my trade and allow me to find love in my own time?”
Virginia sucked in her breath. “You have no idea what it means to support yourself in this economy. You’re a morbid girl, and men will lose interest in your parlor tricks,” she said flatly. “I will be leaving shortly, and when I return, I expect you to be rested, powdered, pressed, and dressed to impress.”
Dar kissed her mother on the cheek and wished her a safe trip. Off a cliff.
CHAPTER 6
Whales and a beacon
Rahul spread four soft woven mats on the floor of the White Cottage ballroom. Now they’d have a buffer between their long skirts and the hardwood floor. The ballroom was a quiet space with high ceilings—quite suitable for meditation. Pleased, he checked the time on his pocket watch. Housekeeping had delivered a note to his hotel room informing him that Lottie had invited a few other guests to join them, including Miss Crossing. Unconsciously, he moved their mats a little closer to his.
When he heard cackling in the hall, he knew that Lottie had arrived with her entourage. She brought along with her Beth, the redhead with the opium problem, and Horace’s mother, Elva. The innkeeper’s wife, he thought with a sigh, was a lovely and vivacious woman, with wild curls and dramatic eyes that would send into cardiac arrest just about any man who had a pulse left to quicken. But her constant efforts to tantalize Rahul with her voluptuous figure seemed so contrived that he doubted any man’s attention would ever be enough.
“Aren’t we expecting one more?” he asked anxiously, peering at the door.
Lottie pouted.
“Just me,” Dar called from a few paces behind. He watched as she paused to catch her breath, carefully tucking loose strands of hair under her hat. Rahul wondered if she knew that her glossy, almost-white tendrils were the ideal color of jute.
As a child, he had loved to watch the retting process. The farmers would wade into the Hooghly River, where the jute had been tied into bundles and left to soak. As the gentle flow of the water saturated the bundles, the fibers swelled and pulled away from their stalks. The farmers would use a wooden hammer to shake them loose from their outer casing, rinsing the jute fibers of excess dirt until the water ran clear and then squeezing them dry.
Rahul’s father had taught him how to judge the efficiency of the retting process by the quality of the fibers. White and silky fibers meant that the stalks had been perfectly steeped and rinsed in clear, still water; course and yellow fibers meant they had been steeped too long and rinsed in a dirty ditch.
Dar’s hair color was an anomaly for a woman her age, but the sight of her straightening her hairpins conjured a treasured childhood memory, and his heart stuttered in response. After this trip, Rahul would never look at a bale of jute the same way again.
“Could you tell us how all the heavy breathing we were doing yesterday helps us to connect with our higher selves?” Lottie asked, interrupting his thoughts.
Rahul laughed. She was being cheeky, he knew, but it was a legitimate question. “If you think of each one of us as a collection of molecules moving through space and time, it means that the same life force that spins through me also spins through everyone and everything around me, but at a higher or lower rate of vibration depending on whether I am calm or agitated, kind or selfish, weak or strong. If we focus on strengthening our bodies and minds, we can impact the world around us. All the poses do is improve the flow of energy so that we can reach that higher vibration.”
While the others shifted self-consciously on their mats, Dar chose a spot on the wall to fix her gaze on as she concentrated on the flow of her breath.
The other women had just settled onto the floor when Rahul heard an undignified puff of wind coming from Beth, who was still working on crossing her legs when she held up her reddened face. He ignored the noise.
The same could not be said for Lottie, who grabb
ed Dar’s ankle and looked at her face with mirth, confirming Rahul’s suspicion that the noise had come not from Beth’s shoes.
Sensing a meltdown, Rahul moved toward Beth and continued the lesson. “Don’t worry about your legs. Focus on keeping your back straight and leaning forward with your chest.”
Slowly and evenly, Rahul offered individual instructions behind Beth’s and Lottie’s backs, coaxing them each an inch or two forward before moving on to the next woman. He felt his pulse race as he moved closer to Dar. When Rahul finally settled in behind her, she shivered. “Your back is straight, I see,” he said quietly, “but your chin is jutted forward too far, and you’re putting too much strain on your neck. Try dropping your shoulders and lifting the crown of your head. Sit so that you can’t feel yourself sitting.”
As he said this, Rahul could not stop himself from running his finger down the length of her neck. Dar leaned back, and Rahul pressed his cheek hotly against hers. While the tension melted from Dar’s upper body, a new sort of tension developed between Rahul’s legs.
Before he lost control, Rahul pulled away, leaving him cold and wanting more. As he resumed his post at the front of the class, he reminded himself, The others will notice.
“As we inhale and exhale, let’s pray for knowledge and for light,” he said to stop unwholesome thoughts from taking shape.
He watched Dar relax into the floor as she pulled in one slow breath after the next, inhaling through her nose with an open throat and sending the air back out with her diaphragm until her breath sounded like the rise and fall of the waves.
Once again, Rahul slipped out of his physical body and floated above the group, where Dar was already waiting.
“Where shall we go?” she said to his surprise.
“Let’s go to the shore.” Taking her astral hand, Rahul led Dar away from the banquet hall, up through the ceiling, and into the clouds.
At last, he was having a proper holiday. From above, they could see the geometry of summer in the circles of women’s parasols and the square tops of bathers’ tents.
Dar and Rahul flew across the pier to the pavilion, following the eager children in hot pursuit of vendors pushing carts loaded with icy treats.
They hovered over the ocean for a while before descending to the water to feel the waves undulate beneath their feet. A whale breached, thrusting its great head into the air and crashing sideways into the waves. Soon others joined, their baleen grins opening and closing to strain the krill from the salt water. It was beautiful, but the longer they stared at the spectacle, the less buoyant Dar became.
“Where are we?” she cried.
“There are many planes of existence: svargam, nakaram, heaven, hell…whatever you want to call them. We have traveled to that plane where the earthbound spirits reside, and it’s bringing you down instead of raising you up,” Rahul explained as she sank farther. Soon, only her head poked above the waves. He could see the shadow of her arms treading water below.
“Do you remember what I said at the séance about following different paths?” he asked her.
“Yes.”
“In Hinduism, we have four paths that lead to moksha, which is the liberation of the soul from the cycle of death and rebirth: devotion, knowledge, and selfless service are the first three. The fourth, the royal path of meditation—Raja Yoga—offers the key to the other planes as well as the lock.
“In one sense, Spiritualism opens the same door as yoga. Somehow you have learned to raise your frequency high enough to see the souls of the dead who exist all around us in another plane. When you are attuned to it, you can see certain images, hear others’ thoughts, and even receive messages from the dead, yes?”
“Yes,” said Dar. The water was now up to her tilted chin. “And I’d love to tell you more about it, but I’ll have a hard time with a mouth full of seawater.”
“Just remember that none of this is real,” Rahul reassured her. “While we are off on a mental adventure, our bodies are safely at the inn.”
“I’ll try.”
“As I was saying, the same thing happens when you practice yoga for a certain amount of time. The problem is that not all departed souls are on the same frequency. Like you said at your séance, there are spirits, and then there are ghosts.”
“How do I stop them?” Panic had filled her eyes.
He reached into the water and grabbed her hand. “Concentrate on the feeling of weightlessness, as though you were a bird hovering above the open water instead of a woman adrift at sea.”
Dar rose above the waves where the whales were still feeding.
“Tell yourself that you are strong enough to cross this entire ocean—just like these whales.”
Dar took his words into her heart and emerged from the water smiling and arms spread like wings.
When Rahul was confident that nothing could drag Dar down against her will, he took her hand and lowered the two of them into the churning water. Enveloped by bubbles, she and Rahul listened as the whales clicked and groaned, singing their strange melodies beneath the waves.
“The sailors had it right all along,” Rahul said. “The song of the siren is real, and it’s haunting.”
Dar shook her head. “Those are no sirens. I think we’re spooking the whales.” The cetaceans must have sensed the disturbance in the water and were voicing their confusion about the two astral bodies that had joined their pod. “They’re talking about us. They must be.”
“What do think they’re saying?”
“They’re hungry.” Dar laughed. “Humpback whales migrate to colder climates to feed and warmer climates to have their calves. This is just one part of their journey; they’re gathering their strength for the next.”
Rahul thought of his mother’s letter and decided to change the subject.
“I never imagined their voices would be so beautiful,” he said. He thought of the day he first arrived in America, when a couple of dolphins had curiously popped their heads out of the water as the ship’s passengers boarded a tender that would carry them to the shore. The playful creatures had squeaked like wheels in need of grease; these great beasts, by comparison, had voices positively celestial.
“I suppose those who dive deep enough to hear it rarely live to tell the tale,” said Dar.
At the mention of death, a new and terrible sound rose from the depths: the calls of drowned sailors and lost souls who still floated in the same ocean that had consumed them ages ago. Rahul saw phantom hands groping for a lifesaver, but there were no lives left to save.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned them,” Dar said with a sigh. “Now they know I’m here.”
“Ignore them,” Rahul said. “Let’s look for somewhere safe.”
“I know of a place.” Dar took Rahul’s hand and pulled him out of the water. The two of them floated back to the beach and up to the Cape May lighthouse, where a beacon shone from the top, even now at midday.
After guiding them to the ground and landing at the entrance, Dar rapped at the door with her knuckles.
“Why do we need to knock?” Rahul asked. “No one will hear us without our bodies, and besides, we can let ourselves in.”
“It’s not the lighthouse keeper we need to see,” said Dar. Like a façade on a storefront that hid the plain structure behind it, the door creaked open to reveal a portal to an even higher plane. Inside, they found a beautiful winged creature smiling down at them from the top of the lighthouse.
“Who are you?” Rahul asked.
“An angel?” Dar suggested. The ring of light around her head could have been a halo.
“A devi?” asked Rahul. Or perhaps a winged vahana for a devi to ride on.
Dar and Rahul knew they weren’t meeting their maker; they were painting a divine messenger with the brushstrokes of their imaginations. To the mind’s eye, the form of a divine being was no mor
e reliable than a painting or photograph.
The being cocked her head to the side. “We’ve met before, but you wouldn’t remember,” she said. “Come up to the top with me. The view is better up here.”
Rahul and Dar followed the twisted staircase to the top of the lighthouse, which looked over the sea, the sand, and the town below. But the light at the top shone so brightly that Rahul could see only the winged being and Dar. The being, whose eyes had not opened once during their journey up the stairs, continued to hold her head in the direction of her visitors without actually seeing them.
“You can touch many lives briefly, but with great impact,” she said, though it was not clear which of them she was referring to. “If you lift your anchor in time for the tide to rise.”
“What do you mean by anchor and tide?” Rahul asked.
Added Dar, “What do you mean if?”
“If you don’t, you will be stuck here. And you will have to wait for the next great wave.”
Dar and Rahul looked to each other for an explanation.
“It can’t tell us everything, I suppose,” Rahul said. “How do you feel?”
“Tranquil,” Dar said, bathing in the energy that radiated from the otherworldly being.
“Be wary of the places you allow your mind to wander,” the being said. “It is understandable if you lose your mind, but unforgivable if you lose your soul.”
The two loose souls closed their eyes, letting the light and energy flow through them and beyond the lighthouse. It pulsated, wrapping them in warmth. The sensation was so strong and pure that it covered any fears and doubts that Rahul had carried with him to the lighthouse—he forgot about India, his parents, and the responsibilities that awaited him.
“I never knew that a living soul could feel like this,” Dar said to Rahul. “I feel like I could live on light alone.”