Rachael's Return

by Janet Rebhan

  “Do their color choices mean anything?”

  “Yes, I believe they usually do, but not always. I believe sapphire is one of the highest of the highest of the high.”

  “The whatest of the what what?”

  Aurora laughed again. “Sapphire is one of the colors worn by those who are the most evolved. They are so evolved, they usually don’t even incarnate anymore, but sometimes they will for a very special cause or reason.”

  “Like what, for example?” Thor asked.

  “Well, often it is to assist someone in their immediate soul group who will be taking on some particularly difficult challenges in their next life. The more evolved soul will usually incarnate as a close family member or friend or even a short-lived acquaintance to act as spiritual mentor in some capacity, small or large. Other times, the more evolved soul will be specifically requested because their unique spiritual gifts are needed at a particular juncture in a planet’s development. Like, say, an Abraham Lincoln, who was instrumental in abolishing slavery.”

  “Or a Mother Theresa?” Thor said.

  “Or a Walt Whitman. They can be a politician, a nun, or a poet, but their gifts are needed at a pivotal time in Earth’s evolution. Their gifts help in times of great transition.”

  “How many sapphires do you suppose there are?”

  “That, I wouldn’t really know. I suppose there are fewer sapphires than other colors, otherwise, planet earth would be a much more peaceful place, but no one really knows. The system is very complicated. So much so that most of us are only aware of one or two levels above us but no more. Yet with each graduation to a new level, new levels above that one come into view, and we expand our knowledge even more. It’s actually a great system because you can never get bored. And you are always challenged. I’ve never met anyone who could tell me the big picture in full detail. I think that’s because at the highest levels, they’re collectively making it up as they go along.”

  “That’s awesome. And that would explain why people in the Seventh Heaven don’t give you any details. They are continuously evaluating new ideas and determining which ones to manifest into reality—that, and giving direction to their counterparts on the Earth plane.”

  “Yes, I think so. But just remember one thing, Thor. Just when you think you have it all figured out, something happens that causes you to change your mind.”

  “So what is the purpose of the Earth plane? I mean, why do you suppose there’s so much pain and suffering?”

  “It’s all a matter of perception, Thor. By the way, this Sapphire lady, did she say why she invited you?”

  “No, but I did see her interacting with Caroline as I walked off the elevator, so I know she’s working with the same group we are.”

  “What was the overall feeling you got from her?”

  Thor thought for a moment. He had felt a multitude of things emanating from Sapphire’s essence: energy, happiness, excitement, humor, compassion. But there was one thing he felt a little more than all the others. He struggled to think of what and then made up his mind.

  “Encouragement,” he answered. “She listened intently, seemed so interested in everything I had to say. I felt no judgment whatsoever, only curiosity. And she never stopped smiling at me. I felt I could tell her anything and she wouldn’t change the way she felt toward me. I felt totally accepted, loved even.”

  “Yeah, that’s been my experience, too, with all the color types in Seventh Heaven. Yet their color gives them a particular edge—one that none of the others have. Did you get one from Sapphire?”

  “Yes,” Thor answered. “She was maternal. That was her edge.”

  “Makes sense,” Aurora answered. “I mean, we are dealing with trying to reunite two soul mates here who incarnated in mother/daughter roles. She wouldn’t have to be directly associated with our people, but then again, she could be. I guess time will tell. Perhaps she’ll call on you again, Thor.” Aurora stood and stretched her arms out over her head, cracking her knuckles. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough excitement for one day. What do you say we call it a night and return to work in the morning, say ten-ish?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Thor said. “Good night, Aurora.”

  “Goodnight, Thor.”

  There was a long pause, and then he asked, “Hey Aurora?”

  “Yes, Thor?”

  “Ever notice how our names rhyme? Thor, Aurora.”

  When Aurora didn’t answer right away, Thor said, “I just realized how childish I sound.”

  Aurora replied, “That’s absolutely normal, Thor. Sometimes when you’ve been in the presence of the highest of the high, you become a little childlike as a result. Other times, you’re more creative. You’re definitely always happier afterward. It’s quite all right. Sweet dreams, dear one.”

  Caroline slept fitfully that night. She dreamed she was in a long brown prairie dress leading a white mare by the bridle into a stall inside a barn. She gently stroked the horse on the nose and served her a bucket of bright-red apples before turning and kneeling to speak directly to Rachael, who was her child in the dream. Caroline wore her long hair in a wide braid down the center of her back. She smiled and moved her mouth, but no sound came. Rachael focused on the expression on her face to read her mood. Caroline moved in close to kiss Rachael’s forehead, then took her by the hand and led her into a shady room within the barn, where she had fashioned a bed on the hay with quilts and a pillow. She handed Rachael a small stuffed animal and instructed her in sign language to lie down and sleep. Rachael did as told and watched as Caroline exited the small room, blowing a kiss to Rachael before closing the tall wooden door behind her.

  The scene switched to a contemporary yellow house with a bright-green Prius parked in the front drive. Night had fallen, and Caroline heard a dog barking several blocks away. She moved as if floating in air; one minute she was outside, and the next, she was hovering inside over a crib where a young baby slept peacefully with a pink satin trimmed blanket next to her cheek and a pacifier in her mouth. Caroline moved in closer. The child had long dark lashes that curled up at the ends. Her mouth also curled up on both sides of the pacifier so that she looked as if she were smiling in her sleep. She lay on her side in a pink onesie, her hands extended in front of her as if reaching to be picked up. Caroline wanted to scoop the baby up and away, but every time she tried, she found herself back outside again, floating in the front yard, and each time she did so, she noticed something new about the house. First it had been the bright-green Prius, next a large oak tree, then the large plate glass window.

  The last time she hovered over the baby and tried to pick her up, Caroline found herself outside again, only this time in the back of the house, hovering near a detached garage. It had a red side door with a small slab of rectangular concrete for a porch. Barren flower pots were placed outside a nearby window; the porch light was a harsh, bright yellow. Caroline wanted to float back to the baby again, but something kept her where she was, forcing her to memorize her surroundings. She sensed urgency, the need to take action. She heard a deafening Snap! Slam! pierce the heavy night air, echoing unhurriedly before fading into agonizing silence. An acrid stench left its metallic taste in Caroline’s mouth.

  She woke with a startle and sat upright in bed, heart throbbing, tight breath cloistered in her chest, bedroom dark and still. Windows shut out all noise from the outside so that all she heard was the steady tick-tick-tick of the clock on her bedside table. Tears welled in her eyes, and her cheeks flushed as swift, bloody currents pounded her prominent facial bones. Her throat constricted, and she coughed to catch her breath. Unexpectedly, she found herself screaming for help, but her screams caught in her throat, transmuting to muffled groans.

  Jake stirred, turned, opened his eyes, and sat up quickly. He held his wife tightly and pulled her back down into bed with him, kissing her face gently where the tears had fallen and shushing her the way he would a small child until she fell back asleep, cradled
in his protective arms. This wasn’t the first time she had had a disturbing dream, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Yet he somehow knew it was all part of what needed to happen before everything worked itself out. And he really needed to believe everything was going to work itself out.

  CHAPTER 17

  Naomi removed the saddle from her white mare and brushed her down slowly, stopping from time to time to kiss her on her long nose just above her large nostrils. Aside from her daughter, Olivia, her horse, Jade, was her closest companion, the one sure thing in her life. All else seemed transitory, slippery, uncontainable. She lived only for the day she would leave her small town and head for the city, where she would own a suitable house and dine in fine restaurants. She would pursue higher education and dress in silks and satin. Her husband would be someone of importance in the town, perhaps a lawyer or a doctor or a merchant. When she was settled, she would send for her daughter, but that would be years away. Luckily, Olivia was only six, so there was plenty of time. Naomi only hoped she would last that long. Out where they currently lived on the open prairie, they were pioneers, and the work never ended. Her hands, once silky smooth, were already spotted from the sun, and she feared growing old before her time, though she was only twenty-two.

  The door to the cabin slammed, and out skipped Olivia in her little blue pinafore. A happy child, she had been born deaf. Her father, a deserter from the civil war, had left town a few days after her birth. Naomi’s father (Olivia’s grandfather) began to drink after that and grew to resent poor Olivia. Naomi shielded her daughter the best she could, but Olivia was a smart girl. She learned to read lips and sign language, or body language, because the sign language Naomi used to converse with her daughter was not exactly correct. That’s one of the reasons she yearned for a formal education—so she could teach Olivia appropriate language that she could also use to communicate with others and not just her mother.

  Olivia clinched Naomi’s thigh and hugged her hard before running ahead of her into the barn and perching herself on a small bale of hay. Naomi left Jade’s bridle on and led her into her stall before removing it and feeding Jade the apples she had collected earlier that morning from the trees in the backyard. As Jade crunched down on the first apple, Naomi heard a sound not unlike that of distant thunder. As it grew closer, she turned to see a large cloud of dust forming at the open mouth of the barn. She turned back toward Olivia and told her they were going to play the hiding game and kissed her on the forehead. Then she took her by the hand and crouched behind a large stack of hay bales. Through a small opening, Naomi saw four men in Union uniforms dismount their horses and head toward the cabin. They were shouting and singing and laughing. She guessed they had been drinking when she heard the bottle smash against the side of the barn.

  She took Olivia by the hand and led her into the spare room where the help slept, that is when they had help. Usually, help was a transient working his way to the city, stopping over for only a few nights and trading work for food and a place to sleep. The bedding was still there in the hay, and she placed her palms together in prayer formation and touched them to the side of her face as she tilted her head to let Olivia know she wanted her to take a nap. She told her that when she woke, they would have milk and cookies. She shut the door behind her, feeling relatively certain no one would find Olivia there, because her daughter would not be making any noise—that and the fact that Olivia always did as she was told. For the first time, Naomi was grateful for her daughter’s disabilities. They would keep her calm and thus out of danger.

  She took a deep breath and walked out the back of the barn in the direction of the outhouse across the field. There, she kept a spare shotgun, loaded and ready to use. She didn’t dare go into the cabin. She had learned long ago not all soldiers were cut from the same cloth. Living in these parts did something to people, turned honest men into crazed monsters. The prairie was lonely, and this made it far too easy to drink when times got rough. Her own father had been violent on occasion. Luckily, he wasn’t home today to see the uniformed men thrash through his home, breaking dishes and turning furniture upside down. He had gone into town for groceries and supplies. She didn’t expect him back before sundown and hoped by then the men would move on, seeing as there was no food in the house.

  When she reached the outhouse, she retrieved her shotgun, checking to be certain it was still loaded. On her way back to the barn, crouching beneath the tall cornstalks, she heard the explosion and saw the cabin erupt in flames. She began to run now as she saw large embers blowing in the direction of the barn. That’s when she heard one of the men yell, and she looked up to see him pointing in her direction. A steely cold hand gripped her heart tight in her chest, and she hiked up her skirt to keep from falling as she trampled the stalks beneath her.

  Inside the barn, she opened the door to Jade’s stall and slapped her on the backside to make her run, but the horse turned around when she reached the front of the barn and stood perfectly still, looking back at Naomi. One of the soldiers approached Jade with a start, and the horse galloped away as the man laughed and raised a bottle to his lips. He noticed Naomi standing in the center of the barn, shotgun in hand, and began to laugh again as he walked directly toward her. She raised the shotgun, steadied herself, and took aim. “Don’t come any closer,” she warned him, but he was too drunk to be scared of a girl, shotgun or no, and he continued to stagger toward her.

  “You’re too young and too pretty to know how to shoot one of those things.”

  “I said, don’t come any closer!”

  “I’ll bet that thing ain’t even loaded. You couldn’t hurt a flea.”

  Naomi took a step back. “You don’t know anything about me,” she said.

  “I know that if you feel as good as you look, you could make me a very happy man.”

  The soldier lurched at her. She pulled the trigger, and the world stopped. All Naomi heard at this point was the echo of the shot she had just fired. It reverberated around the barn, bouncing from stall to stall. The soldier lay at her feet, his eyes wide and his hands clutched to his bloody chest. The smell of gunpowder and blood made Naomi want to vomit. She turned and ran toward the room where she had left Olivia. The child was still sleeping, oblivious to everything going on around her. Naomi tried to stay calm as she woke her daughter and motioned to her the signal to hurry. Emergency! Come with me quick! They ran out the back of the barn and into the setting sun, in the direction of the neighbor’s house two miles up the road.

  The following morning, from the safety of the neighbor’s home, Naomi decided never to return to her father’s house. Instead, she asked the neighbor to deliver a letter explaining she would send for him in time. She found Jade wandering in the pasture between homesteads and traded her to the neighbor for coach fare into the city for herself and her daughter. It broke her heart to part with her beloved horse, but she vowed she would return for her one day.

  In the city, Naomi found work as a seamstress and saved her money to pay for Olivia to enter a special school for the deaf. Never wanting her daughter to amount to anything less than what she would have were she not born deaf, Naomi taught Olivia to listen well with her heart. Olivia learned to read both pain and pleasure and a myriad of other emotions in another’s eyes. She discerned subtle body gestures others could not see. And she learned not only how to sign properly, but also how to speak so well that years later, many people who met her were unable to detect at first meeting that she even had any hearing loss.

  Naomi remained unmarried and struggled with alcoholism, succumbing to cirrhosis of the liver soon after Olivia graduated from university with her degree in English literature. She was never reunited with her horse, Jade. Her father passed shortly after she and Olivia ran away.

  Olivia married a professor but was unable to conceive children. In her later years, she found success writing and illustrating popular children’s books, which were transcribed and distributed in braille. Eventually, she published a memoir
of her early life in which she recounted the story of her beloved mother, Naomi, without whom she surely would have perished, and without whom she surely would have remained less courageous, less capable, less accomplished than others not born with her particular challenge.

  “That’s a very interesting story,” Thor said. “But what does it mean?”

  Aurora was silent for a moment before she spoke. “It’s something I retrieved this morning from the Akashic Records file. A summary, if you will, of the last time Caroline and Rachael incarnated together.”

  “Ah yes. I’ve heard of the Akashic Records,” Thor said. “But what exactly are we looking for?”

  “Life purpose. Motivation. Unfinished business. Ongoing challenges. It could give us some clues to help us resolve this case,” Aurora said. “I have learned over time that the reasons for incarnating can be quite complex or quite simple. That’s why we are instructed not to judge—not ourselves and not another—because only the soul knows what our real purpose on earth is, and it’s not always as grandiose as the ego would have us think.”

  “And what do you think this record reveals to us?”

  “Oh, quite a bit actually. These two have a fierce bond and are very protective of each other. Their current incarnation offers a chance for them to have a life free of the fundamental conflicts that the last one had.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?” Thor asked.

  “Well, as the soul grows and evolves, it’s not always a bed of roses, but it’s not always a harsh reality either. Every other incarnation they get to learn through joy instead of difficult challenges. This makes for more fun and keeps it interesting. It also makes it fair so that sooner or later, everyone gets to be a big shot in some life. And everyone gets a taste of despair and defeat. It’s like a play where each time it is put on, the actors switch roles, and each gets a chance to be the star as well as a bit player. Of course, it’s only for those who continue to incarnate on the Earth plane. Some people move on after only one incarnation.”