I looked out at the view.
“It’s gorgeous.”
Aaron stood at the edge of the cliff, to the point where his toes overhung the rim. He seemed at ease, as though he were standing on a balcony with a railing set between him and the drop. But here there wasn’t any barrier, no safety net of any kind, except the one, I assumed, he held in his mind.
“You’re not afraid, are you?”
Aaron turned to look at me.
“Of what?”
“Of that.” I pointed down. “Of falling.”
“One doesn’t have to be if they have respect for it. It bothers you being this high?”
I hated to admit my weakness to Aaron, but I did.
“I was born and raised in Minnesota. Basically flat land. The tallest things are corn silos, which, by the way, I’ve never been to the top of either.”
“Thanks for sharing,” Aaron said, beaming a smile. “And just so you know, I’ve never been to the top of a silo, either. Not certain I’ve ever actually seen one.”
I didn’t know how to take that. Was he making fun of me or just trying to make me feel less inadequate?
Aaron held out a hand.
“Come and stand beside me.”
Standing beside Aaron was something I very much wanted to do. Standing beside Aaron at the edge of a three-thousand foot cliff gave me pause to question my sanity. I rose and, with great anxiety, moved toward the edge. I’m sure he must have felt a twinge of pain as I grabbed his hand and squeezed it for all I was worth.
He pulled me closer, which brought me to the edge of the cliff.
“Relax,” he said.
Naturally, I started to look down.
“Don’t look down.” he commanded. “Look out. Look at the sky. Look at Shasta. Look at the wonder the world has to offer.”
He waved a hand as if he had the power to usher in the world to my doorstep.
For a moment, I believed he could.
“How can I relax,” I said, “when I can’t stop shaking?”
Aaron stepped behind me. He ran his fingers up and down my arms, grazing them with his fingertips.
“Breathe,” he said, voicing this in my ear. “Feel the wind. Know it will keep you safe. Feel the rock beneath your feet. Feel how solid it is. It’s not going to move, so neither will you.”
I felt the updraft against my face and my arms and my legs. I began to imagine the breeze as an invisible barrier, strung out before me like a net, keeping me from falling.
Aaron worked my arms. He stroked them. He whispered cooing sounds in my ear.
I felt my toes uncurl. My feet relaxed. I relaxed. I traded my focus of clinging to the rock for feasting on the beauty around me. I wanted to wilt into Aaron’s embrace, but I felt a surge of energy build inside me. It gave me a strength I hadn’t known before, a confidence I had never fully realized. I stood tall, even angling out a bit over the abyss, letting the wind carry my load.
Gravity lost its hold on me.
I watched the ravens flying by, so close I felt, if I wanted to, I could reach out and touch them. They clucked, they sang, their calls beckoning me to come and play. I leaned into the wind, relying on the wall of air to keep me from dropping. Aaron’s hands too. I lost all sense of fear, no thoughts of consequence, should I lose my tenuous hold on the rock.
Aaron’s hands gripped my arms. He pulled me from the edge.
I turned to look at him.
Aaron searched my eyes.
“You were getting a little too relaxed out there.” He smiled. “Now I’m afraid for your life.”
He let go of the one arm he still held.
Immediately, I felt drained, like the crash one experiences after the effects of a caffeinated energy drink wears off.
“It was you!”
Aaron sat down. He faced north, toward Mount Shasta.
“Not really. Fear lives and dies through self.”
“I didn’t mean fear. You were doing it again, vampirizing, transferring energy to me. Weren’t you? Keeping me from falling. Making me feel like...I don’t know how to explain it...like a goddess or something. Like I was invincible. Without fear. Like I wouldn’t die, even if I fell. But I would never fall, would I? Because you held me.”
Even though I now felt drained, I hadn’t come down from the high. Overcoming my fear of heights had been exhilarating. Hanging over the cliff, facing my fear full head on, invigorated me. I wanted to dance. I wanted to fly. I moved in circles around Aaron, all the while chattering up a storm.
Aaron closed his eyes and, I’m sure, mentally departed from the wild-eyed girl.
I dropped down next to him.
“Can you teach me how?”
Aaron opened his eyes.
“Teach you what?”
“How to transfer and control energy. How to perform vampirism.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t or won’t.”
“Won’t.”
“Why not?”
“You’re not ready.”
I stood and looked down on him.
“What’s there to be ready? Don’t I have an energy field?”
“Of course. Everyone has an aura. They just don’t know how to strengthen and manipulate it.”
“That’s what I want you to teach me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not allowed to, Julissa. You have to be chosen.”
I walked to the edge of the cliff and looked out. The ravens played, squawked, and made a ruckus. In the distance, Shasta put on her afternoon shawl of fog. I turned and faced Aaron.
“Who chooses?”
Aaron looked up at me. I knew the answer before he even said it.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Who else has been chosen? You? Bernard? The twins?”
Aaron looked down at his feet, away from me.
“You don’t want to say?”
“Does it matter?”
“No. Maybe not. Just want to know what I’m getting myself into. I like you Aaron. I like you a lot. I want to be with you, but there are things about you I don’t understand. And that scares me.”
Aaron stood. He dusted his pants off.
“I understand. What you’re feeling is natural. But aren’t all relationships a bit fearful? A bit of the unknown? Isn’t that what makes learning about each other special? The mysterious?”
I walked up to Aaron and took his hands in mine. I looked into his pupil-less eyes.
“I don’t even know if you can see me. I can’t read your eyes. Can you see my face?”
“Of course.”
“Then you know I’m not lying to you when I say I have strong feelings for you.”
“Yes. I sense it.”
“And what about you, Aaron? Do you have feelings for me? I know you’ve saved my life, helped me to heal and, oh yeah, my mother thinks you are a nice boy, but what do you feel inside?”
“You’re different than most girls.”
“In what way?”
“That way. You’re straight forward. No nonsense. Inquisitive. And...”
“Yes?”
“I like the way you look.”
“Well good, I think. I like the way you look too.” (An understatement)
I let go of Aaron’s hands.
“Can you imagine,” I said, “if all of us were chosen and we all had the power to manipulate our auras the way you do how much better off the world would be?”
“That would depend.”
“On what?”
“The world’s wisdom.”
“You don’t think the world is wise.”
“Do you?”
“No. Probably not.”
I remembered Cherrie’s diatribe on history being littered with men who let power control them and not vice-versa.
“You don’t think I am wise enough to handle the power you have.”
“Maybe, maybe not. What I do know is, not all hearts are ready or capable of care-
taking the gift. Man in general hasn’t evolved far enough.”
“So what you have is a gift?”
“Yes. Handed down through the ages.”
“By who?”
“My ancestors.”
“And they are?”
Aaron turned away.
“You won’t tell me.”
“I brought lunch.”
Aaron zipped open his back pack. He lay out sandwiches, apples, corn chips, and drinks.
“Why won’t you tell me?”
Aaron handed me a sandwich.
“Thanks,” I said. “Why won’t you tell me who your ancestors are?”
Aaron pulled the wrapping from his sandwich.
“That’s another thing I like about you,” he said. “You don’t give up easy.”
“Yeah. How so?” I said between bites of the sandwich.
“You’ve got the tenacity of a bulldog. When you bite onto something you don’t let go at the first sign of adversity. It’s like you have this humongous appetite for life, like you want to ingest everything, like right now.”
I looked out toward Shasta. The sun had risen higher. The shadows that had given the mountain its definition were no longer there. The mountain stood ‘lonely as God’ and as ‘white as the moon’.
“Maybe it’s because I feel rushed,” I said. “Time stops for no one.” I thought of my dad and Chuck, both dying too early. “You never know how much living you have left.”
“Now that’s a pearl of wisdom right there,” Aaron said with a smile. “It shows a good and understanding heart.”
“Then tell me something. Tell me anything. Where you came from, how you know what you know. Tell me about you.”
“Ladies first.”
“Not fair, but okay.”
I devoured the last bit of my sandwich and sat up straight as though I were about to give a speech in class.
“I’m of Slovenian descent. My parent’s grandparents came from Yugoslavia and settled in St. Stephen, Minnesota. I was born and raised in a suburb of Minneapolis called White Bear Lake. Ever hear of it?”
“No.”
“But you’ve heard of the Twin Cities.”
“Sure. Mall of America, the Twins, the Vikings, Prince.”
“Prince?”
“The musician.”
“Oh yeah. Well, he’s old school. So is Bob Dylan, but I’m getting off track here.”
I took another breath and continued.
“My mom is a psychotherapist. My dad was a truck driver, so I didn’t get to see much of them when I was little. I hung out with baby sitters mostly.”
I sat back.
“Your turn.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to give me?”
“What else do you want to know?”
“Let me think.” Aaron reflected for a second. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“No. My mom miscarried three times before she had me. Your turn.”
“Really. That’s it?”
“Yes! It’s your turn. Where did you come from?”
“Well, what you just said sounds too rote.”
“It is. It’s the diary of my life. I should know it by heart since I’ve had to repeat it to just about everyone I’ve met in Shasta. Now what’s your story? Are you Lemurian or not?”
“There you go again. Blasting through. You don’t pull any punches, do you?”
“Just say yes or no.”
Aaron purposely took a bite of apple and stalled. He methodically chewed until I could stand it no more.
“Well? Are you?”
Aaron cleared his throat.
“Am I what?”
“You’re toying with me.”
He smiled.
“Maybe a little bit.”
“So?”
“Who isn’t Lemurian?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Lemuria was the cradle of civilization. It gave birth to many civilizations. Many of us are descendants of Lemuria.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No. I’m not.”
“You mean there are billions of Lemurians?”
“If they descended from Lemuria, yes.”
“How do you know this? They don’t teach it in school.”
“I’d have to give you a history lesson and I know how you hate history.”
“Who told you I hate history?”
“Bernard said you had to serve detention for skipping history class the day I saw you up here on the Crags.”
“Interesting. How come you didn’t have to serve detention?”
Aaron shook his head. “I didn’t skip.”
“Okay. Sure.” I looked to the sun. It was mid-afternoon. “We have time for a history lesson, don’t we?”
Aaron nodded.
“Sure. If you’re interested.”
“Teach away.”
Aaron jumped to his feet. He pulled off his sweater and rolled up the sleeves to his shirt. He threw his apple core over the edge.
“Not sure I’ll be as good as Professor Mattingly.”
I settled into a depression in the granite deck.
“Maybe not,” I said, “but I got to tell you, you’re a lot better looking.”
“No fraternizing with the teacher.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
I pulled off my sweater and threw it to the side.
“Give it to me, teach.”
“Imagine this,” Aaron said as he waved an arm at the sky “is the pacific ocean. “Over here,” he pointed left and drew an invisible line, “are North and South America, and here,” he said as he walked across the window and waved a line, “is Asia. Down here,” he pointed to the granite deck, “is Antarctica. All this in between,” he said, arching a circle with his hand, “was, at one time, Lemuria.”
“That’s good,” I said. “I can see it.”
I couldn’t of course, but I was enjoying watching Aaron, especially when I could do so unfettered and without making him feel self-conscious. I could see he had a flair for entertaining an audience. The more he talked the more animated he became. The muscles in his arms flexed as he pointed and drew. The wind toyed with his hair, whipping it into locks that curled at the end. His blue eyes radiated light, then dark and greys in between as they reflected the surroundings.
If there ever was a perfect classroom for learning history, this was it. I read how, in the ancient days, students would recline on pads out in the wide open and listen as their teacher took them to faraway places.
Here, on the granite slab, three-thousand feet above the flatlands, where birds play and the warm breezes of the afternoon draft through the window, I found joy in a history lesson delivered to me by the god-man. I felt flushed and overheated so I removed my t-shirt and bathed in the sun’s rays and Aaron’s every move. I noticed Aaron stopped moving. He looked at me, probably wondering why I had stripped down to my sports bra.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing. Just thinking you’re starting to look pretty comfortable. Maybe too much so.”
“Thought I’d work on my tan while I learn history. What better place,” I said, waving a hand, “than up here where the sun burns.”
“You won’t be falling asleep in my class, will you?”
I shook my head. “Not a chance. So what happened,” I said, “to Lemuria?”
“It sank.”
“You mean like a boat?”
“You could put it that way. Most of it sank in the ocean after volcanoes and earthquakes ripped it apart.”
“Is there anything left of the land of Lemuria?”
Aaron gave me the teacher-to-student-good-question reply and continued.
“Yes there is. The Hawaiian Islands, the Easter and Fiji Islands, Australia, and New Zealand were all a part of Lemuria many-thousand years ago.”
“And the Lemurians? What happened to them?”
“The breakup of Lemuria didn’t happen overnight.
There were early signs, like volcanoes erupting and earthquakes taking place. Some Lemurians took the hint and relocated. But millions didn’t. They died.”
I could feel the sun burning into my shoulders. The breeze, so prevalent through the open window earlier in the day, now lay still.
“You have any water left?” I asked Aaron.
He pointed.
“Yes. In the back pack. Getting hot, huh?”
I nodded, pulled the water bottle from its saddle in the back pack and drank. I held it up for Aaron.
“You want some?”
Aaron dripped in sweat. He pulled his shirt off. He sat down beside me. He drank before talking.
“You don’t believe the story, do you?”
“You mean that Lemuria existed?”
“Yes.”
I slid around and faced Aaron.
“I don’t know. I’m one of those people who has to see something tangible, you know. There’s so much out there that isn’t real, all digitally fabricated. If ancient civilizations, like Atlantis and Lemuria were real, than where’s the physical evidence? Where’re the skeletons?”
Aaron smiled.
“Glad you asked, grasshopper.”
I looked puzzled.
“Grass hopper?”
“It’s a name the Chinese master gave his student when the student questioned the master’s ability to see the world. The master was blind, but he could hear the grasshopper at the student’s feet while the student, even though he had sight, could not.”
“Okay, master, if you can see the world better than me, what is it you see?”
“Do as I do,” he said.
Aaron turned to the sun. He removed his shoes and socks.
I did the same.
Aaron unzipped his cargo pants’ leggings and removed them.
I didn’t know where we were going with this, but it had intriguing and stimulating value.
Still I hesitated.
Aaron sensed my reservation.
“Whatever makes you comfortable,” he said, as he crossed his feet over his legs.
Given my pants leggings were baggie, I was certain the folds of fabric would not be conducive to crossing my feet up over my calves. I leaned back and squirmed out of my jeans. I kept an eye out to see if Aaron was looking.
He wasn’t.
It’s one thing to be basking in the sun in a sports bra and pants, another thing to be sitting cross legged in a sports bra and skimpy underwear. I told myself this is for a good cause and really isn’t any different than if I stood on a beach in my bikini. I also told myself I would not mention any of this to my mother.
Solstice - Of The Heart Page 19
