Ellie gasped loudly as, at the end of the runway, Mac suddenly brought the jet into a ninety-degree turn, and they were heading straight up toward the sky. She could barely catch her breath, the pressure was so intense. The throbbing, pounding pulse of the jet engines converged in a rhythmic unison that seemed to permeate her soul. Shutting her eyes tightly, Ellie could feel the sensations, the pressure, the pain in her thighs as the g-chaps inflated tight and hard against her lower extremities. She opened her eyes slightly and saw the light blue sky was getting darker.
“Ten thousand,” Mac told her.
Ellie heard the strain in his voice. Yet he seemed alert. Her brain felt fuzzy, and her eyesight was graying.
“Fifteen.”
The pressure increased on her entire body and Ellie could barely move her fingers. She felt crushed against the seat, as if a huge, invisible hand was pressing down on her. Her eyes felt as if they were being pushed back through the rear of her skull. The oxygen mask bit sharply into the flesh across the bridge of her nose.
“Twenty.”
Gasping, she tried to breathe. She heard Mac grunting through the headset and remembered belatedly that she should be doing the same thing. The grunting brought oxygen back into the body.
“Twenty-five.”
Ellie felt like a puppet whose strings belonged to someone else. She could only lie flattened against the seat, gasping, trying to hold on to consciousness.
“Leveling out at thirty….”
Suddenly, the gravity, the crush, began to release her. Ellie’s vision cleared remarkably swiftly as Mac brought the jet into level flight. To her amazement, the sky up here was a dark, cobalt blue. They were flying within filmy cirrus clouds. The view was awe inspiring, and Ellie gasped again—this time not for oxygen, but for the overwhelming beauty surrounding them.
“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” Mac asked.
Shaken, Ellie wondered if he’d read her thoughts. Breathing through the oxygen mask was demanding, but she managed to find her voice and said, “I never realized how beautiful it was up here.”
“Most don’t, or we’d all be pilots.” Mac chuckled indulgently. He lifted his gloved hand and pointed upward. “If you go to forty thousand, the sky becomes almost like night. It reminds me of a dark blue sapphire. It’s breathtaking.”
“Y-yes, it’s all breathtaking.”
“You doing okay?”
“I think so….”
“What did you think of the gravity?”
“Awful!”
Mac laughed. “Yeah, it’s a dog, all right. How did you like elevator flight? Pretty impressive, huh?”
Mac was like a little boy sharing his favorite marbles with her, Ellie thought. She could hear the joy in his voice. “It was something else,” she agreed. “It was uncomfortable.”
“After a while, it gets to be one hell of a joyride,” Mac told her enthusiastically as he banked the jet to the left. “It’s like riding an exploding cannon, only you’re strapped onto the front of it.”
Laughing a little, Ellie said, “I think you’re right, but I still feel like I’m not fully in my body yet.”
“A little like being in an altered state?”
“How could you know?”
“Flying’s a little like your journeying, I think. When the blood leaves my head on tight turns or afterburner stage, I don’t feel very much in my body, either. In fact, it’s a struggle to stay in it. With all the blood draining from my brain, I want to lose consciousness.”
“I’m impressed,” Ellie said simply, “with your insight. But when I journey, Mac, the blood doesn’t leave my head.”
“I know that. But I think the feeling may be the same.”
“It is.” She was humbled by his struggle to understand her and her world in the context of his own.
“You’re awful quiet back there,” he said after five minutes of silence.
“I was thinking,” Ellie admitted.
“Yes?”
“About you.” She looked around through the clear canopy, once again struck by the ephemeral beauty of the sky that embraced them. “You love flying because it gives you a sense of freedom.”
“Actually,” Mac drawled, “a release.”
“From what?”
“Life down on the ground. Up here there are no hassles, no managerial problems facing me—”
“No wrenches thrown through the air?”
He laughed deep and long. “Bingo. You got it.”
“How do you feel after you land?”
“Like I want to climb right back and take off again.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Mac admitted thoughtfully, glancing around, always on the lookout for other aircraft. He pointed the jet toward Flagstaff, a good one hundred miles away. “I can think better up here. I have clarity, I guess. I can have a headache at the office, but if I fly on that day, the headache goes away.”
“That’s a little what journeying is like for me,” Ellie told him. Below, she could see the desert and small, green shapes she assumed to be cactus. “When I’m in that altered state, I feel lighter, freer.”
“Do you like coming back?”
“I don’t mind it. But then, I don’t journey to escape, Mac. Do you fly to escape?”
He chuckled. “Sometimes I do—I have to admit it. Being up here makes me feel better. When you come back from a journey, do you feel better?”
“Every time. It’s a very energizing, vital thing to me, and I always feel better when I come back. There have been times I’ve had to journey when I wasn’t feeling very well. Afterward, I always feel wonderful.”
“So do I. See? We aren’t as different as you might think.”
Touched, Ellie said nothing. Ahead, she could see what looked like a nap over the curved surface of the earth, and she was sure it was forest. “Where are you taking us?”
“I thought we’d tour Flag and look at the red rocks of Sedona, then go home. I’ve got an hour of flight time, and I want to use all of it.”
Smiling, Ellie truly began to relax. The pressures were no longer on her body, and she was able to breathe without trouble. “I can see why you like your world. It’s a beautiful one.”
“Up here,” Mac agreed, “everything looks good. Up here I don’t see the violence, the pollution, or hear the bad news from around the world.”
“It’s a very safe place,” Ellie agreed.
“In one way. Right now you’re getting the nickel tour, with no jet acrobatics or the type of flying I usually do when I’m training for dogfights.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, it’s usually a lot more violent, a lot more physically demanding.”
“As brutal as that vertical climb?”
“The same, sometimes worse.”
Ellie shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Believe me, flying these jets is for young bodies only. I’m reaching the upper limits of my flying, age-wise. I don’t take the g’s as well as I used to, and I’m taking vitamin A to keep my night vision top-notch.”
“You mean you’ll have to stop flying?”
“Eventually, they’ll ground me to a complete desk job and I’ll be allowed only so many flight hours a month. I’ll fly a desk, not a plane.”
Ellie heard the sadness in his voice. “I don’t know how I’d feel if my ability to journey was taken away from me.”
“It’s not a day I’m looking forward to, believe me. I’ve thought about resigning and flying commercial planes. That way, I can continue to fly, at least until I’m sixty.”
“But no afterburners, no vertical climbs,” Ellie noted.
“No,” Mac said, “but I’m an eagle, remember? I don’t want my wings clipped. I don’t want to be grounded for the rest of my life. Flying’s in my blood, like journeying is in yours. Maybe it’s genetic. Who knows? If I don’t get at least fifteen hours of flying a month, I’m a bastard to be around.”
Ellie laughed.
“Well, I don’t have that kind of mood turn if I don’t journey.”
“How many a month do you do?”
“I do up to four a day. That’s all I can tolerate without becoming completely ungrounded or feeling spacey all the time.”
“Four journeys for four different people?”
“Yes.”
“You usually do them in the morning?”
“Shamans vary,” Ellie told him as she watched the dark green carpet of forest beneath them. To the left, she could see the red sandstone formations surrounding Sedona. “I was taught to do my journeying when I was at my strongest point. For me, that’s the morning. That’s when my energy is at its peak.”
“I’ve been trying to understand what you do,” Mac said, banking the plane to the left to take in the red-rock view. “You have to have a tremendous amount of concentration and focus, just like I do when I fly a plane.”
“That’s right,” Ellie said. She smiled softly. “Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to find every possible parallel between flying and journeying you can?”
“Because,” Mac said dryly, “I’m trying to get you to see that we’re not so different, after all.”
“You do it physically. I do mine mentally.”
“So what?”
Ellie wrestled with his challenge. “It’s not that easy to make a comparison, Mac.”
“I think it is.”
“That’s because you want to find similarities.”
“Anything wrong with that?”
Ellie tried to concentrate on the beauty of the sandstone formations below them. At this altitude she could see the entire area. She knew from talking to local Navajo and Hopi medicine people that the Sedona area was considered highly sacred, a woman’s area; even to this day, ceremonies were performed there.
“Cat got your tongue?” Mac teased as he turned the jet back toward Phoenix.
“No….”
“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what you said earlier about mental telepathy.”
“Oh?”
“I guess I have my share of it,” Mac admitted. “Before meeting you, I just wasn’t tuned in to that portion of myself.”
“All humans have the capacity for mental telepathy.”
“I won’t disagree. One time my crew chief, Sergeant Susan Greer, had this hunch that something was wrong with one of the engines on this jet. It was just a feeling. I was supposed to fly that morning, but she asked me to scrub the mission in order to check out the engine. I was a little uptight about it, because with my schedule, flying time isn’t always easily arranged, but I trusted her.” Mac chuckled. “Wouldn’t you know, Susan found that one of the blades in the engine had a nice big fracture through it. If I’d disregarded her hunch and flown, that engine piece would have loosened and ended up tearing the hell out of the rest of it and probably exploding.”
A chill ran down Ellie’s back. “That’s terrible!”
“It could have been,” Mac told her blithely, “but my gut told me to listen to Susan and trust her judgment. I’m glad I did.” He began to ease the jet down from thirty thousand, only this time, he did it more gradually, so that it was comfortable for Ellie. “I’ve been remembering a lot of incidents like that over the last two weeks.”
“Humans sometimes work out of the right brain without ever knowing it.”
“I believe that now. I do. I have to admit I was skeptical at first, but the more we talked, and the more I thought about it, the more sense it all made.”
If only Brian could have gleaned such wisdom from his life and applied it to hers! Ellie shook her head. She saw the last of the forest carpet fade away and the gold-and-red sand begin. For some reason, she didn’t want this flight to end.
“When we get back, I’d like to take you to the O Club on base for breakfast. We’ll land at 0930. What do you say?”
Her stomach was growling. Ellie wondered if he could hear it through his headset and then laughed at herself. Of course he couldn’t! Mac had warned her not to eat any breakfast, to reduce the chance of airsickness.
“I am hungry.”
“Okay. The Officers Club is a nice place. They serve up a mean chili omelet.”
“Chili? This time of morning?”
Laughing, Mac said, “I like hot food. When I got assigned to Luke last year, I was in seventh heaven with all the Mexican food. Salsa, hot sauce and red-hot peppers are my favorites.”
“You’re a lot braver than I am.” Ellie laughed. “Thanks, but I think I’ll settle for a very bland plate of scrambled eggs and bacon.”
“Anything the lady wants,” Mac drawled.
Ellie was a little shaky after climbing out of all the gear. Mac smiled understandingly, put his hand beneath her elbow and led her out into the bright, hot sunlight.
“I feel reborn,” Ellie said.
“How so?” He opened her car door.
“I just feel cleaner, as if somehow flying cleansed my aura. I get a similar sensation when I swim or take a shower.” Ellie climbed in and buckled the seat belt.
Mac was happier than he could ever recall. He climbed into the car and placed the key into the ignition. Glancing over at Ellie, whose cheeks were flaming red, he said, “Flying is like a hot shower to me, too.” But about now he could use a cold shower. Every little movement Ellie made entranced him. He simply couldn’t get enough of her. There was such a vibrant look to her golden eyes, to the soft curve of her lips. And her hair… He groaned to himself and forced his attention to the road. Ellie’s hair was in disarray, tendrils softening the natural angularity of her cheekbones. Mac found himself wanting to tame each errant strand back into place, the sensation electric and heated.
At the O Club, Mac asked for and got a booth in a quiet corner. Not many officers were in the club right now, since it was past breakfast and most of them were at work. He felt as if he was walking on clouds with Ellie at his side. After they were seated, he ordered them strong, black coffee. Folding his hands, he smiled across the table at her.
“You look a little like a fish out of water here,” he observed.
Ellie opened her purse and pulled out her brush. “Wearing civilian clothes around here does make me stand out,” she noted with a smile. She saw Mac’s eyes grow hooded as she unpinned her hair and allowed it to tumble loose across her back and shoulders.
Mac tried to tame his reaction to Ellie’s innocent action. Her hair, rich and abundant, flowed like a black river through her long, brown fingers, and he ached to reach out and touch those vibrant strands. Swallowing hard, he tried to focus on something else. He grabbed his coffee cup and took a quick gulp, nearly burning his mouth in the process.
Grasping for a safe topic, he decided to talk about his youth. “When I was a kid growing up in Oregon, I used to watch the bald eagles flying. I would sit on top of one of the sand dunes and watch those birds for hours. My mother used to accuse me of being a daydreamer. When I was seven I thought that if I wanted a pair of wings badly enough, they would replace my arms.” He smiled sheepishly. “Crazy, huh?”
Touched, Ellie shook her head. “I was taught a long time ago that anything we really desire out of life, we can make come into reality. You wanted to be a bird, so the next best thing was to become a pilot. You might not have known it at the time, but out of your heart, your desire, you created a situation that fit into this third-dimensional reality. Your plane has wings.”
Chuckling, he nodded. “When you were a little girl, did you want to grow up to be a shamaness?”
Ellie shook her head. “Not consciously.”
“Subconsciously?”
“I must have or I wouldn’t have created this reality I live in.”
“Interesting philosophy,” Mac said. “That whatever we desire can be ours.”
“Up to a point, it’s true,” Ellie told him seriously, sipping her coffee. “I believe we have many lives, and before we go into a life, we choose what we want to learn in that lifetime. We may have to p
ay back some people, or give to others, plus try to learn what we’ve set out to master in this lifetime.”
“That’s called karma, right?”
“There’s karma, which is what you owe others, and dharma, which is a gift you deserve. It’s a give-and-take system.”
“Give me an example.” Mac liked her intelligence, her very different way of seeing the world.
“Well,” Ellie said, “from a personal standpoint, I met Brian. He was highly prejudiced against me, against my beliefs. Unfortunately, I was young and naive, and I believed love could overcome such things. One time, I journeyed to find out why we had this standoff, and my spirit guide took me into a past life where Brian was a Puritan and I was a European landowner. I did not have any religious tolerance toward him, and I threw him off my land, along with his family of seven children. Four of them died of starvation, and eventually, he went to America.” She shrugged. “You see, I wasn’t very tolerant of his beliefs, so in this lifetime, I got paid back for being that way. I learned to be highly tolerant of whatever reality a person wants to have—whether spiritual, religious or otherwise. So Brian was a good teacher to me in that way.”
“Turnabout is fair play with karma?”
“You could say that.”
Mac frowned. “You said you went into a past life you’d had with Brian. Is that something else you do as a shamaness?”
“On occasion. I don’t make a practice of it. In Brian’s case, I was trying to retrieve any missing pieces of his soul so that he could be whole in this lifetime. I felt that if I was allowed to collect those missing parts of him, no matter where they were—in this life or some other—that our marriage could endure.”
“What happened?”
“I was able to recover the piece he’d lost in that past life and bring it back.”
“Was he more tolerant of you then?”
Hangar 13 Page 9
