by Elia Seely
“Shannon,” Naomi said, as we cleared up dinner dishes and watched the kids on the back lawn playing with the dogs, “I want you to get some help.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you.” I had weakened and shared the worst of the nightmares with her. “I don’t want to see a shrink. It won’t help. I went for that weekend in Fort Collins that they made me do, and it didn’t help at all. It was ridiculous.”
“I’m not talking about a shrink. Do you remember that woman I wanted you to take Margo to, before? That healer? I think both of you need to go and see her. I’ll come with you—I’ll pay for it. I don’t care. Please, Shannon. For Margo if not for yourself. She’s ragged—she’s trying to take care of you and your feelings and dealing with her own stuff as well. Please.” Naomi was dead serious, clutching my arm at the kitchen sink.
“I don’t know if I can handle it,” I said at last. “Any more weirdness. Spirits or psychic whatever. Don’t you realize that this whole nightmare was predicated on … on … Rabten’s need to have these special powers? And that I guess he did have them”—I hadn’t admitted this before—” and he misused them in the most terrible ways? How can you think I’d want—”
“I know, I know, but that’s—he’s not the norm. He’s not like everyone else. And she’s not a carnival psychic. She’s a delightful little granny lady. A healer.”
I looked out at Margo, in earnest conversation, head to head, with Zoe, the oldest of the two heelers. The delicate bend of her neck, the fragile span of her shoulders. Zoe licked her face. The fight slid out of me.
“All right. Okay. Once. One time. We can go.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
The next Saturday, Margo, Naomi, and I started early on the drive to Sheep Creek, a tiny settlement beyond Ten Mile on the border of Colorado and Wyoming. Naomi had organized our visit with Marion, an Irish-Mexican-maybe-quarter-Arapaho woman who had been a great friend of Naomi’s grandmother. Margo was excited and chattered in the backseat with her Barbies, the most animated she’d been in weeks. I watched the countryside roll by: the high, dry plains covered in sage and juniper, silvery cottonwoods that marked a spring or creek. There were big ranches too, fields of green alfalfa dotted with pronghorn antelope, crossed by silvery lines of wheel line sprinkler pipe, bordered by fences. The mountains ran along to the east, the spine of the continent veering up and away to the fringe of western Wyoming. It was lonely country here.
“I haven’t been up here for ages,” Naomi said, pushing her hand against the slipstream of air blowing hot past the window.
“Yeah—me either. I can’t imagine living way out here.”
Emmylou Harris and Tanya Tucker crackled through the old speakers, barely a murmur under the road noise and wind blowing in through the open windows. We drove through Ten Mile, stopping at the little store to get grape sodas and potato chips. I was nervous, maybe a little excited, but mostly I was just tired. I let Naomi drive when we continued on. Lonely miles unfolded behind us. The air was hot and faded.
“There it is,” Naomi said, pointing to a small, shacky house down a dirt drive to our right. One old cottonwood and a large satellite dish were the only things offering shade.
“Isolated,” I murmured.
“Yeah. Sheep Creek is about six miles on up this road—have you been up there?”
“Once. Not much there either. Couple of trailers, deserted store.”
“Are we here?” Margo clicked out of her seatbelt and leaned forward. “Is this it?”
We pulled alongside the depressing little house, dust from the drive swirling around the Bronco. I took a deep breath and opened the door. We all got out, the slam of our doors loud in the silence. A turkey vulture circled high in the sky.
“It’s hot,” Margo commented, hopping from one leg to the other. “Is this it? Does she live here?”
“Yeah, she likes the quiet and being in the big open country,” Naomi said. “She and her husband Albert used to have a ranch up here, but she sold it a long time ago when he died. Now she just lives here. A simple life.” She put her hand on Margo’s head. “Shall we go in and meet her?”
An old dog panted on the porch and whined as we went up two cracked steps. Margo stopped to talk solemnly to it, holding out her hand first like I’d taught her. Naomi pulled open the screen door and knocked.
Marion flung open the door and bustled us inside. She and Naomi kissed and hugged before Marion stood back to exclaim over Margo. Margo ducked her head, suddenly shy. Marion was old and spare, with masses of thick white hair put up in a messy bun. She looked both tough and elegant, in an old cowboy shirt with silver snaps and a baggy pair of jeans. Her face was somehow smooth and lined, and brown. She could have been fifty or one hundred. She gripped my hand tightly when Naomi introduced us.
“Come on in. I’ve made some cookies,” she said to Margo. “Gingersnaps. It’s an old recipe of my granny’s.”
Naomi exclaimed; the gingersnaps were one of her childhood favorites. Marion led Margo into the kitchen, and I trailed behind, looking at the house, trying to get some kind of feeling for what would happen. I had expected her to look different, draped in Indian regalia or rosaries, perhaps, but she looked like exactly what she was: a spry old country woman with mixed blood and the blessing of good health.
The house was clean inside, if gently crackling into a dry ruin. Marion brought us through a dark sitting room where a gigantic, ancient TV in a console flickered with the sound off into a thankfully brighter kitchen. The gold specked linoleum peeled up from seams and walls. Coffee bubbled in an electric percolator the same vintage as the television. A can of evaporated milk sat on the counter near a plate of deep brown cookies, crinkled and sparkling with sugar. I felt a strange ache in my heart.
“Just sit down, now.” Marion patted the table and set out cups and a small jam jar for Margo.
Marion chattered through her dispersal of her offerings, gossiping with Naomi about mutual friends while I picked at pockmarks in the stained, metal rimmed kitchen table and Margo swung her legs from the chair. Finally, coffee and milk poured and cookies before each of us, she looked directly at me.
“What’s brought you?” she asked.
The story unwound slowly, and Marion sipped and listened, nodding her head from time to time. When I told her about Rabten—an abridged version for Margo’s ears—she took my hand. When I’d finished, she let silence settle, then she looked at Margo.
“And you, little gal, why don’t we go outside and feed my chickens and you can tell me about these things you feel and see.”
“O-kay!” Margo said, sliding off the chair and following Marion out a warped back door. Marion gave me a wink as they left and Naomi and I were left alone in the kitchen.
The room hummed with small noises: the refrigerator, the fussing of the chickens outside and the rumble of a truck passing on the road outside. The coffee tasted like every cup I’d had out of the stained pots of our Bunn brewer back at the sheriff’s office, but the ginger cookies were sharp tasting and hot and good.
Marion worked on me first, settling Margo with a jigsaw and asking Naomi if she’d mind driving back to Ten Mile to fill up a gas can as her old truck was out of fuel. The house lapsed into a dim quiet and we went into a small spare room. There was a twin bed with a white sheet on it, and a dresser with a candle, a picture of the Virgin Mary, some feathers in a jar and a bundle of sage. In the end, the process wasn’t so strange. I lay down, she burned the sage over my body, put her hands on me, and I fell asleep. When I woke, she was sitting next to me with her eyes closed.
“You had a ghost attached to you,” she said, matter of fact. “A young man, very sad. I had to explain to him how to get home. Sometimes they don’t know, those that die suddenly or in some terrible way. I called in some helpers for him, so he would recognize that he wasn’t alone. But I’ve sent him along now and you’ll feel better. You need to purify yourself, though. Go on down to Steamboat and have a good soak in th
e hot springs. Or if you know anyone who’d do you a sweat lodge you could do that.” I shook my head. “Okay, then the hot springs is fine. You need to burn sage all around your house. I’ll give you some.”
“Marion, could you see, do you know, who the ghost was? Was it Choden, the man who died? Will he leave my daughter alone now? She’s been seeing him since he was killed.” I paused, not wanting to break open the feeling we were resting in. But I had to know.
“I didn’t see him, but as he was young and so confused, it is likely it was Choden. He doesn’t mean anyone harm—he’s just a soul trying to move on.”
“But the way he died—the Sky Burial, the dismemberment—has it made him unable to, I don’t know, reincarnate, or whatever?”
Marion patted my arm. “Honey, you gotta trust that you got what you needed to know, that I was shown what would help you. Try not to let that brain of yours push the healing away. There is no way to stop a soul from returning to God, and other lives, if it wants. That’s our birthright, and no one doesn’t go back home.”
I turned my head away. We sat in silence a few minutes more, Marion gently stroking my arm, until I felt the peace of her touch restoring me. I sighed, never wanting to rise from the bed if I didn’t have to.
“Your daughter has some strong attachment to you,” Marion continued, “some of which is okay, but she’s gonna have to separate if she’s gonna feel her own self. You’ve got to give her the choice over her powers. Don’t squish her down, but don’t make her use them either. Can you do that?”
I nodded, closed my eyes again, drifting back into sleep. When I woke, alone, I was strangely empty. I realized that the pressure, the anger, was gone.
I wandered around dreamily while Margo was in the spare room with Marion. I tested the emptiness with sharp shards of thought: Rabten on my chest, Joe’s disrespect, Danny. It was like I was covered in a bubble, and nothing could get through. I didn’t think for a moment it would last, but it felt good, like the relief of rain after weeks of dry and sun.
Margo was radiant after her healing session, and she and Marion seemed to have a bond that was surprising after this brief meeting. Adoration shone out of Margo’s eyes, and I had a sting of useless jealousy that I let slide away.
Margo ate more cookies and laboriously wrote down things that Marion had told her in a little notebook. Naomi had gotten Marion’s truck going again and had driven it into Ten Mile to fill it up. As we got ready to leave, Marion took me aside.
“It’s just the beginning, now, how you feel. I won’t tell you it’s gonna last. But you do what I’ve told you, and when the anger comes back, you remember how you feel right now. Meantime, know that anger covers sadness, and sadness covers happy, and underneath that you find some peace. You don’t have to come and see me again, but you can if you want. If she wants.” She nodded her head toward Margo. “You’ll be okay,” she said. “You both will.” She squeezed my hand and let it go, and we all climbed into the Bronco. As we drove away, Margo leaned over the back seat and waved with both hands, shouting ‘bye, bye.’
Hours had passed; the sun drifted toward the west and the light was softer now. The highway unfolded, mile after ruler-straight mile. Emptiness and fullness. Shadow and light. Ring of Fire came on the radio, and we turned it up and sang out loud, all of us, as the wind rushed by.
About Elia
Elia lives and writes from Colorado and Florida, and onboard S/V Orion. Against all best practices, she’s at work on three series at once. Elia loves the mystery genre and the great characters found in literary fiction and the classics. She’s also the Grounded Mystic, a textile artist, gardener, sailor, and cook. Look for her at eliaseely.com, or on Facebook.
Acknowledgements
It is daunting to write about sacred cows, but just as in my first novel, Spiral of Secrets (previously titled Whisper Down the Years), I find myself exploring both the shadow and light of spiritual traditions, and how human interpretations of spiritual tenets create both empowerment and abuse. As a deeply spiritual person myself, I’m amazed by the beauty and holiness revealed through the many different paths I’ve tread. Yet I also see how others following similar journeys make a choice to exploit and manipulate rather than love. I enjoyed researching different aspects of Buddhism, and have deep respect for the merciful and complex path to peace it offers. I spoke to friends who had spent time as Buddhist monastics and was amazed at all the fallible human-ness that still lived inside ‘hallowed’ walls. At the end of the day, it seems, humans do what humans do, creating their stories. And this, of course, is what is fascinating to writers and readers alike.
There is no Shining Mountain monastery (that I know of), and no Unfolding Lotus sutras. But the magical powers conferred to master meditators? Suffice to say that in many traditions I have personally explored or researched, these types of powers are spoken of and purportedly exist.
I do want to thank my family for their support, especially my mom and sister—fellow writers, too—who are part of the team that gets my books to market. My husband Malcolm (the Captain) is a super-fan and his encouragement and real support are invaluable. Thank you also to my beta readers Djilba and Nancy.
