by Maya Daniels
“Welcome to the pleasure gardens, sister,” she says, looking at me over her shoulder.
“Take those rags off. The shampoo is in the blue bottle, body wash in the red bottle. I’ll go fetch a towel for you. Hurry! We don’t have much time. She doesn’t like to wait!”
Remi’s walking away as she’s saying this. I have so many questions, but they can wait. It’s not like I have anything else to do now that I’m not among the living. I walk towards the pond, shedding my clothing one piece at a time. The weather is perfect—not too hot and not too cold. As I reach the pond, I look at the crystal-clear waters and the beautiful lotus flowers floating peacefully around it. I spot the bottles Remi mentioned on the other side so I walk into the water, submerge myself and swim towards the opposite side. It seems almost tragic to make the water all soapy, but as the suds hit the water when I wash them off, they disappear and the water is crystal clear again. It makes me happy to realize that I will not pollute this beauty. Just as I finish washing my hair, Remi shows up, standing above me, holding a thick towel in her hand. I look down at my naked body in the water, then look up at her.
“Oh, get out of there. You have nothing that I don’t have myself and then some,” she says, rolling her eyes and slapping her butt with the free hand.
“Right!” I laugh awkwardly and try to get out and grab the towel from her as fast as I can. She pulls her hand back, and as my eyes go round, she laughs and throws the towel at me.
“Come now, shy girl, you need to dress.” She turns on her heel and starts walking away. Wrapping the towel around me, I run to catch up.
“Now I understand why she picked you,” Remi says, I think more to herself than to me.
“Who picked me? And for what, exactly?” I ask.
“Never mind, you’ll know soon enough if you hurry and get dressed. Almost everyone is at the temple.”
As she says that, she pushes me through double doors into a huge room with a four-poster bed in the middle of it big enough to fit a family. Silky curtains cover the walls with floor-to-ceiling windows, and plush pillows in greens and blues are spread around the floors. I stare in awe.
“You can look at it after, shy girl, we need to go. Your clothing is on the bed. If you need help, then call out. I need to grab something from my room across the hall.”
Remi walks out and leaves me standing there stupidly like a statue. Dress up first, stare later! Right! I drop the towel and pull on a pair of turquoise pants. They’re the same as Remi is wearing, only in a different color. I don’t know why I’m surprised that they fit perfectly. Even the shampoo and body wash I used had my favorite scent. It’s like they can read my mind here. Looking at the scarf top, I have no idea how to wrap it, but at that moment, Remi walks in. She comes up behind me, grabs the scarf and starts twisting it around my torso and over my breasts like it’s a normal thing that I’m standing here bare chested in front of her. It’s so strange that I don’t even have time to react before my top is on and she starts brushing my hair.
“Your hair is beautiful, like a waterfall,” she says as she untangles the knots.
“Says the woman with the shiniest hair I’ve ever seen in my life,” I mumble under my breath and she laughs.
“The grass is always greener on the other side, sister.”
“Why do you call me ‘sister’? Are we nuns in this temple now?”
She starts laughing so hard that she drops the silver brush from her hand, making a clinking noise as it bounces on the marble floors.
“Nuns?” More laughter. Annoyed I bend down and snatch the brush from the floor.
“Well, we’re not sisters, so if we’re not nuns, stop calling me that. I have a name. It’s Al,” I snap at her. She still chuckles but tries to look serious.
“We are sisters, Alexia, but I guess it’s been a long time and you have forgotten, just like all the others.”
She says the last part with such sadness that I feel like a bitch for snapping at her. It’s not her fault I’m all messed up, I think to myself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to act like a spoiled brat, but all this is stranger than anything I’ve ever seen or lived through in my life, and I know strange, believe me.” Then it hits me. “You know my real name!” I look at her wide-eyed. I changed my real name everywhere on official papers after my grandmother died. No one, absolutely no one, knows my real name. I’m looking at her with suspicion.
“But of course I know your real name. You’ve had it through many lifetimes. All right, not exactly the same, but variations of it. Alexandra, Alexandria, Alexia, Alexis...” She keeps on listing names and with every name she speaks, I feel a jolt of electricity through my body, from my feet to the top of my head and back. She looks at me and must’ve seen something in my eyes, because she closes her mouth with a snap in the middle of the name she was saying.
“I do have a big mouth, as I’m sure you’ve noticed by now,” she says, shaking her head. “Come on, turn around so I can fix your hair. We need to go.”
She turns me around, holding my shoulders and I see plant vines in her hands. She twists it around my hair and all of a sudden, the most beautiful smell hits me and I can’t help but close my eyes. Jasmine. Ever since I was a little girl, jasmine has been my favorite flower and favorite scent. I inhale loudly and hear Remi say with a smile in her voice, “I knew you’d like that.”
“Thank you, Remi.” I turn around and give her the hug that I’d wanted to give her since I first saw her at the beach. She hugs me back.
“You’re welcome, sister,” she whispers in my ear. Then she pushes me away. The girl is much stronger than she looks, I can tell you that much, and she starts walking towards the door. “Let’s go!” was all she said as she walked out.
I hurry after her. We walk through corridors that I hadn’t noticed before, thanks to me acting like a five-year-old, embarrassed because Remi saw me naked at the pond. Even here the walls are covered with the same cone mosaics, creating shapes all around us. The scrolls and pictures pull me in if I look at them long enough, almost as if they’re coming to life. As we walk, I start hearing many voices talking and laughing in the distance and my feet start slowing down. Remi will have none of that. She grabs my hand and again drags me after her. I can do nothing but follow.
First I see the pillars stretching from one end of the forest to the other. That’s the first thing I notice as I exit the sleeping quarters behind us. A beautiful garden sits between the two buildings, but it pales in comparison to the temple in front of me. Between the sky-high pillars, statues of a goddess stand tall and proud, her eyes trained on whoever will dare to approach as if she’s telling them to think twice because there is no turning back. And I feel that! I know as well as I know my own name that if I cross the temple threshold, there will be no turning back for me. Not now, not ever! That has my mind freaking out. My body? It doesn’t have one care in the world. My feet keep walking towards it on their own. I almost think it’s with anticipation, like they know something that I don’t. What’s wrong with me? Even after I’ve died, I’m still weird and strange. Why can’t I be normal, at least here? There’s not much time for internal dialogs, because we’re standing in front of the doors of the temple and Remi stops. She turns to look at me.
“I know you don’t remember. I know you’re worried. I need you to trust me, please. When your name is called, I want you to walk up all the way to the middle of the temple where the drawn circle is. Not like the rest of us, we will walk up only to the front of the lines. You, sister, walk to the middle and stop when you are inside the circle.”
She says this with such sternness that my head starts bobbing up and down, showing I understood, even if I’m getting dizzy from panicking.
“You’ll be fine, Alexia, I promise, but you must do as I tell you, understand?”
At her words, I manage a faint “yes,” and she grabs a cloak from the hooks behind her that I didn’t see until now. She puts one around my shoulders, brings the hood ov
er my head and does the same for herself. She takes me under the arm and we walk in hand in hand into a wide-open temple. I don’t have time to see the beauty of it, because as soon as I walk through the door, everything vanishes and I’m standing in the middle of a fog all alone.
“Hello? Remi?”
I call out but my voice only echoes in the silence. A faint light in the distance gets my attention, and while I’m dragging my feet, I start moving slowly towards it. It’s better than standing here freaking out, that’s for sure. I inch forward slowly, hoping I’ll see Remi any second, but no such luck. Suddenly the fog in front of me clears, and the most beautiful woman I have ever seen stands in front of me. Her hair is reddish blonde like wheat fields before harvest, and it reaches all the way down to her ankles. Her nakedness is only covered by a cobweb-thin baby blue scarf around her hips and chest, but I can clearly see her beautifully shaped body. I gape at her with my mouth open until I catch myself, at which I jerk my eyes up from her body to her face. Geeze, what the hell is wrong with me? I think. Then that thought leaves as fast as it came when I look into her eyes. This is what love looks like is the first thing that comes to my mind. I see it in her eyes. I never knew you could see love, but I’m so sure I’m looking at it that I would bet my life on it. There are stars in her eyes. I couldn’t tell you the color, because I wouldn’t know how to describe it. There is no spoken word for it. Stars, skies, fields, planets, galaxies, the Universe. I can see it all there, but the strongest of them all is love. She smiles at me and reaches out her left hand, palm up, towards me. I don’t even have the chance to think as my arm goes up and I place my hand in hers. She leads me to a small oasis in the middle of the fog and points at the rock for me to sit on. I do. I don’t think I can do anything but obey. I think if she asks me to jump head first into an abyss, I would do it without a question and with a smile on my face. So I sit where she points and she sits down next to me. I can’t be quiet anymore, I need to know.
“Who are you? Please, I need to know. Why am I here?”
I start my questions, but she lifts her hand to stop me, smiles again and reaches with her other hand into the pool. I follow her movement like a hawk. She gestures with her chin, indicating the pool where her hand is making tiny ripples in the water. Automatically I reach with the same hand to touch the water. As soon as my fingers are submerged, memories come flooding in, like a dam has been opened. Memories from past lives—happy lives, sad ones, some lasting longer than others but all of them mine. Different places, different civilizations, I am the only constant in them all. It’s too much. I feel like my head is about to explode, so I pull my hand back. I look at her and my heart breaks. She is looking at me with sadness in her eyes as one tear, sparkling like a diamond, trickles down her cheek. As it hits the grass where she’s sitting, a flower blooms. She reaches with her hand and caresses my cheek.
Leaning towards me, she leans her forehead on mine and we stare at each other’s eyes for a second before she lifts her head and kisses my forehead right between my eyebrows. She pulls back, her eyes searching my face like she’s expecting something to happen. That’s when it starts. Pressure so intense it feels like something is moving inside my skull, between my eyebrows, and it’ll split my head to come out. I cry out and grab my head between my hands, but she pulls them back and holds me still. I don’t know how long it lasted—a second, a year, who knows? But it felt like an eternity of pain and then it was gone, like it was never there. Teary-eyed, I look at her. “Why did you do that? Why did you hurt me?”
I can’t believe this being – whatever she is, because she is not human, that’s for sure – would hurt a fly. I don’t understand why my mind tells me to run, but my heart tells me she didn’t hurt me. I really am crazy.
“I didn’t hurt you, child, I only gave back what was taken from you.” I hear her voice, gentle, melodious. I can listen to her speak for the rest of my life, but her lips are not moving. She is speaking telepathically, and I can hear her perfectly, so I figure I’ll try, too.
“What was taken from me?” I ask with my thoughts. She smiles brightly and proudly at me, like I’m a toddler that has spoken for the first time.
“Your gift. You see, by trying to protect you, Margaret, I believe, did more harm than good with her talents, but there will be time for that. You must go back now. I’m sure my sister will not be happy if we keep her waiting.”
With humor in her voice, she pulls me up and leads me back from where she found me. She gives me a hug, and before I say anything, she’s gone like she was never there, and I feel a little dizzy.
My arm is being shaken, and when I open my eyes to see who is shaking me, I see Remi staring at me annoyed. “Are we walking in, or you are going to measure the pillars first? Move!”
I wonder what happened. How long was I standing there? No time to dwell on that. Remi pulls me in and we line up with the rest of the cloaked figures inside the temple. There are rows and rows of them on both sides, and she puts me in the third row, at the front on the left side. Just as we take our places, the hum of voices stops. It’s so silent I think I can hear the temple breathing. Spooky. A figure appears from the front of the temple and I watch as it prowls elegantly, sure, and powerful like a panther, towards the biggest altar I have ever seen or read about. Two huge lions walk on either side and I can see they are loose. There are no leashes or chains on them, so I start shaking a little, thinking I may have ended up in hell and my punishment is going to be these powerful beasts eating my flesh, over and over again. I shake my head to dispel those thoughts lest I end up having a heart attack in hell, which makes me want to laugh at how stupid that sounds even to my own ears.
The silence is deafening. The figure stops in front of the center of the altar and turns towards us. You can’t see who that person is, or anyone in the temple, for that matter, because the cloaks are covering our bodies and our faces. The person standing in the first row in front of us walks up towards the altar holding a stack of papers and turns towards us. The cloak is removed and a woman dressed just like Remi stands in front of us. She’s African and so beautiful with her full lips and her ebony skin glowing like oil in the light of the candles strategically placed all around us. Her hair is in braids that reach her hips and her eyes are sparkling with excitement. I wonder if she’s on something, because if I were in her shoes, I’d be freaking out, standing that close to those two lions. She lifts the stack and starts reading something in a language I’ve never heard before, but strangely, I understand her.
“Welcome to the temple of heaven and netherworld, sisters. Let us pray first so that the Mother can give her blessings to those ready to leave the realm.” Her voice rings clear and bounces off the temple walls. Everyone drops down on their knees and leans their forehead to the floor, so I follow, but not before I see that the cloaked figure is still standing in front of the altar, not moving. I guess it’s the high priest or priestess since they don’t feel like they should join us, and again the husky female voice in my head laughs. “Well, at least be grateful I entertain you,” I say with my thoughts. It really is annoying.
“Oh, you do, love, you always do,” says the voice and as it laughs again, it fades.
I shake my head and realize the woman who was reading at the altar is now staring daggers at me, so shaking off my distraction I drop down on my knees and lean my forehead on the floor. The prayer goes on forever. We speak our gratitude for our hearts, our minds, our bodies, and essence. They all pray as one but I don’t know the prayer, so I stay silent, repeating every word in my mind. When the last word is spoken, there is silence again and no one moves. We still kneel there while the woman at the front calls out names one by one. My head is down and all I can hear is their footsteps walking towards the altar and after a minute, a quiet “Thank you, Mother.”
So, I was right. It’s a high priestess. I jump a little when I hear Remi’s name being called out and she gets up next to me and walks away. I’m forcing myself to s
tay kneeling. I want to follow her. She’s the only person I know here. I hear her voice ring louder than the rest, “Thank you, Mother,” and a few seconds later, I feel her presence next to me again, only standing this time. As I was about to turn my head to look where her feet are, I hear the woman at the front speak.
“Alexia Semiramis.”
I freeze.
I tried to move, trust me, but for some reason my body likes staying here in a child pose, like in yoga class. That thought would’ve made me laugh if I wasn’t shaking internally. The woman repeats my name again and Remi kicks me in my ribs. That makes me jump up like I’m being electrocuted, and I can see on her face she’s trying hard not to laugh. She’ll pay for this later. I notice her cloak is gone but there’s no time for questions. As I turn to start walking towards the altar, I remember what Remi said, not in front of the line but walk to the center. I guess this is it, where I get eaten by the lions. I have no other option unless I decide to run, but run where, exactly? One foot in front of the other, I start walking, and as I pass the line, I hear the sharp intake of air from the woman who called out my name. I’m hoping this was not a joke Remi tried to play to get the woman upset, but it’s too late now. I’m almost at the center. My eyes are down, looking at my feet, and I see the beginning of the circle, so I speed up a bit before anyone else realizes what I’m doing and yells at me. I walk to the middle of it and stop. Now what? I think to myself. Before I have too much time to think on that, I notice someone standing in front of me and I think it’s the woman, but as I lift my head a bit, I see the person in front of me is cloaked, too. Hands grab my cloak and pull it off me and I’m staring at the cloaked figure of the high priestess.
“Kneel,” the husky woman’s voice says, and I shake my head to make it go away. I don’t need the voices in my head to mess with me at the moment, asking me to get to eye level with the now prowling lions, but then my jaw drops when the figure in front of me starts to laugh with the same husky seductive voice I’ve heard in my head my entire life. “Kneel, I said, love. Do it. They will not harm you, you have my word,” she says.
