Emily's House (The Akasha Chronicles) (17 page)

Seeing Jake and Fanny in my tea, I felt like a real turd. There I was blubbering about my mom and thinking only of myself when Jake and Fanny were out there, who knows where, risking themselves for my quest.

As I looked at the tealeaves in the shape of my two best friends, the leaves started to shift and change. Now I saw another person. Zombie Man.

“Okay, Jake and Fan I believe. But Zombie Man – no, he doesn’t get me. No, I don’t agree with that.”

“The tea doesn’t lie,” she said as she gathered her own cup and washed it out in the washbasin then put it back on her small shelf. The small gesture of washing the cup and putting it away seemed odd in this place of dreams and fog.

“Why did you do that?”

“What?”

“Wash the cup and put it away. You can conjure up a clean cup whenever you want to. Why clean that one?”

“There is joy in doing,” was her reply.

I’m not sure what is stranger – meeting an entity in another dimension, or meeting one who washes teacups.

“You are tired. Long journey. Rest now Youngling. When you wake, we will begin your training. You sleep,” she said as she gestured me to the small bed.

It was a rustic bed and not terribly comfortable, but now that she said it, I was dead tired. I fell onto the bed and slept immediately. I didn’t dream about torcs or green hills or Madame Wong. I didn’t dream at all. Even in my sleep I was in a place of fog and mist.

29. Breathe

I woke to the crack of something hard against the bottom of my foot.
What the. . .?

I opened my eyes, and in the blur of first waking, I made out the outline of a tiny woman, rapping my feet with what looked like a bamboo cane.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“It is time for Miss to wake up.”

“Yeah, well you don’t have to beat me to wake me up!”

Had I slept for a few minutes – or was it days?
There was no time in this place. No sunrise or sunset. I felt refreshed though, so I must have slept long enough.

I got up, stretched and ducked so I could get out of her small door without banging my head. There was less mist and fog now. Through the light haze, I saw Madame Wong, standing perfectly erect – almost as if there was an invisible string attached to her head imperceptibly lifting her body yet leaving her feet firmly planted on the ground. Her hands were at her chest, palms together in prayer position, her eyes closed. Her body, completely still, looked like a statue. I wasn’t sure if I should interrupt her, so I just stood there like a mute for what seemed like an exceedingly long time, afraid to make a sound or speak for fear of startling her.

“You cannot startle me when I know already that you are there,” Madame Wong croaked.

Her ability to read my thoughts was annoying.

“What will I do today?”

“Sitting.”

“Sitting. That’s it?”

“You sit. You breathe. No think. That is lesson.”

I plopped myself down in front of her and sat cross-legged. Mind you all this time she hadn’t moved anything except her mouth to speak. She was still in tree pose and still had her eyes closed.

“You may want to make yourself more comfortable,” she said without opening an eye. “You sit long time.”

I wasn’t sure I could conjure things the way Madame Wong did, but I figured why not try? I thought of the most comfortable sitting I’d ever done. It was at Fanny’s house. She has this cool chair in her room that’s kind of like a beanbag chair, but it has a back and you can sit in that thing for hours. Yep, that’s what I wanted to sit on. Within a matter of seconds, I felt the chair materialize beneath me.

I got myself comfy in my chair – like it came straight from Fanny’s room. When I had settled in I asked Madame Wong, “Now what?”

“Sit.”

“Just sit?”

“Sit. No think. No do. Just breathe.”

“I just sit here doing nothing? This is way easier than I thought it’d be.”

“Not doing harder than doing.”

“Not for a teenager! This is the life,” I said as I kicked back and just relaxed.

I’d say in regular human time, it took all of about five minutes for me to feel bored. Really bored. I was fidgety and anxious. I couldn’t just sit there when my friends needed me - when the entire free world was counting on me! I didn’t have that kind of time to waste.

“Look, Madame Wong, we don’t have the luxury of time. I gotta get the cliff notes version of your lessons and get back to stop Dughall.”

“You think you ready to stop that dark one?”

“Well, no, I don’t think I’m ready. So that’s why I’m saying you know, speed this up a bit, give me the quick version so I can be on my way.”

“No short cut to understanding Akasha.”

“Akasha? Who is she?”

“Akasha, not a she – or he. Akasha is all that is. You are here to learn the mysteries of Akasha – the great Web of All that Is. Now sit.”

I groaned loudly at that.
How can sitting on my butt possibly help me learn about this Akasha or become a warrior or help my friends?

After a few more minutes I said, “Look, I’m not a warrior. I just want to go home. I want to find Fanny and Jake and just go back home.”

“You leave without training, you not ready to defeat the dark one.”

“I’m not the one, okay. You defeat him, you know so much. You and Brighid and little Hindergog – you guys know so much, you go defeat this guy. You shouldn’t be sending a teenager to do this anyway.”

“We exist only in this realm, not in yours. We cannot stop the dark one from his plan. Not our destiny. Destiny of one called Emily.”

“Well then find someone else. There’s got to be some other person that can do this job. I’m not hero material.”

“You are what you believe yourself to be. Now sit. Breathe. Answers you seek will come to you. Lessons you need will be learned. Just sit. Breathe.”

I was frustrated as hell. I had envisioned learning how to use weapons or magic spells. Instead, I was told to sit and breathe, two things I was pretty sure I already knew how to do.

But seeing as how I didn’t know the way out of that place, and it didn’t look like Madame Wong was going to show me how to leave, I flopped myself back down on my chair and pouted. I may have to sit. I may even have to breathe. But I sure didn’t have to be happy about it.

“Miss Emily stubborn one. Yes, very inflexible. Your resistance only makes your lesson harder.”

I ignored her. I would sit and breathe. Best to do it quickly and get this over with so we could move on. The sooner I figured out what she wanted, the sooner I’d be able to get out of there.

I sat. And I breathed. My mind wandered freely. I was thinking about how Fanny and Jake were doing. I was thinking about being out of school and started to wonder if I’d missed much but then decided a few weeks didn’t much matter since I was close to flunking almost everything anyway.

Then I started thinking about Muriel and how steamin’ mad she’d be at me if I ever made it back. And my mind stayed on the subject of Muriel for a long time, thinking about how she’d probably lock me in my room without food and maybe beat me with a cane like Madame Wong’s.

Suddenly sitting and breathing was interrupted by the sound of a shrill and familiar voice.

“Emily Marie Adams!”

I opened my eyes and there before me was none other than Muriel the Mean. Her eyes glared at me, and she held a cane in her hand just like Madame Wong’s.

“Get up off of your lazy butt this minute!”

As I stood she rapped my legs with the cane.

“Go. Go to that table and study your math. You will study all night and all day and won’t eat again until you have mastered the entire book.”

I started to walk to the table now before me, very much like my table at home where I had suffered wraps across my knuckles and Muriel’s icy stare. But then I stopped in my tracks.

“Wait. I don’t have to do what you say, not here. You’re not real.”

“What the hell are you talking about girl? Not real, are you hyped up on dope? Maybe a lash from this cane will show you how real I am,” she said as she pulled it back, ready to wallop me with it.

As the cane swung forward, I grabbed it with my hand and wrung it from her. Muriel was stunned but only for a moment. Then she was furious.

“How dare you?” she said.

“How dare you treat me so badly?” I asked.

“You get what you deserve for your disobedience. You are a stubborn child, so unlike your father. If you were only more like him. . .”

“If I were more like him instead of my mom, you’d stop beating me? Well, I’m not Liam. I’m Emily. And I’m not going to let you beat me or starve me or mistreat me anymore. Now go away!” I shouted.

In an instant, Muriel faded into the mist of the Netherworld as if she had never been there at all. My heart raced. I thought I was supposed to be just sitting and breathing.

“Madame Wong, what the hell was that? Why did Muriel just pop in for a visit?”

“I said sit. Breathe.”

“Well I was just sitting and breathing.”

“No. Madame Wong also say ‘No do. No think.’ You thought.”

“Well yeah, I was thinking. It’s kinda’ hard not to think if you have a brain. I don’t exactly have a shut off switch for the thoughts.”

“Oh, you do. You find it. Until you find switch, you will face whatever your mind think about here.”

“You’re saying that if I think about something, it will appear – good or bad – it’s just going to pop in for a visit?”

“That what I say, why you need to repeat it Madame Wong not know.”

“But I can’t control these thoughts! My mind wanders, and it often wanders to unpleasant things – memories or nightmares. . .”

“Then you in for rough time. Sit. Breathe. No do. No think.”

“But I can’t help it that thoughts come to me. Other thoughts came just then when I was sitting, but I didn’t have Fanny or Jake pop in. Why only bad things?”

“No difference, good or bad. Thoughts like birds in mind. Some fly in. Some fly out. Some stay at water hole to drink. Beware of birds that linger.”

I reflected on what Madame Wong had said and remembered that I had dwelled on Muriel for a while. My thoughts of her weren’t fleeting.

“Now, sit. Breathe. No do. No think,” commanded Madame Wong.

So I sat. Again. Breathing. Trying not to dwell on any thought. Letting go. Mind wandering. Trying hard not to allow anything awful to come into my mind.

“If awful come, let it go,” I heard Madame Wong say from what seemed like a far off place.

I started to get the rhythm of my breath. In. Out. I focused on that, repeating the words ‘in’ and ‘out’ in my mind in time with my breath.

And the whoosh of my breath in and out, in and out reminded me of a sound from a memory. The whoosh, whoosh, whoosh got louder. It was no longer my own breath I heard but the sound that had haunted my dreams – both waking and sleeping – for seven long years.

Whoosh. Whoosh. That horrible sucking sound. Air being sucked in and pumped out.

I knew that sound. I didn’t want to open my eyes. I knew what I’d see, and it was my worst nightmare.

How many times do I have to see my mother die?

30. Riding the Waves

If I'd had any sense about me, I would have kept my eyes closed and tried to hurry up and think of something good - anything else. But it’s like a car wreck that you drive by and you can’t help but look, even though you know you might see something gruesome.

I opened my eyes and there I was, in my mom’s hospital room. The last one. The last time I ever saw her.

There was my dad, sitting in a chair beside her bed. And there, on the other side, was a little girl. Her long red hair looked unbrushed. She was sitting with her eyes open, wide with fear but totally focused. The room was silent except for that awful sound.
What’s making that horrible sucking sound?

There it was the machine, the thing responsible for the awful sound. Some contraption hooked up somehow to the little girl’s mother. A large, clear plastic container with what looked like a bellows inside, going up and down in a smooth rhythm. And below the bellows, a disgusting black, tarry substance.
Was the tarry stuff coming out of the woman? Or being put in?

No kid should ever see their parent die. Yet there I was, reliving the nightmare again.

It was unbearable. The long seething wound deep within me was ripped open again. The tar alien being sucked out of my mom by that horrible machine. My dad, eyes red-rimmed, his face ashen gray. The little girl – my child self – focusing on her mother’s station – picking up her frequency for the last time. And there through it all, that incredibly irritating sucking sound.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I rushed over to that machine and I started ripping at it like a mad person. “Stop sucking the life out of her!” I screamed at it as I knocked it over and pulled at the cords and wires.

“I won’t see this again!” I yelled as I swung madly at the air, trying to make the ghosts go away.

I cried then, mighty heaving sobs that I thought might wholly overtake me in a river of tears. I was no good as a warrior. I would drown in my own tears before I’d had the chance to help anyone.

I felt arms around me, and I was afraid to open my eyes for fear of what I’d see. But the touch was small and soft yet unfamiliar.

I opened my eyes and it was Madame Wong, the last person I expected to comfort me.

I didn’t say a word but instead just relaxed into her arms. Without us speaking any words out loud, I knew as surely as I’d ever known anything that Madame Wong knew more about my suffering than anyone I’d ever known – or would ever meet. The human part of her knew.

In my mind, I saw a group of ancient Chinese houses. Rice paddies. Beautiful mountains in the distance. But the houses were on fire. The sound of anguished cries.

There were other pictures flashing before my mind’s eye. A baby that looked still as a stone. Another baby – no a child this time – being held by a gentle looking man, this one still too.

I saw men and women dying by the hand of a sword and felt the anguish of a heart that had known considerable loss - and great anger. I saw an old woman finding her way through the mist of the portal and into the Netherworld. I saw her struggle with the lessons that I too struggled with –of letting go of anger and of sadness. Of finding peace and happiness.