Overheard in a Dream (33 page)

“I didn’t find this attention overwhelming in the beginning. I was in love with him and wanted to be with him every moment I could. Besides, being his girlfriend was such a buzz – a lot of people really did take this ‘prophet’ business seriously and they looked up to him. They admired him and they envied me, being so close to him. I liked that.

“It felt like a dream, being the centre of Fergus’s life. He made no disguise of how much he wanted me and how much he wanted to please me. For example, my birthday is in June – well past the lilac season in Boston – so he drove all the way up to Maine to find lilacs still in bloom in the cooler elevations and bring a huge bouquet for me because he knew they were my favourite flower. No one had ever done such a thoughtful thing for me. I loved feeling so wanted.

“It wasn’t unconditional love, though. Fergus was always turning up with books on philosophy and religion and even quantum physics – two, three, four at a time – saying, ‘Read this and we’ll set up a time to talk about the ideas.’ There was no question that I would not only read the books and digest their ideas but also discuss them with him in considerable
detail. It was almost as if I were taking second degree alongside medicine.

“He was very keen to improve me. He was appalled that I ate ‘dead flesh’ and insisted the only way to purify myself for my role as his consort in the New World was to become vegetarian. He was mystified by my inclination to be incoherent with tiredness when he wanted to see me late at night. To him my exhaustion indicated a lack of discipline as far as my body was concerned. It showed weakness or perhaps even a wilful choice of the physical realm over the spiritual. And then there were my ‘worldly connections’, as Fergus termed them. This included my CD collection, my enjoyment of going to the movies, and most definitely the time I put into studying. He was the only person I’d ever met who was dismissive of medicine as a discipline. He could not see the value of traditional education, which he regarded as rigid and ‘establishment’, aimed solely at perpetuating the status quo. But worse, he even saw the time I spent writing about Torgon as ‘worldly’ and thus, an activity I needed to let go of.

“‘I
have
to write the Torgon stories,’ I’d protested. She was, after all, what had got me where I was.

“Fergus was adamant. Writing about Torgon, he insisted, only stifled my evolution as a pure channel. Torgon should only come through me directly.

“We talked about Torgon constantly. This Torgon, like the one I trotted out for the Tuesday night group, had long ceased to be related to the real one. Fergus translated and reshaped her continuously in order to help me to understand her for what she really was: not a figment of my imagination, not a character from my writing, but a Being of Light, who had come to me through my play as a child because this was all I
was capable of holding in my mind at that age. Now, however, it was important that I allowed Torgon to return to her natural form and to accept her mission for me.

“Fergus explained in great detail how she was passing wisdom through me to help bring about this new world of peace and universal love. I needed to accept this and purify myself with an appropriate diet, meditation, and the right kind of company in order that I might better open myself to this beautiful expression of universal love.

“I did say at one point that Torgon had never seemed to me to be a particularly shining example of universal love. Her life was altogether as frail and human as mine, and her society was downright brutal. Fergus ignored this. All he was concerned with was that I opened myself up for direct communication with her.

“I desperately wanted to believe what Fergus was telling me. I loved him and wanted to live to up to his dreams and I wanted life to be the way he said. I longed to be the genuine psychic Fergus believed I was capable of being. I wanted to channel a true Being of Light who really had chosen me alone from the billions of people on earth. I just so yearned to be what everybody already thought I was.”

When the session was over, James wemt in search of this “real” Torgon. There were only a few stories left, none of them very long. Sitting down in the “womb chair,” he put his feet up on the coffee table and started reading.

Coming down the steep path from the high holy place to look for the food offering, Torgon saw a figure standing in the shadows at the forest’s edge
.

“
Who’s there
?”

The figure didn’t move
.

Torgon slipped down between the last of the large rocks. She paused a moment, her heartbeat in her throat. At last she ventured closer. “Mogri! It’s you! How my heart cheers to see you.
”

“I wish I could say the same.
”

Mogri stepped out of the shade of the trees. “Here. I’ve brought your food that you may eat while keeping your communion with the gods.” Angrily she chucked the basket out onto the grass.

“Mogri?”

“No, take it. Mam has sent it especially for you. For you must always have the best. So take it, Torgon. Eat.”

“I can’t. Not here. I must return to sacred ground to eat.”

“Aye, that sounds like you. Very well. Keep your holiness intact.” Mogri turned away
.

“Mogri?
What goes so ill with you? What’s happened
?”

Mogri burst into tears. “Tadem’s dead.”

“What
?”

“Aye, Torgon. Three days ago. Working in his father’s smithy, he took a cut across his hand. Just here. Just a tiny cut, a graze. But evil spirits entered and he’s died a writhing death.”

“So fast? Did not the wise woman come to put a poultice on?” Torgon asked
.

“It never should have mattered. But there are so many evil spirits now. The wise woman came but the spirits had already grown deathly strong and she couldn’t call them out.”

“Oh, this brings much sorrow to my heart.” Torgon reached out. “Here, take the comfort of my arms and I shall weep with you.”

“What good will that do me now?” Mogri said and pulled away. “Where were you three nights ago? That’s when I needed
you. We prayed all night in the holy temple and lit candles that your spirit might see and tell you to return, but you did not come.”

“Oh, Mogri, I’m so sorry.”

“That night of Ansel’s death, when I counselled you to tell the elders that the two of you had simply been in disagreement and the knife came accidentally between you, you said no. You said, ‘I will tell it as it is, that he showed himself to be unfit for sacred duty and Dwr commanded me to end his life.’ You said, ‘To do less than tell the truth would make me what he said I was. It is in my heart to show that I am more.’ And
this
is more? Hiding on the high holy place so Ansel’s brothers can not touch you, while we in the village suffer with no holy guidance
?”

Torgon turned away. She slumped, discouraged, against a tree. “So, what would you have me do? Say, yes, I ran fear? All right. I ran away, afraid. And for that weakness I’m very sorry, but I’m divine only in so much as I am human. I feared being parted from my life before I had a chance at other courses. So, I withdrew here to let Dwr tell me what he would have me do.”

“And what would he have me do, Torgon?” Mogri replied bitterly. “I was never Tadem’s wife, for there was no Seer there to marry us and I now carry an eight-months’ babe inside me. What man will want me now, when I’m so soon to yield a crop he didn’t sow?” Bringing up a hand, Mogri wiped back her tears. “What should I do? Leave the babe to die to make myself more marriageable? Or stay forever a daughter in my father’s house
?”

“I
am
sorry, Mogri. I’ve never meant that my burdens should fall on you.”

“Perhaps not, but they have and you’ve never stopped to lift them up again.”

“Mogri, please. Do forgive me. I’m truly sorry.”

“Yes, I know you are.” A second sigh. Mogri wiped back the tears. “I know too it’s not your fault alone. But life does seem much unfair to me. And my heart is sorely sick with it.”

Torgon approached her
.

“At the very least, won’t you come back among us?” Mogri asked. “Can’t you make strong your heart and fight the fear? It’s quiet now. The elders will give you fair hearing for what you’ve done.”

“Shall I tell you truly why I bide here yet?” Torgon asked and her shoulders drooped. “The Power’s waned. I know not why, but fear I lose my holiness. I’ve stayed here, awaiting its return, for I am naught without it.”

“They say in the village that you are already dead, that Dwr’s relieved your body of your spirit in fair payment for the holy Seer’s death. If you stay away much longer, the Power will most definitely pass into another’s hands and you’ll never get it back. So, won’t you please make yourself strong enough to return again and prove the rumour-mongers wrong
?”

A
s much as James longed to have Becky and Mikey at Christmas, it was important to him that Christmas be a time of good memories for the children, not of fighting parents. His own parents now passed away, his brother living on the other side of the country, James knew he couldn’t provide a traditional Christmas with all the trimmings like Sandy’s family celebrated. So, in the end, he and Sandy both agreed that Becky and Mikey would spend Christmas with her and then travel to South Dakota for New Year’s Eve.

James had worked hard to create new traditions for this holiday. The kids were still too young for staying up late, so they had settled on celebrating New Year’s Eve by having a “picnic” in front of the fireplace in the living room. James let them roast hotdogs and marshmallows over the dancing flames. They finished off by throwing handfuls of specially treated pine cones into the fire afterwards to make the flames turn different colours.

Their other tradition was to go shopping on the 31st to buy each child a new outfit to wear on New Year’s Day and a new
toy to play with. The latter James realized was an indulgence so soon after the glut of presents the kids had received at Christmas, but the pleasure they had shopping together always outweighed his better judgement.

Coming in through the glass double-doors of Toys ’R’ Us, James stomped the snow off his boots and then pulled a shopping cart out of the rack. Mikey jumped on the end to ride. Becky skipped alongside.

“You know what thing gives me the best feeling in the world?” she said cheerfully.

“What’s that?” James asked.

“When we come in through the door at Toys ’R’ Us and I see you get a shopping cart instead of just walk on in!” She beamed.

“Yes, you know we’re going to buy stuff then, don’t you?” James said with a smile.

“Yeah, I
love
coming here with you,” she replied and locked her arms around his right wrist as he pushed the cart.

A trip to Toys ’R’ Us with Becky had always involved a long, slow meander down the Barbie aisle. Often it was just to browse. Indeed James could make a good outing for Becky by doing nothing more than coming to Toys ’R’ Us to admire the fancy Barbies in their special glassed in case, all way too expensive to buy as toys. Equally fun for Becky was browsing through the endless assortment of tiny accessories for a doll who seemed to perennially waver between being a vet or a Playboy Bunny.

“Look,” said James. “That’s a new kind of Barbie horse, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Becky said.

“Wow, that’s good,” James said. “I like that black colour. And see, it’s the kind that goes with the carriage.”

“Yeah,” Becky said. She had moved down the aisle

“Would you like that?” James asked.

“What I’d like is a Bratz doll. They’re in a different aisle. The one I’m dying for has got really long, blonde hair and these cool black boots. Let’s go look at those.”

“When did this happen?” James asked, catching up with her. “Last I heard, you couldn’t stop going on about that Barbie carriage Uncle Joey got you.”

“I don’t like it any more,” she said.

“Any reason?” James asked.

Becky reached for a Bratz doll and took it down from the shelf to look at it. “Well, ’cause Uncle Joey got it for me, for one thing. I hate Uncle Joey.”

Surprised, James regarded her. “Why’s that?”

“I hate him being around all the time. I wish he’d go away.”

“Yes,” Mikey piped up from the end of the shopping cart, “but he isn’t going to. He and Mum are maybe gonna get married.”

“I
hate
him,” Becky muttered. “I only want you,” she said and put her arms around James.

The New Year’s Eve picnic in front of the fireplace was a great success. Glutted on hot dogs and corn-on-the-cob, their mouths haloed in chocolate and sticky crumbs from S’mores made with marshmallows toasted on the fire, the children snuggled up on either side of James to watch Disney’s
Sleeping Beauty
. Mikey fell asleep only about a half an hour in, but Becky saw it through, cuddling up close, wrapping James’s arm tight around her.

When the film was over, James carried Mikey into the bedroom, gently undressed him and tucked him in. Becky slid under the covers in her bed.