Solstice - Of The Heart (26 page)

“Yes. Somewhere. Packed away in
boxes.”

“Sounds like you miss your dad more
than you remember.”

“Maybe. What about you? Where do your
parents live?”

“I don’t have any. Bernard is my
god-father.”

I remembered Cherrie saying she
thought Bernard was Aaron’s brother. God-father made more sense,
and it removed one of the weird things off my checklist for the
Delmons.

I asked about his parents.

“They’re dead?”

“Nope. They gave me away when I was
young.”

“That sounds awful.”

Aaron pulled the truck onto the Castle
Crags’ turnoff and onto a gravel road filled with water filled pot
holes.

“It’s not. Not really. Not when
everyone has a hand in your upraising.”

“But it must be hard...”

I didn’t get a chance to finish my
sentence.

As the front truck tire hit a pothole,
water came gushing up through the floor board. It flipped the floor
mat up.

I felt cold spray hit my legs. I
raised them to avoid the second deluge.

Aaron cranked the wheel in an attempt
to miss the potholes.

“Sorry about that.”

He pointed to the hole in the
floor.

“That’s in case we run out of
gas.”

“Huh?”

“You know. Stick your feet out.
Run?”

I didn’t know whether to take Aaron
serious or not. With his super powers, anything was possible. He
saw the serious look on my face.

He busted out laughing.

“I’m kidding!”

Two could play the game. I kept a
straight face and mimicked a British accent.

“Well, I find that fairly
odd.”

Aaron went straight-faced.

“What’s fairly odd?”

“That your side doesn’t have a hole as
well.”

He caught on.

We both broke into giggles.

He nodded. “You’re good. I like
that.”

He tapped his lips.

“The British accent. You speak good
English.”

“Just something I picked up from the
boob tube.”

“You watch much?”

“Not anymore. We don’t have TV. Uncle
Mickey never bothered with it.”

“Probably best. Not much good
on.”

Aaron pulled the truck into the Castle
Crags’ parking lot. A few vehicles sat in the parking lot. He
stated the obvious.

“We’re here.”

I was glad to get out of the truck, to
stretch, and to breathe deep of the mountain air. I did all three
before excusing myself for the bathroom. I didn’t want to be caught
on the trail hunting down a bush to hide behind. And I was feeling
the effects of the coffee in more ways than one. As I recalled,
there weren’t any bushes along the trail, just large trees with
plenty of divide between them.

When I came out of the lavatory, I
found Aaron sitting at the trail head, patiently waiting. He
shouldered a small backpack with a water bottle hooked to the
strap. I hadn’t thought of water.

Looks like I’m going to be a beggar
today.

“Ready?” Aaron asked, as I
approached.

I nodded.

Aaron wore a t-shirt, a blue jacket,
and a pair of blue cargo pants, the zip off kind. I couldn’t help
but notice; even his hiking boots were embedded with blue panels.
With his flowing mane of blond hair, his piercing blue eyes, and
his chiseled facial features, he reminded me of one of those
ruggedly-good-looking models you see in the sport’s clothes
catalogs. I imagined part of his compensation for working at the
Fifth Season included a discount on clothing, shoes, and sporting
goods.

He pointed to my feet.

“That all you got? Tennis
shoes?”

“Yes. Thought about bringing my high
heels, but figured they wouldn’t work very well,” I clutched my
fingers, “pushing the truck in case we ran out of gas.”

I didn’t see it, but I sensed a grin
on Aaron as he turned to the trail head.

“We’ll have to get you outfitted
proper when we get back.”

I looked my clothes over. He was
right. Next to him, I looked like a hobo fresh off the streets.
Nothing matched. Nothing I wore could be considered all weather,
except, maybe, the sports bra.

As we followed the trail through the
forest, I caught glimpses of the crags, mainly the dome. Here and
there, a chipmunk darted out and then scampered into hiding. Bird
song filled the forest. Sun rays shot through the
canopy.

Removed from the hubris of the city I
felt relaxed and at ease.

Although I had a million questions for
Aaron, I slipped into thought instead.

He did the same, not talking, just
moving ahead in quiet solitude, and perhaps moving ahead too fast
for my stride.

I could hear my own labored breathing.
The air in the Craigs, as we gained elevation, grew
thinner.

Aaron’s pace out stripped mine. He
seemed to walk effortlessly, sliding through the forest—and the
air—as though resistance and gravity had no hold on him.

I’d pick up the smell of scorched air,
but when I tried to concentrate on the odor, it disappeared.
Forgetting it wasn’t a storm, I looked to the sky. I saw no clouds,
no thunderstorm rumbling in the distance. I quickened my pace,
caught up with Aaron, and reached out to draw in his fragrance.
This time, the smell remained; scorched air mingled with manly
sweat, a sweet-sour odor.

The smell sounds disgusting, like
maybe the stench in a boy’s locker room after a football game, but
it isn’t. Not to me anyway. It’s a pungent fragrance, like the kind
you would pick up on from a lavender flower, where your nose, at
first, because of the powerful smell, bolts, but your mind and the
emotion generated by the aroma, invites more. I wanted to sniff a
steady stream of Aaron’s scent, to fill my lungs with it, to make
it mine, but like all good things, the smell came and went, which,
of course, made me hunger for more.

I was deep in thought and
focused on keeping up with Aaron, as well as concentrating on
ingesting his smell, I didn’t see him come to a halt.

I rammed into him.

He turned sideways to get a look at
me. “You okay.”

“Oh yeah. Didn’t see you
stopped.”

We stood as close as we had ever been.
Inches apart. I would have loved to have closed the gap, to have
leaned into him, to have taken his sweat and mixed it with mine, to
have savored his smell and his warmth, but even at this distance I
felt a push against my body. It was as though he were emitting an
invisible force, an impenetrable one where snowballs and a girl’s
face cannot penetrate.

“You thirsty?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He handed me the water
bottle.

As I reached into his space I expected
to feel the force, but didn’t.

Did he have control over his aura? To
weaken it at will?

Again I had a million questions to ask
him, but bit my tongue.

I drank of his water knowing a second
before he had his lips on the rim of the bottle. All I could taste
was water, but the thought of us touching, lip to lip, even if it
was through an inanimate object such as a bottle, gave rise to
butterflies in my stomach and, in quick succession, a set of curled
toes.

We stood at the edge of the forest, at
the end of the trail. Before us we saw the gray stone of the
granite arena surrounded by the Crown Dome and the spires. The sun,
a watershed of light beyond the forest line, shone brilliant and
piercing.

After my fiasco with Cherrie’s goggles
up on the slopes of Mount Shasta and having to spend the day
looking like a clown, I made sure to bring along my Flyliscious
Star sun glasses.

I pulled these out of my pocket and
put them on. There, I’m stylish as well as having my eyes protected
from the intense sun. I expected Aaron to do the same.

He didn’t.

Before I knew it, Aaron moved six
paces ahead of me.

I had to scurry to catch
up.

“Isn’t it bright out here?” I asked.
“You don’t need shades?”

“No,” I heard Aaron say between
breaths without turning around, “I don’t wear them.”

“Maybe that’s why you didn’t see Louk
on the mountain.”

You know those words where you want to
bite your tongue off because you can’t take them back? Well these
words, I would have liked to swallow whole. I couldn’t believe I
had uttered them. I mentally punched myself in the
teeth.

El Stupedo. Isn’t that where you
nearly lost him last night? By accusing him of intentionally
ramming Louk on the mountain? And now you’re saying he was
careless?

Aaron stopped. He turned to face
me.

I expected the worse. I shrunk,
bracing for the onslaught I felt I richly deserved.

“I don’t need sun glasses,” he said,
“because my eyes adjust to the light.”

I looked into his blue eyes. I saw two
balls without a core. It was as though his pupils had completely
vanished. It set me back on my heels, at first. I had seen cat eyes
in the bright light react this way, their pupils closed to a slit.
It’s un-nerving. Aaron’s eyes didn’t even have a slit. Just a
tiny—very tiny—dot in the middle, one, if I hadn’t moved in closer,
I would not have seen.

“How does that happen?”

“I don’t know. It just
does.”

“And you can still see?”

He reached out a hand. He placed it
within touch of my face. With his thumb, he stroked a bit of
something off my cheek.

“You had an eyelash there.”

At that very moment I was ready to
sacrifice all of my eyelashes, just to have him repeat the
procedure. Before I could say anything, he stepped back, turned,
and headed up the trail. I wanted to apologize, but what does one
say when they have their foot stuck in their mouth? Better to leave
it alone.

I scurried to catch up.

We followed the trail up to the point
where Cherrie and I sat the first day I saw Aaron and his twin
cousins. I didn’t know if he remembered.

When we got to the split in the trail,
Aaron stopped. He angled his head up to look at Crown
Dome.

It was the exact same spot I had stood
when I looked up to see the god-man looking down at me. I felt a
deja-vu moment, except this time the god-man stood next to
me.

The sun sat in the ten-o’clock
position to our right. It basked the dome in a haze of yellow.
Beyond the dome, far in the distance, we could see Mount Shasta. It
rose up out of the flat plains, a monument to everything and
everyone for hundreds of miles around.

I imagined Cherrie, with Jason in tow,
was on her second or third snowboard run of the day. It would be a
short day for them, I imagined, as I could feel the heat coming off
the sun. It was certain to turn the snow to mush. I hoped it would
also heat up the granite and crags so we could remove our coats and
sweaters.

Aaron stood on higher
ground than me. He turned to the east and faced the sun. He closed
his eyes. He lifted his chin. I saw his chest expand, his nostrils
widening, as he drew in a deep breath. A halo of fog wrapped around
his head as he let out his air. It was a supernatural sight, one
where the god-like man stands tall, his stance set angular, and he
melds into the background of granite and Mother Nature, becoming as
one.

The Law of One—had Aaron meant this to
mean his surroundings as well?

If I sat down in Joe’s art class and
attempted to paint the picture I currently viewed, I don’t think I
could capture its essence. One had to be there to see and
experience the way it made me feel. I felt apart, but as one, far
removed from the daily drudgery of traveling through life. But my
taste, once again, was but a sampling of Aaron’s
indulgence.

I sensed Aaron had found purification
at its utmost and, had not only located it, but was able to align
in its path and extract the whole of it.

More questions rose to mind, but I
kept my mouth shut and watched on in stunned silence as I basked on
the periphery of Aaron’s enlightenment.

In minutes, Aaron pulled away. He
pointed left, away from the trail that led to the dome.

“We’re going this way.”

I needed to say something, so I said,
“We’re not climbing the dome?”

“I don’t think you can make it up
there with tennis shoes, not when it is still wet with snow and
ice. We’ll go to the window.”

“Window?”

“That’s what everyone calls it. It’s a
cut out in the granite wall. Gives you a bird’s eye view of Mount
Shasta and the valley. You can see for hundreds, if not thousands,
of miles. You’ll love it.”

I looked around and, after
catching my breath, said, “I love it out here.”