Emily's House (The Akasha Chronicles) (18 page)

All this was a flash in my mind, like a movie being shown at super high speed. It was more like a knowing than a seeing.

Madame Wong. This tiny little creature – she had known enormous suffering in her human life. And she had come to this place and learned how to. . . forget?

“No, Miss Emily. Not forget. You never forget. If you live to be as old as Madame Wong, you will never forget.”

“Then how. . . why did you choose to live so long – to allow yourself to go on – when you had such immense suffering inside?”

“Ah, yes, choice. I chose to let my ghosts stay in past. Past is history you know. Living is now. I sat. I breathed. I let past go. I let future go. I am. That is all.”

“But didn’t it take you many years to learn how to do that?”

“Have you not understood yet? Time, here – it is slippery, no?”

“It seems not to exist at all, and still. . . it’s odd, in some ways, I feel like I’ve been here my whole life, but it also feels like I just got here.”

“It is difficult for humans to stay here because here there is no watch, no rising of the sun, no setting of the moon. No markers for the human mind to gauge its ever present need to know the time.”

“So if there is no time here. . .”

“It is eternal.”

“Then what is happening back in my own time and place – my own dimension? Has a great amount of time passed?”

“Miss Emily, you need only know that you need not worry about time. That is one you must let go like the ghosts of your past. Plenty of time to sit. To breathe.”

Back to sitting and breathing.

I sat on my chair again and got comfortable, closed my eyes, and began again to breathe. I thought only of my breath. I opened my eyes briefly, and there was Madame Wong, back in the same exact tree pose I’d seen her in before. It was like she had never moved.
Had I dreamed it?
Was her comforting me also a vision, a wish of my own mind?

But that thought too I let go as I paid attention to my breath, like the waves of an ocean. Tide coming in. Tide going out. My breath like the gentle roll of the waves, up and down my body.

I sat in meditation for a long, long time, reckoning as best I can about these things in a place with no time. I had more visions come to life, but they weren't as frightening or as momentous as Muriel or the hospital room.

Eventually I found that I was fully in control of my mind. Mostly I thought nothing at all, which I hadn’t thought possible. For long stretches of time, known to me by the large amount of breaths I had followed like a wave through my body, I thought nothing at all. At other times, there were small thoughts that popped in, like the little birds Madame Wong had talked about. I told them to take flight and they did. It became easy to have a mind free of the distraction of a thousand thoughts and ideas crowding all at once like a busy market filled with people. My mind was instead like a vast, still meadow, waiting to see what would appear.

After immeasurable breaths into and out of my body, my long meditation was broken by the sound of Madame Wong’s voice.

“You ready to become warrior now,” she said. “But first, you sleep Miss Emily.”

I opened my eyes and felt underneath me the rustic bed of Madame Wong’s cottage. It took me no time at all to drift off to a dreamless sleep, my mind already so empty that it didn’t even have the material left to create dreams.

But just before waking I had one dream – or was it a vision? I couldn’t be sure. In the dream I was standing before a man – a dark haired man with eyes like two lumps of coal in his skull. He was gaunt, his fingers bony and his body like a skeleton covered in thin skin. He looked smug and satisfied with himself.

In my dream, I was thinking I should be scared of him because he was scary looking. But I wasn’t scared. Instead, I felt pity.
Why would I pity him?

As the dream faded and my eyes opened, I recalled the image of myself in the dream. At first I didn’t think it was me. There was this girl, but she seemed strong and powerful. It was like she had a light glowing from within and all around her. Her face was determined with no hint of fear or smirk about it – just a calm assurance. And in my dream the girl was holding a dagger in her hand.
Could this be me?
I didn’t own a dagger.

I opened my eyes, ready for a new day with Madame Wong in that place of mist and fog, in that place of dreams and shadows. And I had a vision in my mind of a girl with a dagger that I wanted to meet.

31. Why I Hate Bamboo

I found Madame Wong in a perfect headstand in her spot under the large maple tree in her garden. I sat in patient mediation in front of her, waiting for her to start my lesson for the day. I listened to the burbling sound of the brook that tumbled past her small meadow, and I drifted off into a deeply relaxed state. It was such a shock to the system when Madame Wong finally spoke, her high-pitched croak interrupting the perfect stillness I was becoming accustomed to.

“Miss Emily ready to become warrior now?”

“A warrior? I don’t know if I’m ready for it, but I’ll try.”

“Only do or not do. Which is it?”

“Okay then, I choose do.”

“Ah, good choice. Come,” she said as she gracefully exited her headstand and walked across the garden. I followed respectfully behind her a few paces as we walked through intense fog and mist to the babbling brook.

“Miss Emily has learned focus, yes?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“NO, NO, NO! No suppose. Focus or no focus – which is it?”

“Okay, yes, for God’s sake, I can focus! Jeez, no need to scream at me.”

“Don’t suppose. Don’t guess. Know the answer and say it. A true warrior is sure of herself. Right or wrong does not matter.”

“Well see that’s the point now, isn’t it? I’m not a 'true warrior'. And about the only thing I’m sure of is that I’m not sure of myself.”

I looked down into her eyes. She just stared at me evenly. Stalemate.

“You know focus. Now time to learn awareness.”

I rolled my eyes, a knee-jerk reaction to the thought of spending more time sitting for days on end breathing. I was ready for action, not more doing nothing.

“Oh, you’ll have action young one,” she said with a smile.

“Okay, what action? How do I learn 'awareness'?"

“By doing laundry,” she said and out of the nothingness appeared an enormous pile of clothes just like the ones Madame Wong was wearing – black linen pants with wide legs and a drawstring waist with a long-sleeved dark blue linen shirt with cloth buttons up the front and a mandarin collar. There also was a large, metal washbasin and a bar of soap and a washboard.

“I become a warrior by doing your laundry?”

“You become aware – alert and ready – by doing laundry.”

“How long do I do this laundry?”

“Until all the clothes are washed and hung to dry,” she said as she pointed to a clothesline hung between two large oak trees.

“Then what?”

“Then you cut the fire wood,” she said pointing to a pile of logs and a hatchet that I hadn’t noticed before on the edge of the meadow. “Chop wood, learn awareness and alertness,” she said then vanished into the misty air.

I wanted to rebel. I wanted to sit down on the ground and refuse to do anything. I wanted to be back at my house, even if Muriel was there.

Then I realized I’d better stop thinking about that or Muriel the Mean would pop up again and this time she might be wielding something more dangerous than Madame Wong’s bamboo stick! So I dug in and started washing the old gnat’s laundry.

Dipping a shirt into the stream, rubbing soap on it – up and down – then rinse cycle and then hang to dry. Over and over, trying to be ‘aware’, whatever that meant.

Suddenly I was on my knees in pain, a burning sting surging from my calves and up the backs of my legs. There was a moment when I thought that hatchet on the edge of the meadow had flown into the backs of my legs.

“What the. . . ” I turned, and there was Madame Wong with her cane, a slight smirk on her face.

“Did you just beat me with that cane?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you do that?”

“To see if you aware.”

“Well? Am I?”

“You have a welt on the backs of your legs, what do you think?”

“I didn’t know this was the game! That’s not fair, you didn’t tell me that you were doing to materialize and beat the crap out of me!”

“If aware you know it coming. If alert, you stop me.”

“Now I’m alert,” I said as I stood, challenging her with my look to try it again.

She stood stone still, eyeing me just as I was eyeing her. We stood locked in a death stare for countless minutes. I felt focused and aware.

Suddenly, CRACK! That cane swung out of nowhere and bit into the flesh of my left thigh.

“Son-of-a. . . You did it again!”

“Emily not aware,” she said as she disappeared again into the nothingness.

I sat down right there and let the tears come. You may have heard of caning, the barbaric punishment still meted out in some countries. Now I know why they still used it – and why it was mostly banned. It hurt like hell! Only two swats with that little piece of bamboo had left me with the most painful welts and bruising I’d ever had. The pain, the fear, the worry about my dad and Jack and Fan – I felt hopeless and beat down. I wanted to give up.

“
No think. Do,
” I heard a faint voice say from somewhere beyond the mist. The voice was right. If I dwelled on negative stuff, it would make bad things happen. I had to get up and do something - anything - to keep myself from negative thinking.

“Your lessons suck, Madame Wong!” I yelled into the nothing. Screaming that out made me feel a little better.

More laundry. Wash, rinse, and repeat!

It seemed like days that I did laundry. Every now and then, without any warning at all, that old bat would appear out of the fog and beat the crap out of me with that cane. I tried to focus on what I was doing as I finished the laundry then moved to the woodpile.

I can’t tell you how many swats with that cane I got over the endless time that I was doing Madame Wong’s chores. And I can’t tell you how long it took me to figure this out, but I just know that eventually, I realized that I could be focused on what I was doing but at the same time alert to my surroundings.

I was chopping wood (not as easy as it looks, by the way!), swinging the axe high then down into the center of a piece of wood. I split it clean in two. Suddenly I felt a slight breeze to my left. I had my feet planted, but I swung my upper body to the left and held my axe in both hands, ready to deflect the coming blow of her cane.

But as I turned to my left she wasn’t there. Just empty space. Then SMACK! The cane blow came across my legs to my right. I swung myself around and there she was, standing still and holding her cane like she hadn’t just beat me with it.

“Aw crap! I heard you that time! You switched sides on me.”

“Progress, yes. Alert. Aware. But too focused on what you
thought
was going to be. Don’t think, just do.”

“But if I hear something on my left, then I should think you’re going to be on my left, right? I mean, that’s logical.”

“Don’t think! Logic – logic not relevant.
Feeling
is way. Be in the flow of things Miss Emily. Let go. Just be,” she said as she vanished again.

Coming so far yet feeling so frustrated.

But one good thing came out of all that wood chopping. I had long ago abandoned my long sleeve shirt and stripped down to just my white tank top. I had never noticed a muscle on my body in my life. But I noticed that my shoulders were cut! I had deltoids and shoulder muscles. My arms were strong, not skinny and lacking in any semblance of muscle tone like before.

I don’t think that building muscles was part of the little wench’s plan, but it made me feel good about myself. I was starting to look like a girl that was strong enough to take care of herself. Maybe I could stop that Dughall guy.

Back to chopping. Sweat poured down my back and my tank was soaked. The pile of wood grew. Focused but alert. “Into the flow Emily,” I told myself. Swinging the axe.

I felt a ripple of air move. “Don’t listen, be,” I told myself. The air around me moved. The hairs on the back of my neck were on end. I swung my upper body to my left, holding my axe out and this time, it connected.

THWACK! I blocked her blow. My axe and her cane were locked together, each of us maintaining our stance and our stare.

“You are ready for combat,” she said as she backed away and bowed her head slightly.

32. Slicing and Dicing

When she said that I almost crapped my pants. I mean it’s one thing to fend off a blow from a cane, it’s another to do battle. As always, Madame Wong kept me unsettled. Just when I thought I’d mastered something and felt balanced, she threw something else at me, and I felt like I’d topple.

“Come,” she said as she walked away from the stream and through the meadow to a path I’d never seen before. Before long a building appeared out of the fog. It was made entirely of wood and looked like it had been there for hundreds of years. Instead of a thatched roof like her cottage, it had a pitched roof covered in weathered tiles. I followed her as she walked up the steps to a wide wooden porch the length of the whole building and then into a door opening (there was no actual door).

Inside there was just one large room, open to the rafters above. Windows from the second story rafters let a little light filter in to the otherwise dark, cavernous room. To my right and to my left were walls filled with racks of weapons. There were broadswords, spears, daggers, lances and other sharp, pointy things that I had no idea what they were called. It looked like a weapon cache for a small army.

“What is this place?”

“My training room,” she said quietly.

“But where did it come from? It wasn’t here before.”

“Building from my childhood,” she said as she walked to the right and inspected a row of swords. Madame Wong picked up one and swung it around gently a few times, then replaced it and chose another. She did this with several until she picked up a sword with a handle that looked like it was made of ivory and a thin blade that had lost its sheen, weathered like so many other things here.