Immortal Light: Wide Awake (22 page)

“
I don’t care,” Lucy said
forcefully as she turned away to get on the bus.

She could feel her face flush with anger. All
eyes were focused on her as she climbed on and sat down, trying not
to meet Kat’s glare as the bus pulled away.

***

The Higgins home was empty and Lucy was
grateful for that. She went into her room and closed the door,
throwing herself on the bed. Gripping her pillow, she thought about
the sadness and hurt on Mark’s face as he left the classroom.
Breaking up wasn’t exactly what she always thought it would be. She
expected to be sadder about the whole experience, but instead, she
felt more guilt than anything.

Rolling over in her bed, she
looked up at the ceiling. It looked like a dry lakebed the way the
texturing seemed to be cracked in a non-uniform pattern. As she
stared, she imagined small plants and vines growing from the cracks
and turning the pale landscape into a lush, rich jungle. She could
almost see as the long winding vines stretched and crawled down the
walls, turning the entire room into a green menagerie of life. The
only light left in the room was the orange setting sun coming in
through the window, and when she looked toward the beams, she was
back in the grove, face to face with Benjamin.

The sensation of his presence was powerful.
She locked onto his shimmering eyes as he stared back. He looked
sad, and the feelings of wanting to comfort him overwhelmed
her.

“
What’s the matter? Why do you
seem so sad?” she asked.

He gave her a half smile and brushed the hair
out of her face. His touch sent a powerful charge up and down her
whole body. It felt warm and comfortable. His touch was something
that she had not experienced in far too long.

“
I think I’m ready to show you,
Lucy.”

His look was intense, and to her surprise, he
reached down and took her hand. The sensation took her breath away,
and the two of them walked into the western woods toward the
precipice. As they walked, Lucy felt his fingers wrapped around
hers. There was more in his touch than she had ever felt in
anything from Mark.

As they came out of tree line, Lucy gasped. “I
don’t think I will ever get used to that. It’s so
beautiful.”

“
I know. This is my home,”
Benjamin said.

“
Tell me what’s going on,
Benjamin. I’m not sure any of this is actually what I think it is,
and to be honest, it kind of scares me.”

“
This isn’t at all what you think
it is, Lucy. This isn’t a dream.”

“
Then tell me
what it is. I can’t stand not knowing why I keep … coming here. If
it
’
s not a dream,
then what is this all about?
”

“
Why don’t we sit down?” Benjamin
said pensively as he guided her over to a patch of ground covered
in moss.

“
This place, like I’ve said, is my
haven. I built it as a replica of a place that means so much to me,
but is long since gone.” He paused and took a breath. “A long time
ago, I was faced with a decision that would ultimately bring me to
this point in my life. Being only seventeen years old, I was really
unprepared for what I had chosen to do. So, my brother, Peter,
decided to help me build it. It’s a place where I can think and
focus on problems or decisions in my life, and a place where I can
go to remember.”

Lucy listened to him with her eyes fixed on
the ground.

“
It didn’t take very long for me
to decide on a place where I wanted to spend my time in thought
because this place existed in my life and now it will always be a
part of me.”

“
I don’t mean to sound selfish,
but this is so confusing,” Lucy struggled, her hands tracing
randomly in the dirt and leaves. “I mean, if this is all created by
you, then why do I keep dreaming it, or why do I keep coming back
here?”

“
Lucy, I know you don’t want to
believe it because, like you said, this doesn’t make any sense to
you right now, but you will eventually accept that these visits are
not dreams.”

Lucy rotated her entire upper body and caught
his gaze. “So, why am I here?”

“
I don’t know. I really
don’t.”

Lucy’s head dropped in
disappointment.

“
But I have a theory.”

Lucy looked up again with a spark of hope for
answers.

“
Let me ask you something. What
can you tell me about your life, Lucy? Does anything jump out at
you as being particularly out of the ordinary or
strange?”

“
Not until recently.”

“
What has happened
recently?”

She looked up at him sardonically. “You mean
besides whatever this is?” she gestured with one arm to the
forest.

“
Well, yes, I would certainly
count this as being unusual. What else?”

She bobbed her head back and
forth. Her ambivalence was waning and she leaned toward telling
him.

“
What the heck, if I can’t talk
about it in my crazy dreams, then where can I talk about it?” Lucy
noticed Benjamin’s eyebrows raised as if to prompt her to correct
herself. “I’m sorry, not dreams.”

“
There you go,” he said with a
smile. “I agree; this is the safest place in the world if you want
to talk.”

“
Well, it’s a lot of things,” Lucy
started.

“
Like what?”

“
Well,” she wrung her fingers in
anticipation. “I think I brought a moth back to life, and think I
did the same thing with a bird that the stupid neighbor kid killed
with his BB gun.”

“
Okay, that’s a good start,”
Benjamin encouraged.

“
And I felt something with Mark
and with you, including you, but out there.” She gestured generally
to the sky as if to point outside to reality again. “What is that;
it’s like electricity, or energy or something?”

Benjamin reached out and touched her hand.
“Does it feel like this?”

As he held on to her, Lucy felt
the familiar exchange of energy again. Coming from him it was like
a soothing bath and an adrenalin rush all at the same time. It
seemed to bond the two of them together, and it was different
because she could feel herself contributing to it. She couldn’t
fully compare it to anything she had ever felt before, but felt
sort of the way an embrace felt when both people contributed
equally to the moment. Lucy’s heart swelled and she wanted to hold
him. She was overcome by the reciprocal nature of the flow because
it told her that he was feeling it, too. The urge to grasp onto him
was difficult to resist, but her predominant nature of curiosity
moved her past it.

“
What is that, and why is so
strong with you?” she asked, referring to the energy.

Benjamin smiled warmly.
“That’s
light
.”

Lucy looked at him, intrigued and a little
confused.

“
What you feel
is the force of life. My people, call it Haush-Hatay; it means
Immortal Light. We simply refer to it as
light.
Each of us has this energy,
this Immortal Light
within us. It is the
most powerful force in the universe, and you, Lucy, can harness it
just like I can.”

Lucy felt her mind ready to explode with
curiosity. “Then you have it, too.”

“
I do; I’ve always had
it.”

“
Is this normal? Do other people
have it?”

“
Yes, other
people have it, but they aren’t from …
”
he paused to search for the words
that wouldn
’
t
scare her away.
“
People like me, from my home, are taught to use it much like
you are doing quite by accident. And, I must say, it is quite
impressive, what you do with it automatically.”

“
What do
I
do with it?”

“
Well, when my
people are young, we know that we have the ability to manipulate
our own
light
and
use it like a tool. We can balance life, and we can choose to use
that ability to contribute or we can use it for selfish
reasons.”

“
So, it’s like magic or
something?”

“
No, not magic.”
He looked up sideways at the trees. “Think of your
light
as blood. Why is
blood important?”

Lucy thought about the myriad jobs of the
circulatory system and was pleased that there was finally a
question she could answer with relative certainty. “It carries
oxygen to your organs and other things.”

“
Okay, what happens if you run out
of blood?”

The answer was obvious, “You die.”

“
Your
light
works the same
way. Everyone’s body holds a certain amount of blood, and your body
carries a certain amount of
light
. You can use it for different
purposes. Just like you can give a portion of your blood to help
save someone’s life, you can share your
light
to help save a life or to give
life.”

“
So all of that
stuff that I did; the moth, and the bird …
”
she paused with painful
recollection,
“
and Mark …
”

“
It was all
real. You shared your
light
and were able to help them.”

“
But … I …
that
’
s not
possible. That stuff doesn
’
t really exist. You
can
’
t just give
part of your life force or whatever to something else.” Logic was
fighting its way back into Lucy’s thoughts.

“
I told you that
you need to believe that this is real. This place you are in is
made possible by the flow of
light
. It’s all real. Everything I’m
telling you is as real out there as it is right
here.”

Lucy wanted to believe him, she
wanted it to be real, but she was so afraid that when she woke up
it would all be gone; it would deteriorate and fade like a winter’s
snow.

“
The interesting
thing about you is that you automatically want to share your
light
. The normal
instinct in a person is to take it.” He looked into her eyes.
“Lucy, your natural instinct is to give life, to share it. It’s a
protective instinct, and that’s rare.”

Lucy swallowed hard and
looked away out toward the valley. Everything he was saying was so
overwhelming. She leaned against Benjamin’s shoulder to rest her
head with eyes closed. In that one tender moment, when she could
feel
light
passing between them, she felt as one with Benjamin. Then
something Benjamin had said earlier finally struck her. Of all the
questions she had before, they all hinged on a single answer to a
solitary question.

“
Where are you from,
Benjamin?”

With both hands resting on his knees, he
looked over at her. “That’s what I wanted to show you.”

He slowly stood up and reached his
hand out to her. Taking it, she stood up and he led her toward the
setting sun. The cliff had come into view as they approached and
she could see orange sky beyond. When they had almost reached the
edge, Benjamin brushed aside the large leaves of a forest fern to
reveal a sight that left Lucy’s awestruck.

“
That’s
…
”

“
My home?”

“
Yeah.”

Lucy couldn’t believe what she was
seeing. Down the mountainside, deep in the valley below, she saw
the vast sprawl of a city unlike any she had ever seen. Giant
buildings like skyscrapers dotted the landscape. They stood well
above the tree line and there was movement on streets below. The
city was far enough away that Lucy couldn’t be sure, but there
seemed to be vehicles moving around, and her mind raced. It was
absolutely breathtaking and beautiful. In her wildest dreams, she
had never seen anything like it, and she wondered what she was
seeing.

In spite of the beauty of the
city, the most amazing sight was what she found scattered amongst
the skyscrapers. As if arranged at random, Lucy saw pyramid-like
structures that resembled in part the pictures she had seen of
pyramids of Mesoamerican ruins. They were geometric and stood
shorter, but broader than all the other buildings. To her surprise
they did not seem to be made of stone. It was obvious that the
pyramids were made of solid metal. The gleam off of them could not
have been produced by stone or wood.

“
Are those
pyramids made of … gold?
”

“
Yes,” he replied
simply.

The sight was overpowering and Lucy couldn’t
speak. She felt tears building in the corners of her eyes and she
reached out and grabbed Benjamin’s hand, pulling him close to her.
She knew in that moment that what she was seeing was a real place,
that it was not in her head and not part of a dream, but it was
real.