Moondance (36 page)

“Yes. Now I do.” As quickly as he transformed, he changed back, his hair again shiny and black, streaming over his shoulders.

“So what is this place?”

“Geez, Al, I thought you knew. I thought you’d figured it.”

“I thought I had, too, I understand the rest, sort of.”

“Okay, here we go. First look around you. Look closely. Not on or around, but
inside
this place.

Althea narrowed her eyes. Green trees, split by a sparkling white path. Blue sky. Sunshine. No shadows. Granite adorned with crystal plaques. Was there more? Just as she wondered about that, a man with thinning grey hair, wearing fine, ornately crafted glasses passed them. He nodded at them. He looked familiar to her. The green shimmered. Slowly, she surveyed all of what was around her. She was looking for something, but she was not sure what.
What is this place
.

“Al, don’t just look, feel. You’ll get it.”

The first thing she noticed was the sounds of nature, the birds, the cicadas.

“And what else do you notice about this otherworldly forest, Al?”

The second thing she noticed was that there was a mix of trees, but there also seemed to be simultaneous seasons. A beautiful white birch, alive with no leaves, stood beside fluffy pink cherry blossoms. Lilacs bloomed brightly, a miracle of early spring, standing proudly beside dandelions and apple trees leaden with fruit, a product of fall. The colors were bright, and the leaves were as green as they could be. Flowers in full bloom, purples, oranges, reds and yellows. A rotten tree trunk that housed a nest
of honey bees.

How can this be, she thought. More importantly, what does it mean?

“Did you ever wonder if plants have souls, Al? They do, it’s not as complex as ours, of course, but they do. They have energy. They’re part of life. In this place, they’ve chosen exactly how they want to live.”

Althea eyed the rotting trunk of a tree.

“Yes, they can choose any part of their natural life cycles. This is not a place of judgment. It’s a place of possibility. Here, they get to choose. And so do you.”

Behind the trees, all around them, hundreds of species of birds sang the song that they had chosen to sing. A quote from the movie
Trainspotting
swam in Althea’s head. “Choose school, choose family, choose
life
.”

“How do I choose?”

“We’ll get to that, Al, don’t you worry, but for now keep looking. You’re close.”

Althea looked. The people on the path were long gone. The man with the ornate glasses stuck in her mind. On her right, another boulder emerged. She stopped in front of it. On its shiny brass plaque, it said “This mile is donated by Dieter Hoffman.” Hoffman. Yes. She had read about him in the paper. Dieter Hoffman committed fraud and disappeared without a trace.

A place of no judgment.

“That man, these people on the path. They’ve known this place and they’ve made choices.” The bleached-blonde with red lips and dark glasses.
Charlotte Wise, the missing psychic
.

“Yes. Now you’re getting it.”

She recalled the faces that she saw earlier. She knew them all. Stephen Stalkow — the former business tycoon who killed his family and was executed for it. He was here, with his children. Twins.

“Is this an evil place?”

“That’s such a
human
question, Al. Evil, no such thing. Its more like a place of free will. Anything can happen here. All of your potential can be tapped. It is not a place of judgment, as I said, though you could say that it’s a place that has consequences. So if someone wished for money, power, that sort of thing, they could get it, but they would also get any outcomes which came with it.
Keep looking
.”

They walked. His thumb was moving in circles in the palm of her hand. She turned her attention to the right. She spoke slowly, as if each word was being revealed to her one at a time.

“On the left are our choices, on the right are the outcomes. The outcomes are created by the choices. From here, there is no turning back.”

“Well, we are empowered to make choices all the time. It’s a matter of degree. But you’re right about one thing. This place transcends time as you know it. The choices made here are not like the little choices we make each day that grow slowly into enormous consequences. It’s more like making five billion of those small choices at once, and then having time fast forwarded in an instant.”

“Why me?”

“You made a wish, you had the desire to know your truth. And for other reasons as well.”

“Because of Sophie.”

“
Despite
Sophie.” he chuckled.

On her left, Althea noticed another jewel plaque, this one cinnamon colored garnet.
This mile is sponsored by Althea Brecht
. They stopped.

“Any more questions?” He smiled at her. “I may not be able to answer them, but gimme a shot.”

“You’re teasing me.”

“Something tells me I’ve been accused of that before.” She gestured to the path, which displayed her name.

“Is this my choice?”

“This? This will lead you to where you will make your choice.”

“What happens after that?”

“That’s also your choice. This gives you a leg up, certainly — a big one. But the outcome, as always, is up to you.”

“How will I know what to choose?”

“You know the answer to that.” Althea looked into the sky, which was blue and clear. A red-winged blackbird perched on the branch of a birch tree suspended in winter. She spoke slowly.

“Trust my intuition. Use my imagination. Discover who I am and who I want to be. Dream my grandest dream.”

“Yes.”

“Create my future.”

“Right. You’re already doing it, we do it all the time.
You
created this place, Al.
You
created me. You’re going to be on your own for this leg of the journey because that’s the way you created it.”

“Okay. I’m ready.”

She kissed him and his thumb traced her dimple. His lips felt warm and familiar. She turned away from him toward her place of choice.

A place of no judgment.

chapter 57

THE PATH UPON WHICH Althea now walked
her path
was a perfect counter-clockwise arch. Just when Althea thought that she should be crossing the place where she started, she entered a clearing, lined by a small lake. On the water’s surface, were rows of twinkling ripples, though there was no hint of wind. She looked across the expansive sky until she found what she was looking for.

“You again,” she whispered.

Though it was daylight, the moon hung suspended over a mulberry sky. She looked at the moon, into it, and it was as mysterious as it had ever been to her, even more now, its hues of soft cream and yellow and grey creating the illusion of a face looking down at her, wrinkled and wise.

In concert with the moon, there was something else about this place, and as soon as the question entered her mind, she received the answer.
Circularity
came the whisper, everything’s round here,
circles upon circles. Like the flow of life
. Everything she saw confirmed it, everything she felt. There were no rigid corners here, no hard and fixed lines. From the curve of the clearing, to the rounded waterfront, to the smoothness of the waves as if a storm had just passed, this place was made up of circles and parts of circles, intimate, balanced, and intertwined.

The moon lit her way. Trees emerged shyly from the edge of the clearing. Their leaves blushed an array of greens, oranges and reds so intense, they felt like a magnet. She walked toward them, noticing that she was now barefoot, the sand cool and soft beneath her feet. She left no footprints behind.

The trees parted, and as she recognized where she was, she giggled. She had entered a playground
Created it
came the whisper, and it was her childhood fantasy, sparkling with color and light. Soft notes of music played, an otherworldly piano, the ambient keys mingled with voices mounting in a welcoming chorus. Althea clapped and skipped toward the playground with unencumbered glee
Permission to be a child again, permission to dance
and watched with wide eyes as the rainbow of color surrounding her twinkled and grew.

Althea stood transfixed as a mass of orange and silver swirled and settled into a brilliant teeter-totter. In the place of a wooden plank was an acid green pipe. As she stood watching it
winking at her
, it moved
Come play
. She shook her head, staying where she was, until she noticed that behind it, something else was growing, and when she saw what it was, she gasped.

Before her was the grandest slide she had ever seen — two stories high, in the purest cyan, every child’s dream. Like a mutant tuba, it branched in a dozen different directions, curving around and through. The sliding surface was summer yellow, like glowing fiberglass
but fiberglass that breathed
. As she touched the first rung of the ladder, it glowed and molded into her hand, became softer.
The ride of your life
, it said
that’s what I promise
and she shook her head and let the ladder go.

She turned and two ribbons of the richest burgundy stretched from her wrists to an emerald-green pole sunk deep into the earth. She remembered this ride, too. She used to call it the maypole ride. She imagined what it would be like, gliding from her hands with the wind in her hair, in a perfect weightless circle
Just like flying
until she could see the moon. She touched its surface lovingly, gave it a spin, and it sparked a kaleidoscope that glowed like embers and floated like snowflakes, landing on her shoulders, tickling her skin.

Her attention was diverted when a breath of air lifted her hair. Beside the lake, she noticed an arc of red. As she watched, the maypole ribbons melted off of her hands, and she shivered.
This is it
, she thought.
Without a doubt, this is it
. She began to walk.

Underneath a raspberry arch, which rose from the sand like an otherworldly gate, was a swing set beside the lake. Hundreds of tight golden spirals, like roses just about to open, cascaded on its surface. The swing itself was made up of two velvet ropes in brilliant gold, anchored by a soft oval seat. As Althea stared, the arch grew and leaned toward her, the flower-spirals opened and stretched, and the potpourri scent that emanated from them tickled her nose. The music rose gently, spare and soft, like Erik Satie meets Alice in Wonderland, blending with the chorus of whispers which echoed.

She was standing just a foot away now, her neck stretching to see the top of the arch, which was changing like the sky during sunset.
You control what we become
, it whispered to her.
We’re your creation, all of us, you know that don’t you?

Her eyes filled with tears, and she felt belonging and acceptance as she took the soft ropes in her hands, and sank into the golden seat, which was like suede but softer, and shaped perfectly for her. She looked up into the moon hanging over the water
You know
it said
You always have
, and she realized that she had made her first and easiest choice.

She could feel Him behind her, his body pressed up against hers, his arm around her waist. He held her tight. She leaned into him.

“Are you
ready
?” he asked.

“Yup, I’m ready.”

His hands pushed her hips as her feet left the ground. She leaned back, arms straight, head back to get some height. At the top of the arc, she stopped in mid-air and changed direction, then her body collapsed into itself, her knees tucked under her as she leaned forward. The air caught her hair, blowing it around her face as she dropped her chin to her chest, and then she felt his hands on the small of her back again, pushing her higher.

This time, she laid full back, her toes pointing up, reaching as high as she could, her head falling back to look at him, feeling like a child, upside down, and there he was, his arms extended protectively, waiting for her to swing back to him. Butterflies flew to the top of her throat as she changed direction, and headed back toward him. This time, she passed him so quickly he couldn’t reach her. He stepped back.

The water and the moon and the green blending together, Althea strained to reach the highest point, higher than the highest branches of the trees that surrounded them, higher than gravity allowed. She threw her head back, toes pointing, and in a flicker, the water grew into an ocean, becoming even bluer than before, the moon glowed pink and she kept going, upside down, over the red arch in a perfect circle, then again, moving faster and faster in a place where the earth’s laws did not exist.

It was the ride that she dreamed of when she was a child, and the one that she dreaded, like riding a roller coaster out of control. As she spun around and around, her eyes were open, and her world blended into white, and then it was as if she was watching herself through the lens of a camera, a pinpoint of black, widening, until she was inside it, part of it, images flying at her, bits and pieces of a whole
there for the taking
and here she knew that it was all up to her.