Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow (50 page)

“That was the crazy thing. She
said I had to keep quiet. Said if I told she would get in trouble and maybe go to jail. She could lose her job and I’d get foster care.”

“That doesn’t make
any fucking sense!” He is shaking, holding it in.

Her eyes on him steady.
“I believed her. I went along with it. She would hardly talk to me, angry, saying nothing for weeks. I was so frightened, Clay. I thought I was a pervert. I was so goddam alone. I attached myself to my babysitter. A few years later we knew we loved each other. She was the first girl I slept with.”

Tharcia turns to the drawing. “I’ve had to go through my whole life as this distortion,” she says in a whisper, “an ugly worthless perverted nothing with no value and no name.
Unattractive to anyone, can’t face people sometimes. I miss my mom though in a way it’s good she died cuz I started getting my rage out on her. Lian told me something though. She’s not in hell.”

Clay concentrates on his breathing. In. Out. He’s furious, knows this is not the time to let it fly.
“You said a little.” Long exhale. “How did Lian explain it?”

“We all go back to
the same place, or maybe it’s a state of being. One Spirit, a single consciousness, according to Lylit. They say humans are evolving to see across time. Whales do already. Lylit says there’s a rising level of vibration that humans will hear. Then I came along and fucked everything with my stupid spell!”

She brings the drawing pad and sits beside Clay, hides her face in his shoulder. “I am so sorry I got us into this. You. Me.
Everyone.”

“Maybe it’s only one of your dreams, Tharcia.”

“If it is I never want to go to sleep again.”

She holds up the drawing to show him. In the sketch he’s wearing jeans, stands bare-chested. His arms are out wide, like he’s inviting someone into a
dance. His face is turned down to one side. Somehow, with only the side of his face visible, Tharcia has captured a loving radiance in his expression.

“Thank you for the present,” she says.

Clay gets up, wanting to shake off the moment. “Since we’re celebrating your birthday, we should have wine.” From the kitchen, he says, “Do you remember your last birthday party? The one we had here?”

She laughs, accepts
the glass of red. “That jam session here, only I didn’t clue you.”

“Your place now.”

“I invited myself. I wish for your sake I’d never come here.”

“
Grab a brain Tharcie. Look who’s feeling all sorry-self. My life would have been stone empty without you.”

“Even the
mistreater I have been?”

“You had shit to work through. Shit is shitty. I’m glad you’re back.”

“Yeh.”

“That night was the first time you told me about abuse.”

“But still I lied. Dr. Novack tried to pry it out of me. No fracking way.”

Clay is
watching the windows, full dark outside, orange glow through the trees. “There is something coming down. Is that soot from your fire?”

When they open the door
a scent of roses sweeps over them, overpowering sweetness warms their faces. It is not dark embers from the pile of burning clothes. From high above drift soft blades of deepest red. Tharcia walks out into the fall, air so thick with drifting petals her robe blends, if not for her white hair she would disappear. She gives a squeal of delight.

“Roses Clay, come dance in the roses.” Twirling arms out
head back to catch one in her mouth. The aroma so intoxicating. Clay holds his glass of red wine, swings himself around looking upward into the fall of petals. Tharcia twirls past, laughing, stops long enough to grip his wrist, drink deep of his wine. The fall of roses so dense they disappear from view, find each other from their laughter.

“Did Lian tell you…”

“About this? He said maybe lucid dreaming.”

Clay drains the glass, throws it into the dark.
The thing accelerates over the trees, first glowing then fiercely aflame, a meteor cutting skyward into black. Petals thick as autumn leaves upon the ground, their dancing feet leave furrows. Tharcia twirls past Clay, arms in the robe wide as wings, falls backward. Clay lurches to catch her but she lands softly in the springy mass.

“Clay, the stars.” She’s on her back, perfectly
hidden in the robe, face a faint glow against the dark.

He looks up.
How can we see stars when it’s raining rose petals?
A scattering of colored stars across night sky, uneven outline of dark trees frames brilliant starscape. Gold, blue, amber, violet. The wind changes, clouds hurry in, the first warm raindrops. A damp smell and pitter-pat, it catches, then down it comes like hammers of hell. Clay pulls his sodden shirt over his head, lifts his face to falling petals. They land on his tongue and turn a salty sweetness. Tharcia has completely disappeared.

“Clay,” she laughs
from somewhere. “I can’t get up.”

Clay’s head thrown back to catch
drifting petals. Looks around in the pouring dark, raindrops run down his chest. “Where you at?”

O
n the ground a dark form moves. She’s buried in dripping rose petals. He tries to lift her. The robe hangs leaden.

“Can’t get up.
Get it off!”

F
inds the hem and pulls it up her legs. Sweet-scented, she gets to her knees, laughing. The robe lifts above her head. It hits the ground with a weighted splat. Her arms reach up. Hands in her armpits, he lifts the wet girl. She gives a little jump, her legs enfold his waist. He walks them to the porch. Sits her bare rump on the porch rail. Hands clasping his neck she leans back, mouth open to reach for falling rose blades. White hair dripping rain. Petals land on her smooth arms, stomach, breasts. On her face they alight as glowing jewels, constellations of bluish radiance encircle her eyes, line her cheek bones. He finds a rose petal clinging to her shoulder, brings his tongue to it and gathers it in, sucking the sweet juice it makes. Sees another appear on her skin, drinks it down.

Her
face tilts up. Her features a jeweled pattern, red to electric blue. Bluish glow lights her aureole of white dripping hair, she regards him solemnly, not laughing anymore, her soft mouth a circle of surprise. Her skin on his, thighs clasp lightly his hips. The world stops. She cannot speak.

She tries to say, you are eating my rose petals, but her words come out as, Clay, you are kissing me. He does not understand, drunk with rose petals
turned salty liquor on her body. He smiles at her, tongue finds another petal, it belongs to him. They all do. As each one alights on her smooth flesh, he claims it, smiling gratitude in her eyes. Her body arches as he claims her nipple, so like the rose petal.

“Clay.” On her face a tenderness of waiting. He has never before seen her
naked this way, and never touching him skin to skin. Yes they share a home, yes he’s seen her walking the hallway in a towel, yes they shared a bed, in a way, when her room was a deep freeze. In a timeless breath their eyes hold.

By her wrists he lifts her, presses her bod
y to the post, breasts pulled taut. Thunder of rain in their ears, the drifting mist of rose-scent fills their nostrils.

Her
astonished face. “Clay. Are we…”

By instinct
their lips brush, eyes of stunned surprise. He pulls back. “Tharcia I’m…”

“Hus
h,” she says, finding his mouth. Eyes close.

And then it is instinct fear and rage, loneliness,
a well of hunger, of waiting and unknown longing. With a hungry whimper she lifts her legs to grip him.

A shadowy form
materializes behind her, hunched shoulders and black wings. Reaching clawed hands for the neck of the captive girl her hot breath coming faster into Clay’s open mouth. Melting together with her, Clay does not see, uncaring now as to why this is, wanting it. They both have, always.

Unseen wicked claws reach
toward her from the dark.

A warning cry from h
igh above. The dark form whirls toward the sound. A silent blur rushes in, a white owl, luminous wings outstretched behind. With unstoppable fury it hits the shadow, seizes and rips with muscled talons, wrenches the heavy burden into the dark. Cries of futile pain carry away on the wind. Silhouette against sky and gone.

“My wrists,” she says,
breath hot on his face. He releases, her arms come around his neck.

Clasped in warm embrace,
a single breath of sanity.

“
This is not a moment’s pleasure,” he says.

“It wouldn’t be, for me.”

“Or me.”

“Your bed.”

Mouth on hers, he carries her there.

Hours d
eep in dark of night Tharcia dreams of whales, swims with them toward a ribbon of light. Clay sleeps peacefully. Her leg across him, she wakes, listens to his breathing come and go. Delicious surprise washes over her. Through the night they had awakened, noodle-limbed. Sweat running down half-conscious they had lunged at each other open-mouthed in ancient hunger. Unreal. So wrong. So perfectly right.
But how is the world doing?

Stands
naked on the porch, night wind on her skin. Tries again to pull the whale knowledge to her. Over the hill, the gold of flames, distant muffled sounds. There are no sirens.

In the clearing a white
swirl amid the dark. It comes into form as a horse that walks slowly a complex path. She watches this being of stately nobility, its movements almost a dance. The animal completes its pattern and stands in the ash of her mother’s clothes. This one has called to her before.

Her careful foot follows its
twin silent down the steps. She approaches, daring not to breathe. The horse a tall milky form in blackest night, silk of white mane reaches the ground. Her hand on the soft muzzle. Her sense of this horse somehow her friend, somehow her guide, an equal. In her mind she sees herself astride the strong back, white hair and mane flying behind.

The h
orse nudges her shoulder, urges her toward its flank. Impulsively, Tharcia with handfuls of soft mane springs, throws her leg over. The animal starts off, a smooth fast gait along paths she knows. Girl grips with knees the rippling back, leans into lashing strokes of streaming mane.

They halt at the ridge top. She drops to the ground, her hand on the horse’s neck.
Their eyes sweep north and south. As far as she can see, from the dark of the Ventana wilderness to the ghostly sweep of breakers at Half Moon Bay, islands of flame.

Why?

It was time.

The horse snuffles its nose in her armpit. She slaps it behind the ears.

“Been sweating, so what.”

The animal
lifts its head with a snort. She sniffs the place herself.
Clay. On me. In me.
Standing beside the still animal,
Tharcia recalls her whale dream, the aching loss of impossible knowledge. But now, something is there. On this lonely ridge above burning cities, a small fraction of that knowledge is conscious.
You are part of everything. You are cared for.

Looking
to the horse, and the horse to her, she hears its thought.

You have what we need
. The whales sang with you.

Tharcia feels hollow. She knows what the horse asks, it is not hers to give. She is about to form the words when she becomes aware of something squeezing its way upward from her deepest being. A fabric of clarity and richness, suspended against a black of black, pink lines and abstract symbols stretching from infinite past to unlimited future. Knows she could begin speaking now, and recite
all of it. That would take far too long.

Searching, she finds it, a pattern not of the human brain,
something lucid, not bound in sequenced linear thought, pushing itself through a limitless pathway she did not know existed. It has been hers always.

Standing before the horse, she draws the face close. Looking into liquid dark eyes where reflect golden fire lines of distant ridges, they begin.
A girl and a horse, wind lifting at white hair and hanging mane, stand poised in silence as furious energies pass between them. Her eyes fall closed, boundaries between woman and animal fade to nothing. Swimming deep in her mind the words of Lylit.
Earth has been silent and invisible to other civilizations.
Together in that starry night two minds lift the whale knowledge into a stream of joy heard beyond the galaxy’s spiral arms, birth-song of Earth’s existence cast across time.

When her eyes open, the horse is gone
, the sky stained pink. Alone in this high place, Tharcia has seen through the whales the vibrational traces of every soul’s journey, understands their song to be the world’s collective dream. She must make certain that those animals and others of their kind are everywhere understood as conscious beings.

W
ith Lylit she has seen how dreams are made, knows that dreams prayers thoughts and desires are but some of the ways reality arises from conscious intention, understands that humans reach now for that ability.