Soulstice (The Souled Series) (6 page)

CHAPTER
TWELVE

I called
Shawn right after I left Alma’s shop. A sense of urgency pushed me to do this on the summer solstice because it
was
about new beginnings.

Shawn’s
house was on the other side of town, close to the Long Bridge and right across from the lake. His backyard, where he’d set up the ceremony, was drenched in sunlight that warmed the damp, green grass. There was an almost magical feel about it, and Chris, with his long, graying hair, and the graceful movements of his tall, lean body, reminded me of a wizard from a mystical world.

I followed him as he walked around the yard, picking up sticks, discarding some and keeping others.

“The fire ceremony,” Shawn explained to me, “connects us with Spirit and helps us release old patterns that hold us back.

“Basically we offer a sacrifice to the flames
, and the vehicle for that sacrifice can be something like a letter or an object such as this.”

“A stick
?”

“Sure,” he said
, picking up another one. “Anything that you can pour your heart or thoughts into. We call this,” he said, holding up the small twig, “a death arrow.”

It sounded serious.
But, damn, I was serious about moving on. From the sticks that lay around the yard, I chose a short, thin branch and broke it into a smaller piece, just as Shawn had with his.

“Is this okay?” I asked, holding
my slightly tweaked, slightly knobbed choice of vehicle for him to see.

“Whatever works, as long as it feels right to you. The p
urpose of the death arrow is to carry our limiting thoughts into the fire. From there, the fire will transform and release that energy.

“For example,” he said, kneeling next to the fire pit to begin preparing it for the ceremonial fire. “A very common belief is that we are not worthy of love, abundance, or success, so we put that energy out there and that continues to reflect back in the people around us.”

He couldn’t have hit closer to home.
I was not worthy of love. I was not okay.
That had been drummed into my head by my dad day after day. He’d told me that I should change who I was so I would fit in and be accepted by him and his church. So what did I do? I changed who I was in order to be loved. And the people I had surrounded myself with? Taylor and her posse.

I looked up and caught
Shawn watching me. My face flushed hot. “I’m sorry. I kind of zoned out. What were you saying?”

“No, don’t be sorry. It’s good that you’re giving this some thought. You don’t have to pick only one. Whatever you want to release is okay. When you’re ready, you blow it into the end of the stick, like this.”

Holding the stick like a harmonica in cupped hands, Shawn closed his eyes, seeming to gather his thoughts along with his breath. Then he blew into it a few times.

Then it was m
y turn.
I am not worthy of love. I am not okay the way I am.
As I thought the words, I felt the pain. I let my emotions out through my breath, and with it, something more came through. Something much heavier, much more powerful rode the tail of my shame. It took me a few minutes to understand the emotion. My shaking hands could have been mistaken for fear or nerves, I suppose, but an overwhelming need to throw my death arrow, or anything else I could find, had me grinding words through my teeth. It was anger. Anger toward my dad for treating my mom and me like unworthy women, for trying to take our wings, for always being where he wasn’t supposed to be… at the bar when he should have been home… at home when he should have been at the bar.

Damn you, Dad! Damn you!
How freeing it felt to blow the top off my Pandora’s box, and guide the thoughts into the stick. I hoped there would be enough room - because there was a lot of anger. My hands got tingly and sweaty, my head got light, but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. I needed to purge the emotion that twisted a knot inside and held me back. A red hot acid burn welled up in my chest and forged a groove up my throat. I blew all of it into the death arrow.
I am not worthy of trust. I am not worthy of my gifts. And now, damn it… I release you.

Shawn
sat across from me, eyes closed, lost in his thought, fully engaged in creating his own offering. He seemed like such a happy, content, connected man. What could he possibly have in his life that would be consuming him the way it was? He seemed perfectly comfortable with who he was. I didn’t see him running around town in bright colors with a trained smile on his face. He practiced what he believed in. It didn’t matter who was watching. Like me. Staring. Peeking into his personal space. And it didn’t bother him in the slightest.

A
few more seconds passed before he opened his eyes and smiled at me. Not an embarrassed smile, like I would have probably given had he been watching me, but a genuine smile. Pure and simple. There’s so much I could learn from him. Like my mother, he walked the walk and seemed at peace with who he was and what he believed in.

“So no
w we prepare the fire,” he said, placing his arrow next to him.

“
By placing two sticks in a Southern Cross formation in the center of the fire pit, it represents a point of navigation from the fire to spirit.” He handed me some newspaper. “Help me wad up this newspaper and put them around the cross, like this.” Then, using small, thin strips of wood, he arranged them to lean inward to form a teepee to direct the energy skyward.

Shawn
lit the match and put flame to paper which turned and fed upon itself without hesitation, creating a mini-inferno within the teepee.

“
I’m going to start a chant that will call upon the spirit of the waters beneath the Earth to help us.” He paused, looking past my shoulder, his smile a mix of surprise and welcoming. “You’ve got ancestors here waiting to help you.”

“Really?”
I spun around, expecting to see the ghostly images of American Indians or Pilgrims, or even my grandmother. “Who?”

“I’m not sure.
” He cocked his head to one side, listening, his eyes fixed over my shoulder. “Family.” He looked at me. “Can you feel them?”

Closing my eyes, I stilled my breath and mind. A soft breeze kicked up and the pressure behind my eye
s intensified.

“I’m not sure what I feel.”

“That’s okay. Just know you have a lot of support.” Out of a cloth bag, he pulled out an orange-sized bulb-kind of thing with engravings that created a band around the center.

“My rattle,” he said, “and spirit water.
” He smiled and held up a small vial of liquid. “Spirit water honors the Spirits of the four directions when we call upon them to open the Sacred Space.”

He
shook the rattle and recited a beautiful chant in a language I didn’t know, and sipped at the bottle of spirit water, he quickly blew it out in the four directions of South, West, North, and East.

The wooden sides of the teepee could no longer withstand the damage from the flame, and silently collapsed into a mound on top of the burned paper.
I leaned closer and watched the exchange of give and take within the circle of fire.

“How often do you practice this ceremony?” I asked.

He used the handle of the rattle to push the burning pile around a bit. “At least once a month. It helps to rid myself of issues that don’t serve my higher self.”

The wood sizzled and the flame jumped to join the olive oil he drizzled across the pile.
Shawn didn’t take his gaze away from the fire as it settled itself into the bottom of the fire pit.

“Now we’re waiting for the fire to become friendly.”

“A fire can be friendly?” Definitely news to me.

He nodded. “When we have true intent and we resonate with the energy of the fire, then we can approach it without being burned.”

Exactly what Mom had said, but I had a hard time believing I’d ever see fire the way they did. The images in my mind were still so vivid even after all this time – the flame snaking along the edge of the curtain, melting back the fabric to reveal a gaping flaw in my plan, punctuating its statement by dropping big-ass fiery exclamation marks onto the carpet. My frantic waving only fueled the fire to go faster and to get hotter, until it chased me out of my room and into my mother’s, my screams echoing off the walls.

Shawn
lightly touched my elbow, forcing me to get my head out of Illinois and back to Sandpoint.

“Do you see how the color of the fire has changed
? The pattern of the flames is different, too.”

I nodded
, doing my best to see what he did.

“That’s how you know the fire is friendly an
d ready to accept our offering.” Shawn stood at the north side of the fire pit and said, “I’ll go first. You can stand behind me and hold a space like this.” His arms created a half circle to the sides and in front of him, like a protected harbor.

Wrapping
the space around him was like wrapping my arms around a giant Sequoia. The centuries-old energy that surrounded him challenged the confines of my arms and pressed against my skin. Just like the ball of energy Mom and I had held in our palms, its vibration pulsed with heavy energy, testing my strength.

He kneeled in front of the pit and
placed his death arrow in the heart of the flames. He then quickly passed his hands through the smoke and drew it toward his belly, again to his heart, to his forehead, and once more over his head, as if pouring the fire’s energy over himself.

With his offering complete, he stood to face me. “Now you can approach from any direction.”

I chose the west side and kneeled before the fire, with Shawn holding space behind me.

“Thank you,” I whispered to my arrow, the holder of my secret pain, and placed it in the center of the fire
with gratitude. I imagined the light of the energy within the arrow growing beyond its boundaries, wrapped in love, and releasing into the air. Just as Shawn had done, I scooped the smoke from the pit and pulled it to my stomach, my heart, my forehead, and over my head. I waited for the cleansing energy to sink in before I stood.

In the pit, our sticks burned with such intensity I’d never seen before, as if they were gasoline-fueled. Sparks spit
and the flames expanded and narrowed, not stopping until they had consumed our offering.

Before the fire could die down
completely, Shawn handed me a slightly larger stick he had chosen earlier.

“This is the Pachamama stick. We blow blessings for the Earth
into it.”

Blessings for Mother Earth. I kicked off my sandals and pressed my bare toes to the grass, willing the vibration to connect with mine.
I was now part of her healing and I would do whatever it took to help her. Pressing the Pachamama stick to my lips, I blew into the rough surface with true love and intent, and all my blessings, and then passed it onto Shawn. He closed his eyes for a moment before sharing his.

Together we placed it into the fire.

“Do you feel a difference in the fire now?”

The flames waved lazily as if they had all the time in the world to burn what was left of the wood. But I tried to see beyond the obvious. I tried to see with my soul instead of my eyes.

“The sense of urgency is gone,
” I said. “I sense calmness, like there’s no more disturbance.”

A smile tipped the corners of his lips up to mirror my own.

I felt like the fire. I’d found my moment of calm.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

My junior year at Sandpoint High School was a welcome change of pace.
The rest of the summer had slipped by like a slow-moving stream – slow enough to enjoy, but not enough to go stir crazy. I spent a lot of time on our dock, reading the books I had gotten at the estate sale and learning more about myself.

S
ix months into the school year, I looked back and wondered how much longer I could have continued on in the role of the popular Alyx. Such a contrast. Since Taylor and I were no longer close friends, I completely faded from the social radar.

As for Justin,
I couldn’t compete with Taylor’s determination to go back to him day after day to get his attention and, unless I joined the wrestling team, there was no hope of winning Justin over. The longer I watched him, though, it occurred to me that my competition wasn’t Taylor after all. It was someone else he wanted. I had my suspicions about who it was, but the signs were too subtle to be certain.

I stood at
my usual spot outside the school library’s door, waiting for first period to start. Out of all the students who walked the halls, it seemed I was the only person who had changed since last year. The school was filled with the same students with the same attitudes.

Especially
Taylor. Since the first day of school, she’d been back at it with Justin. For me, being on the outside looking in, Taylor’s attempts to get Justin to talk to her were laughable. The way he side-stepped her constantly when she cut him off in the halls was, if nothing else, entertaining. That morning, though, it looked as if Taylor had taken a second look at Seth, who’d been walking beside Justin. Her expression almost… softened and she had … doe-eyes… but as Justin moved around her, not even acknowledging her, she snapped out of whatever haze she had gotten caught up in, and zeroed in on him again.

“
I’ll see you in class, okay?” Taylor spun around and called after Justin as he made his way down the hall.

Seth didn
’t seem to notice her either. But that wasn’t a surprise. Even if Taylor had ever considered going after Seth, she definitely didn’t stand a chance with him. He was in a serious long-term relationship with his girlfriend, Dani. No one could come between those two and as far as I knew, no one had ever tried.

But something was off about everyone in Seth’s wake,
because Taylor wasn’t the only girl taking second glances at him. Necks strained to keep up with his pace down the hall, eyes begged for him to make a connection, and fingers touched lips, seemingly begging to be the next one kissed.

And he was clueless to all of it.

I pushed off the wall where I had been standing and followed Seth and Justin, making sure to stay hidden behind other kids. There was something different about the way Seth was moving. Or maybe it was just in the way he was carrying himself. More confident maybe. Less shy. In the last two years of watching Seth and Justin, their mannerisms and expressions
were etched in my mind. Seth definitely walked with the cockiness of a guy who had just scored. But it wasn’t in the way he walked that made the difference. It was in the energy he was putting off.

And, damn, if he wasn’t magnetic
. As if a cord connected us together, I walked faster to keep up. I had to get closer to see him… to touch him… to …

I hugged my body tight to break free of whatever had taken hold of me.
I ducked into the next classroom - and bumped right into Justin. Staring at an eyeful of his indifference was almost enough to forget about Seth and his strange pull. Almost.

“Sorry,” I mumbled,
looking down so he wouldn’t see the flush burning my face. I wanted to be anywhere else but where I stood. If only I could hate him. That’d make my life so much easier.

I turned on my heel and stepped into the hallway. Checking to make sure Seth wasn’t around, I headed to my locker.

A knife-edged coldness stabbed me in the chest and burrowed through to my back, stopping my lungs mid-breath. Adrenaline flushed my skin and sweated out my palms as I ran past Seth standing in the doorway of his classroom. There was no way I was going to make it to my locker. I turned and ran back down the hall and into the bathroom because I was close to losing everything I ate that morning. I leaned over the toilet and tried to slow down my breathing and thoughts.

What
was going on with that guy? And what the
hell
just happened to me? Normally I wouldn’t care about the other kids in this school, but when someone’s issues had such a strong effect on me, I had no choice
but
to care.