Star Woman in Love (42 page)

“You’ve gone as far as you needed on this journey, Oscar. Now you can go back. We need more time to bring the Counterplan together. But you’ve just sewn another seam. Well done, my adept. I’ll take care of her to the best of my abilities for a little while longer.”

Master and seeker shook hands as Shambhala’s Gates closed on Oscar: forever.

* * * *

Oscar opened his eyes and looked around. He didn’t know where he was but he understood he had survived death. That was a miracle in itself. There were drips in his arms. The room was spinning. He closed his eyes again. He could still see Lumiel’s smile tattooed on the inside of his eyelids.

“We need more time...”

One by one his relatives and friends trickled in by his bedside in the intensive care ward to comfort him. He greeted them with silence. His only thought now was that Cassandra was still alive. The rescuers had to keep looking for her. He told his mother. The doctors had warned her that her son might be delusional during his recovery from massive coronary failure. She would have to play along with him. His heart couldn’t be upset anymore.

The days turned into a month. When enough strength had returned to his skinny limbs, Oscar was moved out of intensive care and into a private room. By then he had realised that the time had come to put the Counterplan into action. The Counterplan would introduce an element to Cassandra’s life, one that she wasn’t previously allowed to have. If the Counterplan worked, it would create Time, where no time was supposed to be: time for Cassandra and Oscar to be on Earth together.

He went to the bathroom and turned the hot tap on. He felt that his mind and hers were now one. No time and no distance could keep them apart. The heat from the water covered the mirror’s surface with condensation. Oscar wiped it away to look at his gaunt face. That’s when he saw her: Cassandra’s face in the mirror, staring at him from the steamy glass, reflecting back his love and his anguish. The Twins had bridged the dimensions that kept them apart. Their mutual yearning was drawing them together. Her gaze was pure and familiar: it was inviting him on, calling him Home.

He wiped a bigger section of the glass with his hand to see her entire face. She was definitely there. He felt the peace that her loving presence had always brought him. He placed his lips on the mirror to kiss her, but she disappeared. The steam from his breath and the print of his lips on the glass were all that was left of that brief, life-changing encounter.

Things would never be the same again. He knew what to do, he could change the course of history. It had always been his life’s purpose and now he was ready. He took the lift to the roof of the hospital and ventured into the cold air. His pyjama-clad body shivered in the freezing temperature. A light snow was falling. Snowflakes were dancing around him like friendly fairies flying in mid-air, teasing him, daring him. He danced along with them in joy for a moment, but then his heart grew serious.

He walked towards the parapet and looked at the white blanket covering the car park, twelve floors below him. He had nothing to lose. He gathered the courage to run past the barrier between this life and forever, and ended his troubles on car space number 27. He left the world with a smashed skull, a broken body and a crushed soul. That day was the 14
th
of February 2013 and Cassandra’s forty-fifth birthday.

* * * *

“Dear Lady and Lord Masters: our decision is now final. Time coordinates 21-12-2012 are no longer working. An element was introduced in the Plan that makes it difficult for us to be precise in our time-travelling. Going back to fix the past has now become a real challenge, and no more energy can be dedicated to such a risky pursuit. It was always a danger to rely on human duality to create Oneness, to hope for Cassandra and Oscar to align as Twin Flames and be the pillars upon which we could found the future of an enlightened humanity. We have run out of hope.”

Everybody nodded. Meta was among those in attendance. She felt sorry for the Twins upon whom the future of the entire human race had rested. The weight of their destiny must have been unbearable. Yet she envied the need that they had for each other. She was perfect, and longing was not the stuff of the perfect. Secretly, however, she rejoiced in the Twins’ mistakes and wished she could be like Cassandra, who would always yearn for Oscar to make her complete. Meta didn’t even have a Twin Soul, as the Masters would often remind her: she was complete in herself. Only Lumiel, who had not yet aligned himself completely with Myriam in Shambhala, could sometimes function as Cassandra’s Mirror when her energy faltered. She rejoiced in the sense of incompleteness brought about by any fleeting moment of weakness.

Soon it would be over though. Mothership Shambhala was set to return to the Morning Star. Humanity hadn’t ascended. An element among them, apparently, was ballasting the White Island to matter, lowering its frequency and turning it into denser substance. 

Meta was surprised when she was summoned to stand alone in front of the Council. The Masters were saying that she had been chosen to go back to Earth and fix a problem in the Plan. Or to cut a tie forever. The tone in Sanat Kumar’s voice was cold and soulless. No detail was offered. She had to descend to Earth. She would know what to do once she got there. The only choices she would have on the plane of duality would be to either make peace or say goodbye.

* * * *

Lumiel had expected Meta to forget her role as Cassandra in the human tragedy played out in the third dimension. He had feigned his own return to Shambhala perfectly. He had fooled everybody. Now his Counterplan could finally be put in motion. That was the only one way to ensure that the Earth would reject the presence of the Masters and their ambitious Plan to align the Blue Planet and its inhabitants with the Morning Star. The Venusians had always treated the Earth as the slower Twin of their birth planet. They had no profound experience of the place. They didn’t know the beauty of the struggle that characterised life on the third planet from the Sun. Transformation is the law of the Universe. No intervention from outside should be allowed, even when it comes from the pompous Venusians or anyone else, no matter how well-meaning the intent.

He had been one of them. He wished he could forget the time when he was in love with his perfection and plagued by his loneliness. But then he fell to Earth, the best thing that he had ever done. He would never go back to Venus. His Counterplan would keep him on Earth forever. Cassandra and Oscar were his new powerful converts. Their strength came from their vulnerability.

Lumiel reached the Crystal Cave that contained the Earth’s Akashic Records. The silver stalactite over the central altar was said to be eternal. It held the idea of Shambhala and the Plan firmly set in the mindset of the inspired inhabitants of the Earth. The golden stalagmite under the altar was equally important to the Venusians. It held the two concepts of Shambhala and the evolution of humanity in place on the White Island. But Lumiel knew how to remove them. He could at last: he simply had to concentrate on the idea of death that had now entered the minds and lives of Cassandra and Oscar.

So he put his mighty, unfaltering mind to it. First the gold stalagmite cracked and crumbled to the ground. Then the silver stalactite fell and broke into a million tiny shards. No more Plan. No more Shambhala. No more intrusion into the ways of the world. The Masters’ Vision would now fizzle out. No trace of this nonsense would be left in the minds and lives of those who had to endure this idiocy for so long.

* * * *

Tara, 21 March 2012

The joy I felt when I saw you by the Fairy Tree was the highlight of my entire existence. You had come. My memory was clear and my intention was unwavering. We had grown, we were ready. You were standing, waiting for me. I could tell your eyes were grave and your mood was apprehensive. But you were smiling at the sight of me.

“Come Cassandra, don’t be late! I can’t believe I’ve made it here before you!”

“It’s never been a race, Oscar!”

It was like being children again. Our hearts were joyful, our minds were trouble-free, as if all the hurts had been left in the past and a massive door had been locked behind them. I quickened my steps as you opened your arms, as if to make yourself, the target of my love arrows, even more visible.

A sibilant sound cut me short on my track. An unruly whirlwind pushed me to the ground. I don’t know if I fainted or it was really happening. The air was sparkly and orange. Then the sky turned black. I could see falling stars and meteors cross the vaults above me. The world was coming to an end. But you were with me and were now hugging me tight. That’s the last thing I remember. Wasn’t this a crazy, erratic lifetime anyway? One of finding you and losing you and finding you again? Love that kills, loves that brings you back to life. We melted into our desperate embrace. We belonged to that tarnished knowledge. Life around us started to disappear into a void.

We were all that was left: a man and a woman with no secrets between us. Complete revelation, total understanding, ensuing surrender. I belonged to you as much as you were mine. We couldn’t help it. It might have been biology, destiny, psychology, higher circumstances. We were and would always be a perfect match. If we were to look at our time together from any viewpoint in our lives, past and present, the best days were always those we spent in each other’s arms.

All of a sudden there was a big explosion. Then nothingness spread around like an ink stain. It swallowed us. We were no more. We had never existed. No Plan. No Shambhala. No Evolution. No Masters. No Twin Flames. No big love. No transformation. No wounds. No yearning. No Oscar and no Cassandra. Just the heavy black ink of forgetfulness, and ignorance that turned to bliss.

* * * *

Lord Lumiel and Lady Myriam closed the Gates of Shambhala behind them, forever. Mothership Shambhala would return to the Morning Star without them. They were the Rebel Twins headed for a parallel third dimension that would come into being once the White Island had disappeared from the Earth’s dimension. Exciting, challenging times lay ahead. The course of history would be forever changed by their disobedience. They welcomed the element of surprise.

* * * *

Replay: Tara, 21 March 2012 

“Hi Oscar...”

The attractive middle aged woman in the beige Chanel dress placed her manicured hand on her lover’s cheek. A couple of days’ stubble made him even more handsome, she thought. He had made an effort and was not his usual shabby, if charming, self. New shoes and a silk burgundy shirt. She couldn’t wait to peel his clothes off, as soon as they would reach the comfort of the room she had booked in a nearby five-star hotel. She wanted to feel his body next to hers, and to offer her body to him like an oasis in the desert.

He was a divorced, failed artist. She was the unloved wife of an international golfer. They had a lot in common, not just the physical attraction that had brought them together. Like all the bonds that are formed in rehab, where Cassandra and Oscar had met a year previously, theirs was deep and life-changing.

“I’m glad you could make it, Cassie,” Oscar said. “I know the paps are always following you...”

He leaned over to kiss her. At last. Sex between them was finally a possible antidote for the previous sadness in their lives. Relationships between patients weren’t permitted in the clinic. They could not be intimate there: it would muddle their therapy. So Cassandra and Oscar had let their fondness for each other grow in silence. A stolen kiss from time to time, and greedy hands on skin would have to wait, they would make love when they were both free, back in the normal world.

Cassandra was discharged from rehab first, before Christmas the previous year. Twelve months had passed since her last half-baked attempt at taking her own life. She had never really meant to kill herself: it was only a cry for help. Oscar’s problem with addiction to drugs and alcohol was more deeply rooted. It had taken him a little longer to recover, but he had eventually left the clinic two months earlier and had now been clean for six months.

The time had come for them to meet under the sun, or almost. She was still married, technically speaking, and couldn’t afford to be caught having an affair with a penniless artist. Her husband’s new paternity suit would soon provide her with the grounds to leave their loveless marriage. But for now, money was important so she had to bite her lip for a little while longer.

Oscar didn’t quite share her concern with finances. He was a bit dippy, like most reformed hippies. He wasn’t the best of catches in economic terms, but he was very dashing, and as affectionate as a child. They had both recovered from life-long mental troubles and were no longer afraid of anything their psyches might throw their way. Not one single stone in their minds had been left unturned. At last they had faced, and banished, all fears and shame, and were letting reality do its healing.

Their lives had been no bed of roses. Both had secrets which had plagued their souls, fuelling their escapist tendencies. When Cassandra was seven, her mother had committed suicide. When she was eight, she had discovered that her father had also died, in a car crash, six months before her mother’s death. Cassandra had never really come to terms with the loss of her father, and had made up imaginary scenarios where he was still very much alive and the hero of her life.

Oscar’s troubles were even worse: he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was five and sent to be cured in a religious institution a year later. There, he was sexually abused, at the tender age of six.