A pebble of time for light

The air was thick, smothering her skin as rain ricocheted against the slate roof. Mildew and disintegrating paper filled the room, pushing her away as she walked to the midday light pooling on stone. Dragging fingers over its surface steadied her breathing. A kaleidoscope of shadows played through the broken window before her, grey hills rolling into the horizon. She continued stroking the lined sill, each movement a mindless meditation. It was frigid. A thin layer of condensation melted beneath her hands as she continued the hypnotic assessment of her surroundings. Everything was cut from the earth, benches, tables, shelves; the room was a monument to man’s triumph over nature. She shuddered and tugged at the woolen hat sliding up her head. It was too cold to be humid, but her hair grew wet all the same.

A rat ran in front of a pile of books that cantilevered itself towards the center of the room. She inhaled slowly, trying to warm the air before it hit her lungs. The sea raged off the far side of the building, like a woman in labor. Where had she read about this place? For that matter, why had she ever decided to come? Her hands shook. She would not be allowed to return without a souvenir. The front door blew back on its hinges, slapping against the rock wall with each howl off the water. She did not believe in hauntings, but she did believe in life. She knew how large it was and how small she was and right now, the thought made her sick.

As she bent over her knees, trying get beneath the tacky air, her hand brushed against warmth. It wasn’t soft or pliable, not like a body or something animate, but it sweated beneath her touch. She thought about running for a second. And then bent closer.

++++

When she turned nine, her aunt gave her a doll that talked. It had eyes that opened and closed and arms that raised up and down. The legs worked too. Everyone at the party clapped and begged to hold it. It completely horrified her. There were no joints in the elbows or knees and the eyes blinked like a lizard. “MA-ma! MA-ma!” the thing crackled as she held it with outstretched arms. “Stop!” she commanded, but the toy kept rasping and shutting its eyes with excruciating precision. She threw it to one of her friends, ran into her room and locked the door. Her mother tried to convince her to rejoin the party, but she refused. There was nothing human about that creature. It made her feel like she was being watched, assessed with each tortuously executed blink.

The party ended without her. She didn’t care. She hoped someone had taken the doll with them. When she came to dinner, the doll sat across from her seat at the table. “Why is that there!” she yelled. “I don’t want it! Take it away!” Her mother straightened her skirt before sitting down. “Your aunt paid a lot of money for that doll. I thought you might give it a chance.” The doll was immobile and said nothing. Her father winked at her and took her hand in his. He took the doll’s in his other. “Let’s say grace and forget all about this. I know you both have a lot of playing to do.” She stared at him. “This is not my father,” she’d whispered. But of course it was. He winked at her mother like a big joke was in progress. Her mother covered her mouth with her napkin and pretended to sneeze. The doll just stared across the table, freezing her in her seat. That was the moment she discovered that her will to live was stronger than her fear. She picked up her fork and started eating, never taking her eyes off the doll until the last bite was down.

When dinner was over, she asked to be excused and left the doll sitting in the chair. When her mother came up to read her bedtime story, she asked for the doll. Her mother looked relieved and returned with the creature. “Put her by the window so she can breathe fresh air.” she commanded. It was done.

In the morning, the window was open, the doll gone. “Oh, I hope she didn’t fall!” she intoned as her mother gawked out the window. “It’s the second story!” Her mother straightened up and looked at her dead on. “If I ever find out what you did with that doll, you will wish I hadn’t.” Then she turned on her heel, leaving the room silent.

The girl was still. She inhaled the scent of cherry blossoms from the tree across the street and flexed her toes. They were bare and her legs brushed against her cotton pajamas. There was nothing in her room except for her bed, a dresser and a few library books about Vikings and mummies. She liked it clean. Simple. A can peeked from beneath her bed and she bent over to pick it up. Shook it. The hairspray was nearly gone. She smiled and padded down to breakfast, dumping it back in her mother’s drawer. The lighter was fished from her pocket and placed on the mantel inside the wooden box. She felt weightless.

++++

The stone was hot beneath her hand but did not burn her. It radiated up her arm and through her face until she felt her hair drying into curls. Everything around it was cold. She reached her other arm out in a circle, testing each flagstone, trying to ascertain a pattern, but none appeared. The sea continued to hammer against the foundations. She moved to stand on the warm stone, it made the abandoned building ache less. The mental checklist began.

There were too many books for it to be random. It had to be a library at some point. The Norman architecture dated the place to around the 11th century AD. That didn’t explain the fact that the building seemed to be cut from one piece of stone. It did not explain what she was standing on.

Her feet grew warm through her hiking boots and she looked down expecting to see the ground molten beneath her. Its surface was smooth, worn by numberless feet, and gave away nothing. The only way you might find it was to stumble over it. She began shifting from foot to foot, giving the heat a chance to disperse before re-contacting her soles. Each exhalation sent fog rolling to meet the viscous ether surrounding her. It was a dance, she thought. A duel between secrets buried in time and my present curiosity.

The stone beneath her shifted slightly, causing a bobble to the right. She reached out her hand and caught the edge of a stone table. As her fingers curled around it, she squeezed and willed herself upright. The table lifted.

She stood on both feet, staring at the table. Her toes pushed her to the perimeter of warmth and stopped. She looked down. It ended a half meter from the table. She bent closer and pulled her cell out. Flicked on the flashlight app and felt her legs shake. A groove ran through the stone the same width as the table.

“It’s never the aspiring detective that gets it first.” She reminded herself. “It’s the ones who run.”

The channel fit her finger perfectly, hugged in around it like a cradle. As she drug her flesh across its surface, she noted that half was hot, half cold, as if an impenetrable wall bisected the trough. She tried to roll her weight into one side of her finger, than the other, but it was locked in place, equally pressed against the rock.

Her knees began to ache from crouching and she pressed into her feet to stand. Her hand remained rooted to the ground. She looked around the room. The light skimmed low through the door at the far end. This far north, it would be dark in two hours at most.

All was still, save the sea. No gulls rode the updrafts, no trees shook their leaves at the wind. She was completely alone, save a rat and a patch of stone that refused to release her.

+++++++

She was aloof in college. The clubs, sports and sororities held no interest for her.

Her history professor was 20 years her senior and wore the same tweed coat to class every day. That caught her. She watched him prepare his lecture notes at the lectern for a month. Wondered, “Why that jacket?” There was never a deviation.

At the end of the second month she decided to ask him to coffee. Along with his folder of notes he always carried a mug that looked like a first attempt in Freshman pottery. While she’d never gotten close enough to smell him, she noticed his teeth and shirt sleeves-both bore a hint of color that was too light to be nicotine.

She decided on October 13, which fell on Friday that year.

She didn’t believe in coincidence and wanted to see if he noticed.

After class, she walked straight to the front of the room and stood in his path.

Jack looked up to find a short brunette staring at him, hand on her backpack strap, the other extended towards his face. His nose twitched and he ran his fingers inside the tweed pocket, digging for a handkerchieve.

“Hello.” She smiled.

He coughed and cover his mouth. Too late.

“Apologies. I’m sorry, your hand surprised me.”

She started.

“It’s alright. I don’t get sick. Can I call you Jack or would you prefer Dr. Temple?”

He couldn’t place her face and knew he should be able to. Took a stab.

“Students generally call me Dr. Temple.”

She raised an eyebrow and reduced him without speaking.

“I want to get coffee with you and talk about Spain. Specifically, the Alt Emporda.”

Her voice stayed even and Jack smelled warm cornbread on her breath. Her skin glistened at the corner of her eyes and he realized she was nervous. But so was he. He shook his head to clear some space to think. She blanched. Seemed smaller.

Jack reached a hand out, touched her shoulder. He jumped visibly. She was hot.

She swayed briefly, than caught herself.

“Sorry. I wasn’t expecting you to refuse. I thought everything out.”

Jack cursed to himself.

“No. I wasn’t saying ‘no’, just needed to focus. Today is an intense day for me.”

She nodded and handed him a napkin.

“That’s why I asked you out. It had to be today or never.”

Jack’s head cocked sideways. Why hadn’t he noticed her before?

“What class are you in?”

She waved a hand over her shoulder.

“This one. I’ve been sitting in the second row on the right hand side for the last two months. It’s fine if you haven’t noticed. I was trying to blend in.”

He looked at her closer. Shoulder length hair, blue eyes, hips. If he had a type and she weren’t a student. Jack stepped back from the desk.

“What the hell. It’s Friday the 13th and you want to talk about my area of expertise. You say it’s no coincidence and I don’t believe in them anyway. Let’s go.”

She held out her hand and he took it. Fuck the rules. Her voice was gravel speckled honey and he needed something sweet to wear away the edges of his day.

They made it to the parking lot, not speaking, just walking. She motioned to a green MG with its top down. He grinned.

“You have my favorite car. And, by the way, what is your name?”

She dug the keys out of her backpack, then threw it behind the driver’s seat. The keys sailed at Jack’s head and she swung into the passenger’s seat.

“Do your homework and drive.”

++++++++++++++++++

The light shifted from grey to mauve. Magic hour muted the roaring sea and coaxed her towards the ground. She sighed and knelt on the stone. Her watch read dusk. Palms and toes pressed into the heat and she thought about sleeping there.

It was at least four kilometers back to the car and her cell battery wouldn’t last. The only real choice was where in the building she would try and get some rest.

Her eyes wandered over the objects in the room as they started to soften at the edges. A floor to ceiling bookcase dominated the furthest corner from her. Its shelves were overflowing with papers and rolled parchment that clogged the space to capacity. Interspersed at random intervals were stone spheres that had been halved and hollowed out into bowls. They were all empty. As she gazed over its entirety she gasped. It was the hull of a boat, turned on its end, back into the wall. Except it was stone.

The table closest to her was almost bare except for a candle stick that rose like a tree trunk from the table. It looked to be carved from the same piece of stone. There was no wax on the stick or the base but the scent of beeswax wound through the viscous air into her nostrils. Two long benches flanked either side of the table and she could just make out areas worn smooth from countless sessions sitting there. They were carved to resemble planks sitting atop log rounds. The table top itself was at least six inches thick and its corners were perfect 90 degree angles. From her crouched position she could make out the base, which mirrored the candlestick above. The overall impression was that the table had grown out of the bedrock.

A ledge ran around the room at window sill level. Corbels shaped like crescent moons supported it every foot or so. Between the corbels a border of acanthus and roses twined about each other and the stone felt so alive, she found herself inhaling to try for a scent of the flowers.

There was a six inch wide hole cut in the corner closest to her. From her vantage point she could see the ocean through it and the horizon beyond. From the way the light was fading, she guessed it was facing due east.

Jack was supposed to meet her here. He hadn’t shown up. It didn’t bother her that he’d stood her up, he’d been late for plenty of meetings. But he’d always been punctual when it came to Lucibel. His interest bordered on obsession, the passion he’d expressed after their first date had been the only bench mark to hold a candle to his ardor on this subject. Her mind clicked through its deductive process as she kicked her legs out and sat on the heated stone.

They’d met in Barcelona four days ago to go over the plan. He’d been gathering information on the site since he spoke better Catalan than her. She’d headed up to Perpignan to do the same for similar reasons. They made a good team when they divided and conquered. Men seemed to respond better to Jack in Spain and to her in France.

“Might as well capitalize on our strengths.” He’d smiled at her over their tallats. The small cup fit in her hands perfectly and warmed them as she tipped the coffee between her lips and savored the hint of milk. Jack reached out his hand and touched her hair. Said it was time, so they paid and left.

She put him on a train for Girona that evening and walked Park Guell until she spotted Venus on the horizon. Tibidabo glared out from the hill behind her, throwing manmade light toward the planet’s winking glow. When she looked at the amusement park shooting its neon and sparkle atop the mountain, her heart sighed. Even the soul of Spain could be bought for an overpriced ride with a view. She hoped they would not be too late.

Old villages were being rediscovered by ex-pats from Britain and northern Europe and bought up at fire-sale prices. They’d kept tabs on Rabos for years, monitoring its growth and industries, encouraged by its imperceptible progress. This year, they’d finally found the funding to put together the equipment and resources needed to fully chart the site.

“Just the two of us” Jack insisted and she agreed. The information was too explosive and far too exciting to trust anyone else to keep it under wraps. They were pulling out all the stops for this.

A sabbatical for him and a cessation of graduate work for her. The liberal attitude of the university would only extend so far if they knew the full extent of their intentions.

To the world, a professor of pre-Iberian goddess based cultures in northern Spain was travelling with his assistant/lover to catalogue the contents of a particularly ancient religious site in the Alt Emporda. For she and Jack, it was a portal to the origin of humanity.

Which is why, when Jack did not show up at the appointed coordinates, she decided to enter on her own. After all, it was only the staging area, not the site itself. Now that she stood inside, her perceptions were shifting without restraint. The place was alive, holding onto information that she could smell like damp paper drying on a heater. Where she’d expected a place to gather any last thoughts, she found endless unanswered questions.

“I’ve got to move around at least once before it’s completely dark.” She instructed herself. First one foot came off the stone, then the next. She was surprised at the reluctance she felt to leave the space, but turned to her right and began to walk the perimeter.

On an instinct she bent and removed her shoes. They stayed where she shed them as she continued forward. The floor was even and unmarked as though some great blade had sliced it cleanly and then polished it after. She windmilled her arms over the walls and empty spaces, testing for differences in air pressure, temperature, anything out of the ordinary. There was no variation any place but where she’d been standing for the last four hours.

+++++++++++++

Jack had surprised her when they arrived in Barcelona. “Let’s stay at the airport for sunset…it’s so beautiful looking out to sea.” He took her hand and led her to a bank of windows facing west.

El-Prat was a soaring affair with lofty ceilings and walls made of glass. The central courtyard offered shade and sun in equal measure. She’d always loved the feeling of the place. Like a vast terrarium for transients, it soothed and reminded its guests of life’s impermanence.

They stood there, watching the sun drop into the Mediterranean as landscape shifted from daylight gradients to the pastel of evening. “So subtle,” she’d mused, breathing in the scent of coffee lacing the air. “You’d never realize color could change unless you measured it before and after dusk. You just assume it stays the same, even when your eyes tell you it is completely dark.”

Jack looked down at her and put her hand into his tweed pocket. He never took the jacket off unless he was making love or showering. “Remember that when we get to Sant Quirze. Everything will look one way and be another.”

Her skin prickled when he’d said that. This was before they’d gone their separate ways north. The first time they’d both been in Spain together at the same time. She wondered what his fears were. There were plenty to have but neither of them liked to dwell on things outside their control. If they focused on the goal, obstacles became peripheral.

She traced her finger around the inside pocket seam of his jacket, willing the cycles to unwind the knots they still had to untie.

“We haven’t talked about what we are prepared to do if they refuse us entry.” His voice came from a distance and she turned sharply.

“We don’t usually plan for contingencies. Why are you bringing this up now?”

His eyebrow raised a fraction and his shoulders bunched.

“This is not Indiana Jones. Besides, I left my whip at home and you always lose your hat. We can’t just go in there with excitement and a lifetime of scholarship to protect us.”

She looked at the sea and then at her shoes. They had good soles. Kept her from blisters when she would have gotten them in any other pair. Weak ankles had always been her nemesis, rolling her feet in when she’d been younger. She’d had no end of trouble finding the support she needed to keep her stride straight. But she didn’t stop hiking. She ran every day to remind her feet that they had the strength to endure. Jack underestimated her resourcefulness and her tenacity. She wouldn’t do the same.

“I’m not worried. We have everything we could bring from home and our wits have never failed us. Why borrow trouble?”

Jack rubbed his temple with his free hand. She never let him dodge a bullet, even when he was shooting at her.

“You remember the day you asked me to coffee? Friday the 13th, October…the day the Knights Templar were officially disbanded and exterminated?”

Her stomach flipped. He’d never brought up that particular detail of their association. Even though she knew he had to realize her choice wasn’t random, she’d laid her curiosity around his omission to rest for the last five years. Why was he bringing it up now?

“I do.”

The sun seared its last impression in a line at the horizon as Jack inhaled audibly.

“It struck me as Fate when you approached me that day. I had no idea why you targeted me but I was so absorbed with my work that I didn’t think to consider the consequences of saying yes to you.”

A sultry female voice announced the last departing flight to San Francisco via London. It was an oddly appropriate choice, Jack thought. Made you want to return, even if you were anxious to get home. He could sense her hand getting colder in his pocket. He knew he wasn’t doing a great job laying out his point. Everything got muddy and clear around her; it always had. She saw things, connections in the work that he’d never have thought were there. She also clouded his judgement in moments where everything depended on cool headedness. To Jack, it could only mean one thing.

“Kate. I am in love with you.”

She blinked.

“Jack.”

He stepped in front of her, blocking the sea, the trees, anything that could obscure her view of what he was saying.

“When we find the cradle, I want us to make love there so Lucibel and the entire realm of observers knows that we are one. I want us to create a light that leaves no doubt as to our intentions.”

Kate was silent, considering the request. Jack had never been one for effusive shows of affection. He preferred to reserve his passion for private moments, or his work. This was a combination of the two. He was proposing absolute surrender.

“I’ll go to Perpignan first. We’ll talk about it when we rendezvous in Barcelona.”

She felt a low heat rising in her chest. It would happen, just like her first step toward him. Inevitable, a gravity that remained consistent regardless of the opposing forces vying for its energy.

“You know what, fuck it, Jack. Yes.”

He hadn’t spoken, had just taken her hand from his pocket, threaded his fingers through hers and pulled her through El Prat to a waiting cab. They’d wound through the city to El Palace Hotel where Jack escorted her through the front doors and into its heights.

“Get used to feeling like you’re living in a dream.” He’d said as they sat on their balcony with glasses of wine in their hands. “When we find the cradle, life is going to look like a million reflecting surfaces all pointed at the stars.”

Kate leaned back into the couch and nodded. She’d never imagined a dull life and had no illusions of winning an abstraction like success. She just wanted to see what life could be, how many particles of light she could experience while in her body.

“There have been two times in my life when I felt surprised by my emotional response to something unexpected. I don’t care if life becomes infinitely complex or how many stars know, we found our way home. This is it.”

They sat on the balcony, wrapped in over-priced robes, staring at the sea and the lights of Barcelona until the sun threw its first searing tentacle across dawn.

¬++++

It was dark now. The room refused to give up any secrets before deepening into shades of indigo and black. Back on the heated stone, Kate began to hum. It was an old song she’d learned in her childhood books and made up a melody to.

Silent stone echoes on,

Come to bed and rest,

Every child, worn and weary,

Find some peace at last.

Light will feed you,

Light will guide,

Church is not a place to hide.

Wander far, but always know,

The cradle is your home.

As she sang, the sea became distant and the air in the room cleared. Kate rocked, as she always had when she sang the song. Forward and back, side to side. A slow circle beginning to widen. Her face grew calm and she placed her hands on the ground at her sides. This was alright. Safe. The darkness felt lighter, warmer. She opened her eyes and looked down. The stone was glowing.

Its perimeter was indistinct, but the light shone brightest beneath her. She recalled pressing her flashlight to her hand as a kid and watching the ligaments dance against bone. Her knees popped, relaxing into the earth. She was still singing. Her lips wouldn’t stop the lines.

Jack’s voice began to buzz in her mind, all the facts and places they’d discussed flying about crazily, daring her to grab one.

“Lucibel and Lucifer were the same.”

“They were light bringers. People in the Alt Emporda remember.”

“Hail Lucifer, who was wronged!”

“Venus and Lucifer, lover and light.”

“He came willingly.”

“Brother of Christ, not fallen angel.”

“The stone was not of this planet.”

“When the circles align, the awakening will be upon us.”

Kate brought her hands to her heart and bowed her head. She knew what was happening, at last. This was the test. This was the portal, not a staging area. It was the gate.

And then, knew, Jack could already be here. Watching. Or dead.

Her seat became warmer as the thought sat in her mind. What if he followed the threads instead of the light? What would it be like to perish on the cusp of experiencing his life’s work?

The room itself began to vibrate, she could see the walls shaking. It was a uniform quiver, nothing fell from the shelves. In fact, if anything, they began to rise, like kids on a Gravitron at the fair.

Tables elevated, shelves climbed, the boat bookcase in the corner shifted as though on a vertical tide. Kate accepted all this calmly, did not question how she could see the movement when it was supposed to be night.

“Every line is also a wave,” she heard herself whisper, somehow inside the song that continued spiralling from her mouth. But the sea was so far away, back by her car. Why had she walked all the way on foot instead of driving? Why did she think she could see the ocean from inside the room?

Kate brought her hands to her forehead, pressing fingers between her eyes. Her head was a drum, her skin, the membrane holding everything together. It would have to be resilient. She opened her eyes and scanned the walls.

She was sliding down, placed in the center of the stone as the room remained overhead. It did not matter if she understood everything there, the symbology, the smell, the sounds of the sea. She was travelling, something in her proving worthy of the next step.

As she descended, a voice seeped through her consciousness, forcing her to listen, to hear.

It was no longer about applying her intellect, the quality of her soul was being assessed.

She felt the heat of stone spread throughout her body, rendering her immobile and pliant. It was reading the response of her tissue to being permeated with something beyond her control. Kate sighed and arched her spine as heat moved up her legs and into her brain.

There was nothing else around her, all senses on hold as she allowed the earth to hold her.

Drifting, a feather, she was lightening even as she fell.

And Jack was beside her, the stone expanding to hold him.

“Hand.” He said, and she offered it up.

They rocked together, bodies sitting cross-legged, knees to knees. His eyes were opals, every color she could imagine looking back at her. The song continued, flowing from both of them into each other as the air warmed about them. Kate could not take her eyes off Jack, they were locked together and she could no longer remember where they were trying to go.

++++++++++

“What do you think I am trying to do?” Jack asked her the first time they were alone and still. After the coffee and the drive, after the walk through the university library. At midnight the clock rang over the campus, startling them from their books. Kate studied his face, her head cocked to the right. He was handsome, not just in a messy, professorial way. His mouth had creases at the sides from private smiles, his eyes commanded attention, even behind glasses.

“Tell me about the cult of Venus in the Alt Emporda, I’d imagine.” she said with a straight face. He wanted a mystery to solve and she didn’t plan on remaining the cat now that she’d caught his interest. All she needed to do was stay just out of reach.

Jack stared at her and paused. What was he trying to do? Seduce her, obviously, came the reply. He batted it away. She was too interesting to leave it at that, though he didn’t doubt that they would collide sooner or later. Her curiosity and knowledge held him in a precarious balance. There was nothing Freshman about her choice of dates for their meeting, nor was she blushing when he spoke of fertility rites and sex magic cults in pre-Iberian culture. Yet, she clearly wanted to know more, something specific, he sensed, though he couldn’t say what. He leaned back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head.

“Alright, I’m just going to say it. You fascinate me. I’m also bewildered by my level of attraction to you, having never noticed you before today. I want to study with you and fuck you. It’s disconcerting.”

Kate was 19 going on 25. Jack was in his late twenties. She thought about telling him that her childhood had been spent combing books on Isis and the Templars and wondering how they were connected. It would be a good card to hold in case she needed to reengage him. But she’d been studying sound too, the way vibrations made up physical objects, the frequencies of different words and languages. He would understand.

Her hands shook under the table as she came up against her resistance. Sure, she’d been watching him for months but that was different than spending time with him. Far different than actually speaking her mind for him to assess and pick apart. Self-criticism had never been a weakness of hers but she was no fool when it came to the economics of love. You give, someone receives. When the trust loop is completed, both parties benefit. She tapped the underside of the table. The loop of trust. She’d already held out the first strand by inviting him to coffee. Sure, he might brush her off and leave her to find another ally, but things were going well so far. Besides, it was better to try for the stars than wallow in the mud.

“Jack.” It was the first time she’d said his name without asking. He liked the sound of smoke on it.

“Girl.” He had to find out her name

She shook her head and let her hair fall over one eye. “I already know about the sex-magic and the Isis line. I’ve been a practicing initiate since I was 15. What I’m interested in is how they came to be connected with the knights Templar.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. He was ready to be surprised but not to be compelled.

“Why would you think there is a connection?”

She nodded, expecting his question. There was no point in being coy, he was the only person she’d been able to find within driving distance who could possibly speak to the subject.

“The Knights were connected to the Cathars. The Cathars were notorious for their healing abilities and their connection to the Druids living in the Pyrenean region. They were also known to have snuck out their most profound treasure from Montsegur castle the night before surrendering to the Catholic crusaders. It is known that both Knights and Cathars inhabited Montsegur at the end. I think they worked together to remove a lineage. Perhaps an actual person. I want to know what you think.”

Jack wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and scooted his glasses up. She hadn’t answered his question so much as given him a taste of what she knew. A gesture of good faith, he mused, as though they were in negotiations for something they both wanted. But how would she know what he wanted? He grabbed his class roster from the folder of papers in front of him and skimmed the list. None of the names jumped out at him until he saw Katherine.

“Clear. Pure. Katherine. Is that your name?” He knew as soon as he said it. Of course. That was the point. She was unfiltered and patient-prepared to wait until she could engage without artifice. Jack’s mind became a labyrinth he knew perfectly. If she could hold the wisdom without dilution, she could hold the line. She could be the one to enter the cradle with him.

“Indeed. But I prefer Kate. It’s less pretentious. Too many ex queens and princesses go by the long form. That said, you’ve mentioned a cradle and a connection with a lady that I think might figure in to my Isis work. I think we’d make a natural team if you’re prepared to rob the cradle.”

Jack chuckled, savoring the sound of life flying around the book shelves. “This is all rather clandestine, Kate.”

“I know. It suits us much better than a brief in Starbucks, right?”

He took her hand and studied the fingers, one by one. It was finely carved, the bones delicate, palm narrow. He didn’t like meaty hands on women. They were natural channels and it seemed fitting that their hands should display the sensitivity. Jack raised it to his lips and his eyes met hers. They wavered in the heavy air of the library. She looked at his mouth and moved her hand away.

He couldn’t breathe. The light in the room, already diffuse from outside lamps, lowered until it framed her face. She inhaled and opened her mouth.

A sound poured out, so pure Jack felt every sound in the universe. It was quiet, felt more like a whisper than a tone, but it was pregnant and caught him hard. His body was afloat on the current, he’d never hovered before, but he knew if he looked down, his chair would be far below.

“Who are you, Kate?” he whispered as she began to chant.

“The key, Jack. Who are you?”

Jack watched the room drop away and then they were alone in the darkness, the same congealed light creating a bubble around them.

“The lock, right? That’s what I’m supposed to say, isn’t it? That’s what the book says…but I’m the only one besides Astrid that has access to it.”

Their hands wrapped around each others’ as they wandered the night. To the casual observer, it was another forbidden liaison between faculty and undergrad. Kate paused and turned to Jack.

“I make things disappear with light. Material objects, conflict, questions. Perhaps it would be more fruitful to consider how we might leverage our resources.”

He kissed her then, swallowing all sound into his chest. It was the right choice.

+++++++++++

The ground roared up, splitting them apart before everything went black. She did not lose consciousness. Kate reached around her, willing something solid to appear.

“Jack.” She spoke with volume. “Jack. Say something.”

There was nothing. Kate was warm still, the song leaving its after-glow in the space. She had no idea how much space there was to fill. Her body uncurled from seated and she found no sore spots. It was as if the ground had softened before impact, all the hardness becoming a pillow she was being cradled on.

It was spongy beneath her, dry. Almost like a memory foam mattress in a sauna. She wanted to curl into it in the worst way, found her thoughts of Jack slipping through the earth and away from her. The air was different down here, wherever that was. Down no longer seemed right, but then she had no point of reference for where she might be. It smelled like fresh water. Moving water. She was not frightened, but every pore of her skin tingled with a tiny charge. This was bigger than she and Jack had expected. Even though they’d prepared to be overwhelmed.

A hand touched hers and she gasped. It was not Jack but it reminded her of him. This hand was softer, there was no hair on the back like his. Her body said, “Take it.” And she did. Found herself rising to her feet and walking forward into empty space.

Each step met with something to push against, though it might have been air for all she could tell. “Are you walking in darkness too?” she asked the hand. It pulled her forward gently, coaxing her with a grace that made her feet steady.

Then there were trees and she felt Jack in those too. He was changed though, almost an essence rather than a physical form. When she breathed in, she felt him fill her lungs. When she moved forward, he strengthened her legs. It reminded her of rituals she had taught him from the temple of Isis. Ways to move one’s energy from the body to the energetic double that existed like a hologram. She reached out for him with her mind, trying to locate his heart.

“What happened to you when we landed, Jack?” she questioned, expecting his voice in her head.

“I became what we sang, Kate.” His voice was not audible in her mind or ears. It throbbed in the blood pumping to her heart.

“But we sang of light. We sang of meeting Lucibel in the cradle.” It wasn’t that she disbelieved Jack, she simply wanted to feel him physically next to her. She wanted to crystallize what still floated in tendrils inside her.

“Walk forward, Kate. Keep walking forward.” And she felt him go before her, the hand still wrapped around her fingers. She did not question what was attached to it.

Light coalesced around her slowly and she did not notice it immediately. There was blue, the color just before dawn when night agrees to surrender. Nothing sharp came into focus, everything a sense of weight, mass being willed into shape. Her own body felt pliable, weightless in the emptiness of monochrome. Kate wanted a star to appear, felt like it was destiny to see something fixed and gleaming. At the very least, a comet shooting a flare of relativity to make sense of the environment.

Her heart beat steady, Kate realized she was completely awake and entirely detached from emotion. Sure, she wanted to feel Jack next to her, but that registered as more of an overlay, an outfit to put on or take of at will. It was not her flesh beneath. This fascinated her, even as she continued to progress over the yielding ground. She felt the feeling but she was not bound to follow it.

The blue continued to lighten until it reached a clean cerulean. Her gaze travelled down the length of her body and she felt herself lifting out and up. She was not given to making demands on unprecedented experiences and kept her mouth closed. Her body remained on the ground as she watched from above. She knew she was not dead.

She looked about for the hand that had led her through darkness but saw only one thing against the blue.

A stone appeared at a distance, its shape the crescent moon. She focused on it and took note that she travelled in a line toward it. The surface was utterly smooth, so glassy she should have been able to see her reflection in it. Instead she saw an old woman bent over the side, rocking it back and forth.

Kate took in her face, one endless wrinkle after another, trying to find her eyes. They sank into the recesses of her skin, two pinpoints sending beams into Kate’s forehead. She felt herself unwinding inside them. Laying herself bare for examination. It was a relief to be seen. Everything about her from conception to now was taken in and weighed. Witnessed, not judged.

The light continued through, Kate saw it reaching behind her and into the expanse. It was satisfied. She approached the woman and knelt beside her.

“What are you?” she asked, for it was clear the woman guarded the stone.

The woman nodded her head slowly and reached her hand to Kate. It was the same touch she’d felt moments ago. “Thank you for helping me.” Kate whispered.

When she looked down at the cradle, she realized she was no longer breathing.

++++++++++++++++++++

Kate would never call herself a lone wolf. Neither would Jack. They were individuals who saw the beauty of following their passion without apology. Often, it meant they worked alone, seemed aloof and unaccessible, but they were caught in web-spinning a network of curiosities that fascinated them.

Three months after their first encounter, Kate and Jack shacked up in a two bedroom flat in an old brownstone just off campus. It took two minutes to walk to the library and they wore a path between their front door and the books. There was a park a block away that had stands of old oaks Kate visited to practice her rituals. They ordered take-out constantly, most of the time from their computers. Entire weeks would pass with them orbiting each other without touching down for a conversation or meal.

Just as precisely, one of them would have a break through that demanded experimentation and the other would be summoned. It amazed both of them that for all the focus they applied to their study, they were equally happy to be brought into contact with another human.

“We’re doing the same work from different sides.” Jack said after they’d made love for three days. Kate pushed up on an elbow and studied him.

“Do you feel stronger? Brighter? It’s why we do this, you know that.”

Jack rolled her onto his chest and pressed his hands against the sway of her back. “I do and I do. You know we’re not just weird, we’re incredibly lucky.”

Kate stretched her arms above his head and placed her forehead on his.

“Luck is for the undisciplined. I’m the real deal. We transmute light or nothing.”

“That’s why I adore you, Kate.” Jack thought. “No compromise.”

++++++++

The belly of the cradle was luminous. Where the outside seemed to swallow light, the inside birthed it. If she had a fire made from burning opals, she’d still come up short on vibrance. There was a reason she wasn’t breathing. She didn’t need to in the presence of Life. “This is it. This is what we have been looking for.”

Kate stared into the expanse, even though she doubted that she still had eyes. She’d been rearranged on her trip through the portal, right down to the particles holding her body together. If she’d been pressed to explain what had happened, she’d have said she was transformed. Like the second coming of Christ, it happened in the blink of an eye that lasted longer than time itself. Perhaps she was the hologram she and Jack had spent so many hours fuelling. Perhaps the dross of a physical form had been completely burned away, leaving her in possession of her essential self.

But then, where was Jack? Everything in her training had indicated that successful completion of the transmutation would allow her to stay in communication with whomever she chose.

The consideration that Jack may have failed to make the leap did not bother her. In fact, she felt a breeze pass through her, like a whisper. Jack was here, but not in the same way as she.

As she pondered this, the light inside the cradle began to assemble, pulling from surrounding space until an outline shimmered before her. It inferred an infrastructure that was upright without committing to a particular form. More for her benefit than actual necessity for the entity.

She had lost all sense of direction. Up, down, in front of, behind, they all dissolved as she beheld the image of light. She was free of the constraints of 3 dimensional space. Free to observe and feel every nuance of movement occurring around her without becoming overwhelmed. She had no investment in the outcome, she realized. That made whatever happened now an unencumbered learning. She could feel but not be weighted by the sensation. She could love and breathe into the fullness of its potential. Jack could be whatever he was and she would touch him and they would go on learning like this until things shifted again. It flattened every possibility, every impossibility into a table top she could span easily.

As her spirit somersaulted through its newfound spaciousness, the light being reached out to her. The old woman who had watched everything from a distance now approached and extended her hand to Kate. It was a gesture, not an offer. She wanted her to approach the luminosity.

Kate was suffused with the brilliance. All she need say, was ‘yes’. Which she did. Instantly she was filled with a voice that moved her like a cork on the sea.

“How many people have actually looked for the truth behind the mythology?”

Matter paused, suspended in thrall of the thought. Kate waited too, there was more to come. The cradle began to rock, slowly at first and then faster until it became a whirling sphere that rose between them.

“He thought to find me incarnated. Something to be related to, someone he could study.”

She knew even before she saw the face in the ball.

“Jack.”

He sat in the room at the stone table, staring at the candle stick. There was a book on the table and his hands rested on an open page. His lips moved rhythmically and Kate understood he was chanting. No, it wasn’t that, he was…praying?

Lucibel spoke again, carrying her back to the cradle. “He is shallow. Ernest, yes and caught in human frailties. He would be incinerated before ever looking at the cradle.”

Fire stirred Kate’s belly. It wasn’t rage, it was conviction.

“He loves me. Surely that is enough to approach the light. Unless that is not what you really are.”

It didn’t laugh, exactly, but there was a decided ripple through Lucibel.

“Yes. He does at that. But what about you, Katherine? How were you pure enough to approach the cradle when Jack was not?”

So, the moment was here. Her memory supplied a sense of tension, a vague notion of nausea, but it passed swiftly. Kate drifted for a moment, letting her awareness be carried by the light waves emanating from Lucibel. She could never lie and remain there though the truth was more than she had anticipated.

“Thought moves differently here”, she realized. There was no slow unfolding; information did not dawn, it appeared as though commanded. “I am lingering because I remember the tendency of a body, my ego, to avoid unpleasantness…nothing more.”

But there was nothing unpleasant about the truth. It simply was.

“I not only hunger for the light, I have worked to become it.”

Lucibel countered.

“But what now, that I tell you, you have always been light. That you are all light.”

Kate felt herself slipping, shedding another skin as the words poured over her. All the breath, the fire, the desire to move beyond artifice-it had all been training. It had prepared her to accept this moment. She was lighter still, diffusing into the color around her, even as she struggled to collect herself.

“Is it too much for me?” she went to ask, but the words would not come. Instead, sound, more clear than any note she could have conceived of as Kate came from what she identified as her.

Lucibel wavered erratically, as if trying to leap out to catch the vibrations as they passed.

She watched for a moment and felt herself coalesce. There was no body anymore, nothing so crude for her to maneuver, but she was beginning to sense that energy could be grouped with intention. That her essence was what motivated certain particles to combine. She could become a fish as easily as a star and she flexed her awareness beyond its confines to test the theory.

She stood on the surface of the sun for a moment, expanded with its heat, felt its flares ripple through her field, and then, she remembered.

“He was my gravity. My contract to pull me into a body. To have this remembrance. He agreed to stay dark so I could experience expansion. He said he would see me at the end of his human life.”

Her heart no longer existed, as such, but her being shattered into a thousand fragments. Of sound.

They shot across the universe, dragging comets in their wake like water skiers tethered to a runaway boat. She felt creation itself bloom inside each fragment. Every galaxy bore a scent that reminded her of something on Earth. Wet stone after rain. Ozone in the aftermath of lightening. Space was a garden perfuming the very essence of possibility. And she inhaled deeply, calling them back to order.

They moved through staccato into a sensuous legato with stillness as afterglow.

There was no beginning and end, no place where sound and light did not venture.

And then she was lying in the cradle, the old woman rocking her with her foot and humming a tune that sounded familiar and old. In her hand she held a sphere and in it, Jack’s face, smiling as he laid down on the portal floor.

She waved her hands at him, trying to arrest his attention but his gaze fixed over her shoulder. “I should be able to contact him now.” She thought.

Lucibel echoed through her. “Are you certain you want to disturb him? He is finally ready to begin his journey.”

She looked closer, feeling the light from the cradle holding her steady. Jack’s face was the same, but his hands shook, an even tremor that passed like a shiver every few breaths. His eyes had their familiar lines but as she waited, they did not smooth. He moved deliberately, each motion coming slowly, without the spontaneous freedom she knew. He was old.

++++++++++++

She remembered when they had first discussed the possible outcomes of working together at the cradle site. Kate had been the one to suggest teaming up but Jack was skeptical. He had never discovered anyone who had successfully encountered the cradle alone and the thought of them attempting it together worried him.

“It’s difficult to be pure enough for admittance, let alone asking that of two people.”

Kate was unconvinced and shook her head.

“We balance each other. And since we’ve started working on the initiate level together, our tie is that much stronger. I think it works in our favor.”

Jack propped his hand against his mouth, covering it. Leaning into it, he weighed her words. And thought about his childhood.

An only child, Jack was raised by parents who were creative and practical. His mother was a theoretical physicist, his father an art historian. Their house had been a mosaic of prints by Italian masters and the unified field theory scrawled on the refrigerator in dry erase markers. He was allowed to have animals that did not require regular grooming. Mostly, Jack was a quiet kid who preferred books to people.

He’d had a best friend during high school, a lanky girl named Meredith who was into sewing period costumes. They spent hours together, him reading to her from Otto Rahn’s books on heretics and Lucifer, she sketching out her interpretation of what the characters might wear. They dressed as Lucifer and Venus for Prom and lost their virginity to each other in a lake cabin near Mt. Washington.

Meredith was cool and articulate, not unlike lime gelato. Jack never worried about saying something that would offend her because she did not care about offense. She cared about creating garments that played with light to startling effect. Jack was her inspiration, feeding her a constant source of information that wound into her seams and stitches. Their Prom wear had been exquisite.

Far from being sophomoric and gaudy, their outfits created a sense of galactic tension resolving in an undulation of shadow and light. She’d woven together tiny fishing lures and covered them in a sheer fabric to form a waist-coat for Jack. He wore a rough linen undershirt that had golden fibers embedded throughout. Down the sides of his tuxedo trousers, an iridescent strip of silk acted like a runway to his face. He looked like a god with his light curls and piercing eyes, just like she’d planned.

Her gown was flesh colored with a train that foamed behind her like sea spray. She had dyed the bottom blue and faded it gradually to nude at her waist. Her breasts were accentuated with silver curls beneath and around them, on her feet she wore slippers that curled at the toe with the same delicate curve.

Jack’s heart was useless when he saw the combined efforts of their work, but he said nothing. He figured they would continue on into infinity creating glorious homages to light. It never occurred to him there might be a price for such conviction.

Later that summer, Meredith was hit by an oncoming car riding her bicycle to his house. When Jack looked up from the costuming book, it was over. He recalled staring at his hands on the wheel, not knowing how to move. He’d been excited to present it to her as a gift for getting accepted into Princeton. He’d cradled her body in his arms for an hour, feeling the warmth leave her as he waited for someone to drive by. By the time a trucker stopped, Jack had started shivering.

Her parents did not press charges, despite Jack’s desperate wish to be punished. “It won’t bring her back.” Her mother had murmured. “You will never be the same after this, poor boy.”

The compassion stunned him. Made him vomit in the bus on the way back home. It was his get out of jail free card, but he was not going to let the jailer know he had it.

Looking at Kate, Jack felt the bile rise again. He could not tell her the story, it was his fate to bear, not hers. Still, the thought of leaving her behind, or worse, watching her be rejected at the gate to the cradle made him sick. He knew the price. But so did she and she was insistent.

He thought about abandoning his work, knew he loved her, feared its logical end.

“I’m no good at balance, Kate. When I go in for something, I’m in all the way. You’ve clouded my judgement. I’m all heart and no brain anymore.”

“I know,” she’d replied, giving him a hug. “That’s why we need to get to work.”

+++++++++

She lay in the cradle, the old woman stroking her cheek as she watched Jack close his eyes. It was strange that she did not feel remorse. His chest expanded and contracted so slowly, she could only feel the vibration travel through space to her.

“His body is failing,” she told Lucibel, “He’s dying.”

“So it is, are you sad?” The sky was crystalline and seemed to refract rainbows everywhere.

“Not sad, exactly. Curious. Look at him.”

Jack curled into a ball, curved in such a way that mimicked the shape of the cradle. His body seemed to shrink and expand with every breath. Kate saw light begin to lift off his skin and hover over him.

“His energy body,” she whispered. “It’s beautiful.”

Lucibel was quiet, letting light behold light.

Jack’s hands settled at his sides and ceased to quaver. His eyelids fluttered several times. Then suddenly, he sat upright.

Kate reached out to him, knowing it was not distress that moved him. He needed warmth.

“I am going back to help him down.”

The old woman stood up and shuffled back. When she raised her head, Kate watched as her skin pulled taut across her face until she was young.

“Go to him and bring him here. We will fill him together.” Her voice was clear and smoothed itself over Kate, lifting her out of the cradle. She felt buoyant and dense, looked down and saw flesh.

“What is this form for?” she questioned, remembering the weight of earth.

“It is so he will follow you. He will recognize you.”

And Kate stepped toward the shadows that gathered on the horizon. As she entered them, a hand reached for hers and guided her deeper. It was soft and warm and felt sympathetic. She stroked the fine hairs on the back of it and blinked her eyes. So strange to have senses, to feel disconnected from light. Her feet stumbled against roots and she reached out for something to steady her.

Ground whooshed up beneath her and she closed her eyes from vertigo. She had not anticipated this jarring as part of helping Jack.

And then she heard a low hum enter her body, felt it lengthen down her spine and uncurl her. She opened her eyes and saw Jack. Followed the sound to his mouth. She smelled the salt on the air and a faint sweat at his temple. She reached out and touched his shoulder.

When he opened his eyes, Jack saw stars. “Kate,” he whispered, “Is that you? Why can’t I see your face?”

Kate hugged him to standing. He was so light, almost transparent. She raised him in her arms and carried him across the room to the stone. It still pulsed with its unceasing heat. Laid him down and then placed her body beside him.

“I’m here to help you, Jack. To take you to the cradle.”

Jack sighed, letting his body sag into the stone. “That’s where you’ve been. Kate, you’re so light, I can’t see your edges.”

She cradled him then, wrapping her light around him until he was enveloped.

“It’s not important, Jack. I know you traded places with me. I should be looking for your face.”

His breath was mist now, the last bits of light rising from his body as she pressed herself through him and called them home.