thighs, then moved like a soft breeze over my pubic hair. It swept over my vaginal lips to my clitoris. I arched sharply in response and sat up.
The room remained silent, no one but myself on the bed.
—Bael,— I thought and felt his lips press, barely tangible, on mine.
—Lie back.—
—How did you? . . I’m clothed—covered with a blanket!—
—My hands slide through them. Have I pleased you?—
I could psychically visualize his dark eyes, shining, mesmerizing, the curve of his lips, his lean taut body leaning over my own. My physical eyes were blind to his presence. —I can’t see you.—
—Of course not. In your plane, I am spirit-fleshed. Close your eyes. I can cross the gap between our dimensions through touch.—
—No.—
His anger rose palpably at my refusal, then ebbed, as if he struggled to suppress it. —I have waited over four thousand years, Leianna. Do you deny me this long-awaited fulfillment? And your own?—
—My son. My sister.— I gestured toward Daniel and Ginnie.
—They sleep. They need not know.—
—I can’t. Go now, Bael. I have to sleep. I have to find Quatama.—
—Quatama will not run away.— His tone became petulant, then coaxing. —I have sought you for so long. I must join with you. Let me rock you to sleep.—
—No.— I turned on my side, facing him. —Not until I know more. You promised me control.—
He bristled, the current sweeping over me physically. —We will finish what we once began,— he snarled, furious.
I lay curled in a fetal position, waiting, unafraid, but determined to defy him, to hold him to his psychic word.
A standoff silence, electric and hot, ran between us.
And then, like a capricious wind suddenly shifting direction, he vanished from the room.
CHAPTER 8
The Snow Queen. It reminds me of Hans Christian Anderson’s famous story, everything white and crystal. The crystalized plain, smooth and shining, seems to travel to an endless horizon, only small white huts with frozen gardens and shrubbery dotting the flat landscape. In the distance beyond the village, the plain rises to the right, a forest flowing outward, and dips to the left, continuing the line of flatland.
The spirit masters live in these huts. Quatama calls himself my spirit master.
We walk along the crystal ice to his dwelling. I remark upon the wintery, fragile, fairy tale appearance of this place.
“It is winter here, just as it is in your world. The spirit planes of Eliom and of Earth are very close and share the same seasonal rotation. But the seasons are enhanced in our world, made pure in a way that cannot be matched in your dimension.”
I notice I’m barefoot, in my nightgown, yet only feel a pleasant coolness beneath me and around me. Quatama is clothed in a brown longsleeved robe that seems much too roomy for his short, almost scrawny frame. His thin black hair curls over his neck. Tendrils cling to his forehead. His face is neither old nor young and difficult to focus on, as if it were a flickering hologram. From what I can see of it, he has small, opaque, black eyes, a pointed but small nose, thin cheeks, and thin, relaxed lips. His skin is sallow and pale.
We reach Quatama’s hut. There is no door, just an entrance way we pass through. The inside is sparsely furnished: a low table, no chairs, rugs on the floor. Shelves and hooks hold belongings, but I cannot focus on them.
Quatama sits on the rug in the front room. There is a smaller room beyond it, which also seems bare, empty, but I cannot see fully into it. Quatama gestures beside himself, and I sit down next to him.
“I don’t know how I got here,” I tell him.
“You are out of body. Your mortal, Earthly body. Your spirit is now encased in your astral body, a more permanent vehicle of expression.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Think of stacking dolls, one fitting within the other. The outer body is the physical body, within it, the mental or emotional self attached to the physical. Within that, the astral body which is a viable thought form created by the spirit which rests within it, which cradles the spark of life fueling each individual.”
I blink at him, understanding, experiencing my multiplicity as he explains it. The feeling is uncomfortable. I struggle and return to a sense of just one self.
He laughs, three fluted notes of perfect tone and duration.
“No,” I say, “I don’t understand how I got here. The transition from the mortal world to this one.”
“Oh,” Quatama says. His speaking voice, a soft, gravelly rumble, differs from his laughter, not a musical note to be heard. “It is similar to dreaming. As your physical body slept, your spirit, or mind, if you prefer, responded to my summons, locked onto my location and, within seconds of your mortal time, journeyed here by activating your astral or spirit body for dimensional travel.”
“Does the astral or spirit body grow and eventually die, like the physical one?”
“The spirit body is of a more permanent nature. We judge time here differently, in fact, control it to our needs. Time is a concept. Through it, we interact through space with matter, and by it, we gauge our experience and growth. But, yes, the spirit body can be changed, altered, to reflect stages of growth, and is eventually discarded by most in what you would call the far distant future, though sooner by some.”
“Discarded?”
“Even death on Earth is a need to discard the body when the life experience goal—the growth it was fashioned to express—is finished.”
“And what if the growth wasn’t properly . . . expressed?”
A faint hint of a smile crosses his lips. “Then the lesson must be relearned.”
“Take the class all over again.”
“Live another Earthly life with that lesson as part of it once more.”
“We have no free will?”
He looks surprised, then laughs again, but this time the notes hold a sad timbre. “All is free. Nothing is forced. Everyone of us is responsible for our own decisions.”
“But . . . what if you don’t want to learn the lesson over again?”
“Then you will not grow,” he says somberly, “and stagnation will set in until, in time, you realize the need and accept the responsibility for correcting your faults.”
I squirm on the rug. It appears to be a simple rug, a light olive green, cool and comfortable. My restlessness is due to my uncertainty. Why has Quatama brought me here? What has he to do with Bael and my dream of Eliom? What did he say—as
