Akasha 4 - Earth (12 page)

Bee was still singing, but now
substituting 'puh-state' when she touched her toes.

I glared at Alex. "Well that wasn't
very Buddhist of you."

Susan picked up the Chalice and tucked
the stem under her belt. She took my arm. "Come on, let's go see if
we can find a real Buddhist on board."

"Why?" I asked.

"So they can teach you how to
meditate."

"I know how to meditate; my mom taught
me."

"Not like this, she didn't," Susan
mumbled. She looked over her shoulder at Alex. "You have prostate
duty!"

He sighed, looking down at Bee now
doing a squat dance. "Puh-state, puh-state!"

Chapter
17

One of the Guys

Our search around the ship for a
Buddhist provided none. Apparently, we didn't attract the type.
Susan left to put Bee down for a nap while I stayed to help in the
kitchen, peeling the last of the potatoes uprooted from Robert's
farm. Speaking of the devil, ten minutes into peeling, Robert
entered the kitchen and everyone else left. Most preferred to avoid
him if they could; I refused to be chased away that
easily.

Robert eyed me, picked up an unwashed
carrot, and started to chew, loudly. I took a deep
breath.

Meditation would come in
handy right about now.

"Not many trees around here anymore,"
he said.

I paused, setting my peeler down on
the counter, but didn't retort. By now, he surely didn't think
lightning and trees were the extent of my power.

He took another bite of carrot. He
pointed the nubby end at me and said with a full mouth, "I'm
warning you, if you ever do anything like that again—"

"Let me ask you something,
Robert."

His eyebrows rose in shock at my
interruption, but I’d thought of a use for him, which was just as
shocking for me.

"If I wanted to break into a group of
tightly knit men; be one of the guys – so to speak, what would be
the best way to do it?"

He resumed chewing, mulling over the
question, probably trying to figure out where I was going with
it.

"Not
your
group, Robert." I rolled my
eyes. He didn't have a group.

"Well." He cleared his throat. "I
suppose you'd have to prove yourself to them."

"Prove myself? How,
exactly?"

"Equal them. Show you are one of
them."

Equal them?
I snorted; that might be kind of hard.
Any woman who seeks to be equal with men lacks
ambition.

"Don't get all high and mighty,"
Robert said, as if he knew what I was thinking. He pointed the nub
at me again. "If they catch on to that attitude, they'll never let
you in. And don't show them up. That'll just piss 'em off." He
stopped himself. His eyes opened in surprise again, then his brow
furrowed. He’d caught himself helping me with a problem.

How did that
happen?
I smiled to myself, picking up the
peeler and resuming my work.

"Anyway, as I was saying…" he trailed
off when I raised my eyebrow, looking at him. "Oh forget it." He
threw the rest of his carrot stick on the table in front of me and
left the room.

* * *

"Susan!" I shouted across the
deck.

She turned, putting her finger to her
lips. "She's still asleep," she whispered as soon as I was close
enough, gesturing to a snoring lump at her feet.

I lowered my voice to a whisper. "Do
you still have the Chalice? I want to try again."

"Right now?"

I looked at her. "We're running out of
time."

Bee's eyelids fluttered. She was
dreaming. Hopefully about something good.

"Maybe not this close to her, but
somewhere high – I feel like the higher the better."

Susan nodded to the captain's bridge
on the other end of the deck. "How about on top?"

"Looks good to me."

"Here." She removed the Chalice from
her belt and wrapped it in one of the smaller blankets surrounding
Bee. "I know I don't have to say it, but—"

"But you'll say it anyway," I
interrupted.

"Be careful."

As I took the wrapped Chalice her nose
crinkled. "You smell like potatoes."

"Thanks." My mouth tipped up in a
smile. I darted off like a teenager with the keys to mom's
car.

I poked my head into the captain's
deck before scaling the ladder to the top. I sighed, Arnold was at
the wheel. "Hey, First Mate." I cleared my throat. I really didn't
know what to call him. "Er… Arnold. If you hear anything up top,
it's just me. I need some privacy."

He smiled. "Well, hell. Feel free to
hang out in here. I won't bother you none."

"Oh, thanks. But I'm going to try
to…meditate. It'll be easier alone." I took my leave.

"I hear ya, I hear ya," his voice
floated out before I could close the door. "Oh hey,
Kaitlyn!"

I poked my head back in, sighing. I’d
almost gotten away. "Yes?"

"Did you know the Antarctic has their
own nuclear power station? McMurdo Power Station on Ross Island.
You can build these things away from the population."

I frowned. "Antarctica? That anywhere
near Heard and McDonald Islands?"

Arnold smiled. "Yes, actually. The
nuclear reactor was shut down early 70's, but the infrastructure is
still there."

He went on, citing the potential for
various nuclear reactors located in desolate areas. I tuned his
voice out. One of Shawn's bases of operations was awfully close to
that reactor. That couldn't have been a coincidence. Was that his
plan? To run the world on nuclear?

"…take Russia for example," Arnold
continued, unabated. "They built the first floating nuclear
station. It's not in danger of earthquakes like Fukushima, and in a
worst case scenario, the entire station could be sunk. Cold sea
water cools the core and prevents atmospheric release." He paused,
laughing. "I don't mean to talk your ear off on the matter, but
that McMurdo plant—"

"How would they transport energy to
the rest of the world?" I asked, interrupting him.

"What?" He looked
dumbfounded.

"Floating stations are a good idea,
but you still have to bring danger to nearby populations in order
to transfer the power. How do you safely transport energy to the
population with Antarctic nuclear stations?" I asked
again.

"Well…you could…I mean I would just…"
he stuttered out no solutions.

"You think on it. Listen, I need to
get my meditation done before Bee wakes up." The door swung shut
behind me and I scurried up the ladder before he could
protest.

Positioning myself in the middle, I
waited a few minutes to make sure he wouldn't follow me up. I
unwrapped the Chalice partly, balancing it in front of me without
touching it.

"Equal them, but don't
better them," I said to myself. My conscience sneered.
At least not to their faces.

I took a deep breath and grasped the
cup with both hands.

Chapter
18

Righting the Wrong

"Sir?" David asked, pen poised over a
notebook. Both highly prized processions, as they were hard to come
by these days.

"Don't call me…never mind." Shawn
sighed, putting a few handfuls of dirt into the bowl he held. If
they hadn’t gotten it by now, they never would. "We're going to St.
Louis via river. I'll need you to find several motorboats and gas,
and anything else that is sea-worthy that we can slap a motor on.
Much of it is upriver."

"Yes, sir." David wrote furiously in
his notebook.

"Bottle up what you can of the well
water – and do the same for anything edible in the
gardens."

David paused writing, then cleared his
throat. "Sir, the water source has dried up."

Shawn sighed again, standing up and
wiping his hand on his pants. "Just do what you can. Oh, and
David?"

"Yes sir?"

"There is a man tied up in the
basement of the capital building. Send word to the Wiccan camp.
They'll go release him, and we'll be long gone."

"A man, sir?"

"Just do it." He didn't need his list
to get any longer. Shawn walked into his tent, bowl in hand,
zipping the door flap up behind him.

He set down the bowl of earth, right
next to the one of water. Further away was burning incense to
represent air, and a lit candle for fire. Shawn took out his
Athame, and sat down in the middle of a pentagram drawn on the
nylon tent floor with chalk. He turned the black, worn handle of
his Athame over in his hand, thinking about his father.

My father.

Shawn had never pinned those words to
Cato until after it was too late. As a boy, ever since Cato had
passed the Athame to Shawn on his thirteenth birthday, Shawn had
studied the magical history of the Athame ad nauseum. He’d adhered
to guidance from the book of The Order of the Golden Dawn.
According to the book, the consecration needed to happen on the day
of Mercury, meaning Wednesday, and the knife needed to be tempered
‘thrice’ by fire and dipped into the blood of a black cat and juice
of hemlock. It had taken some time to find hemlock, and even longer
to find a black cat. Eventually, both were procured through local
Wiccan covens.

It was doubtful the Shades would give
him their power of Akasha willingly; he was on his own with that.
But Shawn knew exactly what he had to do to obtain it.

Make amends with all those
you have wronged.

Ahi's words flitted
through his head in a whisper. Shawn sighed again, thinking of the
one at the top of his very long list.
Sarah.

She was long gone, but her Shade
remained. The only thing he could think to make things right was to
release her. First, he need the Athame back – allied with him and
not Kaitlyn.

He took a deep breath, and began the
spell, "I cleanse and purify this tool from all my past negative
energies. Spirits of Earth, bless this Athame. Lend your strength
and stability to my magic." Shawn sprinkled the briny earth, direct
from the bottom of the Great Salt Lake, onto the blade.

"Spirits of Air, bless this knife with
the power to direct my magic on my journey, penetrating through
space and time." Shawn waved the blade through the rising, smoky
incense.

The tent flap opened, intruding
Shawn's circle with light and a breeze that doused the flame on his
candle.

"Did you say something, Sir?" David
asked, poking in his head.

"Not to you," Shawn hissed over his
shoulder. "Please don't interrupt until I come out. And make sure
no one else does either."

"Yes, Sir!" David closed the
flap.

Shawn took another deep breath, trying
to release his anger. He relit the candle and continued the spell,
"Spirits of Fire, who forged this blade, bless my Athame to be the
instrument of my will, pure in its direction of my energies." Shawn
held the blade over the flame, turning it so both sides grew
hot.

"Spirits of Water, bless this magical
knife to be a tool used with love, and in respect for the Shades."
Shawn dipped the blade in the bowl of water, cooling it. "I bless
this Athame in the true will of my spirit."

He touched the blade to his forehead,
giving in to the consecrated knife and his subconscious. He fell
forward, but didn't stop at the chalky outline of the pentagram. He
floated right through it. His feet drifted down to the ledge of a
platform inside the cave. Shawn looked around him. Gaseous forms of
Shades flit around, filling the cave and the water below in deep,
shimmery blues, golds, and reds.

One single form descended from a far
corner of the cave, placing herself in front of Shawn and taking
form.

"Hello, Arianna."

She nodded her head once.

Shawn looked past her, stepping toward
Sarah's cove – the entrance high on one of the cave
walls.

Arianna blocked his way. "She knows
why you have come, Athame wielder, and she has a
demand."

Shawn narrowed his eyes at Arianna.
"Let her tell me herself."

Arianna shook her head. "She refuses
to see you until the task is performed."

Shawn moved to step around Arianna.
She placed one, solid hand on his chest. "To force yourself in
would be bad. It would nullify the consecration, and the blade's
magic would become useless to you – without the possibility of
restoring the relationship."

Shawn's jawline tightened, and he
released a slow, controlled breath. "What is her
request?"

Arianna lifted her chin, looking Shawn
in the eyes without blinking. "To release every one of the Shades
here before Sarah. Only then will she see you."