Ride the Moon: An Anthology (12 page)

A channeler? How had that happened? She wouldn't mind hearing the story.

A breeze billowed the skirts. Jacqueline pulled a cloth from beneath the table and covered her wares, turned her sign over, put her money in her purse.

“To start off the evening program, our Mayan Daykeeper will explain today's date, 11:11:11. Plus, I hear he has special news.”

Don Carlos walked to the microphone. “I know that many have written about 11:11:11 as a cosmic portal. The energy of Hunab Ku flows from Galactic Center to us. But this is also an important day to the Maya,” Don Carlos announced to the several hundred attendees just now taking their seats, shushing those still bargaining for crystals at the nearby tables. “In the Tzolk'in calendar, there are thirteen tones and twenty day glyphs. The combination gives the day its specific character. Today is One Ix.”

Silence finally fell over the audience, but he heard something being dragged across the stage behind the curtain. It billowed out.

“The number one begins a new cycle and represents the One Consciousness.” His voice was dry and raspy. Several people reached for their water bottles. “This is also what the skulls represent. Ix is the Jaguar. This is the Shaman, the protector of the Temple. Magic.”

There was a smattering of applause. One woman thought she smelled smoke, looked around to see if someone was burning incense or copal.

“But there is more. Tonight is the full moon. And when this full moon corresponds with One Ix, we call it the White Moon. It is the moon of Ixchel, our goddess of fertility. Ixchel mated with the Sun and had four sons in the form of jaguars. The first jaguar priests.”

“Wow,” a lady in the front row said.

Out in the lobby, an elegant, bronze arm reached from behind a planter and tweaked one of Jacqueline's dusty rose chiffon dresses off the rack. Then a velvet fringed shawl followed, which the tall woman threw over her shoulders. She stepped out from her cover and walked into the Lion-Hearted Women's event.

The women lay on rugs, eyes closed. They wore exotic dresses, harem pants, rayon tops from India, blouses from Bali. All manner of jewellery. Their closed eyelids were a field of spring flowers.

“Breathe in and imagine yourself on a...” the speaker suddenly saw an island in the Caribbean beneath the cool, full moon. She went with it. “The waves are gently running up the beach, bathing the sands...”

The bronze woman sauntered amongst the bodies lolling on rugs, their stomachs rising and falling like the waters out in the bay. The scent of orange blossoms rose from the carpet each time she lifted a foot with gleaming nails, pearlescent like the sand just after the wave has receded.

The Daykeeper in the other auditorium continued, “But she is best loved as the mature goddess of midwifery and medicine. Itzamna is her consort, our Sun God. When she tires of his antics —”

Several people were inexplicably filled with grief. One felt the sting of a slap on her cheek, then cowered as an enormous hand seemed to rise to strike her.

“—she retires to
La Isla de Mujeres
where she brings in new life and heals all. Not just the body, but the soul. But she stays away for years—centuries.” A yearning burned in his chest—the heat of the desert sun.

A man in the front row squinted at Don Carlos. Reached for his sunglasses.

Oohs and ahs rose from the audience, especially the women.

“Will she come?” one asked.

“We shall see,” Don Carlos said. He turned and walked off the stage. Dust, maybe smoke, rose from the curtain.

A surprised pause was followed by clapping that swelled as the emcee returned to the stage. “We shall see,” he repeated, drawing the words out. “It is my honour to introduce to you our foremost expert on crystal skulls who—”

Applause drowned out the rest. Mason bounded to the stage. Boyish charm matched with a sharp intellect, plus a sense of humour. The ladies in the room shifted in their seats, leaned forward, dreamed of catching him later, asking him a question, taking him up to their rooms.

Let them
, Gail thought. She pulled her peacock wrap around her shoulders and sat back to watch him do what he loved most.

He flipped a switch and images of beautiful crystal skulls filled the screen, light reflecting off internal fractures, splaying rainbows. In the large, clear spaces, visions rose—faces of ancient priestesses, the doorway of a temple, a mother with her child, a space ship.

“Do you see that old man?” someone whispered to the person next to him, pointing at the screen in front.

“Where?”

Gail smiled. Everyone expected to see the same thing, but scrying showed you what your own subconscious needed you to see. Or Mother Nature or the Universe—whatever your name was for that guiding intelligence. At least that's what she thought. Not that anybody was asking.

Mason explained some basic terms, his connection to the two important researchers in the last generation, talked about his days at the museum and how he'd first come across crystal skulls.

The seller had said, “This artefact is held in high esteem, but the villagers—they are starving, señor. We ask only that you authenticate this as genuine. Perhaps your museum would like to buy?”

But the huckster had not been lying. The high-powered microscopes had shown no markings from modern power tools. Only hand-rubbed, gleaming crystal.

“And they talked to me,” Mason told her.

“Who?” Gail asked.

“The skulls. Annette—”An old lover. No need for jealousy at their age. “—she took mescaline with the amethyst one. When I asked her what it told her, do you know what she said?”

“What?” she indulged his storytelling.

He imitated her expression, hands spread, eyes wide. “Everything.”

On the stage now, he flashed a picture of this same skull. “My friend had visions of our lives as Templars together when she scryed with this skull. It was said these knights worshipped a jewelled skull. Perhaps it was this one.”

The audience oohed.

Gail's heart warmed and caught flame again.

Jacqueline walked down to the other conference's auditorium. The moon had climbed the sky and hung, white and somehow shrunken, in the darkening sky. She slipped through the side door and found a seat in the back row. Some guy was finishing up, showing a last slide of a perfectly clear crystal skull. It was beautiful, she had to admit. Then he was finished, the audience shouting their appreciation, and the emcee took the stage. She sat forward in her chair.

“Tonight we have a very special treat for you.”A continental accent. She tried to place it. “We will reveal our mystery skull.”

Oh, she'd come too early. She shifted in her seat. The other conference would be at it for a good while. She might as well listen.

“And Samuel Keeton will allow the skull to speak through him.”

The audience thrilled.

Just in time, then. A woman walked by wearing something from Jacqueline's booth. When had she sold that dusty rose dress? She smiled at the tall, bronze beauty, gave her a thumbs up. The woman looked at her through arresting brown eyes and made a curious gesture with her fingers, as if she were sprinkling something, then floated by. Jacqueline thought of a small island in a blue sea, of sun and waves caressing a beach. Of sleeping in hammocks, Sam next to her, of rest and reconciliation, then rising to a new dawn. Even going their separate ways again. Ports in a storm.

She noticed a couple behind her. The man leaned close and murmured something in a round woman's ear. It was the previous speaker. He took the woman in his arms.

“I love you,” he whispered. Their lips met.

Get a room
, Jacqueline thought, then caught herself. She was selling romance just out in the lobby. The woman who'd bought her dress smiled at the couple from a corner and made that same gesture with her fingers, seeming to spread a blessing.

A thin man with a neat goatee stood blinking in the light on the stage. His smile was tentative. “Hello?” he said into the mike, unsure if it could be trusted.

A rustle from the audience seemed to reassure him. “One of my hobbies is antiquities. I'm a collector. I have pieces from sub-Saharan Africa, Egypt—”

“Egypt,” the last speaker whispered to his love.

“The birds,” the round woman said.

“Asia and Central America. I came into possession of this odd artefact a few years ago. The dealer said it was a crystal skull and provided me with paperwork as to its provenance. The letter reads that the original owner saw it being excavated from a tomb, but doesn't specify the location. Just the year. In the early 1930s, he paid $3,000 for it. A sizable sum at that time.

“I took it home and as soon as I opened the box, the skull started talking to me.” He paused as if waiting for derision, but none came. “I suppose you all are used to this. Well, she hasn't stopped since.” This elicited a wave of laughter.

He walked over to a table that had been set up next to the microphone and with a self-conscious flourish—he was not a natural showman, but shy and sincere—he pulled a large, white table napkin off the artefact.

A breeze burst through the room, hitting Jacqueline between the eyes. The couple behind her gave a little squeal as flyers blew up into the air.

“Her name is Celestial Light,” the skull owner said. He put his hand over his eyes and squinted out at the audience. “Perhaps one of the Maya can give us her proper name.”

Don Carlos murmured something beneath his breath.

The bronze woman stirred, alert. She moved to a corner where she crouched like a cat and settled down to wait.

The emcee came forward. “Samuel Keeton spoke to us this morning, so he does not need an introduction. Now he will tell us the message of the mystery skull.”

A spotlight lit the right hand side of the stage where Sam sat on a dais, clothed in white, a Tibetan prayer scarf and wooden beads around his neck. An enormous crystal bowl sat in front of him. But instead of speaking, he picked up the striker and ran it around the rim of the quartz bowl. A deep vibration rose from it and filled the room. He closed his eyes and began to sing. A wordless chant.

The room stilled. Jacqueline closed her own eyes. Lines of energy ran white in her body, loosening the knot in her stomach, opening her neck and head. She flowed up and out of the room to the white moon standing sentinel over the earth. She melded with it.

Jacqueline found herself before a pyramid with steep steps beckoning her up to a flat top. Sam stood there in a pool of moonlight waiting. She stepped into his arms and their lips touched, soft then seeking deeper. He pulled her tight and squeezed her hand.

She remembered.

Thousands had gathered in the temple with its rounded domes, tall crystal spires. Her group moved past splashing fountains and pools open to the sea where dolphins gathered, singing their excitement. The gathering was imminent, the inundation, like the Nile when the Dog Star lit the sky. And these people, these gems, their best and brightest, had volunteered to return to the blue planet that hung beautifully beneath their Brother Sun, but was sorely wounded. To incarnate there and raise the frequency of the planet. To return the Celestial Light.

Jacqueline's group walked through the doors and took their place in line before the great stage, waiting their turn. They hummed together, breaking into complex harmonics, coming back together on one vibrating note.

Their time came. They approached the platform where the great Isis sat on her lapis throne, Xmucane to the Maya, Coatlicue. Oh, she had many names. The towering Cat Mother stood behind, her solar disk glinting as she turned her head back and forth watching, guarding. Jacqueline's group bowed as one. The attendants lifted them to their feet.

“Ah, my darlings,” Isis said. Light suffused her face. “On the night of the White Moon, you will reconnect to this place and I will come to you. That night, we will awaken the earth.”

Then Jacqueline was back in her body. She opened her eyes. Sam sang on the stage watching her. His eyes gleamed love. She looked around and nodded to the others in their group, strangers until this moment. Then Sam's chant intensified.

A column of light extended from her heart up through the Moon into the center of the galaxy where the Great Dipper, the Great Bear, the Urn of Isis, tipped and down poured a balm that healed all it touched, quickened it back to life. Her consciousness melded with that light and she lost her sense of separateness and time.

When Jacqueline opened her eyes again, the emcee was on stage effusing about the wonders of Sam's chant. “I've never heard you sing before. Did the skull have no words for us?”

Sam laughed, shaking his head. “Instead of words, the skull brought us the One Consciousness where all is known in silence.”

A contented sigh rose from behind Jacqueline. The previous speaker and his round love sat entwined, luminous. She remembered them from the temple, the group just ahead of them. It seemed they had fulfilled their mission as well.

The Daykeeper stumbled out the back door, his eyes burning in their sockets. If only he had enough moisture to weep, he would throw himself at her feet, beg her forgiveness, but his yearning had burned away all words. He groped his way to the elevator, pushed the button, hoping it would not ignite with just a brush. The door opened. Then he stood in the middle of the metal cage, away from the wires, waves of heat pulsing through him. The door opened on his floor and he felt her waiting for him. He stumbled down the hall, pushed the door to his room open, leaving a charred palm print on the door.

“Don Carlos,” she said, her voice honey, the lapping of waves against a dock. The room smelled of oranges.

He walked toward her, flames leaping up from the carpet where he passed. He tried to speak, but only smoke came from his throat. He fell at her feet.

“Itzamna.” She reached down and touched his burning shoulders, her hands cool, promising relief, solace and rain. “It is the appointed time, my love.”