Solstice - Of The Heart (27 page)

I wanted to say, I love it
out here with you, or anywhere else for that matter. I felt as
though I was ready to follow Aaron to the ends of the earth and,
right now, it felt like I was following him to the
heavens.

Up and up, we climbed, stair stepping
up the granite ledges and faces of the crags. It grew warmer. Aaron
and I shed our coats.

I looked to tie my coat around my
waist.

“You want me to put it in my
back-pack?” Aaron said, as he handed the water bottle to
me.

“Sure. Thanks.”

I found Aaron as thoughtful as any boy
or, for that matter, any man I had known. He seemed to have an
acute sensitivity for my welfare and comfort. I didn’t know if he
was trying to impress me or if it was just his nature. Either way,
I didn’t care. I took pleasure in his attention.

The last step to the
window stood two feet in height, a bit much for me to
scale.

Aaron reached down.

“Give me your hand.”

Gladly!

We locked palms and
fingers. His strength and my anticipation of his embrace floated me
up and over the obstacle. As I scaled the last step onto the
precipice, I fell into his arms. For a second or two he held me in
suspension, physically and emotionally.

Our eyes met.

I stared into Aaron’s deep
pools of blue, absent the pupils. His scent overwhelmed my senses.
I’m sure my fragrance filled his nostrils, as well. Heat welled up
between us. I expected him to reach out, to touch my face, to
pause, and to move in to touch my lips.

Instead, he pulled away.

“You’ve got to see this,” he
said.

I followed him across the
deck of granite, which measured six feet across and half again as
wide. Walls of rock closed us in on both sides. It was as if
someone had come along and cut a chunk out of the side of the
mountain’s wall and left a gaping hole.

Before me, spread out for miles, lay a
sea of pine trees, all of them shaped in the form of Christmas
trees. Beyond the forest, glistening white and bright under the
intense September sun, rising out of the flatlands, sat Shasta. Her
rugged features hid, silhouetted in shadows. On top of her head,
layered clouds hung in suspension like a stack of pancakes. Against
this back drop, a blue sky, as azure as any I had ever seen, filled
the space to the horizon.

Birds floated beneath us. As I traced
their paths, I suddenly realized how high we stood. Looking down, I
guessed the wall, on which I stood, fell one-thousand feet or
more.

“How high are we?” I asked.

“Three thousand. Maybe
more.”

I backed away from the
edge and sat down on a small wedge of granite. I pinned my back to
a wall. The strain of fright could be heard in my voice.

“You come up here often?”

“To the Crags? Probably once a
week.”

“Every week?”

“Every week that I can. Tough going in
the winter months. Snows heavy up here.”

“I can see why you’d want
to come.”

I looked out at the view.

“It’s gorgeous.”

Aaron stood at the edge of the cliff,
to the point where his toes overhung the rim. He seemed at ease, as
though he were standing on a balcony with a railing set between him
and the drop. But here there wasn’t any barrier, no safety net of
any kind, except the one, I assumed, he held in his
mind.

“You’re not afraid, are
you?”

Aaron turned to look at me.

“Of what?”

“Of that.” I pointed down. “Of
falling.”

“One doesn’t have to be if they have
respect for it. It bothers you being this high?”

I hated to admit my
weakness to Aaron, but I did.

“I was born and raised in Minnesota.
Basically flat land. The tallest things are corn silos, which, by
the way, I’ve never been to the top of either.”

“Thanks for sharing,” Aaron said,
beaming a smile. “And just so you know, I’ve never been to the top
of a silo, either. Not certain I’ve ever actually seen
one.”

I didn’t know how to take that. Was he
making fun of me or just trying to make me feel less
inadequate?

Aaron held out a hand.

“Come and stand beside me.”

Standing beside Aaron was something I
very much wanted to do. Standing beside Aaron at the edge of a
three-thousand foot cliff gave me pause to question my sanity. I
rose and, with great anxiety, moved toward the edge. I’m sure he
must have felt a twinge of pain as I grabbed his hand and squeezed
it for all I was worth.

He pulled me closer, which
brought me to the edge of the cliff.

“Relax,” he said.

Naturally, I started to look
down.

“Don’t look down.” he
commanded. “Look out. Look at the sky. Look at Shasta. Look at the
wonder the world has to offer.”

He waved a hand as if he
had the power to usher in the world to my doorstep.

For a moment, I believed he
could.

“How can I relax,” I said, “when I
can’t stop shaking?”

Aaron stepped behind me.
He ran his fingers up and down my arms, grazing them with his
fingertips.

“Breathe,” he said, voicing this in my
ear. “Feel the wind. Know it will keep you safe. Feel the rock
beneath your feet. Feel how solid it is. It’s not going to move, so
neither will you.”

I felt the updraft against
my face and my arms and my legs. I began to imagine the breeze as
an invisible barrier, strung out before me like a net, keeping me
from falling.

Aaron worked my arms. He
stroked them. He whispered cooing sounds in my ear.

I felt my toes uncurl. My
feet relaxed. I relaxed. I traded my focus of clinging to the rock
for feasting on the beauty around me. I wanted to wilt into Aaron’s
embrace, but I felt a surge of energy build inside me. It gave me a
strength I hadn’t known before, a confidence I had never fully
realized. I stood tall, even angling out a bit over the abyss,
letting the wind carry my load.

Gravity lost its hold on
me.

I watched the ravens flying by, so
close I felt, if I wanted to, I could reach out and touch them.
They clucked, they sang, their calls beckoning me to come and play.
I leaned into the wind, relying on the wall of air to keep me from
dropping. Aaron’s hands too. I lost all sense of fear, no thoughts
of consequence, should I lose my tenuous hold on the
rock.

Aaron’s hands gripped my arms. He
pulled me from the edge.

I turned to look at him.

Aaron searched my eyes.

“You were getting a little too relaxed
out there.” He smiled. “Now I’m afraid for your life.”

He let go of the one arm
he still held.

Immediately, I felt drained, like the
crash one experiences after the effects of a caffeinated energy
drink wears off.

“It was you!”

Aaron sat down. He faced
north, toward Mount Shasta.

“Not really. Fear lives and dies
through self.”

“I didn’t mean fear. You were doing it
again, vampirizing, transferring energy to me. Weren’t you? Keeping
me from falling. Making me feel like...I don’t know how to explain
it...like a goddess or something. Like I was invincible. Without
fear. Like I wouldn’t die, even if I fell. But I would never fall,
would I? Because you held me.”

Even though I now felt
drained, I hadn’t come down from the high. Overcoming my fear of
heights had been exhilarating. Hanging over the cliff, facing my
fear full head on, invigorated me. I wanted to dance. I wanted to
fly. I moved in circles around Aaron, all the while chattering up a
storm.

Aaron closed his eyes and, I’m sure,
mentally departed from the wild-eyed girl.

I dropped down next to him.

“Can you teach me how?”

Aaron opened his eyes.

“Teach you what?”

“How to transfer and
control energy. How to perform vampirism.”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t or won’t.”

“Won’t.”

“Why not?”

“You’re not ready.”

I stood and looked down on
him.

“What’s there to be ready? Don’t I
have an energy field?”

“Of course. Everyone has an aura. They
just don’t know how to strengthen and manipulate it.”

“That’s what I want you to teach
me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not allowed to, Julissa. You have
to be chosen.”

I walked to the edge of the cliff and
looked out. The ravens played, squawked, and made a ruckus. In the
distance, Shasta put on her afternoon shawl of fog. I turned and
faced Aaron.

“Who chooses?”

Aaron looked up at me. I
knew the answer before he even said it.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Who else has been chosen? You?
Bernard? The twins?”

Aaron looked down at his feet, away
from me.

“You don’t want to say?”

“Does it matter?”

“No. Maybe not. Just want to know what
I’m getting myself into. I like you Aaron. I like you a lot. I want
to be with you, but there are things about you I don’t understand.
And that scares me.”

Aaron stood. He dusted his
pants off.

“I understand. What you’re feeling is
natural. But aren’t all relationships a bit fearful? A bit of the
unknown? Isn’t that what makes learning about each other special?
The mysterious?”

I walked up to Aaron and
took his hands in mine. I looked into his pupil-less
eyes.

“I don’t even know if you can see me.
I can’t read your eyes. Can you see my face?”

“Of course.”

“Then you know I’m not lying to you
when I say I have strong feelings for you.”

“Yes. I sense it.”

“And what about you, Aaron? Do you
have feelings for me? I know you’ve saved my life, helped me to
heal and, oh yeah, my mother thinks you are a nice boy, but what do
you feel inside?”

“You’re different than most
girls.”

“In what way?”

“That way. You’re straight forward. No
nonsense. Inquisitive. And...”

“Yes?”

“I like the way you look.”

“Well good, I think. I
like the way you look too.” (An understatement)

I let go of Aaron’s hands.

“Can you imagine,” I said, “if all of
us were chosen and we all had the power to manipulate our auras the
way you do how much better off the world would be?”

“That would depend.”

“On what?”

“The world’s wisdom.”

“You don’t think the world is
wise.”

“Do you?”

“No. Probably not.”

I remembered Cherrie’s diatribe on
history being littered with men who let power control them and not
vice-versa.

“You don’t think I am wise enough to
handle the power you have.”

“Maybe, maybe not. What I do know is,
not all hearts are ready or capable of care-taking the gift. Man in
general hasn’t evolved far enough.”

“So what you have is a
gift?”

“Yes. Handed down through the
ages.”

“By who?”

“My ancestors.”

“And they are?”

Aaron turned away.

“You won’t tell me.”

“I brought lunch.”

Aaron zipped open his back pack. He
lay out sandwiches, apples, corn chips, and drinks.

“Why won’t you tell me?”

Aaron handed me a sandwich.

“Thanks,” I said. “Why won’t you tell
me who your ancestors are?”

Aaron pulled the wrapping from his
sandwich.

“That’s another thing I like about
you,” he said. “You don’t give up easy.”

“Yeah. How so?” I said between bites
of the sandwich.

“You’ve got the tenacity of a bulldog.
When you bite onto something you don’t let go at the first sign of
adversity. It’s like you have this humongous appetite for life,
like you want to ingest everything, like right now.”

I looked out toward Shasta. The sun
had risen higher. The shadows that had given the mountain its
definition were no longer there. The mountain stood ‘lonely as God’
and as ‘white as the moon’.

“Maybe it’s because I feel rushed,” I
said. “Time stops for no one.” I thought of my dad and Chuck, both
dying too early. “You never know how much living you have
left.”

“Now that’s a pearl of wisdom right
there,” Aaron said with a smile. “It shows a good and understanding
heart.”

“Then tell me something. Tell me
anything. Where you came from, how you know what you know. Tell me
about you.”