The Shelter Cycle (6 page)

The Masters watched everything we did, and they would tell the Messenger. How much meat we ate, or if we wore red or black or had it in our house. If we listened to rock and roll, if we decreed or did not decree. If our Light was shining or if it was dim.

While we children slept in that trailer, the dictations, the decrees, the voices entered us, our dreams, taught us. I don't know if I slept. When I looked up again, the Messenger was still talking, now swinging a large sword through the air, slicing through the energy, piercing the planes where dark Entities lurked, waiting to do us wrong. I'd taken my shoes off, or someone else had; I stood, barefoot, and wove my way unsteadily around all the other kids, asleep on the floor. The adults were still watching the screen, whispering decrees. They didn't notice me.

I went into the bathroom and shut the door. I did not turn on the light. The one window was iced, frosted over, and when I turned the handle the ice cracked and the window came open, a little at a time. Cold air sliced in; I was awake.

The snow had stopped falling. Squares of yellow glowed, the windows of other trailers, where people were still listening to the service. Moonlight shone down on the white slopes.

The Messenger's voice was everywhere, traveling all through that lighted landscape. I couldn't make out the words she was saying. It felt special that thousands of other people were so quiet, listening between the words, listening to the words. There was this wonderful hush of attention, this echoing voice that everyone in all the miles around us was straining to hear, that was focusing us all in this amazing way. All up the white slopes into the dark trees, the night sky, the canyons where the narrow roads went, five miles away into the Heart of the Inner Retreat, where the shelter was waiting, where men were probably working at that very moment.

Later, much later, our parents came for us. They picked us up, bundled us up, carried us out to our idling cars with the heaters blasting. It had to be hours after midnight, and my parents didn't seem tired at all. They were energized, full of energy. I could feel the wild vibrations in their arms. The air around us felt like everything was about to happen.

A
CANDLE, A MATCH
. These were what Colville needed, and he was only half unpacked; he'd moved into this motel room hours ago, and tomorrow he'd be gone again. It was a precaution, this constant movement—it kept the dark forces and spirits confused, so they could not find and surprise him. After all, the Messenger herself had often slept in a golden bus that was driven all night, never still.

He felt so much inside these days, so much Light, as if anything were possible. There were still moments when he tried to explain something and people's expressions showed that they couldn't follow, or that they felt sorry for him—when he feared he would begin to cry, or he did start crying, just walking down the street or riding a bus. Those moments came less and less frequently now, the more he trusted his path, the further he followed it.

At last he found a book of matches in a drawer, a candle in the side pocket of his orange frame pack. After lighting the candle, he set it on the seat of the chair. He sat cross-legged on the floor and, placing his hand over his heart, stared at the flame for several seconds. He closed his eyes, visualized the flame in his mind's eye, turned it violet, held it there. It climbed, its point sharp; gradually, it began to flicker. He tried to draw his focus to his heart again, to slow his breathing. Yesterday, the flame had not wavered at all. He'd been so certain, he'd sensed that he was being called to the mountains, back to the Heart to renew his balance and purify his Light. Now he could not hold it steady. The violet flame forked and twisted.

A knock, a knocking at the door.

He opened his eyes.

He blew out the candle and steadied himself against the wall, then hurried to the door, squinted through the peephole.

Francine. Standing there, she licked her lips, turned her head from side to side.

“Hold on,” he said. “Don't go.” He found his pants on the floor, pulled them on, searched his pack for a clean shirt. Then, ready, he opened the door.

She wore white clogs, a white jacket with her name embroidered in red thread above the pocket. Cursive. Her hair was loose, sticking up a little on one side, and her dark eyes were on him, watching and waiting.

“Come in.” He stepped aside. “Here.”

“I tried to come, before,” she said. “I got your message at work, but you weren't at the motel when I got there. It was a different motel.”

“Sit down,” he said, closing the door. “There, at the table. Please.” He rolled up the yoga mat, set it out of the way, then settled on the chair across from her, with the table between them. Now that he was actually talking to her, he was less certain how to begin. He glanced up; the lines of her face were softer, her nose still straight and thin, her eyes drifting and then back in focus. She looked down at the table, up at him again. Her hand resting there was so close that he could reach out and touch it.

“Hi,” she said, after a moment.

“Hi,” he said.

“Are you nervous? You seem nervous.”

“Not really,” he said.

“I am. I don't know why.”

The table hid her stomach—he couldn't see that she was pregnant, and yet he couldn't forget the fact of it, couldn't not feel it. Another person, inside her body and awaiting its soul, almost ready to come out to breathe air, to do all the things it would do.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I hardly know what I'm going to say. So I try to slow down. The other night at your house, I could tell it was too much.”

Voices, shadows passed on the other side of the curtained window. Headlights wheeled around the narrow motel parking lot. Colville waited for the voices to fade, for the cars to drive away.

“Did you read the books?” he said.

“I looked through them, a little, and it was interesting. Some of it. But most of it just seemed so far away from my life, now.”

“I studied them before I gave them to you. I think they'll help, if you pay attention.”

As he spoke, he felt her looking past him, at the candle on the chair, the white plastic cooler. The television, unplugged and turned to face the wall. In the shadowy mirror above the sink, at the back of the room, he could see her and himself, both sitting at the table in these chairs, not quite facing each other.

“I look so small,” he said. “And my hair's almost gone. I must seem totally different to you.”

Francine smiled as she looked to the window, the curtain, then back at him.

“What?” he said.

“I was thinking of you,” she said. “Of back when we were kids. Even before you came to my house the other night, I mean. I was thinking of that broken cabin we played in, and how we put crystals in the little caves, for the Elementals.”

“You see how it is?” he said. “You were thinking of me, and then the raccoon—”

“I'm not sure it works like that,” she said. “But it's something about having the baby that reminds me of how it was, growing up, and my parents and everything—how it was back then. When you came to my house and we were talking, I was thinking how nice it was to not have to hide anything, not to have to explain everything.”

“And still,” he said, “that night, I felt maybe your husband, that you couldn't quite say what you wanted to tell me in front of him.”

“I was just surprised,” she said, “to have you suddenly there. I didn't expect it. He was surprised, too.”

“I didn't warn you.”

“No, you didn't.”

“I saw him,” Colville said, “your husband. I talked to him a little, just earlier today. He's a good person, I think. He's worried, and he doesn't want me to bother you, I guess, so he's been watching me.” Colville glanced up; Francine nodded, listening. “Not that you can blame him,” he said. “The way I showed up, the way I talked. It was fine—he's fine. It's not like he could really understand everything.”

“He does worry,” she said, after a moment.

Reaching back, Colville lifted the lid of the cooler beside the bed; he picked up a piece of ice, dropped it again, closed the lid.

“Do you remember,” he said, “the time we ran circles, around and around the shelter?”

“We shot pieces of that pink insulation through the vacuum tubes,” she said, laughing, “all the way from underground out into the sky.”

“Then we ran outside and found them,” he said. “And how about the periscope?”

“When we sneaked into the lookout room and spied on Maya walking past?”

“And her friend, too.”

“Courtney,” Francine said. “That was her friend's name. Courtney Stiller.”

“I always thought,” he said. “I see now how I always felt I'd know you—and then you moved away and I forgot, I tried to forget, but now it seems the same, like the time wasn't a problem, really, that we shouldn't worry, that it's like the Messenger said. We'll help each other.”

Francine rested her hands flat on the table; she didn't interrupt.

“And you can't not feel it,” he said. “You must feel it, the difference. You came here to meet me, after all.”

“You kept leaving me those notes,” she said. “I was curious.”

“It had to be more than that—you must feel how everything's changing, how it's about to change.”

“Of course.” Francine laughed again, her hand on her belly. “Of course I feel different, of course things are changing. I've got all these hormones, I've got all sorts of preparations.”

“Exactly,” he said. “That's the Light, and the Teachings—the Messenger left so many behind.”

“The Messenger's dead?”

“No,” he said. “Yes. I mean, she's not the Messenger like she was.” He pointed to the tape recorder, the line of cassette tapes on the dresser. “Just last night, I was listening to her—she was dictating from Saint Germain, all about the mountains, as the place where pilgrims go, holy mountains. That was really helpful.”

“But she's alive,” Francine said.

“In Bozeman,” he said. “That's what I heard—at Murray Steinman's place. Her body's there; her soul, I don't know. The Alzheimer's, my folks said, but they could be wrong. They're not really involved in the Activity anymore. They drifted away from it, too, just like I did, just like you have.”

“But you drifted back,” she said. “Is that what you're saying?”

“I forgot,” he said. “I tried to forget. I tried to believe other things, even. But then after Moses died, I started feeling the Light again.” He grasped the wooden arms of his chair, slid it closer to the table, closer to her. “If you had seen me six months ago, you'd see how much happier I am now. Things are starting to make more sense again.”

“I'm glad,” she said. “I'm glad to hear that.”

“It's hard,” he said, “all the things they told us, to see how we could end up where we are, but we feel it again now. That's the important thing. I see how I was brought here to remind you, to help you prepare.”

“I'm doing okay,” she said. “I'm fine by myself—with Wells, I mean.”

“Of course,” Colville said. “That's not what I'm saying, not exactly. For now, I'm just reminding you. I have to go, in any case.”

“Where?”

“Did I mention the mountains?” he said. “That's next, I believe.”

“I thought you came here to find the girl.”

“I thought that, too.”

Francine leaned back, closed her eyes for a moment, rubbed at them.

“I should be home,” she said. “It's late.”

“Right,” he said, standing. “You have to rest, that's right. You have to take care of yourself, of the soul that's coming.”

But Francine didn't move, didn't get up to go. Colville sat down again.

“Think of your baby's soul,” he said. “Waiting. Watching us right now, and all the time before, back in Glastonbury and you drifting away, meeting your husband, the two of you preparing a body for it, a new embodiment for the soul to take in this plane.”

“The language,” Francine said, laughing. “I'm sorry, the terminology, I mean. I would never remember it, but when you say it, it's so familiar—”

“See?” he said.

“I missed you,” she said. “That night—”

“I missed you, too.”

“I mean that first night,” she said, “when I was in our shelter and you were down in the big shelter at the Heart, I missed you. I imagined you burrowing all the way to me, you know, digging for years. And then, when a hole opened up in my wall, you would tumble out, and you would be all grown up.”

She laughed, and he laughed with her, both looking at their hands on the tabletop, their voices dwindling to silence.

“But isn't this the same,” he said, “right now, how I found you? That's what you mean, right? I came back through all this time.”

“It's just something I imagined.”

Now Francine pushed her chair back, looked toward the door. She fit her feet into her white clogs. When she stood, Colville hurried to unlock the door, to hold it open. She touched his shoulder, stepped past him, outside.

He stood there watching as she drove away; then her car turned a corner and he couldn't see it anymore.

H
AD HE SLEPT
? It didn't matter. He felt rested enough, full of anticipation, setting out deeper into where he was going. His skin prickled; he turned a slow circle: houses below, mountains, bare trees. No faces that he could see, looking back.

He'd left the motel room at dawn, hiked across town, through neighborhoods and parking lots, beside highways. He'd stood on traffic islands as school buses rolled past, children's faces looking out.