A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1 (17 page)

44. G.

We were up in Melody’s room, hanging out. The mood was a
little tense, but also thoughtful. Sam had already heard about my dream, at
least a little bit, but even he was sitting there with a sort of frightened
look when he realized how similar my dream was to his.

“That explains the pictures I saw, or at least one of them,”
said Tara, scooting closer to me. She put her hand on my knee, and for the
first time since I met her, I didn’t think about how badly I wanted to make out
with her. There were too many other crazy things colliding for attention in my
head right now to think about getting to second base.

“Do you remember them?” asked Melody.

“Good thing you guys made me write the dream down. One was a
gold crown.” Tara paused and shared a look with Melody.

I wondered what that was about.

“And then there was a heavy metal door, like on a dungeon,
and it was opening. I couldn’t see behind it because it was too dark.
And then a crossroads.
The road was old, it was nighttime
with a full moon, so there were shadows, and I could see an old building off to
the right.
In the distance, mountains.
Didn’t you
guys
both dream about a mountain range in the distance?”

Now it was my turn to share a look with Sam. “Yeah, we were
driving toward it. That’s when Lily said we were almost there.”

“Wait, what?” said Melody.

“I thought you’ve never met Lily?” said Tara.

“I haven’t. But she was in the backseat of the car, and Sam
was driving.

Sam nodded. “But in my dream, it was Melody in the back of
the car, and…” he paused and looked at her, “and you wouldn’t wake up. Just
like the other times.”

Shit. “How many other times, man?”

He looked at me. “I told you I had other dreams, and
sometimes they come true. I have been having dreams about Melody ever since we
met you, pretty much. And in them, she is always sleeping and won’t wake up.
But there’s something else,” he said, turning to look at Melody again.
“Something I didn’t tell you before.”

There was a sinking feeling in my gut. Sam and I weren’t
especially good friends, but somehow I just knew what he was going to say.
“Lily wasn’t just in my dream. She was in yours, too, wasn’t she?” I said.

Sam looked at me sharply.
“Yeah.
How did you know that?”

“I don’t’ know, man.” I held my hands splayed out to the
side.

“Lily was in your dreams of me?” asked Melody, showing more
emotion now than she had all day. Maybe it was a spark of anger coming alive in
her eyes because she was getting a little color back in her face as well.

“Only in the last one,” Sam said hastily.

“We need to be writing this down or something,” said Tara,
getting up to cross the room. “Can I use your whiteboard, Mel?”

I felt a small swell of pride at Tara taking charge and
diffusing the situation. She had obviously known Sam and Melody long enough to
sense when feelings were running high. There was some sort of weird
undercurrent there, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was.
Had to be a girl thing, I guessed.

Tara erased the board and started drawing lines from top to
bottom, dividing the white space into columns. She wrote one of our names at
the top of each column and underlined them. “Sam, you first,” she said. “Give
me the highlights of your dream.”

“Car, uh, road – desert road, thunderstorm, lightning,
mountains in the distance, Melody asleep, G. grabbing the wheel, and um,
lightning crashing into itself.”

“Crashing into
itself
? What does
that mean?” Tara asked as she scribbled away.

“One bolt came from the sky and another came up from the
ground to meet it. It was like a giant electrical explosion.”

“That was in my dream, too,” I said. “And behind it, was
this orange glow on the horizon. And right after that was when Lily told me we
were almost there.”

“Hold on, let me catch up. What about the other things? Are
they the same?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” I said. “Except for Lily in the
backseat instead of Melody and…”
she was
wearing pasties
. Maybe I should leave that part out. “And Sam was making
eyes at her in the rearview mirror, and I had to grab the wheel so we didn’t
hit a semi. Then after that”—Sam gave me an accusatory look and I shrugged.
Sorry, man
—“came the lightning crash and
this golden glow low on the horizon. And Lily said we were almost there.”

“Almost where?”
Melody asked, still
seeming a little angry.

“Orla,” I said.

Tara paused and then finished scribbling the rest of my
information down. “I think I might have… hold on a sec, let me get my stuff on
the board, too.”

Under her name she wrote down: golden crown, crossroads,
mountains, dungeon door,
arrow
in the ground. “Okay,
let me just circle the things that are similar. See this? Mountains, road,
crossroads, thunder storm, lightning… I think we’ve been going at this all
wrong. Orla isn’t a person. It’s not a ship. It means ‘golden queen’.” She
paused to circle “golden crown” under her column.
“What if…
what if Orla is a place?
Like… you
know,
a town
or something?”

Melody snapped her fingers, finally showing real signs of
life. “That would make total sense. Except…
Except, Matthew’s
ghost said to ‘stop Orla.’
How are we supposed to stop a town?” She
reached down next to her bed and dug around underneath for her laptop. She
pulled it up, opened it on her lap, and pulled up an Internet browser. “Let me
look at a map. Maybe…”

I moved across the room to crowd over her on her bed where
she and Sam were sitting and watched over her shoulder. She pulled up a map
site, started typing in the name “Orla,” and the blank began auto-populating.
“Orlando, FL” was the first choice and right there underneath it was “Orla,
TX.”

“No shit,” I said. “No freaking way.”

“That’s not that far from here,” Sam said. “We could drive
there in a few hours.”

“More like seven hours,” Melody said. “It’s further than you
think.”

“But still,” Sam said. “We could go and check it out. Find
out what this is all about.”

Tara stood near the whiteboard, watching us with a concerned
expression. “Guys, maybe after what happened last night, maybe we should get a
little more information before we just rush into this?”

“Like how?”
I asked.

“Maybe…. We ought to use the Spirit Board again?”

“It didn’t work last time,” I said. “It was like a bad
joke.”

“I know.” Tara’s face scrunched in thought. “But we did it
somewhere completely unrelated to anything that’s going on. Maybe we should try
it again here, in the clubhouse.”

Melody shook her head. She didn’t actually come right out
and say no, but we could tell that she wasn’t keen on the idea. “It’s too
much.”

“What if we wait a little
bit.
Maybe try in a few days? After we do the whole grid-thing with the pogs and
everyone’s had a few nights to sleep on the idea?”

Melody was still shaking her head, and Sam put his arm
around her shoulders. She pulled away a little, so I put my hand down on her
shoulder on the other side. I tried to convey solidarity and comfort, even
though I was dying to try the Spirit Board again, too. I could tell Tara felt
the same way.

“We don’t have to decide anything now, you know?” Tara said,
crossing to kneel by the edge of the bed next to Melody. “We don’t have to do
anything else today. Except relax. And maybe, eat some ice cream?”

The mood lightened immediately, and I realized all over
again what drew me to Tara. It wasn’t just her Rapunzel hair or her curvy
figure, it was her sunny disposition. “I could get us all discounts at The
Blossom,” I said. “Mac won’t mind.”

“What do you say, Mel?”

Melody looked up from the laptop in her lap, and there was a
ghost of a smile on her face. “As long you guys promise we can pretend to be
normal for a few days. I just don’t know how much more of this crap I can
take.”

Her voice cracked a little on the last word, and she finally
crumpled a little bit, her head falling onto Sam’s shoulder. Tara leaned in to
give both Melody and Sam a hug, and I finally didn’t feel too weird to join in,
so I did.

45. MELODY

I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even bear to shut my eyes in
the dark. I tried sleeping with some lights on, and I even tried sleeping in
the living room with the TV on, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake the
feeling that in every shadowy corner lurked a ganglion of tentacles and fangs
waiting to suck me dry – dry like a dead battery. I shivered.

I gave up on pretending
to sleep
and decided to channel surf. It was after three in the morning and there was
nothing on –
as if there’s anything on
the rest of the day
, I mused.

Floorboards in the hallway creaked and I snapped to look,
eyes straining in the blue light from the television. My blood turned to ice in
my veins, and for a moment I thought my heart stopped beating. It began
thumping again, with heavy, rapid beats. I tried to hear past the rush of blood
in my ears, but there was nothing. And then I heard it again.
Creak… scrape
… I practically leapt from the couch, clutching
one of the pogs I had made and taking little comfort in its steady buzz.
Movement from the shadows finally took form and I almost laughed out loud when
I realized it was Gramps trying to roll quietly through the hallway in his
wheelchair. He saw me in the living room and grinned.

“Late night snack attack.
Otherwise
known as breakfast for us really old folks,” he said, wheeling up to me.

I leaned down to give him a hug. I made it nice and firm,
hoping he wouldn’t feel how shaky I was now that the adrenaline was starting to
wear off.

“Couldn’t sleep, huh?”

“No,” I admitted, following him into the kitchen where I
pulled down a cereal bowl while he helped himself to the milk and a box of
Honey Nut Cheerios. “Every time I close my eyes, I see those things looming
above me and I just”—I shivered again—“can’t seem to shake it. And I’m having
this weird pain in my chest, too. Like a… panic attack?”

Gramps poured the milk and cereal, nodding as he took his
first oversized bite. “That’s your heart chakra. That’s the energy they like to
feed off of the most. Interestingly, it is also the most potent energy you can
use against them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“First thing to understand is that you, me—we are energy
beings wearing meat suits. As an energy being, you have several—let’s call them
interfaces—in which you can give or receive energy. There are seven major interfaces,
and the one right there under your breast bone, is the heart chakra. It is
where you give and receive love, among other things. It is the seat of joy. It
is also useful for healing. But we can get into that another time.” He took
another large mouthful of cereal.

I tried to digest what he was saying. “Chakras, like in
Yoga?” I’d heard of chakras before, though I had never given them much thought.

“More or less.
The reason you feel
a pain there is because they drained your heart chakra first, and it is running
very low on juice. It’s spinning much too slowly to keep up with the rest of
your energy body and it’s causing you some discomfort. And the anxiety you feel
is a symptom of that. You just need to charge up.”

“How do I do that?” I smiled at him when he made a motion
that he was trying to chew faster.

“You spent time with your feet in the grass, pulling in the
earth’s energy, healing yourself. And because of it, you’re all out of whack.
You’re having a hard time being focused and feeling tired and forgetful, too.”
It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. He took another big bite, slopping
milk on his chin.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “But Gram said that was because they
drained me.”

“Yes.
And
because you’re out of balance.
Trust
me,
I know
more about this particular subject than your Gram.” He arched an eyebrow at me
before plunging another spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

“Really?
Funny because it’s always
her saying weird things about stuff that’s going to happen, and it’s always her
walking around with the smudge stick,
saging
the
house.”

“She sees things I can’t, whereas I can feel more than she
can. You’re like me, Melody. And you’re just going to have to trust me on this.
You’re out of whack. I can feel it from here.”

“So what do I do? I mean besides sitting outside in the
grass? Do I do some yoga?”

“That would help, maybe even more than a little, though I
never tried it myself. Instead, you’re going to need to spend some time with
some rocks.”

“Rocks?
Like my obsidian?”

“Obsidian is a good start. It will ground you. But what you
need, even more than that, is a good long soak in my tub.”

“What?” I loved him, but there was no way I was going to go
take a bath in their bathroom when I had my own right across the hall from my
room.

He cackled a little bit; he was having far too much fun at
my expense. “Put up my bowl will you? Then bring a bucket of warm water and
some of that
dead sea
salt into my workshop and I’ll
show you.”

#

Now I understood. He didn’t mean their bathroom tub, but a
black ceramic-coated cast-iron foot bath that he kept next to the window in the
back of his workshop. The window overlooked the backyard and there was a
rocking chair nearby that he instructed me to drag over to the tub.

“Now you pour that water into the tub, add a half a cup of
that
dead sea
salt, and then sit here in the chair.
Use your feet to sort of mix the salt in while I dig around for my black
tourmaline…”

I did as he asked and then settled into the rocking chair.
The water was soothing, and using my toes to make the circles in the salt
granules on the bottom had a sort of hypnotic effect. I began to see what he
was up to. “You’re just trying to calm me down,” I said.
“With
all this mumbo jumbo about being out of whack.”

“True, but also, aha!” he pulled up a brown burlap sack, set
it in his lap, and wheeled over to where I was sitting. “It is also going to
help put your wrong to rights. Take this sack, and plunk the stones into the
tub near your feet, one at a time. Be careful not to squish your toes. This
stone is brittle, and I would prefer you didn’t bust it all up by being too
rough.”

I pulled up the first chunk, slightly smaller than my fist,
and admired its shiny striations. It was columnar in shape, but in a way that
made it seem as if it were made of shiny, sharp black fibers. It felt strangely
staticky in my hand. I plunked it in the water between my feet and reached into
the sack for another piece. “All of them?”

“Yes, indeed.
All of them.
Now
where’d I put that…
”

There were only about ten pieces, and once they were all in
the water, I felt that same strange staticky feeling beginning in my feet.
Almost like the bubbling I felt when connecting to the earth, but stronger,
faster, and also slightly unpleasant.
“Gramps?
It
feels…” I hesitated. The feeling was growing quite intense. “Ah, I’m not sure I
like this…”

He gave me a grin and rubbed his hands together with relish.
“He
he
he
.
That’s how out of whack you are.
Very ungrounded.
If
you were grounded, it would have a nice smooth buzz, but instead, your energy
field is loose and shaky like a leaf on the wind. And if you think that’s bad,
just wait until I give you this.” He held up a large quartz crystal with a
reddish color to it. “You’re going to just love this.”

He was having a
great
time at my expense. He thrust the crystal out at me, and as I was about to take
it, he swatted my hand away.

“Not that hand.
Your
left one. Hold
it in your left hand.”

The staticky feeling in my feet had not subsided in the
least, and I was not anxious to add another new sensation to the mix, but I
held out my left hand to take the crystal. At first I felt nothing. And then,
there was a very pronounced fuzzy headache that swarmed my head. I squinted,
feeling suddenly like my head was stuffed uncomfortably full of cotton.

“Lithium Quartz,” he said.
“Zaps your
nervous system and energy system back into whack.
Just wait a bit, the
headache will subside and move on down your arm.”

I gritted my teeth, irritated that he was doing this stuff
to me, but had to admit that the sharp ache in my breastbone was fainter than
it was before. Unless it was just covered up by the other new and uncomfortable
sensations he was subjecting me to. And sure enough, there was a fuzzy “pop”
and the headache dissolved and began moving into my shoulder and down my arm,
like a marching army of ants. This was more tolerable. The staticky sensation
in my feet was beginning to subside as well. And suddenly, I yawned, for the
first time feeling like I might be able to sleep. I squinted across the room to
see Gramps digging in another one of his satchels. Maybe I would close my eyes…
just for a few minutes.

I woke up because the sun was streaming through the window
onto my face. If the sun was over the
backyard, that
meant it was almost lunch time. I stretched, my body stiff in the wooden
rocking chair, surprised that my feet were not sloshing in the tub, but had
been rescued and put on an ottoman instead. I felt an afghan in my lap and knew
that Gram must have come by at some point in the morning to keep me from having
water-logged feet.

“Awake finally, I see. You’ve already missed both second
breakfast and
elevensies
,” Gramps said. “I guess
you’ll have to settle for lunch.”

I turned to see him sitting on the other side of his
workshop next to his bookcase, a book open on his lap, his eyes closed and his
hand flat on one of the open pages.

“I feel much better, thanks,” I said. And I really did. I
stood up to stretch some more, muscles and bones creaking. “What are you doing?
Can’t read with your eyes closed like that.”

“I’m not reading. I’m energy sensing.”

“You’re what?”
You
mean you’re not falling asleep with a book in your lap?
Because that’s what
I had always assumed he was doing.

“Sensing the energy of this stone from the
photograph.
In an electronic universe, in a domain in which everything
is made of energy, you can connect to an object’s energy signature just by
thinking about it. So sometimes, I meditate a little bit with my crystal books,
and get a feel for some of these rocks that I have never had the pleasure of
holding. It’s good practice for honing your skills. One of these days you ought
to try it.”

I just stared at him. I wanted to call him nuts, but wasn’t
I the one who just got done soaking in a tub of black tourmaline water and
rearranging my chakras with a lithium quartz crystal?

“I don’t understand,” I said finally, “how you can feel a
rock’s energy from its picture.”

“Everything has a signature – like its name and address all
rolled up in one. And just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean
it’s not true.”

“Oh, will you stop pestering her with that nonsense for just
a little while?” Gram crossed the room to stand next to me. “Now that she’s
awake, I need her to run some errands for me. It will be good for her to be up
and moving, too.” She put her hand on my forehead and smiled at me. “Hungry?
I’ll make you a sandwich.”

I noted the frown lines on her forehead and the dark circles
under her eyes. She was as worried as I’d ever seen her. In fact, I didn’t think
I’d seen her look like this since Matthew died. I felt contrite for having been
so angry with her before.
“Peanut Butter and Jelly?”
I
said, more for her benefit than my
stomach’s
.

“On your way out, go bury those tourmaline chunks in the
garden for me, will you? Don’t forget where you put them because you’re going
to have to dig them up tomorrow.”

“Sure thing, Gramps.”
Burying rocks
in the garden… What next?