Jumping (31 page)

“This is too quick!” I think, trying to slow the projection with my mind. “I'm not ready!” But we're in it. The five of us are standing there, and it's daylight, and the battle has already begun. The two groups of men are shouting at each other, enraged. The first group is shouting, “Ethelred, Ethelred!” The second group shouts something back that I can't understand. Then they are on each other, and the sounds are awful, like nothing I've ever heard.

The thuds and clangs of weapons on weapons and on shields are everywhere, but underneath that are the muffled thumps of blunt trauma, weapon landing heavily on human flesh and the flesh absorbing the blow. Screams and groans and guttural sounds follow. It's a cacophony from hell, with no beginning and no end.

The scene is so chaotic—not a leader in sight, no battle lines in evidence, just men brutally attacking men. I'm almost paralyzed with fear, and I shout to Leonid, wanting to know it's not real.

“It's a projection?!” I scream.

“Not for us!” Leonid shouts back. “We've created it, and we've chosen to be in it!”

He moves forward, and I follow. The five of us have become separated by the battle, in the midst of it, but not a part of it. I lose sight of Ethelred and Keilor. Norwenna stays to one side of me, Leonid on the other. We move into the midst of the fighting. Leonid is looking for something, but I don't know what. It's awful to see what we're seeing, to witness it. I flinch and crouch, trying not to lose sight of Leonid, as men swing their weapons over me. Leonid just keeps walking forward. Crazed, unseeing faces are all around me. Men mindlessly climb over each other, falling, slipping in the blood and sweat and mud, trying to stand to deliver another blow to whoever is standing next to them, whoever is trying to do the same thing to them.

I can hardly comprehend the array of strange, vicious weapons the men are using against each other. They have turned the equipment of their everyday lives—hoes and meat hooks and hammers and axes and pitchforks—into the tools of war. They wield them with particular aim and steadiness, to great effect. I cannot imagine the men who have been struck down rising again after blows delivered by these men with these weapons. The fallen men are mangled such that they resemble slaughtered animals more than men. Their blood has made the ground molten. Many of the fallen men scream in agony, but some are silent.

In the distance, the women, who have traveled with the men to this place and have an encampment further into the woods, are watching at the edge of the woods, apparently ready to help, if they can. I can hardly stop myself from screaming at them to get back, to leave.

“What are they thinking? Where are their children? Get yourselves to safety!”

I must have screamed this out loud, because Norwenna has hold of my arm. “Steady, Miles. We can do this.” I look at her, seeing the tears coursing down her face, not knowing what she's talking about. Can't she see these women and children are in danger? All I can see and know at that moment is battle.

I throw her off me and run for the woods. I can't help myself. I can't just stand by and watch. Norwenna and Leonid are running behind me. The women ahead of me are running, too, trying to get back further into the woods. Some do have their children with them, and the children are screaming and crying uncontrollably. None of them are able to move very fast, which makes them easy prey.

Suddenly, a few of the fighting men have come after them. They begin to slay them, helpless women and children, and the women are begging for mercy for their children. The men hit the women with their clubs, split them open with swords, and kill the children, too. Their screams are more than I can bear.

“Stop it!” I scream at them. “Stop it! Stop it!”

But I can do nothing. We might be in the projection but we are definitely not of it. I fling myself on the men anyway, shouting over and over for them to stop. I see Leonid watching from the trees, stricken. Norwenna crouches over the bodies of the women, her eyes blank, tears still streaming. I don't know where Ethelred or Keilor are. It's a nightmare that won't end.

The man directly in front of me hits a woman from behind with his club, knocking her senseless to the ground. The woman looks dead but is still clutching a small child, who is crying without pause for breath. The man bends over and pulls the child from its mother's grip by its legs. He stands upright and then turns and bashes the baby's body against a tree, all in one movement. The baby's crying stops instantly.

I know I will never be able to get the sound of the baby's body hitting the tree out of my mind. I can't scream, I can't breathe, I can't move. I stand there and watch the man toss the baby's body into the woods behind him, without looking. I'm beside myself now, shocked into stillness.

The killer is standing next to me, surveying the dead women and children scattered around him on the ground. He doesn't see any standing, living people and starts to turn back to the clearing, as the other men are doing. As the man turns, he pauses, as if looking at me. We stand only a few feet apart and are almost the same height. The man looks directly at me, and I see that the man's eyes are dead eyes, without any light. He seems more like a thing than a man. I look at him, and in that instant, my heart stops.

In that instant, I know I am this man. He is me! This was my life. This is what we came to see. I reel from it, unable to hold myself up. Then Leonid has hold of me. Norwenna is with him, on my other side.

“When you heal for you, you heal for all of us!” she shouts to me. “This will not be, cannot be, done again. Have the courage to heal it!”

I look at her as she shouts at me, knowing she's asking for help, too. But I can't do any more. Tears are streaming down my face. I know I can't see or hear any more of this. I can only feel the horror of what I've done. I lean over and vomit for what feels like a long time, feeling Leonid support me, wanting to rid myself of those images, the realization of what I've done.

I can't help but be swallowed in the shame of it, the horror of realizing I'm the kind of person who could do such things. I've always known of these kinds of horrors. This is everything I've spent my life protesting against. But I had classified the people who did them with the Hitlers, the crazed, those beyond saving. The lowest of the low. And I'm one of them. How do I live with that?

“By realizing you're not beyond saving. No one is. You're one of the saved,” Leonid says.

“And don't kid yourself!” Norwenna says fiercely. “We're all that kind of people. Why do you think I'm here today? I'm that kind of person, too! If this planet is about war, who do you think has been fighting them for thousands of years? We all have! Do you think all your lives were about being a good person? What would be the point of that? And wouldn't there be more signs of that in the world?” She cries as she talks to me, gripping my arm hard, her face close to mine, so I can't look away.

“Lives usually lead people to the hard places. Then people have the chance to lead themselves out, if they will. That's what cleanses the person and the place. That's what you are doing today. And don't forget, you're healing all of us, you know? This is what we're meant to do—heal ourselves and each other.”

We look at each other. I continue to cry—
like a baby
, I think. When I watched myself pick up that baby, I remember that I had the baby's perspective for just a moment. The world was spinning dizzily around me before there was an explosion of darkness. I felt no pain, but I felt extreme fear and loss. I think about the comfort I am getting right now, holding onto Leonid, and realize that's part of what I took from the baby—the hope of any future comfort from its mother. I'm also taken by the unexpectedness of Leonid, a cohort member who knows everything about me and is still willing to hold onto me while I vomit and cry. Have I ever done that for anybody?

After some time, the three of us settle to the ground, and Leonid has gotten us some water in a kind of leather bag. I thankfully drink and so does Norwenna, while we lean back against a giant tree. The battle projection is gone, I think, but the trees remain as reminders. I look up at them, and I see how beautiful they are. They are ever-constant witnesses, reminding us of what can be survived. The fading sun creates shadows through their leaves, turning everything on the ground gold. The beauty they create takes my breath for a moment, as I discover I can still appreciate beauty. The beauty gives me hope.

Then I doze or lose consciousness. Some time passes—as when I was falling in the Void. When I look up again at Leonid, I'm still on the ground, leaning against the same tree with Norwenna. It's quiet in the woods, the light now moving into twilight. I hear no bird or insect sounds.

Leonid says, crouching down next to us, “Let's finish the healing, Miles. Let's think about the baby a minute, to come full circle. Let's honor the baby a minute.” He touches my face gently. “Look at me, Miles.” I look away from the battlefield into his kind face.

“There are no babies, you know. We're all the same age.” He smiles, and I look at him numbly.

“So, the baby made a choice, too, in between lives. Made that choice for you. To get the lesson. To help everyone to never do it again. To help us heal. So, think about the baby a minute, not yourself. Let's thank the baby.”

“Wait a minute! What lesson?” I ask, barely able to get words out. “What lesson could there be in this? Help me see that.”

“Fighting over land is one thing. Killing children is another. It's after a different kind of power, isn't it? Those who take the lives of children want the power of God, don't they? Then they're the indisputable winners, land or no land. Who can compete with that? If you've taken away what God has begotten, then you can call yourselves gods and you can demand to be worshipped as gods. So, you get all kinds of added value from killing children. You begin to see it as a useful, even necessary, part of warfare. But tampering with children brings an early and harsh darkness to the world. We're forced to see that something like that is possible. Children are supposed to be protected and given a chance at life. What's the purpose of anything if this isn't true? Who wants to be in a world like this? Everyone's spirit is drained, weakened by such acts. So, it's the ultimate warfare, isn't it? A kind of total defeat—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. What would be left that you could do to people that would matter more? Why would they want to go on?”

“Agreed!” I shout at him, demoralized by his words. “Agreed! So what's the lesson?”

“Something has to bring us back from that self-annihilating edge,” Leonid says. “The baby is an example of someone willing to try to find a way.”

I'm stunned into silence. The baby, who had seemed to be the embodiment of victim, turns out to be the embodiment of hero instead.

“Remember, it's not a baby. It's a spiritual entity, just like you, on an earthly journey—a journey that's supposed to make a difference, for the good in the world. That's what we spend our lives for. So, that baby gave its life for you, to stop you from doing such a thing again. It gave its life for everyone who witnessed it, so they'd never forget and the generations of warfare could end. And it gave its life for itself, too, to experience the growth in understanding and compassion that such an act begets.” He smiles again at me. I'm still stunned by it all.

“We witnessed a great thing today,” he says to me and to Norwenna, who has been listening intently. “Every day people on Earth give themselves and their lives for each other. Like Jesus did. We all do have a chance at emulating the model he laid before us.” He sees my still-stupefied look and says, “Just remember that the things babies do are usually the best lessons. Not the things men do.” He smiles at his own comparison, nodding.

Norwenna, like me, sits and stares into the distance, with her own thoughts. I take her hand, and she squeezes mine back. I sit there, remembering the baby. I can hardly imagine such courage. The woods are still quiet around us.

“How do we thank the baby?” Norwenna asks, remembering Leonid's suggestion.

“From our hearts,” Leonid says, looking at us both.

I bow my head and Norwenna and Leonid do, too. I fervently thank the baby for its incredible act of service, as tears flow from my eyes. I haven't words for it, I just emanate a feeling of gratitude from my heart, focused on the baby. I am engulfed by my love for the baby.

Suddenly, I know who the baby is. It comes to me. It's Silvia, my sister in this life! Duncan Robert's mother. I see her smiling image in front of me. Silvia, whose one wish would have been to end all war.

“That's who would do such a thing for you, to heal you and all concerned. She wasn't doing it because it was karmic payback for her. She was doing it to learn higher service through you. Now, that's love!” Leonid says with a laugh. “But then, what isn't?”

“Is she our cohort?” I ask, in wonderment.

“No, she's a neighboring cohort, one that works with us regularly, depending on common purposes,” Leonid says. “That's why you feel such a connection to her. You know her.”

I shake my head. “But who would ever think that we shared such a thing? How do you pay back things like that?”

“That's the kind of thing we work out as a group. I mean, think about it. How many people were involved in this battle today? Lots. And all were in on the planning, between lives. You never deal with these things alone. Things like battles involve a lot of karma, a lot of opportunities, a lot of specific activities to be orchestrated. They're taken very seriously, believe me. We're trying to see that these things don't happen again.”

“But, my god, you plan killing babies?” I ask, and I can hear the anguish and accusation in my voice.

“No, we don't plan killing babies,” Leonid says, unperturbed, “but we know it's a possibility. We know where all this battling can lead, you remember, because we've experienced it many times before. So we're ready for most things. That's how Silvia could have chosen her role—because she knew how yours might play out. All of us wanted you to get the lesson, to be saved, to help us end the killings, rather than continue to be a part of perpetuating them, by leaving them unpurged.”