CIRCLE OF LIFE
Maryah
Louise, Anthony, and Carson celebrated the first day of spring by taking an overseas trip. The house felt odd without the three of them, but Krista staying indefinitely made up for it. With a couple easy phone calls, Dylan persuaded my aunt and uncle to let her stay with us, and he persuaded her school to let her finish the year remotely.
The more time I spent with Nathan, and the more I heard about our past, the deeper my love grew. But no matter how hard I tried and wished for my memories to return, I made no progress.
The night after the Spring Fling festival, I shot up in bed and glanced around the darkness. I could hardly breathe.
“Maryah, what is it?” Nathan wrapped his arms around me and instantly my panic dissolved.
“Peacocks,” I mumbled, turning to see his reaction.
He smiled and kissed my shoulder. “So, it was a good dream.”
“I remember a peacock in my dream. A huge, beautiful, iridescent one.” I looked up at my dream catcher, then at the blue and green mirror, and pressed my ring to my chest. “I meant to ask you about your obsession with peacocks.”
He laughed. “My obsession? No. Your obsession.”
“Mine?”
“The peacock represents everything you believed in: psychic duality, all-seeing watchfulness, renewal, resurrection, spiritual evolution. The list continues depending on which teachings you research. You used to stare at your ring for hours. You said the feather’s eye showed you stories.”
“Really? What kind of stories.”
“All kinds. Can we please talk about this in the morning?” He laid his head in my lap and rubbed his sleepy eyes. Even in the dark, the jewel-like shade of green glimmered with love when he looked up at me. How did I get so lucky to have someone like him as my soul mate?
I tried to fall sleep, but several minutes later I shot back up. “Something’s wrong!”
“What do you mean?” Concern filled Nathan’s voice. “What’s wrong?” He turned on the light.
“I don’t know. I feel a presence lurking, like something is coming. I’ve never felt like this before. I feel sick to my stomach.”
Nathan stared at me, looking worried, but then turned his focus to our bedroom door. Someone ran down the hallway. Nathan vanished. For a few seconds I was terrified that he left me alone, but he reappeared at the side of the bed with a smile on his face.
“Some thing isn’t coming, but some one is. The baby is arriving early.”
I jumped out of bed.
“I’m going to inform the others.” He kissed me before traversing.
I ran down the hallway to Dylan and Amber’s room.
∞
I assumed Amber would’ve given birth in a hospital, but Helen delivered the baby at home. She explained that she delivered dozens of babies throughout her lifetimes, and in earlier centuries they didn’t have the drugs and technology that hospitals offered. And as Nathan pointed out, we had Krista in case anything went wrong.
Nathan helped Helen. He’d been a physician in a previous life, and he retained his medical knowledge. He kept his position at Amber’s side so she wasn’t exposed to anyone but Helen. He said it was out of respect for Dylan and Amber’s privacy, and it made me love him even more.
A few times I thought Amber would break my hand from squeezing so hard, but Dylan coached her through breathing, and she relaxed. Krista made her sip tea that Helen had made.
After hours of wiping sweat from Amber’s face with a washcloth and keeping her wet hair pulled back, I was relieved when Helen announced she could see the baby’s head. Several pushes later, a tiny, slimy boy arrived into the world. Dylan wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in Amber’s arms. I was sure they’d been through this baby thing plenty of times in other lives, but based on how proud Dylan looked, I would have assumed it was their first time.
Nathan and I congratulated them then left to update the others. Edgar, Faith, Shiloh, Harmony, and Dakota were waiting in the living room.
“It's a healthy baby boy,” Nathan announced.
Everyone erupted into celebration, but then Louise burst through the front door and rushed past us to the bedroom. Anthony and Carson were talking to someone in the foyer. That someone had an Irish accent.
When she appeared in the archway, I forgot to breathe or blink. How could she be ninety-nine? She walked with a cane, and slightly hunched over, but she was luminous. Her long curly white hair had strands of gold mixed through it. Her ivory and gold flowing dress matched her hair perfectly. When she saw me, her brown eyes lit up.
Her voice sounded like harp music. “Hello, Maryah.”
“Hello, Sheila.” As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t recall one memory of her. But I knew I loved her. My heart felt full—fuller than it ever had.
Krista rushed forward and hugged her so tight I thought she’d break her.
“Look at you,” Sheila laughed at Krista. “No more than a young school girl. What I wouldn’t give to be as young as you.”
The joy on Krista’s face when she looked at Sheila was priceless.
Sheila walked over to me and studied me in silence. She took my hand in her soft fingers, and examined my palm. “Yer lines have changed.”
“What? Since when?”
The wrinkles around her eyes deepened as she smiled at me. “We have much to catch up on, but it must wait. There is a wee babe I must visit first.”
Krista and I helped her down the hallway to the guest room. It was a lot of bodies crammed into one bedroom, but they all cleared a path when Sheila entered.
“Thank you for coming.” Amber sighed. She looked happy but exhausted.
“My pleasure, lassie.” Sheila stared at the baby, almost in a trance. “He’s the most beautiful soul I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
“Thank you,” Amber replied graciously.
I discreetly backed out of the room and made my way down the hallway. When I got to our room, Nathan emerged from thin air. He opened his arms and I practically collapsed into them.
“It’s a lot to take in,” I confessed.
“No explanation necessary, my love. You’re doing brilliantly given the circumstances.”
“Louise and Anthony sure got home quick. How fast is this family plane of ours?”
I sat on our bed listening to Nathan explain the one-of-a-kind plane Anthony designed, but a flicker of light in my ring distracted me.
Nathan continued talking, but I wasn’t listening. All I could focus on was the swirling colors in my ring. His words became fuzzy and distant. The tunnel of light I’d seen at Montezuma Well started forming again.
The peacock feather’s eye and the iridescent sheens of blue and green divided, growing into a sapphire and emerald figure-eight. Specks of gold and silver darkened inside each half, deepening and forming more lines and layers.
Eyes. The feather had formed into two larger-than-life human eyes.
I stared. Mesmerized. Watching. Learning.
They were telling an almost unbelievable story. Except there were no words, only energy, emotions, and shimmering colored lines connecting infinite paths of people and places throughout history.
The eyes do not lie, echoed through my mind.
The intricate tale they told was true. I knew it with every fiber of my being. Wind blew all around me, surrounding me in a funnel of swirling, glowing feathers until I could no longer see the huge eyes. I reached forward and the radiant feathers burst into millions of tiny pieces that looked like stardust. I took a deep breath and inhaled every speck until nothing was left.
The bedroom came back into focus as my glowing ring faded back to normal. Nathan was still rambling about who-knows-what.
I slammed my hand against my pounding heart and jumped up. “Where’s Sheila?”
“With Amber, where we just left her.”
It felt like I had been staring at the ring for hours. I understood so much more. So much needed to be done. Weeks ago, suspecting I had some kind of psychic power freaked me out, but this was different. My ring showed me the truth. I didn’t need confirmation, that’s how deeply I knew, but I wanted to see for myself.
“I need to see Sheila and the baby.” The sternness in my voice shocked me.
Nathan took my hand and led me back down the hallway to Amber’s room. Sheila still sat on the bed at Amber’s side. Edgar, Helen, Louise, Anthony, Dylan, Harmony, Faith, Shiloh, Dakota, Carson, and Krista all stared at me. I stood in front of Sheila with new confidence.
She held the baby, asleep in her arms, and a wide grin spread across her face. “You know.”
I nodded.
“Know what?” Faith asked.
Sheila lifted the baby like she was presenting him to the world for the first time. “He’s an Aries, another fire sign.”
Dylan’s voice rang through the quiet room. “Sheila, do you mean…?”
“Yes, you have a fifteenth member.”
Cheers erupted. Krista hugged me, but my focus was crazy-glued on the baby.
Sheila waved her hand and the room fell silent. She handed him to me. “He was connected to this kindrily before this life.”
How did she know? How did I know? It didn’t matter. His tiny eyelids opened just enough for me to see the familiar sky blue.
“Hi, Mikey,” I whispered, “I missed you so much.”
“Our Mikey?” Krista gasped.
I let out something between a giggle and grunt. “Kind of weird, huh?”
Dylan sat beside Amber and held her hand. “Wow. Never saw that one coming.”
“I just love happy reunions!” Faith sang, twirling around. Shiloh and Carson both wore the biggest cheese grins I’d ever seen.
“How’d you know?” I asked Sheila.
“I come from a long line of psychics. I tune into a babe’s essence and see who they were in past lives. I read their souls.”
“We always have her present when a baby arrives,” Helen explained.
Nathan stroked my hair. “How did you know?”
I glanced at my thumb. “I saw it in my ring. Just like you said. It told me an incredible story.”
His gorgeous green eyes gazed into mine. His were the eyes that led me home, watched over me, saved me, and showed me more love than I ever knew was possible.
“Did you see or remember anything else?” he whispered.
“Not about us, but I will. I know I will. Look around, Nathaniel.” Our kindrily, young and elderly, big and small, new souls, and old ones surrounded us with an infinite amount of love. And Mikey was back. The term “circle of life” never had a more hopeful and beautiful meaning. “We share an unbreakable and powerful bond. We’ve already come so far.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe it was possible,” Nathan said.
“Believe what was possible?”
“You. Your gift.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “I should’ve known you were too powerful, and stubborn, to be erased.”
“We tried to tell him.” Louise walked up beside us and shook Mikey’s tiny hand with her fingers. In high-pitched baby talk she said, “It looks like we’re going to need a bigger table.”
NOT THE END
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