Crossroad

It was nearly midnight. I walked across the paddock illuminated by a bright full moon and stopped at the same spot I’d visited that morning. An echo of the energy I’d felt there tingled up my body. It was why I’d come back.

Tonight I would find out what happened to my mother. She’d left when I was a year old, run off with my father, according to my Aunt. She’d lied and I’d spent eighteen years with that lie and my Aunt’s rigid duty.

Yesterday an envelope had arrived for me and inside it was a key to a safety deposit box. It had contained a crystal attached to a long silver thread; a map and a note – from my mother. It was dated the day she left and explained that she was a dowser. She held the magic of the earth within her for the next generation – which was me.
She’d left instructions on where to find the crossroads, the place I’d find answers but nothing more. I could not resist its lure and now I was here waiting.

I pulled the pendulum from my pocket and let it fall, the crystal on its end glinting in the light. I set it swinging, body tense with anticipation and dread. A zephyr of wind rose and played with my hair. It was tender, a caress and I shivered as a white, misty shimmer wrinkled the night open. An exotic fragrance overwhelmed me. Flushed, throbbing I was plunged into a slipstream of light.

I was in the desert. There were camels, an oasis with billowing tents and a woman pulling water from a well. She turned. It was me – yet not me and she smiled, eyes brimming with secret knowledge.
‘Who are you?’
‘I am your destiny,’ she said and I thought – yes – it could be – and was about to touch the hand held out to me when a storm suddenly blew up between us. It picked me up and held me in its eye. Coloured sparks flashed before me and became windows. Inside every one of them was a replica – of me, moving, talking, dressed oddly, differently.

‘Do not look into them,’ a voice said and I jerked my head away to see the smoky outline of a woman. Her face coalesced and on it chased a range of emotions – hunger, regret and love.

‘Who are you?” I said but I’d guessed.
‘Your mother,’ And the wind shifted, changed to a calming silk. ‘If you join with it – you are lost.’
‘You…?’
‘Yes. I was tempted and lost. I am seer, the holder of the family’s path. It was given to me to come here, to the crossroad and see into the future. But I was tricked, caught in the past – where I relived times I thought to recapture with – your father.’
‘Is he here?’
‘No. I saw only what I wanted to see.’
‘But what about me?’
;I know and I’m sorry.. I loved him and am now trapped here. I cannot leave, but you,’ and she drew closer ‘ have a chance to take up your heritage.’
‘How?’ and the wind whipped, took me back into the storm, away from her, battered my mind &body. I held on grimly to my sanity and just managed to hear, a whisper of words, follow the truth of your heart and the ache within me bloomed, cried with the wanting, the need, to belong and suddenly the slipstream of light took hold, dragged me away from the storm.

I was set down by a cascading waterfall. The rush of it silvered; became a giant screen and there, bold and clear was a picture of my aunt, her face contorted with rage and grief as she confronted a man. I knew instinctively that it was my father. I tried to see his face but the image fractured, changed. I cried out and tried to will it back; had almost succeeded when I remembered what my mother had said. Abruptly I let the image go, gritted my teeth against a sudden grief. Then I was riding above red-orange hills and he was with me. Then that too was gone, replaced by another image again and again, too fast to take in. My eyes rolled back in my head and I blacked out.

When I opened my eyes, I was back in the paddock, flat on my back. A cow was licking my face and I pushed it away, laughing shakily as I rose to my feet.
I looked at my watch. It was a minute after midnight.

‘Jeez. Is that all,’ and drew a deep breath. My Aunt had a lot of explaining to do.
My father wasn’t dead. He was the key to my future and the glimmer of possibilities that now nestled inside me. I would hold them for a year until next Halloween’s Eve, then I’d come back more prepared and ready to be the force I was always meant to be.

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Tags:

wind, magic, earth, crossroad, halloween and pendulum