Chapter 36
In the past, I’ve done all sorts of enchanted forests, ancient temples, fluffy clouds—you name it—and I’ve created a cool meditative space in my mind to work through whatever troubles me. However, this space isn’t about anything troubling me. The shadow farm is more about a reflection of my own personal planet, and all the energies and entities around me.
While the specter of Virgil, like an avatar, stands to my right as a partner, his brother kneels at my left hand. Dix holds on tight to the hem of my garments, all the while gazing up at me, but at the last second, he turns to look off in the distance, as if distracted.
“Dix,” I murmur.
Beside me on the earthly plane, Virgil inhales and holds his breath. When he exhales, he says, “A romantic partner will typically be standing behind you or maybe to your side with his arm around you.”
“Um, not quite.” I choose not to elaborate. Dixxie is sweet and devoted, but there’s still something missing between us. Honestly, what’s missing is probably me.
“Look directly in front of you,” Virgil instructs. “Is there anyone standing directly in front of you, like close enough that you can reach out and touch them, but they’re transparent?”
“Um, I’m not sure what you mean so I guess not? I’m standing on the hill, looking out across the farm, and to the edge of the… the world? Like I’m on a tiny planet. Standing between you and Dixon. There is nothing and nobody directly in front of me or that close, but there are others. Off to my left, maybe six feet away, is my mom. She’s sitting in a—” I squint in my meditation as the image becomes clearer. “She’s sitting in a patch of purple petunias with a hand trowel in one hand and a book on gardening in the other. She doesn’t seem upset or confused.”
“That’s good. It means that she’s calmed down now and isn’t frightened. She’s thinking about, or maybe dreaming about, something she enjoys, and everybody knows how much Miss Emma loves her flowers. Who else is there with you in front of you?”
“My daughters and their partners.”
About ten feet in front of me, just far enough down the hill that I can see the horizon over their heads, my younger daughter Sonnet plays the guitar and sings the alto harmony to Christabel’s soprano. Maybe they’re just singing for fun, or maybe they’re writing a song together, or maybe they’re practicing for the next show of “Ravenz Legacy.” I would have to look at the calendar that Sonnet sent me to know exactly where they are this week, but it’s somewhere along the California coastline on the way up to Seattle. In each of the major cities along the way, they’ll stop and deliver metaphysical messages through channeling and song to a sold-out crowd, and then stick around for a few days afterward as consultants for healing centers that the locals are establishing. Every new healing center is a fractal of the prototype Center of Light that Jesse and I had created when we first married. Even though we lost our Center of Light to Jesse’s money problems, our healing center lives on in over eight hundred cloned centers across the U.S. and Canada. This was the mission the Old Gods gave me a decade ago, even though it didn’t come to fruition in the way I’d imagined.
Almost even with Sonnet and Christabel in my meditation, but barely to the right of center, Rhiannon curls up on an oversized sofa, propping herself against three fluffy pillows to support her enormous belly. Her husband curls up beside her, laughing with her and pausing to kiss her almost ripe baby bump. Any day now. Any day.
“My mom is fine,” I tell Virgil, “and so are the kids. Mama is content for now, and the girls are happy in their own daily lives. There’s nothing bad in front of me. Does that mean my stalker is gone? The one in my visions?”
I scan the horizon beyond the kids. Several shadows move around this shadow farm, but none seem menacing.
“Honestly, Laurie, I don’t sense anyone stalking you or bringing you any real harm here. Maybe a little bit of nuisance, but nothing to endanger your life. Sometimes we can see threats to others but not to ourselves, and I don’t see anyone stalking you.”
“You don’t believe my visions are real?”
“Oh, I didn’t say that! I definitely have the sensation of real visions. Prognostications. I just don’t sense anyone stalking you. It doesn’t make sense to me either. I know your talents are strong. Maybe the visions are echoes from the past.”
“I’ve had visions before. Things that have come to pass, sometimes within a day or two, sometimes within one moon cycle, and sometimes if at a lunar or solar eclipse, they came to pass within six to eighteen months, all depending on the length of the eclipse, and which astrological sign the eclipse took place in. These visions feel like that, like warnings. I have in the past been able to prevent bad things from coming to pass, but only after I learned the hard way that I could alter fate.”
Virgil chuckles. “Be careful not to let any of the priesthood of Daegan hear you say that. My priesthood’s foundation is based on knowing our fate and being able to ring every ounce of power out of that knowledge.”
“Are we done yet? Can I open my eyes now?” I shift on the hard ground as I start to drift away from the shadow farm which is infinitely more comfortable to my Astral body than my aging physical one.
“No, no. Not yet. Let’s get a better feel for what’s going on around you that you can’t see. I want you to direct your attention to the edge of this little world you have created for yourself out of the farm and your safe space. Often, the people in our lives, who act as sentries will occupy those positions, usually not directly in front of us but down at the edge of your earth, as you created it in your meditation often one on each side, but usually at least one. I would expect under normal conditions that I would occupy one of those positions, maybe the one to the right.”
Under normal conditions, yes. Virgil stands next to me, my partner and my equal, though he certainly may have occupied a sentry position when I first returned home. He’d acted as both sentry and guardian before he and I began partnering for magick.
“Shelby!”
The shadow on the ground ahead of me and to the left, at the edge of this little planet, shifts from hazy fog to my tall lanky but muscular brother on the ground. He’s camouflaged with grass and hay, and I feel him there more than see him. He’s more than a sentry: he’s a sniper. Even though he is my little brother, he’s always watched out for me, and he always took beatings meant for me when our dad was hellbent on someone paying a price.
“Anyone else in front of you?”
I search the astral landscape. “No. No one else in front of me, but they’re people off to the side. Dottie, Niecie, Pamela, all just barely within my periphery to my left. What does that mean, Virgil?”
“Your closest friends and partners are usually by your side, or directly behind you, depending on the relationship. The people closest to you and in front of you tend to be the ones that you cherish most, and feel responsible for. That would make sense that it would be your mom and daughters. Even your brother, though I have a feeling that his work takes him so far away that the two of you aren’t that close now. He’s still in a sentry position, safeguarding his big sister. These are all the people you’re most focused on or are most focused on you or both. Sometimes a shadow will show up directly in front of you, standing almost nose to nose with you. That could be a romantic interest or a romantic rival. Business rival, maybe.”
Even as Virgil is describing the reason someone might be that close to me turn directly to face me and studying everything about me, I think of the chaos witch who less than four years ago wanted my life so badly that she ended up destroying all the parts that she wanted most. But there’s no chaos with her now.
“I don’t see anybody here, Virgil, who isn’t someone I either love or support or support me. That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Have you looked behind you?”
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