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Category:
Science Fiction
Publisher: Human Being Publishing
ISBN-10: 0984002081
Type: Fiction
Pages: 208
Copyright: Nov 16, 2013
ISBN-13: 9780984002085
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
Forget all that you know. Remember everything else.
Hillary, her sister, Molly, and niece, Heidi, have each lost themselves,s literally, in an ethereal location, one in which a thought can be manifested in an instant and all actions are illusory. In this timeless space, they will lose themselves, find themselves and, in the process discover a universal secret of immortality.
A YA Sci Fi Fantasy Mystical Adventure Series (Book 3)
"Iron Shinto" has earned numerous awards and honors at several national and international book festivals including 'Runner Up' at The Great Southeast Book Festival, 'Honorable Mention' in both The Los Angeles Book Festival in the Young Adult category and in Portland Oregon's Great Northwest Book Festival.
Book Description:
Forget all that you know. Remember everything else.
Hillary, her sister, Molly, and niece, Heidi, have each lost themselves literally. After saving the Hawaiian Islands with Moa and discovering the Statue of Ku in Egypt, a malevolent force has separated them from their physical bodies, transporting them to an ethereal location, one in which a thought can be manifested in an instant and all actions are illusory. In this timeless space, they will lose themselves, find themselves and, in the process discover a universal secret of immortality.
Excerpt
“Battle not with monsters lest you become one.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Prologue
The Prince of Jupiter
It has been said that gods ruled as kings before Earth was formed. The people who said this, however, never met the Prince of Jupiter, who single-handedly transported the inhabitants of Jupiter beyond their meager planetary confines to a world where desires were manifested with a thought and dreams were a three-dimensional reality. It was all because of a glorious, mystical accident.
As a boy, the prince was fascinated with the afterlife and spent every waking moment studying what happens at the moment of death. He learned that the physical body contains two distinct ethereal bodies, the “Ba” and “Ka.” The “Ba” or soul leaves the body at the moment of death and returns to a collective group of souls where it will reincarnate into another body. The “Ka” departs the body but stays nearby. It remains a psychic imprint or “spirit” which can roam freely but remains detached. It was the “Ka” body that fascinated the prince the most. The “Ka” can make journeys to heaven, hell or can relive its human life for eternity.
The prince wondered what could happen to the “Ka” while the body was still alive. His curiosity led him to a meditation practice in which he attempted to send his own “Ka” on “errands.” He became quite adept at allowing his “Ka” out for short excursions and equally skillful at calling it back into his physical body.
As the prince continued his unorthodox self-guided education, the queen, who had fallen ill shortly after the prince was born, spent most of her time in bed, which left it to the king to raise and care for the prince. Despite the stressful family arrangement, the king dedicated himself to giving the increasingly overcrowded planet of Jupiter some much-needed elbow room. The king’s initial exploratory missions found a suitable planet called Earth. Although the atmosphere was not ideal, the royal metaphysicists had created alchemical conveyance structures—pyramids—which would allow any Jupiterian to materialize on any planet and to calibrate to the atmosphere.
The first exploratory excursions to Earth found locations for three conveyance structures. Metaphysicists also calculated that one year on Jupiter equaled one hundred years on Earth. Construction of the pyramid conveyance structures—PCSs—began when the prince was a baby and concluded when he was fifteen. The aim was to link other PCSs with energetic vortices on the planet Earth and constellations beyond Jupiter’s galaxy. Each PCS included two transportation areas: The King’s Chamber and the Queen’s Chamber.
What no one could have planned, however, was how the PCSs, now located around the world, would react with the intensely powerful, naturally occurring healing vortices on Earth and the prince’s “Ka” exercises.
The young prince begged his father for permission to be part of the first test group for the newly erected pyramids. When his father refused, the prince sent his “Ka” body into a PCS where it successfully rematerialized on Earth! Although his “Ka” was separated from his physical body, the prince experienced all sensations on Earth as if he had a physical body. As he exited the main portal into Earth’s atmosphere, he accidentally cut his hand on a sharp crystal at the mouth of the pyramid. Wrapping his hand in his cloak, he continued on his adventure. The prince explored the lush foliage surrounding the PCS and the crystal-blue waters, which flowed nearby. He dipped his hand into the lake to test the temperature and his cut healed immediately!
Upon his return and after he had reintegrated his “Ka” into his physical body, the Prince was punished by the king for his disobedience. He promised he would never attempt to travel through a PCS or release his “Ka” again. Meanwhile, the PCS project fell out of fashion. Most Jupiterians, it turned out, would rather not travel through the PCSs but favored their newly developed astro vehicles instead. So the project was abandoned.
By the time the prince was twenty, his fascination with using the portals turned to a full obsession. Based on his own healing experience with the beautiful crystal lake he wondered if a PCS could access the incredible healing powers of Earth for his mother, so he once again begged his father to go back but his father was still mistrustful.
Legend says that the prince convinced his father to allow him to separate each of their “Ka” bodies, including his mother—now, gravely ill—and they would go, as a family, through the portal for healing. When they arrived on Earth, however, they found that all the lakes and foliage had turned to desert. Sadly, when the family tried to return to Jupiter, the PCS failed. They remained suspended on Earth in stasis. Their “Ka” bodies were all they had, and so, with no kingdom to return to, the family set about building an invisible virtual kingdom. Invisible, that is, until they were discovered by the Anuenue. These entities were the bridge to the other world. The Anuenue told them that their PCS had been overtaken by the Egyptians—who could not see or hear the royal family because of their vibrational state—and the PCS was renamed the Great Pyramid. Egyptians believed the pyramid was constructed by pharaohs as a burial tomb. The only chance of rescuing the Royal Jupiterian family from imprisonment was through the power held within a statue created in honor of a young man who died at the base of the pyramid. The Legendary Ku was the only human in Earth history whose “Ka” and “Ba” were transferred directly into the statue where they remained intact. The Anuenue said that they would find the statue and, through Earth inhabitants, find a way to free the royal family from eternal imprisonment.
A group of benevolent Earth women was chosen for this task and was given guidance through Moa, a mystic guide. What the Anuenue did not tell the royal family was that the statue alone could not help them; instead, they would need a special stone to activate the statue and thus heal the queen. Moa placed the stone into the statue to release the royal family from their stasis.
While the royal family was on Earth, they tried several times, in vain, to return home through other PCSs on Earth. Their final attempt at escaping through an Earth vortex in Japan was thwarted by an evil force, which came in the form of a spindly-limbed crone. This evil force was fed on the stolen gifts.
With the Anuenue’s help, the king imprisoned the evil crone in a stone temple, which he embedded in the forests of Egypt.
She remained there until a young Ku freed her from her confines after which she fled to the island of Japan. His good deed bound Ku and the crone together for the remainder of Ku’s Earth life and eventually caused his demise.
The king felt that the PCS from Japan—called the Iron Shinto—was safer with him than in the hands of such an evil force, so he shrank it and transported it to his virtual palace for safekeeping.
Chapter I
Continuum
+
Ritual: Connecting the Dots
Element: Copper
Planet: Venus
Lie quietly and listen to your breathing. Inhale fully and deeply sixty times. Imagine a light in your heart space, which grows beyond your body and surrounds you with protective light.
Now, imagine a line of relatives from your past extending behind you. Even if you don’t know who they are, see them stretching in a timeline back as far as you can visualize. In front of you, imagine a line of relatives forming. Again, you don’t have to understand what you see or if you know these people. Then, feel your heart space light extending backward and forward in time to each of the relatives in your lineage. See that lovely healing heart light mending any past troubles or patterns. Then imagine that the light is moving through you and beyond you, extending into the future, healing all that was, is and will be.
+
Hillary writhes in pain on a crinkly paper-covered table. Acupuncture needles protrude from her hands, her stomach and her face. Her eyes are wide with fear as she quickly glances down at her wrists and ankles, which are bound by thick, oiled leather restraints. Her hands look different, small child-like hands, slim short fingers with bitten nails. Her tiny feet have even tinier toes. The sound of city traffic wafts in through the rusty security bars of a dirty window as her gaze wanders to an ornate tattoo curling around her right ankle.
The reality almost chokes the breath from her pincushion chest. She is inhabiting someone else’s body. And who on earth, she wonders, would tattoo a child?
“If you just close your eyes, you will gain so much more from this process, miss.” The doctor jabs a needle directly into her forehead and turns it again and again.
Hillary tries to jerk away, but her restraints prohibit almost all movement. Pain jaggedly zings through her head. It certainly feels like it’s Hillary’s body, or at least this pain is happening to her.
“Mommy?” Shocked at the rasp of her voice and that she is calling out for her mother—an act she hasn’t done since she was ten, more than eight years ago—Hillary cranes her neck to find any evidence of her location.
The doctor wears thick black-framed glasses with even thicker lenses and he reaches over Hillary to turn the needle in her left forearm. As he does so, his grimy, stained sleeve brushes across her lips and she wonders how often he launders his lab coats. His manner is cool and cruel and as she winces, he gives a slight smile. “How is it said? No pain, no gain?”
His worn black work shoes squeak on the beige tiled floor as he leaves. Hillary feels the wake of cool air pass over her body, hears the creak of the door handle and, finally, the metallic clunk as the doctor slides the deadbolt into place.
Resisting the urge to close her eyes, Hillary can’t explain it, but there is something she does not wish to see which lurks just behind her eyelids. She blinks. The blink turns into a flutter and before she knows it, her eyes shut.
The second her upper lashes meet her lower lid, she gasps. Her own face appears inches from her nose. It’s as if she has separated from her body and a part of her is unreasonably close.
Eyes snapping open, brakes squeal on the street below followed by a loud crash, then people arguing in an indiscernible foreign language. Hillary frantically scans the immediate area for anyone, her breath comes in heaves, as if whoever, whatever, was hovering above her was pressing on her chest. No one is in the room. Outside, a gentle rain drips through an ancient barred window and falls onto a rolling metal cart containing cotton balls, a large bottle of alcohol and the dreaded needles.
Struggling to free herself, she yanks at one arm restraint, then another. A wisp of a thought meanders through her mind. Is it really worth all the trouble being here on Earth? The thick leather burns her wrists, almost rubbed raw, as she writhes against them, willing them to give under her pressure. Feeling no release, Hillary examines the bound right wrist of her prison-body. Perhaps it will hold a clue to whoever is encasing her ethereal body and maybe the evidence will offer information about how she can escape. Again, slightly stronger, the meandering thought continues. Wouldn’t it be easier to be set free of the confines of this human body? The right wrist has thick, horizontal pink scars just at the inside crease. Oh God, Hillary jolts in disbelief. This child tried to commit suicide. A quick glance confirms her worst fears, the same scarring on the left one. Both hands have scratches and the nails are dirty and bitten to the nub. Hillary is overcome with pity and, instead of feeling trapped, now wonders if she could be an unwelcome squatter. As she lowers the left hand, it knocks against a small, hard object. Deftly maneuvering her hand into the ample folds of her well-worn fabric of the skirt, she digs into a deep, loose pocket and unearths a small silver coin with a shockingly familiar pattern, three parallel wavy lines.
Suddenly, Hillary hears the acupuncturist’s voice and quickly shoves the coin back in the pocket. Before she can do anything else, a snowy white overtakes her vision and a tunnel-like echo engulfs her ears. The veil thins and then fades to nothingness.
***
“Mommy?” Seven-year-old Heidi’s voice is clear and crisp.
Hillary shakes off her jarring experience and hears her sister Molly answering her daughter, the sound vibrating around her head, “Yyyesss.”
“Mol, Heidi. Are you okay? Is baby Adem with you?” Hillary’s voice sounds thick and she feels numb and warm as she moves her hand to her own light brown curly hair. Wondering if the other thing was a dream, she traces a path to her eyes, her smallish nose and her full lips.
Even though she can’t see her niece and sister, she tries to picture each of them as they speak. In her mind’s eye, she sees Heidi with her long, straight, light-brown hair, sparking dark brown eyes and bright skirt and top. She imagines Molly’s jaw is set sternly—even in relaxation—her own gorgeous wavy light brown bob curling slightly at her chin and her compassionate amber eyes staring directly into Hillary’s heart.
Being in this place that is no place is definitely an unusual sensation, like when any of Hillary’s limbs fall asleep they feel tingly and cool and just a little uncomfortable, although this is all over her body. And she is definitely awake. In fact, her entire body feels vibrant and alive.
“Sure, Hil.” Molly’s scared, Hillary can tell. Her trademark skepticism is replaced by taut fear. “Your voice sounds strange. Almost like you’re miles away and at the same time right next to me.”
“I wonder if Moa is close by. It sure would be nice to have some guidance.” Molly pulls Heidi a little closer and yells, “Hello! Moa? Are you there?”
She is met with a tingling silence. Molly’s words resonate around the group and echo like a vast cavern.
Heidi senses her mother’s tension. “I think Moa is in a different place right now,” she says, reaching for her mother’s hand. “I feel funny.” Heidi rubs her free hand on the entwined hands, tracing each finger as a reassurance that she and her mother are still connected. The idea that no one can see her sends a chill through her little body.
The air smells electric, almost like after a rainstorm, clean and bright.
In this space, Hillary notices that while her sister Molly’s voice sounds tinny, her niece Heidi’s words ring like a bell. Hillary experiments with her own sound and says, “I hope we come out of this soon. I feel strange—unbalanced—like one half of me is here and another is somewhere else.” The timbre in her voice sounds like she has her hands over her ears.
“Me too.” Molly’s voice hums. The vibration reverberates through Hillary making her feel even more uneven. Nonetheless, Molly continues to call for the absent friend/spirit guide. “Moa? Moa. Mooooaaaaaaa!”
“Mol, this isn’t a restaurant where we can call for service.” Hillary loves her sister, but sometimes she can be so annoying. Funny, though, feelings seem to be muffled and fleeting in this new space. “Seems like we’re on our own…at least for the time being. I’m guessing Moa and Ku have reunited with their families. But that’s a good idea about finding guidance.” Hillary attempts to yell, but her voice sounds like a chorus of tinkling bells, “Hello! Anyone! Is anyone out there? We need help!”
Nothing. No response.
“Wow. We really are all alone.” Molly shivers like a snare drum.
An unfathomable silence overtakes Hillary. Then a terrible thought: What if none of us is alive?
“Mol, Heidi?” Hillary tries to quell her rising panic. She wishes she could see her sister and niece. “Where are you?” She fumbles around desperately trying to find them. Each word Hillary speaks resonates through her, around her and inside her. It’s as if she is sitting inside a steel drum and each word is a note.
“We’re here, Hil.” Suddenly, her sister’s voice sounds as if it is right next to her and Hillary jumps.
Stretching her hand outward toward the sound, Hillary feels around for Molly and Heidi. “Where?”
“We’re where we were when we all put our hands on the Iron Shinto and left Egypt. Right across from you.” Molly says, “I’m holding Heidi on one side and Adem’s carrier on the other.”
Hillary continues to grope around her immediate area. She cannot feel anything but the rough weathered roof of the Iron Shinto. Her feet don’t even feel like they are touching the ground.
“Are we in Japan yet?” Heidi asks. Hillary smiles as she hears her niece’s sweet voice.
“That’s a good question.” Hillary finally touches something and exclaims, “Aha! It’s…let’s see, I think it’s Adem’s carrier.” Her hand runs over the plastic handle and down to the baby and the soft plump flesh of his leg. “Yes. It’s definitely him.”
“Where are we?” Molly sighs. “I guess that’s the real question.”
Hillary pats her way across the carrier until she finds Molly’s hand and covers it with her own. “My guess is we are hovering somewhere over Tokyo.”
“How do you know that?” Molly’s hand tightens under Hillary’s.
“Because we would have arrived by now, but I can see the lights in my mind’s eye. It looks like we are...hovering far above the city.” Hillary is as baffled as they are. Her intuitive sense of the situation is that when the group left Egypt, their atoms split and shifted, molecules shuffled and these elements rearranged perfectly to send Hillary, Heidi, Molly and Adem into the ether. “I have a feeling that awful crone who stole Ku’s gifts is behind this.”
“What if the crone is here?” Heidi’s tinkling voice has a hint of shrillness. “And she’s keeping us separated from our bodies.”
“Look, at least we have each other.” Molly feels the buzz of white noise around her. “For now, we can hold hands until we can come up with a way to get out of here.”
“You know,” Hillary says, her seriousness sounds dull and heavy, like putting a hand on a beating drum. The sound stops at each syllable. “Our bod-ies are still some-where and…” her syncopated speech stops abruptly with no clear ending.
“I think I took a detour before arriving, um, wherever we are…” Hillary stops short unable to continue. Suddenly pictures of little hands and feet with acupuncture needles flash, lightening fast through Hillary’s brain and she whispers, “Whoa! Someone’s in danger.”
“What? Is it us?” Molly’s voice sounds like the highest note plucked on a violin.
“Well, yes and no. I saw pictures…”
“I hear her crying.” Heidi’s tone is heartbreakingly melodic. “She’s asking for her mommy.”
“Yes, I understand. The girl is trapped.” Hillary soothes, “Who is she?”
“We can save her entire family and their descendants!” Heidi says excitedly.
“Now, how are we going to do that given our…um current location, or lack thereof?” Molly reaches for her daughter’s hand and pulls her closer.
Hillary tries to intuit their location to no avail. It seems that they are surrounded by an energy that is determined to keep them stuck. Not wanting to scare Heidi, she merely says, “I don’t know, but we better do it soon. I think we are in danger, too, if we don’t find her.”
“What makes you think so?” Heidi asked reluctantly.
“Just a sense.” Hillary doesn’t want to tell anyone about her out of body acupuncture experience until she is sure if they need to save the girl from a monstrous abuser or from the girl herself.
The Iron Shinto, a weathered and miniaturized version of a real-life Japanese shrine, has dissolved Hillary, Heidi, Molly and Baby Adem into a metaphysical gray area and I am holding them here for my own purposes. But more about me momentarily.
After reading the “Prince of Jupiter” story from the ancient book from the King and Queen’s library, the group held the gem gifts from Ku and began to direct their thoughts and intentions on traveling to the island of Japan to retrieve their physical bodies. Each gem was intended to enhance each recipient’s personal gift as well as create an entirely new powerful “group gift” if each participant aimed her focus on a desired goal. As they held hands, closed their eyes and focused on traveling to the Island of Japan, everyone, including Baby Adem and the Iron Shinto dissolved into nothingness.
For now, however, they remain between the light and dark. They aren’t dead, they aren’t alive, time does not exist and they are behind the veil which separates them from all that exists in the physical world.
“When we left the Royal Palace,” Hillary says, “our Kas were instantly separated from our bodies. Remember how the tourists couldn’t see us as we wandered near the base of the Pyramid?”
“And we could see each other. But wait,” Heidi chimes in, “it could have happened before that. Remember when Ku ascended with Moa in his labyrinth? We were blasted with some kind of energy, then, too. What ever happened to the King, Queen and Prince of Jupiter? Did we really have that experience?”
“The whole thing is beyond logic,” says Molly, the self-proclaimed “realist” of the group. “But I know what I saw and felt.” She is still trying to wrap her head around how they left Egypt and the manner in which their spirits were separated from their physical bodies. Molly imagines how her own newly acquired gift of claircognizance will be enhanced. Her knowing has already helped them locate Ku. With Heidi’s gift of clairaudience and Hillary’s clairvoyance they should be able to solve any problems that come their way.
What Molly doesn’t know is that she, her daughter, Heidi and sister, Hillary, all agreed to help me during this lifetime to procure that which is rightfully mine—a piece of my soul which will bring completion to my work on Earth.
Just as Moa described as she watched Hillary before their fateful meeting, I hover just beyond the “outer shell.” However, I am in a self-imposed exile far from Hillary, Heidi and Molly. Light years away, in fact. The period of time has yet to be determined, but the ultimate decision for the end of my spiritual incarceration will cease when I am complete. And by complete, I mean every fragment of me has been returned to its rightful dwelling place inside me, and I am finally able to go home.
In my current incarnation I’m called Mina, and my story is both long and complicated, so perhaps I should start at the beginning. Human lives have a beginning, middle and end to them, just as stories, do. All of these journeys occur in a container called time.
We all have tasks to complete in life. Either we do them and move on to the next journey, or we don’t and must repeat the lesson until the task is completed.
Along with the accomplishing of a task comes an element of timing. The timing is a vibration, which connects us to other people and to the earth. By connecting with timing we agree to join a universal chain of events. Those events determine our future.
We also have free will to choose our destiny. With that choice, we can move in infinite directions based on past choices and events. Timing creates a current in which we travel to specific destinations in order to accomplish certain goals. When we complete the tasks and reach a specific goal, a new timing path/channel opens up for us and we move further along that current toward accomplishing the next goal. Whether we know it or not, we all set goals—consciously or unconsciously—and those goals determine the course of our lives. The expectation of outcome is what makes a difference in how difficult or easy, fast or slow, shallow or deep the journey is. In other words, by expecting an outcome we shape the type of journey we can have in a particular journey.
Journeys also have a beginning, middle and an end. When we’ve accomplished a goal or task, there is a celebration, which ends a journey. Then, we are at a timing crossroads and we have the ability to choose our next journey. Our expectations, thoughts and feelings can shape our journey or even determine it. That person can release expectations (making the journey open up wider to more possibilities, thus making the journey faster) or create specific judgments and expectations (narrowing the journey’s path and perhaps slowing down the process.) The journey is fraught with unknown people and circumstances and, at each moment, we are able to choose (by our reaction, thoughts and actions) how to deal with the situation. By doing so, we create timing.
As I said before, each person’s journey has a beginning, middle and end and within that journey can be hundreds, thousands or even millions of journeys all with their own structure and timing. Therefore, my story will start at the beginning of my lifelong journey to find wholeness. What I never imagined was that no amount of searching would manifest the help that I needed. It was all a matter of time.
“Doctor can you help my daughter?” My mother’s farm-weathered hands desperately convulse with fear as she pushes me toward the imposing male figure. “I cannot handle her…” Eyes dart right and left, “demon’s eyes, she has…” She wrings her hands, “We named her for our heroic ancestors, Minamoto Yoritomo…” and paces toward a window with metal bars. “I caught her talking to no one, thin air, she said it is her grandmother.”
He peers over his thick dark framed glasses which magnify his eyes far beyond their normal size, hands in pockets jingling coins, as he leans in closer for a look.
My mother continues, “Her grandmother is dead. She writes strange recipes and once performed a ritual to try to bring the chicken I was cooking for dinner back to life. People talk, doctor. Our family will be sent away if this gets out. Mina has brought us much misery. We cannot survive on our own away from the village.”
I wish I could look down at my feet, but the doctor’s nose is inches from mine as he bathes me in garlic scent. “Demonic possession. Bad for Ainu family. I fix.”
Bad for family. Bad for family. The words echo in my head. My ten-year-old brain trying desperately to make sense of why I need to be fixed. Trying so hard to not see what is right in front of me. But, spirits are everywhere and ignoring what was right in front of me had become increasingly difficult. Especially when the spirits asked me to do things for them. It wasn’t my fault that these spirits had unfinished business. I cursed this extra sight I had that no one else seemed to possess. My family has had it hard enough as it is. Being an indigenous Japanese, Ainu, we have been ostracized for thousands of years and finally were made to “assimilate.” Both my mother and father were Ainu and it was greatly frowned upon when they married and had children. Everyone around us, including their families, wanted them to find suitable mates who would allow the Ainu blood to disperse. The last thing they need is one of their children bringing disgrace on the family. Maybe I am crazy? Perhaps the doctor can help me after all. But there is something strange about him. I can’t put my finger on it, but something isn’t quite right.
Reaching into the depths of my skirt pocket, I clutch the only thing I have left of my family, a silver coin that was passed down to me from my grandmother. My thumb moves over the three raised parallel lines and the cool metal as I beg my ancestors to protect me from this malevolent man and to free me of this cursed gift.
He escorts my mother out of the room and says once more for emphasis, “I fix.”
This glimpse of her as she leaves is, I fear, the last time I will ever see my mother.
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