“What sort of ritual?”
“It is one of calming and cleansing. It will help you to focus and open your mind.”
“Okay,” I say, as Omar moves to the wonky shelves, picks up a basket, places a wooden bowl in it, and begins picking bottles from the shelf.
Yoki moves onto their knees by the table and gestures at a spot on the floor. “I would ask you to lie flat on your back.”
Trying to be as not-awkward as possible, I maneuver myself onto the spot on the rugs Yoki suggested and lie back with a cushion under my head. Omar comes to kneel nearby and I shoot him a questioning glance. He nods subtly to reassure me and places the tray on the table. Immediately Yoki takes out the bowl, mixes some fragrant herbs with what appear to be spices, dried leaves, and seeds. They take up a blunt stirrer and mix the contents of the bowl, crushing them together before finally lighting the contents on fire. The bowl erupts with a purple flame that immediately goes out but leaves behind a bowl of smoking herbs and spices. Why do I feel like I’m about to experience the wildest contact high since that time a guy lit up on the L train?
“Close your eyes,” Yoki says, gently wafting the scented smoke from the bowl in my direction. I do as I’m told. “Inhale deeply. Let the smoke envelope you. Feel your rib cage expand as you breathe, feel your stomach muscles widening. Once you have taken in as much air as you can, hold that breath.”
My body expands as I breathe in, the smoke fills my nostrils, sweet and tangy and purely natural. As I hold my breath, it’s hard to explain, but it’s almost like I can feel the smoke moving through my cells, seeping into my veins and filling my body. My skin tingles, my fingers twitch, my muscles relax, and my limbs become heavy.
“Now release that breath and let the walls that protect your mind fall.”
I’m scared that this is going to hurt, scared that by letting in all the noise I’m going to be overwhelmed, damaged somehow, and yes…lost, like Yoki said. But I’m here to try and figure this out and I won’t be able to do that if I don’t give this a go, if I don’t put my trust in Yoki and Omar. As I let go of the breath I’ve been holding, I picture the walls around my mind falling outward.
Immediately my consciousness expands. I’m floating at the center of an infinitesimal void: weightless, buoyant, vibrating, eternal.
“Good,” Yoki says, as if they’re with me, as if they can feel the same thing I’m feeling. “You have left the physical world. And now you exist on the lunar plane. Just like the moon you are a reflection of the light that surrounds you. The noise you fear is not sound but light. Embrace light, search for it, and let it shine upon you.”
As they say this a speck of something glitters far, far off in the distance, then like the sun rising over the horizon, it grows, ethereal beams of yellow and gold spike out in all directions as the light grows bigger and hotter. For a moment I’m afraid, scared that it will burn or blind, but then like a wave the light passes over me. I inhale sharply as I embrace the warmth and the light.
It’s not unpleasant, but it’s intense, my muscles seize and my, my—everything disappears, evaporating and becoming nothing but light.
My eyes shoot open and I sit upright. The tent feels darker than before, the smells more intense and unpleasantly pungent. Everything is swirling around me, but even though I very well may topple over…I smile.
“What did you glimpse, Blood Wolf?”
“I saw it,” I say, breathless. “I saw us.”
THE LIGHT OF THE MOON
“You wouldn’t believe how good it felt,” I say, pacing, almost bouncing around Jasper and my tent.
Outside the night air is cool and the choir of insects is buzzing a soaring ballad.
“It was like a warm bath only it was all light, moonlight, and I didn’t have a body but it wasn’t scary—it was like being a tiny part of something so big and wonderful and if I can just learn how to tap into that intentionally who knows what I could…”
Jasper is sitting on the edge of our bed, a dumpy mattress on the canvas floor, not responding.
“Are you listening?”
He turns his head slowly, squinting at me, then shakes his head as if he’s waking himself up.
“I’m sorry. Tomas had me hammering poles into the ground all afternoon. I’m wiped.”
He runs a hand over his face and through his hair and I join him on the bed.
“Did you at least get to ask about your mother?”
“No. Tomas palmed me off onto one of his team then disappeared. I didn’t see him for the rest of the day.”
“That’s so strange. I’m sorry.” I rub his back and shoulders.
“I doubt he even knew my mother well enough to tell me anything about her.”
Jasper’s muscles are crazy tense.
