I sold the idea of a moonwalk to Jasper with the notion that we’d be able to find Jericho in there and even speak to him. The idea lit up Jasper’s face.
I take his hands, letting them sit between us. “I found you, didn’t I? When you were in the hospital.”
“But that’s different. That’s us.”
“I know. But he’s your father and I’ll be there to help find him.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Omar chimes in. He’s finished setting out candles and is now lighting them with a pack of matches. “The lunar energy in this space is off the charts.”
We’re in the packhouse, in a room vastly different from the glamorous event space upstairs and the corporate offices onthe other floors. Here on the fourteenth floor—fourteen being a significant number for wolves due to it being half the duration of a lunar phase—is the prayer room. A sacred space for wolves to meditate and connect with the moon gods. The walls around us are huge LED screens, displaying a crystal-clear landscape, flowing hills, blue skies, and cherry trees, their branches swaying in a light digital breeze, causing the animated blossoms to drift like confetti through the air. To my right, a crystal the size of an office chair rises from the pebbled floor, the energy vibrating off it in waves that are almost visible to my wolf senses. The instant I stepped in here I could tell we were in a special place. The veil between our plane of existence and the Lunar Plane is wafer thin here, it feels sort of translucent, as if I could easily step from one side to the other.
“Are we almost ready?” Jasper asks, his impatience overt.
“Can’t rush the moon gods, my man,” Omar replies, pouring a pouch of wolf’s teeth onto a large wooden platter with a carved border, and placing it between us. When he’s done, he moves beyond the edge of the circle of candles, sitting next to the large crystal, behind a crescent of dimpled bronze bowls. “Remember how this works, Max?”
I nod to Omar, then say to Jasper, “Close your eyes.”
Jasper studies me skeptically for a minute and I give his palms an encouraging squeeze—we got this. He closes his eyes. With one big breath in I do the same.
“I want you to focus on your breath,” Omar says, guiding us, “acknowledge any intrusive thoughts that enter your mind, and let them drift away.”
Immediately, I’m confronted with a swirl of intrusive thoughts.How am I going to tell Jasper about moving across the country for college? What if I don’t want to be marked? What if we don’t find his father waiting for us on the Lunar Plane?But I do my best to follow Omar’s guidance and releasethese thoughts into the ether. I take another breath, letting it fill my chest, letting my shoulders rise and my back expand, then releasing it, along with my anxieties and concerns.
The warbling bell sound as Omar drags a small, cloth-covered mallet around the inside of one bronze bowl rings out, quietly at first then gaining volume. He moves to another, this one with a deeper sound, resonant and rich, harmonizing with the still-ringing sound of the first, sending vibrations through me. Another tone is added to the mix, and pretty soon my mind is flooded with sound. Omar plays the bowls in a random but enchanting sequence, revisiting tones, mixing them with new vigor. My mind’s eye pulses with colors and shapes as I zero in on the sounds.
“Hey Max.”Jasper’s voice arrives in my head, low but audible over the ringing.“How do we know if it’s working?”
“Listen to the world, let your mind open,” I say. “Let your wolf self roam.”
Omar adds a familiar-sounding instrument to the mix, a bean-filled bamboo tube that sounds like rain as it’s flipped, as well as his own voice, a deep hum that warms me from the inside out. That feeling spreads, the heat increasing until my skin feels like it’s on fire. I open my eyes but am confronted by nightmare visions, coming at me all at once.
It’s freaking intense. I see wolves howling out in pain. A smoke-flooded field, where hundreds of wolves lie strewn across the muddy grass, blood spattered everywhere. I see my friends lying in a heap, their wide eyes unblinking, their bodies not moving. I see Aisha running down a long dirt path at night, turning back as if she’s scared of whoever is following her, as if she’s scared I’m following her. I see Jasper and think the nightmare visions are over but as he approaches, he opens his jaw inhumanly wide, fangs elongating. His hands hold me in place, I try to shake free, to scream but I can’t move, and nosound escapes my parted lips. I cry out in pain as his teeth sink into my neck—
“Max,”Jasper says, and I know it’s not the terrifying vision of him, but the real him speaking to me, and I’m suddenly calm. I find myself floating in a galaxy-like void. Pinprick lights dance around me. My fingertips drape through the onyx river, causing ripples in the nonexistent water. This place feels familiar. The Lunar Plane.“Max, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say.“Where are you?”
“I don’t know,”he says.“I don’t think it’s working.”
“What can you see?”
“Nothing. My eyes are still closed.”
Up ahead I spot a small light on the horizon and I swim toward it, half flying, half floating. As I draw closer I realize the light isn’t a star or the moon, it’s Jasper, he’s floating in the same inky black void, with his eyes closed. I reach for him and take both his hands, the same way we began this journey.
“Open your eyes,”I say.
He does and from his eyes shines a light so brilliant and white it blinds me momentarily. Slowly though, the light dissipates and, blinking, I realize we’ve arrived somewhere new. We’re still holding on to each other’s hands, but now we’re standing, surrounded by cherry trees and green grass that carpets the sloping hills rolling away in all directions. We’re in the orchard from the screens in the prayer room, only now it’s real. Blossoms dance in the wind and branches sway in a breeze that grazes my cheek.
“Whoa,” Jasper says, looking around, taking it all in. “Is this ...?”
“Yeah,” I say. Even though it looks different than the last time I was here. “The Lunar Plane. We made it.”
He lets go of one hand but stays holding the other, wandering a little from where we’ve landed. The aroma ofthe blossoms is intense and sparks a familiar affection in my stomach. It’s the same scent that’s always accompanied Jasper.
“Where do we go?”
I look around for a sign or some guiding spirit animal. “I don’t know. Last time my wolf self found me.”
