For Kayli
Every day on the balcony of the sea, wings open,
fire is born, and everything is blue again like morning.
—Pablo Neruda
In the First Age, in the dark cave of creation, the light of knowledge was infused with the blood of compassion in the womb of earth. The heart light was born. Its power was coveted by those that knew its strength. But soon fractured, the stone could not come to light. So began a world controlled by fear, where the devil was blamed for all sin. A fractured stone meant a fractured humanity, and the dark ones were pleased. But the sands of time have waited for the moment to arrive when the extraordinary magic of the human heart will have another chance to shine again. If the stone can be healed by the pure of heart, its power will be remembered in all souls that walk the earth.
Vivienne DeClaire’s apartment sat perched precariously over the lapping waves of the Mediterranean. An ancient, gnarled pine clung tenaciously to the exposed face. It hadn’t yet decided to succumb to the sea. Vivienne’s marble deck now hung completely over the side of the cliff. She had made Bari, Italy, her home after the First Age, when more land surfaced after the Great Flood. Good memories had soaked into the land there. She had only wanted to remember the good. But now she looked out at the stunted shore beneath her and saw the painful ones returning. Ghostly, black, crab-like creatures crawled out of the sea at a snail’s pace. Their slow speed made their return that much worse, prolonging the inevitable. They had been waiting, as all painful memories do, in the churning, deep, dark water of the ocean. They were messengers from the primordial deep, and Vivienne was now faced with a choice she thought only applied to humans: act or react. She already knew she had waited too long to act.
The earth was experiencing remarkably swift changes that no scientist could explain away with global warming. Beatrice, the Great Mother of Air, was to blame for some of them. She hadn’t limited her wrath to the US. Many of the shores of Europe had been coated in silt. Now a light gray color, the beaches couldn’t hide their sadness. The shadow of humanity had been drawn out of the protection of the ocean and washed up like a tidal wave of beached sea life. It was forcing mankind to look at its own darkness.
Ocean, Great Mother of Fire, had to take responsibility as well. Fire was volatile, and volatile energy was escaping the earth’s core through volcanic activity. Volcanoes were, surprisingly, more easily dealt with than the quiet migration of the rising tide, however. The sea was just like Vivienne, Great Mother of Water—reserved and commanding, yet lethal when necessary. Nothing could stop raging water.
But all of the earth changes couldn’t be blamed on the Mothers. The greatest Mother herself, Gaia, needed to stretch and change. If a house sat where fire or fresh water must flow, so be it. Humans were required to adapt; they could no longer believe the earth was for conquering. Gaia had allowed people to live on her body, and they had proven horrendous stewards.
Natural disasters were the Great Mothers’ way of healing, of purging their personal pain. Although selfish in motive, the disasters always helped collective humanity. It seemed people forgot their pettiness and self-absorbed lives when disaster struck and remembered what life was truly about.
“Beauty always emerges out of destruction,” Vivienne said. “Always.”
Milicent Grayer wrapped herself in her vintage Armani purple silk kimono and sat on the corner of the ornate, satin-covered bed in one of her grandmother Vivienne’s guest rooms. Vivienne’s grand apartment had nine bedrooms, unheard of in crowded Bari. But Vivienne had converted six apartments into one at the turn of the twentieth century, mostly out of boredom. She had admired the rich Italian décor then, but now over a century had gone by, and she hadn’t the energy or desire to redecorate. She was considering leaving the apartment and relocating to Indonesia.
Milicent was slow to dress that morning as the wet heat wafted off the water through the open doors of the balcony. Her assistant, Noah Maganti, sat in lotus position on an uncomfortable antique desk chair in the corner. He was dressed all in white, his dark curls sleekly swept up in a man bun. He’d fallen off his weekly trim regimen, and it showed.
After Skylar’s abduction, he’d been glued to YouTube doomsday channels until Milicent forbade the negative energy in the house.
“You love negative energy, Mil,” he said.
“I’m working on raising my vibration and so should you,” she said. “We can’t keep feeding the collective fear. Power over others is a dying paradigm, and I’m trying to get ahead of the next big thing—power from within. Do your part to help me, Noah.”
After a bit of research into the other side of YouTube, he’d discovered the world of Kundalini yoga videos and had been practicing the technology incessantly ever since. Milicent didn’t know which was worse.
Vivienne walked into the room and Noah jumped to his feet and bowed. Niceties observed, he returned to lotus in the chair and resumed his alternate-nostril breathing. Vivienne chuckled quietly, but the reverberations of her laugh were felt for miles. Locals would cite a mild earthquake. Until now, she had done a queen’s job of keeping herself hidden among the cliffs of Bari, but now it was her turn to be seen, and that would come with a cost. Her sisters both claimed to be the most powerful Mother, but they secretly knew nothing was greater than the power of water.
She picked up the Book of Sophia from the desk next to Noah’s computer. It was barely recognizable, disintegrating by the day.
“It will return to the ethers soon,” Vivienne said. “Sophia calls for its return.”
“It’s unfortunate,” Milicent said. “It was the last piece for my library.”
“Records of the past have their place, but the future will be created on a whole other level,” Vivienne said. “The need for writing things down is coming to an end.”
She put down the book, and the two women walked out onto the small balcony attached to Milicent’s room. The high tide made the shore completely disappear.
“Grandmother, if a flood is inevitable, what’s the point in trying to make the world better?” Milicent asked. “It would seem we’re truly at the end of things now, and we should invest our money in that fellow who’s trying to get to Mars.”
“It’s never the end,” Vivienne said. “In the trying, help is given, timelines are collapsed, and futures change. Compassion for your fellow human acknowledges your own worthiness, and in that, worlds can be saved and crises avoided.” She sat on a bistro chair and sipped a glass of something cool and sparkling. “Besides, Mars is a dusty place. You’d hate it there.”
Milicent understood what Vivienne was saying. But as much as she didn’t want to admit it, she liked the drama of her life—except maybe the part when her husband, Devlin, put a cord around her neck.
Vivienne glanced back inside at Noah. “I like your boy,” she said. “He balances your energy.”
Milicent frowned.
“You know, for someone who claims to hate men, you always choose boys to collect. Do better with this one, child.”
“I’ve changed, Grandmother,” Milicent said. “Not necessarily by choice, but even I can’t deny that it’s for the better.”