Ellery
Ellery watched the shadows of the dancing tableau on the beach below. Beside her, Ned Harris clutched the deck railing, his knuckles white.
"I don't know about this, Ellery," he said, his voice cracking. "Letting Vickie dance—there's so many people, so many minds. How do you know it won't injure the baby? How can you be so sure?"
"She's a Dakotan, Ned, and the child she carries is a Dakotan. By joining with the others, my daughter is passing a great gift to your daughter. They'll be all right." She turned her face to the moonlit sands.
Below, the flickering shadows seemed to gather into rippling rings of gold, locking one into the other, flowing across the sands in ever widening circles as the dancers lifted arms high, pressed palm to palm, swooped down and back and lifted again. The pattern was always changing, always circling, joining.
Mesmerized, Ellery held her breath as immense power surged and ebbed above the sands. Colors flashed. Shapes formed, paused, fell back into the flowing power like kaleidoscopic images turning on a wheel. A glint of gold brushed across her feet, whirled away with a dizzying spray of light. Her mind stilled as she watched sand ripple like a still pond of water into which a stone is dropped. Deep in her being a great longing reached out, rushed headlong toward the widening circles. She fought to keep her balance as her body strained against the deck rail.
I belong there.
The thought sang.
Her eyes searched for, and found, an approaching spiral of gold. She balanced on one foot, the other poised to meet the ring. Of a sudden, a great plume of fire shot upward, curled down upon itself. Before she could cry out a warning, the spinning mass exploded around the dancers, billowed outward, and raced toward the house. Up and over the deck it rolled. For a moment, a rose-colored haze enveloped her body, then flashed back across the sands. In its place was joy inexpressible and a sense of assurance, of triumph and wonder unlike anything she had ever known. Deliverance from the finite to the infinite came and she understood immortality in all its guises. In that instant, she knew she had glimpsed the immensity of the Whole: a meaning and drift to the universe and man impossible to describe. Even as she struggled to define the emotions and knowledge, they slipped away.
Ellery wiped a film of moisture from her forehead, unable to stop the question that slithered to the forefront of her mind. A delusion? After all, delusions could possess the mind just as firmly as facts and were just as easy to believe.
"No," she muttered to herself, shaking her head back and forth. "Not delusion. There is something in man that is neither mind nor body. Something that is not subject to the conditions of space and time, of flesh and bone, of blood and genes." Existence by those terms is but a shadow of what we truly are, she thought. Like a dream without a dreamer; fragmented and soon forgotten. Not so what I felt. That was whole, limitless, and eternal. That was reality.
"My, God, Ellery. I feel like I am watching creation itself." Ned clutched her arm in a viselike grip. At her gasp of pain, his hand fell away. "Sorry," he mumbled.
The spell was broken.
Body trembling, she nodded, but did not speak. Somehow, Papa Victor, you found the key, she thought. You have given us what you didn't know you had—a pearl of great price.
Her mind raced with the implications. The Dakotan memory is important, she thought, but as nothing compared to the true gift they'd received. She gazed at the shadowy figures spread across the beach, still dipping and swaying as if listening to a magnificent concerto, united, disciplined, and in control. From their seed would come future avatars: teachers of peace and unity, givers of power and wisdom. Given time—and practice—the whole world could become Dakotan in thought and action. Now it was doubly important that the BH gene, their legacy, be protected.
As if on cue, the dancers stopped.
In the silence, ever so faint, came a mournful howl: malignant, Evil. Ellery lifted her head and listened to the night. Shivering, she hugged her arms close against her body. The hounds of Hell, she thought. They are loose. Victoria! She's in danger. The child, too. Beside her Ned stood rigid, his head raised into the breeze. She reached out and lightly touched his arm. He jerked back.
"I'm sorry, Ellery," he said sheepishly. "For a moment, I thought I heard a howling." He shrugged his shoulders.
"You heard it, Ned. I did, too. Now listen to me. I want you and Vickie to move far away from here."
"What?"
"I'm serious about this. I want you to take her away. She's not safe here anymore. Don't ask me how I know, I just know."
"But my job! Our house!"
"Forget that. I'll sell your house for you. You will find another job. She's in terrible danger. I can feel it, smell it. If I put out my hand, I will touch it."
"But where will we go, Ellery?"
Below, two figures walked slowly toward the house, pausing every few steps as if to rest. Three more followed behind,. The Dakotans were coming.
"Kansas," Ellery blurted. "Katie Hudson will let you come. Take Victoria to Kansas, Ned. Do not write or call. If I need to get a message to you, I'll find a way. Above all, let no one else know that Victoria is Dakotan or that you are from anywhere near this area. Agreed?"
"I don't know. You're asking us to take a big step into nothing." He stared down at the figures. "There's Vickie. I'll talk to her." He raised his hand to wave, stopped the motion in mid air. "She's in labor!" He charged toward the steps.
Ellery whirled to the rail then raced after her son-in-law.
Matthew supported his sister as she struggled to move across the sand. Half bent, her hands clutched at her swollen belly. A low moan of pain escaped her lips. She slumped to the sand. Her eyes squeezed into thin lines. Kneeling beside her, Ned patted her face with his big hand. He looked up at Ellery.
"What can I do? What can I do?"
"Victoria Danielle!"
Vickie's eyelids flew open as Ellery knew they would. They always did when she used her daughter's formal name.
"The contractions—when did they start?" she said softly.
"There was a sound, Mama. A horrible, evil sound." The young woman looked at her husband. "It wants my baby," she cried. "It wants my baby."
"Nothing's going to take our baby. Nothing!" He bent and kissed her forehead. Vickie cried out, her face tightened.
"The contractions, Victoria. During the dance?"
"No. When the sound came. The baby jumped and began to flail her arms and legs. Then the pains came." Vickie grabbed at her stomach. "Mama, she isn't going to wait."
Ellery nodded. "Ned, you carry Vickie to the house. Matthew, I'll need hot water. Lots of it."
"We can help, Doctor Jensen—my two sisters and I. We've birthed each other several times. Leave the gentlemen out of this one. We know what to do."
Ellery looked into the calm face of Katie Hudson and nodded.
As Ned lifted Vickie into his arms, she tilted her head back, gazed upward and said, "The baby's coming early, Mama. Does her angel know it's time?"
Turning her own face upward, Ellery smiled as she traced the patterns of twelve constellations in the star filled heavens. Two months shy of her fifth birthday, Vickie had asked the magic question—where do babies come from, Mama? The story of a house with twelve rooms where souls waited to be born seemed the perfect answer. And it was. In fact, it had become a favorite bedtime story. Memories flooded her mind, vivid and real.
How she had once fancied the idea of angels and babies living in a house in the sky; a house with twelve rooms just like the one she lived in. Eyes fixed on the star-filled firmament, lost in childhood reverie, her mind ticked off each room with its guardian. She frowned. Who guarded The Twins—the sixth room? The name flitted at the edge of her memory. It wouldn't come.
"Mama, does he know?" The voice held a touch of fear.
Ellery reached over and gently touched her daughter’s face. "Yes, child. Her guardian knows."
She watched Ned carry Victoria through the French doors and disappear into the house. My granddaughter will draw breath on the sixth day in the sixth month, she thought. The Rings of Maat have linked, John would say. The day of Truth from the room of Truth. Her hands reached out and upward toward the night sky. "Truth shall keep us free," she whispered to the stars. Her step was light as she entered the house and followed the three women into the bedroom.