Ancient Echoes

CHAPTER 28



MICHAEL, JAKE, CHARLOTTE, and Quade made camp. After the shock and horror of what had happened to Ted Bellows, they searched for footprints and found several that probably belonged to the university group. The footprints headed east. With renewed hope they followed them until it grew too dark to see. Eventually, they fell into a restless, troubled sleep.

It seemed he had scarcely shut his eyes when Michael awoke to the lute-like sound of a sanxian. The melody sounded beautiful, intriguing. He had to see…

Quietly, he left his small tent and sleeping bag and walked toward the gentle music. Moon and starlight in a cloudless sky lit the way. Instead of dry, brittle ground, a lush green garden of low grasses, moss, red peonies, and a mulberry tree spread before him.

With wonder, he continued on. Mist swirled around a pond filled with lotus pods, and by the bank, her back to him, a woman sat on a low bench and lightly strummed a sanxian. She was slender, and wore an emerald green Chinese robe. Gold ribbons and mother of pearl combs held her long, heavy hair in elaborate coils.

He approached, but the setting made no sense. No placid waters or thick foliage existed in this high, arid land. And it had been night, but now sunshine warmed the day.

Was this heaven? If so, he was sorry he'd stopped believing in it.

The woman turned his way. He knew her at once.

“Come sit by me.” She gave a small bow of the head as she gestured toward a small, second bench nearby.

He didn't recognize the words she spoke, yet by the time they reached his ears, as if the mists themselves possessed the power to translate, he understood. When he answered in English, the same translation seemed to occur. He sat at her feet. They were tiny, but had not been bound. That practice came many centuries after the Han dynasty. He was thankful she had not been made to suffer. He felt big and clumsy beside her, but her warm smile eased his awkwardness.

She had a teapot and two Chinese cups at her side. She poured him some tea. He thanked her and took a sip. He tasted it, smelled it, felt its warmth as it slid down his throat. He then set the cup aside. His gaze never left Lady Hsieh. She stared back at him in equal wonder.

“I’m dreaming,” he said after a while. “That’s the only explanation. But it’s a pleasant dream.” He smiled, as she did. Once again, a sense of connection with this woman, deeper and more profound than anything he'd ever known, jarred him.

“It's not a dream, but for you, it should be,” she said softly. “I'm not of your world. And yet, you are the only one who can set me free. You have begun, but there is more work to do. Dangerous work.”

She placed her hand lightly on his forearm. He covered it with his. The skin of her small, delicate hand was softer than the silk she wore. He felt its warmth. “You are real. I can touch you. How can that be?”

“You've been searching for me. I heard your call. It made me happy,” she said shyly. She spoke as much with her eyes as with her lips. He felt lost in them, the fine lashes, the thin feathery brows that lifted and drew him closer with each word.

She pulled her hand free, but remained leaning towards him. He noticed the scent of peonies. “After you accomplish your work here, Michael, you must find your way back. That is where you will find what you seek. There is nothing here for you.”

He could read the sorrow in her eyes and it filled his heart with profound sadness. “What is this place?” he asked.

“It is a place where time meets.”

“This makes no sense.”

She clasped both his hands with hers. “My grandmother taught me the ancient instruction that the alchemist Li Chao Kuin gave to the Han Emperor Wu Ti. I learned to transform the powder of cinnabar to a yellow gold that gave prolonged longevity. With such longevity I lived among the blessed hsien—beings—of the island of P'eng Lai. There, I could not die. That is the Chinese way of alchemy.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand any of it.”

“I don’t expect you to,” she said with a smile. “But you should know that I did wrong. What is existence without life? Without love? It is torture.” Her dark brown eyes seemed to read his very soul. He had never seen anyone so beautiful. He felt her loneliness because it matched his own. “Be careful,” she pleaded. “There are those who would stop you.”

“Stop me from what?”

She dropped his hands. “From destroying this world. Destroying me.”

Stunned, he refused to listen to such madness. “I would never hurt you.”

She studied him as if committing to memory every inch of his face. Her tender gaze filled with regret. “How remarkable that you were the one who woke me from my immortal sleep. You are a good man, with a good heart, and”—she blushed—“very pleasing to look at. I wish…” She stopped and sadly shook her head, unable to go on, to say what filled her heart.

This is madness. He fought against his too sudden, too strong feelings for her. She’s not real. And yet, he wanted nothing so much as to touch her again, to hold her. “Tell me everything,” he whispered.

She turned as if hearing something that only she could hear. “Time cannot be out of step in this way. It brings too much disorder, too much danger.” She faced him with an intensity that reached his very core. “When the time comes, follow your intuition. It will save you. I'm sorry, so very sorry.”

The image shimmered then faded, and he found himself standing alone on a scrub-covered hillside in the middle of nowhere. The moon set just beyond the mountaintops. He felt empty inside. Destroy her, she had said. He would as soon destroy himself. “No,” he whispered, then louder. “No!”

o0o

Charlotte slept lightly and awakened suddenly. Whether because of a noise outside her tent, or the sudden quiet of the two owls that had been calling and answering all night, she didn't know. She rarely dreamed, yet in this place, she'd done nothing but dream of the dead.

Thoughts of the men who had been hunting her, who had killed her friends, jarred her into action. She took her gun and crept to the opening of the tent where she peered through the slit.

And saw Michael.

He acted arrogant at times, even cocky, with his intelligence and the successes he’d had, but it was almost as if he were putting on a show, a strong face to the world so that people wouldn’t see the real Michael. She could sense that he held locked inside a deep sorrow, perhaps because she had done the same for so many years. Where she had burrowed into a mundane life to avoid facing all she had lost, he did the opposite. He seemed to seek danger in his travels, as if he used them as a means to run from his troubles, or perhaps, to run towards them. And he seemed to do so with little care or concern for the dangers he would face. Perhaps, she thought sadly, even welcoming them.

She wondered if he would talk to her.

o0o

Michael heard his name. He turned to see Charlotte standing outside her tent.

He spoke quietly so as not to wake the others as he approached. “I couldn't sleep. Strange dreams.”

“You aren't the only one,” she admitted. “You're trembling.”

He wasn’t aware of that until she mentioned it. He felt half frozen. She took his hand to draw him into the warmth of her tent. He knelt because the tent was small, and she touched his forehead to check for a fever.

“I’m not sick,” he said, yet felt oddly comforted by her touch, her concern.

She sat, cross-legged, and he did as well, then she placed the back of her hand against his cheek. “You feel like ice. Get into the sleeping bag. You’ve got to warm up or you might become ill.” She had him lie down, and eased a corner of the bag over her cold feet and legs.

“What were you doing out there?” she asked.

He didn’t answer the question—he wouldn’t know how to. Instead he asked, “Do you believe any of this, Charlotte? A vortex to another time, another place. You're the realist. I want you to tell me I'm dreaming and none of this is real.”

His words surprised her, and she studied him before speaking. “Why do you say that?”

“I’m not sure.” He stopped himself from saying all he wanted to, how, usually, he felt only emptiness, as if he was adrift and didn't know how to stop himself. But here, he had found an anchor...and doubted it was real.

Cold, she slid further into the unzipped sleeping bag with him, turned onto her side, bent her elbow into position and rested her head on her hand. “Tell me what's troubling you, Michael,” she said. There was nothing sexual about her actions, but merely as a one seeking to understand his troubled mood.

“Do you know what it's like to feel empty inside?” he asked. “To wonder why you go through each day?”

“Yes, I do,” she admitted. “But I'm surprised to hear you say that. I would have thought you have everything—money, fame, an exciting profession that takes you all over the world, and I'm sure more women than you know what to do with. What more could you want?”

He answered without hesitation. “Perhaps…to not feel hollow?”

Her blue eyes met his, and she nodded. She understood.

He remained silent, however. As much as he wanted to open up, he couldn’t. He wasn’t that way.

No longer was he trusting, able to “share” or to bare his soul. Once he had been, but no more. Once, he knew a woman—or thought he did—the two of them had grown up together. She knew his family, knew how cold and unfeeling it was, how everyone in it ignored the youngest child. Only with her could he share his deepest secrets and reveal his wildest dreams.

And still, their ending haunted him.

He had loved her, but it hadn’t mattered.

After that, women seemed to come and go in his life. He'd been “in lust” often enough, even to the point of contemplating marriage, but his instincts told him happily ever after didn’t exist for him. Deep-in-the-heart-and-soul love was as alien to him as the galaxy of Andromeda. So he kept traveling as far and as fast as possible…but he couldn't outrun himself.

Charlotte waited, her expression open, trusting, empathetic. What kind of fool was he? He opened up to a figment of his imagination, and wouldn’t talk to this compassionate woman who had been through so much he should have been the one offering her comfort, rather than vice versa. Sometimes he disgusted himself. He forced himself to speak.

“I've tried to fill my days with people, possessions, places to go and things to do,” he whispered, “but...I don't know. It hasn’t worked out the way I expected…or, I expected too much.”

“You never talk about your home, or your family,” she said.

He thought about his life outside, back “home.” But where was home? He had a house in California he never visited. It was a storage dump and mail drop, not a home at all. He filled it with valuable possessions from his trips, and paid a housekeeper, gardener, security experts, and a bookkeeper to assure everything ran smoothly in his life. And for what? “There’s not much to talk about.”

“What's odd,” she said softly, “is being here…this place is filled with ghosts. It has a sense of the Other. I suspect that appeals to you, Michael.”

“The spiritual?” He scoffed. “I don't believe in ‘the spiritual,’ whatever that is.” Thoughts came to him of Lady Hsieh. Or, I didn't, he thought.

The expression on her face told him she wasn't convinced. “Sleep, Michael,” she whispered. “It will help.”

“I may be able to now.” He got out of the sleeping bag. “I’ll give you back your bed.”

She stepped out of the tent with him.

“You’re a good person, Charlotte,” he said. “Thank you.”

He turned to leave. “Michael,” she whispered. He turned and she put her arms around him in a quick hug, then eased back and brushed her hand against his face in a gentle stroke. “Anytime you want to talk, Michael, I’m here.”

“I know,” he whispered.

With that she nodded, and went back into her tent.

To his surprise, he found himself oddly comforted by the somber but understanding woman. He got into his sleeping bag and fell into a fitful sleep dreaming of the sound of a sanxian.