These last two weeks with Kali have been all she promised, yet not what you expected. Sure, you’re basically freeloading: no need to pay or work your share of the apartment, and lots of unsupervised time in the house while she is out meeting clients. Yet, when she said "study", she wasn’t joking. She’s left you some modules to handle while she’s gone, of assorted content, all of it pretty mundane—math, for example, but also history and social studies, which you thought you left behind—and she was very disappointed when you ignored them. That’s when you realized that, the angrier she was, the heavier her accent became—as she berated you for thinking little about your future.
And that hit you hard, because that was exactly what your father told you. Before anything of this had happened.
Things worked better after that, and you applied yourself steadily and conscientiously. Kali, for her part, began to leaven your studies by talking about what you really want to learn about: the stuff to do with your new life.
Today, however, she has promised something different, and when you emerge from the bathroom after showering and brushing your teeth, she receives you in the living room with a yoga mat and incense. She is also in tight-fitting clothes that leave little to the imagination.
You must have shown surprise, for she starts by saying, rather archly, "I hope you don't find my attire distracting. You will need a clear mind and a clear conscience for where we are going today."
"What are we doing?" you ask, being careful to keep your eyes on her face.
"As yet I have merely spoken to you about the ousiarchs. It is now time for you to meet them."
--
There are many ways to meditate, she explains to you. Through prayer, through daydreaming, through induced trances. But she has decided to teach you the lotus stance. "It is what most people think when they hear of the word 'meditation'," she says. "This, I believe, will make it easier for you to understand what you are doing, and so easier for you to do it."
So she puts you cross-legged atop the yoga mat, in nothing more than oversized pants and a sleeveless shirt. She takes the same position. "Now close your eyes," she says, "take a deep breath, and relax." Her voice is soothing. "Release that breath—and with it, any worries. Any concerns. Leave them behind with each exhalation."
You follow her instructions, and peel yourself free of all thoughts. Your worries about Taylor and Lucy. Your yearning to be back with your brother, in Olympia. The desire to know what happened to your mother. Even that unfinished business with Blackwell—that last lesson that Margaret left you to ponder upon.
As those fetters drop from you, you feel lighter and lighter. It’s like what happened back at Margaret’s parlor, when you finally floated free from Lurga’s influence. This time, however, there’s no fear, no pain, no distractions. Only Kali’s voice tells you there’s still someone near you.
"Now, think of the night sky."
Instantly you are plunged into darkness. But it is no void. Twinkling lights peep out all around you. Some condense into swirling nebulae, while others remain small and distant. And yet you feel an immense sense of familiarity. As if you have been here before.
For you have been here before. It’s been long since you’ve had these dreams, but you’d recognize the planetarium.
"Why do you laugh, child?" Kali asks.
"I’ve been here before."
"You have?" She sounds startled. "Describe it to me."
It takes some effort to explain, and this place is not quite the same. For a start, that odd sphere is missing, the one where the sigils of that damn book manifested upon you, shifting back and forth from the wheel of many rims into the first of the constituent sigils.
"Also," you tell her, "I remember seeing the planets here. But it was like ..." You trail off.
"Like looking at other worlds?" she asks. "Then, you have already met them, though you weren’t seeking them. Seek them now."
There is no obvious change, but the space you are in seems to deepen: you are no longer inside a place—a planetarium—but in deep space itself. Yet you feel something solid beneath as you search the sky for one in particular.
Pluto. Or, as you know now—Kenandandra.
It appears before you now, as though summoned by your thought, and you know it is Kenandandra even though it in no way resembles the planet whose birth-marked face you remember from your Astronomy class. The entity before you, though, appears as a ball of wheels nested within wheels, spinning and rotating, the surface of each replete with yet more wheels that spin. Shafts of molten light break from the heart of the sphere here and there, piercing gaps that yawn and shut as the wheels whirl and rotate about each other. It throbs with heat.
It's also the sphere from the "planetarium." No, it doesn't look the same. But you know, somehow, that it is the same.
You stretch your hands to grasp it, for even as it seems very large and very distant, it looks small enough to cradle in your hands.
Careful, a voice seems to echo. You wouldn't put your hands inside an industrial press or a blast furnace. So you withdraw. And yet the thing fascinates and mesmerizes you, for you sense the thing is not all and merely whirling action. There is a pattern to it, and if you can just glimpse that pattern, and return with it to the realm of the mundane ...
The image quivers, like a ripple in the surface of a pond, and you realize that what you see is only a reflection. There is another presence here, one that is giving you the image of that living planet. And now that you are aware of it, you can see that other presence, first as a milky frost, and then as a white mirror. It is cold and blank and featureless. Or is it? There are other reflections in it, disconnected and random. But as you drink them in, they seem to acquire a shape, the way a cloud comes to have a shape and features. At first, because you know you are now in the presence of Sulva—the Moon—they appear as the face of an old man with a wizened brow and a diaphanous beard. Then they appear as chubby face of a sleeping babe.
But last, they take the form of someone you recognize: Yourself.
--
You haven't much to say after you wake from the state, and Kali doesn't press you, but leaves you to rest and recollect yourself as she rises to prepare supper. It's not until you're sitting at the table, pushing your fork over a plate of scrambled eggs and roasted tomatoes and mushrooms, that you find the voice to describe an experience that, while so vivid in your memory, sounds so cold and dead when put into words. It's rather like describing a dream to someone, and maybe that's what it's like for Kali, for her expression shows the feigned interest that you've seen on your friends' faces when you've tried to describe a dream to them.
So when you're done, you try to put some meat onto the thin bones you've given her by asking if any of it means anything.
"It means neither more nor less than anything else," Kali archly replies. "Tell my why you ask if it 'meant' anything?"
"Well, like in a dream," you stammer. "Things have meanings in dreams, don't they?"
Kali looks skeptical. "Sometimes."
"Well, did it mean anything that I didn't get to see Kenan— Dandra." You'll get your mouth around that name yet. "That I didn't see it direct? That I only saw it as a reflection in Sulva?"
Kali sniffs.
"In the first place," she says, "your experience was not a dream. So don't go looking for meaning or symbolism in it, as you would in a dream, any more than you'd go looking for meaning and symbolism in real life. What you saw and where you went were as real as this room. But that doesn't mean it wasn't significant. However, it is not for me to explain what the oarsmen meant by presenting themselves that-a-wise. That's for them to explain to you."
"How will they explain? Do they talk?"
"Not as you and I do, here. But there is ... communication. That is the purpose of meditation—to consult them, to confide in them, so they can steer your. I said just now that you mustn't look for symbolism in your meditations, but you must interpret what you find there, as you interpret what you find here. For instance, you have not said to me that you dislike mushrooms. Yet I interpret and infer from the way you pick and push at them, that you don't." Her eyebrows arch.
You blush, but push your plate to side. "Yeah, I didn't want to offend you by saying anything."
"Hmph. Well, there's eggs and vegetables in the refrigerator still. You can prepare a meal to your own taste. Or there's cold cereal in the pantry. But as for Sulva showing you Kendandandra indirectly— Well, other sessions may give you an inference there."
"We're going to do more sessions?"
She clucks her tongue. "Certainly, child. This will be a common thing for you, and when you are older and practiced, it will be possible for you to step into that place and out again in the twinkle of an eye." Her own gaze briefly goes distant, and you wonder if she has just shown you what she means. But when she speaks again, it is to say, "And sometimes you will spend hours or even days there. It is not only a place to consult or to rest, but to a place to work as well."
"Work?" The word resonates. Could this be the way to that "perfect workspace" you dreamt about before?
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