The Predictions Page 6

  Shakti took the card from my hand and shuffled it back into the pile. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

  She poured me a thimble of tea, which tasted bitter, as though it had brewed for too long. Across the table, I noticed Shakti had half a dozen long hairs growing around her nipples and tufts of kinky hair sprouting from her armpits. I didn’t have that yet, and thought how strange and furry that must feel.

  Shakti caught me studying her and said, “Have you ever gone nude? It’s so freeing to be in the world in your natural state.”

  The question alone made the skin on my neck grow hot. “Not since I was a child.”

  “It could be good for you to try it again. Empowering.”

  “You mean embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassment is just another name for fear. What are you afraid of?”

  I felt put on the spot. “I don’t know.”

  “Trust me,” she said. “You will feel so liberated. Think of it as a rite of passage to womanhood. You don’t want to be stuck in childhood forever do you?”

  “I guess not.”

  I had not, in my mind, agreed to anything, but Shakti seemed to think I had, and proceeded to come up with a plan that involved a dawn meditation the very next morning, before anyone else on the commune was up. I tried telling her that someone on the commune was always up before you were, but she thought I’d meant it as a joke and didn’t realize I was genuinely worried about being seen.

  I did not sleep much that night, but none of my fretting and worrying resulted in a watertight excuse to withdraw. At dawn, Cowboy the rooster crowed his daily lament, and I climbed out of bed, resigned to my fate.

  We had arranged to meet at the far edge of the forest just before sunrise and I was already late. Shakti had suggested coming to our sleeping hut to wake me, but I had told her not to because I didn’t want any of the others to notice I had gone. Even before I went into the orchard, I looked behind me to make sure no one was coming. Tiptoeing through the woods, I tried to psych myself up for what was in store by remembering I had run around naked as a child all the time. Before the age of thirteen, the seven of us had stripped off in front of each other without a second thought, had spent whole summers bare-­bummed and carefree on the beach. All I had to do was channel that same nonchalance and I would be fine. But cutting through the woods, following a path so familiar that I could navigate it in the dark, I couldn’t do it. I felt as though every tree, every blade of grass, every bird, was looking at me and getting ready to laugh. Then I remembered what Shakti had said, about how doing this would make me a woman, and that if I didn’t go through with it, I would be stalled, forever a girl.

  I came to the end of the woods, and there was Shakti, sitting cross-­legged in a short Indian caftan, facing the sea and the rising sun, her hands resting on her knees, finger and thumb pinched together to form a tiny oval. When I got closer, I saw that she had her eyes closed in meditation, and I sat down next to her and imitated her pose. For a ­couple of minutes, she didn’t register my presence, and then she whispered, “Are your eyes shut?”

  They weren’t—­but I quickly closed them. “Yes.”

  “It’s just us here,” said Shakti. “Just us and the sun.”

  I heard her whip off her caftan and opened my eyes a fraction to make sure.

  “That feels better,” she said with a sigh.

  Below the thin fabric of my T-­shirt and shorts, my skin tightened, as though I had shrunk a little bit in size.

  “Take your time,” said Shakti. “Wait until it feels right.”

  She was waiting for me to take off my clothes but I wasn’t sure how to go about it without first standing up. “I’m wearing shorts,” I whispered. “I didn’t really think this through.”

  “No matter,” said Shakti. “Start with the T-­shirt. One thing at a time.”

  I pulled the T-­shirt over my head and crossed my arms to cover what wasn’t there. Perhaps above all, I didn’t want Shakti to see how flat chested I was.

  “Ommm,” she said next to me. “Om shanti om.”

  I had heard these chants before, when the women practiced yoga, and wasn’t sure if I was meant to join in, like the other women did, or to stay quiet. I whispered, “Do you want me to say that too?”

  Less patiently than before, Shakti said, “Up to you, honey.”

  I decided not to. I still had not taken off my shorts, but uncrossed my arms and moved my hands to the ends of my knees, where I pinched my thumb and forefinger together. A cool breeze tickled my chest, a sensation that was not unpleasant, but that also felt wholly inappropriate, given that we were supposed to be meditating.

  “How are you doing with those shorts?” whispered Shakti. She had apparently changed her mind about letting me do things on my own schedule. “Let me know when you’re done. I won’t start the meditation proper until then.”

  I was holding things up. Very quickly, as though it was no big deal and I was just about to take a shower, I stepped out of my shorts and underpants and hurriedly sat cross-­legged on the grass. Bits of it were spiky, and I discovered why sitting bare-­arsed on kikuyu grass is a terrible idea. Shakti, when I looked over at her, was sitting on her caftan, and I quickly did the same with my discarded shorts.

  “I’m ready,” I said, and closed my eyes.

  “Great,” said Shakti. “I’ll start us off with a chant for peace.”

  The sun was coming up fast, turning the backs of my eyelids orange and warming my skin all over. I must have been sitting in a slumped position, which wasn’t unusual for me, because the next thing I knew, Shakti had placed one hand in the small of my back and another on my shoulder, and pushed them in opposite directions to straighten my spine. She had strong hands, like a man’s.

  My chest was thrust forward at an alarming angle—­like I was trying to make more of what little was there—­but I didn’t dare move in case she tried to correct me again.

  “It’s a beautiful sunrise,” Shakti said softly. “Let’s chant.”

  She started out quietly, her voice gradually building in intensity until it was booming and deep, almost a growl. I joined in with a weaker sound of my own. For a few seconds I forgot my nakedness. But then the fact of it came back to me in the points of my skin that were most exposed to the sun. Bits of me were warm, too warm, and other parts tingled in response. I recognized the sensation, though I had no experience of where it was going, or knowledge of how to control it. As best I could, I carried on chanting, and dug my bottom into the hard earth, which seemed to help. The feeling didn’t go away, but nor did it get any stronger.

  I risked opening my eyes a little, to see if Shakti was looking my way or had noticed. Her chants seemed to be reaching a crescendo, and she looked completely out of it, eyes tight shut, her skin flushed and glistening with sweat. She even seemed to be straining against something, as though an unseen force was pushing against her. At the height of the chanting, her voice faltered for a second, and she paused to catch her breath before carrying on in a more subdued fashion. This was unlike any meditation I had ever been a part of, and I shut my eyes, quite bewildered.

  When it was over, and by over I mean that Shakti fell silent, I reached for my T-­shirt, which I pulled over my head, and then my underpants and shorts, which I stood up to put on. Even fully clothed, my heart was pounding like it does when you’ve been caught doing something you shouldn’t, and I shook out my arms and legs to try to make it stop.

  Shakti opened her eyes. “Wow. That was intense. It must have been our combined energies.” She stretched her arms above her head and stood up. “How was it for you?”

  I was not sure what she was asking me, or what the correct response was, so in as neutral a voice as possible, I said, “Okay, I guess.”

  “Okay?” Shakti laughed. “Just ‘okay’? Well, I guess it was your first time, so we shouldn’t
expect too much.”

  We did not say much on the way back to the commune. Breakfast was already under way, the mess hall jammed with hungry teenagers and adults, the rise and fall of conversation, and the clunking of spoons and bowls like an out-­of-­tune orchestra. I deliberately did not sit next to Shakti, but squeezed in next to Nelly, who asked me where I had been all morning. “Shakti and I went for a walk,” I said, and she replied, “Not in the nude, I hope.”

  For the rest of the day, Shakti was missing from the commune, along with one of the shared cars, but she reappeared in the evening with a box of half-­melted Pinky bars she had bought in Coromandel town. The others pounced on the chocolate bars but I held back, feeling strange about what had happened that morning. I still couldn’t say one way or the other if something was wrong, but every time she came near me, my body pulled away from her.

  Shakti was her normal genial self, perhaps even more full of smiles than usual. Later on, after we’d had our customary post-­dinner sing-­along of folk hits, accompanied by Paul and Lukas on the guitar, she took me aside, holding me by the arm so I couldn’t squirm away, and presented me with a gift wrapped in tissue paper. “Go ahead,” she said. “Open it.”

  I did as I was told. Inside the paper was a leather necklace, the attached metal pendant a cross hanging from a circle. It was ugly, a symbol of some kind, but I didn’t know what it meant. “Thank you,” I said, as she took the pendant from my hands and hung it around my neck, standing back to admire it, then coming in close to whisper in my ear, “I’m so proud of you. Today’s the day you became a woman.”

  BETWEEN SEPTEMBER AND DECEMBER each year was birthday season at Gaialands. In the space of those four months, six out of the seven of us had birthdays. At the close of 1978, Timon turned seventeen, the twins and I turned sixteen, and the younger ones—­Meg and Fritz—­turned fifteen. The odd one out was Lukas, who had turned seventeen the previous May, and had cultivated a crop of fuzzy hair on his upper lip to prove it.

  We were used to the eccentric cluster of our birthdays, but Shakti seized upon it as hugely significant, a sequence that could only have been divinely ordained. “Everything in nature happens for a reason,” she said. “There are no accidents.” And so it was decided that in the month of December, after the last birthday had been celebrated, she would hold her ritual, a ceremony called the Predictions. “Think of it as a rite of passage,” said Shakti, when she announced the date. “A ritual to seal your seven destinies.”

  As December drew to a close, momentum gathered, and an air of anticipation overtook the commune. The adults held secret planning meetings and went to Whitianga for supplies. Shakti’s caravan was a hive of activity, day and night. The seven of us, however, were kept in the dark. This secrecy, so we were told, would result in a more powerful outcome.

  Some preparations were stranger than others. A few days before the ritual was due to take place, a noise woke me early one morning. I was tired, and it was still dark in the hut, so I didn’t open my eyes. Assuming it was one of the others getting up to pee, or an animal scratching in the dirt outside, I drifted back into a half sleep. The noise went on, punctuated by snipping sounds, which blended into a dream in which a woman was making a dress and cutting off threads as she sewed. It was only when I heard the door to the sleeping hut click closed that I opened my eyes and realized that the snipping sound had been real, not part of the dream at all. Why had I heard scissors, of all things? I sat up and looked out the window, the ledge of which was right by my bed. In the soft early light, I made out the figure of a woman in a billowing caftan crossing the field, heading away from our hut. She walked purposefully and, halfway there, stopped to examine or adjust whatever she held in her hand. For a second or two, scissor blades glinted in the day’s first sun, and then she carried on walking. It was only when she veered off in the direction of the willow trees, where her caravan was parked, that I realized it was Shakti. She did not normally wear caftans, and it had been the presence of this garment, more than anything, that had confused me.

  Despite my reservations about Shakti, I was excited to take part in the Predictions and eager to find out what my future held. Most of the other kids shared my enthusiasm. Only Lukas had doubts. Several times in the lead-­up to the ceremony, he had told me how silly he thought it all was.

  The day of the ceremony, timed to coincide with the summer solstice, dawned bright and loud with chirping cicadas. By eight in the morning their chorus was deafening, heralding a scorching day and a balmy night to follow. Conditions couldn’t have been more perfect. But at half past eight, we discovered Lukas had gotten up early and disappeared, leaving the remaining six of us to try to figure out where he was. Everyone was in agreement that we had to find him.

  Sheepishly, the six of us went to see Shakti and confessed to her that Lukas had split. She asked us to sit with her in a circle under the trees by her caravan, a space she had hung with dream catchers, talismans, and crystals to enhance its sacred vibe. “You do realize,” she said, after some consideration, “that without Lukas we can’t go ahead with the ceremony?”

  I felt deflated, and so did the others. “That’s not fair,” said Meg. “He can’t ruin it for the rest of us.”

  Shakti said, “The universe has made it quite clear to me that for the ritual to work, the seven of you must form an unbroken circle. Take any one of you away and that magic is lost.”

  “Can’t we just do it another day?” said Timon.

  “Timon,” said Shakti gravely. “There is no other day. I have been summoned to heal Gaialands on the summer solstice in the year 1978. I didn’t choose that date. The universe chose it. Just like it chose me to be the instrument of your destiny.”

  The six of us fell silent, overwhelmed by the gravity of her words.

  “I want to do it,” said Fritz. “It’s Lukas who’s stuffing everything up.”

  “I know, darling Fritz. It isn’t fair.” Shakti focused her amber-­flecked eyes on me. “Poppy,” she said. “You have the power to turn this around.”

  “How?”

  “You can change Lukas’s mind.”

  Six pairs of eyes turned my way.

  “Me? But I don’t even know where he is . . .”

  Shakti sighed dramatically. Her eyes had filled with tears. “I don’t think any of you understand how important this is—­how many preparations have taken place. The fate of the commune is at stake.”

  “I’ll try,” I said, feeling suddenly responsible for everyone’s future. “I’ll do my best to find him.”

  Timon had a hunch that Lukas had gone into Coromandel to replace the transistor radio, so I hitched in the same direction, hoping to find him. It wasn’t easy to get a ride, but eventually an elderly ­couple stopped to pick me up, and I sat in the back of their dusty car, next to a picnic basket full of delicious-­smelling egg sandwiches.

  In town, I asked around. Had anyone had seen a boy fitting Lukas’s description? Someone said they had spotted him hanging out with the Maori boys at the end of the wharf. Everybody knew everybody in this town, and if you weren’t from around here, then you stood out even more.

  I recognized Lukas from a long way off, his lean torso and the flared jeans that ended too far above his ankles. He had grown taller, suddenly, but we did not have any new clothes. The guys he was with seemed older, more like men, but then, when I got closer, I realized Lukas was the same age, that he was no longer the boy I thought of him as. Approaching the group, my confidence stalled. In my plain, boyish clothes, and despite Shakti’s declaration otherwise, I still felt very much like a child.

  One of the boys must have seen me approaching and alerted Lukas, because he turned around before I reached the group. He looked baffled, but also pleased, to see me.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You have to come back to Gaialands.” In front of these boys, I was reluctant to say
what for. “If we leave now, we can be back before it starts.”

  Lukas felt no such reluctance. “I don’t want anything to do with her fortune-­telling bullcrap.”

  “But Shakti says . . . She says the fate of the commune is at stake.”

  “The fate of the commune my arse.” Lukas laughed, and the other boys joined in. He was showing off for them, using dirty words. “It’s a power trip. I’m telling you, she’s a witch.”

  One of the boys said, “Oooooooh,” like he was a ghost, and another said, “Don’t do it, bro. What if she chops off your old fella?”

  They hooted with laughter, Lukas loudest of all. Had he been telling them stories about us, how crazy and weird we all were? I bit my lip, not knowing what to say. One of the guys, wearing a Coromandel school T-­shirt a few sizes too small for him, had been looking me up and down, and now he caught my eye and tilted his eyebrows and chin in a way that was definitely flirtatious but also mocking.

  I scowled at him, as much to stop myself from crying as to show disapproval. “Please come back,” I said to Lukas, in a plaintive and pathetic voice. “You’re ruining it for the others.”

  Lukas wasn’t laughing anymore, but he was still smiling—­not taking any of this seriously—­and rather than humiliate myself by crying in front of all these boys, I turned on my heel and scurried away. The tears that came were blinding, and I stumbled once or twice before making it to the road.

  I was almost there when, behind me, Lukas called out: “Poppy, wait!”

  I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my T-­shirt but didn’t stop.

  Lukas caught up to me and gently grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t bugger off yet. Stick around. I’ll get you a milkshake or something.”

  “So you can make fun of me?” I shook off his hand. “No thanks.”

  “I was just kidding around. You know I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  I burst into tears again. “You don’t get it,” I said, sobbing. “We can’t do it without you.”