The Predictions Page 7

  He tried, more gently, to put his hand on my shoulder again, and I let him. “Does it mean that much to you?”

  “Not just to me. To everyone.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the others,” he said, brushing the hair out of my eyes and putting it behind my ear, a thing I did about a hundred times a day but no one else had ever done for me. When he realized what he had done, Lukas quickly withdrew his hand and shoved it in his pocket.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay, what?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “You will?” The despair lifted so suddenly that without thinking, I threw my arms around him and squeezed.

  He hugged me back, saying, “Steady on,” in such a prim way that I laughed.

  “I can’t believe you ran away,” I said, punching his arm. “You’re such a dork.”

  “I’m a dork?” he said. “What about you? Crying like a baby in front of all those boys.”

  Normality had been restored, or so I thought, but as we walked back to the main road and stuck out our thumbs to hitch, Shakti’s words echoed in my ear. She was right. I had been able to change Lukas’s mind. But how had she known?

  A ute picked us up at the start of the 309 Road, and we climbed into the backseat, which was narrow with very little legroom. Even so, Lukas managed to shuffle into a position, hard up against the opposite window, where there was no danger of our arms or legs accidentally touching. He didn’t speak once the whole way back to the commune, not even when the ute almost skidded off the road and into a ravine. Worse than that, he was broody, deep in thought. Going to fetch him had been a mistake. He was mad with me.

  A cheer went around the mess hall when I returned to Gaialands with Lukas in tow, but I couldn’t join in. I was worried that saving the day had come at a price. We ate early, a light supper of dal and brown rice, followed by bottled peaches and thin, sour yogurt for dessert. While we ate, Shakti gave each of us our tasks. Nelly and I were to gather up candles, one for each person, plus a ­couple of spares. To this we were to add a box of matches and a kerosene lamp, in case it rained or was windy on top of Mount Aroha. Sigi had put together what looked like a first aid kit, but when I asked if that was what it was, she said it was more of a just-­in-­case kit. “Things could get messy, but I don’t think anyone will get hurt,” she said ominously. We had been told not to ask questions, that we should trust in the universe’s plan.

  The base of Mount Aroha lay just beyond the boundary fence of the commune, on Maori land. The lower slopes were covered with wild manuka bushes, home to swarms of honey-­making bees. As children we had called it Buzzy Mountain.

  In the twilight, the bush-­clad peak was already in silhouette, a blue-­black slab, giving away nothing of its difficult terrain, the bracken so dense that climbing through it would be like trying to unpick knitting. Despite the status of the land as Maori owned, we wouldn’t be trespassing. Local iwi had given us permission to go up there, but still I worried we might disturb something, an ancestral spirit or a long-­forgotten curse. Not to mention the bees. We kept hives on the commune, but these ones were wild and didn’t like humans.

  Wide tracts of sunlight broke through the clouds. “You see?” said Shakti, pointing skyward. “The cosmos has blessed our little gathering.”

  Shakti had timed our ascent so that we would reach the peak when there was still light in the sky. It was the summer solstice, which coincided this year with a full moon, and she reassured us, even though it was cloudy, that there would be plenty of light by which to navigate our way down.

  On past ascents, it had taken hours to reach the peak of Mount Aroha, but on this occasion, we arrived near the top, fresh and giddy, after what felt like no time at all. In a clearing of flat stones, we sat down to catch our breath, and none of us could fathom how we had climbed up so quickly, stomping through the thick, tangled bush as though it was a smattering of weeds. “Another blessing!” said Katrina, throwing her hands in the air.

  Before we climbed the final section, Sigi retrieved a large earthenware jar from her knapsack and passed it to Shakti, who then passed it to Lukas. “I’d like each of the seven of you to take a long drink,” said Shakti. “It’s to open your chakras.” She watched us drink the bitter liquid, but she herself abstained. “The unusual taste comes from a rare and sacred herb,” she explained.

  A few meters below the rocky peak there was a broad circle of earth where nothing grew, not even weeds. It was perfect for our ceremony. Shakti instructed Paul and Hunter to dig a pit for a small fire, and the rest of us set about collecting as much dry kindling and heavier branches as we could find. Most of it was too damp to use, and we were grateful for the stuff we had carried up in slings on our backs. Once the fire was lit, Shakti told us where to stand, the adults to one side of the clearing and the seven of us in a circle around the fire. Because the fire was the only light source, the adults fell into shadow and after a while I forgot they were there. I stood with Fritz on one side and Ned on the other, with Lukas directly opposite me, his face licked with gold from the flames. He was the first one Shakti went over to, whispering something in his ear. He turned to her, mystified, but then nodded.

  From the adults, cloaked in darkness, came chanting—­an unfamiliar language, mouthed with hesitation. Shakti held Lukas by the arm and guided his hand toward the fire. She moved her grip to his palm and held it over a small metal bowl. She had something in her hand, a sharp tool of some sort, and she pushed it into his thumb. Lukas winced, and in response, I felt a nervous spasm in my own chest. Was that his blood dripping into the bowl? Shakti next approached Timon, who offered up his hand and bit his lip when the tool pierced his skin. Nelly, who was standing alongside him, reached out to touch his arm, then retreated. When her turn came, she yelped in pain.

  Soon, Shakti stood in front of me, her skin glowing in the firelight. She smiled at me elatedly, then pricked the cushion of my thumb with the pointed end of the blade. It didn’t hurt. The anticipation had been worse than the pain itself, but looking into the blood-­spattered bowl, my insides churned.

  Once Shakti had collected blood from the seven of us, she pushed the blade into her own thumb and squeezed a few drops into the bowl. This she mixed with a series of powders and liquids from vials she had carried up the hill in her knapsack. The resulting liquid was thinner and bluer than the blood had been, and she wiped some on her arm to test the color. She placed the bowl next to the fire, and came and stood with us in the circle.

  “Join hands with me,” she said. “And we will say the invocation.”

  Fritz, who stood next to me, folded his arms so no one could take his hands, but then, when he saw that he was the only one not joining in, he reluctantly took mine. His hand felt cold and sticky with his own blood, and I felt the familiar surge of tenderness toward him. On the other side of me was Ned, calm and inscrutable and sturdy. You could plant Ned in the middle of a hurricane and he wouldn’t blow away.

  “I call on the power of the beloved I Am,” said Shakti, “to bind us and protect us in spirit and in body.” She signaled for us to echo her, and obediently we chanted, “We call on the power of the beloved I Am to bind us and protect us in spirit and in body.”

  I was starting to feel woozy, light-­headed. Around me the others mumbled incoherently, their eyes shining blankly in the dim light.

  “I call on the great spirit of the beloved I Am to heal what was broken, to bind this circle together with love for eternity. Tonight each one of these seven gathered souls will receive the blessing of your guidance in the form of a prediction. We recite for you now our prayer of devotion to the goddess Shakti, the source of all things.”

  Had Shakti just referred to herself as a goddess? The thought zoomed across my temples, then was gone. I had trouble remembering where we were. In the flickering light, I caught Lukas’s eye and I thought he mouthed something to me but
I couldn’t be certain.

  Shakti finished her prayer, then instructed us to join in the chant the adults had been keeping up. At first, I was self-­conscious and hesitant, but before long, the sound of my voice had merged with the others, and soon, it was no longer a human voice but part of a hum that was already in the air and I was merely tuning into. It went on and on, this drone, until it was the only thing holding me upright, and I worried I’d collapse if it stopped. For a few seconds, the air in front of me swarmed with tiny pale stars, and I thought I saw the outline of a dancing woman, her hair and skin white to match her dress. She flashed luminous for a second, this ghostly dancer, and then was gone.

  Shakti picked up the metal bowl and dipped in her forefinger. She went first to Lukas, then to each of us in turn and dabbed a streak of it across our foreheads. Some of the blood mixture rolled down my nose and a small droplet trickled into the corner of my eye, where it burned like acid.

  When she had been around everyone in the group, Shakti told us to stop chanting and to sit on the ground. The sudden silence was deafening, like being plunged underwater. The fire had been slowly gathering in heat and size—­the men had been feeding it logs—­and all I could see were flames, orange, red, and fierce, and beyond them, nothing but blackness.

  Shakti flitted between us, handing each person a black felt package tied with ribbon. She placed one in my hand and whispered for me not to open it yet, adding, “It’s bad luck.” When she had given a package to everyone in the group, she stood to one side and raised her arms to the sky. “I present you each with a prediction—­a glimpse into the future from the highest order of the sacred realms. In this task, I am merely a messenger.” She bowed her head and held her hands in prayer position. “Om shanti om. You may look at your predictions.”

  I unfolded the piece of felt in my hand. Inside was a rectangle of cardboard, and on it was an ink drawing, the lines heavy, not at all like the delicate one Shakti had shown me in her caravan.

  I squinted to make out the drawing, of a woman standing next to a man. The man was a king of some sort—­he wore armor and a crown, and carried a shield and a sword. Above them was a giant heart, cartoon red, and at their feet an empty cradle. The woman had a big blue tear running down her cheek, a blob that was larger than her mouth. On the back of the card Shakti had written

  In a faraway land your true love waits . . .

  But your womb shall bear only sorrow.

  The first part of the prediction thrilled me. Somewhere in the world, my true love was waiting. All I had to do was to find him. The cryptic words leapt off the page and straight into the ironclad part of my brain, where memories lived that I’d never forget, even if I wanted to. The second part barely registered. I was not planning on bearing anything with my womb, an organ that seemed wholly abstract to me.

  Fritz stood next to me, studying his card. Even in the firelight, I could see it was wildly different from mine in one important aspect—­the bright color. Almost the entire card was green, a riot of leaves and the trunk of a tree, colored brown. Inside this trunk crouched a boy. The tree sheltered the boy but he was also part of it, his feet mingling with the root system. Fritz had always been crazy about climbing trees, had from a young age tried to scale everything from the smallest sapling to the giant kauri that stood at the base of Mount Aroha. It was a way to give his clubfoot the finger, and his card made perfect sense.

  Everyone crowded around, showing each other their predictions, and I let them see mine, but not for too long. I worried that sharing it would take away its power. For the same reason I tried not to be nosy about what the others got despite how curious I was. I saw flashes of this and that—­a dagger of some sort on Timon’s card, and a wizard on Ned’s; on Meg’s a woman looking at her reflection in the mirror—­but I did not stop to consider what their symbols meant.

  The mood was celebratory, and the adults came forward and embraced us, passing around a few bottles of homemade pear wine that we were allowed to try. Lukas hung back, taking no interest in anyone’s prediction, only in the booze. Wine was a rare privilege, and he and Timon guzzled as much as they could, trying to get drunk.

  Nelly linked her arm through mine and squeezed it. She was fizzing with excitement and held out her prediction for me to see. Sure enough it was the one Shakti had shown me in her caravan, the woman surrounded by love and happiness and children. It was even more colorful than I remembered, and Shakti had added the stick figure of a man, holding the woman’s hand.

  “There he is,” she said, pointing to the stick man. “My husband! I wonder what these are?” She caressed the little symbols with her index finger.

  “Your kids,” I said. “You’re going to have heaps of them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Shakti told me.”

  “Wow!” Nelly laughed. “What about you?”

  Reluctantly, I showed her my prediction. She examined the front, then turned it over. “Crikey,” she said. “A bloke with a sword—­and he lives in a faraway land.” She ran her finger over the handsome knight. “That’s odd. I always thought you’d end up with Lukas.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “You guys always seemed made for each other.” She ran her finger over the writing. “This other bit is weird. ‘Your womb shall bear only sorrow.’ What does that mean?”

  “Nothing,” I said, feeling defensive. “I don’t even want to have kids.”

  “Of course you don’t now.” Nelly looked again at the card. “But what about when you’re older?”

  I took back my card. “I can live with that if it means I get him.” Then I vowed not to show it to anyone else.

  Across the fire, Lukas was kidding around with the other boys, but he caught my eye and smiled. I hoped he hadn’t heard my conversation with Nelly.

  It was time to go. Paul and Hunter had been flinging wet logs on the fire, and it hissed with steam as the flames extinguished. I hadn’t noticed until then that it was the only source of light, and as the fire went out, we were plunged into shadow. A ­couple of the adults lit kerosene lamps to light the way down the hillside, and Hunter split us into walking groups, two lamps apiece. Nelly and Meg had congregated around Hunter and Shakti and a few of the women, who were laughing and talking excitedly, but I didn’t feel like joining in and found myself bringing up the rear with Paul and the boys. Feeling tired after so much excitement, I mechanically followed the footsteps of the person in front of me and barely noticed Lukas walking next to me until his hand found mine in the dark. The feeling of it there was so natural, as if we had been holding hands all along, and after only the briefest glance into each other’s eyes, we went back to looking straight ahead.

  I had pushed the felt-­wrapped prediction to the bottom of my jeans pocket, but knowing it was there, while holding Lukas’s hand, felt treacherous. Perhaps that feeling would go once he had shown me his prediction. “What did you get?” I said, turning to him in the dark and trying to make out his expression.

  “No idea,” he said. “I threw it away.”

  “You didn’t even look at it?”

  “What for? It’s a load of crap.”

  “What if it isn’t?” I said. “What if it’s true?”

  I stopped walking, as did he.

  “Please don’t tell me you believe in it.” His eyes were pleading, but his mouth was a smirk.

  When I didn’t respond, we both knew what that meant.

  I let go of his hand, and we continued on, the silence between us masked by the crunch of twigs underfoot.

  Maybe Lukas felt bad about what he’d said because after a time, he added, “Anyway, who cares what I think. What’d you get?”

  “You’re right,” I said, suddenly aware that I ought not to show him. “It’s silly.”

  “So silly you can’t show me?” Now he sounded bruised.

  Rel
uctantly, I handed him the prediction, hoping he wouldn’t be able to see it in the dark. He glanced at it for a few seconds, then handed it back, saying nothing.

  “Well?” I said.

  “Well, what? I’ve told you what I think.”

  We couldn’t see two feet in front of us on the dark hillside, but the first part of the descent went off without a hitch. We followed the same route we had taken on the way up, sticking to the tracks we had hacked out of the bracken. But about a third of the way down, the party at the front came to a halt, and word filtered back that they had lost the path—­our tracks had disappeared. They were going to start forging their way through virgin bush, cutting new tracks.

  The group I was with thought that was a crazy idea. “Why don’t we backtrack?” suggested Timon. “See if we can find the original path? We’ll be up here all night if we have to cut a new one.”

  “Good idea,” said Paul. “Lukas, you tell the others and I’ll go back with Tom and Timon.”

  Lukas called out to the group ahead of us to stop and wait. When there was no response, he walked up the path toward them and called out again. But still they ignored him. “Wait here,” he said, and disappeared down the dark track, while at the same time, Paul and Timon, with the other lamp, clambered up the hill in the opposite direction.

  Seconds later, I stood in the pitch dark on my own, barely able to see my hand in front of my face. “Guys?” I called out. “Can someone come back?” I tried to walk in the direction Lukas had gone, but with no light to guide me, it was impossible to see where to put my feet. The ground was uneven, crisscrossed with branches, and fell away sharply to one side. The only way I could make anything out was to look above my head, where small patches of moonlight filtered through the trees.

  I sat down on the path and waited. Sooner or later, I reasoned, either Lukas would return, or Paul and Timon would come back for me. I could hear them scratching through the undergrowth somewhere behind me. And if I squinted, I could even see the head of a tiny, bobbing lamp. No reason to panic, not yet.