LeOmi's Solitude (5 page)

Then…it was as if she was fighting. The air
was so heavy on her chest and then scratching and clawing, was it
her own hands or was it someone or something else. It was as if she
was far below the surface and the line had been cut. Then there was
suddenly a bright light that had overtaken everything. She woke,
gasping for air. She was in her little room in New Orleans,
everything was familiar, but something had changed.

She lay back down, catching her breath. It
was her twelfth birthday. She smiled and remembered there was a
Magi in her dream.

LeOmi sat up in the bed in the darkness. At
one point, the light from the dream seemed soothing and as if it
were happy that she had made the correct decision. She had waited
for this all her life. But there was something horrible too.
Something that she couldn’t quite remember—the horrible darkness
and the squeezing of her chest were as bad as anything that had
ever happened to her.

What did it mean? What secrets did it
hold?
–It was coming, and not so terribly far away.

She looked around. The room seemed too hot,
but nothing seemed out of place.

Over the past year, she had made this room
her own home away from home. There were odds and ends of things
that her father had slowly shipped from home. Some of her book
collection, her music and her computer.

All of her sports equipment was stowed in a
large trunk that LeOmi knew was her dad’s from when he had been
stationed on an aircraft carrier before he met her mom.

The smile returned to LeOmi’s lips. She laid
her head back on the pillow and reached underneath it to pull out
her mother’s scarf. She smelled her mother’s scent as she cupped it
in her hands; tears spilled from her eyes dropping into the sheer
cloth.

“I made it.”

* * *

The next day there was a call from her
father. He asked, “Did you have a Magi visit you in your dreams
last night?

Her father was at the house later on in the
week. The last time he had been to her room, she had been in
Virginia and a pair of scissors had been in her hand. This time he
was actually smiling; not a forced smile to be polite, an actual
smile. It was a little frightening actually. Maybe it was because
she had let him in. Likely she knew that it was almost time for her
to go. He was very polite too.

“May I speak with my daughter, alone?”

“Of course Jacob. Dinner is at eight. Will I
need to inform Hannah that you will remain?”

“No, thank you. LeOmi, is it all right if I
speak with you in private?”

LeOmi nodded and led the way to her tiny
room. Her father closed the door and walked around noticing
familiar things. His hands were clinched behind his back as he
looked at her books and the trunk that he had sent. Cautiously he
kept his distance and she hers in the small room.

“I was very happy to hear from Ruby, did she
contact you directly?”

LeOmi looked surprised.

“No? She still may. I’m sure your sister and
brother wanted to come, but they can never get away.”

“Why am I accepted now, in the family
too?”

He abruptly turned and sat on the trunk
facing her. He motioned for her to sit on the bed. The smile was no
longer there.

“I know that the last few years have been
very hard for you.”

She frowned and looked toward the door,
wanting to run away, but she didn’t. It was time.

“Now that you have been accepted to The
Seventh Mountain; your whole life will change. Are you ready for
that?”

LeOmi nodded and her frown slowly faded.

“I remember the day I was accepted into The
Seventh Mountain.”

“You went to the Magi school?”

“Yes, but I didn’t graduate. My vocation was
in a different area.”

LeOmi just looked at him, her mouth gapping
open.

“I can’t talk to you about that. There are a
lot of things you must learn. Your brother and sister are at the
school, and they are doing very well.”

Silence. LeOmi looked at a spot on the
carpet, anything but his face.

“There is one other thing I must tell
you.”

“Just one?”

Oh no, here it comes.

He fidgeted and snapped, “Why is it that I
can talk to every man and woman that comes into my office, but I
can’t talk to my own children?”

“Is that a rhetorical question, or are you
really asking for that answer?”

His impatience jumped a level and he blurted,
“I can’t afford to pay the tuition.”

Once again, her mouth gapped open.

“Don’t look at me like that. I couldn’t pay
for your brother’s or sister’s tuition either.”

“Well then, how are they going?”

“They are working their way through. You
would be surprised to know how many students work at the school to
pay their tuition.”

“You can go to The Seventh Mountain, and work
your way through. Or maybe you would like to come home to
Virginia.”

“Home?”

“If you would like to.”

“The only thing I have ever wanted to be was
a Magi. I have to go no matter what I have to do.”

“All right, then I will inform the
school.”

There was an awkward pause. This time it was
his turn to look at the pattern on the rug.

“There is one thing I must tell you. Magi
depend on each other. Your greatest weakness is that you don’t let
anyone in. You will need to change that.”

She could only look at him. “I don’t believe
it.” She stood and started pacing back and forth following the
patterns on the rug, the same patterns that they had been studying.
Then the words just started coming out. “You have never been there
for me. You were either gone, ministering to the flock or you were
cloistered in your study.”

He hung his head down and listened, he seemed
to prepare for the onslaught and that just seemed to fuel her
already blazing anger.

“I don’t believe this. First you come in here
and say ‘You made it into The Seventh Mountain.’ No congratulations
or anything like that, which, by the way, I was never sure that I
would make it. Then you say that you didn’t make it all the way
through. Then the reason I never see my brother and sister is
because they are working all the time to pay for their tuition and
then you inform me that I will have to do the same thing. Then you
have the nerve to tell me a little fatherly wisdom.”

He stood up. The room was too small for him
to be standing and her to be pacing so she stopped.

“Congratulations.” He turned with a single
stride and put his hand on the door knob.

“And by the way, I never had a doubt that you
would make it.”

The door opened, tears were welling up in her
eyes. All she could do was follow. She couldn’t say,
But wait, I
am not really accepted, I'm on probation
—but not after what he
said. So she followed. He went to Grand-Mère. She sat in the parlor
waiting for him. He stopped in front of her.

“Thank you for all your kindness. I will
enroll her into a private school and I will arrange transportation
for her on the twenty-fifth of August.”

Grand-Mère acknowledged with a nod of the
head and her father nodded in his response. At this, he turned and
left through the front door.

LeOmi, Grand-Mère and Hannah all stared at
the door. Hannah moved first, waking them all from their surprise,
sadness and anger. She gathered his tea cup and saucer onto her
tray unused.

LeOmi turned and went to her room—her sad and
lifeless room—with no happy memories, something else for her to
shovel into the basket of disappointments. She gently closed the
door and through the sting in her eyes she saw on her bed where she
had been sitting a moment before, a fresh twig—it looked like it
was from an olive tree.

* * *

The next morning seemed like a new beginning
for LeOmi. The only dreams she had that night, were of her mother,
glimpses of happy times, Christmas and days at the beach.

LeOmi had a routine. She would get up early
each morning, planning to be outside during the favorite part of
her day. That was just about twenty minutes before sunrise. She
would use that time for meditation and prayer. She always tried to
be outside then. There was something about the newness of the day
that always calmed her, seemed to bring things to a clearer light,
kind-of back into focus and this morning was a new beginning in
more ways than one.

All the houses in New Orleans had balconies
or veranda type rooms that were in the north and south side of the
house. Grand-Mère’s house faced south on Dorcus Street and the
sunrise over the river was truly spectacular, but then the breeze
would blow over the water and bring that smell. She could never
understand the love that people had for this place, just as many
couldn’t understand her love for the ocean, and oh how she missed
the beach. The stench of the muddy river and stagnant marsh lands
couldn’t hold a finger to the oceans sweet sounds and breezes.

Why?
Why did her mother go away with
that Julian Compton? It did seem like there were no answers. Only
more questions. Sergeant Polaris said that she had gone to
Calcutta. Why Calcutta? Why did she get that Journal? What did it
all have to do with that signet? For that matter, what did her
family have to do with the whole thing? Only more questions.

After the sun was fully up, LeOmi’s morning
jog served as thinking and evaluating processing time. Some people
pull weeds, some doodle on paper, some stack sugar cubes. Her
mindless action was jogging. She loved running. It was private and
there was just one foot in front of the other, breathing and
thinking and being alone with her thoughts. This was sometimes good
and sometimes bad, but there was always a feeling of moving a
little closer to the goal –the finish line—whatever that may be.
The wind in her face was always good as was the feel of the jolt of
every thump as each foot hit the ground. It reminded her that there
is always a sequence to things. Even going backwards is a step in
the long process of getting to the finish line.

Generally, she jogged wherever she went. The
library was down on Loyola Avenue, just a few blocks away and she
spent a lot of time there. It was a spacious building that was
almost all windows, the smoky type glass. It gave the entrance a
sort of twilight look whether it was ten o’clock in the morning or
five o’clock in the evening. The smoky atmosphere impression that
seemed to be the look of most of New Orleans—which probably had a
lot to do with the lazy-day type atmosphere that ran the whole
city.

The public library archived all sorts of
information and the Genealogy Department dated back to the 1700’s
and probably before. The internet access computers were on the
first floor in the center of the library surrounded by rows of
reference books and a row of printers that were constantly and
quietly pumping out information.

Mother had been in New Orleans, for at least
a few weeks, before she was killed.

I wonder if Grand-Mère knew
.

Of course she knew. That woman knows
everything.

LeOmi’s research on Sumerian Mythology was
complicated. There wasn’t much information available about the
Sumerian Journal. The Journal itself had been photographed and
documented with portions on the National Library of India’s
website, but deciphering it required research on the cuneiform
language which involved a lot of time, study and referencing.

Generally cuneiform writings were found on
stones that had been created by a scribe. The stones were created
by using moist clay and forming it into the shape of a tablet, and
then a tool was used to make a pattern of marks. This formed the
document. At one time there were 1200 different cuneiform
representative impression marks.

The National Library of India in Calcutta had
received the Sumerian Journal from a familial bequeath and the
family wished to remain anonymous. The family had supposedly had
the Journal for generations, but it was still only partially
translated.

Time was short, less than three months until
school started. Not much time to find out who killed her
mother.

LeOmi knew that her grandmother had people
around New Orleans; people that LeOmi called Grand-Mère’s spies.
They were everywhere, generally obvious, and LeOmi mostly ignored
them. Occasionally she would lose them only to have others turn up
at another location. Most of the time, it was two eerie urchin-like
small old men, full of endurance. They knew the streets and were
impossible to lose. Every time she tried to stop and confront them
they would disappear. They obviously had explicit instructions not
to interact under penalty of whatever. The power the small woman
wielded astounded her, and her Grand-Mère’s power was very far
reaching. Even beyond the borders of New Orleans.

If only Grand-Mère would talk to me—we could
work together.

Henry would have been upset about LeOmi
playing detective. He would not have wanted her to go to The Celtic
Wheel. He would have gone with her, if he could.

Sergeant Polaris could be a great help. We
could help each other. I could be his eyes and ears in
grandmother’s house and he could help me with finding out who
shoved that dagger into my mother’s heart.

There was something about the way that
Sergeant Polaris talked. There was pain in his voice and his
existence, like he had known the pain that LeOmi felt.

He had made a point to ask her about the
lighter with the emblem on it.

A Sumerian Journal was definitely a strange
thing for her mother to be interested in.
Where did she get the
money for that?

Is it all connected?

It was no surprise when the Sergeant arrived.
LeOmi could hear his booming voice at the information desk. She
finished her information gathering and when he approached she was
retrieving her printed pages.