WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (37 page)

For a while she
is frozen, paralyzed by choice and dreaming of pills.  But then my cries enter inside her ears and she is fueled with a burn that unleashes her.
A bright hits her face and causes her to squint and turn away unable to meet its luminosity. When it fades to a soft glow and she is able to see it—
she melts.
 
Rectors were beautiful and she had forgotten how much.  In our earthly realm, we see glimpses of them, pure white glints of light, here then gone.  We see their touch on our lives and in other’s lives,
their infinite work around us, their unfailing attempts at guiding us, saving us from danger, convincing us of right and wrong. Our lives are guided by Rectors.
Everyone has one. 
They are bright as the sun, polished a
nd perfect. Until they dim the light yoked upon them, you cannot look at them, lest you white your eyes and go blind. 
In the inter-realm Imperium, seekers can interact with the Rectors as they can with the shadows. 
But who wants to interact with the shadows? The devil, maybe.
 Maw Sue’s mother told her that the Rectors interact with us on earth and help us during troubling times, tapping on shoulders, whispering words of wisdom, opening doorways previously closed and delivering us from the evil shadows that try to destroy us. They guide us, sure, but the pathway isn’t easy. It leads to dangerous travel and roads not taken, enemies in bushes and hidden things. Carnal humanity is conditioned to stay in one place, resist pain, and deny growth but the Rectors press against this carnal resistance, nudging us to move, walk new pathways,
to push forward and grow into what we were created to be. 
They challenge us to embark upon a new trail, climb a mountain never climbed, and endure a road filled with brambles and briars and boogey men. Rectors push their chosen ones past the point of breaking, while they press our fingers in wounds, making us touch the humanity of our own pain, and yet not die in it,
in order that we may grow strong under pressure, endure to the end, more alive, more whole than ever before. 
They encourage us to chip off old habits and fears, and prick the deepest inner core of ourselves to
find out what we are made of, inside and outside.  Once we see who we are—which is most times, lacking, they
show us who could be. They push us past the point of growth to stretch our mind, our bodies and our spirits to a capacity we never knew we had. As a child, Maw Sue calle
d the Rectors, the crumb givers.  It was the only way her mother could make her understand who they were.  To Maw Sue, they
delivered the necessary crumbs to seekers for survival, to make it through another day. To avoid these crumbs or deny their existence is to turn into a sleeper, passing through this life unaware, unknown and merely existing till turning to dust. The light of the Rector glowed like a giant firefly inside the cedar closet, inside the imperium realm. She felt the soft embrace as she always did when it was near her. The reassurance, the comfort, the warmth but as always, nearby, the old demons were there too. She could feel their presence, the pressure mounting like a volcanic eruption.
The shadow Amogians could easily take her down. 
With the Rectors help, she stared past the outer realm of the world she feared and into
the world she had to confront, the one she left behind, long ago. 
Inside the imperium realm the giant leaned against the wall, its eyes dark and daring. Time had turned the stack of boxes, books, journals, bags and collected trinkets from her past—into an ugly, huge monster. His baggage head showed wrinkles and a mouth line that l
ooked like a snarl, his bulging eyes, like hardened hickory nuts.  He alone held her secrets, her shame, her past, the one she could barely face.  Around her, t
he shadows were swarming like huge gnats.

The child. Remember the child. You can do this Susannah. You can.

The Rector encouraged Maw Sue in her spirit while the Shadows intercepted with doubts that made her struggle. She was so weak. The blocking worse, the resistance strong, unbearable and worse than inside the hospital room when she held me
in her arms for the first time. 
The giant wanted her to retreat, let it be, leave well enough alone, deny, sweep it under the rug. Maw Sue would not make the same mistake again.
She couldn’t repeat the past. 
Destroying her own life was enough and she could not let them destroy mine. She dropped to her knees, shaky and tormented. She had no tic-tac’s, no medicine for
this
kind of pain. The
red stone necklace was useless in this dimension. 
No rubbing, no soothing. 
Just confrontation. No turning back.

The giant’s arms and legs grew gnarly and wicked and reached outward to strangle her. 
The child, remember the child.
 Before he could tear her asunder with overwhelming guilt and regret—she lunged into him.
Piece by piece, the giant of cardboard boxes, and fabric bags full of trinkets were torn asunder.  Maw Sue ripped into the giant
like a savage until there was nothing but the dismantled bare bones of her childhood, scattered about the floor. Boxes, trinkets, buttons, metal parts, toys, pictures and family relics
strewn about. 
Her gifted ears could hear the song of the south, silence in suffering and the sins of yesteryear rising up from the floor joists, coming alive, uncovered, exposed. Discarded and stored away ages ago—now alive as if resurrected from the dark compartments of her mind, so brutal, so devastating. Out of the corner of her eye, the Rector lit up the dark corner of the closet and illuminated the object
to which her eyes had not seen in ages. 
It shimmered
like silver dust angels. 
The tragic splendor of its appearance made her shudder.
Yes. It was her mirror bin.
 She let out a sigh of relief and regret all in one swoop. Sitting on top was a stack of tattered leather bound books salvaged from the Mayflower after its long treacherous journey or that’s wha
t she used to think as a child. 
Some, like treasure maps, old and tarnished and stained with squiggly lines and hidden symbols. Most, if not all were curled up, ripped and needed pieced back together, well-traveled, well-read and of course, right beside them was the sidekicks, the counterpart, the legendary Cupitor scrolls rolled up like ancient socks. Maw Sue felt a sharp lump form in her throat, cutting into the
flesh, slicing open old wounds, tasting the memories, the blood as it trickled between her teeth. 
Bear it Susannah. Bear it. You can go forward. You can.
 The Rector’s voice pushed, pressed, encouraged. 
Don’t lose it now Susannah. Remember the child
. 
Channel it to good. Use the gift. It will help you. Remember the crumbs. Reach, reach, reach.
 
Devenio! Devenio! Devenio! Make lovely your losses.

Heated from the inside out, she glanced up and the light of the Rectors barely there hand pressed into her shoulder, a bond of love and strength, an angel of fortified steel 
rendering aide to a helpless human.  Rectors are the clones of our hidden light inside us, the
internal essence of our true selves, waiting to be birthed, to be set free, to lift upward, to pull out of the muck and mire, to gain a steady momentum and move forward—to
slip into the lighted shadow of ourselves and become whole. 
Simple be who we were called to be.
 Rectors remind us of who we are, and who we shall become, 
if
we move ahead, as warriors of courage, and fai
th. For Maw Sue, in her old age, too late for changes, they reminded her of her failure. 
Tears fell in a blurry mess, and right when she thought she could take no more, forever sinking into the abyss of regret, consumed with
the past’s pain, the closet was incubated with my newborn cries.  To Maw Sue’s horror, my screams came from the mouth of the Rector and with it, a vision projected into her mind, of my darkened birth, the shadows weaving in and out of the inner realm and
the outer realm of all that was, tangled up.

“I will not let her live the life I lived.” Maw Sue wailed. “I will not.” She took a deep calming breath while the Rector screeched my curdling cries, with each howl
a projectile of hot swords slicing her eardrums. 
She steadied the pain, touching it for what it was, and with the Rectors help, she pressed forward. Maw Sue reached deep inside the belly of the closet, rustling through the items
untouched for years.  Relics of her past, trinkets of remembrance.  T
he old texts
were stacked in piles, hardbacks and leathers ties, some rolled up, others unbound. 
The Rector gave her a nod of approval
.  Maw Sue steadied herself knowing she would have to do the rest on her own merit.  On her own strength.  A
zipping noise ruled the air, and she vanished leaving her human to her duty. The inter-realm was deathly still as if it waited on her to make a move she had never made before, a move to the crossroad, the intersection where there is no return, no turning back. With deep breathes Maw Sue grabbed the large leather binder off the stack and laid it on her lap. Slowly and with care, she opened the
ancient pages. 
She knew the power of old things, unused and put away. Darkness grows
in the darkened places, and when handled carelessly they yield a power of destruction. 
Like a ball held under water too long, the tangled realm of dark, the lesser light accumulated with the light, exploded into a plume of old dust. She squinted, coughed and wheezed. Her
gift propelled to new heights.  She heard a repertoire of
unheard things, she saw unseen things, a multitude of figures, old and unfamiliar, row after row of shadows within the shadows, appearing and disappearing, vanishing into a thin line, then a simple blip and gone. 
She had crossed over.
 She could not return to where she was. Not spiritually, not physical, not emotionally, 
not ever.

“Devenio—devenio—devenio.”
 The voice said.  Maw Sue startled and shaken by it, sat breathless.  It was indeed her mother’s voice.  S
he had shut out the dark voices that haunted her long
ago, voices that drove her mad, but in doing so, she had forgotten, that to deny the darkened places, is to also deny the lighted places.  M
emory muzzling is a popular avenue of reinforcement for the Shadow Amodgians. Without memory—we have no purpose to which to drawn our strength, our love, our basis for human survival. 
If we drown out the dark—we take the light with it, for the dark is the lesser light, enveloped within the light
.  Maw Sue wept in
knowledge of what she had done.  Her heart broken in pieces. 

“Okay, mamma.”
Maw Sue said. 
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know…I just needed them to stop talking
in my head. 
I
t drove me crazy, I didn’t know…I didn’t know.” 
“Hush, hush precious. All is forgiven Susannah. It is not too late.”
Her mother said.  Maw Sue
felt a surge of strength, a
muscle pumped with blood and sinew, an umbilical cord attachment she hadn’t used since she was a kid.  Just hearing her mother’s voice
was power. With
controlled ability she never had, she flipped the pages of the book and started to read the words. 

One by one, page by page, absorbing each ancient word, each handwritten message,
every detail, note or scribble.  She scoured
over the bitter chronicles of
Cupitors, seekers and sleepers. 
She analyzed letters, numbers, dates, times, stories, everything and anything that would explain why a child could be born at the forbidden time. An hour passed.  Two hours. Then three. Maw Sue was no closer to the truth than when she started. Confused and overwhelmed, she felt powerless. This mission was too hard, too painful, too consuming. 
I cannot do this. I am the wrong person, maybe someone else could do it, but who? 
Her mind twisted and turned with thoughts of regret, of running, of taking a bottle of tic-tac’s.
A light glowed in front of her. The Rector came closer and touched her lips,
then faded.  A taste sprung up in her mouth, a familiar crumb she knew she had ate before. 
It exiled a bitter memory she had spent most her life trying to forget.  She
trembled as if the earth shook with her.  Her heart thudded, her ears burned. 
An intense pain, wracked her up and down. She wanted to run but she was paralyzed in the imperium realm—
where one has to face all that was, all that is, and all that is to be. 
Use your gift Susannah.
 
Find the treasure.
 
She kept hearing encouragement from the Rector.  She
flung the book down and pushed the scrolls to the side. She rummaged through the trinkets scattered on the floor and found a half used book of matches and an old candle. She closed her eyes
and confronted what she had to face. 
When she had finished her prayer, touched the pain and faced the dark Lord of the lesser light, she lit the wick. The flames instantly lit up the black,
and exposed the hidden things. 
With the candle in her hands, she slid across the floor on boney knees, inching her way deeper into the closet, as it grew wide, large and darker, closing in on her like a cave dwelling. Sketchy outlines of dark
creatures never seen before, drew themselves in the shadows, with invisible hands.  Maw Sue shuddered with each sighting
but she kept moving despite her fears. She could hear them spilling off into the crevasses of the black corners where no light existed, feeding off the dark, her mind fears, her past rising up like a buffet for their starving apostates. In her vision, the one she tried to deny, but couldn’t, she heard the stirrings of the giant, the bones and sinewy muscles trying to reassemble themselves as a block to stop her, and if he couldn’t, the shadows surely would.