Chapter 37: Chapter 37

Ka It was a good theory that if Maya could take others through portals, she could take them to the astral plane. However, no-one actually expected it to work.

It wasn’t Ka’s first attempt at the astral plane. He had been through a phase of following a philosophy in an attempt to be able to just exist, particularly without waking up with a hangover. He had tried to elevate himself to the astral plane but concentration wasn’t one of his strong points thus meditation was impossible as his thoughts kept wandering off.

Part of the philosophy was to live in the here and now, leaving daydreams behind as they are destructive as they are about the desire for a life beyond what we have. Unfortunately for the holy life, daydreams were all Ka had at the time, and he resisted giving them up. Eventually, much to his master’s consternation, Ka retreated from the philosophy on the grounds that he would have nothing to do if he couldn’t drift off into a world of his own at every opportunity.

At some point during his childhood, dissociation ceased to be something he chose to do, instead becoming something he had no control over. Or maybe it was always like that, it was hard to recall. It had its down points on occasion, but failing to respond to someone calling you was easy to overcome, feigning a touch of deafness in the old left ear. However, going fifty miles past your junction on the freeway when you are already late tends to be a definite disadvantage.

It also posed problems with meditation. You always start with three deep breaths, before focussing on nothing, blanking your mind. Unbeknown to his master, he was rarely able to get past the first two before drifting off. He suspected that if he continued starting the breathing from scratch every time he realised he had gone off into a day dream, he would have ended up suffering with hyperoxia from the sheer volume of deep breathing.

Ka would sit there watching his doppelgänger using their old trick of appearing to be listening to the general conversation whilst being somewhere else entirely. He had his face fixed into an attentive position, which just meant keeping your facial muscles tensed, as if you were actually paying attention. Also periodic eye movement was necessary to keep up the façade. He had realised that he didn’t get away with it quite as much as he had thought, as he had studied the familiar face.

Ke reminded Ka of a time that seemed like a lifetime ago. He was happy in his world with Maya, so much so that he didn’t need to go away anywhere, he just went if he wanted to. Ke was living in another world, so far gone he was struggling with the boundaries of truth and fiction, a road Ka once knew only too well.

Ka was standing in a forest, but it was no ordinary forest. It was as if he was on hallucinogenics, everything was the same but different. He looked down and realised he didn’t exist, he was nothing but a pair of eyeballs. He blinked his only attribute hard, trying to make sense of where he was, but blinking didn’t feel quite right either.

Maya was stood next to him, and somehow part of him.

“Is this the astral plane?” he asked, his voice more in his mind than his ears. He realised his question was probably quite stupid, but was glad to have broken the silence.

“Yes, this is where I came last time at first,” Maya’s voice rang out in his mind and all around him, while being somehow muffled.

“Where is my body? Why have you got one?” asked Ka, still looking around at nothing but trees. “Hey, does this mean I’m not a man anymore?” he asked, noting the absence of male sex organs. Or any organs for that matter. He was certainly lacking in the tangible department.

“Concentrate,” she was smiling at him, her hand outstretched. “Think body.”

“Body, body,” murmured Ka, envisaging himself in the clothes his physical body was still wearing, he didn’t want a rerun of the naked dream. To his relief, his body appeared fully clothed.

“It’s so beautiful, I feel so connected,” Maya wondered in amazement. “I forgot just how connected when I was back there.”

Ka shook his head, in a manner of speaking anyway. He understood, could feel it too. It was like he was made out of the same material as the trees that surrounded them, the same material as Maya.

“Come,” said Maya, and he followed her in his mind’s eye to find himself outside a cave. He returned to being nothing, there was a certain novelty to not having a body.

“Maya,” Maya called out to her mirror as they entered the cave.

“Go away,” the voice emanating from the cave was weak in her mind, fragile, but undeniably Maya’s, the other Maya.

“Maya please, I need to know. Did you give me this, this ?” begged Maya.

“Go away, I don’t want it near me, make it go away.”

“Did you give this to me?” Maya’s words were stronger, firmer, almost shouting at her. She needed to know, desperation was creeping in.

“Go away, go away GO AWAY!” the other Maya’s cries rang through the cave, and then she was gone.

“No!” Maya shouted, turning into a translucent red coloured floating mass.

“Come out of here,” Ka led Maya out of the cave to a cove flanked by cliffs, with boulders and rocks for a sea shore. “Stay here,” he instructed. “I can feel her, let me try.”

Ka don’t really know what he intended to achieve, but he knew we would get no answers as long as the gift was present, so the only thing for it was to go it alone. He could feel the broken girl, like you can feel pressure on a limb. He focussed on her really hard, and found himself in another dark cave. He realised that she must have had a number of caves to hide in.

“What happened with the gift?” he asked, unsure of where to start, not wanting to scare her away again.

“She took it from him. I didn’t know, didn’t know it was him. So scared, so so scared I didn’t know, didn’t know it was him,” the shadow murmured weakly.

“Didn’t know it was who?” pushed Ka gently.

“It should go, should always go, why didn’t it go?” she mumbled, not listening to his questions.

“Where should it have gone?” Ka pushed a little harder.

“Should have gone, should have gone with her, why did she bring it back? Should be gone!” Maya cried, her voice rising to a screech that couldn’t be dampened by Ka covering his ears.

“What should have happened to you, once it had gone?” he thought that question was probably too far, too confusing, so he was surprised at the answer.

“Dead and gone,” she murmured, getting louder. “Dead and gone, dead and gone, better!” she snapped. “Better not worse, dead and gone, dead and gone!”

Since he was getting answers, Ka decided to push his luck further.

“Did you give the gift to my Maya?”

But Maya kept repeating “dead and gone” over and over, so he left her to it and returned to his Maya, who was talking to a well-toned dark skinned man wearing nothing but baggy orange trousers.

Ka and the man exchanged pleasantries and bowed to each other, before the man addressed Maya.

“I cannot help you, I do not know how to gain or remove this gift. I only know that it is a gift from God, and that he has a plan for us all.”

“But there is no god!” Maya burst out, causing the man to bow to them before vanishing.

Ka tried with all his might to locate his favourite meditation spot, a large flat rocky area exposed to the sea spray.

“Come,” he said to Maya, taking her with him to a place he hadn’t been in a while.

“Where are we?” she asked, looking around.

“India,” he told her. “It’s one of my favourite places in the world, I used to come here and meditate, it was the only place I found peace before I met you. Now I have peace wherever I have you.”

“You spoke of this place, I remember now.”

Ka realised what felt so strange about the sounds in that place. It was like there was an echo, so light and distant, then nothing. Like all sound had been sucked up into a great acoustic sponge, the background noise all silenced. He could only hear the ocean when he thought about it, and there was no breathing or bodily noises, only an abyss where sounds should have been.

Ka and Maya’s energies merged in a way so intimate it surpassed any possible earthly actions by an order of magnitude. They passed time without speaking, the bare matter that was each of them mingled together to create one being.

“Hey,” a voice in Ka’s head called out.

A woman joined them on their rock, bursting their bubble.

“You have been seeking answers,” her deep tone resonated throughout their heads, and almost from the world around.

“Do you know about the gift?” Maya asked, hope rising through her face.

“I know it doesn’t belong to you,” she replied, remaining a perfect sphere of energy, invisible except for the light it refracted, changing the view of the world behind the sphere.

“I think it was my mirror’s,” Maya told her honestly.

Ka was thinking about not only how beautiful the energy was, but also concern for why she did not show herself.

“She gave it to me but she’s broken and I’m breaking. I don’t know what to do.” Maya sounded like she was breaking too.

“Somebody stole the gift and forced it on another. Your mirror did not steal the gift,” the stranger advised. “It wants to return to its owner, you must find that person and give it back. Then your soul will be complete.”

Ka wondered how this mysterious soul had found them, how she knew what they had been looking for.

“How do I find the owner in this multiverse? Where do I start looking?” Maya seemed totally taken in by the blob.

“Only you can know who it belongs to. Search inside yourself, the gift will have attempted to bend you to its will, taking you to its owner.”

“But I don’t know!” Maya started to panic, while at the same time Ka felt pulled strongly to his body, not for the first time since settling on the rock.

“You will. You have enough knowledge now. There is something I must ask you before you return. It is very important that you listen carefully and answer honestly, “Have you ever heard of a human called William, a power hungry maniac who cares nothing for how he comes by it?”

“No, I’ve met no-one like that. I just want to save our souls. Hey, will giving it back save my mirror’s soul? Free her from the astral plane, from her eternal hell?”

“I don’t know, but she is an innocent, and fate will have a plan for her.”

Ka wanted to argue about this so called fate, wanted to know why so many people put so much stock in fate and deities. However at that moment, his body forced him to return to it, and he awoke next to Maya’s unconscious form in Les and Rob’s lounge.

The pain was intense as his muscles screamed after being posed in the same cross legged position since late afternoon. It was now dark and the flat was silent, the clock in the kitchen area reading three A.M.

Maya returned next to Ka, her body clearly in the same level of pain as his. He shushed her, indicating to deal with the pain in silence so as to not wake up the others.

They rolled around in agony for some time, eventually returning their muscles and tendons to a relatively normal but aching state after the twelve hours of punishment they had endured sat cross legged while their souls were elsewhere.

Crawling towards their bedroom they tried not to giggle about the condition they had ended up in, both trying not to think about the knowledge Maya was supposed to already possess.