She had long since missed morning rush hour, and the drive to Isle of Palms was completed more quickly than she had anticipated. The weather was gorgeous, with a bright blue sky that seemed to darken as she came closer to the sea.
The address that Dr. Elizabeth had given her belonged to a quaint, English-style cottage, whose backyard merged into a wide sandy beach, with the crashing Atlantic the nearest neighbor. Strangely enough, she felt completely at ease here, experiencing none of the normal anxieties that would usually be generated when meeting a stranger in this manner.
With her doubts all but forgotten, she anxiously walked up to the heavy oaken front door and knocked three times.
“Who’s there?” asked a familiar, high-pitched voice from inside the house.
“It’s Mimi Slater.”
There was the dull clicking sound of a deadbolt being unlocked and a door swung open to reveal a short, overweight, white woman in her fifties. Her eyes were hidden by sunglasses, and she wore an abundance of pinkish red rouge on her cheeks, and matching lipstick that seemed to blend with the bright colors of her loose-fitting Hawaiian muumuu. On first appearance, she certainly seemed pleasant enough, though a bit of an eccentric all the same.
“Do come in, hon,” she said with a warm smile.
“My, you sure made good time getting over here. It seems like we just got off the phone.”
The house was tastefully decorated, with a predominance of white wicker furniture and plenty of green plants. There was a good deal of antique marine paraphernalia hung on the walls, and it fit in perfectly with the wonderful ocean view from the adjoining screened-in porch.
“You can credit my niece for all the furnishings,” said Dr. Elizabeth.
“I always said that she would have made a great interior decorator.”
“What does she do for a living?” questioned Mimi, who watched a large, black Persian cat emerge from the kitchen to check her out.
“She’s a magazine travel writer of all things,” answered Dr. Elizabeth.
“That one should have been born with wings instead of legs. Right now, she’s touring Asia, and won’t be back until winter.
So when she asked me to house-sit, how could I refuse?
I’ll tell ya, hon, this sure beats fightin’ the crowds on the Upper West Side.”
There was a hint of incense in the air, and Mimi could just hear the crashing surf in the distance.
“Please join me on the porch for some herb tea, hon. That’s where I feel most comfortable doing my readings.”
Mimi noted how her host pronounced the h in herb as in the man’s name, and she couldn’t help comparing her to the character of Minnie Castevets, in the movie version of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby. She vibrated a trusting innocence, that made Mimi feel as if she were visiting a long-lost aunt. With this impression in mind, she followed her to the porch, and sat down in one of two comfortable wicker rockers.
While Dr. Elizabeth went to get the tea, Mimi gazed out the room’s massive, screened-in windows. The crashing sound of the surf was a bit more noticeable here, as well as the distinctive cries of the local sea birds. There wasn’t a soul on the beach, where white sand was rippled into ridges tufted with green grass.
The cat made its presence known by gently rubbing up against Mimi’s leg. It was one of the largest Persians that she had ever seen, and as Mimi bent over to scratch its head, she saw that it had strikingly clear blue eyes, that appeared almost ethereal.
“My, now that’s certainly most unusual,” observed Dr. Elizabeth as she arrived pushing a tea cart.
“Usually Isis keeps well away from strangers.”
“So your name’s Isis,” said Mimi, while continuing to stroke the Persian’s silky fur mane.
“That sure is an unusual name.”
“Isis was a most revered Egyptian goddess,” revealed Dr. Elizabeth.
“She was the wife of Osiris, the sun god.”
Satisfied that the newly arrived human was a friend, Isis sauntered over to the screen to peer out at the circling gulls. This left Mimi’s hands free to accept a delicate bone-china cup, filled with a steaming hot, light green liquid.
“I hope you enjoy this tea, ho nit a combination of chamomile flowers, spearmint leaves, orange blossoms, and rosebuds. I blend it myself.”
“Sounds wonderful,” said Mimi, who took a sip from her cup and pleasingly nodded.
“You know, honi hated to have to call you out of the blue like I did, but I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. I’ve seen the news, and can just imagine what you’re goin’ through right now. But that’s just another reason why I had to go and bother you.”
“Please tell me about Peter, Dr. Elizabeth,” pleaded Mimi.
“Is he still alive? And if so, where is he?”
As the psychic settled down into the rocker beside her guest, she reached out and softly grasped Mimi’s hand.
“Hon, your husband contacted me from a place that he’ll never be able to return from. But I can’t really say that he’s deceased. You see, he’s been sent on a cosmic voyage, along with the rest of his crew, to a universe far from this solar system. And it was during this initial transfer that the entity contacted me and made me aware of their plight.”
“I’m afraid that I don’t understand,” replied Mimi, with her slim hopes quickly fading.
“You say Peter’s not dead, but that he’ll never be able to come back home. Then exactly where is he, and what in the world occurred to send him there?”
“My dear, your husband has been conveyed to a distant star, in the constellation Cygnus, the swan. The entity who guides me also comes from this far-off place, and it’s from his lips that I learned of the capstone’s activation.”
“Capstone?” questioned Mimi, her tea completely forgotten.
“Hon, I can tell right off that you’re no stranger to the psychic world. You’ve lived on this earth before, in many previous lives, all of which have contributed to the present high evolutionary state of your soul. In one of these reincarnations, you lived on the continent of Atlantis, so what I’m about to share with you will only be like a trip homeward.
“The great land of Atlantis once occupied a major portion of this earth, lying primarily in the area where today there lies nothing but ocean. Except for the accounts of Plato, details of the Atlantean civilization have been all but wiped from modern man’s consciousness.
And what a shame that is, because there’s so much we could learn from Atlantis and apply today.
“Their advances in the arts and sciences easily outdistanced our current level of technology. This was primarily due to the fact that the Atlanteans were energy independent, having learned to harness the very forces that energize the universe. To tap this dynamic force, they built a pyramid with a specially designed crystal capstone, known as the Tuaoi Stone. Acting as a self sustaining energy relay station, this pyramid was located in an area that’s today known as the Tongue of the Ocean, between the Bahamian island of Andros and Nassau’s New Providence Island.
“In brief, Atlantis fell apart because of a conflict between the forces of peace and those of war. This eternal struggle between good and evil reached its climax when a combination of natural and man-made disasters tore apart the Atlantean continent, with much of its landmass being sucked beneath the sea.
“This was the fate of the crystal capstone. Preprogrammed to activate when the heavens were properly aligned, the Tuaoi Stone continues to draw down the powers of the universe from its current position on the sea floor. Your husband’s warship had the misfortune of passing over the remains of the pyramid at the exact moment that it was energizing. And it was in this manner that he and his crew were tele ported to Cygnus, where they dwell in peace in the land of the Tuaoi entity.”