I walked toward the arch that separated the security area from the main terminal. De Gaulle was a series of pods, built years before modern security theater, and even after every attempt to turn it into a series of dehumanizing little boxes, it still evoked the interior of a gothic cathedral. The new arch was a faux wall, built from pressed wood products and molded plastic, and it certainly didn't have the grandeur of any of the arches of Notre-Dame. But it had its own magic: by virtue of its shape and design, it was a threshold; a portal between here and there, one magickal space and another. Arches, doors, entryways, thresholds: they were all symbols of change. Once I crossed it, I would be in a different world.
I would be back in France.
I had caught an earlier flight than the one that had been provided for me. The direct flight was too obvious, and I couldn't believe that someone wouldn't have been Watching there. Especially when my real name had been on the ticket. I had gone out to Sea-Tac much earlier in the day and had talked my way on to standby for the less direct flight. At the last minute, the gate attendant released a first class seat. I had feigned surprise and eagerly paid full price for the ticket. The airline had been happy to gouge me.
The flight went through Heathrow, where I had sat for several hours in the British Airways lounge and tried not to think about my final destination. Or the phone call I wasn't making. Excuses were plentifuclass="underline" it was an international call; I didn't have a cell phone; she might not be home; what was the point of leaving a message. After all this time? Hi, it's Michael; I'm not as dead as you thought.
Baggage. Lots of baggage. Physically, I had grown accustomed to traveling light, but, in my head, I was standing at the curb, waiting for a Sky Cap and a cart. The rapture in Portland had graced me with a new burden-a different sort of baggage-and not all of my old mistakes had been forgiven. Sins may be absolved, but the stains left behind were another matter entirely.
The Chorus flushed through the braid of white hair around my throat, leaving-in their wake-a tingling sensation that flowed down into my chest like a film of water racing across glass. An involuntary shiver followed, a purely physical reaction to the mystic flow. I still wasn't accustomed to this new freedom they enjoyed, this new independence from my Will. Certainly less of the malignant taint that had been eating at my spirit for the last decade, and there was a constant hum to them now, as if they were some sort of autonomous holistic system, keyed to maintaining my shell.
Too much like a guardian angel for my liking.
Then there was the issue with the Old Man. Maybe he was too strong of a spark to be subsumed quickly. Maybe the process of mapping history to mine was slower with the new Chorus. They weren't as ravenous as the last bunch, and it had only been twenty-four hours since Philippe and I had met in Seattle. In Harvey Alleningham's library, where we had talked. Father to son. Teacher to student. Magus to magus.
Less than a day had passed since we had had our talk, and I had taken his soul.
Staring at the arch that separated Customs from the main airport, I was reminded of Aleister Crowley's commentary on the Moon, the nineteenth card of the Major Arcana of the tarot. Well, the Moon was never far from my mind these days. Not since Portland. Not since Devorah nearly cut my throat with it.
On the Moon card, there is a void between the pillars, a threshold between the two paths represented by the pillars. A bloodied moon hangs low in the sky. The card represented the cusp of possibility. The Moon was the edge of midnight. On this side of its pillars, you were still in the real world, on the other side was both dream and nightmare. Unrealized until you stepped across. Until you actualized the future.
You See it, Michael, it becomes so; that is the key to the ego of the Moon.
While in the lounge at Heathrow, I had looked at the deck I had brought with me, and the Moon had been warm, the ink seemingly still wet on the card. Unlike Crowley's symbolic explosion, the Marseille Moon was like a surrealist landscape painting, a flat illustration of disparate objects: the pillars, the dogs, the rays thrusting forth from the lunar disk, the crab in the river, the moon itself. But it was a syncretic whole, all the objects to be treated equally, and not read solely as a representation of the swollen eye of midnight. The meaning of the pillars and the space between them was but a piece of the puzzle, as were the tears falling from the gibbous eye and the crab reaching up for them.
You could hold yourself on this threshold, balanced on this moment of possibility. You could live your life here, never crossing over, but it was a life in abeyance. A life never fully realized. You had to cross the threshold. You had to move forward and pass between the pillars. You had to decipher the mysteries offered by your existence, otherwise the river would-eventually-wash you away.
I had to unlock the puzzle in my head. I had to know why the Chorus came back. I had to know what Philippe gave me when I took him. There were too many pieces still unknown. Too many strands of the mystic knot in my head that I couldn't follow.
I had to cross the threshold into the future.
A fellow passenger, clearly under no apprehension about arches, strode past, clipping my foot with the edge of her suitcase. Don't be a rock in the stream, the Chorus whispered, and I knew they were right. Time to move on. I took a deep breath, held it, and walked through the arch.
I don't know what I expected: lights and sirens; a bolt of lightning from Heaven; a demonic army bursting through the floor. Like most transitions we go through in life, there was no sign the Universe carried or noticed. Nothing happened. The lights didn't even flicker. I took a step to the side, hauling my suitcase out of the way, and watched as other passengers moved past me. Souls, moving from one realm to another. Thousands did it every day. It was just another portal. Part of the endless cycle of our lives. We pass through portals and don't realize-or don't care-that nothing-or everything-has changed. We pass through, and go on.
"Paranoia," I whispered to myself. "Looking too hard to find connections." In the last six months, I had started talking to myself. It was the only way I could be sure the voice was mine and not theirs. The first few times I had been furtive about it, as if I were hiding something, but from who? The voices in my head? I could imagine Detective Nicols making a note in his little black book: Schizophrenia. How many symptoms is he exhibiting now?
The Chorus read the terminal, overlaying my vision with the glittering silver of etheric energy. A sea of dancing lights, filled with currents and eddies, this magickal overlay was a visual filter that transformed the terminal into a fluid map. Allowing the Chorus to enhance my vision was becoming an unconscious reflex; prior to Portland, this had been an act of Will, and now it was merely an aspect of evaluating the environment. I could read the leys more easily now; I could see the patterns of force that affected the world and those caught in its rhythms. I could see the lights without having to worry about my own; the Chorus was no longer a constant threat, waiting for me to weaken, waiting for their chance to take over my body.
The souls in the terminal were like a profusion of stars in the night sky: some were bigger, some brighter, some twinkled. One appeared to be strong enough to exert a subtle influence on the souls around it. The Chorus reached for this light, but I held them back, flushing them from my vision. I wanted to see who this was without the benefit of mystic sight, as there was something about its resonance that was achingly familiar. Something about its pulse that seemed so close to my own.
At the farm house, along the Aude. The memory of the little dark-haired girl, chasing the geese. One of Philippe's memories. I hadn't known her then. But as the Chorus left my eyes, and I saw her standing by the wall, the memory of the little girl became fused with my history of the child as a grown woman.