Leaping Through the Lightning

Penelope Hill

I Leap ...

Blue fire engulfs me, dragging my soul from its enchaining flesh, and I am back in that place which is no place, a time outside of time, where ancient powers linger and there is no sense of when, only of now ...

Here in a limbo of endless light and eternal darkness I wander. Waiting for that moment, for the twist of self that gives me purpose and sends me back to be again. I am in a world that has no set form or substance, existing in a space and void, meandering in the Waiting Room of God, while all creation ponders what task to set me next. It is a time I cannot remember, yet each time I return to it, it is to return home. Here others walk, sometimes my companions, sometimes avoiding me; old ghosts and souls not yet born. Dead voices greet my passing, speak to me of past and future - pity me my chosen course. And here, once, always, on the one occasion that is continually now, I am tempted and tormented, beckoned from the path and guided on the way, protected and assailed by powers I cannot conceive, yet have given up my soul to serve.

I am in heaven, and I am in hell, and I cannot measure the difference between them ...

I walk through a symphony of orchids, brushing notes of liquid music from their petals. This place is new to me, yet always familiar. The sky is a rainbow of perfume and the mountains at the meadow’s edge are impossibly distant. They are my destination. My task for this time is simply to reach their feet.

I walk for hours. For ever. The sound of the music becomes unbearable, the endless changing sky a torment of colours and scents. But I still walk. To stop now would be to stop for eternity.

The figure waits for me in the roll of the landscape, a scarecrow cut from measured cloth, draped in features I know but cannot place.

"Going somewhere, kid?" he asks, falling in to match my step. I gesture to the mountains and he laughs. "Shooting at the moon again, Sam? They can’t be reached. Rest up for a while. Keep an old friend company."

I turn to study his face. It is a face I know I should trust in another time, another place ... His smile is disarming, but his eyes are wrong.

"Uh-uh," I deny, still walking. "I’ll rest when I get there."

"Get there?" His laugh becomes deeper, mocking me. "You’ll never get there, Sam. You’re just going round in circles. Round and round forever ... You need a guide. Why don’t you come with me?"

I shake my head despite the temptation. I know what I have to do. His offer draws me, but it cannot deflect me. He’s right, but he isn’t right. I don’t know how I know, but I do.

"You won’t make it alone, Sam Beckett." His voice falls behind me, his threat and promise shivering my soul. "I’ll see to that ..."

I look back - just once. The demon tears its way through its adopted form, scattering it around itself like discarded tickertape. Its shadow rises over the landscape and I hurry away, fighting a rising wind, shielding my face as the flowers are ripped from the earth to strike at me.

"This way, Sam." Another voice. The same voice. I hesitate, beset by the whirlwind that tears at my escape. "Just a little further. You can do it. I know you can ..."

I surge ahead, pulling free of the wind that sucks at me and drags me back. There is a space of calm, there in the eye of the tornado, and at its heart stands a man. A man, and not a man. The demon tempted me with friendship. The angel greets me with love.

His wings are not made from fragile feathers, not snow-white and reflected glory, but from true fire. Phoenix-like he unfurls them, and they seem to reach to the edges of the sky. I shield my face from their blaze, seeing only shape and form within the conflagration.

"Don’t be scared of me, Sam," he says, and his voice is achingly familiar, the same voice, only filled with light and surety. If this is temptation, then I surrender to it with barely a thought. I reach out to take the hand he offers me, and his fire ignites across my skin, racing to consume my fragile form.

There is no pain, only incandescence. I am not consumed, merely transformed. I too, am given wings. While he is with me, I can fly.

We leave the ground together, leave the twist of the whirlwind, leave the demon’s shadow far behind. The creature took a truth and made it his lie. I cannot succeed without a guide. I cannot reach the distant goal alone.

But I am not alone. Always alone, never alone, another riddle of this place that I cannot comprehend. I have a shadow, a protector, carried on phœnix wings. We revel in the freedom of the sky, twist and turn on spirals of flame. At last, too soon, some time past forever, he lets loose my hand and I fall; fall into the curve of his arms, into the embrace of his fire, and he puts me down gently at the mountains’ feet.

"It is time for you to go back," he says. Regretful, saddened. I feel the heat of his presence, the warmth of his wings enfolding me; then he steps away, the flame folding down around his shoulders and blazing there about him like a cloak of scarlet and gold.

"Wait," I beg, feeling the mountain call me, the place I must go becoming real whether I wish it or not. "Who are you?"

"Your guide," he answers. "Your guardian." A smile that lights the curve of the earth and the stars that lie beyond it. "Your friend."

The lightning comes. Blue lightning, spearing me with time and space, making me exist again. The place that is no place ceases to be, has no memory to haunt me.

I will return.

Once again to be tempted and tested, tried and judged, and sent on my way.

Which is the reality, which the dream?

I have no way to know.

Until I Leap ...

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Disclaimer:This story has been written for love rather than profit and is not intended to violate any copyrights held by Donald P Bellasario, Bellasarius Productions, or any other holders of Quantum Leap trademarks or copyrights.
© 1995 by AAA Press. Written and reproduced by Penelope Hill