“If you had touched it,” Anita stated firmly, slowly releasing Lilly’s hand, “it would have pulled you in. Where it might take you none of us knows, nor would we know how to get you back.”
“Really?” She examined it more closely, leaning in for a better look. “It just looks like a door with fancy artwork.”
“It is a portal,” offered John. “While each of the quadrants is unique to the person looking, we all see the circle and the cross. If you touch any of the four spaces, each will take you to a different destination.”
“Wow, so you can’t see this?”
Their silence was her answer.
“So in the lower right, down here,” continued Lilly, making sure her fingers didn’t get too close to the carved surface, “there is a figure eight on its side . . .”
“Infinity,” blurted Gerald, then he grinned apologetically. “It is the symbol for infinity, in case you didn’t know.”
Something about the symbol drew Lilly’s attention. “At the center where the two ovals of infinity meet is a snake’s head, and it’s swallowing its own tail . . . forever?” Involuntarily, she shuddered.
“Go on,” Anita instructed, her tone serious and focused.
“Up here”—Lilly pointed toward the upper left—“is Adam . . .” She caught herself. “I mean, a carving of a man who possibly represents Adam. He is on his knees looking down at the dirt that he is scooping up in his hands. He’s naked, like the woman in the upper right, who might represent Eve? She is turned toward the man, and her hands are outstretched, empty palms raised as if holding something precious.” As best she could, Lilly took the same posture in order to show them what she meant.
“Astounding!” exclaimed Gerald.
“If there had been any doubt about you being the Witness to Beginnings,” Anita said, “it has been completely erased.”
“Because I can see a door?”
“Because of what you are able to see on the door,” emphasized Simon.
“So now what?” asked Lilly.
“We enter,” uttered John, a weight of importance in his tone. “This is the entrance to the Vault. Shall we proceed?”
“How?” asked Lilly.
He smiled, lifted his hand, and placed it on the very center of the portal. Without a sound it swung open, slowly and majestically.
“Sometimes”—John grinned—“you only need to touch the center of the cross, where everything comes together.”
The area they stepped into could have been featured in a magazine of high culture and taste, as a richly appointed courtroom or opulent hotel. Its crafted woods and array of objects placed strategically by superb artistic decorators created an exotic impression.
“Wow!” Lilly exclaimed. “Not what I expected. I was thinking more like a big safe or something.”
“There’s a small larder and additional resting areas that way.” John took on the role of tour guide showing off a prized property. “And four special rooms over here, each with its own specific purpose. I’ll show you.”
He ushered them into what looked like an observatory. “The Map Room!” he announced. “These aren’t walls exactly, but space in motion: countless stars and galaxies, constellations, giants and dwarfs, and tiny asteroids and comets drifting around and so forth.”
Each of the two long walls offered an overwhelming view into completely different places in the cosmos. It felt like everything was moving and Lilly had to concentrate to keep from toppling out of her chair.
“Takes a moment,” John reassured her, “like the first time at sea on a sailing ship. There is a rhythm to it, and once you move with and not against it, it will settle down.”
“I’ve only heard stories of these places,” disclosed Gerald. Anita, outlined by a flare of some sort, was simply shaking her head in amazement.
“Oh, look, Gerald! Pods!” she squealed, pointing to a row of seven emerald orbs, each about the size that would fit comfortably in a palm.
“Don’t touch, please!” said John. “That’s a warning, not a command,” he added, as if he had surprised himself.
“Moving along, why don’t we make our way down there to the far wall?” Whether they got there by walking or gliding, she wasn’t certain. Simon pushed Lilly until they were in front of what looked more like a typical map. It was the layout of an enormous complex, and it took a moment for Lilly to realize what it represented.
“This is a map of the Refuge!” she exclaimed. The Refuge was huge, much bigger and more sprawling than she would have guessed, almost like a city. She could make out the upper rooms where she had recovered from the tragedy, and it even showed the ramp and staircase to the Castle Patio where Simon had given her the mirror.
But what amazed her most was the subterranean expanse. The levels stretched out under nearby hills and valleys, and maybe even to the boundaries of the purple mountains.
While the view of star systems had been too big to comprehend, this map gave her a new perspective of the Refuge’s scale. She felt small and astonished.
John showed them their location in the Vault, barely below the surface of the ocean. Then he touched the screen with his thumb and index finger, and the map expanded.
Now John moved to the adjacent wall, where a row of ten small triangles outlined in crimson red was mounted on the wall. Lilly realized that she had seen similar triangular, empty spots in the walls of the Refuge. She had thought they were lighting or temperature controls.
“With these”—he indicated the triangles—“we can instantly travel anywhere in the Refuge.”
“Really?” Lilly exclaimed about the same time Anita let out an “Oh, my!”
“I have never heard of this,” Simon muttered. “How does it work?”
“If you touch one of these travel pieces to a triangle on the map, you’ll be transported there. The piece will return to the Map Room within ten minutes. If you desire to return with it, you have to find a return receptacle for your triangle wherever you are before the ten minutes are up.”
“Would I be able to travel?” Lilly asked. “With my chair?”
“Yes. Anything you are touching will travel with you, including your clothing, which for some of us is God’s kindness.” At that everyone laughed. “But each person must carry his or her own travel piece.”
John pointed back toward the hall. “Those orbs, the pods as Anita referred to them, are like triangles, except that you can travel between worlds and other such places. It’s not for the faint of heart . . . or those who don’t know exactly where they’re going.”
No one seemed inclined to challenge him.
“The three other rooms are simpler,” he said, leading them to the nearest door. “Especially the Chamber of Witness and the Records Room. But the Study is its own wonder.” He opened the door with a proud flourish. “Here is where you Scholars can study, explore, or research if and when Lilly has need of your expertise, or just for fun.”
The Study was tastefully appointed and had desks and chairs and couches and anything else that might be needed to do scholarly work. There was an array of books, quills and pens, parchments and journals waiting to be filled, and trays of teas, coffees, and cookies, and fruits and nuts. It was beautiful but nothing out of the ordinary.
“So let me tell you the wonder of this place,” announced John. “Whenever an Artist or Scholar such as you three enters the Study, everything you have ever considered, written, or explored, even those things you don’t remember, arrives with you. It gathers and waits for you in the drawers and cabinets and walk-in closets along that wall.”
All three Scholars stood stunned, their mouths open.
“This is beyond imaginable,” Gerald finally managed, running his hand along a shelf of thick tomes.
Anita had tears in her eyes. She put her fingers to her lips. “My dear,” she said to her husband, “our life’s work is here. Now. In this room—not a moment of thought or consideration lost!”
“This is a treasure
beyond profound,” Simon said.
The Scholars were filled with thanksgiving, and Lilly smiled to hear each whispering their gratitude to God.
Simon picked up a silver pen and tested the weight of it in his hand.
“Before I lose you to this place, let’s quickly visit the other two rooms,” John said, taking over for Simon in pushing Lilly’s chair. “Follow me, please.”
The Chamber of Witness was a small green room with a very comfortable-looking flat sofa in the center. Four overstuffed chairs of various sizes and shapes occupied each of the corners. “It’s simple, really. You stretch out, get comfy, and . . . witness . . . whatever you are here to witness. Not certain why green, but it seems to be a shade that aids the process, color of life and all.”
Lilly wondered why anyone needed a special room in which to witness, but thought it best to ask a different question. “Will everything I witness in here also be recorded here?”
“No. That’s done over there, in the Records Room.” And John led them out the door and through another archway. Along the hallway was another door, which he ignored.
Lilly couldn’t help herself. As John pushed her past, she reached out and tried to turn the knob. It was locked.
“You don’t want to know,” said John, without slowing or turning around.
“Really? I thought I wanted to know,” she mumbled.
“Lilly, mystery creates a space where trust can thrive. Everything in its time, and timing is God’s playground. Trust me, being surprised by everything is so much better than needing to control everything.”
Lilly wasn’t sure if that was true but didn’t respond as they entered the Records Room. It was bright and almost tropical in pale blues, purples, and whites. Looking down, she half expected there to be sand between her mismatched toes. The thought made her smile.
Like the Chamber of Witness, the Records Room was quite modest. A square table stood in the center, one chair on each side. Each of the four seats looked like a mix of work chair and step stool, with high and interlaced backs. The table surface appeared to be alive, shifting dramatically between sandy browns and watery blacks.
Along one wall, trays protruded from slots less than an inch wide. Each of these held a very thin black tablet.
“This is where you will record all that you witness, Lilly,” explained John.
The others shrugged, which Lilly took to mean they didn’t understand it either.
“I told you I’m not a good writer,” Lilly said. “And my spelling is atrocious, and what if I forget the stuff I witness?” She already felt like a failure.
“Not to worry.” John smiled, indicating the room with an upturned hand. “Look around. No writing instruments.”
“I thought this is where I record what I see?”
“What you witness, Lilly.”
“So how does this work?”
Walking over to the slots, he scanned the tablets until he found the one he was looking for. After pulling it out and opening it, he laid it on the strange table. The tablet vanished into the surface much like Simon’s mirror. John pushed her chair in front of it, and she looked closer.
“Can you see it?” he asked.
“Barely,” she answered. “The very faint reddish edge?”
“That’s right.”
“Whatever this table is, it keeps shifting, but that thing remains still.”
“When you are ready, you put both your palms down in the center of that outline. The device will do the rest, capturing and storing whatever you experience.”
Simon cleared his throat. “Do you think we Scholars might be let loose to explore the Study?”
John nodded and the three left. But Anita returned a moment later and took both of Lilly’s hands in hers. Lilly tried not to flinch as pain shot through her arm.
“Dear one, you and I need to talk, perhaps not now, but soon. You need to let me in, okay?”
Lilly took a deep breath and looked up into the woman’s bright and beautiful green eyes. “Okay. You’re right. I think it’s probably time.”
The woman clasped Lilly’s face and lifted her chin. “Remember, Lilly, you are here because of who you are. Now, let me practice my hugs, and then I will join the others. We will be ready for whatever you might need.”
They hugged and Anita left. A moment later, Lilly heard her fuss with the knob on the locked door—on purpose and as loudly as possible. Anita’s little statement of solidarity made her grin.
John also heard it and unsuccessfully tried to look disapproving.
“Should I do it now?” Lilly asked.
“I don’t think anything will happen. You have to actually witness something in the Chamber of Witness in order to record it here.”
For an instant Lilly hesitated, thinking about her dreams and hallucinations. But just as quickly she dismissed them.
Lilly placed her hands on the table’s surface inside the red outline. For a brief moment everything seemed to slow down. Then it slowed again, almost to a stop. She saw John lifting up his hands, shock plastered on his face. And for a moment she could hear his drawn out and slowing shout of “Wa-a-a-i-i-i-t!”
Then everything went black.
Twelve
* * *
SIX DAYS
Lilly floated, weightless. At first she fought the familiar oily thickness that overwhelmed and embraced her at the same time, especially as it slipped into her mouth. As before, breathing this slick sludge swept her to the brink of terror. Fluid filled her lungs.
But she adapted quicker, knowing she would not suffocate. Eyes open, seeing nothing, she relaxed into the drift. Soon, an underlying peace emerged. Lilly knew where she was and remembered what she had done. In the Records Room with John, she had placed her hands on the table.
THE FIRST DAY
The spewing detonation was instantaneous and continuous, not only overwhelming light expressing force and information with all its shades and hues but also expanding sound and universal song. First a brilliant but not blinding inspiration, then exhalation of ecstasy and wonder, unhindered and held within consuming fire, a rush of wind and water: the culmination of Almighty Voice thrusting into other-centered union.
Behemoth of matter squared off against leviathan of chaos, sending sparks of play and power outward, creating space, energy, and time. These were attended to and applauded by graceful spirit beings whose inhibited elation scattered like far-flung beads of perspiration, scintillating jewels, spun out and up and in. It was an overpowering, discordant riot, an overwhelming cacophony as harmony wrapped itself around a central melody.
It was all happening again. Lilly was reliving Creation’s first explosion, and the crafting of the womb in which God would form Man. But now she knew why she was here: to witness the Ages within Beginnings. There was no going back and no way to stop, so she rested into it, to feel, experience, and know it, allowing the cosmic surge to pick her up and carry her on its crest.
Lilly wasn’t there to understand or measure or set limits but to hear and see and feel in the simplicity of bearing witness. How could she comprehend light, energy, spirit beings, and layered wrinkles formed between force and matter? How could she wrap her mind around the mysteries of quantum strings and quarks and multiple dimensions? She couldn’t, and it didn’t matter. But what Lilly knew beyond all doubt was that the focus of communal Love was settled on one tiny, secluded, precisely constructed planet tucked inside the rim of a spiral galaxy.
Lilly moved closer as the potter’s wheel spun out the clay into a rippling space. A violent stranger with a fiery tail gouged out a cavernous wound. The moon broke off but couldn’t run away, held in place by the grasp of spinning earth’s gravitational affection.
Now the Witness stood upon the shell of the new world, a formless empty wasteland enshrouded in a canopy of dust—star wreckage and gases. Lilly couldn’t see but heard and felt the slow-pulsating wings of the hovering Spirit, and the shouts of attending Angels who proclaimed Her
name with every beat: Ruach! Ruach! Ruach! The Spirit blew away debris to let light from the nearest star penetrate the surface’s chaotic turmoil.
Evening turned to morning, and it was Good.
THE SECOND DAY
The fiery Joy of God pushed apart the churning matter, an opening invitation for atmospheric gatherings as sunbirthed warmth and swirling dust-laden moisture played upon Lilly’s upturned face and outstretched hands. The first day’s penetrating light had probed the liquid deep, awakening new songs within its swirling depths. Lilly watched transfixed as a finely tuned and synchronized living dance responded to the melody, biomass and diversity rejoicing in a harmony of purpose, as evening turned to morning, and it was Good.
THE THIRD DAY
Earth trembled. Its crust buckled. Volcanoes raged in tectonic praise with hands of silicate reaching skyward. The land emerged and, cooling, clothed itself in vegetation’s cover. With isotopic, photosynthetic, eukaryotic flourish, the Artist splashed across the earth’s broad canvas a stunning layered landscape.
The Spirit frolicked like a child, abandoned to the Father’s Love. Within the very being of Eternal Man, She finger-painted uninhibited design. Inspiration, inhalation, exhalation, exaltation! Evening turned to morning, and it was Good.
THE FOURTH DAY
Lilly could see out to the starry host. The moon lit up the night, surrounded by countless attending stars. Daylight scrubbed away the thick clouds of shadow dust, transforming Earth’s skies from translucent to transparent. The lights that God had blasted into being now hung visible and waiting. The stage was set by the Playwright, and with the audience expectant, evening turned to morning, and it was Good.
THE FIFTH DAY
The sea swarmed, stirring up all that once was fragile. Out of this soup swam fins and gills and squirting things, and colossal sharp-toothed killers in search of their next meal. Then the land gave itself to the creeping and the crawling, a vast army that prepared the soil and air. They joined their Creator in constructing the world as evening turned to morning, and it was Good.