Out of Nowhere, page 20
"But Pax did," Johnny whispered to himself.
Bryan looked over at Johnny before answering. "Yes. He did."
EPILOGUE
Ginny looked out over the crowd gathered around her and not for the first time wondered how it was possible that she was here, doing this, becoming this. Her mother stood beside her, holding her hand, and she could feel the same tremor running through her. It was happening. This magical thing was actually happening.
In front of her, Isira and Akotas stood smiling at her. Akotas smiling the same smile she saw when she looked in the mirror.
The past year had been straight out of a fairy tale. Transported to another world. A father she had never known. People who at first stared at her, then embraced her, and then taught her what she would need to know to face this day.
She had watched her mother bloom and become the woman she had briefly known as a child. Full of life, Maya laughed and danced and spent quiet moments walking with Akotas. Ginny knew her mother was trying to make up for all the years she had wasted. But it was more than that. Akotas had returned for her, but he and Isira would leave soon, and it would be her and her mother who would remain.
Ginny tried not to let fear rise in her. The fear that she would never be capable of being a High Priestess and all that meant. Even though she spent every moment of the last year learning how to guide and lead effectively without using personal power, she worried it wouldn't be enough.
She had spent as much time with Akotas as she could, too. As a teacher, he was a master. As a father, he had waited all these years to be one, and he didn't want to waste a moment of it. They walked and talked and sat by the fire together. Akotas took her into the woods, shared stories of Pax and his childhood and the Decana and Crann history. He tried to condense a lifetime of sharing and teaching into a year. Akotas promised her he had loved her all along and that he would love her into the future. Long after she could no longer see him, he would still be there.
One night he had told her of how he had known the man named Earl Weiland. They were both boys when they met on one of his trips to Ginny's world. They recognized each other immediately. Travelers. Earl from another dimension on Gaia called Erda, and he from Crann.
They called Ginny's world Earth since that is what the people of her world called it, thinking they were the only dimension on the planet Gaia. Both Earl and Akotas thought it ironic that the people called it Earth and yet didn't acknowledge that it was the earth and the nature that grew from and with it that was the true power.
"Never forget that connection, Ginny. Man cannot have power. There is only the connection between all things and the One Intelligence that governs it all. In all worlds, not just this one," Akotas reminded her repeatedly. She promised him she wouldn't. She had seen what happened when it was forgotten.
Akotas was not the only one she had learned from during the past year. Isira taught her the role of being a High Priestess. It would have been something she would have learned through her life if they had lived in Crann, and all of it had to be condensed into a brief span of time.
Once the Decana clan fully understood who Ginny was and what she would become, they taught her, too. She spent days living with different families, learning the small things that they grew up with, and that she didn't know. Isira and Akotas assigned teachers to her who would continue her lessons long after Isira and Akotas. Ceya and Koda would be two of them.
And now this was her day. It was the first time in history where the current High Priestess passed the crown to the next one instead of waiting for their passing. There was no need for a two-moon reprieve. Ginny had a lifetime of knowing the other world. And the people needed to truly accept that she was the legitimate successor in a long line of guardians for peace.
With all the learning she had to do, she had an advantage. She had lived in the other world, and she would not let what happened there happen here in Crann. And she would have help.
Looking out at the crowd surrounding her, Ginny smiled at Bryan and Johnny. Akotas had returned once more to Doveland and invited the two of them to use two stones--the stone he had given Pax, which Pax then gave to Bryan, and the stone that had been in the mirror to be at this ceremony. Bryan knew they would leave these two stones in Crann, where they belonged. The remaining eight stones belonged in their world, their job of bringing their Karass together completed.
Ginny smiled at them, delighted that they were there representing Doveland and the people who had helped her and her mother return to Crann. To her, Bryan and Johnny were Pax’s brothers, from another world, but with the same heart.
As she bent forward to accept the wreath of flowers and leaves that Isira was placing on her head, making her the official High Priestess, an owl hooted, and she felt the breath of wind meant only for her. It was like the touch of a cloud--warm, gentle, and reassuring. She knew it was Pax. He had fulfilled his mission. Now, he would always be the peacekeeper, and he would always be at her side.
She and her mother had come home.
The End
Author's Note
Are there parallel worlds? How could there not be? Do we see them and not realize we do? Perhaps. What if we did? Would we accept it as a "reality" or think we have gone crazy?
Maybe the only place we can believe that there is more to life than our five senses report to us is in our dreams. In that way, we expand our perception, and maybe, just maybe, one day, "magical realism" will be part of everyday life.
And it was in a dream that I saw what happens in the prologue of this book. I kept thinking about the dream. Even days later, I could still see that bolt of light and a man rise up from the meadow.
Maya's house was a memory of a house we would walk past on our way to elementary school. We crossed the street and never went there for Halloween, telling ourselves that it was haunted.
Later I imagined that we had missed out by not finding out who lived there. Maybe a woman like Maya with an interesting story to tell.
Pax appeared in a second dream, more of a daydream this time, and I realized he belonged with the first man. However, Pax, as the central character, was a surprise to me. I thought it would be Akotas. But once I realized Pax was the story's pivot, the rest of the story fell into place.
That is the joy of writing. It is trusting in the outcome and going to my computer every day to find out what story these people want to tell me.
Will Bryan and Johnny revisit Crann? Perhaps. But in the meantime, Doveland continues to be, for me, an imaginary town where I would love to live. So visiting it in these books is a joy for me, as I hope it is for you.
And Pax's world? I imagine it is a world where my husband would love to live, or maybe where he came from.
In the meantime, there are always dreams—and books.
Thank you for reading and sharing mine.
You can find all of The Karass Chronicles at your favorite book store or on my website: becalewis.com
Connect with me online:
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Also By Beca
The Karass Chronicles: Magical Realism
Karass, Pragma, Jatismar, Exousia, Stemma, Paragnosis, In-Between, Missing, Out Of Nowhere
The Return To Erda Series: Fantasy
Shatterskin, Deadsweep, Abbadon, The Experiment
The Chronicles of Thamon: Fantasy
Banished, Betrayed, Discovered, Wren’s Story
The Shift Series: Spiritual Self-Help
Living in Grace: The Shift to Spiritual Perception
The Daily Shift: Daily Lessons From Love To Money
The 4 Essential Questions: Choosing Spiritually Healthy Habits
The 28 Day Shift To Wealth: A Daily Prosperity Plan
The Intent Course: Say Yes To What Moves You
Imagination Mastery: A Workbook For Shifting Your Reality
Right Thinking: A Thoughtful System for Healing
Perception Mastery: Seven Steps To Lasting Change
Perception Parables: Very short stories
Love’s Silent Sweet Secret: A Fable About Love
Golden Chains And Silver Cords: A Fable About Letting Go
Advice:
A Woman’s ABC’s of Life: Lessons in Love, Life and Career from Those Who Learned The Hard Way
Acknowledgements
I could never write a book without the help of my friends and my book community. Thank you, Jet Tucker, Jamie Lewis, Diana Cormier, and Barbara Budan for taking the time to do the final reader proof. You are a loyal and much-loved reader team. You can’t imagine how much I appreciate it.
A huge thank you to Laura Moliter for her fantastic book editing.
Thank you to every other member of my Book Community who helps me make so many decisions that help the book be the best book possible.
Thank you to all the people who tell me that they love to read these stories. Those random comments from friends and strangers are more valuable than gold.
And as always, thank you to my beloved husband, Del, for being my daily sounding board, for putting up with all my questions, my constant need to want to make things better, and for being the love of my life, in more than just this one lifetime.
About Beca
Beca writes books she hopes will change people’s perceptions of themselves and the world, and open possibilities to things and ideas that are waiting to be seen and experienced.
At sixteen, Beca founded her own dance studio. Later, she received a Master’s Degree in Dance in Choreography from UCLA and founded the Harbinger Dance Theatre, a multimedia dance company, while continuing to run her dance school.
After graduating—to better support her three children—Beca switched to the sales field, where she worked as an employee and independent contractor to many industries, excelling in each while perfecting and teaching her Shift® system, and writing books.
She joined the financial industry in 1983 and became an Associate Vice President of Investments at a major stock brokerage firm, and was a licensed Certified Financial Planner for over twenty years.
This diversity, along with a variety of life challenges, helped fuel the desire to share what she’s learned by writing and speaking, hoping it will make a difference in other people’s lives.
Beca grew up in State College, PA, with the dream of becoming a dancer and then a writer. She carried that dream forward as she fulfilled a childhood wish by moving to Southern California in 1968. Beca told her family she would never move back to the cold.
After living there for thirty-one years, she met her husband Delbert Lee Piper, Sr., at a retreat in Virginia, and everything changed. They decided to find a place they could call their own, which sent them off traveling around the United States. They lived and worked in a few different places before returning to live in the cold once again near Del’s family in a small town in Northeast Ohio, not too far from State College.
When not working and teaching together, they love to visit and play with their combined family of eight children and five grandchildren, read, study, do yoga or taiji, feed birds, and work in their garden.
Beca Lewis, Out of Nowhere
