Chapter 22 #2
“No,” Eden countered, “I’m not here to do that at all. I’m here to release them so they can go on as the souls they were intended to be, as the people they were intended to be. You cannot keep them here forever, and it’s poisoning you.”
“It matters not,” Helen cried out. “I care not what happens to me. It doesn’t matter. I only care that they are safe.”
“And they will be safe. I promise you that they will be safe, but it’s time for them to move on to another space, to another time.”
Shaking her head, Helen visibly trembled. “No. … You’re just like the others. You are lying, trying to trick me. They tried to get my house away from me, take our livelihood away from me. Take my children from me.”
“Why did they come for you?”
“Jealously. They couldn’t stand that I was making money here, that we were okay, that we were fine together. They didn’t like that. But we are fine here now. I made sure of that.”
“No, that’s not true. You’re not okay at all,” Eden argued, her voice soft, gentle as the wind. “By doing what you did to try and keep everybody safe, it’s tearing you all apart, and you’re having to bring in more people.”
“Of course. That’s how business is run,” she stated. “You must have more people to keep it going. So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m not hurting anybody.”
“That is also not true,” Eden told her. “You are hurting people who don’t deserve this.”
“Of course not,” Helen snapped. “People just want to take it away from us, to break us up, take what’s ours, make us suffer,” she cried out.
So much outrage and pain filled Helen’s tone that Eden could only imagine, given the time frame that Helen had lived in, how hard it would have been to fight against those determined to steal from her, determined to take everything that mattered.
Eden whispered, “I’m not here to take anything from you. I’m here to help.”
“No, no you’re not,” Helen snapped. “Help is not what you’re here to do. You just want what I have worked so hard for.”
“No, I don’t,” she repeated, “and yet I understand. I understand that, for you, this is a war that just won’t quit. It’s a life that you’ve been in hiding over, even though that life is long gone.”
Helen stared, her eyes wide, her hair flying, as if in a breeze.
Eden continued. “You know it, deep down inside, and you know it well. You couldn’t bear the idea of anyone else taking it from you, so you set that house of yours on fire.
And, just like that, you torched every family member, young and old alike, sending those you loved beyond that lifetime and into a new one.
With tears rolling down your face, you made sure that not one of them could escape that fire, so they could all travel with you away from the world that was so harsh.
No way you would let them go, not to what those men wanted to do. ”
Helen’s face crumpled. “You have no idea what they would do to my girls, even to my little boy,” she wailed.
“I spent my whole life, everything to protect them, but they were coming the next day, and I had no way to stop them. I had no way to fight them. The only thing I could do was take away the things that they wanted.”
“The house,” Eden noted.
Helen nodded. “The house and more, of course. … The house, the children, my dignity.” She sighed, then nodded.
“That’s what they really wanted. That’s all they wanted—everything,” she muttered, with a broken laugh.
“And when I say all, I mean all. As long as they could get every last thing from me, they were satisfied. I know not who these men even were or where they came from. I just know that they came, took, and destroyed, with every word, every blow, every punch. I wasn’t strong enough to protect those around me.
I couldn’t let my poor children suffer.”
Eden heard both the fear and the resolve in Helen’s tone, yet still filled with pain and horror.
Eden marveled in wonder, in this space of nothing physical, in this space of nothingness, as the tears ran down poor Helen’s face, her torment so real, so profound, and so exhausting as she continued to keep her children safe.
Nothing could be done for her, except to try and get her to understand that those times were long gone.
What Helen hadn’t accounted for was the effort to keep them here, the effort that she had expended to try and keep them safe—albeit her version of safe, not realizing that it came at a price, and that price required more energy, always more lives, and if she couldn’t create it herself, it had to come from everyone else around her.
Eden understood, based on her own grandmother’s fear, just how deadly that was. To families, to anybody in this world who couldn’t seem to get past it, who didn’t understand that there was so much more to life than what their fear was giving them for an existence.
Helen cried out, “You don’t understand.”
“Maybe I don’t,” Eden conceded, “and maybe it’s something that you need to explain to me, but I can’t have you taking more lives, hurting more people, to save everybody in this space.
It’s not where they belong. It’s not where you belong.
They are spirits now, and they need to be free.
You need to let them go, in love, in joy, where they truly will be safe.
You saw your world as dangerous. You made a choice, right or wrong, and that choice has led you to this moment in time,” Eden explained, “and that moment has now led you here. Now you and your family can find that peace.”
It looked as if Helen was ready to acquiesce, when suddenly she gathered up an enormous amount of energy and roared, “No!” With a sudden wave of her grasping claw-like hand, she reached out and grabbed Eden’s energy in an electric grasp.
“You are only here to take, like everyone else. It’s what you do,” Helen cried out, in anger, in pain.
“You hurt others. You take from others. Now you want to take from me. You do not want to help me,” she yelled.
“You couldn’t even help the ones you wanted to help.
You only want to take from me, and that I will not allow. ”
And with that came this heavy, ugly whoosh, and a weird thick energy came crushing down on top of Eden, blackness all around her, and then she knew no more.
*
Eric reached Eden’s body, just as a shockwave seemed to hit her, and she jolted, jerked, and thrashed near the Origin portal.
He cried out as he dropped down at her side, but Stefan warned him immediately, Don’t touch her, just as Eric’s hands were about to grab her and shake her. Eric froze.
Don’t touch her, Stefan warned again. Something’s going on, and we don’t know what, but I need you to not put your hands on her.
Eric stared around. The place was secluded, not the same place where the poor sick woman had fallen. Eric didn’t know what the connection was, if there was a connection, but he didn’t want to hang around to wait and see. “I’m going in after her,” he declared, with a resolve that surprised even him.
He didn’t have any experience in this, but it didn’t matter.
If somebody was after Eden, then Eric would go in and would ensure they didn’t succeed.
She’d had enough shit in her life, enough people making her do stuff she had no desire to do.
Somebody with a skill like Eden’s shouldn’t be forced, pressured, or coerced to do the bidding of others, but he also understood that it was all about survival of the fittest. In this case, he could only hope that she was strong enough to endure whatever was happening to her.
Stefan’s words of warning were in his ear, as he lay down beside her, close but not touching.
Stefan noted, You do understand.
“No, I don’t. I understand nothing,” he declared. “I just know that I can’t let whatever this is be something she faces alone. That’s all she’s ever done was face this shit alone,” he snapped, “and that ends today. She learned on the go, and I guess that’s what I’ll do too.”
With that, he closed his eyes and shut off all communication.
He drifted off into the Netherland, the land of nothing, the land of energy, wiping out distance and time.
He knew there was a whole massive eternity to explore.
He had to keep pulling his energy back, as everything inside him wanted to drift off into a million other directions.
Little voices and thoughts tried to set him off on a different course, not necessarily deliberately but because they could, because they always had.
Learning to discipline the mind was a whole different ball game, one he hadn’t spent much time worrying about.
Now he realized that had been a mistake.
Shifting his energy deeper and deeper, another voice popped in. This time it was Stefan.
Don’t worry about what you can and cannot do. Just follow my voice, he instructed. We’ll go together and see what’s happening to her.
Grateful for the company, and realizing that Stefan was the better hand at this, Eric followed Stefan, using his voice as a guide to continue deeper and deeper into this unknown morass of energy, energy that seemed to suck him in, almost with a giddy joyfulness as he rode deeper.
Stefan said, Enjoy it, relish it, and realize this is not the time to explore, but you can come back here anytime you want, particularly after this run.
“And I want to,” he stated. “I really want to because something is incredibly freeing about being here.”
Exactly, it’s where you get to de-stress and to let go of everything that’s taken over your world, Stefan explained. I’m here a lot, so is Dr. Maddy, and so are many of our friends and energy workers. It’s a space where you can just let go, he shared, and be who we were always intended to be.
“But, if it’s so freeing, why is Eden stuck here?”