Authors: ESTHER AND JERRY HICKS
SARA, BOOK 2 (10 page)
Dead . . . or Alive?
S
ara opened her eyes, feeling very disoriented. “Well,
that’s
a first,” she said, out loud. “I don’t usually nap in the tops of trees.”
But
I
do.
Sara heard a familiar clear voice coming from a branch up over her head.
Her heart began racing. “What in the world? Solomon, is that you? Is that
you?!”
Hello, Sara, how are you today?
Tears began streaming down Sara’s face as she peered through the leaves, spying a large, beautiful owl sitting out on the
limb of her tree.
This is a very nice tree house, Sara. I can see why
you spend so much time here.
“Solomon, Solomon, oh, Solomon! You’ve come back! You’ve come back!”
Sara, really, I don’t know why you are so excited.
I’ve never been gone.
“But Solomon, I can
see
you. You have feathers. You
have
come back!”
Solomon smiled, quite pleased to see Sara so pleased.
Well, Sara, I thought it would be easier for Seth
to experience me if he could see me as you did in the
beginning. Besides, I wanted to spend time in your tree
house.
Sara laughed. It was her dear, sweet, funny Solomon, all right. Sara felt happier than she could ever remember feeling. “Oh,
Solomon, I‘m
so
happy you are back!”
It’s hard to get over the dead or alive thing, isn’t
it, Sara? Remember, you are not dead or alive. You
are always alive. What is it about my feathers that’s so
important to you mortals anyway?
Sara laughed. She did understand what Solomon had taught her—that there is no death and all Beings live forever. But there
was no getting around it. Sara loved being able to see Solomon as she heard him. She loved peering into his wonderful, wise
eyes and gazing at his beautiful feathers softly moving in the breeze. She loved watching him spread his amazing big wings
and lift, powerfully, up into the sky.
Sara, we are going to have a wonderful time as we
help Seth remember who he is. He is pondering many
important things, and it is for that reason, in response to
his asking, that I have returned.
Sara smiled. She felt such joy and such love, and such an excited feeling of eagerness.
Sara, I’m going to leave it to you to introduce us.
“But Solomon, what should I say?”
Use your own judgment. I’m sure you will think of
the right thing to say. Tell Seth about me tomorrow, and
when the time is right, I’ll join you.
Have a wonderful evening, sweet Sara. I’ll see you
later.
“Solomon, I am so glad to see you again.”
Well, Sara, it’s nice to be seen.
Sara laughed.
Solomon lifted from the branch, made one very large circle in the sky, and then flew out of Sara’s view.
“Yippee!”
Sara’s voice echoed through the trees. She ran and skipped all the way home.
No Turning Back
O
h, darn, it’s raining!
Sara could hardly believe it. It almost never rained in Sara’s town. During the winter there was lots of snow, and then during
the spring and summer the snow slowly melted, providing all the water that Sara’s community, and many other communities downstream,
needed. Rain was rare.
Of all the days for it to rain. This was the day Sara had planned to tell Seth about Solomon.
But
we can’t go to the tree house in the rain,
Sara silently complained.
The final bell rang and Sara waited inside the building. She laughed as she looked out into the school yard watching students
running here and there like chickens with their heads cut off. No one had an umbrella. Some were holding jackets over their
heads, some tried to shield themselves with books, and all of them looked disoriented and awkward.
Good grief,
Sara thought,
it’s only a
little water. It’s not like they’re going to melt or anything.
“Hey, Sara,” Seth called, as he ran down the steps toward her, “I’m glad you waited. I was afraid you’d go on home on account
of the rain.”
“Yeah, bummer. Guess we can’t swing from the tree today.” Sara hadn’t planned on doing much swinging, anyway. What she really
wanted was to sit and talk with Seth.
“We probably shouldn’t swing today, but we can go to the tree house anyway. I put a tarp up this morning on my way to school.
It should be fairly dry under that. Mom says I can hang out an extra half hour. Since it’s wet out I don’t have so much to
do. Wanna go?”
“All right!”
Sara was grinning from ear to ear. Not only was this unusual rain not a problem—it was turning out to be a help.
“Hey, what made you think of the tarp? It wasn’t raining this morning.”
“My mom said it would rain before the day was out. She says she can feel it in her elbow. She never misses. It’s a gift.”
“You have a very weird mother,” Sara said, laughing.
“Takes one to know one!” Seth laughed back.
Sara laughed.
Well, he’s about to find out just
exactly how weird I am.
But for some strange reason Sara wasn’t really worried about this. In fact, it seemed to her that a whole series of rather
odd circumstances had perfectly set the stage for her long-overdue chat with Seth. She could feel that the timing for this
was just right. The whole thing seemed to have a sense of inevitability about it. It was as if it were all in motion and there
was no turning back—and no desire to turn back.
This feeling reminded Sara of sitting on a gunnysack sled at the top of the giant slippery slide on her first visit to the
amusement park. She remembered how hesitant she had felt, how unready she really was, but then her brother, Jason, shoved
her from behind, and an instant later she was barreling down the slide. She knew that there was no turning back, and in the
fun of the ride down the slide, she no longer wanted to.
All of this felt just like that. And Sara knew that she was about to begin her joyful ride down the slide.
A Teaching Owl
S
ara and Seth sat high in their tree. “Do you think your parents know about this place?” Sara asked Seth.
“I’m not sure. But I can’t believe that they know, ’cause if they did know, they’d probably be figuring out things that needed
to be done to keep me from spending so much time here. And yet, I can’t believe that they haven’t figured out that I’m going
somewhere
after school.”
Sara sat back against the tree and pulled her legs up close against her chest and then pulled her jacket down over her legs.
She was always fascinated by the stories Seth told of his life at home. It was hard for Sara to imagine having parents who
were so strict. It wasn’t that Sara didn’t have responsibilities. She had plenty of them. But it always felt to Sara that
it was important to her parents that she have a good life and a good time. She never felt that they were trying to come between
her and a happy life. They didn’t stand on their heads to make Sara’s life perfect—nothing like that, but they didn’t get
in the way of it either.
It seemed to Sara that Seth’s parents deliberately made his life hard. As if a hard life would somehow make him turn out better
or stronger or something.
“We just have to have as much fun as we can
while
we can, Sara,” Seth said.
Well, I guess this is as good a time as any,
Sara thought.
Here goes.
She gulped. She just couldn’t seem to find the words to begin.
Solomon was aware of Sara’s struggle.
Sara,
Solomon spoke in Sara’s mind,
are you
worried about Seth disapproving of you?
“Maybe,” Sara said out loud.
“Maybe
what?”
Seth asked.
Sara was concentrating so hard on what Solomon might say that she didn’t even realize Seth had spoken to her.
Sara, rather than worrying about whether Seth will
approve of you, think, instead, of the value you are giving
to him.
Sara’s fear vanished. A flood of wonderful memories washed over Sara as she realized, in that moment, the extraordinary value
she
had discovered in knowing Solomon.
“Of course,” Sara said, out loud.
“Of course,
what?”
Seth said. “Sara, you’re beginning to
scare
me.”
Sara brought her attention back to the tree house and to her friend sitting before her.
“Well, Seth, are you ready for the next chapter of my strange but wonderful life?”
Seth smiled. He’d been dying to hear more about her owl experience, but he’d decided to wait for it to be
her
idea. “You bet!”
“Okay, here goes,” Sara said.
“Remember, I told you about how I fell on the ice and how I heard a voice that said,
Have you
forgotten that you cannot drown?”
“I remember.”
“And how I saw this amazing, gigantic owl?” Seth nodded eagerly.
“Well, the next day I went back to the thicket to see if I could find him again. And when I walked into the thicket, there
he was, sitting right there on a fence post, right in front of my face.”
“I’ve seen lots of owls,” Seth said, “but not up close like that. Were you scared?”
Sara took a big breath. “No, I didn’t feel scared because it was all happening so fast. He said to me,
Hello, Sara, isn’t this a lovely day?
Sara spoke slowly, studying Seth’s face for some sort of reaction, but Seth was quiet. That was even worse. She almost wished
he would laugh, and then she could just pretend she was making it all up to tease him, and then they could swing from the
rope and just forget it.
“Go on,” Seth said slowly.
“Well, I mean, his mouth wasn’t moving, or anything like that, but I could hear what he was thinking. He knew my name, and
he said he had been waiting for me. He said that he was a teacher and that I was a teacher, too. He knows everything, Seth.
He’s funny and smart and will talk about whatever I want to talk about. He says that all is well, and that whatever happens
in our lives is because we’re making it happen.”
Sara’s mouth was so dry she almost felt panic. She was in too deep to back out now, but she felt too paralyzed to go any further
with her story. She had never told any of this to anyone.
“Sara, I don’t believe this! This is too weird!”
“I shouldn’t have told you!”
“No, Sara. I believe you. I believe you. I meant that it’s weird because a bird talked to me once, too. At least, I think
he did. It only happened once, and then later I thought maybe I had dreamed it or hallucinated it or something. I never told
anyone
about it. They would have locked me up!”
Sara felt such relief. “Really! A bird talked to
you?”
“It was a red cardinal. I was hunting one day for something for dinner. We used to pretty much eat anything we could shoot
or catch . . .”
“Hmm,” Sara murmured. His life was so very different from hers.
“. . . and one day I was sitting out in the pasture on a stump, just waiting for something to show up, and this big red cardinal
landed on the fence real close to me. So I got it in my gun sight and right while it was looking at me, I shot it.
“It just dropped off the fence and landed in the snow. It was so red, just layin’ there in that white snow.
“I went up to see it and I thought,
Geez, why
did I do that? It’s too little to eat.
I felt real bad. It seemed like such a terrible waste.”
A tear rolled down Seth’s cheek.
“And then the bird spoke to me. He even knew my name.”
“What did he say?”
“He said,
Seth, there is no need to feel bad. For there
is no waste, and there is no death. All is well here. All
is well.
But just the same, that was the last thing I ever shot.”
“Wow!” Sara’s eyes filled with tears, too. “That sounds just like something Solomon would say.”
Seth wiped his face with his sleeve; Sara did the same, and they sat huddled in their tree house overwhelmed with emotion.
Neither spoke.
Solomon circled above their tree house, waiting to make his perfect entrance.
There’ll never be a better time than this,
Solomon said, as he plunged straight down from the sky as if he intended to dive right into the river. But then he pulled
up quickly, just at the last minute, and zoomed back up to the tree house and landed on a branch only a few feet from Seth
and Sara.
“Geez, Louise!” Seth shouted, jumping to his feet.
Louise is a nice name.
Solomon smiled.
However,
Sara calls me Solomon.
Seth flopped down on the bench, as if his legs just couldn’t hold him, and looked in amazement at Sara.
Sara grinned and shrugged. “What can I say?”
Sara went to bed that night feeling a contentment beyond anything she had ever felt before. The thrill of having her Solomon
back in physical form, where she could see him and touch him, was almost more wonderful than she could bear. And on top of
that, to have her two very best friends in the whole world now knowing each other, well, there just couldn’t be anything greater
than that. And it was obvious to Sara that their appreciation of each other was mutual.
Sara snuggled deep down into her bed and pulled the blankets right up over her head. She felt so very, very happy.