Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student (Illusions 2)

“I think I remember...”

“I’m surprised you remember anything. It was an incredible crash.”

“Nothing hurt, Geoff. I was dreaming, not flying. I couldn’t see for a while, and then I was…somewhere else.”

“I hope so. Was no fun being where you were, after the crash. A man pulled you out of the cockpit. Then a helicopter came, took you to the hospital. You were here thirty minutes after the crash.”

“Did…” her name suddenly, “…Sabryna hear about it?”

“Yep. We flew right away, to Seattle. You were somewhere else, you stayed gone for quite a while. Some folks thought you were going to die.”

“I decided not to.”

“Good decision. Saw any little angels, did you?”

“Not a one, that I can remember.”

“They probably figured you were OK.”

“I would have liked it if they said something. ‘Have a nice day…””

“They must have said something. You were gone for a week.”

“I’ll remember later.”

Before he left, I said good-bye. Gone again.

Chapter 4

In every disaster, in every blessing, ask, "Why me?"

There's a reason, of course, there’s an answer.

The problem with the little rooms in hospitals is that they don’t much expect that you’ll be traveling. I had a narrow bed there, one with no room to move except for lying on my back awake, or lying on my back, sleeping.

I closed my eyes in the daytime, the gray of the room shifting seamless into the gray of sleep. Once in a while the dark behind my eyes was spangled with action and colors.

A dream? It was misty. A place away from the hospital? Either way, dream or far away, far away was OK with me.

The mist lifted. The field was dry hay, just been cut in the midst of a golden summer.

There was Donald Shimoda’s Travel Air biplane, pure white and gold, quiet in the morning, and my little Fleet biplane. When I walked around the engine, there he was, sitting in the hay, leaning against the airplane’s tire, waiting for me.

It wasn’t as if there had been forty years gone…not one day had changed. Something had happened to time.

The same young k

arate-master as he had ever been in my mind, black hair, dark eyes, flash of his split-second smile, old memories, happening now.

“Hi, Don. What are you doing here? I thought… you’d be far away.”

“You thought there’s a ‘far away?’” he said. “Your belief of time and space, it separates us, does it?”

“Doesn’t yours? Hasn’t it been years, since…”

He laughed. “Am I separated? I hope we’re not separated. Sharing your beliefs is my job.” Then, “You have no idea how many angels there are, that care for you.”

I smiled. “A hundred.”