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

“You saw for yourself. When she crashed, her body was lifeless, like yours was almost. Yet you could talk with her. She had no pain, no distress. You didn’t either, while you were out.”

“I wish I could have talked with her, then.”

“Ah, that belief of seven days when you think you remember almost nothing. What could have happened then? You didn’t talk with her, did you? How strange.”

“Something happened. I remember, it was desperately important for me to make Puff’s body ready, for her spirit to meet us again, in this world. I’d say I made a promise to her, that we would fly again.”

“Notice, Richard, that you’re beginning to remember. You think it’s a story you invented. It may be. The meaning is for you to say.”

I looked at him, a half-smile. “May I give you a word, and you can tell me a meaning?”

He looked at me, nodded.

“Valkaria.”

He laughed. “You’re learning your mythologies, aren’t you?”

“No,” I said. “What does Valkaria mean? I didn’t pick it. No game. It means…?”

“Valkaria are the daughters of the Norse god, Odin. They were Valkyries. They chose which of the warriors would die in battle. The Valkyries brought them home. They’d be heroes...or heroines, living again.” He smiled. “Is that what you need to know?”

I said nothing. Listening again to what he said.

“Richard?”

“Don. The place where we trucked Puff after the crash, the hangar where Jim Ratte rebuilt her to fly again, the name of the place?”

“Not a hint. Tell me.”

“The name of the airport is Valkaria.”

I looked again at Puff, asleep. Not a word, but she felt happy, ready to try a body again. Our story had come where we promised it would. No one would say, beside spirits and wise friends, that our story was fiction.

Chapter 15

How many of us count fictional characters, or those we've never met, among our closest friends?

My hand's up.

Thursday I flew with Dan and Jenn to Valkaria airport, we landed and taxied to Jim’s place. Outside in the sunlight, we saw Puff again, for the first time.

The last time I saw her, she was unloaded from the truck, mostly wreckage. Now, one year, 3 weeks, 3 days after our crash, Puff was the same as she had been, all the days before.

As though the crash had never happened, as though Time knew the whole thing had been a mistake, disappeared every bit of the evidence that anything had happened. Jenn stopped at Jim’s hangar of Valkyries, to meet the brave one, the heroine who gave her life for me, reborn again.

I touched her gently, walked slowly around her. She was asleep, covered with her cockpit cover, embroidered now, her name stitched in the color of an afternoon sky.

“Sorry,” said Time, who had slipped and now recovered, this minute the error was brushed away.

I walked to her, put my head on the soft fabric of her cover, and all at once sobbed for the sadness and the joy of this moment. That she had been through so much, and I had been through it, too, and now it, the two of us both, alive again! No proof there had ever been any crash.

There was no need to grieve for Puff, I thought, for she was with me this minute, space and time had caught up with the affirmation we had said so often: You are a perfect expression of perfect Love, here and now.

There had never been such a time in my life: someone destroyed for certain, whether I liked it or not. It was proved time and again that Puff was dead, histories written, photos taken. Yet came this morning and all at once she was alive again, and I was, too. The wreckage was an image on film. I do not live in paper images, nor does she. Puff was here today, ready to fly!

I would have gone on, sobbing, but stopped, wiped tears away. I’ll cry if I must in some private place with her, not here.

I walked again around her, tears drying. There was no pile of wreckage. Not in the hangar, not anywhere. Did not exist. Puff was here as always she had been, her body perfect, her spirit gently asleep.