The word special made me giggle nervously, but I nodded. “Sorry.”
Madame Véronique gave me a doubtful look. “Very well. Look into the candle’s flame, Lacey. Watch it carefully. In a still room, it appears to be motionless, yet it is anything but. Gaze deeply into it, and let it be your guide.” She paused for several seconds. “Now, Lacey, I want you to keep watching the flame, but as you do, I want you to repeat a word in your mind. Over and over, at the same tempo I’m speaking, but ever softer each time. The word is Noram. Repeat it to yourself in the deepest recesses of your mind, over and over and over and over. Noram. Noram. Noram.”
I did as she requested, repeating the odd word internally as she said it softer and softer, until it was just me. Madame Véronique sat motionless, her eyes also focused on the flame. After countless repetitions, I began to feel sleepy, and my eyelids began to droop. I continued repeating it, and then Madame Véronique spoke, her voice soft as a lover’s whisper, encouraging me to close my eyes and continue my inner repetition.
I did so, and my limbs grew heavy as I sensed myself going deeper and deeper into a trance, as if my consciousness were following the word down into some unplumbed depth of my soul. I had an odd feeling of weightlessness and of rotating within my head, as though my mind were detached from my body and floating free, with no sense of up or down, left or right. When Madame Véronique spoke again, her voice was like a shadow at the edge of my awareness, barely audible to me in my deeply relaxed state.
I stopped being consciously aware of what she was saying or what I was feeling; I was now in a vacuum where nothing could reach me, enveloped in warmth and well-being. Some part of me realized that I was revisiting my time in the womb, but the thought was fuzzy and distant, an inconsequential flitting idea that came and went without stirring me from the absolute peace and calm I felt.
I continued to enjoy the weightlessness and tranquility, and then something flickered in the darkness that surrounded me, like a distant star. I felt my spirit rushing toward it, even as a part of me fought unsuccessfully to stay wherever I was.
Then, suddenly, I was beneath the stormy sky of my nightmare – only there was none of the usual terror that accompanied it, just total peace, as though I were watching the scene as an observer instead of a participant. Just as quickly, I transitioned to another scene, this time in a massive hall with polished marble floors, dancing to a minuet, wearing a long, flowing ball gown, swirling around and around with a partner in a Victorian suit. I looked up to see who it was, and vivid blue eyes held mine with rapt adoration. I gasped in my dream, and my vision expanded to reveal the figure’s identity.
Jared held me in his arms as we spun, impossibly handsome, his hair slicked back and longish, but unmistakably him. I tried to speak, to call out to him, but I couldn’t – I was a spectator rather than actively in the scene, able to watch but unable to control anything else.
A shift, and the surroundings dimmed, and then it was just Jared and me, he lying on disheveled sheets and I with my head on his naked chest as he stroked my hair in a room with a thousand candles. I traced a finger down his rib cage and across his washboard abdomen, and then raked long nails across his stomach, to his delight. I felt myself glowing, my entire body vibrating with an energy I’d never experienced before, as though connected to him at a cosmic level, the two of us one.
The scene shifted again, and I was riding a black stallion into a forest at night, a stippling of stars overhead and a tangerine harvest moon’s glow illuminating the surroundings, the trees reaching into the dark sky like spectral limbs.
On and on came the visions, and then I drifted back into the comforting darkness and was again in my weightless state, floating peacefully without care.
When I opened my eyes, tears were streaming down my cheeks, though whether from joy or sorrow, I couldn’t tell. Madame Véronique’s face was a mask, inscrutable as a brick wall. Jared was standing by his chair, his expression radiating concern and the same unmistakable adoration as in my vision.
“Oh, Jared,” I cried, and anything else I was going to say was choked off by sobs. He rushed to me and took me in his arms and held me close, his scent ambrosia and his energy like a jolt of adrenaline. “It’s all true. All of it,” I finally managed, and he squeezed me tighter, as though to shield me from unseen harm.
“I know, Lacey. I know,” he whispered, his voice so soft I could barely make out the words.
I pulled away. “I’m ruining your shirt,” I said, snuffling and wiping away tears.
“I’ve got more.”
Madame Véronique rose and moved to the light switch. The room brightened, and Jared reached for his sunglasses. She stood for a moment, lost in thought, impossibly still, and then after a painfully long beat, fixed me with a penetrating stare.
“Remarkable,” she said. “Really remarkable. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Reincarnation?” Jared asked.
She cocked her head and studied me like a lab specimen. “Past lives are common. This, though…I’ve never seen one of your kind brought back. Never.”
“How does this happen?” I asked, blotting my face with my sleeve, Jared’s arms still encircling me.
Madame Véronique gave me a grim smile. “If you think of time as a continuum, where the past and the present are just different directions on the same line,
