I sense the building’s façade rising into the sky in front of me, but I’m too close to it to actually glimpse the top…forest for the trees and that sort of thing. I lean closer toward the door because I can’t read the names on the door plate, and I’ve just struck my last match. I pray that this one doesn’t go out… Yes! There it is. Ms. Jerusha Wyvern. She’s the one I need. The ninth floor.

I drop the still-lit match and slowly push open the heavy door; the door probably weighs more than me. The hallway inside is very dark, but there is one of those old-fashioned light switches on the wall…perhaps you remember the kind? They light the stairwell for about a minute before switching off. It’s a feature of these older buildings, built during another time, when things were preserved more carefully.

There is enough light-time to get me to the elevator and then, with a click, there is darkness again. By then, I have summoned the elevator and it is slowly crawling its way down toward me from the dim places somewhere above.

I don’t need the light that much, anyway. My eyesight of starting to fail. I have become more accustomed to judging things by their sound. I feel like I am becoming sharper at seeing people by their voices and their words. I couldn’t tell you what the taxi driver looked like, the one who brought me to this street, but I would remember his voice if I heard him again. When he talked I could feel his smiles. He asked me why I was here in the eighth district, so far away from the bright lights of the more fashionable sections of town.

I probably told him more than he wanted to know. I’m so nervous. My search has paid off, you see. I found her. And now that I was on my way to see her I kept closing my eyes and silently reciting the words I’d been rehearsing.

The cab driver let me talk for a while… and then we rode the rest of the way in silence. Before he dropped me off he reminded me that the eighth district wasn’t safe for young women. And even though it was still daytime, still afternoon, it was fairly dark and overcast and looked like rain. A young lady might catch cold, he said. I should be careful, he told me. I told him that I didn’t plan on being there long. I would only need a few moments with her.

By now the elevator has arrived and I’m inside. It has an old-fashioned accordion door which takes all my weight to close. By squinting very hard I am able to make out the floor numbers. I press the button for the ninth. There is a metallic groan and an ancient shudder and then the elevator begins to rise. I smell different smells from each floor as I pass them by. Potatoes, something like mushrooms, garlic, cigarettes. They are scents and flashes of other people’s lives.

Something about the mingling of smells sends me back into the memory from so many months ago when it happened. A group of us, we had decided to follow the path of the solar eclipse last year. I could see more clearly then. 

We parked by a meadow in the countryside and spread a blanket out to wait. It was the special hour of late in the day when the sunlight angles and gives everything a magical glow. We took out our phones and snapped some shots of one another while we waited. Finally, the moment arrived and the sun dimmed as the moon took its place in the sky.

Those people who write about how magical an eclipse can be…they don’t lie. The experience was otherworldly. The moment that the moon’s shadow started to fall across the earth the animals prepared for night. The spiders began to take apart their webs. 

At the very moment that the darkness was the greatest I could not resist. I did what we’re told not to do. I stared up. Directly at the shrouded disk of solar light. My eyes were unprotected. First my friends laughed, but when they saw me continue to stare upward one of my friends gasped. The others pulled at my arm, imploring me to turn away. But I couldn’t. Something had overtaken me and even though I could feel my eyes begin to burn still I looked up, resolutely caught and in rapture. 

In that moment I felt an ancient mingling of things beyond myself. I imagined past civilizations and saw long-ago people looking at the sky as I did. When they looked into an eclipse they heard creatures and goddesses. While my eyes burned I felt that perhaps I could hear them, too. They spoke their quiet, shadow language to me in the whisper of the insects that had gathered around me in the field. Their dark words were pregnant with personal transformation and also a call for the world to renew.

When I finally looked down my eyes were bleeding with my own tears, and I saw the fiery circle of the sun’s atmosphere branded onto my vision for the rest of that day. No matter where I looked the molten ring of the heavens hung unimpeded before my eyes. And there was a revelation that came with it. For on the ragged edges of the fire I could see cosmic, living things that perched in the dark spaces behind the sun. 

I dreamt of them that night. Celestial beings, hidden from our eyes except when an eclipse dims the sun’s brightness…and, even then, only glimpsed by those who refuse to heed the warnings.

Those things out there. Hanging in space. They’ve always been there. And once I saw them, I know they have pledged themselves to me. They will never leave me. Now I can hear their mouths, wet with covenantal promise. They hide behind the thin veneer of daily life and only reveal themselves to those willing to hear.

Shortly after that day my eyes began to fail, but by then I had been given an inner view. I believe that I know something now. I see the world as the beings behind the sun see her. She is a living island floating in the blackest darkness of space. And on the day of the eclipse I saw the source of all the planet’s energy become darkened; a yawning black hole. I received a calling that day; a commissioning. 

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it and its been over a year since it happened. I ache to tell others. The creatures behind the sun…they led me to Ms. Jerusha today. She is also commissioned. She possesses the way to a larger voice. I hope she will grant it to me.

The elevator gives another shake and I break away from my daydream. I’m in the present again…ready to meet Ms. Jerusha. The elevator stops and a moment later I’m feeling my way toward her door. It’s at the end of the hallway. The hall light stays on long enough for me to find her doorplate. I stand there for a moment with my hands pressed against the wood. It feels warm and wet. I knock twice. There is a pause, a hiss of wind at the threshold, and then Ms. Jerusha is standing in the open door. 

Even though she has a face, I can’t really see it. I sense the vacant spaces where her eyes are and the wide slice of a mouth. I can also hear her breath, sort of thick and deep. After a pause she says, “Well, then, we’d better have you in.”

She brings me down a dark hallway, dark to me at least, and then I’m sitting in a deep chair. She sits across from me, sips something for a moment, and then says, “I wonder if you know how it works?”

I can’t believe I’m blushing. I give a shy smile. “Yes, I know,” I say.

I sense her smile and she continues, “Well, there will be plenty who’d say they know, but some might lie,” she pauses and I sense a small frown, “So what we’ll need first is for you to come right out and tell me what you want.”

There must be a clock in here somewhere because I hear a ticking in the silence that follows. The atmosphere in this room is close and there’s a faint fungal smell. She sips quietly while she waits.

I knit my brow and twist my mouth. I take a deep breath and I say, “Ma’am, you know I saw them out there. They showed themselves to me in the celestial moment. I heard them. And then I heard your sweet call.” 

I paused… thinking carefully. “It’s no accident. Eclipses can only happen during the daylight, when people are awake. It’s a time for new seeds. I know this now. They showed this to me and made me promises for the future. They promised truth for the world. And they pledged me a voice. Now may I have it?”

I’m breathing a little heavy now. In the breathy silence I can hear the ticking and more sipping. The smell of brown mushrooms has grown.

She says, “And what do you suppose you’ll do if you have it?”

I am so eager that I close my eyes to steady myself. I say, “If you give me the eyes of the world, I’ll share it. I want to invite others.”

Another pause. More ticking and the rot smell is stronger…but it also has a breath of freshly turned earth, like during planting time…fallow ground. I can feel her looking me up and down. Then she leans forward and I feel her press a little jar into my right hand. The glass of the jar feels cool. As she leans back the air wafts around me. I realize the planting smell is coming from her.

Then I sense/hear her stand and she says, “Alright, then. We’ll have it happen tonight. Will that do?”

“Oh,” I say, “That will do!”

“Fine then.” And now she’s ushering me back down her hall and out the door. I cross the threshold and there’s a slight shiver that comes between my thighs. There’s a faint tingle. I press my hand between my legs because for a moment I think I might not be able to stand it. Then it leaves and I feel wet and weak.

I turn to thank her, but she stops me before I can say much, and she says instead, “That leaves you a long night tonight for all the work.”

“Yes,” I say, “I know that.”

By the time I’ve summoned another cab and made it back home it’s just before 7. I take a glass of water from the kitchen. I’ve been clutching the jar the entire ride home. I open the stopped and smell it. It smells like mushrooms. I tip the powder into the water and drink it.

After that I open the living room window so that the moonlight can stream in. I don’t bother with any lights. They don’t do me much good anymore anyway. But after the eclipse I feel like light is something that I can actually feel on my skin. I don’t have to see it to know that it’s flooded up the room. I lay down on the carpet and feel the gravity gently tug me down against the floor. I can feel the powder working. The moonlight slowly begins to coat me like warm honey. I part my legs and stretch out my arms to either side so that I can be completely covered. 

As I lay there I can hear the celestial voices begin to whisper to me again. Their dewey words and breathy phrases flutter in my ears like moth wings. Now my legs are twisting and I turn my feet side to side. When it finally arrives the delicious ring of light heats my skin until I gasp and heave and sigh with no shame and a total emptying. 

When I finish I lay on the floor for a while longer and feel myself vibrate. I sense the shadows of clouds move across my face. I am breathing deeply.

As I said, I don’t much bother with the lights anymore. That will all change after tomorrow. I smile. I sit down at my desk and fumble for the laptop switch. I sense the soft glow of the monitor across my fingers. 

As my outer sight diminishes, I am being given an expanded inward view. And tonight Ms. Jerusha is promising me the eyes and ears…of the world. I have thought through all my words. And her jar has given me the tongues of all the nations. There is only one universal language tonight. 

I adjust my screen. I blink my eyes. I open a portal. I smile. I begin to speak. A kind of rapture has begun.