I Am Eve Read online

  “I….” I didn’t know the answer. I started to say something, but words failed me. I’d never thought about that before: where heredity came from, why some people inherited diseases while others didn't.

  “It began long ago,” he said, “when humans fell to their sins. We changed. We started eating animals. We stopped living in balance with the world. We brought on anxiety and stress as we desperately scratched and clawed for material wealth.” He shook his head. “With those changes came health problems. At first, humans were still living hundreds of years. But as one child saw their parents die from certain causes, they began to believe they would die the same way. Over time, that belief became hardwired into our DNA and was eventually passed down to the next generation.”

  He let the dirt slip through his fingers and then brushed his hands together to get rid of any remnants. He looked up at the sky and waved his hand around, displaying the clouds, then the mountains, then the ground beneath us. “All of this,” he said, “was built on belief. The entire world, the galaxy, hinges on the power of belief. We can shape the physical world around us, and we can shape our lifespan.”

  “So…you’re saying that experiences of my ancestors resulted in programming themselves to die from cancer or heart disease?”

  He gave a nod. “Yes. Of course, stress doesn’t help, either. It hurries the process.”

  “Why are you telling me this? What am I supposed to do with all this information?”

  “Alter your beliefs. Once you do that, you’ll see the world very differently. When the veil is pulled back from your eyes, you will be able to do anything.”

  I wanted to believe what he was saying, but none of it added up. I’d never seen anything in my life that would convince me I could perform miracles as he suggested.

  I shook my head. “I think you got the wrong girl, Darius. There’s nothing special about me. I’m not sure why you believe there is.”

  I started back to the cabin. I’d made it about ten steps before he spoke again in a voice that boomed across the meadow.

  “I didn’t choose you, Eve.”

  I froze in place again and waited to see what else he was going to say.

  “I didn’t choose you. You were chosen long ago, before we were even alive. Your family line has something encoded in your DNA that no one else has.”

  I drew in a deep breath, looked back over my shoulder, and listened.

  “You have something that no one else in the realm has. Not even me.”

  “Not even you?”

  He shook his head. “No.” He looked down at the ground and then back up at me with a disappointed look on his face, almost as if he was ashamed of something. “I can’t move these mountains, Eve. The beliefs inside me are too deep. I can change our reality, show you remote images like the one of your parents, but when it comes to larger, real objects like mountains or buildings, I’m useless. My strengths are nothing compared to yours. You are the one we have been waiting for. You alone can return balance to the world and lead the people of this planet back to the light.”

  I didn’t know what to say to all that. My mind swirled with doubts, but there was a part of me deep down inside that believed him. I couldn’t explain why. Logic said Darius was just a crazy old magician who could do parlor tricks.

  But what if he was right?

  I’d always thought there was something different about me, like I had some sort of greater purpose than farming on the top of a mountain. I didn’t know the reason.

  “Why, Eve, do you think your parents brought you here? Why do you think they put that blessing on your home? They knew the forces of evil would come for you, because if you reach your full potential, you represent a very real threat to their plans.”

  “Plans?”

  Darius paused. “To destroy what’s left of our civilization.”

  6

  Two weeks after the vampire Kaio attacked me, I started to think it was a random, single incident—that it wouldn’t happen again.

  Things had been relatively quiet on the mountain, and it was good to get back to some kind of normality, even though I now had a guest in the house.

  I couldn’t help but wonder when Darius planned to return to his own home, wherever that was, though I got the distinct sense that he wasn’t going to be leaving anytime soon.

  I poured myself a cup of coffee and looked over at the couch where he still slumbered. Darius had a habit of staying up late into the night meditating and praying.

  He did it every single night and sometimes in the morning when he woke up. I’d never spent much time in prayer or meditation, though I had to admit I was curious about his seemingly magical abilities. He continued to claim it wasn’t magic, that it was simply quantum science, but I had my doubts.

  Several times—when I was alone—I’d tried to move objects or make something hover in the air just by using my mind. It never worked. Every time I did it, I felt stupid despite the fact that no one was watching.

  I took a sip of coffee and looked down at a spoon on the counter. Tilting my head to the side, I stole a quick glance at the sleeping Darius to make sure he was still unconscious, and then put out my hand. I waved my hand gradually from left to right, attempting to move the spoon without touching it. Nothing happened.

  I tensed the muscles in my arm and hand. The tendons in each finger tightened. Still the spoon remained in its place on the counter.

  “If you’re trying to move that spoon with your muscles without touching it, you’re going to be standing there a very long time.” Darius’s sudden comment startled me, and I nearly dropped my coffee mug. A few drops of the hot brown liquid splashed over the side and splattered on the floor near my feet.

  “I thought you were asleep,” I said, embarrassed at my foolish attempt.

  He rubbed his eyes and grinned. His graying hair was all over the place. “I was. Then I sensed a disturbance in the space-time continuum.”

  I raised a dubious eyebrow. “Really?”

  He shook his head and laughed. “No. Not at all. I smelled the coffee,” he said with a wink.

  I sighed, irritated. “I don’t understand how you do all those tricks. What’s the secret?”

  Over the last few weeks, Darius had been teasing me with all kinds of miraculous things. He caused a dead flower to bloom, a tree’s leaves to turn bright red, and several other feats. Not to mention the thing he did with my porch chair by moving it around. He’d shown me dozens of incredible things, but I felt no closer to my understanding of it all than I did when Darius first arrived.

  “That’s because you live in a reality where seeing is supposed to be believing, but it actually doesn’t translate to that at all.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked and poured a cup of hot coffee into a mug for him.

  “Some of the greatest teachers to ever walk the Earth performed innumerable miracles, yet everywhere they went the people always asked for more. Even though they’d seen the amazing feats with their own eyes, they felt sure something was amiss, that they were being tricked or perhaps were hallucinating.”

  “Then why can’t I do it? You said I’m some kind of chosen one or something. What’s my problem?”

  He grinned at the title I’d given myself. He gratefully accepted the coffee and returned to a stool at the counter.

  “Your problem is that you believe the power to shape your reality comes from intense emotion or physical strength. This is a misguided thought process.”

  He could see I was going to ask more questions and cut me off before I could ask. “Interaction with the quantum universe requires a few key things. You have to get rid of all of life’s distractions. This is necessary so you can quiet the mind.”

  “Um, done. What kind of distractions do you see around here?”

  Without television, the internet, and cell phones, life had become much simpler across the entire planet.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Since we no longer have those things around, it is much e
asier to concentrate on what we desire. The problem is that you’re still trying to alter reality with brute force. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Obviously.”

  He took a long sip of coffee and let out a satisfied exhale. “The secret to performing what ordinary people would call miracles is not as difficult as you would think. It’s all about three things: mind, emotion, belief.”

  “Mind, emotion, belief. You said that before.”

  “Yes, but you have yet to harness them correctly.” He could see I was still waiting for a simpler explanation so he went on. “In your life, you have probably heard of or know someone who has had cancer, yes?”

  The first person that came to mind was my grandmother. She died a few years before mankind fell. I nodded.

  “Have you ever wondered why some people die from cancer and others make an almost inexplicable recovery?”

  I had to admit the question had come to mind more than once. “A few times. I remember a story about a bicyclist from when I was younger. He had cancer all through his body. They gave him almost no chance of recovery, yet he survived and went on to win major races all over the world.”

  “I’m familiar with that one,” Darius said with a kind smile. “He is a perfect example. Do you know what the difference between him and others who didn’t survive was?”

  “No,” I said and shook my head. “But I guess you’re going to tell me.”

  “Some thought because he was an elite athlete that he had an advantage over cancer. The truth is; his physical condition isn’t what beat the disease. In fact, the real secret is that he didn’t try to beat the disease at all.”

  Darius let the last part sink in for a moment before he continued.

  “People who try to beat cancer or other disease usually don’t because they are focused on the problem, not the solution.”

  “What else are they supposed to do? They have a chronic illness.”

  “That’s what makes performing these miracles so difficult. The great masters taught us that we must focus on what it would feel like if the illness was already gone. So, for someone like the bicyclist, instead of waking up every day and saying he was going to beat cancer, he woke up and said he was going to win the next big race. When he got on his bike trainer or went out for a ride, he focused on what it would feel like to stand on the podium and get that yellow jersey, how it would feel to hold the trophy for a major race. In his mind, he could hear the throngs of fans cheering for him. As he trained in his basement, he let his mind go to the highest mountain peaks of Europe. There, he could feel the cool air wash over him as he went over the top and descended to victory below.”

  I thought hard about Darius’s explanation. “How does doing all that change anything?” I asked, finally.

  Darius had a warm, patient look in his eyes. “Let me simplify it this way. Your mind is the computer. It controls all the other stuff, like emotions. While emotions can sometimes get the better of us and run wild, the mind is always there to put emotions in check. We can feel the emotion of fear, but the mind is capable of overcoming that fear and putting us into a state of calm. When we change how we think about things, such as the bicyclist on the mountain, it alters how we feel. We go from trying to fight cancer to a place where we have already beaten it and are fully healed. The body reacts to that and puts itself in the same state as the mind and emotions. This happens at a quantum level, too.”

  It was a lot to take in and I wasn’t sure I got everything he was saying, but I had to come back to the simpler question about the spoon.

  “So, tell me how this relates to moving the spoon or some of the other things I’ve seen you do.”

  “Remember what I told you before. Don’t try to move the spoon. Everything in this universe exists in a permanent state of potential. That means the spoon is sitting there and it’s also over there,” he pointed at the other end of the counter. “And it’s hovering in the air. It’s outside on the porch as well. Where you see it is simply where you believe it to be.”

  The puzzled look on my face told him I still didn’t understand completely.

  He closed his eyes and steadied his breathing. I watched him intensely for a moment, trying to figure out what he was doing. Then I saw it.

  Out of the corner of my eye, the spoon started moving along the countertop, sliding by itself along the surface until it reached the other end.

  I looked up and saw Darius had opened his eyes. “I…how did you do that?”

  “In my mind, I allowed myself to understand that the spoon is everywhere. Then I let my feelings become amused by it moving on its own. One of the greatest teachers of all time said that for a miracle to happen, you must believe it has already been done. That’s what I did.”

  “Believe it’s been done, and it will be so,” I muttered.

  “Precisely. And there is one more piece to this grand puzzle.” He paused for dramatic effect before speaking again. “There is an emotion, a feeling, that is more powerful than all others. That feeling is appreciation.”

  “Appreciation?”

  “Yes,” he said with a nod. “Appreciation is one of the greatest forms of love. Some would say it is the greatest form.”

  I shook my head, still confused. “Are you saying that I just have to feel appreciation for something, and it changes the world around me?”

  “Sort of. That’s just one of the feelings you can use to alter your reality. The spoon moving across the table isn’t necessarily something I’d feel appreciative about, but there are other feelings. For the spoon, I let my mind fill with thoughts of how it would make me feel to see the spoon moving on its own.”

  “How did it make you feel?”

  His smile widened. “Amused.”

  Before I could ask, he answered my next question.

  “Amusement is a wonderful feeling. Laughter, after all, is good for the soul. It’s also good for your reality.”

  I bit my lower lip and thought about everything he’d been saying. What Darius believed flew in the face of everything I thought I knew to be true. It was tough to argue with the moving spoon, the disappearing chair, the strange blue orb he conjured to show me where my parents were. That brought me back to the thing that had been bothering me for the last few weeks.

  “I need to get to my parents,” I said. “I know you probably think I’m not ready, but I have to find them, Darius. If they’re alive, every second that I’m not trying to get to them is time I’m wasting.”

  His expression remained patient. “You are doing more to find them than you know.”

  My face scrunched, telling him I didn’t follow.

  “What I mean is that just because you’re not actively looking in buildings or asking other people if they’ve seen your parents doesn’t mean that you’re not trying to find them. One can’t reach the destination without taking the first step. Believe me, my dear, you are doing exactly what you should be.”

  I had a feeling he was going to say something like that. I didn’t disagree, but it also felt like I was spinning my wheels.

  Instead of arguing, I decided to ask one more question.

  “Mages use spells,” I said bluntly. “Why don’t you use words to create these miraculous things?”

  “Ah, a very good question. For thousands of years, people believed that spells were something someone had to know in order to use magic. I learned long ago that those words don’t matter in and of themselves. They’re just words. What matters is the feeling those words create inside you.”

  “The feeling?” I asked. “How do words create a feeling?”

  “So, when I was younger, I took a trip to Tibet and visited a grand monastery. While I was there, I spoke to the abbot in charge of the whole place. I asked him about the prayers the monks were saying in the huge prayer room. There were dozens of them, all on their knees, all saying a sequence of words in a rhythmic chant. He told me that the prayers were a way to generate a feeling inside them.”

  “
What feeling?”

  “Coming full circle from what I said before, he said the feeling they were generating was appreciation. However, he did say that they have different prayers to create different feelings. One they focused on a great deal was peace and comfort. It’s interesting to consider the possibility that those monks praying every day might actually have been changing the world for the better all those years—without ever leaving the mountain.”

  I didn’t want to ask the next question, but I had to know. “Those monks…what happened to them during the fall?”

  For the first time during our conversation, Darius’s face twisted with sadness. “They were destroyed. Their temples, their homes, the monastery, all of it is gone. And the monks were wiped off the face of the earth. The zealots organized an attack, claiming the monks were evil because they had magical beliefs. The monks never fought back, and they were all executed.”

  A somber silence fell over the meadow. The wind that usually rolled over the mountain even stopped blowing as if quieting itself for a moment of reverent silence.

  “Zealots,” I muttered. I had a bad taste in my mouth about that group. Any group who believed they could force their own agenda and way of thinking on others seemed like a bad thing to me. As bad or worse than those they sought to eliminate.

  “Yes,” Darius said with a hint of regret in his tone. “The zealots have ruined much about this world. They believe they have a sense of purpose bestowed upon them by God, but the reality is they are nothing more than a sadistic, twisted group following a maniacal leader.”

  I’d heard of the leader of the zealots. He was a man named Ronald Smith. He’d led the initial surge against the last remnants of government and authority. The rebellion hadn’t taken much. Most of the people left in the realm were at a point of desperation where they were looking for anything that would give them hope. Smith gave that hope.

  A modestly successful career in acting had given him the ability to speak with conviction and his natural charisma was addicting to people starving for change.