Here I sit, still and alone in the darkness, only my feet and buttocks and my back give me any sensations at all. The cement is cold. The wall is rough. The air is putrid and damp. There is a stench that emanates from the small hole somewhere across the darkness where I am required to relieve myself when the urge overcomes me. I keep my arms wrapped tightly around my knees and I clutch them to my chest and I lay my head on them. In this prison, this is only way to feel any comfort at all. I have become so accustomed to sitting like this that I can only sleep in this position. I learned quickly that when I stretch out it's too cold and damp in my solitary confinement to get any rest. Not that I deserve any rest. Or any freedom. Or anything at all.
I do not suffer in my incarceration. The isolation and darkness don't concern me. Being locked in this cell deep underground, far from human contact doesn't concern me. Far from it. Being isolated keeps me safe from people like you stumbling on me while I am wandering. Being isolated is the only way I can get any real rest. I am not like you. I am different. I am a wanderer. You don't know anything about me. Until now, you had no idea I existed. Until right now you didn't know my kind existed. And that is how I like it. Your ignorance allows me to wander.
When I sit here I allow my thoughts to travel. Sometimes back to then beginning, when I was a small child and too small to know anything about anything. Back to when I discovered my ability to wander about, free from my tiny body. Of course I didn't know I was different at the time. To me it was as normal as breathing. My mother would lay me down in my tiny crib and I would go to sleep like any normal infant. But when I woke, instead of crying out, I simply left my body behind and went and snuggled against my mothers welcome bosom. As I grew older, I found that if I wanted to be somewhere, I could go to that place, leaving my body behind. If I wanted something, I would just think about my desire and I would appear next to it. I could grab it and bring it with me back to my body. I never thought I was the only person who could do this. Only decades later I found out I wasn't.
My ability as a toddler initially caused a lot of arguments between my mother and father. Each accused the other of leaving me in a crib full of toys or a room full of treats and sweets. They didn't realize that I was doing it until they started putting me to bed as a team. They would leave the room and I would wander over to the toy box and pick out a few toys and wander back. When they came back in the room, they were shocked to see me playing with toys that were moments before on the other side of the room. They began devising tests of my talents, hiding things further and further away, but they couldn't find a place far enough away. Even putting the toys in boxes and shipping them across country didn't help. I could find them and bring them back. Finally they decided that they would try to stop me from wandering. It would have been easier for them to stop me from breathing. That wouldn't have worked either, as I found out later.
Other than being able to have what I wanted when I wanted it, wandering for me wasn't that big of a deal. It never occurred to me to hurt someone or take something that wasn't mine. As I grew older and my world became larger and I grew out of my egocentric existence, I discovered that I could do other things.
When I was ten years old, my mother's father passed away suddenly. She was crying when I came home from school and without realizing it, I wandered over to her and curled up in her lap. It was an act of compassion and fear. I wanted her to stop hurting and I didn't know why. It scared me. As her tears fell, I could feel her pain as my own and with a simple thought I could understand why she was so sad. She missed her father so much. So I focused on being with him. My wandering self went to my grandfather to get him and to bring him back. I didn't know that he was separated from his body when I found him. While I am in my wandering state, only the objects of my desire are clearly defined. Everything else appears as if in a foggy haze.
"Grandpa, mama misses you. She wants to say goodbye. She is so sad."
"Shep, she can't see me any more. I've passed on. I don't understand why you are here and I don't understand how you got here. But you aren't supposed to be here. You need to go before someone finds you." He had real concern in his tone. I remained unafraid. There was something different about him, like he was with me and he was somewhere else. It was my first time meeting someone else in a divided state.
"Don't worry Avo. I will bring you to mama. I will show you the way." I called him Avo, which is the Portuguese word for Grandfather. Instinctively I knew speaking to him in his native language would calm his unease. "Don't worry. You aren't supposed to be here either." How I knew this I do not know. But I could sense his separation from his earthly self and I focused on finding his other part.
In an instant we were back at his body. It looked so empty and sad without my grandfather living in it. I wondered for a moment if that's what I looked like when I wandered.
"Do you know how to go back together, or do you want me to help?"
"Sheppard, I cannot go back to my life. My body is used up. I have died. I must go to where my ancestors have gone. I must join with them. I can hear them calling from the place you will someday come after a long and full life."
"That's not true grandfather. If you want to come back, just say you wish it so." He laid his hand on my head and smiled.
"If you had the power, I would wish it so. But you are not real. This is some trickery for the newly passed over to endure. I know I cannot return."
My grandfather was wrong. I thought about my grandfather back in his earthly body and I could see inside and see the damage to his heart and his arteries and his veins. It was nothing at all for me to imagine him strong and vibrant again and so it was. The empty body my grandfather had left behind was rejoined to his living soul. Now it would last him for a long time. He coughed and he gasped and sat bolt upright, clutching at his chest and arms. He looked around but he could not see me. In his living body I was still invisible to him. I hadn't learned how to make my wandering form visible at will yet.
In the next instant we were both at my mother's side. She screamed and lurched backwards at the sudden appearance of her father.
"Don't be afraid, meu amor," he quieted her, calling her 'my love' in Portuguese. "I am really here. I don't know how and I don't know why. But I am here." He reached out and allowed the warm flesh of his hand to brush the strands of hair from my mother's cheek. Feeling his touch she grabbed his hand and pressed her face against it.
"This cannot be. You are alive. You are here and warm. How can this be so?"
"I do not know. I only know Shep brought me here."
My mother looked at me. "You did this?"
I nodded.
"How?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "You were sad. Your heart said you wanted Grandfather. I found him and brought him here." For a moment I was afraid I had done something wrong. I didn't have to read her mind to know that she was thrilled I could bring her the gift of her living father. She clutched me to her chest in earnest and squeezed. She reached out and grabbed her father and pulled him close too. It was the first time I was ever in the presence of real joy. It was overwhelming for my ten year old senses. But I knew I wanted that feeling again.
For the next six years I dabbled with my ability from time to time, but for the most part I limited my wandering to short adventures like places I was reading about in school. While the rest of my classmates remained firmly anchored in their chairs, I went to China, Antarctica, Italy, the Amazon, wherever I wanted. It wasn't until my junior year in high school that I discovered I could wander into time itself. We were studying medieval times and I was intrigued chivalry and jousting. I wanted to see knights battle for myself. Suddenly I was in the Norman French countryside watching two noblemen tilt at one another from the backs of massive horses. It wasn't nearly as romantic as I thought it would be. It smelled foul and so did the people of the day. It was not my favorite place to wander and I found myself back in my seat shaking my head. I did remember the time travel though. That was interesting.
The second thing I discovered that year was girls. Not all girls, just one. I wasn't really a typical teenager. I hadn't really thought about girls at all. I was too preoccupied with the things I found interesting. Girls weren't interesting at all yet.
Ellie Windstrom was the exception. Ellie was a wisp of a young woman, tall and lithe and only at the cusp of womanhood. She had hints of curves that would blossom into her womanly features. Her hair was ash blonde, nearly white, and hung straight to her over her shoulders and nearly to her waist. It caught the light and shimmered as she walked. She wore one-piece, knee length dresses and light sandals. It was just a coincidence that we shared a birthday. As much as my heart desired to be next to her, I never wandered into her mind. I never read her thoughts. I never peaked at her in private. I just adored her from a distance and every so often I could catch her sneaking a peek my way, but I would quickly turn away. Ellie was the only girl I thought of when I thought of girls, which wasn't that often.
But at sixteen years old, I began to notice she was a late bloomer like I was. I had such a strong desire to enter her mind and find out if she liked me in the same way I like her, but my fear of a finding out she didn't kept me from looking. It was better to hold onto hope that someday it might be, than to find out there was no chance. Ellie Windstrom remains the only person I ever showed that restraint for.
At sixteen I had other hobbies that kept me busy. My greatest indulgence was the ocean. I had discovered swimming and surfing at fourteen. I loved the feeling of being in the surf, riding the power of the ocean, taming the faces of big waves. Since school was so easy for me, I never felt compelled to pay attention in class. While in school I could wander off and surf for thirty or forty minutes while my classmates remained glued to their seats, forced to day dream to escape the droning lectures. I spent most school days surfing at various beaches in my side of the world. The remaining great surf spots were in darkness while I was in class. As a result of my ability to wander, I became a pretty good surfer. I thought I was much better than I really was and that's when I discovered something else.
I had wandered to Oahu's North Shore early one Saturday afternoon. It was early in Hawaii and I arrived when the swell, powered by a massive storm in the north Pacific, began to stack up on the beach. Huge curls were crashing in long rows. The surf kept building. I couldn't help myself. Ignoring the dangers I followed a couple of locals out into the fifteen footers and started ripping. Since it was a Saturday, I pulled my corporeal body along and it was really me powering through the North Shore pipeline. I rode wave after wave as the swell continued to build. The fifteen footers were long gone and now only a few of us were riding the twenty-five footers that had taken over. This was a full pipeline curl and I was intent on riding in the barrel, riding in the eye of the wave as it curled around me. What a stupid thing for a dumb kid to do.
I was tired, the light was fading, the surf was becoming dangerous and the really good surfers had gone in. They had warned me to come in but I couldn't. This was too much fun. But I promised I'd be careful and I'd only ride one more. I waited until a monster began to show and I put all my strength into getting me and my board into the right position to drop in. As my board nosed down the face, I rose to my feet and felt the monster rising from the deep behind me. I knew it was going to be a killer ride.
