Stepping into the Sky: Jump When Ready, Book 3 Read Free Page A

“What I mean is, you might find this experience
a little disorienting.” She looked back and forth between Henry and Nikki.
“Ready?”
    Again, Henry and Nikki exchanged glances. Henry brought
his attention back to Martha. “I guess?”
    Nikki snorted a laugh and Henry couldn’t help crack a
smile. Obviously, he didn’t sound at all sure.
    “What about you, Nikki?” Martha said.
    Nikki’s face reddened a little. “Sure. I think so.”
    “Fair enough.” Martha opened her door and Henry winced
against the light suddenly filling the hall, nearly blinding him. She turned
their way again. “As I said, things are about to change.”
    Martha stepped through the doorway and disappeared into
the light. Henry and Nikki hesitated, their eyes meeting.
    “Do you have a feeling about this?” Nikki said.
    “Yeah. I get the feeling this is going to be weird.”
    A moment later they stood in a space without any evident
boundaries. No floor, no ceiling, no walls. As his eyes adjusted, Henry
realized the light surrounding them wasn’t just white. Behind the glare, he saw
a pulsing spectrum, ranging from light blue to green, then yellow, orange and
red. At the same time, it was like his brain couldn’t process it and, instead,
registered the total effect as being a field of uniform brightness.
    “It takes some adjustment,” Martha said. “Don’t worry.”
    Henry appreciated her reassurance but he didn’t feel
worried. In fact, just the opposite. For some reason he couldn’t understand, he
felt almost euphoric. He looked up, then down, but neither seemed to matter
since the view was exactly the same, as if he stood suspended weightless in the
air. Again, he recalled the brief encounter with Lysrus, that moment when he’d
at first barely been able to keep looking, his skin tingling, his ears ringing
and his hair lifting as if by electricity. He remembered being surprised by the
calm feeling that had followed the initial shock. He felt the same sense now.
    A moment later, the light parted—a flash of even brighter
light behind it—as if a curtain briefly opened and then closed. A figure strode
forward and within seconds stood before them. Henry looked into Lysrus’s eyes
again and those golden eyes gazed back at him. There
hadn’t been time to notice before but now Henry realized they lacked both
irises and pupils. Lysrus kept shimmering , flickering like the light around them or maybe causing the light around
them. Henry stared at Lysrus’s face but it kept shifting too, flickering
like a strobe light, showing faces of different genders, ages and ethnicities.
The effect was hypnotizing and on one level Henry suspected it could have been
frightening. He didn’t doubt that if he’d encountered a sight like this when he’d
been living in the physical realm, he would have been terrified. Now, though,
he remained fascinated as he remembered what Martha had told them before—that
Mentors manifest all past lives simultaneously.
    After a few moments, the strobe effect slowed, then
settled to a stop as Lysrus’s form took on the appearance of a tall, thin man
with shoulder-length platinum hair. His eyes shifted to pale blue. The light
around them stopped pulsing too, becoming consistent, a soft and steady white.
    “I sense that you both perceive me as being male,” Lysrus
said. “It’s true that I have been many times.”
    Right there, Henry wanted to start asking questions but
decided he should probably wait.
    “I suspect it’s also better that I don’t appear to you
displaying the wings you imagined upon our first encounter,” Lysrus said.
“While it’s common for us to be perceived that way, that expression of energy
won’t serve any purpose here.” He gestured to what he wore, the same white
robes Henry had briefly caught sight of the first time. “I also sense that you
perceived me wearing robes. In truth, my current manifestation requires no
fixed physical form. All the same, I’ll appear to you