Please enjoy the first three chapters of Light of Mind. If you’d like to read the rest, please reach out!

1 / THEIA

The first time Theia Carcey died, she was alone on the street. She ran, beginning the day as usual. She pumped her legs, her pace steady, her gaze admiring the sky’s deep violet hues as the sun began to rise. It wasn’t her normal route, and she began earlier, but it was still a typical start to her day. Until she dropped.

The morning’s colors swarmed and hijacked her sight. She fell and hit the pavement at full speed, and the world shifted around her. Her sight grew darker and blurry, and she felt lighter in her skin. In that moment, Theia experienced death. Or something very close to it. When she opened her eyes moments later, everything reverted to its natural order. Except Theia. 

She scrambled on her hands and knees until her back was up against the wall of a building. She caught her breath and watched some trees swaying nearby, using their movement to ground herself in the present. She ran her hands over the gritty sidewalk to confirm it was real. Her palms burned with fresh scrapes. She wiped her hands on her pants and ensured she was still in one piece. She didn’t know how much time had passed since falling, but in that time she’d had an out-of-body experience of dying.

This death hadn’t been a dream. She was tired, but she had been running, and there was no chance she’d fallen asleep. Even in a comfortable bed, sleep rarely came easy. Most nights, Theia was lucky to get four hours of fitful, dreamless rest as her brain thoroughly processed the events of the day. Now, as she sat leaning against a building, she imagined the event on an endless loop in her mind.

She remembered the colors of the different place first. She closed her eyes and replayed the moment in monochrome until flickers of blue, gray, and gold spots appeared. The blue dots grew and became shallow water, the grays became shadows and clouds, and the golds became saltgrass that billowed around her like delicate fingers, a slight blur in their wave.  When she’d looked down, sun-freckled skin glowed with a deeper tan than her own pale pallor. Her fingers riffled through thick, light brown hair, so different from her own thin, straight dark strands. This wasn’t her body. She had been looking through someone else’s eyes. Someone else’s mind.

On the street, Theia opened her own eyes again and shook off the memory of what she’d seen when she fell. She placed a stinging palm on the building for support and stood. Her head pounded, and everything inside felt loose.

“It’s not real,” she said aloud. She forced a shallow laugh. She took a few cautious steps toward the glow of a street lamp. Her eyes locked with her reflection in the window of a car parked on the street, and her smile faded. Suddenly she remembered more vivid details of her experience as they unfolded in her mind: 

An egret walked in a high-tide wetland. The woman with thick hair was near the marsh, looking to the horizon at lush green woods beyond. She stood on dark pavement different from the concrete sidewalks of Theia’s morning run. The water washed over the black tar like a stone beach, eroding the edge. 

The woman caught her image in the puddle: a kind, thin face, worn by sun and sea. Beautiful and tough, but also drawn. The image told a complex story of fun, joy, and despair. She was older than Theia’s twenty-seven years, but not old. Mid-thirties, Theia guessed. She wore a plaid button-down shirt, the first couple of buttons undone and casual.

In the vision, Theia stared at the face like a reflection, experiencing the strange sensation of looking at herself while locking eyes with someone she was seeing for the first time. The woman’s lips moved, blurred in the ripples of the water. 

What? Theia asked. 

The woman moved her mouth again, more exaggerated this time. Then again. And again until it registered with Theia what she was saying.

Find me. 

A shadow loomed over the woman. She turned to see a man, his features blurred and wavy like the saltgrass. He stepped toward her. She spoke, but her words were muffled, like speaking underwater. Theia couldn’t understand them. He said something back, also muffled. 

Theia and the woman seemed to merge again, and Theia felt her throat tighten painfully. She dropped to her knees, the scent of decay and sediment overwhelming her as she splashed in the water before her head hit the ground. Theia urged her muscles to fight back but had no control of the woman’s limbs. She tried to scream. 

From above, the man raised a finger to shush her. It was almost like he cared for her and thought he was helping her, or at least regretted the necessity of this.

The man cradled her like a sick child, his breath hot as he whispered something. Despite his blurry features, she saw his lips move, and she read two syllables of a name on them: Lana. He held her, her throat thick and choking, while her sight darkened. His silhouette floated above her. 

Her vision darkened, but before it was gone completely she looked out again beyond the marsh. Her eyes were only half open, and her sight was weaker, but she saw that the spring green woods were inexplicably now the browns and reds of fall. Her head slumped and her vision blurred as she focused on a simple paper coffee cup standing up on the edge of the marsh a few feet away. Her mind spun, and the corners of her vision closed in as consciousness escaped her grasp.

Theia blinked and stared at her familiar reflection in the car window back on the street. She’d seen something. Experienced it. She stepped to a nearby bench, took out her phone, and opened up a note-taking app, then tapped out everything she remembered.

My name was Lana, she wrote, playing back the name the man mouthed at her. I was murdered near a marsh.

…

Theia replayed the memory or vision or whatever it was as she sat on the bench taking notes. It was like death. She’d left herself and was floating away. Now, grounded in her skin again, she was aware of a clear delineation between her consciousness and physical body. She wondered if she’d ever feel like one whole being again.

She finished recording all the details she could remember. The marsh bordered by pavement. The look on the woman’s face. The man who cradled her. The lush green woods that then flashed the colors of autumn foliage for a moment. The paper cup. 

She returned to her run, each step more cautious now, and headed back toward her home. Her pulse quickened from the jog, but also in a weird combination of excitement, anxiety, and terror. Her head ached less as she moved away from where she fell.

With each pound of the pavement, she broke down what she’d seen. Now she could use her skills and instincts as a reporter. She wasn’t hallucinating and this was not magic. She’d witnessed something involving a real person. There was an explanation, and she’d find it.

Her pace picked up. The deeper her thinking, the harder she ran. Thoughts formed in the back of her mind as though Lana had left a piece of herself behind, unwilling to be forgotten. Clues, perhaps. She thought again of her silent plea. Find me.

The sun was fully up now and the city awake. The delivery drivers slammed the iron lifts on their trucks, a dependable alarm clock to the residents in the apartments above. Shopkeepers swept and hosed down the previous night’s stains from the sidewalks in front of their establishments. Theia bounded by them. 

She lived in Beacon Hill, one of the oldest and most elite neighborhoods in Boston, although she was neither old nor elite. Her basement apartment measured only three-hundred square feet. No grand estate, but she loved the feeling of having all her stuff around her within arm’s reach.

She traveled down Charles Street and jumped onto Acorn Street, slowing her pace to navigate the raised, ancient cobblestones that led to her door. She fumbled with the combination lock and then burst in and sat at her laptop. Her breath stalled as the screen faded in, her fingers placed over the keyboard to type Lana missing marsh in her browser’s search bar.

Dozens of results loaded, although a cursory glance suggested many were not a match for what she wanted. Some appeared right, though, and a wave of surreal excitement came on as she clicked on The Marshland Disappearance. The page loaded, and the subhead read Lana Labelle, 36, missing and presumed dead.

A photo anchored the top of the article. The consequence of living in the basement and sharing the building’s free WiFi was that it was a weak signal. The picture loaded pixel by pixel. Finally, the complete image stared back at Theia.

A woman. Thick light brown hair. Freckled skin. This was Lana. 

Theia recognized her kind face, even if her only other reference was a watery reflection. She hadn’t read or heard about the woman before, a fact that was clear to her now. Their first encounter had been in her vision. She knew every bit of her for a few moments like she lived inside of her mind, reliving her memories. She’d seen Lana at a terrifying time, and as crazy as it sounded, Lana had asked Theia to find her.

Theia stared at the image on the screen and looked into the pixelated eyes of Lana Labelle, holding her gaze.

“I’ll find you,” she said. The vow lingered on her tongue long after the browser closed.