heavily, Charlotte once again locked her bike and together they went back into the house. For a while they drank their tea in silence. After some time, Christiane softly and hesitantly asked, 'What will happen now?'
Charlotte looked around the room before answering. 'For a start we could light one or two candles.' Christiane found some matches and lit the candles that seemed to have been standing there unused for a long time. They had obviously been for decoration only and had never been lit.
Charlotte brought an incense stick out of her bag, but Christiane frowned and said,
'Oh, don’t use that, please. This artificial stuff always gives me a migraine attack.'
Charlotte placed the incense stick in the candle holder near the candle and nodded.
'I’ll just leave it here, maybe you’ll feel like lighting it later on.'
Charlotte scanned the room. 'It would be best if you were to lie down on the chaise-longue over there and close your eyes.'
Instantly Christiane seemed to stiffen and Charlotte noticed that the idea of lying down and closing her eyes in the presence of a stranger seemed to frighten the other woman considerably.
'You don’t have to close your eyes if you don’t want to. Just look at something that will help you to relax, for example that large oak tree outside in the park.'
Christiane nodded her consent and Charlotte took the antique piano stool over to the chaise-longue. She sat down beside Christiane where she could comfortably touch her.
Christiane became increasingly nervous.
'Nothing bad will happen to you,' Charlotte said soothingly. 'If you can’t bear the touch of my hands, please tell me at once. If anything feels wrong or bothers you, just lift your hand and I’ll stop immediately.'
Christiane once again silently nodded her consent.
Charlotte now tried to let go of all tension and closed her eyes for a few minutes. 'Calm, calm, calm,' she thought with every breath she took. She noticed that Christiane’s anxiety and tension had infected her. In her thoughts she asked the goddess for help. Softly she murmured the mantra of the goddess. When she was calm inside and felt her feet connecting with the earth beneath her, she put her hands on Christiane’s solar plexus.
At first it was a shock to feel nothing but cold emptiness. She waited for the warmth that usually rose through her hands when she laid on hands, but nothing happened. After a while, she felt a soft, hesitant tingling. It could hardly be called warmth, but at least there was a slight reaction. She visualised warmth, love and sympathy as an orange-red ball in Christiane’s solar plexus. She managed to some extent, but it didn’t stay stable and it didn’t really shine. It seemed more of a promise, like the red morning sky at the horizon on a cloudy day.
When she was sure that she wasn't going to get a better result, Charlotte placed her hands around Christiane’s head, moulding them like a shell but avoiding actually touching her hair or her head. She visualised Christiane’s crown chakra to open, letting love, power, wisdom and sympathy stream in from the universe. She imagined it to enter Christiane’s body, flowing through it, enclosing her heart, loosening the cold, empty feeling in her belly into a warm, tickling, comfortable sensation, then continue to flow through her hips and her knees to her feet and so out again.
At first nothing happened but Charlotte refused to give in. Again and again she asked the goddess for help. For a moment, her own heart suddenly felt cold and Charlotte became afraid and considered abandoning the treatment.
Then she felt the dog at her back, her warm head pressed trustingly against her spine. Charlotte felt touched and very thankful. Her heart opened and instantly she could feel the energy starting to flow. Christiane sighed heavily, put her hands on her belly – but more astonished than afraid – then let her hands fall back as she settled back down again. She was a lot more relaxed now. It seemed as if she now felt free to accept the treatment. She still had her eyes open, but now they seemed to be looking at something in the distance instead of trying to find something to hold onto within the room.
Charlotte noticed that her hands seemed to move by themselves. Starting at Christiane’s head chakra, they moved to her throat chakra, heart, solar plexus, to her cold hands, back to her stomach, the cramped tendons in her hips, to her tensed thighs, her cold knees and the weak calves and finally to her feet. Charlotte then returned once again to the solar plexus, which now pulsed steadily and warmly, before she finished the treatment. That was it.
Charlotte walked over to the open fireplace in the corner and put her hands on the cold stone floor. She gave thanks to the goddess and asked the earth to absorb all foreign energy, everything that didn’t belong to herself. She concentrated on letting all the foreign energy flow into the floor. When she got up she looked at the clock on the wall and saw that she had been here almost two hours. Involuntarily, she sighed deeply. She felt thankful. Something had changed and there was a bit more love, sympathy and warmth in the world.
Then Christiane slowly sat up. Charlotte once again took her place on the stool next to her, put her hand gently on her shoulder and said, 'Just keep resting for a while longer.'
Christiane lay down again. 'What do I owe you?'
'Nothing,' answered Charlotte. 'I have a well-paid job at the moment, so I don’t need money. Healing, in my opinion, means passing on divine energy that was given to me. It goes against the grain to take money for something that I was given for free.'
Christiane looked at her in doubt and disbelief.
'It’s true,' she repeated. 'If I didn’t have any income, it would be a different kettle of fish altogether.'
'But I can’t accept it for free, just like that,' argued Christiane.
'Well, if you can’t then you could decide to use two hours, the amount of time I spent with you, to do some good deed, something that will bring healing and love into the world.'
'But how am I supposed to do that? What should I do? I can’t do anything like that.'
'Hmm. You could start by being tender and loving to your dog for two hours.'
Christiane frowned angrily. 'I really mean that,' Charlotte urged. 'It’s about opening your heart. You’ll feel a lot better if you do that and you’ll learn what you have to do to reach be healed. And your dog will feel a lot better, too.'
As if she wanted to prove Charlotte right, the Doberman now crossed over to them, sat down near Christiane and lightly touched her knee with her nose. She didn’t lean against Christiane, as she had done with Charlotte; it was more like a tentative question.
Christiane’s face smoothed out and she suddenly had tears in her eyes. 'Anona…', she whispered, and to Charlotte she said, 'She’s never done that before.' For a moment something like happiness shimmered in Christiane’s eyes and the dog swallowed. Woman and dog kept completely still.
But the moment passed. Christiane’s body jerked, her mouth turned down and her face became hard again. Quickly, Anona got up and fled to the corner of the room. Christiane snorted.
'Well, she can’t stand my presence very long, can she?'
'Practise,' Charlotte said softly. 'Practise opening you heart and Anona will not only put up with you, she'll come to love you.'
Christiane looked up at the word 'love'. Her eyes had such a searching and clueless expression, as if Christiane wasn’t familiar with the meaning of the word. She seemed confused and astonished and was searching for answers in Charlotte’s eyes.
Charlotte smiled and got up. 'I’ll go now. Just stay where you are, I’ll find my own way out.' She looked back before she left the room, to see Christiane sitting motionless on the chaise-longue, gazing at the old oak in the park, lost in thought. Anona was standing off to one side and seemed to be looking back and forth between Christiane and Charlotte, with a silent question in her eyes.