“What happens if you lose your grip on the leash?”
“Then it’s done. Their mind belongs to them again. And you can’t incite remotely. The incitement always needs to start with you sharing the same energy space.” He rolls out his shoulders, as if preparing for a fight. “Enough talking. Let’s harness. Go into my mind.”
I close my eyes, centering myself, then open a path and follow it into his mind.
“What do you see?” Hawkins asks.
Behind my eyelids, I see his shield, the negative frequency that protects his mind from intrusion. Just outside my field of vision, I glimpse what Uncle Jim always described as the hallway: the positive frequency you follow to establish a telepathic link.
“Pay attention to the energy around you. Block out the negative and positive waves. What’s left? What do you see?”
I strain my mind, trying to do what he asks. All I see is blackness. I hear a hum, though. Something else is there. Ifeelit. I…
“I see it,” I mumble. “The gold dust.”
It’s so faint, barely perceptible to the naked eye. Flickering in and out of my vision. The thinnest, most delicate sparks.
“Picture yourself gathering it up. When I harness, I visualize coiling the gold into a tighter and tighter ball until it’s something I can hold.”
I do what he says, reaching out to gather the gold, but it’s too elusive. I can’t for the life of me grab hold of it. Every time my fingers brush a gold strand, it floats away as if it’s being tugged by an invisible string.
Frustration rises inside me. “It’s not working.”
“Just keep trying.”
I try again, but it takes several more attempts before I even come close to touching the gold.
And then, finally, my fingertips brush it.
Excited, I eagerly close my fingers around it, trying to trap the gold inside my fist, but the moment I do, an uncomfortable shiver rolls through my arm and up my spine. I release my fist, and the gold dust flies away.
“I had it for a second, but I lost my grip,” I complain.
“Try again.”
That’s all I hear for the next hour.
Try again. Try again. Try again.
I grow increasingly frustrated at each failed attempt. I canalmostgrasp it, the slippery gold. Sometimes I’m even able to keep it in my palms for several seconds, until that peculiar shudder overtakes me, stopping me cold.
“You keep letting go too soon,” Hawkins says brusquely. “You’re scared of the sensation. Don’t be. Let it travel through you.”
“It doesn’t feel…right.” That’s the only word to describe it. It feels wrong when the energy is flowing through my body.
“If you weren’t supposed to use it, you wouldn’t have the power to do it. Try again.”
I tamp down my frustration and give it another go.
This time, I make actual progress.
Focusing all my concentration on the task at hand, I start gathering the dust, one wisp at a time. Excitement tickles my belly as thegold slowly becomes a bigger and bigger clump. I clench my fist around it, determined not to let it escape. My palms begin to feel hot. Tingling wildly.
“Unclench your fists.”
Hawkins’s voice distracts me. My eyelids open, causing me to lose my grip on the gold again. It disappears like smoke through my fingers.
“I was just starting to get it,” I grumble at him.
