g he sun softly illumined the glowing green of the forest of the village, along with the clear waters of the river that bathed it. Both seemed to softly sing of the happiness of everyone in the small town of Love.
The fifty-two village children, aged between four and twelve, tended to gather almost every morning for one to two hours in a field of flowers where four adults were responsible for their general education. In society, this meeting would be called a school, but everything is different for the better in the village, and the villagers prefer to call it “the children’s meeting” because here children are treated by adults as full human beings just like them and therefore have exactly the same rights. Nobody is forced to attend the meeting, but each and every one of the children enjoys it so much that they miss it only when there is a legitimate reason why they cannot go. They sit on the floor in a large circle, with the adults dispersed equally among them. The adults encourage the participation of each child, in an informal and fun atmosphere. The younger children have the opportunity to learn from older ones, in a loving exchange of knowledge and experience. The more individualized and comprehensive education of each child is left to the parents, who never fail in their responsibilities because they truly look at teaching the children as a wonderful opportunity to be of special help to a kindred Spirit.
Yania, Kami, Kimi, and Ilky were four of the children participating in the meeting that day.
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Eniky, a grown man who was 378 years old but had a body that appeared to be only thirty-five, was talking about space and time, explaining these concepts to the children. Several sets of 3D images (nonradioactive) floated over the group in order to complement his lesson with pictures and video.
“My dear little siblings, where are you now?” he asked the children affectionately.
They all responded that they were in the Garden of Lilies, as they called the area where the village was located.
“Very good. And when?” he continued.
“May 6, 2007,” they replied, though the smaller ones hesitated for a moment, as they still did not know their dates very well.
“Very good! Many of you may be asking yourselves what is so difficult about this, and to help you understand better, I’ll ask Sijy to tell what she has learned about time and space. Sijy, would you be so kind as to explain what you know?”
Sijy was a twelve-year-old girl who had already participated in many missions of Love.
“Thank you, Eniky! You know, my brothers and sisters, that the monsters will lie about even the most obvious things, trying to disrupt the free will of the people through the confusion of ideas as simple as... space and time,” she said, a bit appalled at the thought. “Many monsters try in various ways to spread the idea that time travel is possible—that is, that a person can use a machine to travel to the past or the future. Can you understand the absurdity and the seriousness of this lie? That would mean that if someone was, say, fifty years old and could travel forty years into the past, he could meet himself as a child. Then, if he were a murderer, he could even kill this child who was actually himself. Let the absurdity of that sink in. First, who was he, after all? The adult or the child? If they were both there at the same time, how could they be the same person? Second, how could he kill a child who was himself, forty years before? If the child was killed, then he never could have grown to be an adult in the same incarnation and, as such, could never have killed the child! Third, how could he kill himself? Would it be murder or suicide? It couldn’t be both, because murder is killing someone else!”
At that point, Kylie, a girl of four, quietly asked Jiniu, a nine-year-old boy sitting beside her, what suicide was.
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“It’s when someone kills himself,” he said into her ear.
“Yikes!” she said in surprise. “Thanks, Jiniu!”
Deiriu, one of the other adults in charge of the general education of the children, added, “Did everyone understand well what Sijy has explained to you? If time travel were possible, it would represent total chaos in the universal order. Chaos means a destructive confusion in our lives. So, Love could never agree with that. If time travel were possible, and it is not, certainly, the Love Spirits never would do it.
“Yes, recognize well the absurdity of this lie,” stressed Imya, one of the other adults. “The monsters purposely confuse the concepts of time and space! Understand that when you travel, you travel in space. Time is just an abstract concept—that is, a concept that refers to something that does not exist in and of itself. Time does not exist. It is simply the continuation of everything and nothing.”
This one idea, which seemed so simple, turned out to require more complex explanations in order to undo the lies the children had heard and to prepare them to defend themselves and others from such attacks of falsehoods.
Ealy, another adult, finished the explanation of the topic. “See how devious the monsters are? They deny the existence of something as clear as the existence of spirits, and they defend that which is impossible, as is the case of time travel. Always remember, our little brothers and sisters, the infallible principle that we have already taught you: always question everything, and ask yourselves if it is in accordance with Love or not. If it is not in accordance with Love, reject the idea immediately because it is a lie, or else is something that exists outside Love and, as such, is against us all. Now, I ask you to tell me whether or not you feel that those teachings are of Love?”
Immediately, all the children, with an extreme conviction, gave a resounding, “Yes!”
Then the adults proposed that the children make some drawings of Love and, more specifically, that each child draw the Love he or she felt for the child seated to the immediate right. They all began the task with great enthusiasm, for the Love among them was immense, as always with all the villagers. After each child showed his or her design to the child for whom it was drawn, that day’s meeting of children ended with 108
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all the kids running out into the fields, jumping, laughing, and playing with each other.
“What beautiful hearts full of stars! Thank you, Yania, for your beautiful drawing!” exclaimed Kami with emotion, holding the drawing to her chest.
“Thank you! It is exactly what I feel for you! Look at the picture that Ilky made for me.”
“Wow! It is also very nice. There is so much light coming out of his hands for you. He is such a sensitive kid!” said Kami as Yania showed her Ilky’s design.
“You know, I haven’t said anything because I didn’t want to worry you, but he had a terrible nightmare last night,” said Kami a bit restlessly, as if she was getting something off her chest. “Kimi came to our room to call us, but you were fast asleep and we didn’t want to wake you. Dyma and Noiu are now trying to figure out whether there is reason to worry, after hearing all the details of Ilky’s nightmare.”
“What? And you didn’t wake me?” asked Yania indignantly. “I would also have liked to help him!”
“Yania, I know. I’m sorry. I know you’re such a fantastic girl! But you weren’t going to be able to help much more, so we let you sleep.
Kimi told us that she woke up hearing Ilky panting as he slept, something he never does. So she lay down on his bed, rubbing his back, trying to gently wake him. Ilky then gave a great shout, like ‘Nooooooooo!’
and awoke with a start, sweating and saying that we had to help her.”
“Her? Help who?”
“He didn’t know how to explain, but it seems that something very bad may have happened to a Love Spirit. He told us that it was one of our children, a girl, who had been. . . brutally raped and murdered.”
Yania became extremely worried. “We must find out who this girl is!”
“Dyma and Noiu are already calling all the villagers to come together tonight, to gather more information and develop a strategy for action with our guardian angels.”
“And you think that our guardian angels will be able to help us with this?”
“I think so. At least, this is one of their missions.”
Yania and Kami, like all the other villagers, had learned that the guardian angels are Love Spirits like them but who chose to be tem-T H E L O V E S P I R I T S
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porarily disembodied in order to better perform certain missions in which the physical body would be a burden, such as protecting people from the spiritual plane, obtaining and revealing important information, counseling through dreams and visions, and assisting spiritually when people died.
Now the girls waited impatiently for the time for the general meeting of the village.
Night fell, and the other wondrous, beautiful stars in the sky replaced the sun.
In the great clearing of the village, Ilky embraced his mother sadly.
He remembered the terrible scenes he had seen the night before and felt that there had been a communication from the girl who was attacked.
Aina was in charge of coordinating the meeting. In her 259th year of life in this incarnation, Aina was focused especially on the link between the embodied villagers and their disembodied brethren who worked as guardian angels all over planet Earth. Under the soft light of a torch, she asked in prayer that they might be able to contact the guardian angel that watched over the girl that Ilky had dreamed of, so that they could know all the details about what had happened.
After a few minutes, two faint luminous figures of human form begin to appear in the center of the clearing near Aina, and little by little, they materialized, almost seeming to be incarnate Spirits.
“Brothers and sisters, hello, everyone! Ilky, do you recognize this girl?” the guardian angel asked while embracing the child she was carrying.
“Thanks for coming, Lyndi!” said Aina as she recognized the guardian angel, a bright Spirit in female form that had already spent hundreds of years devoted to this work.
Ilky approached the Spirit child, the same girl, about four years of age, whom he had seen in his nightmare. He looked deeply into her eyes. The girl smiled at him and gave him a hand. While it was not entirely materialized, he felt a tremendous heat from the tiny hand.
“Ilky,” said the girl with great tenderness.
“Can it be?” he asked, still somewhat skeptical.
“Yes, it’s me,” she replied, having read his thoughts.
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A tear began its descent down Ilky’s delicate face. He embraced her with all the strength he had. The light pouring out of the spiritual body of the girl joined the two in a magnificent sparkling embrace. It was Madeleine! The shape of the child had made him hesitate for a moment, but now his doubts were dispelled, and their reunion brought to Ilky’s mind all the wonderful moments they had shared together for over four hundred years when they lived in the galaxy of Paradise as companions.
At that time, they had established an impressive family of Love and during those years together had given life to twenty-five children, thirteen girls and twelve boys. After the children were all grown, both had volunteered to come to Earth on a mission.
“Madeleine is fine now. But we were not able to protect her during those fatal moments,” explained Lyndi, with a huge dose of regret. She began to explain to everyone what had happened. “There just aren’t enough guardian angels. We have many brothers and sisters on embodied missions in society, and the attacks by the monsters against them have recently increased disproportionately. I myself have 321
children and 954 adults under my protection, scattered around the planet. The monsters have cooperated in thousands of simultaneous brutal attacks against our brothers living in society. Their objective is to ensure that we do not have the means to help everyone. At the moment when Madeleine was abducted, 159 other children in my care were also attacked. I’m so sorry... for failing to protect her.” She closed her eyes to stop the tears.
“We are well aware of your difficulties. Please don’t blame yourself, Lyndi!” comforted Aina. “We also have many challenges in fulfilling our missions. The earth is a planet ruled by monsters, and we are still a minority here. Your problems as guardian angels are also our problems as incarnated angels. It is true that there have been more volunteers in our galaxy for these missions, but the universe is huge and there are many planets that we are trying to return to Love.” She stood up and kissed Lyndi. “Sister, we rejoice in the fact that all is now well with Madeleine.”
The beautiful guardian angel then went on to describe the details related to the kidnapping, beating, rape, and murder of Madeleine. Several video devices in the village flew over the meeting in order to auto-matically record everything happening, so that the villagers would have T H E L O V E S P I R I T S
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a visual record of everything. Up in the heavens, in the skies above the village, several ships of Love made sure that the village was not attacked, while at the same time ensuring that the monsters were not spying on what went on there, including creating an energy field that formed an effective barrier against their spy satellites, which always polluted the Earth’s orbit, attempting to violate the privacy of the Love Spirits.
Once Lyndi finished the description of those terrible events, a boy stood up. His smooth, short brown hair, the same color as his eyes, blew gently in the light breeze. He looked at Lyndi, and she looked at him. The look spoke a thousand words. His physical body appeared to be about thirty-one years old, but he was actually 198, with the pain and experience of one who had spent most of his present life in society.
He had studied the monsters from their midst for many long years, and he knew the atrocities they were capable of. Ijyu was an authentic expert in the psychology of Evil. “I will leave the village to help Madeleine,” he said with conviction.
“Easy, Ijyu. You cannot just up and go, besides which you would need someone to help you,” replied Aina with concern.
“I have Lyndi! She will help me!”
With this, many of the villagers offered to go with Ijyu, explaining that they could have others help with their tasks while they were absent.
But many looked discreetly towards Yania and Kami.
Kami and Yania discerned that their brothers and sisters aspired to have them help. They wanted to volunteer to go with Ijyu also, but they thought that the inhabitants of the village would not agree, as they were still children and this would be a very dangerous mission; thus, they had not yet said anything.
Then Yania rose impulsively and, pulling Kami’s arm up with hers, addressed everyone. “We know that we are still children, but we also know that we have much experience in the fight against the monsters!
Kami, is this not true?” she asked her friend, who just nodded her head, smiling.
“We have gone against the Great Beast by ourselves, so this mission will be like a game to us.”
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Nobody said a word. It seemed that everyone had hoped they would volunteer but nobody had dared to ask.
Ijyu squatted in front of the two girls. “I could never ask you to do this, but I have to admit that your experience is unique and would be very valuable. But please stay here, because things could get very com-plicated.”
Yania and Kami looked toward their parents, as if asking permission.
Dyma and Noiu both nodded, giving permission, acknowledging the courage of the girls.
“It’s settled! Yania and I will go with Ijyu!” said Kami immediately, grabbing the hands of Ijyu and Yania, who then closed the circle by grabbing Ijyu’s other hand.
The three looked at each other.
“I have no words to thank you,” said Ijyu, obviously moved.
“We are Love Spirits, are we not? So you don’t have to thank us!”
Kami replied.
“Let’s go help Madeleine! That’s what matters!” exclaimed Yania.
The inhabitants of the village then discussed the means that must be made available to help the three on their mission. Ijyu already knew how to drive a car, so he only needed some identification documents. It was also necessary for him to pass as someone of importance to the monsters. This was because the monsters gave more importance to what people had than to who they were. The infernal hierarchy that they had created valued evil in all aspects. In society, a person without papers, documents, and money was not considered a person. There, goodness was despised and wickedness praised, so they discussed the idea that Ijyu could pass as a lawyer. The monsters gave a certain social status to lawyers, and beyond that, it was a profession that might relate to the mission. As for Yania and Kami, they would be his daughters.
Together, they would travel to Portugal, a country where none of them were known, and where the three would have to speak the official lan-guage.
They asked the Love Spirits based on the dark side of the moon to manufacture the necessary documents and to register these documents in the databases of the monsters in Portugal, and to print twenty thousand Euros, all through the most sophisticated technologies that their brothers possessed.
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In addition, Denya, the only villager who had lived in Portugal, devoted herself for several days to teaching the three siblings all that was important to know about that country. She also taught them to speak Portuguese with no accent, so as not to raise any suspicions.
One of the things that Denya explained was that Portugal was a country that had almost always been ruled by monsters, a country that had recently seen a revolution, called the Carnation Revolution, for which many good people collaborated but that the monsters had acted quickly and, through their boundless and unscrupulous hypocrisy, had returned to power.
Two weeks later, a ship of Love came to pick up Ijyu, Kami, and Yania to take them to the Algarve region of Portugal, where Madeleine had been abducted. Each carried a small suitcase with clothes and other things necessary for their mission. The three had left their necklaces in the village because they would almost always be surrounded by monsters, so their Pink of Life necklaces would not be very useful.
It was around 10 AM local time when the magnificent gleaming spaceship landed in Portugal on Espinhaço de Cão (Dog Ridge), far away from inquisitive eyes.
Kami, Yania, and Ijyu now had to walk about twenty minutes along a dirt road until they reached the nearest town, Pedralva. Arriving there, they found a taxi to take them to the city of Lagos, where they rented a car and an apartment.
About half an hour into the taxi ride, they’d already received a small sample of what they would be dealing with. After they had deflected the impertinent curiosity of the taxi driver about the three of them, who were, for him, unusual characters, the conversation revolved almost entirely around a soccer match between Benfica and Sporting, then the best taverns in the area, and finally, the Chinese and the Indians, who, according to the taxi driver, should be expelled because they want to take over business rightfully belonging to Portuguese traders.
Regarding soccer and taverns, the three passengers knew nothing, nor were they interested in those topics, but regarding the Chinese and Indians, Ijyu tried to explain that people are neither better nor worse for having been born in one or another place on Earth; the planet was one, and countries were no more than artificial divisions within the same house.
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For the taxi driver, this idea was hard to accept because, he argued, across the border with Spain, the police wore different uniforms and gasoline was cheaper. But soon, he was confessing that his wife liked to go to a store to buy Indian things, where prices were cheaper. And his cousin lived in Australia, where they also liked soccer. The ride went on, regardless.
Yania, Ijyu, and Kami finally arrived in Lagos. They said good-bye to the taxi driver and reminded him that kangaroos had lived in Portugal for a long time, and that, despite their being from Australia, no one complained; quite the contrary, people even paid to see them. Therefore, since the Chinese and Indians were human beings, they should have more rights than kangaroos, who were just animals. Ijyu gave a nice tip to the man, but on the condition that he give it to his wife for her to buy more things in the Indian store.
Around 12:30 PM, Ijyu had already rented a car, and the three were entering their small apartment overlooking the beautiful Praia da Luz.
It was there, in this quiet town, that Madeleine had been kidnapped.
The mission had begun.
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