Chapter Fifty. Steam Rises

Steam Rises

Derby flashed back to the limo ride after the Ninja fight, when Jeninqua had been thrown into the seat next to him. She was tattered and beaten up badly. Derby could feel her next to him. She was nearly naked, barely covered in the torn scrap (or what was left of it) of her tiny dress.

He felt the urgency of his need for her. The tug of his care for her was imminent. She needed him now after she stood between him and danger and took a beating to within inches of her life. She used her body as a shield for him.  She was near death and Derby felt all his power should be redirected to protect her. To save her from more danger. He thought, at the time, he would use all his energy and replenish hers.

There was also the sensuality of her innocense. Her body was there, naked, except for a small thread of fabric. Her breasts, her belly, her neck, her perfect legs. She was nearly unconscious. In no way was she in shape for feeling arousal. She was struggling to breathe. And yet, Derby noticed all of her sexual fullness. "My God," he thought, "even near death she is magnificent and I WANT her. Now. Just like she is. I want to throw her down in this seat and have her. Be inside of her."

And yet, Fredalnte Muscovido had just burst Derby's bubble about his fantasy gal.

"She is me?," Derby wondered to himself. The limousine, now still winding and humming along some river road in some obscure neighborhood in Hong Kong proper, but the silence of the engine was now less present. (How is that for a bunch of double negatives in sequence?). The purr of the motor had become a banging, clanking bunch of mangled gears and fighting cats and chaotic disturbance.

A war was going on somewhere in the world and a struggle was taking place in our hero's consciousness and Derby was losing the battle.

"How is Jeninqua me?," he desperately asked his internal monitor. "WHY is she me? and then WHO am I, if also Jeninqua? And how....," he stopped and let his logic engage. "How could she have been on the plane? How did she turn into some kind of monster when Fred burst in the scene? and the mice! Umpa called them to him and spun them. Wasn't she a white mouse which had swallowed a black marble? Or was she a black mouse? Wasn't she a black marble? My God, please someone come and untangle this knot!"

As if Fredalnte was in his head watching the dialogue which Derby was conducting with himself, the handsome travel companion offered, "Derby, you need to relax. Start with your shoulders."

Fredalnte could have been a licensed physical therapist at that moment. "You are totally tight and you have very chaotic disturbance surging through yourself. Relax my boy. First try to relax. Then we'll continue."

Derby's head was spinning. He felt nauseous. "I don't feel well," he told Fredalnte.

"Focus," Fred instructed him. "The marbles are still in your hand. Rub them together."

"I don't want to feel the marbles," Derby assured Fred. "I don't want to feel period. I want to go home. Please, just let me go home."


Fredalnte wrapped his two hands around Derby's right hand which held the balls. He cupped them and maneuvered them so Derby had no choice but to squeeze and turn the marbles. The black marble trumps the white marble Derby!," Fredalnte explained. "Water puts out fire! Focus on the black marble my lad. Now imagine that the wet coolness of the black marble is in the "oven" of the white marble. What is it doing?"


With Fred's pumping motion of his two hands around Derby's right hand, the marbles were rubbing together and turning. Derby's eyes were closed and his breathing had relaxed.


"Breathe in and out of your nostrils," Fred instructed. "In and out. Relax. Now again, what is the black marble doing--in the oven?"


Derby continued to peer into the visualization which Fred was orchestrating. "It is steaming," Derby finally whispered. "There is moist steam coming off the black marble."


"Yes," said Fredalnte. "Then the steam rises. Where does it go?," he asked Derby who was now in a trance like state and lost in the visualization exercise.


"It rises to the upper chambers. Energy seems to be refined and an awakening takes place," spoke Derby, as if from a dream.


"Yes, affirmed Fred. "And circulates. Keep it circulating. Hold that circulation. Breathe."


Derby concentrated and did as he was instructed.


"Now, what do you notice about the energy?," asked the teacher to his meditating pupil. "What is different about the energy?"


"It is refined," Derby spoke mechanically. "It is subtle."


"I understand," continued Fredalnte. "But what has changed?"


"Before," slowly began Derby, eyes closed and attention focussed within, "it was physical energy stirring from my testicles. It was about reproduction. As if it was just animal drive."


"Good," commended Fredalnte. "Continue. What is different?"


"It is the same energy but mutated," began Derby. "It actually wasn't from my testicles as I thought, but had come from the base of my spine!," he said, as if he had stumbled on to a revelation.


"Excellent my boy," said Fred. "What else?"


"This is evolutionary energy!," Derby explained, as if he sat in a mysterious restaurant where unknown foods were dispensed and he had just discovered a brand new flavor, never before tasted by him.


"Hold that circulation Derby. Now who was Jeninqua and what are you to her?," Fredalnte asked of his apprentice.


"She is night. I'm day. She came to break the cycle of excess Yang. For five thousand years there has been an accumulation of excess Yang. I am her song."