Chapter 1

The memories started when puberty struck, and for a while I believed I was surely going bonkers. I mean, jeez, it's bad enough to be forced to deal with periods, tender titties, and body hair and odors, not to mention some pretty powerful sexual urges I wasn't ready to handle. Add a lot of strange memories that made no sense but were vivid enough they had to be real, and I was ready for the funny farm.

Mom had been helpful with the standard puberty stuff, even the sexual urges, although I honestly didn't see abstinence as the way to go, but she wasn't equipped to help me with the memories. You see, she's very religious, a Mormon, and reincarnation and Mormonism just don't go together. For that matter, reincarnation and Christianity clashed - period. I figured if I couldn't talk to my mom about what was happening to me that I couldn't talk with anyone, so I zipped my lips about the memories and tried to act like a normal teenager.

The memories invading my mind were from past lives - my past lives, I finally figured out - and they weren't fleeting, a vignette here or a passing thought there. The detail from my past lives was huge in scope, including the various languages, professions, religions, and the general cultures I experienced with each life. I also remembered the men and women I knew, and the children - especially my children. To confuse me further, I wasn't always a female. I was a male in about half my incarnations.

What perplexed me more than anything at first was the order in which the memories arrived. I didn't remember my immediate past life first. Uh-uh, that would've been way too easy - less confusing, too. Instead the memories started way back when, and the first to arrive was my death - my first death I figured out later. Now that scared the bejesus outta me.

I died. I don't know how or when, but I died, and nine months later, I was reborn al-Biruni in 973 AD. I died in that incarnation in 1048. Al-Biruni wasn't subjected to a whole bunch of memories like I was in this life, except he remembered that death I mentioned, and like me, he experienced his demise during his previous incarnation at the onset of puberty. He shook it off and went about his business.

I decided his approach was the best way to handle the memories, but I've often wondered if he would've reacted so nonchalantly if his memories included twenty-two complete lives over one thousand plus years.

Al-Biruni was an Arab scholar, quite an accomplished man for his time. That incarnation gave me fluency in the Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and Syriac languages - a pretty good start in life, huh? I won't bore you with the details of that life, but if you're interested look him up. He's in the history books.

My next life was a short one. I was born in 1049 and was killed in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Yes, I was a man in that life, too. You can't look me up in the history books because I wasn't very important in that incarnation, but check out the Battle of Hastings. The Normans kicked butt, and the battle changed the course of European history.

I lived my next life as an Icelandic female from 1067 to 1118. Again, I'm not included in the history books for that era, but check out Ari, the Icelandic historian. He was my brother-in-law.

As a female and a Jew under Muslim rule, I lived in Cordoba, Spain from 1119 to 1178. I named my first son Moses. My last name for that incarnation was Maimonides. My boy made me proud. Look him up if you want. He was a pretty good philosopher.

Are you starting to get the picture? I've been a man and a woman, rich and poor, lived long lives and short ones in many places on our glorious planet. And I remembered... everything! I wasn't a seventeen-year-old girl; I was a thousand or so years old. Wild, huh?

The memories could be troublesome, though. For instance, I could speak about twenty languages, write some of them, too, but like English, the languages had evolved over time since I learned them as a child. One day I sat next to a Frenchman at a restaurant. I could make out what he was saying, but when I spoke with him in his language, he asked what part of France I came from because my French wasn't his French. I couldn't tell him I learned his language from 1589 to 1611 when I was a girl living in Paris, France.

I also learned the hard way not to correct my history teachers about some of the wrong facts they presented, and because I'd been many races over the years, I was way too quick to denounce prejudice of any sort, which frequently put me at odds with teenagers and adults alike.

But the biggest problem for me at my current age in this life was sex. I was a virgin, but I wasn't, if you get my drift. I knew a lot about the subject, not only from the female but also the male perspective. And surprise, surprise! I was bisexual. Hah! Experiencing life as both a male and a female over the last thousand years made bisexuality a given. I lusted for pretty girls and women as much as sexy boys and men. Yeah, both genders, young and old, well, not too old or too young. The age of the recipients of my lust didn't matter all that much as long as I was attracted to them. The lust I felt wasn't new, either. I'd been just as randy during each of my previous lives, but satisfying my current urges was a huge problem. Remember, I told you my mother was a religious woman, a Mormon, and Mormons, like most Christian religions, espouse a pretty rigid code of sexual conduct. I loved my mom and didn't want to hurt her, and my dad was an even bigger problem. He was the Bishop of our ward.

Still, taking any religion seriously was difficult for me. In past lives, besides being a Christian, I'd been a Buddhist, Taoist, and followed the teachings of Confucius. Toss in Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, several pagan religions, and a few other well-known or obscure faiths, and you can understand my reluctance to give myself over to one religion. In some past lives, I didn't have a choice. I toed the line or else, but I figured I had a choice in this one. The question in my mind was whether to give lip service to my loving parents' religion, or openly defy them. Right or wrong, I elected the former course.

I mentioned earlier that I wasn't a seventeen-year-old girl, that I was a thousand years old. That's true, but the real truth reflected the reality that I lived in the here and now, not the nebulous past. I had the experience of a courtesan, but at the same time I was an innocent girl, a frustrating dichotomy, I'm here to tell you.

If you're wondering, yes, during past lives, I'd been both a thinly disguised gigolo and a renowned courtesan. Also from 1880 to 1916, I lived for thirty-six years in Brazil where I plied my trade as a common prostitute for four of those years. The beaches of Epanema and Copacabana were my corners. That I became a prostitute was not entirely by choice, more by the accident of my birth - la Vida, the life, or a daughter following her mother into the oldest profession. I used the stake I saved by selling my body for four years and combined the money with the knowledge I gleaned from my memories to improve my social and economic status.

Regarding my social and economic status for this life, I was okay. My family wasn't rich, but certainly not poor; I wasn't drop-dead gorgeous, but nowhere near ugly; intellectually, I wasn't a rocket scientist, but I wasn't dimwitted, either. The memories helped make me a straight A student without much effort.

I lived in Scottsdale, Arizona with my parents and my brothers and sisters - two sisters, both older, and two brothers, both younger. Dad owned and operated a large heating and air-conditioning business, mostly air-conditioning. The summers in Arizona can be brutal - profitable for my dad, though. Fortunately, he was a good business manager and knew how to delegate because he spent most of his time tending the members of the Mormon ward he led. He did an awful lot of praying, too. Mom was a homemaker, and a good one from all accounts. My oldest sister, Carol, was away at college - Brigham Young University, of course. She was also engaged to a returned missionary of the church. Whether she was a virgin was open to question. Jennifer, my other sister, was without doubt a virgin. She was the most infuriatingly righteous person I've ever known both in this and past lives. Boring. Cal, short for Calvin, was a year younger than I. Cal was a jock and much too full of himself. Josh, my other brother and the baby of the family, was fifteen going on forty, which is better than being seventeen going on one thousand, like me. I adored Josh. He could've been labeled a nerd because he was smart as a whip and serious about school and learning, but he was too good-looking to be a nerd, and he certainly wasn't shy around girls.

Witness.

"Sandy," Josh said after knocking on my bedroom door. "May I come in?

"Not unless you want to see me naked," I said teasingly through the door. I wasn't naked. I wore panties and a bra, but...

The door opened, and bold as brass, he stepped into my room. "Liar," he said with a boyish grin.

Did I shriek with indignation or embarrassment? Nope. I struck an alluring pose. "Close enough to get your motor runnin', young fella."

He laughed. "That's for sure. Got a question for ya."

"Close the door and have a seat. I'll throw on a robe."

"Shucks," he said as he plopped onto my computer chair at my desk.

I belted the robe loosely and sat on my bed. "Ask away."

"Can you sense what other people are feelin'?"

"Sometimes. Facial expressions and body language help. And eyes. Eyes are the windows to the soul."

"That's not what I mean. Can you sense what someone is feelin' even if you can't see 'em?"

I frowned. "No. Can you?"

"Yeah. I think I'm an empath."

Did I laugh? Uh-uh. I believed I could remember my twenty-two immediate past lives, so I wasn't about to scoff at Josh's incredible claim that he was an empath. I could empathize, no pun intended, with my brother's plight, but the boy had always been imaginative. He'd had an imaginary friend when he was a child. So, I did have a few questions.

"Have you spoken with anyone about this... ah, ability of yours?"

"Sort of, but... ah, heck! I brought it up with Bill as something that could be possible, but he laughed at the concept." Bill Robb was Josh's ex-best friend. He and his family had moved away recently, leaving Josh as loose ends.

"You said you could sense what someone is feeling even if you couldn't see that person. Give me an example. No, wait. Let's talk about feeling first. Are you referring to emotions?"

"Yeah, but I feel sensations, too."

"Aren't sensations and emotions the same?"

"Uh-uh. I looked them up on the Internet. Emotions involve the whole body, but sensations are related to a specific part of a body. Happiness, for example, is an emotion. If you cut your finger, you feel pain. That's a sensation."

"Gotcha. So, your empathic ability includes both emotions and sensations?"

"Yep. Cool, huh?"

"Way cool. How long have you had this ability?"

He shrugged. "It started about three years ago, but it was intermittent and not very strong for a while. Now it's all the time and... Well, it's so strong now that it's becomin' a problem."

"How so?"

He blushed. "I walked by your bedroom about an hour ago. Jeez, Sandy! When you climaxed I did, too. In my pants!"

Talk about blush! I must've been a bright red. An hour earlier, I'd been joyfully playing with my pussy. My door was shut and locked. Except for subdued gasps, I was quiet about it, too. There was no way Josh could've known what I was doing unless...

I gulped and took a couple of deep breaths. His statement required a response, and I figured I could react in a number of ways. I could act indignant or furious because my privacy had been invaded. In truth, his astonishing assertion had produced both emotions, although they were fleeting. Did he feel them? On the other hand, I could stonewall him, deny giving myself a couple of comes earlier and call him a liar. Or...

I chose honest acceptance, the response I would've liked from Mom when I tried to tell her about my memories. I chuckled and said, "In your pants, huh? Good. That's what you deserved for invading my privacy."

He hung his head. "I didn't..."

"But because you invaded my privacy without a conscious effort on your part, I forgive you."

His boyish grin melted my heart.

I asked, "Is a climax an emotion or a sensation?"

He frowned. "I think it starts out as a sensation, turns into an emotion, and becomes a sensation again."

I nodded. "Makes sense. Starts in the genitals and spreads through the whole body. What about sexual arousal?" I asked because that's what I was feeling at the moment.

The little shit grinned at me. Little? Hardly. An inch over six feet, he towered over my five eight. He wore his dark, curly hair long, and his large, dark eyes glinted with passion. I glanced at his crotch. Yep, he was feeling what I was feeling, and the bulge in his pants didn't do anything to dampen my libido. Just the opposite. It dampened my panties.

Incest. In all my past lives, save one, incest was verboten, a crime against nature and God, whatever God was worshiped at the time. That didn't mean incest didn't happen, and I'd committed the crime quite a few times in my past lives. The exception I mentioned happened from 1550 to 1588 when I was a female member of an indigenous tribe living in the Amazon rainforest. According to custom, I married my brother during that incarnation - happily married him, I might add. I shivered when some sexy images from that life flashed through my mind, and my panties became wetter.