Cottage by the Sea (24 page)

   Even if she'd unconsciously done such a monumentally stupid thing, her lawyer, Lisa Spector, would have every right to have her committed to the nearest loony bin.

   At that moment Blythe pulled up short to avoid colliding with a small tent displaying a sign that said Crystal Ball Gazing. Below the sign was a poster that touted the virtues of supporting the Search and Rescue Team, a Gorran Haven organization that was "proud to work in concert with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution." Next to it was another handmade sign that read Valerie Kent, Ph.D. Psychology. Readings: One Pound.

   Blythe couldn't resist peeking inside the tent. She was interested in seeing what a local gypsy looked like, especially one who both touted an advanced degree in psychology and dutifully supported local civic groups.

   What met Blythe's gaze was a heavyset woman in her mid-sixties with a shock of black and silver hair poking from beneath an outlandish scarlet turban that sat on her head at a dangerously rakish angle. Like a plump, broody hen, she was roosting on a folding chair in front of a glistening crystal sphere the size of a baseball. The round table it rested on, topped with a fringed tablecloth, was positioned on a small Persian carpet that covered the grass.

   "Welcome… madam," the presumed psychic greeted Blythe in mock sepulchral tones. "May I look into your future in my crystal ball? All for a good cause, you know… All for a good cause."

   "Oh… hello," Blythe said tentatively.

   "Do come in!" she trilled in a singsong voice that obviously reflected the woman's best efforts to sound genuinely gypsy-like. "My crystal ball awaits…"

   "Oh, thank you… but—"

   "You'll be my first customer," the gypsy implored her. "I promised myself I simply couldn't indulge in a cup of tea and a scone unless I'd told at least one person's fortune. I must do my bit for my colleagues, you know."

   "Are you a member of the Search and Rescue Team?" Blythe asked skeptically. She couldn't quite imagine the rotund Dr. Kent rappelling down a cliff to save some stranded soul.

   "I help people afterward… to talk about the trauma and that sort of thing."

   "Oh… well, then." Blythe shrugged, ducking her head to enter the woman's inner sanctum. "You certainly deserve a nice cup of tea."

   Why not help the poor woman do her civic duty? Blythe thought. At least it might prove an amusing way to pass the time before the birthday boy cut his cake. That way Blythe could avoid the Hostess with the Mostest. In any event, it was unlikely that Dr. Kent could produce anything more fantastical than what Blythe herself had conjured up when she had pushed her finger against the glass on Luke's genealogy chart.

   "You're American," said the stout turban-clad woman hovering over her crystal globe. "You must be Luke's summer let. From Hollywood, are you?"

   "Hrnm. Gorran Haven must be a very small village indeed," Blythe replied with a resigned smile.

   "Welcome to Cornwall, Mrs. Barton-Stowe," Dr. Kent continued brightly. "Luke told me at dinner the other night that he's delighted you'll be staying all summer."

   "He did?" Blythe replied, surprised to learn that this unlikely pair broke bread together.

   "He's my cousin… once or twice removed," Dr. Kent laughed. "Most of us whose families have lived here a long time are related one way or another, way back."

   Blythe wondered if that made this exotic-looking woman a cousin of hers as well.

   "I understand you may be kin to us both," the psychologist said, startling Blythe by practically reading her mind. "Blythe Barton is a name not easily forgotten in these parts, I assure you!" the woman added, laughing.

   "So I gather," Blythe answered. "And do you do crystalball gazing as a sideline to your work as a psychologist?"

   Valerie Kent looked at her visitor intently. "I took early retirement as a school psychologist. I still practice at the local clinic in the village two days a week. Except for my time at university, however, I've lived in Cornwall all my life."

   "Do you have children yourself, Dr. Kent?" Blythe inquired politely.

   "Never married. Do call me Valerie… May I call you Blythe?" she prattled on cheerfully. "Good. I suppose my diminutive patients became my children. Now that I'm an empty nester, as you say in the States, I have plenty of time to read. I study all manner of wonderful subjects like piskies and knackers and the myths connected with Cornish folklore." She smiled broadly at Blythe and lowered her voice to a whisper. "I also find myself exploring all the exciting parts of my profession that were taboo when I was working in the state school system."

   "Such as crystal-ball gazing?" Blythe smiled, raising an eyebrow in the direction of Valerie's transparent sphere.

   "Scrying, it's called in the trade," she answered with manifest dignity. "It's the art of gazing into any clear surface in order to conjure visions within."

   Blythe was taken aback.

   "You mean, people claim to have seen visions in shiny surfaces
other
than crystal balls?"

   "Oh, my goodness, yes. Mirrors, polished stones, glassy lakes … even pools of blood!" she added with relish. "Scrying's a very ancient technique, you know, used by the Chinese and the Egyptians and your Native Americans… All sorts of spiritual leaders have employed it to forecast future events."

   "A-and to look into the past as well?" Blythe said hesitantly.

   "Have you not heard of past-life therapy in America?" Valerie Kent asked excitedly. "I thought everyone in California was interested in that sort of thing."

   "Oh, of course… I've heard of it." Blythe nodded. "But I was born in Wyoming, so I must say, I haven't paid much attention to the subject."

   "Wyoming? How fascinating. What state is that in?"

   "It
is
a state," Blythe laughed. "In the Rocky Mountains… part of the Old West… cattle ranches… cowboys… that sort of thing. Like the movies."

   "Well," Valerie barreled straight ahead, "I read in a professional journal recently that there are some eight hundred hypnotherapists in your country, and many of them specialize in exploring past lives with their patients. Others, I hear, are looking into the possibility that we may have genetically based memory or an ancestral component to our genes. Who knows?" she pondered with a zealous gleam in her eye. "Perhaps traces of past events that were significant or traumatic in the lives of one's ancestors may somehow be etched on one's own DNA."

   "I-I don't understand," Blythe said, shaking her head.

   "Encoded messages engraved on the genes," Valerie replied, as if she were stating an accepted fact. "Why do some people cry when they hear bagpipes and others, like me, plug their ears? Or why do travelers swear they've been in a particular castle or Buddhist temple before? It's because they have been—or because some ancestor was the chief priest and was murdered by a cabal or something. The trauma of the place got etched into the DNA of witnesses to the trauma and their children inherited the notched gene. The possibilities are all extremely fascinating, don't you think?"

   "But wait," Blythe protested. "How is that possible? How could the traumas of war in one generation, for instance, possibly be remembered four or five generations down the line?"

   Valerie leaned forward, tapping her forefinger to her skull.

   "Trauma can change the brain and body chemistry," she pronounced solemnly. "That's been very well established by scientists these days, you know. And a change in body chemistry could alter some cells, which, in turn, might conceivably change the DNA—or encode a gene with information that future descendants inherit and might be able to access under hypnosis."

   "Hypnosis… as in a trance?" Blythe asked slowly. "And you use your crystal ball to—"

   "The crystal ball helps subjects focus their attention," she interrupted eagerly. "I've discovered over the years they can be hypnotized far more easily if they stare at something that reflects light. Once they're in an altered state of consciousness, recalling one's past lives—or the past lives of their forbearers—is rather like pushing the correct key on that computer of yours…the one Luke was telling me about… and then pulling up a long-lost file from your hard disk!"

   "Luke mentioned my computer…?" she asked, wondering in what context.

   "The other lives one may have lived," Valerie continued, waving her hand airily as if her cousin's comments were not particularly relevant to their conversation, "or the memory of one's ancestors encoded on one's genes, may merely be 'files' that have never been retrieved by the brain until hypnosis is used to push the right key!" Then she smiled brightly and demanded, "Now, I ask you: aren't the past-life recollections of one's ancestors and the theory of genetic memory intriguing notions? You Yanks have done such marvelous, open-minded research on these subjects. America's such a wonderfully go-ahead country! A place where the term 'metaphysical' isn't a dirty word!"

   By this time Dr. Valerie Kent was breathless with enthusiasm.

   "Eight hundred past-life therapists in the United States!" Blythe repeated with astonishment, reacting to the first of Dr. Kent's many startling statements. "Holy cow."

   "My sentiments precisely, my dear." Valerie nodded emphatically, with near disastrous results to her turban. "I've read scores of books on the subject published in America…
Life after Life… Reunions… Closer to the Light
… The Biology o
f
Belief.
All these dear people coming forward who've had neardeath experiences or past-life adventures, or have seen into the past, or dared to look into the future. They are bravely telling their stories to the world. So courageous! So absolutely fascinating, don't you agree?" she inquired for a second time.

   "I-I had no idea…" Blythe stammered. "And these pastlife therapists ask their patients to stare into mirrors and such? What about glass-covered pictures or paintings and the like? Would… ah… that kind of thing induce a trancelike state?"

   "You'd be simply amazed to read in the literature the variety of reflective surfaces that have initiated an altered state of consciousness in people," Valerie volunteered. "Personally, I think," she added in a hushed tone of voice, "that it has more to do with hypnosis, the sensitivity of the subject in the trance, and what might be engraved on their genes than the particular shining surface involved—but that, of course, is mere conjecture on my part."

   "But aren't you and others involved in this held up to ridicule by your more conservative colleagues?"

   "Constantly," Valerie acknowledged with another airy wave of a hand bedecked with an extraordinarily tasteless collection of costume jewelry. "But not to worry. It's such exciting work… it's worth being ridiculed in the name of science," she added dramatically. Then she raised her arms and settled her turban more firmly on her head. "You know the old story: 'a prophet has no honor in his own country.'" She sighed. "But," she continued cheerfully, "I have my pension now, so what do I care?"

   Then, as if to bolster the arguments supporting the merit of pursuing her eccentric hobby, she disclosed conspiratorially, "Even Queen Elizabeth the First employed a wizard with an obsidian 'shewing stone,' he called it. She asked him to divine what might happen to the Spanish Armada."

   "Amazing," Blythe murmured politely. She dug into her jeans pocket for a five-pound note and placed it on the table, prepared to pave her escape by making a contribution to Valerie's favorite charity.

   "I'm a bit disappointed you can't tell me more about crystal gazers in California," the pseudo gypsy sighed. "Well, no matter. Thank you for this," she said crisply, tucking it into her ample bosom. "The Search and Rescue Team appreciates every penny, I assure you." With that she leaned forward, and the palms of her hands hovered above her crystal ball. "Now," she said in a most professional manner, "I want you to begin to breathe very deeply… in and out… in and out…"

   "Oh, I-I don't think I want—"

   "Come, come, Blythe," Valerie hushed her. "I've never had the opportunity to hypnotize an American. You must allow me to have a go. That's it… sit down! Now, breathe from your diaphragm… in and out… in and out… that's better… just breathe deeply… in and out. I want you to relax completely… just let your mind go blank, and…"

   Blythe didn't reply. In fact, in the next few minutes she hardly heard Dr. Valerie Kent's voice at all. Instead she stared, transfixed, at the sight of the ersatz conjurer's crystal ball. Inside the translucent sphere floated the vision of a baby. It appeared before Blythe's gaze like a tiny astronaut, adrift in infinite space, and utterly alone in its pink perfection.

   "Blythe? Do you see something?"

   "A child…" she murmured. "I see a child…"

   "What else do you see?" Dr. Kent asked quietly.

   "I-I think it hasn't been born yet."

   "Why do you say that?"

   Silence. And then Blythe answered in a labored whisper, "The baby… is still attached… to the umbilical cord."

   "Who is its mother?"

   "The baby's lost… and the mother…" Blythe paused, her voice choked with emotion. "The mother's crying."

"Why?" asked the psychologist gently.

   In response to the hypnotist's previous question, Blythe herself began to weep.