The Secret Language of Stones (16 page)

“Yes, there will be a way to shut it. The issue is that there's a real possibility that if you shut it even once, it might stay shut.”

Picturing a large metal door like the one to the vault under the shop, I imagined shoving it closed.

“Forever? I might not be able to open it again for even one voice?”

She nodded.

If she was right, if I did close it forever and stopped hearing voices . . . if all the voices went away, Jean Luc would go away too. Was the risk worth the loss? I shivered. What did it mean that I could even
ask myself that? What was Jean Luc really but an incorporeal dream?

“You still want me to try?”

I nodded. “I think so.”

Anna stood, went to the shelves, and began pulling down jars. As she opened one after the other, taking out pinches and handfuls of dried leaves and powders, the cavern became redolent with a strange, mysterious scent. Adding a few drops of oil to the mixture, she ground it in a mortar with a pestle and then poured it into a glass. In the candlelight it glittered gold, almost as if she'd ground down some of the mosaics from the walls of the cathedral above us.

Next, Anna uncorked a dark green bottle and poured some of its liquid into the glass. Suddenly I smelled apples—the scent that always accompanied my messaging. Usually it made me queasy, but there, in the cavern, it caused no ill effect.

Finally, Anna unscrewed a jar, dug in a spoon, scooped out honey, and stirred it into the concoction. An aura appeared around the mixture, as if it were lit from within. Or was it just the candlelight's reflection?

“You've always said that when you make the lockets you smell apples.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why apples are connected to the talismans?”

I shook my head.

“Try to remember that very first time. Tell me about it.”

I closed my eyes and thought back. “I was in the studio . . .”

“Picture it in your mind. Do you see yourself there?”

I nodded.

“Look around . . .”

In my mind I glanced around the workshop.

“Do you see anything unusual? Pavel loves apples, was there one on his table?”

I shook my head.

“Look down at your workspace,” Anna said.

“Yes, yes. I can't believe I forgot. You'd brought tea right before the customer arrived. Apples and little cakes.

“I put the plate of food away when I went to help Madame Maboussine. Her son had been killed at the front, she said. And she'd remembered how her grandmother had worn mourning jewelry and wanted to memorialize her son in that old-fashioned way. As soon as she handed me the lock of his hair, my head filled with noise initiating an avalanche of pain. Suddenly the scent of the apple—still on my fingers, I suppose—became overwhelming.”

I told Anna how the next day, while working on the design for the amulet, I incorporated the apple quarters into the design. I was basing the locket's design on an ancient Etruscan rock crystal amulet I'd seen in the Louvre. An orb nestled in two bands of gold. One wrapping it horizontally, the other vertically, with a hook at the top for a cord. A lock of hair sandwiched between two halves of the crystal. I was drawing it when Anna came into the workshop with that afternoon's tea. Once again bringing little cakes and apples cut into quarters. I'd stared at the fruit, the sections, the slices, suddenly getting the idea to cut the rock crystal into slices like the apple, then etch in the symbols for the soldier's astrological sign along with his birth date and death date and decorate them with his birthstone. A commemoration of his being born and mourning of his being gone.

“So the apple was connected to the talisman twice.”

“Yes, the first time when Madame Maboussine came in and I'd been eating the apple . . . its odor still on my fingers. The second, while designing the piece. I hadn't realized it.”

Anna nodded. “Let me see your palm.” Reaching out for my hand, she turned it over and studied the underside. She'd first done this a long time ago, when I was thirteen and we'd just met.

She pointed to the crescent-moon-shaped scar on the fleshy part of my thumb. “I don't remember this from before.”

“While I was working on the talisman later that day. I cut myself with a carving tool. It slipped.”

“And bled?”

“Quite a bit. It made me sick to my stomach.”

“Was that the first time you became nauseated in relation to the talismans?”

“I hadn't thought about that connection before, but yes . . .”

“So you'd been aware of the smell of the apples before, but the scent hadn't made you sick. That only happened when you cut yourself?”

“I think so, yes.”

“And now, still, you conjure the smell of apples when you work on a piece and feel ill.”

“Yes.”

“Did you hear Madame Maboussine's son's voice while you made the locket?” Anna asked.

“No, that didn't happen until I gave it to her and she put it on. At first it was just a faraway whisper. A young man's voice:
Tell her even though I'm gone, she's my mother forever. Tell her, please, for me.
”

“What did you do?”

“I excused myself, got up, and went into the showroom, thinking someone was there. But there wasn't. I opened the door to the staircase, thinking I'd heard someone below, but the stairwell was empty.”

“You didn't realize yet?”

“No.”

“Or you didn't want to.”

“I was convinced I'd heard someone whispering. His voice was that clear and distinct. I just didn't know where it was coming from.”

“How did you feel?” she asked.

“Confused and afraid.”

Anna nodded. Then, in the quiet, I suddenly heard chanting. Panic rose in me like bile.

Anna noticed my expression. Instantly, she tried to calm me. “I hear it as well,” she said reassuringly. “It's the monks chanting.”

I relaxed.

“I believe that in the moment you cut yourself and bled over the soldier's hair, you lowered the curtain between our plane and the one beyond.”

I shivered.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A saying in my family having to do with blood.”

She nodded. “ ‘Make of the blood, a stone. Make of a stone, a powder. Make of a powder, life everlasting.' Is that the one?”

“How do you know it? Did my mother tell you?”

“No. I knew about it before I met her. Most of us who are involved in the occult here in Paris know of it. It's referred to as ‘the curse and the blessing of La Lune.' ”

“But it wasn't complete. I remember my mother sitting with me in the bell tower the year I turned thirteen . . . an ancient worn leather-bound book opened before us. La Lune's grimoire—my mother explained how the spells were encrypted in the text. My mother said there is a quarto of missing pages that were believed to contain a poem, each canto holding a secret of the universe. Each, an enigma revealing a power. To ensure the poem never went missing, La Lune wrote out each canto separately and hid them somewhere else. My mother discovered the blood stanza when she was just about my age, in her grandmother's house. The others, she told me, were still lost. But I think I might have found them.”

I fingered the ring I wore on my right hand. The ruby floret given to me by my mother when I first got my menses. Part of the La Lune legacy, she'd said, and told me it would protect me and never to take it off.

Anna nodded at my hand. “The crescent on your thumb . . . is it the only one on your body?”

“No, I have a birthmark on my back in a similar shape.”

“The sign of every Daughter of La Lune.”

“My mother only uses that name to sign her paintings. The real La Lune died in the sixteen hundreds.”

“And all her female descendants are called Daughters of La Lune. If you'd let your mother school you in their rituals, you'd be able to use them to quiet the voices.”

“But I didn't want to learn. I'd grown to hate what made her different. What kept me and my sisters separate from everyone else. I just wanted to be normal.”

What did I even know about a normal life? Did I have a taste of it with Timur? Maybe for a moment, but my powers hadn't even allowed me to enjoy a normal relationship with him.

“All right. Let's see what we can do about it now. The German philosopher Nietzsche said if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you. This is a dangerous journey we are undertaking. You must be prepared. First, I'd like you to drink this . . .” Anna handed me the glass of golden liquid she'd concocted while we'd talked.

“What is it?”

“A combination of herbs, honey, and juice to make you less nervous and more receptive.”

“It's safe?”

“Of course.” She took the glass from me, tipped it to her lips, and sipped. Then she handed it back to me and I drank it down, surprised at its deliciousness, relieved the fermented apples didn't nauseate me.

The chanting I'd heard before started up again, more loudly this time. The sonorous ensemble of men using their voices as instruments seemed to be coming through the walls and the ceilings to surround me like a cloak, cosseting me, seeping through my skin, entering me. I closed my eyes and the gold and jewel-toned mosaics from the cathedral swam in the darkness, a kaleidoscope of rubelites, peridots, wine-colored rubies, midnight sapphires, royal amethysts, citrines, sea green emeralds—fractured facets of gems—brilliant and blinding.

“Open your eyes,” Anna whispered.

She looked like a portrait in stained glass. Her face and clothes turned into prismatic designs pulsing in time to the chants. I floated on the sounds, lifted up in invisible arms.

“Opaline, can you hear me?”

I responded but too softly, and she asked a second time. I made a greater effort. “Yes.” The word sounded loud and harsh in my ears. As if the entire world coalesced in my voice.

“All right. You can close your eyes again. Just listen and relax.”

I sensed a light pressure on my forehead in between my eyebrows. Then heat. Her finger pressing warmth into me.

“Can you feel this? This is the spot we need to focus on . . .” She took my hand and replaced her finger with mine. The heat dissipated. “This is your third eye . . . In Hinduism it's called the eye of clairvoyance; in Buddhism it's called Urna . . . in Egypt, the Eye of Osiris . . . in Hebrew they say it is the eye of the soul.” She took my hand away and replaced my finger with hers. The heat returned. “Once I've taught you to open your third eye, you will be able to use this portal and reach inside yourself and access all your abilities. You will be able to speak to the voices through your third eye.”

Her pronouncements merged with the chanting until they were one and the same. Her words, their rhythm. Their cadence, her phrases. Her finger burned my skin. Setting me on fire. All calm left. Anxiety took over. Raged. Nightmare images filled my mind. A black smoking field . . . smoldering trees . . . the bitter stench of hair on fire . . . my hair?

Reaching up, I tried to push her hand away, but she held fast. I wanted to rise . . . run . . . get away from her . . . from the chant . . . from the fire. Around my neck the talisman felt hot . . . heat increasing every second . . . heat devouring me . . . Suddenly faces swam into my mind. Unfamiliar. Each in uniform . . . tattered . . . dirty . . . torn . . . Each face—younger, older, fair, swarthy—each in agony . . . suffering, in pain . . .

One by one, I saw them, suffered with them, then watched as
their misery seemed to melt through and each face lost all its color and settled into a peaceful black mask.

Who were these men? I didn't understand my own vision. Until I saw one I did recognize. Madame Maboussine's son. She'd shown me his picture. Twenty-one years old. His face contorted. Screaming mouth hole. The shout no less frightening for its silence. His expression exploded, distorting, finally settling into a pale, sad smile.

And then I knew I was seeing the men I'd messaged. In the process, they became part of me and I them. And while their final peaceful visages should have comforted me, they didn't. Their terror was imprinted on me. I was reliving it.

I started to scream—at least I thought I was screaming—but it was their collective voices I heard, their horrible, terrified shrieks and openmouthed bleeding cries.

Anna's pressure on the spot between my eyebrows increased. Their voices and my screaming softened, lowered, turned into bells, large bronze bells, clanging over and over, and even though they were no longer hideous, they were still clamoring, still disturbing.

I couldn't listen anymore, couldn't watch. I needed to quiet them, to silence them, to stop the pictures and the sounds, and I pushed myself away from the table and stood up and then there was nothing but blackness and blessed calm.

Chapter 15

Once I'd recovered from my fainting spell, Anna made me tea laced with cognac and lavender honey and served me little Russian tea cakes her cousin had left for us and insisted I try to eat. But I couldn't. She sat with me and encouraged me, but all I could do was cry. My tears of frustration flowed freely, and she tried her best to comfort me, but I was inconsolable. I'd put so much faith into our session. I'd expected to walk away with the ability to be in control. Instead, nothing had changed. I'd only learned that if I tried to close the portal, I might never be able to open it again.

“It's a gift,” Anna said, smoothing down my hair. “And you need to embrace it and trust we will find a way to help you live with it.”

“It's not a gift,” I insisted. “It's a nightmare.”

“Part of the secret to being able to control it is not being so frightened of it . . . not hating this ability quite so much.”

“Anna, the war is right inside my mind. I hear these men who have died. Some are still caught up in their pain, haven't forgotten it yet, are traumatized by it. Others are so worried about those they are leaving behind, they can't sever the connection. Lost, missing their families, they are in some terrible limbo.”

“But they don't stay there, do they?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let's agree you are receiving messages the soldiers leave in the passage vortex between life and death. That these final thoughts linger in some kind of psychic tunnel waiting for you to retrieve them so the soldiers can take their last step out of this realm.”

“Yes, fine.”

“And once you listen to the messages and pass them on, the soldiers move on?”

I nodded.

“So if you focused on that, maybe you would be more accepting. After all, none of them stay with you, do they? Once you give a mother or sister or wife her talisman, that soldier's voice is gone, isn't it?”

“Yes . . .” I wanted to tell her about Jean Luc, but something stopped me.

She didn't notice my hesitation.

“So your actions relieve them of all their pain and suffering. You unhaunt them, if you will. Do you see?”

I nodded.

“That's why it's a gift. You give them the permission they need to move past the pain and step into the light.”

“And if I were to keep hearing a voice, what would that mean?”

“I'm not sure. Has that happened?”

If I told her about Jean Luc, would she think there was in fact something wrong with my mind? That I was making him up? What if she called my mother in Cannes and my parents came to get me? Would Jean Luc come with me? What of my work at the shop? The help I was giving the women who came to see me? Could I abandon them?

“No, it hasn't,” I lied.

“So if you look at the process this way, wouldn't the burden feel less onerous?”

“I suppose. I just wish . . .” I shrugged. “I still wish I didn't need to bear witness to their agony.”

Once again, she smoothed down my unruly hair, and then bent down and kissed me.

“Let's go home. We won't give up, Opaline. We'll work it out.”

I lay in bed after Anna left, my hand creeping up to my chest, cupping the talisman. I kept thinking about the ramifications of what I'd undertaken. If I closed the door and couldn't open it again, I would be letting go of Jean Luc.

The gold began to heat against my skin. I turned on the light, and I pulled out the book of Jean Luc's columns I'd borrowed from Madame Alouette and opened it to where I'd left off. The next column after the one about Héloïse and Abelard.

Don
't read that one.

Jean Luc's voice.

“Why?”

It's too sad and you're already so very sad.

“How do you know?”

I was with you today.

“How does this work?” Suddenly shy, I put my hand up to my chest. I hadn't yet gotten used to the idea of him being able to see me without me realizing.

I'm not totally sure myself. I'
m not always cognizant of you. But when I am, I have a feeling I'm warm. Which isn't how I feel the rest of the time.

“Do you try to see me or does it happen without you making an effort?”

I have to make an effort.

“Can you hear me too? What I'm thinking?”

If you direct a question to me in your thoughts, but it
's far easier for me if you do speak out loud.

“How do you do it?”

I don't know.

“How does my voice sound to you when I'm just thinking?”

The same. As if we are connected by hollow threads that allow sound to travel back and forth. But I'll always let you know I'm there. I won'
t spy on you.

“How?”

The warmth.

“Where are you the rest of the time?” I asked.

I don't know. My awareness isn't constant. But when I am with you, I'm in the least amount of discomfort. Not that I'm ever in acute
pain. Oh damn, I've spent my life using words precisely and now I can barely figure out my state of being.

I laughed. Then thought how odd—either I was laughing at an invention of my own mind or at a ghost. And if he was an invention of my mind, then I was ill, wasn't I?

You aren't.

He'd read my thoughts.

I may not be quite real the way people in your life are, but I'm myself and not someone you invented. Just think, Opaline, if you were to invent a fantasy lover,
wouldn't you make him much more exotic than me? I'm just a bourgeois journalist who can't even dance well.

And then he laughed. I'd never heard him laugh before. A joyful sound, it reminded me of the time before the war when young men drank champagne with women in cafés and bought them violet posies and the sound of cabaret music lingered in the air, mixing with the perfume women wore, all making the very streets of Paris, like the lives lived there, seductive and delightful.

I loved the sound of Jean Luc's laughter and tried to memorize it, for I feared this strange experience would not last. The dead do not linger for long. Jean Luc would do what he must and move on.

I'd been sitting up in bed, my back against the pillows. It seemed one of them had slipped down and I reached to prop it back up. But the pillow sat in place. What was I feeling?

“Jean Luc?”

Yes.

“Is that you?”

Yes, I'm trying to get the hang of this. So you can feel that, can you?

“I can.”

I heard a soft chuckle.

And this?

He'd moved his hand to my shoulder and stroked it. Though I wasn't quite feeling a hand. The warm breeze seemed to have coalesced into a form.

“Yes. Do you feel anything?”

No. I don't seem to be whole. I don't get hungry or thirsty either. But I have emotions.

“You're upset about your men.”

More than upset. If I'd been smarter, I would have realized we were walking into a trap. I would have—

“Stop. Please. It's pointless. Regret isn't like grief; it never lessens, just stays the same. A little hard ball in the pit of your stomach.”

What do you have to regret?

So he hadn't listened to the whole story I'd told Anna.

“A boy went off to war, and all he wanted was my promise to wait for him.”

You didn
't give it?

“No.”

Why?

“I should have, even if I didn't love him. Realized he needed me and it wouldn't hurt me to just tell him. But I didn't love him. Not the way you wrote about love in your column. A grand love, you wrote. Did you have a love that grand?” I asked him.

No. I never did. Did you?

“No, and I wouldn't want to. It would be too painful if it failed.”

But to experience it once—even if it is painful—don't you think it would be worth it? Wouldn't you want to know what that kind of intensity is like? Wouldn't you want to feel that deeply?

“I don't think most people can. Not the way I imagine it.”

Tell me what you imagine.

Leaning over, I shut off the light. If we were going to have a complete conversation, it wouldn't be as peculiar in the darkness. I'd be less conscious of the empty room.

“I wouldn't think it happens easily or often. Never for some people. I imagine a love like that is like a fire . . . starting with a spark and growing into a blaze . . . becoming an engulfing passion too hot for most people to withstand.”

But don't you think a passion that strong would last? Even as glowing embers. Always illuminating the blackness. Always giving some warmth in the cold.

“It seems so tragic to me, but you make it sound wonderful.”

And it would be . . . to always
possess the memory of what was possible. Of what could be. Tell me, what do you think it takes to make that first spark?

“What does it take to make a grain of sand become a pearl? They say the sand is an irritant. Maybe love starts that way too. You're alone in yourself and then meet someone who upsets your balance, who you can't quite explain away or put in a comfortable place. Someone who shakes your very soul. Who has ideas that jar you and make you think. Who does more than understand you, who understands what you need.”

Who shakes your soul. That's lovely.

The warmth around my shoulders slipped down my back. Encircled my waist. I'd been kissed before, often enough by Timur, by Grigori, but Jean Luc's kiss wasn't like theirs. It began dancing on my lips, pressing on my mouth, and at the same time on my breasts and then at the same time between my legs. Creating sensations all over my body in the one instant. I became the spark about to combust. I smelled his scent of pungent limes, verbena, and myrrh. So intoxicating, at once forbidden and teasing. Like the ghost who now lay on top of me, beckoning me to slide into his dark embrace and get lost within sensation.

How was he stroking me? How could he be moving me to distraction? How was this ephemeral being making my heart race and my breath come in shorter and shorter spurts? A force building deep inside of me beat to a rhythm I couldn't hear but my blood responded to. A spark burst into tiny tickling flames, the flames licking the cleft between my legs, my legs pressing together as the gathering tightened and tightened more and then exploded into fragments of fire . . . a hundred tiny pinpricks of sensation reaching up and up and then finally slowing, easing, so nothing existed but the feeling of my heart pounding with excitement and the sound of the blood rushing faster and faster.

And then it ended. As I caught my breath, I waited to hear what he would say. How he would describe what had occurred.

“Jean Luc?”

No response.

“Jean Luc?”

I waited, but still no response. If he'd been there, he wasn't any longer. The tears came then and surprised me with their intensity. I wanted him to be real. He made me feel as if I belonged to someone and someone belonged to me. As if I'd found my place in the world. Except he wasn't in this world with me. His body had burned in a terrible explosion that destroyed dozens of lives. Ash on a field at the front. He wasn't supposed to have died there like that. I was sure of it. He was supposed to come home. So we could meet. So a true spark might have ignited. So when he kissed me, he'd be able to feel my lips on his. I fell asleep with tears still flowing, clutching the talisman, wondering into what darkness my phantom lover had disappeared.