by Cat Winters
I swallowed and hesitated. Prickly beads of sweat bubbled across my forehead. Genevieve’s lullaby strengthened in volume, perhaps to assuage my fears.
Don’t be rude and delay the show, I scolded myself the way Father would complain whenever I dawdled before leaving the house for an event. What are you waiting for? Chop-chop!
I slipped off my gloves with my eyes directed toward my nut-brown skirt. Henri’s bare right hand reached my way, and, with trembling fingers, I took it. Our other hands joined as well. His skin, smooth and hot, smoldered against mine.
“Look into my eyes,” he told me.
I gave his face a brief glance, noting how blue his irises were, but the idea of staring into the face of a stranger felt unnatural. I tittered and focused instead on the starry backdrop.
“Miss Mead,” he said in the gentlest male voice I’d ever heard, “are there any worries you would like to escape?”
My smile faded. My mind skipped back to a scene from earlier that day. I saw a small group of women with yellow ribbons pinned to their left shoulders. They shouted for equality on the steps of the courthouse. My own voice, along with Frannie’s and Kate’s, rang through the air in support. A barrage of rotten eggs smacked my arms and chest and oozed milky gray yolk down the lace of my blouse with a stink that made me gag. Fierce-eyed men—men who might have known my father—barked at us to go back to our homes where we belonged, and I ran off to scrub away the filth and my guilt until my fingers turned red and raw.
“Miss Mead?” asked Henri Reverie. “Would you like me to take you away from the world for a while?”
I glanced back at him, and his eyes held mine. Such arresting blue eyes—bright river blue, without any flecks of green or gold to distract from the principal color. They pulled me toward them and beckoned me to stay. They wouldn’t let me go. Nor did I want to leave them.
“You are going to feel a great deal of warmth pass from my fingers into yours.” He squeezed my hands—not enough to hurt, but enough to show me he was there. The balls of his thumbs pressed against mine. “It is going to feel like gentle flames, starting in your palms and fingertips . . .”
Heat tingled down my thumbs and spread across my hands.
“And then it will move into your wrists and slowly, slowly up your arms.”
The warmth glided through my blood, past my elbows, and up to my shoulders in a strange, pacifying wave. Henri’s blue eyes continued to hold my full attention.
“You may feel your arms grow numb, and that is perfectly fine,” he said, and my arms indeed felt strange and heavy. “The heat and numbness will make you tired. Very tired.” He inhaled a deep breath that inspired me to do the same. My lungs expanded with air that soothed me down to my bones.
“As the warmth pours down through your torso like heated milk,” he continued, “and travels slowly, gently across your hips and to your legs, you are going to find yourself so relaxed, you cannot keep your eyes open.”
My eyelids fluttered.
“Close your eyes.”
They fell shut.
“Keep them closed. Fall into a deep, deep sleep.”
My hands, weighing several tons, dropped away from his fingers, and my chin slumped to my chest. I sank deep inside the darkness in a languid, dreamlike fall. Nothing hurt or troubled me any longer.
I felt divine.
“As I pass my hands over you,” said Henri, “you will travel farther into this wonderful stage of sleep and be unable to open your eyes. Keep going downward, downward, and hear only my voice. Turn off all your other senses. You will only hear, taste, feel, smell, and see if I tell you to do so. For now, just focus on my voice and the magnetic force of my hands passing over your body. Sleep. Sleep. Keep going farther into sleep.”
Downward I kept sinking. Downward, downward, downward. Gentle nips of heat sizzled across my skin, all the way to my toes, and my body melded into the chair until I became a part of the batting and the nails and the wood.
I continued to hear Henri’s voice, directed to the audience. The word test came up, and cymbals, and Remarkable, isn’t it? But nothing else mattered until he told me, “Stand up, Miss Mead.”
I did as he asked. My eyes remained closed, and my body may as well have been made of stone, but somehow I was able to get to my feet.
“I am going to press my hand against you, and my touch will cause every muscle inside your body to go rigid.”
His fingers cupped the back of my head, and a hardening sensation spilled down to my feet, as if he had unscrewed the top of my skull and poured a fast-drying plaster inside me.
“Rigid!” he called near my ear. “You are an iron bar that cannot bend. Every part of you is stiff. Nothing can cause you to falter. You are as solid as a board.”
He spoke again to the audience, calling up “strong male volunteers.” Firm hands lifted me into the air, beneath my shoulders and legs. I rose up high, my arms glued to my sides, and settled across two bars, one behind my neck and the other below my ankles.
Henri’s voice whispered inside my mind. “Lift yourself out of your body, Miss Mead. Float up to the top of the stage, and I will return you safely after you have had some time to enjoy yourself. You can hear Genevieve’s organ music again . . .”
The organ filled my ears with a rich and dreamlike melody.
“Open your eyes.”
I did.
“See the shine of the lights. Let their radiance beckon you to them. Allow Genevieve’s music to carry you away. Do not fight it, lovely girl. Just go.”
I rose out of my petrified bones.
“Yes . . . go.”
I drifted upward—a weightless feather immune to the burden of gravity, lured by the pull of the vast ceiling above with its rows of metal catwalks and blinding lights that breathed wispy plumes of smoke. Genevieve’s music carried me up to the bulbs and allowed me to lie in a foggy bath of golden rays without a worry or a pain. Henri disappeared. Memories of gaseous eggs on my chest disappeared. Fears of what Father would say about the courthouse rally slipped away. I was nothing but a feather.
I floated for hours . . . or so it seemed.
I could have drifted much longer if Henri’s voice didn’t call up to me. “Miss Mead,” he said. “Are you ready to come back now?”
I tried to hold myself up there in that luxurious land of electricity.
“I need to bring you back so someone else may have a turn. You have done beautifully, but it is time to wake up.”
“No,” I said, but I felt myself deflating. A withering hot-air balloon with the gas turned low.
“I am going to sweep my hands upward, starting at your feet, and count from one to ten.”
“No.”
“Yes, Miss Mead . . . and by the time I reach ten, you will feel wide awake and rested.” His presence burned at my feet. “One, two—you feel the magnetic force between us fading—”
I sank back to the ground, closer to the stage.
“Do not fight it. Three, four—you are slowly stirring back to life. Five—your senses are returning to your body. You can feel the heat from the stage lights again . . .”
My hair warmed, and my mind was able to recognize the music playing: “Evening Prayer” from the opera Hansel and Gretel. The sheet music was part of my collection back home.
“Six, seven—do not fight it, Miss Mead, please do not fight it. Eight—very good, you are almost there—nine . . .” He placed his hot hand against my forehead. “Ten. Awake.”
I opened my eyes, and the hum and the glare of the lights made me jump. I found myself standing upright at the center of the stage again.
“Let us give a warm round of applause for the lovely and cooperative Mademoiselle Mead.” Henri lifted my hand in the air, and applause assaulted my ears like the blasts of gunshots at a sharpshooter show. My legs wobbled as if made of sand, and I had to grab hold of Henri’s coarse sleeve to keep my knees from sinking to the ground.
Henri put his arm around my
back and guided me to the stairs. I resisted the urge to lean against his shoulder to support my drooping head.
The clapping died down.
Genevieve finished her music.
The hypnotist let me go.
He didn’t say another word to me as I clutched the handrail and descended from the stage with my gloves somehow back in my hand—not a whisper in my ear or a simple Thank you for joining me. At the bottom step, I peeked over my shoulder and caught him watching me, as a doctor would monitor a patient he was releasing from the hospital after a surgery. But then he smiled. A warm smile that heated my blood and made me forget Percy Acklen sitting high in his box seat above the darkened theater.
The hypnotist then turned back to his show.
I returned to my seat.
Our relationship seemed to be over.
hen I sat back down, Kate covered her mouth as if she were stifling a laugh and Frannie whispered, “Oh dear, Livie. That went much differently than expected.”
“How do you mean?” I asked, but the woman behind us shushed us, and Frannie murmured that she’d explain later.
The next volunteers ventured onto the stage in a group of ten, and they were a motley collection of males and females of varying sizes, shapes, and ages. Under Henri’s spell they waltzed to “The Blue Danube,” forgot their names, and performed other embarrassing but relatively harmless feats.
During all the demonstrations, I was nothing more than a heap of melted butter that oozed against my red velvet chair in the audience. I felt as if I had awoken from a hundred-year nap, every part of me rested and content, aside from an odd, smarting sensation in one wrist. I almost possessed the confidence to go home and tell Father I had participated in a women’s suffrage rally in the center of the city.
Almost.
“SO, TELL ME, LIVIE,” KATE SAID WITH BARELY CONCEALED excitement after the theater lights stirred us back into reality and we rose to our feet, “what did it feel like when lovely Monsieur Reverie was on top of you?”
“I beg your pardon?” I halted in mid-stretch. “What did you just say, Kate?”
“You heard what I said.” She smiled with a glint in her hazel eyes. “He instructed you to stiffen, and then he laid you out between those two chairs and stood on your stomach to show how rigid you became.”
“What?” I pressed down for signs of bruises below the protective barrier of my corset. “He stood on top of me?”
Frannie nodded and bit her bottom lip. “He did, Livie. That’s what I meant by ‘Oh dear.’”
“Didn’t you feel him?” asked Kate.
“No.”
She laughed. “You didn’t feel a man at least thirty pounds heavier than you standing on your body?”
“No.”
“You were honestly that hypnotized?” Frannie put her hands on her hips. “You didn’t hear the cymbals he crashed next to your ears or feel the pins he poked into your wrist to see if you were alert?”
I rubbed my left wrist. “Is that why my skin tingled after I got back to my seat?”
“Oh, Livie.” Kate shook her head, her fair curls wobbling across her forehead. “You’re always missing the excitement, even when you’re smack-dab in the middle of it.” She swiveled toward the aisle and held up the hem of her skirt. “Come along, ladies. Let’s try to pull Agnes away from her suffragist troops and their election-day plotting and remind her she’s our chaperone.”
Frannie and I grabbed hands to keep from losing each other in the crowd, and I followed her swaying braid up the aisle, while she followed Kate’s bright green-and-black plaid. Strangers stepped on my feet at least three times, and I couldn’t help but think everyone was staring at me, the girl who had let a young man balance atop her stomach.
Out in the lobby we had to wait ten minutes to fetch our coats, and then we found ourselves swept along in a warm wave of bodies that pressed toward the theater’s exit. On all sides of me people buzzed about Henri Reverie’s skills.
“Quite a talented young man.”
“Such persuasion. Such power.”
“I would have liked to see him try that hogwash on me. My mind is far too sharp and alert for that sort of humbug—I can promise you that.”
I glanced over my shoulder, for I thought I heard my name amid the commotion.
“Olivia.” An arm waved, flashing a jeweled cuff link. Auburn hair and a handsome face with fine cheekbones came into view ten feet behind me. “Wait,” called Percy Acklen.
I squeezed Frannie’s hand in the crowd’s swift-moving current. “I think Percy is calling to me.”
She laughed. “What?”
“Percy Acklen is calling and waving to me.”
She turned as well, and although a parade of elbows and shoulders smacked against us, we stood there, frozen.
Percy made his way to where we waited and stopped two feet from me. I could smell his divine, musky cologne.
“May I drive you home, Olivia?” he asked.
“Drive me home?” I looked to Frannie to ensure I’d heard him correctly.
She gaped, her jaw dangling open enough for me to see the little gap between her bottom front teeth.
A rotund gentleman with a heavy black beard fell against Percy, and the force of the blow knocked Percy’s chest against mine. He grabbed my arms to steady himself but carried on with his conversation as though we hadn’t just crashed together with our cheeks pressed close. “My father bought me my own buggy.” He let go of me and stepped back to a more respectable distance. “I’d love to give you a ride.”
I cleared my throat to find my voice. “Didn’t you come to the theater with your parents?”
“They brought their own carriage. I drove separately.”
“Frannie? Livie?” called Kate from the exit, bobbing up and down like a buoy. “Where in heaven’s name are you?”
“We’re coming, Kate,” said Frannie. She glanced my way with concern in her eyes. “You’re coming, too, Livie, right?”
My heart pounded. I felt I’d stumbled across a crucial fork in a road after a long journey, and choosing the wrong path might alter my entire life. Going home with my friends as planned would mean safety and comfort and normalcy. Yet driving away with Percy, unchaperoned—Percy who was gazing at me as if I were something rare and enchanting he’d just unearthed—well, that was an entirely new adventure.
I buttoned up my gray wool coat. “I’ll go with Percy.”
PERCY’S BUGGY WAS AN ELEGANT BLACK CONTRAPTION with fresh paint, a curved roof, and a seat, meant for two, upholstered in padded green leather. He stepped in beside me and rocked the vehicle until he got himself situated.
I tucked my gloved hands inside my coat pockets, for the night air was chilled and damp with the type of mist that stung my cheeks and nose. Fairy kisses, my mother had called that type of weather when I was small enough to believe in mystical creatures.
Percy fitted his silk top hat over his head. “Where do you live?”
“Twelfth Street, near Main.”
“That shouldn’t take long.” He gathered up the reins. “Are you ready?”
I nodded. “I am.”
“Let’s be off, then.” He made a clicking sound out of the side of his mouth, and his white ghost of a horse pranced away from the theater with the steady clip-clop of hooves. The carriage bumped and jostled over potholes in the dark, so I grabbed the crisscrossing bars running up to the roof to keep from bouncing out to the muddy street.
“You have a beautiful horse,” I said when we were two blocks west of the theater.
“Thank you. His name is Mandolin.”
“Oh, that’s pretty.”
“Thank you.”
I leaned back against the seat and wondered what I was doing with exquisite Percy Acklen and his gorgeous black buggy.
Silence ruled our drive across the city, even though I longed to ask him what books he liked to read outside of school and what he thought of hypnotism . . . and Halloween . . . and bicycli
ng . . . and a dozen other subjects. Words failed me, however—as they were apt to do around attractive boys. All my imagined questions struck me as either dull or nosy.
I focused on the glow of the arc lamps dangling from overhead wires and the darkened stores, including my absolute favorite, McCorkan’s Bicycle Shop, which featured two pairs of ladies’ riding bloomers in the front window. We traveled past rows of houses—oversized gingerbread homes with rounded towers and sprawling porches topped with jack-o’-lanterns that reminded me of Henri Reverie leaping out of smoke. The carriage wheels squelched through soupy puddles and clattered across stony patches of road so poorly paved, the surface might as well have been dirt. The air carried the scent of Halloween bonfires and magic.
We turned left, and Percy urged Mandolin into a fast trot, perhaps to impress me. My backside bounced against the seat hard enough to rattle my teeth.
I clutched the buggy. “Is it safe to go this fast in the dark?”
“Are you scared?”
“A little.”
“It’s Halloween. You’re supposed to be frightened.”
“Frightened of the dead arising . . . not of imminent death.”
“Ha! I’ll slow down, then.” He adjusted the reins, and the horse eased back into a walk. The buggy swayed in a gentle rhythm, and I relaxed my stranglehold on the bars. “There, boy,” cooed Percy. “There’s a good horse.”
Our narrow, two-story house came into view to the south, its ugly red clapboards too dim to be seen with the clouds blocking the moon.
“My house is the third one on the right,” I said with a nod toward the place. “The skinny one with the big maple in front.”
“All right.”
We drove close enough for me to see a light flickering behind the lace curtains of one of the side windows in the back. Father’s study.
