by M. J. Rose
“Every other avenue has been exhausted. We tried bribes, but there is no news we can rely on. They say anything for money. One day that they are alive and hidden somewhere. The next that they were executed,” Alexi said.
“Opaline,” Monsieur said as he put down his spoon and leaned toward me, “will you at least consider it?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, no.”
“There is nothing we can offer you truly worth the effort and danger,” Monsieur continued. “But—”
I started to protest.
“Hear me out. You are a fine jeweler with a keen eye and a wonderful imagination. To be young and so talented. I envy your future. Once the war is over you will be able to soar, and the pieces you will make will take Paris by storm. I know this. I can see it in your work. I taught you like I taught my own sons. You are almost ready to go out on your own. If you take on this journey, if you help us, then when you are ready, in a year or two, whenever it is, I will set you up in a shop of your own and stock it with all the gold and silver and gemstones you need to open your doors.”
The offer took me by surprise. I could hardly imagine how much money it would take to accomplish what he’d suggested. I knew the Orloffs were well-off, as was my family, but this offer required a small fortune. Was Tatania Tichtelew helping finance the effort? I’d seen her in the shop earlier that day.
“No, I just can’t.”
“But Opaline—” Monsieur began, but Grigori interrupted.
“This is too much. You asked her, she said no. And why shouldn’t she? It’s not her country, it’s not her empress, it’s not her problem. You are exploiting her. Opaline”—he turned to me—“there’s no reason for you to do this. Or even to sit and listen to any more of it.”
Grigori’s compassion touched me. The room was swimming. Too many eyes watched me. The rain had become a storm, and outside the howling wind distracted me. My mind was crowded with what everyone had said. It was ridiculous to even entertain the idea in exchange for a shop. If I wanted one, my parents might become my patrons. Or maybe one of the other wealthy women who came to La Fantaisie Russe would want to be able to brag to her friends that she’d financed a jewelry store. My great-grandmother was another avenue. She knew immensely wealthy men whom she sent to our store to buy baubles for their wives and mistresses. Perhaps one of them would want to finance a shop. Besides, I was years away from going out on my own. Or was I ready? Had I in less than four years learned what Monsieur Orloff could teach? Was working with him actually stifling me? Didn’t I have ideas for pieces, journals filled with drawings, that he’d dismissed? But how mercenary—to be bribed into taking this trip!
I turned to Anna. “You agree with my decision, don’t you?”
“You have a great gift to listen to those who have passed and bring solace to those who are still here, but you should never feel obligated to use it in any way uncomfortable to you.”
“But you think I should go?”
“It’s not what I think. It’s what I’ve beheld. No matter what I say to you, you will go. This journey is meant to be. It is something you do because of who you are.”
“Who I am? A Frenchwoman with no ties to Russia?”
“Because you are a Daughter of La Lune.”
Listening to her echo my mother’s words angered me. I didn’t want Anna to tell me what lay ahead.
“Will you do this for us?” Monsieur asked.
“I’m not ready to . . . I need time to think about it.”
I hadn’t said no this time, and Monsieur Orloff beamed. The widest smile he’d ever bestowed on me. Anna’s eyes filled with tears. Serge and Alexi appeared relieved. Only Grigori was upset, and I couldn’t help but wonder why he looked as if his worst nightmare had come true.
Chapter 22
In the end, it was my memory of Timur that influenced my decision. I owed the Orloffs for not giving their son what he had deserved, what he’d wanted, before he died.
There was not a lot of time to prepare for the trip. We would be leaving in three days to travel by car to Le Havre, where Grigori and I would ferry across the channel to Portsmouth and then be driven to the rendezvous in a town whose name I’d not yet been told.
Anna suggested she help me practice trying to read the locks of hair without turning them into talismans in case I cracked the crystals or broke the solder machine. I wouldn’t have backups, only what I brought with me.
“I’ve tried, I can’t. I need the crystal and the engravings and elements to work together to open the portal.”
“Maybe simply because you don’t know how,” she said.
“That’s certainly possible,” I answered.
“Have you been studying the grimoire Sandrine gave you? Has it shed any light on the notes you took about the triptych painting?”
Since agreeing to this mission, I’d been actively studying, trying to find something in the book about soothsaying—about telling the present or future without the use of stones—but hadn’t been able to discover anything.
“Why don’t I try to help,” she said and suggested I retrieve my book of spells and bring it to her secret reading room.
She was waiting for me in her monde enchanté. Thick votives, perfuming the air with their sweet scented wax, burned softly, illuminating the crystal orbs and jeweled Russian icons. A beatific Madonna seemed to be looking down at me with a knowing glance.
Today Anna’s worktable was decorated with a bright red-and-navy silk cloth, in its center a pentagram embroidered with silver thread.
I handed her the grimoire, somewhat reluctantly. My reaction surprised me. It was only a book—what harm could come to it by letting Anna read it?
As she took it from me, I wondered if she might find more there than I had. Would she discover the secret of the voices? And if she did, would she finally be able to teach me to control them?
What I’d read so far had at least explained a bit about my preoccupation with Jean Luc. Daughters of La Lune, it seemed, were cursed when it came to matters of the heart. Each only was allowed one absolute love per lifetime. And that love, once given, never waned. Even if the man was untrue or died, she was destined to pine for him and never find another mate.
Many generations tried without luck to find an antidote to love. And I didn’t wonder at their effort. If there was a potion I could swallow to rid my heart of Jean Luc, I would have gulped it down. If the curse was true, I was in love with an ephemeral spirit not just for now but for always.
I’d read how my ancestor, the first La Lune, lost her lover, Cherubino, and did everything in her power, including selling her soul, to try to regain his love. She’d failed, but even after his death, she never stopped loving him.
And now, over three hundred years later, there I was, also in love with someone who was dead. Who was trapped in that netherworld. Had a cosmic mistake been made? Had what was meant to be been thwarted? Had the war interfered in our meeting? There was nothing in the book about the strange process that made it possible for him to hear me. To speak to me. To touch me with his warm wind.
In searching for an answer, I’d read a warning about necromancy in the pages of my book. The darkest art, it was fraught with dangers. Mistakes created monsters. Preventing an imminent death didn’t test the laws that governed us. That was allowed. But raising the dead did. Still, if I could bring Jean Luc back . . .
Anna closed the book and handed it back to me. “I’m sorry,” she said, with a sad, defeated expression in her eyes.
“There’s nothing?” I asked.
“There could be everything, but I can’t see it. There’s nothing written in the book, Opaline, it’s all blank pages.”
“That’s impossible. What do you mean? I’ve been reading the stories about—”
Anna interrupted. “So you can read it?”
I nodded.
<
br /> “Then it must be guarded so no one but you and the person who wrote it can read it.”
“That’s possible?”
“Yes. Rare, but possible.”
And then I remembered. “My mother said it was protected when she gave it to me, but I didn’t understand what she meant.”
“Well, no matter,” Anna said, and stood. “I can still try to help. Here, look at this—” She pulled a book off her shelf and opened it to a yellowed vellum page. I stared at the illustration of a compass and notations that appeared to be written by hand, in Latin.
“This is the Ars Notoria, believed written in the thirteenth century. This drawing is of a ‘megnetick experiment’ which allows people to communicate through telepathy using a lodestone and two compass needles. The theory was that when the two needles were rubbed against the same lodestone, they would become entangled with each other. Linked. And whenever one needle moved, the other needle would move the same way. So if someone placed a needle in a circle made of letters and spelled out a word, wherever the other needle was, it would move accordingly.”
“And you think that’s similar to what happens to me? I’ve become entangled with a cosmic needle?”
“It’s possible the talisman functions as the needle. So if the goal is for you to access the voices without creating the amulet, you need to become the needle yourself.”
“Yes. Do you think that’s possible?”
“I’m not sure, but we can try.”
Anna opened her armoire and began pulling out bottles and jars.
Finished with her apothecary, she placed two beakers in front of me, one on either side of the bowl. The left looked like oil, golden with a hint of green. The other appeared to be rich ruby wine. Into a crystal glass that reflected the votives in all its facets, she poured first some of the oil, and then the other liquid.
I’d read dozens of my great-grandmother’s books on witchcraft and the occult. I knew what some ceremonies and spells required. And the grimoire my mother gave me provided me with more proof.
“That’s wine, isn’t it?” I asked.
She laughed. “Yes. What else could it be?”
“Blood?” I asked.
“Heavens no, Opaline.” She picked up a small paring knife I hadn’t noticed. “Now, for your personals. Can I take a nail clipping?”
I offered her my hand, and she sliced off a tiny sliver of the nail from my ring finger.
“And a lock of your hair.” She clipped a curl. “Now the most difficult part. I need to collect one of your tears.”
“How can I—”
“Close your eyes and try to remember something that made you sad.” She handed me a glass spoon. “Use this to capture the tears.”
“Couldn’t you let me cut up an onion?”
She laughed. “They have to be tears of emotion. I’ll leave you alone for a few minutes.” Anna rose, leaned down, and kissed me on the top of my head. “You’re a brave one, Opaline. I’m proud of you.”
I’d worried how I’d manage to cry on purpose, but her words got me started and then I pushed myself to think, with a sinking heart, about my futile, impossible feelings for Jean Luc.
When Anna returned, she put the nail clipping and lock of hair in the depression of a large amethyst crystal geode. Then she lit a tall buttery-colored candle and intoned what sounded like a prayer.
“The powers present are strong, but we ask for them to be stronger still. We ask that they intensify for all of the right reasons and none of the wrong.”
Then, using the tip of the candle, she set fire to my hair and nail shaving. A noxious odor filled the room, and I leaned back, away from it. Picking up the spoon, she dripped my tears over the tip of the candle to put out its flame.
Once the concoction in the geode stopped smoking, she anointed it with six drops from the oil-and-wine mixture. Then she wrapped the mess up in a piece of parchment and placed it in a crimson-colored silk pouch with black drawstrings. She held the small bag close to her heart for a moment and then held it out to me.
“Wear this for three days, and then see if you can pull a message from a lock of a soldier’s hair without encasing it in crystals and gold. Without the man’s wife or mother or sister there. Hopefully, you’ll be able to do it.”
“I’ll try.” I took the pouch from her and held it in my right hand.
Anna put her hand over mine. “You’ve been gifted with a rare power, and despite how it’s pained you, you’ve used it graciously and selflessly. But never more so than now. No matter the outcome, I want you to know we are grateful for your willingness to help. All of us, myself, Pavel, Grigori, Serge, Madame Tichtelew, the rest of the émigrés, and even those who are no longer here to say it themselves. From all of us, Opaline, thank you.”
It was almost a shame Anna didn’t need any more of my tears, because of how freely they flowed then.
Chapter 23
That night Monsieur Orloff and Grigori fought. I didn’t know why they were in the store after it closed. Or what they argued about. But their heated words carried from the shop down to my apartment, so lying in my bed, I could hear them. If only I could have understood them. Russian is a complicated-sounding language to the French. Our words flow like water, smooth like sips of wine, like the texture of our cheese, silky like my mother’s paints on her palette. Russian sounds like throwing rocks into a stream, like chopping wood, breaking branches.
Placing the silken pouch around my neck as Anna had suggested, I tried to go to sleep, but the fight continued long into the night, and so I finally got out of bed, picked up the binder of columns written by Jean Luc, and continued to read.
There were over one hundred. He’d written a column every other week for four years. Plus several that had never been published. A soldier’s letters home to his lover. Except there was no lover. He’d only imagined her in his mind. She was as ephemeral to him as he to me. And yet, as I read, I could picture him with his careless smile and hair falling into his eyes. It wasn’t the photographs of Jean Luc I’d glimpsed in his parents’ apartment that I saw in my mind, but my mother’s paintings of him. I’d been too far from the photos to see any of Jean Luc’s expressions. But the man my mother had depicted was animated and vital. Yes, wracked with guilt, but also with a yearning for life, sensual and smart, determined and creative. A poetic soul who sent me on lonely treasure hunts around Paris.
The more I read, the more I was able to fill in about him. He was an avid reader who’d traveled as far as China and Australia and Egypt. Sorry he was an only child, he’d had an imaginary friend when he was a boy. Sometimes, in the trenches, he thought about that friend, almost wishing he could conjure him again. A dog lover, he missed his terrier—the dog I’d met at his mother’s house. An inveterate museum visitor, he found solace there. Art made him think, wonder, engage in philosophical questioning. Among the list of artists he mentioned whose work he’d studied and appreciated, I was stunned to find my own mother’s name. Reading about her work in one of his columns did more than surprise me; because of its context, it stunned me.
Jean Luc wrote he’d been home on leave and gone to the gallery on rue la Boétie, where her work was shown. He’d fallen in love with one of the paintings, wanted to buy it, and was distraught to learn it had already been sold.
Stupefied, I read on, realizing the painting he’d wanted to buy was of me.
Portraits of her sitters illustrated via the items that exemplified them was one of my mother’s specialties. She painted my father in the reflections of all the windows of a building he’d designed. My younger sister Delphine, following in my mother’s artistic footsteps, could be seen in puddles of watercolors in her paint tin. My brother, her twin, who had all attributes of a businessman even as a teenager, was pictured on a ten-franc note. My mother had painted me over and over in the flashes of fire in a string of opal bea
ds.
Putting the book of columns down, I took off Anna’s pouch and replaced it with Jean Luc’s talisman. Between my breasts, under my nightgown, it warmed my flesh instantly.
“You knew my mother’s work? You’d seen my portrait? Did you recognize me when you first saw me here?”
No. I felt drawn to you, but I didn’t realize till just now, as you read it. So that’s who you are, the famous painter’s daughter. La Lune’s daughter.
“Her real name is Sandrine Duplessi, but she signs her paintings that way. Do you know about the original La Lune?”
No, but I’d love you to tell me the story.
And so I told him about my ancestor, a sixteenth-century courtesan, a witch, a painter. And a spirit who kept herself alive for almost three hundred years, waiting for a descendant strong enough to host her—who turned out to be my mother.
Her tale frightens you.
“It does.”
Because of what you might have inherited?
“Of course. Witches’ blood flows in my veins. Witches! Who were burned at the stake and were pilloried. Who are shown as old crones to be feared.”
Is that why you came to Paris? To escape her and your ties to her?
“No, I came to help with the war effort.”
Are you sure?
“Of course.”
I’m not as certain, Opaline.
A breeze blew against the back of my neck.
“How do you do that?”
I pull at the energy in the atmosphere. Do you like it?
“It both frightens me and reassures me at the same time. If I physically feel the heat and the gusts of wind, then I know you’re not a manifestation of my imagination. Not a symptom of some kind of mental illness. If I feel you, then you are real. Or at least as real as any spirit might be.”
You know the reason you can hear me, feel me, is because of the powers you inherited. Your mother is right . . .
