by Jane Kindred
In the meantime, it was a perfect autumn day, with a bite in the air and the bright, golden glow of a low-angle sun. I could almost forget that I’d seen poor Aravella’s lifeless body on the beach, that they’d taken her away in body bag. Almost.
I had to circle the block once to find the house that was the site of Such Stuff. To my relief, Lumi was at the counter. I hadn’t thought to use the card she’d given me to call before I set out, and couldn’t on the walk over, since my battery was dead.
She spotted me immediately, coming around to give me a hug. “So terrible about poor Aravella,” she said, holding on tight. “Is there anything you need?” It seemed like a strange question. Though I wasn’t certain how close they’d been, Lumi was the one who’d lost a friend.
I stuffed my hands in my pockets when she let me go, feeling awkward about why I’d come now that I was here. Aravella had died, yet I was occupied with my own concerns about my birth mother. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you, but I’m not sure this is the right time. It was an impulse. I should have called first—”
“You want to know about Beverly.” She pressed my forearm, giving me a patient, understanding smile when I nodded. “Let’s take a pot of tea upstairs.” Lumi stepped behind the counter and filled a pot with hot water, setting it on a tray already loaded with cream and sugar and a pair of cups and saucers. “Darjeeling okay?” she asked, reaching for a tin, and I nodded again, feeling tongue-tied. “Freyr, can you mind the counter for a bit?”
A bald man with a dark beard, white eyebrows, and a plethora of piercings stepped up and gave her a kiss. “Sure thing, love.” He smiled at me, and despite his rather intimidating look, he emanated warmth and kindness. Unexpectedly, he reached across the counter and took my hand. “We were so sorry to hear about Aravella. She had such a gentle spirit.” He managed to say this with the same sweet smile, yet convey a quiet sorrow. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond, but it seemed no response was needed.
Lumi scooped up the tray, and I followed her up the stairs to where she apparently lived over the café. “Can I carry that?” I offered, but she shook her head.
“I’ve got it. You develop a steady hand serving tea and coffee for thirty years.”
The apartment wasn’t what I would have expected. The décor centered around a pair of rich leather easy chairs and a fancy velvet couch with cushions in dark, brooding colors, everything almost supersaturated with pigment and incredibly tactile, with furry pillows and textured throws. Lumi set the tray down on a wrought iron coffee table with a glass top and waved me into a seat on the couch among a pile of the luxurious cushions. While she poured the tea, I pulled off my hat and glanced around. My eyes went wide and my cheeks went warm at the art on the walls and the sculptures on the tables. They were frankly sexual, nudes of all shapes and sizes—males with tremendous erections and women with erect nipples and flushed, swollen labia.
“Not what you’re used to.” Lumi handed me a cup.
“Sorry, I…didn’t mean to stare.”
“That’s what it’s there for, hon. To be looked at. To be celebrated. To invoke the divine.” I must have rolled my eyes inadvertently, because she gave me a knowing smile and went back to the tea. “But you didn’t come here to talk about that. You want to know about Beverly.”
“I dreamt of her last night.” I stirred sugar into my cup, not sure how much I should say. “She wanted me to join her in ‘the Grove’. I’ve heard that term from a few people at the Strand.”
“But they haven’t told you anything else?”
I looked up at her, wondering at her tone. She seemed cautious. “Is there something they should tell me?”
“The Strands are an old family,” she said. I was getting pretty tired of hearing that. “They have traditions they brought with them from Sweden that might not make sense to someone who hasn’t grown up among it. But it’s really not much different from what Freyr and I practice.”
“What you practice?”
Lumi sat back with her tea. “We value everything in nature. Everything living, everything not living, the rituals of life and death—it’s all interconnected. The earth itself is a living organism. We’re all just part of its cellular makeup.”
I nodded. Garden-variety paganism. I’d been exposed to plenty living in the Bay Area. “So what does that have to do with my mother?”
“Beverly belonged to our circle.” I had a feeling she didn’t mean circle of friends. “The Strands had pretty much kept to themselves up to that point. Then Sebastian started spending more time with Beverly, and there was some…exchange…of traditions among us. His family wasn’t pleased.” No doubt.
She set down her cup. “Would you like to see some pictures of Beverly? I think I may have a couple.” She didn’t wait for an answer, going to the armoire to take out a pair of photo albums. My heart beat faster at the prospect of seeing my mother’s face at last. I hadn’t even thought there might be pictures.
Lumi sat beside me on the couch and opened the first, paging through until she found the ones she wanted. “Here. That’s Beverly on the right. It’s not the greatest picture, but I’m sure I have more.” She pointed to a group photo with a younger version of herself with blond hair hanging straight, and beside her was a tall young man with a dark head of hair almost as long as hers, whom I realized must be Freyr. There were half a dozen others in the photo, all linking hands, and at the right edge, partly cut off, was a woman who looked so much like me that I started, thinking I’d somehow been in the picture myself.
Beverly. My mother.
I traced the image, too overcome with emotion to say anything. It wasn’t quite the girl I’d seen in my dream, but so close as to be uncanny.
Lumi turned the page after a respectful pause and pointed to another. “Oh, here’s a good one.”
My mother was crouching on the ground, holding a seedling of some kind in her hands and wearing a big grin. A hole had been dug in the dirt in front of her where she was obviously about to plant the little tree.
Lumi took the picture out of the plastic sleeve and handed it to me. “You keep this one.” She was kind enough not to make a big deal out of my sudden tears, flipping through more pages while I held onto my prize with both hands. There was one more blurry shot of Beverly at a party, taken from the side, but the one I had in my hands was everything.
Setting the first album aside, Lumi opened the second. “There might be one of Sebastian in here too.” She turned pages of photos showing gradually aging pictures of herself and Freyr among various groups of friends and family, and after a moment, she shook her head. “Sorry. I guess not.”
The book flipped onto the last page as she started to remove it from my lap and my mouth dropped open in shock. Lukas and Aravella were on that page, in more than a few shots, and Lukas was bare-chested, wearing black leather pants and heavy-looking boots, his hair longer than it was now and tied back in a short ponytail. He didn’t yet have the silver at his temples. And Aravella…Aravella was naked and absolutely stunning in her petite perfection…and wearing a collar. Removing all ambiguity about the possible meaning of that collar, in the last photo she was kneeling at Lukas’s feet gazing up at him with a look so intimate and full of desire it was like a punch in the gut.
Lumi took the photo album from my lap. “Lukas and Vella were part of our circle too. A smaller circle.” She studied my face and there was no way I could keep from showing how the pictures had affected me. “I’m sorry. Aravella told me you had a history with Lukas. I didn’t realize—”
“No.” I shook my head, and then repeated it emphatically. “No, I can’t—we can’t—I didn’t know—it was a mistake. A long time ago.”
She set the photo albums aside and set a hand on my arm, just barely touching, exuding a comforting warmth. “There’s no judgment here, Millie. But I’m sorry I let you see those. I didn’t know you were in lov
e with him.”
“No,” I choked out. “I can’t be. It’s wrong. It’s horrible.”
“Love is never wrong.”
“That kind is wrong!” The exclamation came out sharp and loud, and I shrank into myself, wishing I could completely disappear if I just drew in tight enough.
“It’s a love that isn’t meant to be, certainly, but it isn’t wrong to feel what you feel. Your feelings can’t ever be wrong, Millie. Beverly would tell you that if she could. It’s not as if either of you entered into a relationship with the knowledge that you were something more to each other than you knew.”
My throat felt tight. I dropped the photo in my lap, clenching my hands to try to stave off the growing wave of panic. “Aravella—Aravella said he knew.”
Lumi shook her head. “No, I’m sure she was mistaken. Or maybe just hurting, herself, and lashing out. I’ve known Lukas a long time. He would never engage in anything deceitful or harmful to someone else. It goes against everything he is.”
The realization of what those pictures in her album meant hit me, and I recoiled from her touch. “You’ve known him since he was a child—and he’s part of your ‘circle’? You mean parties. You have parties here. And you’ve had them with Lukas.”
“We have rituals here, yes. Celebrations of the goddess and her consort. What some term ‘play parties’. But I’ve only known Lukas as an adult. Sebastian was the only one in the family we had contact with in those days. And I’ve never played with him, if that’s what you mean. There are a few different generations in our circle. We welcome the young who are new to this expression of their spirituality, and we honor our elders. But there are certain boundaries.”
“But you watched them—fucking,” I burst out, my cheeks nearly on fire.
Lumi didn’t seem perturbed by my outburst. “Actually, Lukas and Aravella only engaged in power exchange within the circle. Vella had some things to work through, and Lukas wanted to help her through it, so he came to Freyr to learn.”
“To learn how to—?” I sputtered, unable to finish.
“To learn how to engage in consensual dominance safely. Millie.” She said my name gently, as if trying to talk me down, trying to bring me back from the white panic swirling through my head. “It was between Lukas and Aravella. It was an arrangement that worked for them. And for a while, they shared that energy with the circle. But I wanted to tell you about Beverly, not Lukas and Aravella. I can help you dispel the anxiety you’re feeling, if you like. Just some breathing exercises. Or I could read your cards and see if we can find out what Beverly is trying to tell you in your dreams.”
I focused on her, trying to stop seeing Lukas in those pictures. “I don’t know about breathing exercises, but I guess I wouldn’t mind a reading.”
Lumi smiled. “Wonderful. Let me get my cards.”
I set my precious picture off to the side and moved the tray of tea things to the other edge of the table while she went into a bedroom in the back, returning with her cards wrapped in a bright piece of ruby lace. She had me shuffle and cut the deck and then began to lay them out on the table while seated beside me.
The deck was an unusual one. I’d dabbled with tarot before and was familiar with the traditional designs, but the images on these cards were all trees, gracefully painted and marked with runes of some kind. The first card, representing the past, was Rowan, which meant “protection against enchantment”. The second, Elder, standing in for the present, was more esoteric: “the end in the beginning, and the beginning in the end”. The final card, in the future position, made the hair stand on the back of my neck: The Grove.
“The Grove represents all knowledge,” said Lumi, seemingly unaware of my dismay. “It’s a sacred place where everything is linked together. In it, the past, present, and future become clear.” But nothing was clear. Every piece of the puzzle I received seemed to make things muddier. Lumi hadn’t even answered me directly when I’d asked about the significance of the Grove.
“Is there a literal grove?” I asked finally.
Lumi continued perusing the cards, and for a moment, I wasn’t sure she would answer. “There is, yes. But it isn’t my place to share that with you, Millie. It belongs to the Strands.”
“Lukas said he wanted to take me there before I left.”
Lumi’s head popped up as if in surprise, but her face seemed serene. “Did he? Then you must go with him.”
“I can’t.” I felt my face grow warm again. “I dreamt of him there, before I dreamt of my mother, and…”
“And it would be painful to go alone with him to your family’s sacred source with all that unresolved energy between you that’s been making itself felt in your dreams, because you’ve banned it from your conscious life.” Lumi’s eyes held compassion and understanding, so much so that I thought I might start crying again. “The Grove is your past and your future. You’ll go there again, whether you visit it with Lukas or not. The cards paint a very clear picture. In the Rowan, I see that you’ve been kept hidden from others just as your identity has been hidden from you. This wasn’t an accident. And the Elder reinforces that you’ve come here now to where everything began for you, and where it will end. You can run from your destiny, but it will find you eventually. Better to find it yourself and face it head-on.”
A clock chimed on her mantel, and I realized I’d stayed far longer than I’d meant to. It was already eleven o’clock. “You’ve been so kind to take the time to talk to me.” I rose. “But I should get back. I can’t imagine what poor Konstantin must be going through right now. I ought to be there for him in case Lukas needs me.”
“Of course.” Lumi gathered the cards into the deck and stood to see me out. “I’m so glad you stopped by, Millie. It’s been lovely getting to know you a bit. You’re so much like Beverly in some ways, but much more cautious. Your mother could have done with a bit of that herself, I suppose.”
I paused after I’d pulled on my hat and begun buttoning my coat. “Do you know something about her death?”
“Only what we heard at the time. I just meant that she had a tendency to run headlong into things. She was very spontaneous.”
“Was she—spontaneous about the circle?”
Lumi smiled. “You mean the intimate circle. No, back then we pursued the divine in other ways. We were sort of tree-hugging nature freaks, I suppose you could say. Bev and Sebastian didn’t share anything else with us except for a love of nature.”
I finished buttoning my coat, relieved that my parents hadn’t been into some kind of kinky orgies thing. But that only served to remind me that Lukas and Aravella had.
We headed downstairs, and Lumi gave me a hug when I reached the door as if we were family. “Think about visiting the Grove,” she said. “You don’t have to go there with Lukas. But it’s come into your dreams for a reason. Maybe Clara or Signe could take you there.”
I nodded and thanked her again, not bothering to try to explain that Signe had no idea who I was or that I’d even survived past birth, and that Clara was a few cards short of a tarot deck herself. Hiding me had happened for a reason, Lumi had said. That was certain, and yet I still wasn’t quite sure what that reason was.
Heading back to the Strand, I began to get goose bumps along my flesh as if I were being watched. It was obviously just my anxiety getting to me. I’d take a pill when I got back to the cottage; it was long overdue. But just the same, I walked a little faster through the avenue of trees. There was nothing like the beauty of a place where no other living soul was within shouting distance, but there was also nothing like the paranoia that such isolation inevitably brought out in me.
By the time I reached the Strand, I was almost running, anxious to be back in familiar surroundings, though it was a bit disconcerting to think how quickly they’d become as familiar to me as home. I hoped the investigation into Aravella’s death wasn’t going to go
on for too much longer, because I had the distinct feeling that the longer I stayed here, the more enmeshed in Lukas’s world I was likely to become.
* * * * *
When I reached the cottage, I paused on the porch. The door was ajar. I was certain I’d locked it. Heavy, rapid footsteps sounded on the stairs, and I was frozen for a moment until Lukas came into view.
He drew up short at the bottom of the steps as I opened the door wider. “Millie! Jesus. Where the hell have you been? What happened up there?”
I stepped inside, untying the scarf I’d secured against the wind. “Happened? Where?”
“The master bedroom. You haven’t been up there today?”
“You mean the branch? I tried to cover the window last night, but it must have broken off in the wind.”
“I’m talking about the floor. All the boards are torn up. What were you looking for?”
“They’re what?” I swept past him and hurried up the stairs to find Roger crouching in the debris of splintered boards, hastily pried up as if with a crowbar.
Roger looked up at me. “Are you all right, Ms. Lang? We thought someone had broken in and might have done harm to you.”
I shook my head, perplexed. “I have no idea what happened. It wasn’t like this when I left.”
Lukas had followed me upstairs, and he lingered in the doorway. “You had me scared out of my wits that some killer was out here targeting people at the Strand. First Aravella, then you…” His face looked pale and haggard.
I rubbed my arm against a sudden chill. “You really think someone pushed Aravella?”
Lukas raked his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. I don’t…know.” Whether someone had pushed her or she’d taken her own life, it was obvious he was grieving her deeply, despite their estrangement. And how could he not? They’d raised a child together. And they’d shared something more than that once.
