by SL Hulen
“Use your Kharissima,” Victoria ordered, pushing Khara in front of the door. “If I do it, we’ll probably be arrested for trespassing.”
“At least I’m not a coward.”
“And I’m not stupid. Now ring the bell.”
Khara knocked softly instead. Putting her ear to the door, she listened for a few seconds, and then whispered, “Your niece Bea has sent us.”
Inside, they heard a slow, dragging sound accompanied by ferocious barking. A voice croaked, “Quiet, Shamrock. Get in your room. Go on, girl.” The door opened a quarter of the way, revealing a small bent figure. “Bea called to let me know you were coming,” she said in a labored voice. “Friend of hers or not, what are you two doing out here in the middle of the night? For goodness sake, come inside!”
The inside was dark except for some failing flames in the center of a fireplace almost big enough to stand in. Trophy heads cast sinister shadows across the planked wall. The few spaces not devoted to wild game were filled with pipes and antique firearms.
“Neither of you is dressed for a night in the mountains. But then again,” she put her hand to her forehead and, looking at Victoria, continued, “you didn’t come here for the fresh air, did you?”
Bea had forgotten to mention that her aunt suffered from a myriad of disturbing ailments which left her hunched and swollen, her every step a testament to the force of will.
She asked merrily, “You didn’t, by chance, pass a red Ferrari? Emma, that harlot, is out looking for love again.”
“No,” Victoria answered, “I would have remembered.”
“I hope I don’t have to make another trip to the police station.” Celeste shook her head. “It’s a good thing that little beast’s been fixed.”
Medicines stood in neat rows on top of library-style bookshelves on the far wall. Perhaps, Victoria thought, her strange comments have something to do with the astounding number of small bottles.
The girl accustomed to having others wait on her moved quickly to the woman’s side, guiding her to the overstuffed chair near the fire. Walking-stick in hand, Celeste waved it at the chair.
“Off of my chair, General Lee,” she commanded what looked like a tattered pillow, but was a mangy orange cat. Celeste steadied herself against Khara, wheezing as though every breath would be her last. The cat complained bitterly, but jumped to the floor.
It was easy to see where Bea got her looks. Beyond her infirmities, Celeste was still beautiful. She might have been in her early sixties or ten years younger, but aged by disease and the shadowy light. Victoria doubted she had ever been much over five feet tall, and she had delicate features and unwavering blue eyes. Her hair was blonde or gray, and fell in soft curls just below her ears. She wore an ivory wool robe over a ruffled, white flannel gown. In her earlobes was a pair of magnificent diamond earrings.
She caught them staring at her right leg, which was two, maybe three times the size of the left. “I’m guessing you’ve never seen someone who’s cheated death so many times,” she teased, her smile mischievous. “Now,” she began, easing into the chair, “make yourselves at home. You,” she said abruptly but not unkindly, wagging her cane at Victoria, “look familiar. Have we met?”
“No, though Bea speaks of you often.”
“Does she?” She appeared wistful. “What a wild child she was. Couldn’t get her away from the barn; she practically slept with the horses.”
“Horses?” Khara crept closer, kneeling on the hooked rug in front of the fire. “No wonder your niece and I see things with the same eyes.”
“I taught her to ride myself. A real Texan, she is. Back then, I was as tall as you are,” she recalled, aiming her cane at Victoria, “and I had a good deal more curves. It’s no wonder men fell all over themselves for me. But you don’t want to hear about that now. I’ll make some cocoa.”
“We’re fine, really,” Victoria assured her. “Please don’t go to any trouble. I can’t tell you how grateful we are to be here.”
Ignoring the tactful refusal, Celeste began the monumental task of hoisting herself up again. Victoria and Khara followed her down a narrow hallway to a farmhouse kitchen, cavernous by contemporary standards. A fortune had been spent modernizing it with a restaurant-sized range and a pair of built-in refrigerators, the doors matching the room’s wooden paneling. Butcher-block countertops gleamed in an L-shape, and in the center stood an old-fashioned dining table with generous chairs upholstered in green and white checks.
“I rarely sleep more than a few hours at a time anymore,” Celeste confessed, looking up at the clock and shaking her head. “It’s sort of a treat to have someone to talk to. Of course, I always have my cats. They’re better company than most people,” she told Victoria as she fumbled for a pot, which she filled with milk. She placed it on a gas burner, which she turned up alarmingly high.
“Aha! I know where I’ve seen you!” she exclaimed. “Be right back,” she added and hobbled into the hallway, leaving the girls alone in the kitchen.
The far end of the kitchen was lined with windows, in front of which sat a dove grey sofa. The aroma of cigars lingered here, where Victoria guessed Celeste spent much of her time. In front of the couch, a coffee table laden with books, stacks of letters, and catalogs of bulbs and seeds caught Victoria’s eye. A variety of boxes of flowery stationary were scattered across the cushions, and on the wooden floor in front of the sofa lay a wide-brimmed straw hat and a pair of pink gardening gloves next to a large pet bed. The low ceiling was bedecked with at least a hundred crystals of different sizes and colors, hanging from varying lengths of fishing line.
Celeste returned and laid a photo face-down on the narrow counter. “I’m going to let the dog out now, so watch yourselves.” She opened the door to a small washroom from which a huge German shepherd appeared. “This,” Celeste pronounced, as though introducing royalty, “is Shamrock.”
Victoria backed up against the wall, but Khara knelt close to the dog. Shamrock put her paw in Khara’s hand as if they were old friends. After noticing the dog’s peculiar sideways walk, Khara asked, “What happened to her?”
“I’ll never know. She went outside fit as a fiddle one night and came home like that. It could have been one of the cows; she chased them enough. Since then, she’s had more surgeries than Michael Jackson. My vet keeps telling me to put her down, but I can’t even think of it. We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?” she asked as she lovingly ran her hand over the dog’s head.
Khara whispered in Shamrock’s ear, and the dog lowered her head as if ashamed. “It was not a cow,” she reported. “She chased a squirrel across the road and was hit by a car.”
Celeste observed Khara with a half-smile, and then turned her attention to Victoria. “I almost forgot. Isn’t this you?” she asked, handing the photo to her. Bea smiled at her from that long-ago graduation day as they stood with their arms around each other. “I look at these pictures all the time. Just this morning, in fact,” she declared, scratching her head. “Well, it might have been yesterday or maybe last month. Anyway, I asked myself what fate had befallen this dark-haired beauty, and here you are.”
“Do you believe that everything happens for a reason?” Khara queried, her arms around the dog’s neck.
“I most certainly do.” Celeste’s eyes rested briefly on Khara, and then went back to Victoria. “Now it’s time you girls told me what you’re doing on my porch in the middle of the night.” By the time they finished their story, sun was pouring into the room, the cocoa was long gone, and they were bleary-eyed with exhaustion.
“The cabin is out the kitchen door and across the garden. It’s a bit on the rustic side, but comfortable. I should know; when the stairs get too difficult for me, I move there until I get my strength back. Or sometimes Emma brings lovers home, and I can’t stand the noise. That little hussy,” Celeste commented and shook her head. “She didn’t bother coming home last night. See if she gets any tuna when she finally does show up.”
“Well yes, a Ferrari. And a Bentley, which she drove into the lake one day after I said I thought she looked plumper than usual. She’s the most spiteful cat I’ve ever known. I suppose that’s most of her charm,” she chuckled.
Victoria and Khara exchanged glances filled with misgiving. Celeste explained that since she rarely had company, the cabin had been taken over by three to five cats that found the main house not to their liking—mostly because of the shameful way Emma treated them. Khara and Celeste chatted about the difficult temperaments cats were prone to, leaving Victoria feeling like Alice in Wonderland.
“Everything should be there,” Celeste assured them as she led them across the stone patio, stopping every now and then to examine a new leaf. She unlocked the cabin’s door with a set of keys she wore around her neck. “There’s a bedroom on the upstairs floor with two beds in it, or you can use the bigger bed downstairs. Just make sure the cats have someplace comfortable to sleep.”
Of course,” Victoria said dryly.
Chapter Twenty-eight Victoria
She bolted upright from a chilling dream in which she tried to run but found her legs trapped in oily, grey sludge. Giant locusts swarmed above her, and then came together in the shape of a hideous black demon. Her screams were drowned out by the deafening noise of their wings as they lifted Khara and flew away with her.
Wiping sweat from around the back of her neck, Victoria was, at first, completely disoriented. The events of the last days blurred together in a series of Daliesque images. She rose from the couch and went into the bedroom to check for Khara, but found it empty. An intense flame of panic engulfed her, and she pushed open the screen door. She was met by a lush stillness and, little by little, her spirit quieted. Victoria practiced the deep breathing she’d learned in yoga class.
Earlier, darkness had prevented her from seeing the charm in the weathered copper roof of Celeste’s home, how the downstairs window boxes spilled over with yellow and purple pansies. Shamrock rested on the back porch, warming her crooked bones in the sun, surrounded by cats. When a tortoise— shelled calico nuzzled her, the dog with the vicious growl closed her eyes contentedly.
On a bench painted the same luxuriant green as a nearby bed of ferns, Victoria sat down next to a blanket that seemed to have been left there intentionally and pulled it over her shoulders. The fawn-colored throw felt weightless, and softer than anything she’d ever laid her hands on.
“It’s just your color,” Celeste called as she shuffled toward her, dressed in a silk kimono that Victoria suspected was authentic. The soft peach flowers of the gown could not have suited anyone more perfectly, and the remaining light gilded Celeste’s still mostly blonde hair. The animals immediately jumped up to accompany her. “I trust you’re feeling better?”
“How long did I sleep?”
“Most of the day. That friend of yours, though—she’s been up and around for hours. After discussing every plant in the garden, I was afraid I’d run out of things to keep her entertained, but now she’s found the stables and I fear we may never see her again. May I?” She motioned to the empty space on the bench.
Victoria made room. “It’s such a lovely place. How long have you lived here?”
“Thirty years or so.” She paused. “Bea’s never said a word about me, has she? Sometimes I think I embarrass her.”
“She mentioned that you were married once and that you have too many cats.” Celeste’s blue-grey eyes danced.
“I met Carl Szabó while touring the Italian countryside after college. Back then, I didn’t know anything about anything. I had dreams of spending my life inside a greenhouse, but life had other plans for me. You never saw a man so beautiful.” She stopped to savor her memories and pet her dog. “Have you ever been in love?”
“I’m not suited for it,” Victoria answered, coiling her hair around her fingers—a leftover from childhood, when she’d seen her mother do the same. “You know, the whole ‘happily ever after’ thing.”
“Promise me you’ll try it before you decide. After my first surgery, he left. I think he loved me too much to watch me suffer. Of course my family didn’t agree, but a wife knows these things. Even today, at this very moment, if I needed him, he’d come—new wife or not.”
“You mean he walked out on you when you were in need?” Victoria asked angrily. “I should think you would hate him!” Then she took a deep breath. “I’m sorry; it’s not my place to say.”
“Oh, I could never do that,” Celeste assured Victoria, her crystal eyes clouded with sorrow. “He was everything to me.” She reached over to prune a withered blossom from a clump of carroty nasturtiums. “One day he’ll forget the reason he left and come walking through that door.”
“You’d take him back?” Victoria asked, incredulous.
Celeste patted Victoria’s knee. “Spoken like a true cynic. Young people don’t know squat about love. But enough about me.” She looked expectantly at Victoria.
“My life? Well, it’s about my work. At least it was, until a few weeks ago.”
“Can Khara really be who she says she is?” Celeste questioned. “You don’t seem like the type who takes much at face value.”
“I didn’t believe her at first; who in their right mind would? But the peculiar occurrences that seem to follow her have convinced me.”
Celeste laughed. “And people say I’m eccentric! I thought you two were pulling my leg, which would be rather cruel since I only have one good one left.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have come.”
“Nonsense. The two of you are welcome to stay as long as you want. You’re safe here.”
“I need to let my office know where I am. I have appointments, and my clients count on me. I’m assuming you have Internet access?
“Never used a computer in my life; don’t intend to, either,” she bragged. “You could use the ones at the public library in town, though.
“Imagine,” she mused, staring deeply into the forest, “what Carl would say if he knew that fate had brought a fugitive Egyptian princess to our home?” She picked a weed from between the cracks in the stone pathway. “I don’t consider myself a bona-fide clairvoyant, but I do experience ‘insights’ from time to time.”
Victoria took a long breath and prepared for one more step down the rabbit hole.
“Well, aren’t you curious?” Celeste demanded. “I could interpret your aura.”
“I’d be afraid to know. Things have gotten so out of control lately.”
“Long after your last great-grandchild is born, you’ll still remember the excitement of these days. Relish them, Victoria.”
“Can you see Khara’s aura? What does it tell you?”
“Her aura is always changing, so her path must be very uncertain, crammed with achievements and catastrophes. Colors and people swirl around her as though she were the sun. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The voice inside Victoria’s head that usually spoke quietly in the middle of the night returned. What makes you think you can get Khara back where she belongs?
Victoria set her jaw.
“You, on the other hand, are an open book,” Celeste announced.
As much as Victoria didn’t believe in such things, her heart missed a beat.
“If I was the kind of person given over to telling the end of a movie or letting on what a person’s Christmas present was, I’d tell you. But,” Celeste whispered, “I don’t want to ruin it for you.”
“Then I’ll assume it’s a happy ending,” Victoria replied and gave Celeste a look she reserved for lying witnesses. She helped Celeste to her feet and, slowly, they made their way to the main house.
At the door, Celeste eyed what was left of Victoria’s good suit with more than a little disdain. “Lila, my caretaker’s wife, is bringing something for you to wear. You can’t go around here like that,” she commanded, nose wrinkled. “I never could bring mysel
f to get rid of the clothes Bea left here. She and Khara are practically the same size. Now come, child, it’s time to start dinner.”
Victoria grimaced. “I’m afraid I’m not much good in the kitchen.”
“Then it’s about time you learned. Khara too. So many things to prepare her for. What a gift you’ve been given!”
“I don’t follow you.”
“You, my dear, are the conductor of her train ride through the modern world. With influence like yours, just imagine the knowledge she could take back! It doesn’t take a seer to spot how badly she wants to learn. Teach her; teach her everything you can.”
Victoria shook her head. “I think we should leave Khara just as she is. I worry that her views have already been distorted. Changing the past—or the future, however you want to explain it—is not my job. I don’t believe she was ever meant to be here.”
“That’s because you lack—”
“Faith. I know. You were going to say I lack faith.”
“That’s not true. You, my girl, have more faith than most people ever dream of. I was going to say that you lack verve. Where’s your vigor outside the courtroom? Doors don’t open every day, even when you’re young and beautiful.” They went inside, where, without another word Celeste put her to work chopping onions.
Using her cane for balance, she began moving about the room, fishing out pots and pans and tossing vegetables single-handed from one of the refrigerators onto the countertop, humming all the while.
Patiently, she positioned Victoria’s fingers around the knife and tucked the knuckles of her opposite hand into the slippery onion. “There’s nothing more pitiful than being useless in the kitchen. Holding the knife correctly makes all the difference. See?”
She was right. The efficiency with which Victoria sliced her third onion amazed her, as did the onset of tears that accompanied the growing pile of neat slices on the cutting board.
Celeste remarked, “You know the old Mexican saying, don’t you? ‘Only jealous women cry when chopping onions.’”
“Who believes those things?” Victoria retorted. “Find me one person who wouldn’t cry doing this.”
