M. Rose - The Secret Language of Stones

Where am I?

“I don’t know, I don’t see you,” I whispered into the darkness.

Where am I?

Listening harder, I realized the shadowy blue-green voice echoed inside of me. The sad and desperate words weren’t coming from outside. I was manufacturing them. Overtired, my imagination was playing tricks on me. I needed to leave, to go to bed, to sleep.

Please, tell me.

I put my hands up to my ears and pressed as firmly as I could to block out the voice, the wind, the words.

“No,” I heard my voice groan. “No.”

Please.

“Go away.”

Please, tell me where I am.

This time I screamed: “Go away. Go away. Go away.” I needed to shut down the voice. To prove to myself I wasn’t losing my mind the way so many women in my family who had succumbed to the darkness and been its victim had lost theirs.

I knew all their names and the dates they were born and died-all tragically. Some accidentally, some by their own hand. Only one living past thirty-three.

EUGENIE 1664-1694

MARGUERITE 1705-1728

SIMONE 1734-1777

CAMILLE 1782-1814

CLOTHILDE 1800-1832

My great-grandmother had escaped by not believing in the legend. My mother by embracing it and willingly inviting a fate that the others had thought was worse than death. But I wasn’t my mother.

I’d succeeded in quieting the voice. The wind slowed and softened to a breeze. The workshop was silent once again, save for the sound of my own heart beating, still a bit too fast. My back dripped with sweat. My hands continued to tremble. But the worst of it was over. I knew if I just rested for a few more minutes, I’d be all right again. And then I’d go downstairs and go to bed and in the morning this would all be a-

Where am I?

I shook my head. “No, no… go away.”

I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn’t move. My feet seemed cemented to the floor.

Please… Just tell me . Where am I?

I gave up. What else could I do? Maybe if I answered, he’d leave.

“I don’t know where you are. On the battlefield where you died? In our shop? What can you see of where you are?” I whispered.

What would be worse? For him to answer or not to? I didn’t know anymore.

When I received no response, I deluded myself that the episode was over. The breeze was even softer than before, wasn’t it? In fact, I wasn’t sure I could even feel it anymore. Yes, the episode was over. I willed my hands to stop trembling. I didn’t need to put away my tools. I just needed to leave and go to bed.

You. I can see you.

Alarmed anew, I spun around. The workshop was empty. There was no doubt of it. There was no living being here with me. My head ached worse now. The powder hadn’t helped. Yes, yes. That must be it. At last I’d figured it out. The entire episode was a manifestation of my headache. An exaggeration of my ability to hear the stones and an overactive imagination.

Yes, I seemed to receive messages for mourners. I tried to convince myself the communiqués were the product of my mind reading the mind of the woman who sat across the table from me, desperately wanting to hear the words I shared with her. I had almost talked myself into believing I was a mentalist, not a necromancer. That I spoke the words I sensed the woman needed to hear. Not that I really was picking up messages the dead soldiers left in the atmosphere for their families so they could move on.

And it was possible, wasn’t it? Accounts of mentalists who were able to receive others’ thoughts went back to the Old Testament and ancient Greeks. In 1882, Frederic W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, invented the word “telepathy.” But I preferred “mental radio” to explain the phenomena I experienced-the theory being that, in the same way the newly invented radios in the news transmitted sound, our brains transmitted thoughts to one another.

Over and over, I told myself that’s what I heard, what the noises were. Transmissions from people around me, in the same room, the next room, the street. That what I saw and experienced was no different from my father’s ability to imagine a building, from Edith Wharton’s ability to imagine a story, from Picasso’s ability to imagine a painting.

But that night, speaking to a voice in the ether, I couldn’t fool myself. I was the daughter of a woman who called herself a witch and who could spin spells to prevent aging, cure illness, or alter the thoughts in someone’s mind.

What was my curse? Or my gift, as Anna insisted I refer to it. Yes, I spoke the language of gems and minerals. But I didn’t just hear their energy and sense who had touched them last or what they’d been feeling. I received audible messages through the stones as well. Or, more accurately, I was able to sense the energy between stones and humans and sometimes receive messages from the dead. Yes, I’d heard the dead’s cries in cemeteries, in the catacombs. And through the lockets I’d heard messages meant for their loved ones. But I’d never spoken to the dead before. I’d never known I was capable of doing that.

I remained sitting at my workbench, staring down at Madame Alouette’s charm. A simple rock crystal egg in eight sections with a soldier’s hair-her son’s hair-sandwiched at its center.

I still felt ill, but I knew I couldn’t stay in the workshop all night. Forcing myself to clean up, I swept the gold dust and scraps into the leather apron strung under my table. Nothing is wasted in a jeweler’s workshop. A year’s worth of scraps of the precious metal is worth a small fortune.

After putting away my tools, I picked up the crystal egg once more, this time intending to put it too away.

Surprised by its warmth, I closed my palm around it. An exotic and pungent scent tickled my senses. Lime and verbena with a hint of myrrh. I heard the wind again but warmer and calmer this time. And with it came a tangle of voices. I listened harder and heard, inside of them, a single voice. His voice whispering softly. I leaned forward, thinking the voice emanated from the egg. But I was wrong. He was all around me.

I’m not on the field.

“No?”

I was on the field. The last place I remember. I made a call. The wrong call. What happened next was all my fault.

“What happened?”

My unit… all my men… all gone.

Did the voice belong to Madame Alouette’s son? It had to. I’d been working on his talisman all night. And she’d told me he’d been in charge of his unit. Was it really him? And why was I scared to address him? Because he wasn’t alive anymore? Because I was talking to-what? A spirit? A ghost? A fragment of a trapped soul needing to communicate before he moved on?

I’d heard other soldiers’ voices before. But they were final thoughts left behind. A last sentence or two, preserved. Like an insect frozen in amber forever. Those soldiers weren’t speaking to me. Not to Opaline Duplessi. But this one was.

It was never my mother’s magick but rather my father’s love that kept me feeling safe when I was a child. When she opened the door, her darkness and her secretive powers would overwhelm me, while my father’s words and his touch would soothe me.

But that night I was alone in Paris. My father wasn’t with me. He couldn’t comfort me and convince me I had nothing to fear. And I was afraid. Somehow I’d opened a door of my own, and now I would have to live with what was on the other side.

The next evening, once the shop closed, I followed my typical Saturday routine. I changed from my work clothes-a simple black midlength skirt and white blouse-into an mandarin orange sleeveless chemise, matching satin-heeled shoes, and opal earrings and necklace I’d designed. Ten minutes later I crossed the Pont du Carrousel to my great-grandmother’s house. I would sleep there overnight, and we’d spend Sunday together before I went back to the store Monday morning. The normalcy of our time together would make me feel better, I was sure of it. Grand-mère discouraged exploration into the spiritual realm. My inner turmoil would calm, as it always did around her.