M. Rose - The Secret Language of Stones

“You are double cursed and double blessed,” Anna said as she gathered up our plates and put them in her wicker basket. “Let’s go upstairs to my reading room and we’ll see what we can see.”

We walked through Anna’s sitting room, all done up in a mauve silk, and into her closet. Here, behind a rack of the lavender- and deep-amethyst-colored clothes she favored, all scented with her powdery iris perfume, was the secret door leading to her reading room, her monde enchanté .

Anna’s hidden enclosure had been built by the apartment’s previous owner. We often wondered who might have required such a hideaway. What nefarious, clandestine business had been transacted here? Had it been an opium dealer’s den? A lover’s trysting place? A torture chamber dating back to Richelieu’s reign?

Using the ambient light from the closet, Anna lit an ornate silver candelabra. One by one, the five candles burst to life, revealing a wondrous cave.

The room was half the size of a bedroom and windowless. Antique mercury-spotted mirrors covered the ceiling; midnight blue wallpaper covered the walls. Sitting on the floor, on shelves, and on tabletops, Anna’s vast collection of crystal balls sparkled and shone and reflected in the mirrors, like hundreds of dazzling stars in an infinite universe.

Anna, descended from gypsies, had inherited the ability to use these orbs to see someone’s past and into his or her future. Combined with the fortune-telling, she used astrological readings in order to fully divine the complex paths a human psyche traveled and where that person was headed.

“Choose one,” Anna said to me, gesturing to her collection, her bracelets jangling and sending more rainbow flecks onto the walls. Being married to a jeweler, Anna could have worn different jewels every day, but she always wore the same pieces: three bracelets on her right wrist with ancient cultural, mystical, religious, and astrological symbols dangling from the gold chains; an Egyptian amethyst scarab ring surrounded by diamonds; and amethyst teardrop earrings hanging from diamond studs.

Scanning the shelves, I spotted a sphere on the third shelf with slightly bluish occlusions that looked like starbursts. I placed it in the depression in the leather-topped table, a hollow made from all the readings Anna had conducted over the years.

Pulling out a chair, I joined her at the table and watched as she leaned in and began to study the orb.

After a few moments, Anna looked up. “When was the last time we did this?”

“About four or five months ago.”

“Something has changed.” She smiled. “You’ve met the man you are going to love.”

“The only man I’ve met is your stepson, and that was seven months ago.”

She looked into my eyes, back into the ball, then shook her head. “Yes, you are on a path with Grigori, but…” She hesitated. “But I’m not sure he’s who I see here. I’m trying…” She hesitated as she focused. “Your aura has definitely altered. I believe it has to do with the voices, Opaline.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not certain. What you described, it’s the first time a voice has interacted with you, yes?”

“Yes.”

She studied the ball again. The quiet was profound in the small room. If there was an air raid, would we hear it so deep inside the apartment? The thought of bombs was never out of my mind for long.

“Have I ever asked you when you began hearing things others couldn’t?”

“I’m not sure when it started. I remember being a little girl sick in bed. My mother would bring me her large jewelry case, covered in silver sharkskin, and let me rearrange her treasures. Mostly she had rubies, blood-red earrings, rings, bracelets, and brooches. They shone with purple and deep blue highlights. And if I held them up to the light, I could find a rainbow of colors inside them. She owned a shell-shaped pendant set with opals. I used to put it up to my ear and listen to it.”

“Did you hear anything?”

“I heard the sea. My mother came in one afternoon and found me lying in her bed, the pendant up to my ear, and asked me what I was doing. When I told her, she seemed pleased. She explained that opals were layers of water trapped in a stone and maybe that’s what I could hear. I asked if she could hear it and offered it to her. She listened for a minute and then shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I’m proud of you that you can.’ And then she smiled and gave me the pendant to keep.”

“Did you know why things were different in your house?”

“Not really. I thought it was because my mother was beautiful, the same way our house was exquisite, hanging off a cliff, high up in the hills, overlooking the sparkling bay.

“Only when I turned thirteen and my menses started did I begin to understand all that beauty contained. My awareness came with the extreme cramps that made me double over. Suddenly a layer covering my world lifted. All that had been invisible and inaudible before was revealed.

“To help ease the pain, my mother fed me tea and lavender honey that helped me sleep. When I woke, I would feel better until she came to check on me and the cramps would return. When she asked how I was, her words would turn into pearls rolling around on the floor. When she left, her footprints glowed red.

“One night, when my father had returned home, she brought him to my bedroom. Half asleep, I heard my mother tell him she was worried because she herself had never suffered so badly.

“ ‘The difference,’ my father said, ‘is that Opaline is your daughter.’ ”

“I opened my eyes then and saw a glance pass between them I didn’t understand. ‘What does that mean?’ I asked.

“She shook her head and said I shouldn’t worry about anything. Then she gave me more honey-laced tea. After I drank it, the pain went away. I tried making the same tea on my own when I got cramps and she wasn’t there, but it never helped. Only when she made it. The tea was bewitched, I know that now.”

“Or dosed with laudanum,” Anna suggested, smiling.

“Do you think so?”

She nodded. “Much more likely than a spell. What about the stones? Were they more audible after that?”

“Yes, the day after I first became unwell, I went into my mother’s room for something and noticed a topaz bracelet on her vanity rattling like a snake. I went to find her. As soon as I entered her studio, a bowl of smooth round black stones started humming. When I explained, she told me not to worry. But the expression in her eyes informed me she was holding something back, keeping a secret from me.

“I became a spy in my parents’ house after that. Listening at doors, peering through windows, stealing into my mother’s room and rifling through her things. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I was determined to find something that would explain it all. My trespassing yielded nothing until one night the summer I turned fourteen.

“Well after midnight, I woke up hearing a high-pitched hissing. I pulled on my robe and went out onto the balcony. A full moon splashed diamonds across a calm bay. The noise couldn’t have been coming from the sea. I crept around to my parents’ balcony and peered into their bedroom through the open window. With the moonlight’s help, I saw my father asleep on his side of the bed. My mother’s side was empty.

“Creeping downstairs, I went outside. A glow emanated from her studio. I padded across the dewy grass toward the separate structure far enough from the house to afford her privacy. Not easy to spy on, the studio didn’t have any ground-floor windows, expressly because she didn’t like people looking in while she painted. But since a painter needed light, there were skylights. And so the only way for me to see what was going on was to climb up one of the oak trees hanging over the structure.