M. Rose - The Secret Language of Stones

For a half hour, I sat on a small stool beside the safe and searched through pink diamonds, rubies, sapphires, brown diamonds, emeralds, and tsavorites, picking out my choices for the jeweled flower.

Finally, I heard the distant footsteps of Monsieur coming downstairs. Nervousness fluttered inside my chest. I wanted him to approve of my selection and perhaps even offer a word or two of praise.

Looking up from the glittering gems, I listened. Something was wrong. The sound wasn’t coming from the right direction. The footsteps weren’t descending from the stairs, but approaching from behind the vault’s wall. From the tunnels running behind the section of the subbasement owned by Monsieur Orloff.

The noise increased in volume, sounding more like voices than footsteps but still muffled and hard to decipher. Was I picking up the hum from the dead and mistaking it for sounds being made by the living? Concentrating, I thought I could hear levels and tones of several people speaking.

It seemed that in a room or a cavern abutting Monsieur Orloff’s vault, people were gathering.

I put my ear against the back wall and listened, almost able to make out the chatter, but there was too much noise, too many people talking all at once, as if there was one set of voices on the other side of the wall itself and another beyond it.

I have a bad ear for languages. I know how to speak English since my mother was born in America and talked to us often in her native tongue. While I certainly heard the Orloffs speaking Russian often, I’d never picked it up. To me, Russian, Polish, German, Czech, and Yiddish were almost indistinguishable and equally indecipherable.

Choosing yet another section of the wall, I put my ear against the cold stone and tried again. No clearer. For a few minutes, I moved around, repeating the same action, searching for a spot where the sound would be more distinct, but the walls were too thick.

Was I hearing German? Could these be spies? Or was my sense of direction off and it was Monsieur Orloff hosting a Two-Headed Eagles meeting? I just couldn’t tell. Too many voices, too much noise.

As I worked my way around the room, I noticed one of the alcoves was set back farther, deeper into the wall. Maybe the sound would be more audible from there. As I quietly moved items off the shelf, I continued listening. Was it a mélange of unconnected voices from the heavens? Had I turned on some kind of psychic switch? Even though I wore gloves, was I hearing the people who’d once owned the antique objects in the vault before they were handed down or bought by their present owners? Had talking to Jean Luc opened a portal? Was I now a receptor even when I wasn’t trying to be one? I needed Anna’s help more than ever. I had to learn how to control my abilities so I could step out of the nightmare when it overwhelmed me.

Succeeding in emptying the shelves and removing them, I stepped into the alcove, put my ear up to the wall, and listened.

The only thing I became more sure of was that whoever was beyond this wall was speaking neither French nor English. If they were, I would have been able to pick up a hint of a word or accent. Pressing closer, I knocked over a candelabra, which clattered as it fell from a table onto the floor. The crash surprisingly loud.

The noise on the other side of the walls ceased for a moment. Then, just as it picked up again, I noticed a flicker of light above and to my left. Investigating, I found a slim crack in the rocks with half an inch of loose mortar. Using a fingernail, I picked at it, dislodging another half inch more, creating a peephole.

I moved the lantern away to the other end of the vault. If there was someone beyond the wall, I didn’t want them to see its glow and find me out.

Finally, afraid I would spot German uniforms-or, worse, not see anyone and discover the sounds were not of this time or place-I leaned forward and peered into the room beyond the vault.

Men’s legs. Hands. A long cream-colored cylinder I couldn’t identify.

The dimness of the chamber, the angle and size of the hole, didn’t allow for much visibility. As far as I could tell, my peephole was only a few feet above the floor. I was almost eye level with chalky, muddy shoes. Five-no, six-sets of feet. Maybe seven. Too much movement, too many shadows. The noise was no more distinct. I realized I had, in fact, been listening to what these men were saying as well as hearing voices from the antiques around me. I couldn’t separate the sources.

This was some kind of new hell.

Closing my eyes, I tried to remember Anna’s advice on how to control the messaging. But we’d only worked on my psychometry, on what to do when I was touching something, not how to deal with untethered responses.

Stop , I said to myself. Stop listening. And miraculously, after a few moments, some of the noise dissipated. Maybe now, if I looked through the peephole and focused, I could pick out their words, identify their language.

I took a step forward, but before I got close enough to peer through, I saw a man examining the crevice from his side. A flash of hair the color of burnished bronze, heavy eyebrows, topaz eyes shining with suspicion. Could he see me, or was I deep enough in shadow? What did the vault look like from where he stood? I’d moved the lantern, but was its light reflecting off the gold and silver objects?

I dropped to the floor. Waited. Listened. Still unable to make out the words or the language. Inching backward as quietly as I could, I reached the lantern and pushed it farther into a niche. I picked up a large onyx box and moved it in front of the opening. Now, if the men on the other side looked in, there was nothing to see but their own reflections. I studied my watch. I’d been down in the vault for almost an hour. How much longer before Monsieur came looking for me?

For the next fifteen minutes, I sat still with my back up to the wall, my head pressed against its stony unevenness, listening, trying to pull apart the noises and recognize a single word so I could discern what might be going on. An innocent meeting of people who worked somewhere in the Palais? French soldiers searching the underground? Germans planning an attack?

Finally, I heard shuffling and a door closing. The only sound remaining was the din I usually encountered in these dungeons. Slowly and carefully, I moved the box and then looked through the peephole. On the other side was nothing but darkness. All lights extinguished. All men gone.

What had I seen? Monsieur Orloff’s émigrés meeting in a new place? A gambling den? Rumor suggested there were at least a half dozen such dens in the Palais. Or was it German spies? Were the cylinders rolled-up maps?

Quickly, I replaced the shelves in the arch and arranged the objects sitting on them. I’d just begun sifting through the stones again when, for the second time that afternoon, I thought I heard Monsieur Orloff coming downstairs.

“Let’s see how you fared,” he said after closing the door behind him.

While he examined the stones, I tried to figure out what I should do. Ask him? What exactly? Or just tell him I saw men in a room beyond this one? What if it made me sound paranoid? Would he become hesitant about me doing my job?

Maybe I was letting my imagination get the better of me. After all, there were stores on both sides of us and each of them retained access to basement chambers. I couldn’t be sure of the vault’s orientation. If we were beneath Grigori’s antiques shop, then on the other side was a coin collector’s shop. And if we were beneath the jewelry showroom, on the other side was a perfume shop. There was also the possibility that the vault backed up against tunnels that were not part of anyone’s shop and that the men were city workers. Maybe a sewer needed maintenance and the cylinders were maps of the sewer system. Or could there be a series of tunnels stemming off the metro line needing attendance?