M. Rose - The Secret Language of Stones

“What is it?”

“A combination of herbs, honey, and juice to make you less nervous and more receptive.”

“It’s safe?”

“Of course.” She took the glass from me, tipped it to her lips, and sipped. Then she handed it back to me and I drank it down, surprised at its deliciousness, relieved the fermented apples didn’t nauseate me.

The chanting I’d heard before started up again, more loudly this time. The sonorous ensemble of men using their voices as instruments seemed to be coming through the walls and the ceilings to surround me like a cloak, cosseting me, seeping through my skin, entering me. I closed my eyes and the gold and jewel-toned mosaics from the cathedral swam in the darkness, a kaleidoscope of rubelites, peridots, wine-colored rubies, midnight sapphires, royal amethysts, citrines, sea green emeralds-fractured facets of gems-brilliant and blinding.

“Open your eyes,” Anna whispered.

She looked like a portrait in stained glass. Her face and clothes turned into prismatic designs pulsing in time to the chants. I floated on the sounds, lifted up in invisible arms.

“Opaline, can you hear me?”

I responded but too softly, and she asked a second time. I made a greater effort. “Yes.” The word sounded loud and harsh in my ears. As if the entire world coalesced in my voice.

“All right. You can close your eyes again. Just listen and relax.”

I sensed a light pressure on my forehead in between my eyebrows. Then heat. Her finger pressing warmth into me.

“Can you feel this? This is the spot we need to focus on…” She took my hand and replaced her finger with mine. The heat dissipated. “This is your third eye… In Hinduism it’s called the eye of clairvoyance; in Buddhism it’s called Urna… in Egypt, the Eye of Osiris… in Hebrew they say it is the eye of the soul.” She took my hand away and replaced my finger with hers. The heat returned. “Once I’ve taught you to open your third eye, you will be able to use this portal and reach inside yourself and access all your abilities. You will be able to speak to the voices through your third eye.”

Her pronouncements merged with the chanting until they were one and the same. Her words, their rhythm. Their cadence, her phrases. Her finger burned my skin. Setting me on fire. All calm left. Anxiety took over. Raged. Nightmare images filled my mind. A black smoking field… smoldering trees… the bitter stench of hair on fire… my hair?

Reaching up, I tried to push her hand away, but she held fast. I wanted to rise… run… get away from her… from the chant… from the fire. Around my neck the talisman felt hot… heat increasing every second… heat devouring me… Suddenly faces swam into my mind. Unfamiliar. Each in uniform… tattered… dirty… torn… Each face-younger, older, fair, swarthy-each in agony… suffering, in pain…

One by one, I saw them, suffered with them, then watched as their misery seemed to melt through and each face lost all its color and settled into a peaceful black mask.

Who were these men? I didn’t understand my own vision. Until I saw one I did recognize. Madame Maboussine’s son. She’d shown me his picture. Twenty-one years old. His face contorted. Screaming mouth hole. The shout no less frightening for its silence. His expression exploded, distorting, finally settling into a pale, sad smile.

And then I knew I was seeing the men I’d messaged. In the process, they became part of me and I them. And while their final peaceful visages should have comforted me, they didn’t. Their terror was imprinted on me. I was reliving it.

I started to scream-at least I thought I was screaming-but it was their collective voices I heard, their horrible, terrified shrieks and openmouthed bleeding cries.

Anna’s pressure on the spot between my eyebrows increased. Their voices and my screaming softened, lowered, turned into bells, large bronze bells, clanging over and over, and even though they were no longer hideous, they were still clamoring, still disturbing.

I couldn’t listen anymore, couldn’t watch. I needed to quiet them, to silence them, to stop the pictures and the sounds, and I pushed myself away from the table and stood up and then there was nothing but blackness and blessed calm.

Once I’d recovered from my fainting spell, Anna made me tea laced with cognac and lavender honey and served me little Russian tea cakes her cousin had left for us and insisted I try to eat. But I couldn’t. She sat with me and encouraged me, but all I could do was cry. My tears of frustration flowed freely, and she tried her best to comfort me, but I was inconsolable. I’d put so much faith into our session. I’d expected to walk away with the ability to be in control. Instead, nothing had changed. I’d only learned that if I tried to close the portal, I might never be able to open it again.

“It’s a gift,” Anna said, smoothing down my hair. “And you need to embrace it and trust we will find a way to help you live with it.”

“It’s not a gift,” I insisted. “It’s a nightmare.”

“Part of the secret to being able to control it is not being so frightened of it… not hating this ability quite so much.”

“Anna, the war is right inside my mind. I hear these men who have died. Some are still caught up in their pain, haven’t forgotten it yet, are traumatized by it. Others are so worried about those they are leaving behind, they can’t sever the connection. Lost, missing their families, they are in some terrible limbo.”

“But they don’t stay there, do they?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s agree you are receiving messages the soldiers leave in the passage vortex between life and death. That these final thoughts linger in some kind of psychic tunnel waiting for you to retrieve them so the soldiers can take their last step out of this realm.”

“Yes, fine.”

“And once you listen to the messages and pass them on, the soldiers move on?”

I nodded.

“So if you focused on that, maybe you would be more accepting. After all, none of them stay with you, do they? Once you give a mother or sister or wife her talisman, that soldier’s voice is gone, isn’t it?”

“Yes…” I wanted to tell her about Jean Luc, but something stopped me.

She didn’t notice my hesitation.

“So your actions relieve them of all their pain and suffering. You unhaunt them, if you will. Do you see?”

I nodded.

“That’s why it’s a gift. You give them the permission they need to move past the pain and step into the light.”

“And if I were to keep hearing a voice, what would that mean?”

“I’m not sure. Has that happened?”

If I told her about Jean Luc, would she think there was in fact something wrong with my mind? That I was making him up? What if she called my mother in Cannes and my parents came to get me? Would Jean Luc come with me? What of my work at the shop? The help I was giving the women who came to see me? Could I abandon them?

“No, it hasn’t,” I lied.

“So if you look at the process this way, wouldn’t the burden feel less onerous?”

“I suppose. I just wish…” I shrugged. “I still wish I didn’t need to bear witness to their agony.”

Once again, she smoothed down my unruly hair, and then bent down and kissed me.

“Let’s go home. We won’t give up, Opaline. We’ll work it out.”

I lay in bed after Anna left, my hand creeping up to my chest, cupping the talisman. I kept thinking about the ramifications of what I’d undertaken. If I closed the door and couldn’t open it again, I would be letting go of Jean Luc.