Child of a Rainless Year (20 page)
Read Child of a Rainless Year Online
Authors: Jane Lindskold
“A drawer liner,” I said aloud. “Meant to make it easy to lift out the lot without making a mess. I’ll know next time.”
The bottom of the now empty drawer was apparently seamless. Feeling like a bit of a fool, I tapped and heard not quite hollowness, but certainly not the dull thud a solid bottom would have given. I have a good eye for detail and discrepancy, and it didn’t take me long to find the place where I could press down and release the hidden catch. The false bottom lifted up on hidden hinges, revealing a compartment about four inches deep and as long and wide as the drawer.
“No wonder it didn’t sound hollow,” I said. “It’s completely full, but what of?”
The compartment was filled with tubular objects, each ranging from roughly eight to twelve inches long. The diameters varied too, from narrow enough I could span them with thumb and forefinger, to fat tubes thick enough for a gerbil to set up housekeeping. Inside they were made of wood, of metal, of glass. No two were alike, though all had similarities. Each rested neatly in a velvet-lined trough clearly fashioned to hold it alone.
I stared blankly for a moment, then registered what I was seeing.
“Kaleidoscopes!” I said in astonishment. “It’s a hoard of kaleidoscopes! I hope I haven’t broken any of them.”
One by one I lifted the kaleidoscopes from their places in the holding tray and held them to the fading sunlight coming in the window. Each was unique, each extraordinarily beautiful. The mandala views within were enough and more to match the external adornment.
I don’t know how long I sat there on the floor, looking through each kaleidoscope in turn, then beginning again with the first. I couldn’t seem to get enough of the gem-colored scenes. There were the simple, classic mandalas; there were elaborate snowflake patterns. Multicolored patterns contrasted with rare, nearly monochrome arrangements, these all the more beautiful in that they relied upon subtle differences in shading for their effects.
Eventually, the failing sunlight made me aware how much time had passed. I set the kaleidoscope I had been holding—a triangular one made of stained glass with an elaborate hand-blown sphere set in a bracket on the end—into its holder, got to my feet, and stretched.
After the brilliant colors in the kaleidoscopes, the white and gold of my mother’s bedroom furnishings seemed pale and insubstantial. I crossed to the wall and switched on the lights, noting again where bulbs needed to be replaced. The electric light was not as satisfying as the sunlight had been, but it was ample to see by.
Going back over to the vanity, I thoughtfully stared down at the hoard I had discovered, wondering what to do with it. I knew something about kaleidoscopes. Each one of these was worth a tidy sum. Something other than their value awakened my curiosity. The artistic renaissance of the kaleidoscope was only about twenty, maybe thirty years old. Before that the elegant optical playthings that had so delighted the Victorians had declined to cheap, if charming, toys made mostly of cardboard, their inner mirrors a bit of bent metal as often as not.
This hoard was at least forty years old. That almost certainly meant they were antiques, their value enormously higher than that of contemporary pieces. But that was not reason enough for my mother to have hidden them in this way. She had left her jewelry in the open—even the better pieces had been tucked away in a velvet bag in her lingerie drawer. I knew this, because it had come to me with the rest of her estate.
Why would she leave jewelry out and hide these kaleidoscopes? And what should I do with them now?
Frowning, I decided that the place in which the kaleidoscopes had remained safe this long would do a bit longer. As I was lowering the false bottom on the drawer into place and resetting the liner and the concealing junk, I remembered I hadn’t checked the left-hand drawer.
Knowing what I now did, I made a much neater job this time. I found the liner could be removed without taking the drawer out of the vanity. With this out of the way, I found the release and opened the false bottom panel. At first I thought I’d found more of the same, for again I was confronted with neat rows of kaleidoscopes, each in its tailor-made velvet bed.
Then two things caught my attention simultaneously. One kaleidoscope was missing from the first row. Then I realized that all the pieces in that first row were not kaleidoscopes but their close cousin, the teleidoscope.
I took out the one from the niche next to the empty one and held it to my eye to confirm my realization. Instantly, I was treated to a mandala in which the bedspread’s gold and white were fragmented into a perfectly symmetrical mandala. I moved my head, and the view shifted with me, picking up glints of silver from the wall mirrors, a dash of the green from the foliage outside the window—for unlike the kaleidoscope, which relies on the images in the object chamber at one end to make its images, the teleidoscope transforms the world around the viewer by means of a convex lens set at one end.
I lowered the teleidoscope, pulling myself away from the enchanting images with difficulty. I had to resist an urge to leave this room with its dominating pale hues and see what the teleidoscope would do with the richer colors elsewhere in the house. I did resist, and instead sat staring at the teleidoscope, my earlier puzzlement returning.
There was no doubt that the instrument in my hand was a beautiful thing. The case was wood, the rich hues ranging from dark honey to nearly black. The woodworker had turned it on a lathe, giving it an almost femininely seductive curve. The whole had been polished so satiny smooth that my work-roughened fingertips could hardly believe anything was there. The lens at the end was actually a perfect crystal sphere set into the wood without seam or join.
The exteriors of the others varied somewhat, but not as much as with the kaleidoscopes. Here wood, enamel, inlay, or other less fragile materials seemed to be preferred over the stained glass that had been common in the kaleidoscope casings. Yet there was no reason why the exterior casing of a teleidoscope shouldn’t be as varied as that of a kaleidoscope. It was the arrangement of mirrors within, the set of the eyepiece, the arrangement of the lens that effected the image.
So why had my mother preferred these relatively hardy teleidoscopes? Why had she hidden the collection in this way? Why had she hidden it at all? And why was one teleidoscope missing?
I started to put the teleidoscope I had been using away, but stopped at the last minute. Instead, I set it carefully on the vanity top, then hid the others away. After drawing the blinds and shutting off the lights, I left my mother’s room, taking the teleidoscope with me. Once outside, I locked both the bedroom and the upper parlor doors. Then I went into the room I was using as a bedchamber and slid the teleidoscope into an odd sock. I hid the bundle at the back of my sock drawer.
I did this methodically, not even thinking whether or not I felt stupid about it, but that night, after I’d eaten and chatted a bit with Domingo, and gone back up to my room, I didn’t read in Aunt May’s journals as I usually would. Instead I lay on my bed, turning the crystal at the end of the length of polished wood here and there, watching the colors transform into wonderful symmetrical patterns that followed me into my dreams.
In the Middle Ages, color was used in
heraldry … Color
helped carry the message of the design: White = faith and purity; Gold = honor; Red = courage and zeal; Blue = purity and sincerity; Green = youth and fertility; Black = grief and penitence; Orange = strength and endurance; Purple = royalty and high birth
—Betty Edwards,
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
That an argent field meant purity, that field of gules meant royalty or even martial ancestors, that a saltire meant the capture of a city, or a lion rampant noble and enviable qualities, I utterly deny.
—A. C. Fox-Davies,
The Complete Guide to Heraldry
Until the day I discovered Colette’s secret hoard, I had faithfully read forward in Aunt May’s journals. Mostly, I had read of frustration—how her efforts to learn something from police and reporters had met with silence, how she had tried and failed to learn who my father might have been, how pushed beyond patience, she had even tried to find Colette’s own birth certificate.
All of this had met with no success—or so she thought at the time—and given that the search had now stretched over a year, Aunt May had good reason to give up in frustration. Then came the announcement that a much loved cousin was dying in faraway Arizona, and with that announcement came temptation.
Breast cancer, her mother writes. They’ve taken both breasts away, and all sorts of glands and muscles, but it seems the cancer persists. I can’t believe it. Linda and I played together as kids. Death is something that happens to old people, not to a woman who isn’t even forty-five.
But it’s going to happen.
I’ve been moping around for a week now, and yesterday Stan told me he wants me to go out to Arizona and see Linda. He doesn’t spell it out, Stan doesn’t, but he knows I need to see her to make this real. And, yes, I need it to be real. Otherwise, there’s going to be a phone call and a funeral someday, and I’m going to break down and hate myself for lost chances.
So I agreed to go, and while I was looking at the map something came at me. Arizona borders on New Mexico. The drive to Las Vegas would be a long one, but … I could make excuses to Linda and her mother. Stan wouldn’t know where I was. Long distance costing what it does, he isn’t going to call me every night or anything like that.
I could rent a car, but I’ve checked. Trains run that way. I could catch one from Tucson, get to Las Vegas. Stay a day or so, ask some questions. No one would know. How could they? It’s been over two years since we adopted Mira …
Two days later.
I asked some questions at a travel agent while I was doing the shopping. A round-trip ticket from Tucson to Las Vegas wasn’t all that outrageous. I made a deposit. Tonight Stan came home with my airplane tickets to Arizona. He’d gone to get them on his lunch break. Different travel agent, of course. He’s being so kind, I almost hate myself for breaking our promise, but this is something I have to do.
And almost as soon as Aunt May had made this decision, her doorbell rang. With that cascading chime, not only did her plans change, so did the journal. Up to that point, I’d been reading it with a certain detachment, but with the first two paragraphs something odd happened. I felt pulled inside, and read without awareness of the words, seeing the scene before me with all the vividness of life.
Dear Mira: I’ve been writing this journal to you all along. Today was the first time I realized it. I felt a fierce temptation to go back and tear out those earlier pages, but I’ve decided to leave them in. It’s best that if you ever read this—as I plan that you will—that you don’t have any illusions about what set me on what I did, and maybe even more importantly, what I’m planning on doing, though more than good sense tells me I should not.
You’ve read what comes before this. If you haven’t, go back and do so. Now you can go on with everything straight.
Yesterday I put a deposif on a train ticket from Tucson, Arizona, to Las Vegas, New Mexico. Midday today, around ten o’clock, when I’d stopped to have a cup of coffee and a sweet roll and glance over the newspaper, the front doorbell rang.
I was surprised, but not too much. Salesmen are something of a fact of life, and they’re just about the only people who use the front door. Friends come around to the kitchen.
Finishing my coffee, I went to the door, but I didn’t find a salesman standing there. I found a man I recognized, and if I tell you my heart leapt into my throat, well, you’ll just have to believe me.
He was about my age, short, plump, and fair-haired. As every time I’ve seen him, he was impeccably dressed in one of those suits that you know is expensive, even if it doesn’t look all that different than every other suit you’ve ever seen. I know him as Michael Hart, and he’s one of the trustees of Mira’s estate—the youngest of the three, I think.
I opened the door to him immediately.
“Mrs. Fenn?” he said politely. “May I come in?”
I couldn’t quite make myself talk yet, so I nodded and motioned him in. I thought he’d sit in the living room like he has always done before, but he moved past me into the kitchen and sat across from where I’d left my coffee cup. Somehow this made him a little less frightening, but I was still plenty nervous as I went in after him. I offered him coffee. He accepted, then added about half the contents of the sugar bowl. He got right to business.
“Mrs. Fenn,” he said. “It has come to my attention that you are planning to make a trip to Las Vegas, New Mexico—in direct violation of the agreement we made when you and Mr. Fenn took in Mira Bogatyr.”
I nodded. I didn’t see any sense in lying, and I wasn’t about to ask Mr. Hart how he knew. It occurred to me that I’d been stupid using a travel agent here in town. There aren’t that many. I should have made the arrangements once I was in Tucson.
This flitted through my mind, even as I listened to his next words.
“It also has come to my attention that you have sent various letters to Las Vegas, letters inquiring after the fate of Colette Bogatyr.”
I didn’t even nod this time, just stared, and as I waited for him to continue his accusations something in me grew white hot.
“I know the terms under which we took Mira in,” I said, and my voice shook, but it wasn’t because I was afraid. I was furious. “If you’re going to take her because I’ve broken them, well …”
I trailed off, not certain what I was threatening, but knowing that if my impulsiveness had lost me my daughter, I was going slit my wrists—if Stan didn’t do it for me. Mr. Hart seemed to understand my desperation.
“Mrs. Fenn,” he said, “why were you trying to locate Colette Bogatyr?”
“I want to know what happened to Colette. It’s like I’ve already said. If something happens and Mira is taken from us … I don’t know what I’d do. I wanted to find out if anything had been learned about what happened to her. I wanted reassurance that she wouldn’t come and take my little girl.”
The smallest hint of compassion mingled into Mr. Hart’s professional severity.
“Do you swear that is all?”
“What else could there be?”
“Mira has an inheritance coming to her. Perhaps you are interested in securing that. This would be difficult to do if her mother returned.”
I was so shocked at being taken for a gold digger that I didn’t say a word, and my silence apparently made a better answer than any words could have done.
“I see,” Mr. Hart said. “If I assure you that Colette Bogatyr is not likely to return and take your daughter from you, will you stop your prying? I am pleased with how the child is thriving in your care, and so am reluctant to have her removed from your home. My colleagues might feel otherwise.”
“Can you really swear Colette won’t be coming back?” I said. “Is she dead then?”
Mr. Hart’s expression became vague and I don’t think he even saw where he was for a moment, so intent was he on an inner vision of some sort.
“She may be or she may not be, but though Queen of Mirrors she certainly is, and Mistress of Thresholds as well, she knows less than she could wish of color and of light. That is why she had a daughter.”
I heard the titles, but shaken by the oddness of those words all I said was, “What?”
Mr. Hart shook his head, as a dog might shake water from its coat. “Trust me. Colette Bogatyr will not return to take your daughter from you. If you wish to keep Mira safe, let her grow here in this quiet place, let her find her strengths in her own time. That is the best thing you can do for her. Now. Do I have your word you will not go to Las Vegas, New Mexico, and that you will cease writing letters to those involved with the disappearance?”
What else could I do? I swore.
“Do not tell anyone of my visit. My leniency would be misinterpreted, and not only would you lose Mira, you would lose one who thinks well of how you care for her.”
Mr. Hart rose from my kitchen table, and I walked him to the door. As he was about to leave, he handed me an envelope.
“Your deposit,” he said, and without a further word of parting, he went down the walk. I glanced down at the envelope in my hand, and when I looked up again, he was gone.
Mira came home today with her folders stuffed with drawings from her art class. To this point, I had looked at them mostly to see how her skills were developing. Now for the first time I saw the riot of color she used. Not even a simple daisy was drawn in the white and yellow more usual for a child of her age. It was white and a dozen shades of yellow, from deep gold to the lightest lemon, petal edges touched with green, and given depth with shadow.
Color. Somehow my Mira has more than an artist’s eye. Something in her ability to use color is key to her relationship with Colette. There’s more here, too. Mr. Hart seemed to think I was interested in getting control of Mira’s inheritance. I thought at the time he meant the money and property. Now I wonder. Could this “inheritance” be some ability? Maybe her artistic ability. I keep thinking about what Mr. Hart said: “She knows less than she could wish of color and of light. That is why she had a daughter.”
Weird, but no stranger than anything else to do with Colette.
I have promised I will not do any more research regarding Colette’s life in Las Vegas, but can I find out what those strange titles might mean? They sounded like something from a fairy tale, but I have heard that fairy tales often are watered-down versions of older stories, stories that have their roots in truth. Maybe there is some tiny country or Masonic lodge or something where these titles belong.
It seems like a safe enough thing to do, and not even Stan will find anything odd in a new mother who suddenly becomes obsessed with storybooks.
And so began Aunt May’s search for the meaning behind those words, a search that I had seen the traces of in her interest in every religion, philosophy, and occult tradition of which she could learn. I had thought her interest a curiosity, an odd hobby, later even an attempt to compensate for the limitations inherent in the life of a suburban housewife.
Now I knew it for what it was, a quest as noble as that on which any of Arthur’s knights ever rode out, more noble even, for while they sought the Grail for the honor it would bring to their king’s house and to themselves, Aunt May sought knowledge so that she might use it to arm herself—and her daughter—against a danger she could not understand but knew nonetheless was there.
That night, reading her words, and knowing the end of that quest as Aunt May herself never could have done, I bent my head and wept over the handwritten pages, my tears the rain that never fell in the year that I was born.
Maybe it was because what I read in Aunt May’s journal forced me to confront what was going on more directly than I had before, but the next morning I realized I was awakening more than the silent women. Something was coming alive, something that had … I struggled to find a word that would explain what I myself only nebulously understood. Slept? Been suspended? Been held in abeyance? Slept seemed easiest, but in that ease I recognized the danger of oversimplification.
Something that had slept, then, for forty years, ever since Colette had vanished.
I’d like to say that what was awakening was the House, but just as the term “slept” was a dangerous oversimplification, so was this. It was more like what the House stood for was coming alive. No. That wasn’t quite right either. It had to do with the nature of the House itself.
Can something be alive and yet not? Aware and yet unaware? If so, that was the nature of the House.
The House was not a person but a place, a living place. There are long traditions of sacred sites, of places sanctified due to some nearly forgotten event—or perhaps the original event has mythologized almost beyond recognition of what originally happened. Myth might tell of how a god of war came to earth riding upon a flaming horse. The original event might have been an iron meteor falling to the ground.
There are other occult traditions that touch on the idea of living places. In the lingo of the New Age they’re called “ley lines” or “alpha vortexes.” There are those who claim to sense “vibrations” or “emanations,” from the living earth. These terms are all right, but still limited in their ability to express what’s really going on.
It’s like a tone-deaf person trying to sing Handel’s Messiah a capella, or an artist trying to draw a rose with one red crayon. Semblance is there, but not substance, not dimension. If you know the
Messiah
or have seen a rose, you’ll recognize what is being attempted, but going the other way around and trying to discover the original from these distorted representations is harder—if not completely impossible.
Messiah
or have seen a rose, you’ll recognize what is being attempted, but going the other way around and trying to discover the original from these distorted representations is harder—if not completely impossible.
But nonetheless I knew. I knew that this house I had inherited from my mother was not just a house—even as it was indisputably and inarguably a house. All the things I had been doing since my arrival in New Mexico—the cleaning and dusting, ordering Domingo and his crew to complete the exterior painting, even the finding of Colette’s hoard—were playing their part in this awakening, but these weren’t the only things.
It was as if the research I had been doing into my past and into Colette’s past, the reading I had been doing in Aunt May’s journals and the transformation this had worked on my settled images of my childhood and of the people who had raised me, had reshaped my mind. I felt as if I was being reworked, made into the key that would unlock the puzzle that was Phineas House.
If this were the case, I was no linear shape of metal, but something more fluid and irregular, more like the final amoebalike shape that completes a jigsaw puzzle, transforming it so that everything seen before as little individual, unrelated scraps of color becomes a whole.
I was not the only one aware of the awakening of whatever potential it was that Phineas House held. Domingo Navidad may have been aware before I was, for Domingo had ever been the House’s acolyte. Perhaps the relationship had begun when as a boy he had assisted his father about the grounds. Children’s minds are more plastic than those of adults, and, if the evidence of the presence of the silent women can be taken as anything, the House was awake and alive then.
Perhaps when the House was being pushed back into sleep it reached out and touched Domingo, wrapping a tendril into his awareness, and through him maintaining a touch on the waking world. When this thought first occurred to me, the image was gentle, a green-hazed climbing vine setting a gentle hold on a support. Later, when I knew more, I came to think that what the House had done was crueler—more akin to the setting of sharp-hooked thorns that roses employ when they climb, digging into whatever is soft and yielding in their surroundings.
But this later image had no part of my initial reaction when I realized that of all the people I knew there was one, at least, who would not think I was insane, as Colette had been thought insane. I think Aunt May not only would have believed, she would have welcomed Phineas House as an answer to many of the puzzles whose edges she had discerned in her research, but whose inner logic remained frustratingly incomplete.
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