Child of a Rainless Year (49 page)
Read Child of a Rainless Year Online
Authors: Jane Lindskold
While listening to this brief exchange, I had confirmed that, as with my previous day’s vision, I was limited to the vicinity of the mother and child, so I followed as Chantal walked around the house rather than going in the convenient kitchen door. I wondered if she would not use a servant’s entry or if this was her way of prolonging her time outside without actually defying her husband.
As we rounded the side of the House through a narrow walkway—the side lots had already been sold, squeezing Phineas House into the truncated yard I remembered from my childhood—I saw a familiar gig parked by the front gate. Shooting Star turned her head to watch Chantal pass, but Chantal gave no sign of noticing either horse or carriage.
I wondered why I had not seen Chantal and the infant Colette in my previous vision. I decided that it had to do with my focus then being on Colette and the circumstances of her disappearance—extraneous elements had not been shown. Or maybe even then Phineas House had been extending its protection to its residents. I simply didn’t know, and it didn’t seem important that I know now. What was important was learning whether this time I would be able to cross the threshold and learn what had gone on inside.
I hugged as close as I could to Chantal, all but treading the heels of her shoes as she went up the steps to the front porch. A servant opened the door as she approached, and to my great delight, I passed inside with Chantal.
The entry foyer retained many of the furnishings that were there in my day: the umbrella urn and coatrack were familiar friends, as was a narrow table. This held a tray for cards, a basket for outgoing mail, and an ebullient arrangement of roses. What was missing were the mirrors that the adult Colette had hung everywhere. The only one that remained was set in the middle of the coatrack.
Chantal automatically checked her reflection as she came in. She was a good-looking woman who was probably very pretty when she made the effort, an effort she had not made merely to take the baby out into the house’s private garden.
“Beatrice,” Chantal said to the serving woman who had opened the door, a short, dumpy woman who was definitely not one of the silent women. “Would you take off my shawl for me? Little Colette has fallen asleep and I don’t want to wake her.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Beatrice replied, moving immediately to do so.
Chantal’s accents were colored with her native France, but Beatrice spoke with a flat American accent that for all its almost monotone respectfulness managed to sound vaguely disapproving.
“I’m going to take the baby up to the nursery,” Chantal went on. “If Felicity is in the kitchen, have her come up immediately.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Beatrice sounded even more unhappy, and I guessed that she and this Felicity—probably the nursemaid—must not get along.
But this exchange was of passing interest to me. I had been looking side to side, moving as far from Chantal and the infant as my invisible tether would permit me. Nowhere did I spot the adult Colette. Had the kaleidoscope misunderstood me and taken me to see my infant mother, not realizing that the actions of the adult Colette were what interested me?
I gave an internal sigh. Never mind. If there was a mistake, I had allowed enough time for me to rest from this ordeal and try again before midnight. I’d succeed in confirming that Sunday’s kaleidoscope would let me view past events, and that alone meant this was not a wasted venture.
Chantal went up the main stair, and I shivered just a little when I remembered that her husband would fall to his death some nine years later, a death caused, if the gossip of a ghost was to be believed, by the baby girl who now drowsed with such contentment in her mother’s arms.
I was drawn after Chantal into the nursery, and immediately felt a spark of triumph. The adult Colette was waiting there, sitting in a comfortable chair by a window that overlooked the garden. The room was furnished with a crib for the baby, various dressers and wardrobes, and a bed in which, doubtless, the nursemaid, Felicity, slept. The doors to the connecting rooms were closed, but I guessed that the room that would someday serve as my playroom had already been furnished for the amusement of a child too young even to roll over, much less to play with toys.
The adult Colette watched the entrance of her mother and infant self with cool calculation. A moment later, a buxom, broad-hipped woman came in, a little boy clinging with one hand to her skirts, with his other to a battered toy. The woman was Felicity, no doubt, nursemaid and, quite possibly, wet nurse as well.
Chantal handed over her child with trusting ease. “I think she’s wet, Felicity. See if you can change the diaper without waking her.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Felicity replied with competent calm, accepting the transfer of the infant to her arms. “I’ll do as you say.”
Chantal left after bestowing a kiss on her baby’s brow. The little boy had detached himself from Felicity’s skirts and now crouched by the bed, murmuring to himself as he played with his toy. Felicity gave him a brief smile, then moved to check the infant’s diaper, unwrapping layer after layer of lacy blanket to do so.
Adult Colette rose from her seat and watched intently as the nursemaid tended to the drowsy baby. Colette looked distinctly displeased when, after the diaper was changed and the baby clean, Felicity moved as if to put the baby in her crib. Colette’s tension ebbed when the baby began to fuss and Felicity gave up all attempts to put her in her crib. Instead, Felicity began to walk around the room with a measured tread meant to lull little Colette back to sleep.
Adult Colette was less pleased when Felicity opened her dress and set the baby to her nipple. I was standing near my mother now, but all I could make out of her mutterings was something that sounded like “ … don’t need your tit.”
Time passed as Felicity nursed the drowsy infant, continuing her pacing as she did so, humming a lullaby under her breath. Colette paced with her, her motions that of a stalking predator, her gaze alert, her mood shifting with Felicity’s every motion.
Eventually, I discerned a pattern in adult Colette’s reactions. Whenever Felicity’s pacing took her near the room’s one mirror—a large one, mounted in a free-standing frame—Colette grew tensely excited. Whenever Felicity drew away, especially when it looked like the nurse might put the baby in her crib or settle them both into the comfortable chair near the window, Colette grew agitated.
Whatever she wants has something to do with the mirror, then,
I said,
but I can’t for the life of me guess what.
I said,
but I can’t for the life of me guess what.
Eventually, infant Colette stopped nursing and settled into a deep, milky sleep. Felicity, unable to hear the adult Colette’s protests, settled in the chair near the window, obviously having decided that this was a better course than risking waking her charge during the transition into the crib.
Adult Colette wasn’t thrilled by Felicity’s choice, but then, when she moved nearer to the seated nurse and child, her mood brightened noticeably, her expression became calculating. Confident now that I could be seen by none of the participants in this peculiar scene, I moved to stand behind Colette and learn what had so pleased her. As soon as my angle of vision matched Colette’s I understood at once.
Felicity and the infant were both reflected in the windowpane. The lighting was just right, so that the reflection gave back not shadowy images, but ones almost as good as what you’d get from a mirror, complete to a wash of pale color.
Colette was plucking her gloves off of her fingers now, tucking them into her skirt-pocket, rubbing her hands together as if to awaken whatever sensitivity the gloves might have removed. Then she leaned forward, hands coming together as if she would lift her infant self from the nursemaid’s hold. Instead, to my astonishment, she reached past the living child and her hands went up and into the reflected image on the windowpane.
Colette reached as if to pull the reflected child forth, but though she made contact with the nurse’s arm, moving the reflected image just slightly back from the child, so that image no longer matched reality, her fingers slipped through the child Colette’s image.
Adult Colette straightened, as if as surprised at this result as I had been at her attempt. Then she folded her hands in front of her waist in an almost prayerful attitude, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply in and out.
Calming herself
, I thought.
Refocusing.
, I thought.
Refocusing.
After several minutes during which I noticed to my fascination that the living Felicity unconsciously shifted her arm so that it now matched the position of its reflection, adult Colette opened her eyes once more. The intensity of her focus was so acute that I found myself glad her back was to me, for it seemed impossible that she would not see me. Under that intense gaze, the images in the windowpane grew more concrete, colors deepening, depth of field expanding so that the reflection seemed as real as the reflected.
Or rather, part of it did. Felicity’s reflection and that of the chair grew more solid, but that of the baby Colette remained as it had been, translucent, only lightly brushed with color. Nonetheless, adult Colette moved as if to lift the baby from Felicity’s arms. Once again her hands passed through the reflection, coming away without the baby Colette she so obviously intended to take from its image.
Now I saw Colette’s anger building. She paced back and forth across the room, but as was always her way, her anger did not externalize, it focused inward, fueling her thoughts, making her more, not less, calculating.
Eventually, Colette returned to Felicity’s side. Again she reached into the reflection, but this time she did not try to take the infant. Instead she gave the nurse’s bare forearm a hard pinch, twisting the supple flesh cruelly. A red mark appeared instantly, but only in the reflection. With a startled exclamation, Felicity broke from her meditative silence.
Baby Colette whimpered drowsy protest, and the little boy looked up from his game and said, “What’s wrong, Mama?”
Felicity rose from the chair, craning to see her arm, but adult Colette had chosen her spot well. Felicity could not see that portion of her forearm without putting the infant down. With little Colette balancing between going back to sleep and waking into a screaming fit, the nurse wisely chose not to put the child down.
Instead Felicity walked toward the big mirror, saying to her son as she did so, “A horsefly must have bitten me. Watch for one, my boy, but don’t make a sound going after it. The baby’s fussy and we don’t want to wake her.”
The little boy dropped his toy and began scouting the room for the horsefly, his eyes gleaming with pleasure at this new game. In front of the mirror, Felicity twisted to see the reflection of her damaged forearm, hunting for the mark her nerves told her should be there. As she made her futile search, adult Colette came up beside her. Confidently, she reached into the mirror, grabbing at the child’s reflection, but as within the windowpane, her fingers slipped through.
After several attempts, adult Colette seemed to acknowledge she could not succeed at whatever she was attempting. Coldly furious, she gave Felicity’s reflection another pinch, taking care not to pinch hard enough that the nurse would unsettle her infant charge. Felicity yelped again.
“Go to the kitchen, Tommy,” Felicity said to her son, “and ask the cook nicely if you might have a baking soda paste on a cloth. We’ve found no flies in here, so I must be getting a rash, and that will soothe it.”
Tommy scampered away, and adult Colette followed him out the open door. I found myself drawn after her as she went down the stairs and out the front door, drawing her gloves on as she went. When Colette opened the front door, the vision began to fade, and soon I was back among the fantastical garden of gold and crimson flowers, feeling oddly apprehensive, and more puzzled than before.
When I awoke from my post-scrying nap, I was alone in my bedroom. What I was now thinking of as the usual headache and bone-penetrating weariness were gone, but I made no move to get up. A glass of water rested on a coaster on the bedside table. I propped myself up to drink, and thought about what I had seen.
Colette had gone at great risk into her own past, apparently to steal her own reflection. It didn’t make sense. I thought about everything I had read about reflections, about how some primitive peoples believed reflections and shadows contained the essence of a person, that person’s soul.
Why would Colette try to steal her own soul? What good would that do her? Try as I could, I simply couldn’t make sense of what I had learned. My bladder was protesting the additional water I had drunk, and so I found my robe and went into the bathroom.
A long shower to rinse the cobwebs from my thoughts seemed like a good idea, though I felt rather guilty about a second shower in one day. The summer monsoons had never come, and mandatory water restrictions were in place in Santa Fe. Las Vegas hadn’t gone quite that far, but people were being asked to conserve water whenever possible.
“Another rainless year,” I thought, settling for giving myself a cold rinse with a sponge. “Like the year in which I was born, the year my mother carried me.”
One of the silent women was waiting for me in my bedroom.
“The gentlemen are out in the yard, talking. Shall I summon them to you?”
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