The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (3 page)

She started down the path. Had the trail been this slick, this steep before? Almost immediately she slipped and fell in a patch of cold mud. Her right ankle protested when she tried to get to her feet. Nora cursed herself. Accidents like this were precisely why she should have left a note at the cabin. Well, someone—Maggie, perhaps—would eventually notice if she didn't show up for brunch
or
the wedding
or
the reception. After a minute, Nora tried again to stand, and this time she was able to pull herself upright. So far so good. The ankle was sore, but it would take her weight. Well, she thought, I wasn't planning to do much dancing tonight anyway.

She found a stick to lean on, and began limping down the mountain. The forest here was full of spindly young trees like the ones that she had passed on the way up, but she couldn't tell whether they were the same trees. It was darker here than on the mountaintop, and the woods were full of soft pattering noises, rain smacking leaves. After ten minutes of slow progress, Nora had to admit that she still had no clue as to whether she was on the right path or not.

She had just about decided to turn around and retreat when something ahead caught her eye. Instantly she knew that she had taken the wrong trail. I would have remembered
that
, she thought.

I
t was a graveyard, a small one. Through the trees she could make out the white glimmer of tombstones; a rusted iron fence surrounded the graves like a border of tattered lace. The path led to an arched entrance, also iron, with a gate that was not so much hung from the fence posts as propped up against them. With some effort, Nora wrenched it open and stepped inside.

Nora had a weakness for country cemeteries. She and Adam had spent one summer crouching on overgrown graves and risking Lyme disease as they copied down Victorian funerary verses for one of Nora's papers, “Voices in the Grass: Strategies of Faith and Subversion in the Post-Romantic Epitaph.” Here, the most recent graves were just over a hundred years old. The oldest dated back to the 1830s. About half of the tilting, lichen-spotted stones bore the same surname, Clement. A family burying ground, filled over a few generations and then abandoned. Out of habit, Nora stooped to read one of the inscriptions, a few lines of verse written in the slanting pothooks of the time.

Read this, take heed, and gain from my sad fate.

For you the way is open. I must wait,

Condemned for centuries long to guard this gate.

Make haste, pass through, the hour is growing late.

Strange, rather creepy. What was this about watching and guarding? The usual Protestant dogma of the period taught that the dead would sleep quietly until called for, when the Last Trump blew. The meek members of the resurrection, Dickinson said. Yet the speaker in this poem spoke as a restless ghost, spying on the living, guarding the gates of death. Of course, Nora thought, the nineteenth century was the heyday of the ghost story, but it was strange to find this view of the unquiet dead expressed on a tombstone.

She looked at the name on the stone: Emmeline Anne Clement. Died May 11, 1833, AE 18 years, 3 months.

May 11, today's date. The coincidence wasn't spooky as much as sad, that Emmeline Anne had died so young on a spring day that was the match to this one. “Poor Emmeline,” Nora said aloud. “I'm sorry you had such a short life. I hope it was a happy one.” Happier than mine, she thought morosely.

She decided that she might as well make a note of the inscription, in case she ever got around to revising her tombstone paper. She put her hand on her back pocket, intending to sacrifice the flyleaf of
Pride and Prejudice
—but she had nothing to write with. Well, she could memorize the verses and write them down later.

Nora read the poem aloud, then again to make sure that she had memorized it—she was secretly proud of how easily she could learn poetry by heart; none of the other grad students seemed to bother—and then straightened. The rain had stopped. The forest looked lighter.

“Emmeline, I have to leave now,” Nora said. Having spoken to the dead woman already, she felt a dim obligation to say good-bye. She wondered what had happened to Emmeline Anne Clement on that other May 11. Fever, consumption, childbirth? There was no shortage of ways for young women to die in 1833. “I'm sorry that you had such a short life,” she added, “and that you've been waiting here for so long. I wish—”

But, she reflected, what could you wish for the dead? Wasn't that really the essence of death, to be beyond the power of hopes and wishes? Still, Nora had the urge to leave this lonely grave with some sort of blessing.

“I wish that you were free of guarding that gate, if that's what you want, Emmeline,” she said haltingly. “I wish you could move on to the next thing, or stage, or place, and be happy.”

Edging among the stones back to the gate, Nora was a little surprised at herself. She remembered trying to talk aloud to EJ in the months after his death, telling him she missed him, but the one-sided conversations had never been much comfort. It wasn't as though he could hear her.

Nora closed the gate behind her as best she could, then set off back along the path. Thankfully, she noticed, her ankle felt better. The rain seemed to have stopped for good, and she caught glimpses of blue sky between the thick leaves overhead. It was warmer, too—almost hot—despite the shade in the forest. The ground had already dried. After a few minutes, the trees in front of her thinned out, giving way to an expanse of sunlit grass. She must be coming back to the mountaintop. All she had to do now was circle around the Bald until she found the path back to the cabin.

But at the edge of the forest, she came to a dead halt. Stretching before her was a lush green lawn surrounding a long reflecting pool. In the center of the water a satyr embraced a nymph, carved in some honey-colored stone. Pouting, the nymph was pushing the satyr away, but not very hard, and meanwhile her draperies were sliding advantageously down her breasts and thighs. The satyr seemed to wink at Nora over his partner's shoulder. On the other side of the lawn was a tall privet hedge with an oval gateway.

Puzzled, Nora stepped onto the grass. She couldn't quite work out where she had gone astray. Perhaps this was another part of the mountaintop that she hadn't seen before.

She crossed the lawn and looked through the opening in the hedge. On the other side were gravel paths and a profusion of rosebushes in full bloom. Their scent was overpowering. Nora hesitated for a moment, then followed the path, stopping now and then to bury her nose in the blossoms.

An arbor with a white lattice gate waited at the far end of the rose garden. Nora pushed it open and discovered an allée of elm trees leading to a folly shaped like a small Greek temple, which turned out to be an entrance to another walled garden, where narrow paths snaked around overgrown beds of lilies and more roses. A small green door in the wall led to a Japanese garden of pines and knobby stones.

Nora sank down on a bench in the diminutive teahouse beside the pond, where fat red koi were swimming. This garden is incredible, she thought. It must be part of some grand mountain estate, like Biltmore in Asheville. She wondered why no one at the party last night had mentioned it. She watched the rippled reflection of trees in the pond and felt an unusual sense of calm. Normally, she'd be nervous about trespassing on someone else's property, especially property that obviously belonged to someone very rich. But it was hard to feel ill at ease in the middle of this lush, well-ordered beauty.

Sooner or later, she would come across a groundskeeper and ask for directions home, or to use a phone. All the plantings looked well tended, and the paths were raked clean. Remarkable that the trees here were in full leaf while those on the mountain still had the gauzy, pale-green foliage of early spring. Perhaps these grounds were situated in some sort of sheltered microclimate that allowed the trees to leaf out and summer flowers to bloom early.

It was certainly warm enough to be summer already. Nora found, suddenly, that she was very thirsty. She stood up and resumed her walk, wondering if it would be safe to drink from one of the fountains. The garden seemed to have no end to it. She passed through a cobble-paved herb garden; a topiary menagerie of green dragons, unicorns, and other mythological beasts that she didn't recognize; an enclosure where all the flowers were such a dark purple that they looked black. Finally, after what could have been an hour or just a few minutes of wandering—her watch seemed to be alternately halting and skipping—she turned a corner to find herself facing a brilliant blue swimming pool, surrounded by more of those high, clipped hedges. At the near end of the pool was a pink marble sculpture, something abstract that reminded Nora of an anatomical model. At the other end of the pool were a pair of white lounge chairs and a matching table with a glass pitcher and a couple of glasses.

The pitcher, dewy with condensation, drew Nora's attention. Coming closer, she saw it was full of some drink that looked like cranberry juice or iced Red Zinger or even cherry Kool-Aid. Anything cool and liquid was fine with her. She poured herself a drink, ice cubes chiming in her glass, and took a long swallow. Some sort of punch. She couldn't quite describe the flavor. Draining her glass, she poured herself another.

“You must be very thirsty,” said a woman's voice behind her, throaty, amused.

Nora spun around. The woman standing on the pavement was smiling, but it was hard to see her face beneath the oversize Jackie O sunglasses. She wore a white silk scarf over a glossy pile of chestnut hair. Her dress was also white, a sleeveless, tailored sheath that ended just above her knees. She had the sort of delicate, never-ending legs that movie studios used to insure for their starlets. Around her neck was a choker of pearls so large that Nora thought that they had to be fake, but she wasn't entirely sure, because everything about this woman screamed money. Nora was too young to remember the Sixties, but this woman looked like her idea of the Beautiful People, what the jet-setters looked like back when jets were still glamorous. On someone else the clothes and hair might have looked campy; on this woman they looked only chic.

Horrified, Nora began to apologize. “It must seem incredibly rude for me to help myself this way—well, to be here at all. I got lost on the mountain.” She offered a nervous smile. “Your grounds are so lovely—and I was hoping to meet someone who could show me the way back. I'm very, very sorry to intrude like this. I don't know what got into me.”

The woman laughed. “But you were thirsty. Go ahead, drink the rest.”

She waited expectantly, so Nora raised the glass to her lips. She drank as quickly as she could without gulping.

“Do you like it?” the woman asked. “A friend of mine gave me the recipe.”

“It's delicious,” Nora said politely. “What is in it?”

“Blood oranges, hibiscus nectar, moonlight!” she said, laughing again. Not quite sure what the joke was, Nora smiled anyway. “But tell me about yourself. You came from the mountain, you say. So far! You must have passed the little graveyard?” The woman drew the last word out, searchingly. Nora could hear the trace of an accent in her voice. Something Italian in the way she caressed her vowels. But there was also a clipped undertone that sounded British, posh, authoritative, making Nora think of nannies and boarding schools and country houses. “It has been so long since I was up there. What is it like now? All the little stones in good order? The fence still standing?”

“It's a bit run-down, but everything is still basically upright. A strange place,” Nora said uncertainly. Would this woman think it peculiar if she mentioned Emmeline's grave and the odd verses on the stone?

The other woman nodded. “Yes, it is so lonely, in the middle of the woods. There are still woods? And you? What is your name?” Nora gave her name, and the woman smiled. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Nora,” she said.

“And yours?” Nora asked. She had a sudden, unnerving intuition that the answer would be “Emmeline.” That was silly; she was talking to a flesh-and-blood woman; there was no such thing as ghosts. But she was relieved when the other woman said, with a moment's hesitation, “You may call me Ilissa. It's what you'd call a nickname. My full name goes something like this—” She rattled off a rapid string of syllables that Nora couldn't quite follow. “But that's too long and boring to say. I make my friends call me Ilissa.”

“It's a lovely name.”

“You're too kind! But please, sit down. You must be tired with walking so far this afternoon.”

Nora demurred, apologizing again for her intrusion. She had already imposed enough on the other woman's good manners. But Ilissa insisted. She had been feeling bored and lonely all day, she said with a brilliant smile. It was wonderful good luck for her that Nora had appeared, and she refused to let her new friend leave—“I'm sorry, I'm just unreasonable!”—until they had had a good long chat. Nora found herself sitting on one of the recliners, sipping another glass of the red punch, and answering Ilissa's questions. The punch must have had some alcohol in it—maybe that was what Ilissa meant by moonlight—because Nora began to feel a light buzz, and was talking more than she had expected to, trying to make a joke out of some of the things that had gone wrong lately: the problems with her thesis, Naomi's disapproval, her dead cat, the mouse in the kitchen. Ilissa listened, apparently rapt.

Although Nora hadn't meant to mention anything terribly personal, even the details of last night's humiliating encounter with Dave came spilling out.

“Oh, but what an idiot,” said Ilissa, clucking her tongue. “Ignoring that other poor girl, toying with your feelings—and then not even seeing to his own pleasure or yours! No one has any fun! Everyone is unhappy!”

Nora laughed. Last night, she hadn't considered the situation in exactly that light, but Ilissa had a point.

“I'm surprised, though, that a beautiful girl like you is unattached. Or did you leave your young man back at your university?” Ilissa said, smiling. She leaned forward and studied Nora's face. “Wait, I see you have had another disappointment in love recently. This one is more serious than that boy who was so silly last night.”

Nora gave a feebly dismissive wave of her hand—her litany of woes, she thought, must be getting tedious for this elegant creature. But Ilissa would not be put off. So Nora told her the story of her breakup with Adam and then, because the other woman still seemed so interested, the whole history of their relationship, starting with their flirtation in Renaissance Lyric, when Adam had been impressed with Nora's knowledge of Elizabethan sexual puns; his specialty was the modern novel. That was almost four years ago. Adam became her ally in that seminar, taught by the ruthless Naomi Danziger, and by the end of the semester, they were a couple.

As Nora went on talking, Ilissa took off her sunglasses to reveal her own eyes: a deep blue-green, slightly aslant. She looked older than Nora had expected. Not that there were any lines around those clear eyes, but her face had a honed, decisive look, as though she were used to being in charge.