by Rose, M. J.
Twenty-nine
Something was breaking inside Jac. She didn’t understand the feeling or where it came from, but she had never experienced anything like this before. This wasn’t like coming out of the hallucinations she’d had as a girl in Paris or this past summer. Those were easy transitions. She would just step past the dream and be back to being herself, and remember it all clearly.
But not this time. She wasn’t sure who she had been or even where she was. As the impression of leaves and trees and water and rock came into focus, all she could think about was how she wasn’t ready to leave this place. Wasn’t done mourning. Someone she loved had died here. And she couldn’t go out in the world yet. Not without him.
No. That was wrong.
This was where someone she loved had lived.
“Jac, hold on to my voice.”
The chanting interrupted her thoughts. Yes, her name was Jac, of course, but that was only half of her. She felt as if there was another self. Two of them warring with each other—one wanted to stay, the other wanted to go.
“Hold on to my voice. Let my voice pull you up. You’re not to be scared anymore. Or sad. Or worried at all. You’re going to be fine. Just hold on to the thread.”
Jac didn’t want to be scared anymore. Or sad. She pushed hard, as if she were shooting up from underwater. Breaking the surface, she took a great gulp of air. Focused her eyes in the direction of the voice.
A woman was sitting next to her, watching her. From the expression on the woman’s face, Jac knew something was wrong.
“What happened?” she asked.
Jac recognized the woman as Theo’s aunt.
“You’re going to be fine,” Minerva said.
Theo ran over, knelt down. “Are you all right?”
Jac remembered seeing his face like this once before. When? Why? Then she knew. At Blixer Rath. But under what circumstances?
“You both look so worried,” Jac said to them.
“You know who I am?” Theo asked.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“And where you are?” Minerva asked.
“Not exactly this spot, no, but in Jersey, yes. Why are you asking me these questions?”
“You’ve been not quite with it for the last hour or so,” Minerva said in that voice Jac knew. A therapist’s voice. Giving only the most minimal information, making an effort not to influence the patient as she tried to calm her.
“How did we get here? I remember we were in the cave.” She looked at Theo. “We found that strange rock and the little amber totems and . . .” She had to think. “Oh. You found the Victor Hugo journal.” She searched his face. “You still have it?”
He nodded.
“You found it?” Minerva asked, astonished.
“We did,” Theo said.
Jac was still trying to work her way out of her confusion. She could smell Minerva’s perfume. It was of this time and place. Not of that darkness where she’d spent the last hour. A whole hour? Was that really what Theo had said?
“So how did we get from there to here?”
“Let’s go home to Wells in Wood,” Minerva said. “We can go over it once we’re inside and have some tea and cake. You’ve been through quite a bit for one day.”
Theo helped Jac up. She was still looking around, trying to get her bearings. “I thought we were down by the beach.”
“We were. But we took a long walk—a run actually. You’re a very fast runner, you know. I couldn’t keep up at all.”
“I don’t run. I haven’t in years. I swim but don’t jog.”
Theo had a strange expression on his face, as if he was hearing her but not believing a word she said.
“Let’s wait to talk about all this till we are back at the house,” Minerva said. “I’ll get the car and pull it closer. Theo, bring Jac down to the road.”
Theo took Jac’s arm to help her. They took a few steps, and then she stopped and looked back at the stone ruin.
“You said I ran here?” she asked Theo.
“Yes. We were getting into the car, down by the beach, and you broke away from me and ran off.”
“Did something scare me?”
“I don’t know. You didn’t say anything. Didn’t explain. You just took off as if you knew where you were going and led me right here.”
“This was his house. He lived here with his family.” Jac had shocked herself. She didn’t actually know who she was talking about, but there was knowledge about a man that she had now that she didn’t have before. The knowing was just there in a niche in her mind. The way the totems had been sitting in the rock, protecting the bones, waiting all this time to be discovered. To reveal their treasures.
“Who? When did he live here?” Theo asked.
Jac shook her head.
“You were crying when you got here. Do you know why?”
“No. Wait. I do. Something had gone very wrong. As I started to come back, I was still holding on to a terrible loss. As if everything that had mattered to me, that would ever matter to me, was gone.”
Theo nodded.
“You know the feeling?” Jac asked.
“I do. And I don’t quite understand how to explain this, but whenever I come here, and I have been coming here since I was a boy, I’ve always felt a particular loneliness. A profound sadness. This place is part of the reason I wound up at Blixer Rath. I was spending so much time here, becoming more and more depressed, until I . . .”
He stopped, kicked a rock with the toe of his boot.
Jac looked at him. She empathized with this man. She understood him in a way that she understood no one else she’d ever met. As if she were inside his head somehow. It was a very real connection. One she didn’t think she should ignore.
“Let’s go. Minerva will be waiting with the car by now. Once we get back, we’ll try to figure out what happened,” he said.
Jac was still staring at the ruin. Stones surrounded by trees. Ancient stones and holy trees. “You know exactly where we are, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“So if I wanted to come back, you’d be able to bring me?”
He nodded. “But we’re not going to come back.” He said it as if he were trying to will it so.
“Before, you said when you were a teenager you’d come here all the time until—until what?”
“I tried to kill myself here.”
Thirty
Jac was wrapped in a pale-rose cashmere shawl, sitting on the settee in front of the fireplace drinking a cup of tea laced with brandy. Just the way her own grandmother used to make it. The way her brother made it. The way she herself had made it the night when this excursion had really begun, in Connecticut, in Malachai’s house, when Jac found Theo’s letter.
Eva was in the kitchen making soup and sandwiches while Minerva and Theo kept Jac company. They were also sipping the fortified tea. Neither of them had asked her any more questions. At least not yet. But she kept running over the episode in her head. It was so confusing, and the answers that Theo had given her had only made everything more complicated, not less.
“Did you take the figurine?” Jac asked Theo.
“Yes.” He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. He placed it carefully on the coffee table. Jac looked at it but didn’t reach for it. Not yet.
“What is that?” Minerva asked.
Jac had just started explaining when Eva came out with a tray of cheese and tomato sandwiches. As Jac smelled the toasted bread, she realized how hungry she was.
While Jac ate, Eva picked up the statuette and examined it.
“This is very curious,” she said.
“Why?” Minerva asked.
“I think we have one of these somewhere in the house. I’ve seen something like it before.” She put it back, and Jac reached for it. She lifted it up gingerly, as if it were burning hot, and turned it over in her hand.
“I think you should stay here tonight,” Minerva told Jac, as she watch
ed her.
“I’m fine to go back to the hotel.”
“Yes, you are now. But something happened this afternoon, and speaking as a doctor, you would be best served staying over. I don’t think you’ll have any kind of relapse or reaction, but if you do, there should be people around.”
“I appreciate it but—”
“My sister’s right, Jac,” Eva agreed. “We really can’t let you go back to an empty hotel room.”
“If I stay, then I want you to help me figure out what happened,” Jac said to Minerva.
“There’s time for that tomorrow. What you need now is food and calming rest and a good night’s sleep.”
“And I’ll get it once I understand what happened.”
“I don’t think—” Minerva started.
Jac interrupted. “Please? I feel a little crazy right now. I need to know.”
“All right.” Minerva’s voice sounded soothing. But at the same time Jac heard some reluctance. Why would that be?
“Theo, help me clean up,” Eva said. “We’ll let you talk.”
Together the two of them picked up the dishes and cups and took everything to the kitchen, and then Eva came back.
“I have something to give you,” she said, and pulled a twisted length of silken red thread out of her pocket. “Give me your wrist.”
Jac obediently held out her hand.
“This is your lifeline. My sister pulled you out of the state you were in by having you grab on to her voice as if it was a rope. I want you to have your own rope in case she’s not around. You can use it if you feel yourself starting to float off.”
The cord was dyed the most brilliant scarlet Jac had ever seen.
“Is this Wiccan?” Jac asked, as she watched Eva tie the ends of the thread. She’d been collecting bits of thread and ribbon all her life and felt an instant kinship with the bracelet. As if she’d been waiting for it, but that made no sense either.
Eva laughed. “No. It’s a mystic kabbalist tradition. It’s called a roite bindele and was said to ward off misfortune and the evil eye. A client of mine asked me to make one for her years ago and told me all about it. I’ve been weaving them ever since.”
Jac touched the thread and ran her finger down its silken length. “The evil eye . . .” she repeated.
“The evil eye itself goes back over five thousand years to ancient Babylon—” She stopped. “Oh, you know all that part probably, don’t you?”
Jac nodded. “I do. Every culture had its version. It’s universal. One of the things that is most fascinating about studying mythology is how so many of the stories and symbols are the same through the centuries and cultures. Just renamed and slightly altered.” She looked up from staring at the red thread into the woman’s eyes. “Thank you for this.”
Eva smiled. “Now I’ll leave you to Minerva,” she said, and ambled out of the room, favoring her right leg just a fraction.
“Why don’t you move over to the chaise?” Minerva said. “It will be more relaxing for you.”
Once Jac was settled, sitting up with her feet stretched out in front of her, she drew the cashmere shawl over the lower half of her body like a blanket. She was still chilly.
Minerva pulled up an armchair and sat.
Jac was aware that the furniture had been reconfigured to resemble a therapist’s office.
“Okay, let’s go to work. You might want to shut your eyes. It sometimes helps.” Minerva smiled.
Jac did.
“Good girl. Let me lead you in a deep-breathing exercise to relax you.”
Minerva talked Jac through a series of steps that were the same as the square breathing Malachai had taught her so long ago at Blixer Rath.
“Breathe in one, two, three, four . . . Hold for two, three, four . . . Now breathe out slowly for two, three, four. And now hold for two, three, four . . . and again . . .”
Jac felt her body giving up the last of the tension she was still holding in her neck . . . her shoulders . . . the backs of her knees. She was getting soft, letting go.
“Now, tell me, what is the last thing you remember before we found you at the ruin?” Minerva asked.
“Being in the cave. Theo finding the journal.”
“All right. Very good. Let’s stay in the cave for a while. Look around. Do you see Theo? Look down at your feet, your hands. What do you see?”
Jac described the cave and the strange meteor rock with the cubbyholes filled with totems and bones.
“Tell me about the totems.”
“They were roughly carved figures, little, half-man, half-animal, like on the wall paintings. I found one that was a man-cat. It was wet and I was rubbing it, and it had this amazing odor.”
“Can you remember that smell now?” Minerva asked softly.
Jac could smell the amber totem and it prompted a stream of images. She watched the movie going on inside her own head and recounted the action. It was a complicated story about a small family—a mother, father and son. And even though she didn’t know them, Jac felt the emotions of these people. Every pang of angst, every explosion of anger, every touch of love.
These images, these people and their crisis were not at all familiar. She didn’t sense the story had come from her deep memory. Instead it was foreign to her. It had come from someplace else.
Jac was overwhelmed by the pain of the man whose drama she was watching. “I’m in a cave. The gods are giving me some kind of vision, so I know what to do on behalf of my community. But the weight of this responsibility is too heavy. I would rather die than accept this mission. I must be wrong, must have misunderstood the message. This can’t be right. Cannot be what is expected of me.”
When Jac opened her eyes, Minerva was still in the chair, leaning forward, still listening. She didn’t say anything at first. It was Theo, who must have come back into the room at some point, who spoke first.
“You saw all that?”
Jac nodded. “Yes.”
Theo shook his head, incredulous. “I don’t understand this,” he said. “But I know that story.”
“What do you mean?” Minerva asked.
“It sounds familiar to me. Everything Jac said, it was almost as if I was anticipating it.”
“What is going on?” Jac asked. “How could I imagine a story that Theo would remember?”
Minerva looked from Jac to Theo. “This might have happened before.”
“What has?” Jac asked.
“I need to make a phone call,” Minerva said, standing.
“Now?” Theo asked. “What in the world—”
“I need some information first,” Minerva said. She looked at Jac. “You’ve done a very good job. And I promise I will help. Let me just go and make this call, and then I’ll explain. Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.” She left the room.
Theo looked at Jac, and she thought his eyes looked even paler, sadder. Sweat had broken out on his forehead. He kept clenching and unclenching his hands.
“Do you have any idea what is going on?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. Theo, you did find the journal, didn’t you? I didn’t imagine that?”
The clouds in his eyes lifted. “Yes.”
“Can I see it?”
Theo was back in a few seconds. Carefully he handed her the notebook.
Jac touched the worn leather. Opened it. In the dark cave she hadn’t been able to see it well. Here in the bright light, it was far easier to examine the tight slanting script. She reread the first paragraph, then skipped ahead to the end. The pages were numbered up to twenty-five.
Jac was one of those people who always read the end of a book first. Not the whole last chapter, but the final five or six lines. She needed to know about the journey she was about to take. To know if it was going to end happily or sadly.
Her brother had once asked her why. After thinking for a minute, she told Robbie she wanted protection from surprises. She’d had too many of them in her life, and they’d br
ought too much grief.
The last three words on the last page, though, brought a different kind of surprise. She showed Theo.
“This isn’t the only journal,” she said. “Look.”
Theo peered at the words. “Translation, please?”
“This story continues in the next volume,” she said. “So there must be another notebook.”
“I didn’t see one.”
Once you found this one, did you keep going through the rest of the cubbyholes?”
“No, the cave was flooding.”
“We’ll have to go back.”
“I’ll have to go back.”
“I’m going with you.”
“We can talk about that later. For now we can read and translate this one. Something to do while we’re waiting for the sea to comply and—”
Minerva had come back into the room. She was holding a phone. “I just talked to Malachai. He’d like you to call him after we talk, Jac.”
“What does this have to do with Malachai?” Jac asked.
Theo stood up to go.
“No, stay, Theo,” Minerva said. “You should hear this too.” She waited until he was seated and then took a long measured breath. “Maybe Eva should too.” She left the room and got her sister.
When everyone was assembled, Minerva began. She addressed Jac and Theo. “At Blixer Rath, Malachai and the other therapists were proponents of Jungian therapy, and as such they believed in the collective unconscious.”
“We know this already,” said Theo.
Jac nodded. What she’d learned at the clinic had helped her. The theory that the unconscious incorporated memories, instincts and experiences that are common to all humans for all time was at first hard to grasp. But then she began to understand and see how knowledge was inherited and incorporated into her own dreams and actions. That personal understanding of Jung’s theory had been instrumental in her healing and had then cemented her fascination with mythology. It was the cornerstone of her decision to become a mythologist.