by Angela Hayes
The problem was while dancing came easy, I wasn’t fond of the body breaking work and dedication that went into being a prima ballerina, not when so many other things in life demanded my attention. And I preferred my privacy too much to become a screen siren. Being an archeologist or history teacher in my next life was more realistic.
“Every little girl’s dream. I’d like to be a baseball player,” Danton confessed, pointing to the field. “Third base, extreme sports enthusiast, or video game engineer, something more exciting than a paper pushing C.O.O.”
“And video game engineering is exciting?” I asked in disbelief.
“Are you kidding me? Have you ever been to one of their conventions? Wild!”
I rolled my eyes. Boys and their toys.
“Hey, how about a hot dog?” Danton offered when a vendor came close.
I couldn’t refuse, they always tasted better at the ball park.
We spent the rest of the ballgame in friendly banter only half of our attention focused on the live game as it was being played out before us.
Full of hotdogs, nachos, and peanuts we decided to forego dinner, heading back to
my place instead when the game was over.
“Why don’t you have a seat?” I offered, dropping my purse and new t-shirt on the hall table. “I’ll get you something to drink.” I offered, my nerves stretched taunt, ready to fray at the slightest encouragement.
I pressed a hand to my stomach. It had been turning somersaults ever since we’d parked in front of my apartment. I’d be lucky if everything I ate earlier didn’t come back up.
Chapter 35
Truth
Danton
I couldn’t understand the nervous waves Love was giving off. They were so palpable in the air. I should have been able to reach out and touch them; and they seemed to be getting worse with every second.
“There’s the sofa.” She directed me with the wave of her hand as she disappeared into her kitchen.
I walked through the short foyer separating the small dining room on my left with its oblong wooden table and white tulip chairs from the galley style kitchen on the right with its the fiery red walls, glassed in cabinets, and checkered floor. Straight ahead in the living room lay a lime green sofa.
The small room took my breath away, it was so Love with its brightly colored and oddly eclectic pieces. White throw pillows had been tossed onto the sofa that was flanked at each end by a pair of electric blue side tables topped by squat lamps wearing orange crowns. In the lamp light the walls were a brilliant sunshine yellow, the blonde hardwood floor dressed in a multicolored rug.
A large ornate chest dominated the area in front of the sofa. I worried the wicker table it sat on wouldn’t be able to stand up to the chest’s weight much longer it was so large. Off in the corner behind Love’s sofa next to a pair of French doors was her floor harp. But it was what bordered that same wall had me stepping forward for a better look.
Resting on top of a waist high pedestal was a delicate model ship complete with white linen sails and red banners. Above, encased in a shadow box were a wicked looking set of daggers pinned- one face up, one face down- to a piece of harmonizing red velvet. Both were wavy in length and as thin as stilettos. From hilt to blade they had to be a foot long. The grips, half as long as the blade, were polished ivory craved in the likeness of a mermaid, her fins formed the hilt below which ran chaotic symbols I didn‘t understand.
“Coke okay?”
Crossing back to the middle of the room I took the cup Love offered me, eyeing her as she retreated to the edge of the sofa to worrying her hands. The nervous gesture rattled me. Love was usually so confident, I was beginning to worry. Sitting my Coke on the side table untouched I took a seat beside her.
“Are you okay?” I asked concerned. Her anxiety was contagious.
The hand she pressed to her brow was visibly shaking. “Yeah, um, no. There’s ah, something I need to tell you. I just, uh, need you to keep and open mind. What I have to tell you is going to be hard to accept.”
“What is it? Are you sick?” My thoughts flashed back to the picture of Gracin and Belinda Mills we’d seen hours before. Remembering her strange question about reincarnation my stomach dropped to my feet.
I reached for Love’s hand needing to feel her, to know she was still there beside me. They were cold, lacking all previous warmth. I rubbed them between my own hands to warm them up.
“No, I’m not sick.” Her voice trembled on a forced laugh. “It’s something else. Something I‘ve been trying to prepare you for.”
My relief was short lived.
“Oh, my. This would be so much easier if you believed in magic. If you could believe that what I’m about to tell you is the honest truth.”
Turning from me Love opened the iron chest, the hinges groaning with the effort as specks of rust littered the floor. From its depths she pulled out a clear plastic bag that she held tight to her chest, eyes closed, before handing it to me.
“This is my tartan, my plaid. Hope and Faith also have one. Before it faded and was dinner for the moths, it was once patterned in checks of green, gray, and brown. The purple and white stripes that ran through the hem identified the wearer as part of the royal family.” Love tapped the plastic, her finger pointing out where each color should be. “This small pin was one we wore over our heart and is known as a luckenbooth. Usually given as a betrothal brooch, ours were given to us as a means to show our worth and protect us from harm. Gold, three hearts were entwined and topped with a crown. These gifts beside our very lives were the only things our father gave us. The first and only time we met him, he was on his deathbed, we were eighteen. A week later our mother died in the same moment he drew his last breath.” Needing the extra air Love drew a breath of her own. “That day was the thirteenth of February, eight-hundred and fifty-eight AD. My father was Cinaed mac Ailpin, crowned king of the Picts and Gaels. He was Scotland’s first king.”
“Eight- hundred and fifty-eight?” That couldn’t be right, she was only twenty-five. “Don’t you mean Nineteen-eighty-seven?”
“No. I was born for the first time in Scotland during the middle of the ninth century.”
I could scarcely believe my ears. There was no way she had been born eleven hundred plus years ago, a person could only be physically born once. Love was lying, she had to be.
I wanted to jump up, take her by her shoulders and shake some sense into her. I needed to get her to a hospital, a terminal brain tumor had to be the reason she was spouting such nonsense. There was no way I could believe the lies she told, even if she believed them herself; and I could see that she did.
“My mother, Riona, loved my father more than anything else in the world. Only they couldn’t marry because she a serf, a common slave, a nobody and sadly he was betrothed to another. Riona loved Cinaed so much that she gave her blessing for him to marry the woman who had the pure and royal bloodlines that she didn’t. Being a bastard by birth herself, she knew she could never be the queen Scotland’s people deserved. She also knew that if Cinaed ended the betrothal for her, it would mean war.
“In the end Riona put the lives of hundreds of others above her own personal wants. The night before my father’s wedding they spent their first and last night together. It was then that a promise was made and my sisters and I were conceived.”
As she spoke Love’s eyes filled with tears, her voice taking on a Scottish brogue so thick that despite my instantaneous denial, pulled me in.
“It was March and though spring was on its way to the Highlands, there was still a touch of frost in the air. They came together holding each other close inside the ring of fire that warmed them. Cinaed’s warrior heart beat violently under Riona’s smooth palm as she gave him her pledge.
“This night together will be our only, yet in this gift I shall never be lonely.
To live a life and life again, a living soul that has not end.
A living promise of you and me, a life of three I’ll
bare for thee.
With their birth the gift of sight, bathed in blue; loves true light.
From night to night and day to day, with their help true love will stay.
Seen in light, a halo of blue, this my promise I give to you.
Whenever our hearts cease to beat, our spirits true love then will meet.
Held in the heart of the oldest of three, she will bear the love of you and me.
Life to life and heart to heart, our true love no, will never part.
Our love will live again, this you will see, as I will so mote it be.
“Nine months later during the witching hour of the winter solstice, when magic is said to be at its most powerful, we were born. Each of us baring a head full of black hair our forelocks a slash of pure white, our eyes the greenest of green. First came Creideamah, Faith. Next came Dochas, Hope. Then me Gra, Love.
“Every life we have lived since, the order has not changed; and for the most part our first given names have always translated to the equivalent of the same meaning during each life. With each new birth our looks changed based on who our parents are and every life we are blessed with the ability to see the love that can exist between two people. It is our job to bring these people together. It is what we were made for.
“It is that gift that caused me to interrupt Melanie’s wedding to Stephen and it is that same gift that has brought us together.”
As Love finished I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. She must have me on hidden camera, the story was just too far fetched to be real. I swiveled on the sofa to look around.
“You almost had me. Where are the cameras?” I got up to search the room for them. “You’re trying to Punk me aren’t you?”
“There are no cameras Danton, hidden or otherwise. This is no joke.”
“Come on Love, you expect me to believe you?” I reached for the sealed bag I left
on the sofa, tossing it into her lap as panic clawed at my throat. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be.
“I don’t expect anything from you,” Love denied, “Except common courtesy. I would just like for you to accept for the moment that what I’m saying is true. You said earlier that you believe anything is possible and I’m telling you it is.”
“And what then?” I demanded, as anger began to set in, “You tell me this nonsense, we go on as if everything is honky dory and we live happily ever after?”
My voice was so full of sarcasm that Love flinched as the cutting edges hit home.
“Yes.”
My ire was rising. “So how does it work exactly? You and your sisters insinuate yourselves into my life, get me to care about you, and then you pull the rug out from under my feet. Are you sure this isn’t some sick joke? Because it sure as hell sounds like it to me! It also sounds like you‘ve been playing me from the beginning. Softening me up with all the magic whoo-whoo before coming in for the kill.”
“It’s the truth Danton.” Love proclaimed softly, her eyes on mine.
Woodenly she sat there in her unmoving way letting me slap at her as I paced around the room. This was ridiculous. I hated to ask, but if what she was saying was even half true, then I wasn‘t the first one she‘d attempted to deceive in this way, there had to have been others before me.
I had begun to think Love was my one and only. Now… well now, turns out, I was only one of many. And underneath it all, that is what galled the most.
“How many others have you convinced of this tale? This isn’t your first life,right? What number is this?”
“This is not a trick,” Love insisted, “This is my eleventh life and if you’re asking
if I’ve ever known a man, the answer is, no. Not in this life, not in this body. But yes, there have been others. Ones I’ve married and had children with.
These radical claims were pushing my temper to its breaking point. How could she sit there so calmly and spin lies that had my life careening out of control. I couldn’t make any sense of this. “So how many?”
“I’ve been married nine separate times.”
“Aw, no perfect score! What happened to number ten?” I asked as condescendingly as I could muster. Only to watch her pale so visibly in front of me that my anger momentarily abated at the thought of causing her angst despite her psychotic declarations.
When Love spoke, eyes downcast, her voice was no more than a mere whisper, “I died.”
I snorted, “Was it the plague?”
“No,” Eyes filling with tears Love picked up the plastic bag containing the so called tartan holding it tight to her chest, as if she could absorb it. “We were lucky enough to avoid that. I was, ah, my sisters and I were murdered. Accused of being a witch I was burned at the stake.”
I felt my legs go weak, blood freezing in place as my bones dissolved. I sat heavily on the sofa so I wouldn’t fall. Love’s oddly paired eyes met mine and in them I could see the depths of her grief. Real or imagined, I could not doubt the tears that rolled down her cheeks were real. Slowly she left me, awareness fading from her eyes until I knew she was seeing something I could not. An odd feeling snaked its way up my spine. It was a look I’d seen on both her and Hope, one I knew I wasn’t fully able to understand.
“It was October seventh, sixteen-ninety-two, the height of the Salem Witch Trials. Many innocents were found guilty of being witches and those living in the town of Ipswich, Massachusetts were no different. Faith, Hope, and I were among the ones who lost their lives.” On a violent shiver Love brought her gaze back to mine. “They killed us in the order we were born. ‘Send them back to Satan in the fashion in which they came’ was the judge’s ruling.
“They took Faith first. Blind folding her before the gathering crowd stoned her to death. She never saw what hit her or that it was our uncle who threw the stone that ended her life. Hope and I did though. They held us back so we could watch, delighting in our terror. We had no choice but to watch her fall. To look on helplessly as she lay unmoving on the ground, her life draining away as her blood soaked into the soil forever staining it.
“Hope was next. Willingly she embraced her death. Her heart had already been broken by the one who had dammed us ever so efficiently. Watching Faith die killed her spirit. She refused to fight as they bound her hands and feet before throwing her helplessly into the pond where we had once bathed and played. Hope drowned and as she did her eyes never left his, and he never lifted a finger to save her. He only stood there, waiting for her to die like everyone else. He was supposed to be different.”
I didn’t think I’d ever heard anything as chilling as the torment and hatred I heard in Love’s tone as she spoke of the unnamed man.
“Four centuries later and Hope still refuses to go into murky water. When she didn’t surface, because everybody knows a witch floats, they tied me to a pyre and set light to the pilings placed at my feet. I screamed the entire time, the smoke stinging my eyes, burning my throat, damning them all for the murderers they were. I cursed them with my last breath,” Love spoke brazenly, her eyes flashing with the need for revenge. “Pleaded to God for them to live out their days in the same type of Hell they’d condemned us to.
“In the end I outsmarted them though. Just as the flames began to singe the tips of my toes I breathed in as much of the smoke as I could until my chest would no longer rise. In the end the flames devoured a lifeless body. We were seventeen.”
Horror struck I wasn’t able to suppress the running shudder that shook my body from head to toe. I couldn’t believe what Love was saying. She truly thought she had been murdered. My horror only increased as she coolly shrugged her shoulders before telling me in a sing song voice how her next life had been better.
I fumbled for something, anything to say. Desperately I latched on to her earlier words. She’d been falsely branded a witch, yet had told me that she can see true love. Didn’t one go hand in hand with the other?
“You said your job is to bring them together, these people you see. What happens next?”
“Love is a proponent of free will. You either love me and accept me for who I am and what I can do, or you don’t. I can’t make you love me or make anyone else fall in love either. That’s your choice Danton. I’ve never had that kind of power.”
“Lead a horse to water, is that it?”
“Yes.”
Suddenly I understood. “This is what you meant by preparing me. You sent all those figurines so I would better accept what you were going to tell me.”
Love nodded. “For there to be an us Danton, you have to believe there’s magic in this world. Accept that I can see and do what I do.”
How was I to accept it? What she said she could do, who she said she was? It was so far from the realm of reality I didn’t think I could. If Love was ill, she needed professional help, but if what she said was true… I couldn’t wrap my head around it. It just wasn’t possible.
“I’m sorry Love. I can’t accept it, I won’t.” The part of myself that cared for Love warred with the part of myself that was disgusted by her. “This is all crazy, you’re crazy.
You need help.” I declared jumping to my feet, backing away.
A feeling of sorrow swamped me as I watched Love place her package back in the chest. I couldn’t believe I’d fancied myself in love with her.
“It’s okay Danton, I understand.”
She made no move to follow me as I stalked from the room, rising only to close the moaning lid as she wiped a tear from her eye. “I love you Danton,” She said simply. “I have since the moment I first saw you and will to the day I draw my last breath. I know you find that hard to believe right now. I just want you to know, I’ll be here when and if you change your mind.”
I couldn’t be there any longer. Her martyr routine turned my stomach. I had to leave. Knowing I loved her and couldn’t be with her left me with a hollow feeling inside.
“Get some help Love.” I pleaded as I shut the door behind me.
Chapter 36
Love
I walked stiffly, my composure slipping with every step I took. Leaning heavily against the door I managed with trembling fingers to flip the deadbolt and set the chain before my legs gave way.