“Hey—Muse of Water—isn’t that what you’re calling your book, Bethesda?”
Although I wouldn’t have thought she could grow any paler, Bethesda turns a face so drained of color toward Nat that for a moment she looks more like one of the stone-cold statues in the garden than a living girl. Then without another word she rises and leaves the room.
“What’s wrong with her?” David asks. “Why was she so hard on Ellis?” He’s approaching the decanter of scotch, but Nat reaches it before him and empties the last inch into his own glass.
“It’s because you nabbed her title,” Nat says, pointing his glass in my direction—almost as if he’s toasting me for the feat. “Muse of Water. She found the phrase here last summer in a letter Frank Campbell wrote to Aurora, and she’s kept it to herself since then. Since he wrote the letter the day he died, Bethesda thought it was probably the only appearance of the phrase. Where in the world did you come upon it?”
“I don’t know. I must have read it somewhere,” I say, although the truth is I have no idea where I first encountered the phrase.
LATER IN MY ROOM I LIE AWAKE CURSING MYSELF FOR PROVOKING Bethesda Graham’s anger. She’s a major reviewer, after all, famous for her scathing dissections of hopeful new novelists. I should have known that the phrase Muse of Water came from her. It’s not, I realized after checking the pamphlet and my research notes, anything I’d read or heard before. No, I heard it for the first time tonight, in the library, spoken as if someone had whispered it into my ear. Just as I heard the first line of Zalman’s poem and David Fox’s secret wish to leave the garden in ruins. Just as I’ve heard voices all my life that issue forth from no human lips. Sure, other writers may talk about hearing their characters speak to them and finding their voice, but I’m beginning to suspect they don’t hear the kind of voices I do.
As if in mockery of my unhappiness, a girl’s laugh suddenly rises from the garden below my window. I get up, pulling my Tshirt down over my panties as I cross the cold floor to the half-opened window. For a moment the moonlight on all that white marble is blinding. All I can see is the terrace that wraps around the first story of the house. The paths that lead into the garden and down the hill, the crumbling fountain-allée, the statues that stand on the ledges, all fade into the shadows of the cypresses, the dense ilex branches, the deep overgrown boxwood hedges, and, beyond the boxwood maze at the bottom of the hill, the deeper blackness of the pine forest. As I peer into the impenetrable gloom trying to find the source of the laughter, a light wind stirs the tops of the trees and carries with it, along with a scent of pine and copper, that same sweet odor of vanilla and cloves I’d caught on the terrace earlier. Something white sways just beyond the edge of the western edge of the terrace, and I realize it’s just the statue I saw earlier today, only someone must have draped a scarf around its neck, because I can see the girl’s drapery floating on the breeze. Thank goodness, I think, the last thing I need is to add visions to my voices. I’m about to turn from the window when I see a white hand reach out to grasp the fluttering drapery and draw it close around her. A coppery taste pools in my mouth like blood, and I hurry back to bed before I can see anything else.
I pull the covers over my head, but I can still hear the wind as it sweeps down the hill, skirts the muses’ draperies, pushes into the open mouths of satyrs and sphinxes, swirls around the overgrown parterres of the rose garden, solves the puzzle of the boxwood-hedge maze, and finally settles into the grotto dug into the hillside where the stalactites still drip with the last drops of the last spring. There I can feel the wind go to ground, its voice muffled at last by the webs the tunnel spiders spin in the underground pipes of the old fountain.
Tomorrow, though, it will rise again, carrying voices with its coppery breath, and even Bosco’s legendary silence won’t be able to still the voices in my head.
Praise for
The Lake of Dead Languages
“Hopelessly addictive . . . definitely the season’s guilty pleasure.”
—Time Out New York
“A wonderful new thriller . . . Comparisons to [Donna] Tartt will understandably abound . . . but this work stands on its own. . . . Goodman pinballs from present day to flashback, slowly weaving together the similarities of tragedies in deliciously escalating, well-written tension.”
—The Dallas Morning News
“Genuinely haunting . . . the suspense is so pervasive.”
—New York Daily News
“Goodman debuts strongly with this intricately plotted and captivating tale of buried secrets. . . . The dark and shocking secrets of Jane’s adolescence, revealed gradually in flashbacks, progressively absorb the readers into the final disquieting denouement. . . . Goodman weaves ancient mythology with modern legend into a chilling and evocative story of deception and complicity.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The Lake of Dead Languages holds its secrets to the end. If it weren’t for Goodman’s keen ability to weave a mystery of multiple layers, each revealed with exquisite timing, her picturesque prose would be reasons enough to keep the reader turning the pages.”
—Bookpage
“An outstanding novel by a marvelous new talent. Carol Goodman’s use of language and her ability to let a story unfold naturally reflect a writer at the top of her game. Goodman uses the lake and its characters to lure you into a story so compelling you won’t want it to end. This is a must-read for anyone who loves good writing.”
—Rapport
The Lake of Dead Languages is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
January 2006 Ballantine Books Mass Market Edition
Copyright © 2002 by Carol Goodman
Excerpt from The Ghost Orchid copyright © 2006 by Carol Goodman
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2002.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming hardcover edition of The Ghost Orchid by Carol Goodman. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eISBN 0-345-49091-6
www.ballantinebooks.com
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