Visible (Ripple) by Cidney Swanson

Author:Cidney Swanson [Swanson, Cidney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Williams Press
Published: 2014-02-10T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

THE GOLDEN SLIPPER

A few minutes later, Chrétien and I are strolling invisibly along the drive in front of his father’s cottage. The moon is very … refulgent, indeed. It looks bright enough to read by. Or close to it. I hear Chrétien humming. I don’t recognize the tune, but it sounds lullabye-ish, almost. He breaks off abruptly.

You must miss them a ton, I say, inside our invisibly melded brains.

Yes, he replies, a response both simple and heartbreaking.

I feel his heaviness almost like it’s my own. I want so much to make things better, but where would I even start?

Would it help to … talk about them? I ask. I know I’m inviting him to visit the past, but it feels like the right thing to do, somehow.

Perhaps. My father is now of the opinion he did me no service, leaving me to my own thoughts through the centuries.

Through the centuries. I shudder. Well, my mind shudders. There’s no Gwyn at the moment.

Was that super creepy? I ask. Being trapped all that time?

I was not trapped, Mademoiselle. At any time, had I wished it, I could have regained motion and a physical form.

So you didn’t … wish, I guess?

It was restful. More so than slumber, perhaps. Time seemed … fluid … unimportant. I do not know when I would have returned of my own volition, had not my father asked it of me when he did.

I try to think how to ask what I want to know. Are you … sorry you came back?

No, he replies at once. I am most glad to have rejoined my father. To have formed so many new acquaintance. To live once more among the visible.

He says he’s glad, but he seems sadder than ever. I’m about to say he can tell me whatever he wants, when he speaks again.

In truth, I do not know whether to desire to have Marie-Anne’s diary once more or whether to be glad of its loss. Do you have the aphorism, ‘to open once more a wound’?

Sure, I say. Ma uses that phrase. Or one like it. She doesn’t like when the aunties talk about the Chinese Cultural Revolution. She calls it “reopening an old wound.”

Yes, says Chrétien. Had our daughter lived, I should have liked to have kept my wife’s diary, but perhaps it is better to allow the wounds to heal now.

As he says this, I feel hope settle around us like a warm blanket. We stroll (or whatever this is) in silence for a few minutes, just enjoying the way the moonlight catches the tops of the trees, the roof, even Sir Walter’s car.

Then Chrétien speaks again. I have yet one other remembrance of Marie-Anne. I wonder, would you like to see the slipper of gold and diamond in which she danced with le Roi-Soleil?

You have her shoes? I ask.

I have only one, he says. I keep it hidden in the pocket of a jacket. The jacket rests invisibly within the wall of Château Rochefort.

I hesitate.

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