Ruby Read online

  It stood on the edge of a lake. In the gray dawn, the ducks and swans glided through the fog like fragments of someone’s dreams. The willow trees swung their hair into the water. I walked around and around until I was sweating. Then I went inside and drank tea and ate fruit and the home-baked blackberry scones the size of small loaves of bread, which Marge had set out on the dining-room sideboard. I was the only guest.

  It was the time of year, Marge said. Not many tourists. She was interested in the book I was writing. She showed me photos of the house dating back to the turn of the century and told me about the yellow daffodils that grew in the spring, the spa—a natural hot spring with healing powers—the ancient ground sculpture of the phallic man that could only be seen from the air. I wanted so much to ask her about the young actor who grew up in this village and then vanished from the public eye. I could almost have gotten away with it, because of your picture in the pub, but I had to bite my lip until I felt the marks of my teeth. When she was done, I thanked her and went into town.

  I wanted to skip, but I restrained myself. Don’t draw attention, nothing flashy or strange, Ruby. Although somehow I felt that no one would really mind here. There was an undercurrent of eccentricity in the village. One house had antique china doll heads filling the casement window. Most of them were bald and a few had only one eye. There was a bakery with breads in the shapes of small, round, bare-breasted women on display. The smell of warm dough made me hungry. A bent old woman passed me, pushing a cart filled with daisies and wearing a giant hat that looked as if it had been made from bare winter branches swathed in tulle. She was followed by a trail of cats, two of whom wore decorated hats of their own. I kept walking until I saw what I had been looking for—a gray stone building with rose vines climbing up the walls. I stopped and took a breath. Above hung a wooden sign in the shape of a pig: CAULDRON OF WISDOM. I crossed the street and walked right up to the door. There was another sign: ALL SEEKERS OF CERRIDWEN ENTER AND FIND PEACE.

  I went in slowly, not wanting to make a sound, but the heavy wooden door bumped into a cluster of bells suspended from the low ceiling just above the door. It was dark inside, with a few rays of autumn light filtering in through an open leaded-glass window. There were three doorways, each leading to small rooms filled with some of the oddest things I had ever seen.

  One room was like a kitchen, with a wooden floor and a black iron wood-burning stove. Twig brooms covered one wall. From the ceiling hung bundles of sage and dried herbs. I could recognize rosemary and lavender, and there were other scents, too—strange and earthy. Small wooden tables displayed bowls of carved wood and stone, baskets of leaves, feathers, pinecones, and shells; black, white, green, purple, and red candles; and incense sticks and burners. Also some funny-looking dolls with soft, wrinkled faces, which I realized were made from dried apples with raisin eyes and grains of rice stuck into them for teeth. Stones and rocks of various shapes and sizes were stacked loosely or arranged in formations. The room had a door that led into a tiny glass greenhouse filled with exotic-looking plants.

  The next room was like a study, with cases of leather-bound books on every wall. A fire burned behind an iron grate, and large tapestry cushions were arranged in front of it. All around were tall, obelisk-shaped glass cases full of altar tools. There were knives, daggers, chalices, and the wooden or metal athames for circle casting. Other cases displayed tarot cards and runes. One smaller case contained small blue bottles of liquid. Someone had handwritten the labels in a cramped, spidery script that I couldn’t quite make out.

  The third room smelled sweet from the vases of hot-house roses. The scent and the velvet chaise longues piled with silk pillows made me want to lie down here. There were framed moon charts on the walls. Some were ancient, ready to disintegrate behind the glass. Silk-velvet hooded cloaks in shimmery, pale colors hung on a rack. In the middle of the room was a round glass case lined with dark blue and purple velvet and filled with crystals, white chalcedonies, aquamarines, opals, bloodstones, rubies, and moonstones. I could also see tiny velvet draw-string pouches with mirrors peeking out from inside of them.

  I was looking at the case when I heard someone coming from another room at the back of the store.

  “Oh, I didn’t hear the door! Welcome.”

  She was a slender woman in her late forties, with dark hair that had started to go silver. Her eyes were large and dark, with thick eyelashes, and she had a small space between her lips, even when they were closed. I recognized that mouth. It had been analyzed and praised in the magazine that chose you as one of the most beautiful people in the world. I stood there gazing at her, trying to understand how this could have come to pass.

  How I could be talking to your mother.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re American?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “No, it’s lovely. We don’t get too many visitors from the States here. I’d better make a nice impression and offer you some tea.”

  “I’d love that.”

  I followed her into the kitchen, where she boiled water on the stove. I wanted to just stare and stare. She had a long, slender neck. A few tendrils of hair had escaped her bun. She had given birth to you; this body had contained you and brought you out into the world.

  “Are you on holiday?” she asked.

  “Actually I’m living here for a while. I’m staying at the Bentleys’.”

  “Whatever made you come to our lazy little village?”

  She was looking at me with her warm eyes and I felt shy all of a sudden. “I’m a writer, well, sort of, and I thought living in the English countryside would be kind of inspiring.”

  “My husband will be delighted. He’s a writer himself. Phillip Woolf. And I’m Isabelle.”

  “I’m Ruby. Pleased to meet you.”

  “And you, dear.” She asked if I’d seen the rubies in the case.

  “Yes, they’re beautiful.”

  “And you’re familiar with the lore?”

  I nodded.

  “Well it’s always good to have a ruby around,” Isabelle said.

  Your mother, Isabelle.

  All of a sudden, I wanted to leave. It was going too well, too easily. I was afraid something would happen to spoil it.

  “I have to go,” I said. “But thank you so much for everything.”

  “What about your tea?” she asked me.

  I apologized and thanked her and told her I would be back. It was too much for me at that moment.

  Before I left, she pressed something into my hand.

  “A gift,” she said.

  It was one of the small blue bottles with liquid inside. I could read the label. The label said CRONE-WISDOM.

  the crone

  THIS IS WHAT I REMEMBER for certain:

  I left the village and went into the meadow. I walked over the sparse grasses to a stile, crossed that, went down a winding road, and came to the forest. The trees grew close together. They were turning gold with autumn. The sun had come out and it filled the leaves so that they shimmered, almost metallic. The sound of the birds and the shining leaves seemed to blend together, to be almost one thing. I opened the blue bottle and swallowed all the contents in one gulp. Then I walked into the woods. This is what I remember. This is what happened. But there was more. The rest felt even more real. Did it happen, too?

  I AM IN A DARK FOREST on a narrow, winding path. I feel lost, like a child in a fairy tale, a panic pressing on my chest, but I take a deep breath to dissolve it and keep walking. The trees are ancient—oak, pines, elders. They are shivering without their foliage, stripped bare with winter. I shiver, too, wondering why I didn’t dress more warmly. I hear birds, but not musical chirping—a haunting sound that echoes in the trees. I sense the presence of large, fierce animals lurking, but I don’t see any. The path curves through to a clearing. At the far end is a cob cottage with a thatched roof. On each side of the door is a row of sturdy-looking flowers with pearly, white, lar
ge, almost orchid-shaped blossoms that seem to gleam with an inner light. I go closer, squinting to see better. They aren’t flowers at all but skulls, human skulls on thin stakes, bleached white from being dried in the sun.

  Now the panic in my chest is a creature squatting there, but before I can turn away, an old woman appears in the doorway. She’s like a part of the forest in her earth-brown robes. Her hair seems to be changing back and forth from thin and white to thick, shiny, and black, and her eyes change, too. First pale and clouded with cataracts, then black and sparkling.

  Now her hair stays white and her eyes dark. She motions for me to walk to her, and I feel my feet moving forward. The wrong way—I need to leave. I stop in front of her, so close I can feel her icy breath. There is a moment of complete stillness. Then she snatches my hand—a cat pouncing on its prey. Her own hands are bony and leathery. She strokes my palm. I am freezing. I am hollow. Cavernous.

  She turns my palm facedown and gently strokes the top of my hand. Now I am warm, heat radiating out of me. I am the sun.

  “What do you want, my child, that is not already a part of you?”

  I hear my voice as if it belongs to someone else. Someone young and afraid, crouched on the floor of a bathroom in the Midwest behind a rattling door. A child who can ask for nothing, not even the protection of a lock. “What am I allowed to want?”

  “Allowed?” she howls. “Allowed?” Her voice is a wind in my chest. “You are allowed to seek anything that is already a part of you.”

  But what is a part of me? The sun god? The goddess? The demon?

  I REMEMBER LYING on the end-of-spring grass, the most lush and tender. A breeze lifting the tips of my hair very gently, the sun shining down. Earth, wind, fire. How well they work together. The sun is so warm and comforting it almost tickles.

  Later, I told my mother about lying in the sunshine. She looked at me closely.

  “Ruby, the sun kissed you!”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Well come look in the mirror. There are little sun kisses all over your nose and cheeks.”

  So we went to the mirror together. I leaned in so close that my nose was nearly touching the glass, my breath making funny marks. And there they were—the reddish-brown spots sprinkled over my cheeks, below my eyes and over the bridge of my nose. I touched one gently, not wanting to rub it off.

  My mother whispered in my ear: “The sun must think you are something special, Ruby. He doesn’t kiss just anyone and he kissed you, see, very delicately.” She pointed to a tiny speck on my nose.

  I leaned in again, looking at the sun’s gifts. When I closed my eyes, I could feel him again.

  YOU KISSED ME all those years ago, but if I find you, will you remember?

  I RAN BACK to Isabelle’s shop the next day.

  “And how are you this morning, Miss Ruby?”

  “What was in that potion you gave me?” I asked.

  “Oh, just some herbs and flower essences. Black walnut—I thought it might help you with your writing project.”

  I leaned against the wall and tried to catch my breath.

  “What’s wrong, dear?”

  She led me to the back of the store. There was a wooden door marked NO ADMITTANCE, which she unlocked with a key on a cord around her neck. The first thing I noticed was a large, black, beveled mirror propped up on a low table, surrounded by colored candles of various shapes and sizes. The smell of beeswax was so strong I thought I could taste honey on my lips. There was another table, with a black cauldron, a wooden mortar and pestle, and small bowls full of powders. A bookcase held some very ancient-looking leather-bound volumes. In one corner was an altar, draped in purple velvet and covered with crystals, gemstones, roses, and small picture frames with their backs facing outward so I could not see the photos in them.

  Isabelle sat me down at the table with the mirror and put her delicate hand over mine.

  “Now, tell me.”

  I shook my head. “I just swallowed the potion and I felt a little funny afterwards.”

  “I’m so sorry, Ruby. I should have told you, it’s on the label but I should have said, you just rushed off so quickly. It’s all completely harmless ingredients but I suggest you only take ten drops at a time in a little warm spring water. I feel just terrible.”

  I reassured her that I was fine. She watched me for a while. Then she said, “You have a bit of the gift, don’t you?”

  I knew she meant the knowing, but I felt uncomfortable about it, so I looked down.

  “Do you mind if I give you a reading? Nothing fancy, just a quick tarot. It would be on the house. To make up for my negligence with the crone, if that would be all right?”

  Suddenly, I was afraid again. What would she see in my cards? That I loved her son? That my father beat me? That I was completely and utterly insane? Something even worse?

  But I let her do it. Everything was going so smoothly, and I knew she had a sense about me; that seemed like a good sign.

  Isabelle shuffled the cards and carefully laid them out in a formation. She studied them without saying anything. I could see that she was trying not to show much expression.

  I didn’t know a lot about tarot, but some of the cards weren’t hard to figure out. The first card showed two dogs looking up at a yellow moon in a blue sky. There was also a lobster crawling out of the water, and two odd towers. I had always liked moon imagery, but for some reason the card made me feel uneasy. Isabelle put a card horizontally over “The Moon,” crossing it. This card showed a bare-chested, bearded, horned creature with goat legs, chicken feet, and a pentacle on its forehead crouched above a naked, horned couple who were bound together with a chain. “The Devil.” I knew who that was. Above the first two cards was a woman seated on an ornate throne, holding a large golden vessel. I liked that one. “The Queen of Cups.” And I liked “The High Priestess,” a woman in a pale blue robe sitting on a throne between two columns with pomegranates behind her. The next card was “The Tower.” Two men were falling out of a burning building. Isabelle tapped her finger on it, a little nervously, I thought. She saw me eyeing the “Death” card with a skeleton in armor riding a white horse.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. Her smile seemed slightly forced though. “Death is transformation. It’s actually quite positive.”

  Somehow I wasn’t fully buying that. I watched her put down a few more cards. A graceful woman with a bird perched on her hand standing among vines of red grapes and nine golden pentacles. A man lying on his stomach with ten swords piercing his spine. This time I was sure I saw Isabelle flinch, but she kept going. A man with his arm around a woman stood beside two dancing children under a rainbow of golden cups. The last card she laid out showed a naked, fair-haired child with a crown of flowers, riding on a white pony in front of a wall of sunflowers. A large yellow sun shone in the sky above.

  Isabelle smiled up at me. “I knew you were meant to come,” she said. “Are you free for dinner tonight, Ruby?”

  What had she seen? It didn’t matter. I was one step closer to the sun.

  fear of the dark

  I WENT TO THE HOUSE that night. It was a stone cottage with a dark, thatched roof—the kind I would have thought didn’t exist anymore if I hadn’t researched the village already—and a small garden. Pumpkins grew on vines in the front beds, beside the Michaelmas daisies. There was a stone well that made the place seem even more like a fairy-tale illustration.

  As I walked up to the door, a woman with skin so dark and smooth it seemed painted on came out of the house and brushed past. Our eyes met, and I had the feeling she was seeing some kind of X-ray image of me. I greeted her but she didn’t say a word.

  Inside, the house was much different from Isabelle’s shop. There was none of the clutter or mystery. Everything was bright and fresh.

  I helped Isabelle set the wooden table in front of the kitchen fireplace. There was home-baked bread, a wheel of cheese, and a pot of rich vegetable stew for dinner. Isabell
e apologized for the simple meal.

  “It’s my favorite,” I told her. “My mother used to tell me I’d turn into a mouse or a rabbit.”

  A man walked in and took off his hat to me. I knew right away he was your father. He was tall and wiry, with twinkling eyes and a firm, dry handshake.

  “Phillip Woolf. You must be Ruby.”

  I nodded. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”

  “Sir? Please. Phillip.”

  He offered me a glass of red wine and we sat in small velvet armchairs in the front room while the stew finished cooking.

  “Isabelle told me you’re new here.”

  “Yes, I just arrived. It’s so lovely.”

  “My wife likes to make everyone feel at home but she has a special feeling about you, I think.”

  “I’m honored,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about myself, though. I was afraid he might find something out. “Isabelle says you’re a writer? Your book sounds fascinating.”

  “I hope so. It tends to be a bit dry, I’m told. But the subject might interest you. The sacred feminine is gathering so much force, even in popular culture. But the male energy can’t quite handle it. It’s all somewhat explosive.”

  “Do you think that’s why there’s so much turmoil now?”

  “Until there is more acceptance of the feminine, it’ll be a struggle. It’s too threatening. But some people want change.”

  “Not where I come from.” After I’d said it, I wished I hadn’t. I didn’t want him to know I had even a hint of bitterness about my past.

  “We’re sheltered here. Everyone in this village seems to be of the same mind.”

  “How wonderful. You must never want to leave!”

  He smiled and took Isabelle’s hand. “I must say there isn’t much I could want in the world. But when you’re young it’s a different story, isn’t it?”

  He looked melancholy for a moment, and I wondered if he was thinking of you.

  Where were you? All of a sudden, the question started up in me, almost a panic. Don’t panic, Ruby. You’ve come this far. And it’s been so easy. Like a miracle. You’re in the Woolfs’ house! You’re here. Just don’t blow it. Don’t ask.