The Moonstone (Enchantment Book 1) (9 page)

"You slept in, didn't you my little groundhog?" says Gertrude, placing a tray of the now confirmed objects onto the marble countertop.

"Groundhog!! It's only five-thirty! What time did you two get up?"

"We've been up since about four in the morning, give or take," answers Charles, putting down his newspaper to take a sip of his sumptuous looking layered coffee.

"Four o'clock!! Did you create a potion that delivers rest in a bottle? I can't understand how it's humanly possible to sleep for three and a half hours and be so refreshed," I say, taking a seat at the table.

"Darling, enchanters don't need as much sleep as humans. Three or four hours are usually plenty. You slept a little longer than we did because you were exhausted by the ritual and you’re a younger enchanter than us...it's a bit like with human teenagers who sleep for hours." He stands up and walks over to the counter to steal a couple of pastries from Gertrude who softly taps his hand.

"I normally sleep at least eight hours!"

He hands me a chocolate pastry that I devour instantly, and answers me as he returns to his seat:

"Lou, you never accepted the magic in you because you weren't aware of its existence. It's as if your body were in permanent dormancy. You'll see, it's not only sleep that is beneficial to an enchanter."

I can't help myself and I blurt out my burning question:

"Can you...I saw the brooms."

"What? Don't tell me that you want to do housework! We have way too much to do today to worry about things like that," answers Gertrude, handing me a coffee.

"No, I mean, can you... you know, the thing with the witch and the broom. No?" Seeing the amused smiles on their faces, I realize too late the ridiculousness of my question. It doesn't prevent me from wanting to know the answer to the question, though.

"Oh my goodness, Lou, those are children's stories. You don't believe that we can fly, do you?"

"You can't blame me, Charles, I'm not sure what's rational and what's not anymore. Yesterday you put mud on my face, and I started to float on air. I need a little more information about your world; actually, I guess it's my world, or otherwise I’ll stick out like a sore thumb over there."

"Would you like a bowl of cereal, Lou? I have your favorites, and I even have chocolate milk."

"You did think of everything, but, in fact, I would love another chocolate pastry. And is there sugar for the coffee?"

"My dear, enchanters count sugar as their primary source of nourishment, we need it to function. It's normal that you’ve always had a sweet tooth and that’s part of who you are, but now it will become a real obsession for you, so I suggest you usually keep a few sweets on hand, wherever you go."

"Wait, are you telling me that all the things that my parents always told me about sugar, about gaining weight and getting cavities, doesn't apply to me anymore?"

"That's right," she said, "in fact, it must be your primary source of calories from now on. Come here."

"No, Gertrude! Not my personal stash!" broke in Charles, sounding annoyed, but resigned.

"Oh, Charles, don't play the miser!"

I follow Gertrude, who opens a section of the floor, and we descend a few steps into what turns out to be a vast underground storage room. She claps her hands, and the lights go on.

"OH MY GOD!" I can't help myself from shouting it out when I see the Ali Baba's cave of wonders under the kitchen. It looks more like a general store, a little like the one in Woodstock, but filled with only sweets. It's paradise, and now I'm certain to ask Charles if I can rent a room from him.

"Follow me," says Gertrude, advancing into the space. My eyes scan from left to right and then up to the ceiling where he has suspended candy necklaces. After a few more meters and many "mmm" on my part, we finally reach a large wooden cupboard. Getting closer, I lay my eyes on the most marvelous thing imaginable. A cupboard filled with Ghirardelli Chocolates.

"Take as many as you like, there are little paper bags for you. Collect a stash of anything that you like here, my dear."

I don't wait to be asked twice, or for Charles to put an end to my treasure hunt and I grab a bag that I fill with chocolates and all my other favorite candies. I feel as if it's Halloween, but with only the best of the best candy, no apples, no hard candies, only the cream of the crop. Going back upstairs, I'm already chewing on a mouthful of chocolate caramels mixed with popping candies that crackle in my mouth; this will certainly be my new breakfast of choice.

"Come on, ladies. We have our work cut out for us today."

Charles guides me to a luxurious library with floor to ceiling bookshelves and one of those sliding ladders to reach the top-most shelves... this is my dream room!

"Charles, can I come and live with you? Yours is the house of my dreams!"

"Oh, you'll have your own real dream house one day, but I'm more of a lone wolf. My door will always be open to you for a whiskey next to the lake, though."

He indicates a weathered leather club chair, and I sit down, looking at him expectantly as if he were an inspirational professor. He looks out the window for a few moments before turning his head back to the room and sitting down on the chair behind an imposing desk. Gertrude is leaning against the doorframe and softly says she’s going back to the kitchen to prepare a few provisions for me.

Charles lights a pipe that is right out of Sherlock Holmes movie and takes a couple of puffs before looking into my eyes.

"I loved your mother...immensely. In fact, you could say I was crazy in love with her. She only ever saw me as a friend, and I always accepted that. It allowed me to stay close to her, and I never wanted to lose her. That's why you’re the only person who I’ve ever told. It must be because somehow you remind me of her."

He takes a long pause, runs his fingers through his hair and breathes in deeply, falling back in his chair.

I can only imagine how hard that must have been for him to spend all his days with her without ever revealing his feelings.

"Whatever, I made her a promise to always protect you, to help you in your mission. I know this next statement will seem cruel, but for the longest time I hoped she would change her mind, that she would fail to create you. I almost kidnapped her the day you were born to prevent her from seeing her plan come to fruition."

He takes another breath and gobbles a couple of caramels that he has in a small glass jar on his desk, all the while avoiding my eyes.

"I wanted to find someone to blame for your mother's death and in my eyes, you were the perfect scapegoat. Because of you, I lost the love of my life. I wanted you to grow up and be sacrificed so she could come back. I hoped to convince you to go through with it. Gertrude never knew how I felt, but she could see I wasn't good for you, and so she asked me to get out of your life."

His words chill my blood, and I find it hard to swallow.

"So you're going to try to convince me to do it now, is that it?"

"Darling, no! After a reclusive trip through Asia and many visits to magical meditative temples, I accepted the facts. Sometimes when we love, we need to give up our personal needs for those of others. I will never understand how she found the courage to do what she did. I’m also very angry with myself for never telling her how I felt; I'll never know how she truly felt about me, about us. Well, I loved her, and I’ll love her for eternity, but I can't bring her back, so I must respect her wishes and keep my promise to protect you."

"Is it possible for me to bring her back by sacrificing myself?"

"No, not really, I did some research into it when I was in Asia. Enchanters and humans can reincarnate. Humans reincarnate often; given their higher numbers on earth, their souls must be recycled much more quickly. We, on the other hand, are only about a million in number, and we live longer, so when one of us dies, it could be several decades before he or she is reborn."

"So she might come back on her own some day?"

"No, Lou. The greatest sacrifice is the one that is needed to create a Moonchild, the soul is given as a sacrifice, and can never be reincarnated."

He looks at the floor, spent. Given his avowal, I feel the same. My mother did sacrifice everything for me.

"It's so sad; it seems that all enchanters live through powerfully sad love stories."

"Not all, but it’s true that when we fall in love, it's for life. Humans have a wider range of emotions than we do; that's what always fascinated the Gods. In contrast, though, our emotions are stronger and truer than theirs, and that's why we often end up with deep emotional scars."

I love when he speaks; he seems to choose every word carefully before saying it. Even if his honesty is harsh, I can see how he might have had those thoughts.

"When, exactly, did you change your mind about me?"

"You must’ve been five years old at the time. I had just come back from my Asian tour, and I went over to visit Gertrude and Gisèle. The two women were at the park. I sat with them, taking advantage of a lovely sunny day and then suddenly you were there, with your adoptive parents, playing in the sandbox. You were smiling and running around, and I don't know why, but I had a sudden urge to run and hug you to let you know that everything would be ok, that I would be your guardian angel. I saw you as the child I should have had with Anne, and from that moment on, I swore I would respect her wishes. You were, and still are, an incredible young girl. I hope I’ve managed to erase that horrible confession I made earlier."

"Charles, you didn't know me when you had those feelings, and you were acting out of love for her. Who would accept losing the love of their life based on a simple vision?”

Charles looks at me; a small smile plays on his face. I’m not sure he can feel relief after all. He loses no matter which way you look at it; he lives with the regret of wishing me dead, and he also lives with the loss of his one and only love.

"I wish I could’ve known her."

Charles opens a small, mirrored box and an image similar to the one I saw yesterday at Gertrude's is projected onto a violet colored smokescreen. It's my mother; at least, I think it's her. She smiles and dances to the tune of “You are my Sunshine”. She hums the song for a few moments and then puts her hand in front of her face, asking Charles to stop filming, and then the projection suddenly ends. She seems so young and so full of life!

"It's the only souvenir I have left. You can have it; I've watched it enough, and it's become torture more than anything."

I take the box he hands me, with the song already becoming a pleasant earworm in my head. I feel sad that poor Charles had to give up my mother for her fateful choice, he must have felt so helpless. I can see how much she loved him just from watching the short video. If only they had had that conversation, maybe she wouldn't have chosen to sacrifice herself. Or maybe she knew how much he loved her, but she knew it would have been impossible for her to follow through with her plans if they had been together in that way. Whatever the case, he might not ever recognize the look in her eyes the way I do, and there's no point in my sowing the seed of doubt in his head. He's hard enough on himself the way it is.

"Could you enlighten me as to what I should do? Gertrude told me about the Emerald Table, that somehow I’m the key to it and that everyone wants to find me, or something like that, but I don't know any more than that."

He smiles as if to thank me for changing the subject and takes a deep breath before starting up his speech while tapping on the top of his desk.

"Did she tell you about the two magical worlds?"

"Yes, briefly, we were all created by the Gods, who then left."

"Exactly, the great Gods created us, the enchanters and the humans. As I told you before, humans have a greater scope of emotions and are therefore more vulnerable. You know, sometimes when a family has one child who is weaker than the others, the parents have a tendency to take care of that child a little more than the others and to over-protect it. That's exactly what the Gods did with humans. When they saw that the humans were hunting us and isolating us, they did nothing to protect us. There was one God, Hermes, who took the humans' side to such a degree that he wanted them to become our equals. So, Hermes taught them alchemy so that they could create potions. He also created a magic table, the Emerald Table. This tablet is the key to the Gods' power. Which means that whoever opens it will command the ultimate power. Of course, Hermes wanted to offer this gift to a deserving human. He is the secretary of the Gods, but the only one to have become so close to humans. The problem is that Hermes left along with the other Gods and nobody knows where the Emerald Tablet is hidden. After having learned that Hermes had betrayed them by revealing their secrets, the Gods hid the tablet saying that only one who was pure and born of a sacrifice could find it; only a Moonchild would know where it was located. Since then there have been many Moonchildren born, but none had visions. About fifty years ago a prophetess whose sign was Ether had a vision that during our era, a Moonchild would find the Emerald Tablet and would change the destiny of our world. You are that child, Lou, and you will find it."

"How will I know? How can I have that vision?"

"How, I can't tell you. But I know that you will have to be at the height of your powers. That's why I want to send you to the Academy. There you will learn to use all your gifts, and you will become the one we've been expecting. I don't know what path you will take, but your mother wanted us to have faith in your destiny, so that's what we'll do. You must always be looking for signs and tell us if you have the slightest clue."