Page 51 of Entranced
“Use your imagination.” He touched a hand to her cheek. “The past, I think. You prefer taking care of your own future.”
“You got that right, but—”
“Put your hands on the globe, Mel. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“I’m not afraid.” She squirmed a little, let out a long breath. “It’s just a piece of glass. It’s weird, that’s all,” she muttered as she took the crystal. Sebastian put his hands under hers and smiled.
“My aunt Bryna, Morgana’s mother, gave me this ball as a christening gift. It was, for me, somewhat like training wheels on a bicycle.”
It was cool in her hands, smooth and as cool as lake water. “I had this ball when I was a kid. A black plastic one. You were supposed to ask it questions, then you could shake it and this writing would float up toward this opening. It usually said something like, answer unclear, try again.”
Again he smiled, finding her nerves endearing. The power was flowing into him, sweet as wine, easy as a spring breeze. This was a simple thing he would show her. “Look inside,” he said, and his voice echoed oddly in the small room. “And see.”
She was compelled to do so. At first she saw only a pretty ball with internal fractures glinting rainbows back at her. Then there were shadows, shadows within shadows, forms shifting, colors bleeding.
“Oh,” she murmured, for the glass was no longer cool, but as warm as a sunbeam.
“Look,” he said again, and it seemed his voice was inside her head. “With your heart.”
She saw her mother first, but young, so young, and brightly pretty, despite the heavy use of eyeliner and alipstick several shades too pale. It was the laughter in her face that brought the prettiness through the cosmetics. Her hair was blond, shoulder-length, and straight as a pin. She was laughing at a young man in a white uniform, a sailor’s cap perched jauntily on his head.
The man was holding a child of about two who was dressed in a frilly pink dress with black strapped shoes and lacy white socks.
Not just any child, Mel thought as her heart thudded in her throat. Me. The child is me.
In the background was a ship, a big gray naval vessel. There was a band playing something rousingly military, and there were people milling about, talking all at once. She couldn’t hear the words, only the sounds.
She saw the man toss her in the air, toss her high. In the candlelit room her stomach leapt and dropped giddily. And here was love and trust and innocence. His eyes beaming up at her with pride and humor and excitement. Strong hands around her. A whiff of aftershave. A giggly laugh tickling her throat as she was caught close.
She watched the images shift. Saw her parents kiss. Oh, the sweetness of it. Then the boy who had been her father gave them a jaunty salute, tossed his duffel bag over his shoulder and walked toward the ship.
The ball in her hand was only pretty glass with inner fractures glinting rainbows back at her.
“My father.” Mel might have dropped the globe if Sebastian’s hands hadn’t held firm. “It was my father. He … he was in the navy. He wanted to see the world. He left that day from Norfolk. I was only two, I don’t remember. My mother said we went down to see him off, and that he’d been excited.”
Her voice broke, and she gave herself a minute. “A few months later there was a storm in the Mediterranean, and he was lost at sea. He was only twenty-two. Just a boy, really. She has pictures, but you can’t tell from pictures.” Mel stared into the globe again, then slowly looked up at Sebastian. “I have his eyes. I never realized I have his eyes.”
She closed them a moment, waiting until her system leveled a bit. “I did see it, didn’t I?”
“Yes.” He lifted a hand to her hair. “I didn’t show you to make you sad, Mary Ellen.”
“It didn’t. It made me sorry.” On a sigh, she opened her eyes again. “Sorry I can’t remember him. Sorry thatmy mother remembers too much and that I never understood that before. And it made me happy to have seen him, and them together—all of us together—even once.” She slipped her hands away, leaving the ball in his. “Thank you.”
“It was a small thing, after what you brought me tonight.”
“What I brought?” she asked as he rose to replace the ball.
“Yourself.”
“Oh, well …” Clearing her throat, she got to her feet. “I don’t know if I’d put it like that.”
“How would you put it?”
She looked back at him and felt that new helpless fluttering in her stomach. “I don’t know, exactly. We’re both adults.”
“Yes.” He started toward her, and she surprised herself by edging back.
“Unattached.” So it seems.
