“But I don’t want you in Paris,” my mother argued. “Of all places,
Opaline, Paris is the most dangerous for you to be on your own
and . . .”
The rest of her sentence was swallowed by a burst of crackling.
In 1905, we’d been one of the first families to have a telephone. A
decade later almost all businesses and half the households in France
had one, but transmission could still be spotty.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“It’s too dangerous for you in Paris.”
I didn’t ask what she meant, assuming she referred to how often
the Germans were bombarding Paris. But now I know she wasn’t
thinking of the war at all but rather of my untrained talents and the
temptations and dangers awaiting me in the city where she’d faced
her own demons.
I didn’t listen to her entreaties. No, out of a combination of guilt
over Timur’s death and patriotism, my mind was set. I was committed
to living in Paris and working for the war effort. Only cowards
went to America.
I’d known I couldn’t drive ambulances like other girls; I was disastrous
behind the wheel. And from having three younger siblings, I
knew nursing wasn’t a possibility—I couldn’t abide the sight of blood
whenever Delphine, Sebastian, or Jadine got a cut.
Two months after Timur died, his mother, Anna Orloff, who had
been like an aunt to me since I’d turned thirteen, wrote to say that,
like so many French businesses, her husband’s jewelry shop had lost
most of its jewelers to the army. With her stepson, Grigori, and her
youngest son, Leo, fighting for France, she and Monsieur needed
help in the shop.
Later, Anna told me she’d sensed I needed to be with her in
Paris. She had always known things about me no one else had.
Like my mother, Anna was involved in the occult, one reason she
had been attracted to my mother’s artwork in the first place. For
that alone, I should have eschewed her interest in me. After all, my
mother’s use of magick to cure or cause ills, attract or repel people,
as well as read minds and sometimes change them, still disturbed
Too often I’d seen her blur the line between dark and light,
pure and corrupt, with ease and without regret. That her choices
disturbed me angered her.
Between her paintings, which took her away from my brother
and sisters and me, and her involvement with the dark arts, I’d
developed two minds about living in the occult world my mother
inhabited with such ease.
Yet I was drawn to Anna for her warmth and sensitive nature—
so different from my mother’s elaborate and eccentric one. Because
I’d seen Anna be so patient with her sons’ and my siblings’ fears, I
thought she’d be just as patient with mine. I imagined she could be
the lamp to shine a light on the darkness I’d inherited and teach
me control so I wouldn’t accidentally traverse the lines my mother
crossed so boldly.
Undaunted, I’d fled from the dock in Cherbourg to Paris, and for
more than three years I’d been ensconced in Orloff ’s gem of a store,
learning from a master jeweler.
To teach me his craft, Monsieur had me work on a variety of
pieces, but my main job involved soldering thin bars of gold or
silver to create cages that would guard the glass on soldiers’ watch
faces.
To some, what I did might have seemed a paltry effort, but in
the field, at the front, men didn’t have the luxury of stopping to pull
out a pocket watch, open it, and study the hour or the minute. They
needed immediate information and had to wear watches on their
wrists. And war isn’t kind to wristwatches. A sliver of shrapnel can
crack the crystal. A whack on a rock as you crawl through a dugout
can shatter the face. Soldiers required timepieces they could count
on to be efficient and sturdy enough to withstand the rigors of
combat.
Monsieur Orloff taught me how to execute the open crosshatched
grates that fit over the watch crystal through which the soldiers could
read the hour and the minute. While I worked, I liked to think I
projected time for them. But the thought did little to lift my spirits.
It was their lives that needed protecting. France had lost so many, and
still the war dragged on. So as I fused the cages, I attempted to imbue
the metal with an armor of protective magick. Something helpful to
do with my inheritance. Something I should have known how to do.
After all, I am one of the Daughters of La Lune.
But as I discovered, the magick seemed to only make its way into
the lockets I designed for the wives and mothers, sisters and lovers
of soldiers already killed in battle. The very word “locket” contains
everything one needs to know about my pieces. It stems from old
French “loquet,” which means “miniature lock.” Since the 1670s,
“locket” has been used to describe a keepsake charm or brooch with
a personal memento, such as a portrait or a curl of hair, sealed inside,
sometimes concealed by a false front.
My lockets always contained secrets. They were made of crystal,
engraved with phrases and numbers, and filled with objects that had
once belonged to the deceased soldiers. Encased in gold, these talismans
hung on chains or leather. Of all the work I did, I found that it
wasn’t the watches but the solace my lockets gave that proved to be
my greatest gift to the war effort.
To send M.J. a message and/or request a signed bookplate, send an email to mjroseauthor at gmail dot com
Every Tuesday,
August 9, 2016
WordsAndPeace
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