“The book, the grimoire you found, is important, Sandrine. We can learn from it. Not only to help you but to unlock mysteries we have been trying to uncover for decades . . . for centuries.”
“And if I give it to you, you’ll help me?”
“Yes, but in order for you to turn it over to us, for us to be able to accept it, you must be initiated,” Alexandra said.
“Then initiate me.” The stench of the violets intensified. So did my need to vomit. I swallowed.
She laughed. “It takes time. You’ll need to study and learn so you understand our goals and our efforts.”
“But I don’t have time. Julien has left me. Benjamin is here in Paris, and I’m afraid of what he can do to me. My grandmother goes mad when I come near her . . .”
I stopped explaining. I was distracted by something in the distance. The cellar was more beautiful now that my eyes had adjusted to it. Mica rocks shimmered in the firelight. Two crystal monoliths glowed as if lit from inside. They were what I had noticed. And they seemed to be pulling me. I walked to them. I found myself at the beginning of a labyrinth created with round black stones embedded in the dirt.
Alexandra pulled me back. “You can’t, not yet. It’s part of the rites and rituals, and you aren’t ready.”
“But she seems to know her way,” Dujols said.
“It’s too dangerous,” Alexandra argued.
Dujols put his hand on hers. “Let her go,” he said.
I had stopped listening to them. I was walking the path. Was making all the right turns. I could feel energy pulling me forward.
Soon their voices were far in the distance and no more intrusive than a bee’s buzzing. Reaching the center, I discovered a spiral staircase descending below.
I climbed down. The cavern was even darker. It smelled of earth. Of fungus and moss. Of fecund leaves rotting. The scent of violets followed me in.
A wooden slab with a brass handle was set into the floor. Lifting it, I looked down into a coffin-shaped hole in the ground, just big enough for a body. Dirt floor. Dirt sides.
The wooden slab had a handle on the inside, too.
“Sandrine?”
Startled, I turned.
The beautiful white-haired woman had followed me.
“You need to come back up with me.”
“What is this place?”
“Our initiation chamber.”
“What happens in the initiation?”
“You’re not ready. Before you even attempt it, we need to teach you how to manipulate your breathing so, like the ancients, you can slow your body down, gain power over your heart, your lungs, and the flow of your blood. It’s the first step to learning many forms of restraint.”
“So that I can control La Lune’s coming and going?”
“Yes.”
“What would happen down here once I’d learned to slow my body?”
“You would pass a certain amount of time in this chamber of illumination. Once you proved you could withstand that, we would know you were ready to learn the rest.”
I knew what I had to do. If I didn’t stop La Lune, I was going to lose everything that mattered to me. I had to banish her. Then Julien would return. There was no other choice.
I crawled into the earthen box and, before the woman could object, pulled the lid closed. Heavier than I thought, it slammed with a loud bang I hadn’t expected.
“No!”
Alexandra’s scream was followed by the sound of rain. But it couldn’t be raining, not down here. For what seemed like several minutes I listened to pings, chinks, and dings falling against the wooden lid.
When silence fell again, I took hold of the handle and pushed up. The lid did not budge. I put both hands against the plank and pushed.
Nothing.
“Can you hear me?” Alexandra’s voice was muffled.
“Yes.”
“I’m going to tell you how to slow your breath. And then I am going to get help.”
Her voice was too far away.
“What happened?”
“The wall partially caved in, and the door is covered with stones and dirt. Listen to me and don’t talk. You need to conserve your energy. Get control of your breath. Feel it. Breathe in to the count of four with me . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . Now hold it just as long . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . Now out . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . Now hold . . . counting two . . . three . . . four . . . Keep that rhythm. Breathe slowly. Slowly. Now give your breath a color. A light color that floats. Pale blue or rose . . . pastel green. Imagine that you can see each breath as you expel it and hold it and take more in. Now slow down even more. Count to ten as you take it in . . . five . . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . ten . . . and then count to ten as you let it out. Watch the breath. Watch it as you exhale it and as you hold it.
My panic abated as I followed her instructions and saw and counted the pastel green breaths.
“Now count to fifteen for each inhalation, each hold, and each exhalation. And then twenty. Allow the color to become lighter and lighter as you breathe more and more slowly.”
I focused. I saw Julien’s face in the green miasma. I didn’t want to leave him. I counted to twenty. Was I breathing slow enough? Something was going wrong. The air grew thinner. Too thin. I could feel La Lune in the coffin with me. Nervous, not for herself but for me. For her best chance in generations. I almost felt sorry for her. Lost, wandering, waiting. We wanted the same things, she and I, but they could not be taken by manipulation as she had done through all these years. She was going to lose. I would not go mad like Marguerite, Eugenie, Clothilde or Simone. My portrait would be added to the wall, but the story they would tell about me would not be of a woman who succumbed.
Until that moment, I’d thought I needed La Lune in order to be the woman whom Julien had fallen in love with. To be a painter. To be a sensualist. To be brave. But it wasn’t that way at all, was it? I didn’t need her. She needed me. Without me she was just vapor. Just wind. If La Lune wanted to feel love, she needed me.
I was going to die, here in a dirt coffin in hell. And she would continue her wait . . . searching for someone to infiltrate. Poor La Lune, forever restless, forever hungering for just one thing, to love again, to be loved and be set free.
But I didn’t want to die!
My breath was labored. As slow as it was, it wasn’t slow enough. I couldn’t see the pastel breaths anymore. Only a viscous oily blackness that seeped in through the cracks in the wood, dripping onto me. Skinny snakes of disgusting filthy air that I could not take in. Poisonous vapors. Overtaking me. And there then was a blinding long last burst, and I knew I could stop trying. That it was the end. That I had lost.
Chapter 36
Hands pulled me out. Lifted me up. Carried me up the stairs. Coughing, I gasped the fresher air. Gulped it down.
They took me to a room in the back of the club. Laid me on a cot.
“No one has ever been in the box that long,” Alexandra said as she wiped my face with a cool cloth.
“Drink this,” Dujols said, and held a glass of water up to my lips.
I took several sips. Then several more.
“How long was I there?” My voice sounded hoarse.
“Over two hours,” Dujols answered. “When you closed the lid, it slammed, and the vibrations set off an avalanche of small rocks. A part of the wall caved in. We had to dig you out. We were worried the whole time that you wouldn’t make it.”
“And only two of us at a time fit in that small space. Without any real tools. We had to use our hands and cups,” Alexandra said. “Did you sleep?”
“I don’t think so. But then again it didn’t seem like I was there more than a few minutes. I just did what you said and slowed my breath.”
I sat up. I knew I could no longer pretend—or hope—that La Lune was a manifestation of my guilt. A figment of my imagination. She was not a response to my father’s suicide. My grandmother was right. La Lune was a malevolent force, and she needed to be evicted from my soul.