Reverie of Ages
Cora squints at me through the bright sunshine. As she realizes I’ve heard Siobhan’s cruel words about the husband who bolted for a younger woman after fifty years of marriage, Cora’s pale cheeks suddenly flush with embarrassment. Her eyes lock with mine, lips trembling as she takes an unsteady step forward, searching for an explanation she’ll never find.
The heat waves rise from the ground, distorting the air between us. Cora stares as if I might be a mirage or maybe an early sign of a stroke. She takes a single step toward me, teeters, and then another tentative step.
I remember her this way, and a few years older. Somehow, when I was seventeen and last saw her, last hugged her goodbye, I thought she was ancient, but now, at eighty-two? eighty-three?, she doesn’t seem as old anymore. Not younger, exactly—time has carved its map into her skin—but less distant. As if the years between us have shrunk to a threadbare sliver. Maybe it’s me who’s changed, my own proximity to death giving me new eyes. Or maybe I just never really took a good look at her because aged bodies were so unsavory in the bloom of my youth.
The years have etched lines into her face, but her eyes still hold that penetrating wisdom that once guided me through the labyrinths of astrology and destiny. My heart swells with both nostalgia and sadness, remembering the countless nights spent under Cora’s tutelage, learning star secrets I’d later pass to Veronica as soon as my little girl was old enough to read.
Before I can welcome the trio to the archive, Cora locks eyes with me. An odd sound escapes her throat, more of a whimper but maybe an “Oof!”
“Girls,” she calls, voice quivering. “Go on, have a look around the archive. But mind your manners.” She shoots Siobhan a stern glare, met with an eye roll.
“Come on, Siobhan,” my younger self urges. “Let’s go look inside. I want to see the old books.”
Siobhan’s upper lip curls. “I don’t care about moldy old books. And I don’t give a flying flip about a rickety old library full of spiderwebs. It probably smells like old farts. Unless there are books on how to build armies and make men fall at your feet to worship you.” She glowers in my direction.
That and more, but why feed the beast? Instead, I say, “Siobhan, there are some books of ancient legends, like Lady Jaryx, the Wolf Queen.”
The words have barely left my lips when I recall the same words in my distant memories of this day. I’m not sure if I’m repeating a memory to her or simply remembering her fascination with wolves. In a few years, she’ll birth the next Jaryx incarnation, though it’ll take time for anyone to realize Veronica’s destiny.
Siobhan doesn’t thank me for the suggestion but seems to consider it before sauntering off towards the entrance with an exaggerated sway of her hips, her bare feet kicking up little puffs of dust with each step. Young Maeve, however, lingers for a moment, her gaze darting between Cora and the other older woman she has yet to recognize as her future self. There’s a glimmer of curiosity in her doe-like eyes, a sense that she knows there’s more to this place than meets the eye. I wish I could remember what I was thinking back then, but before I can recall, Maeve 1.0 follows Siobhan toward the looming building.
Cora toddles toward me, hand outstretched. Her lips part, a question seeming to form, but then she smiles slightly, a knowing, secretive curl of her thin, puckering lips. “I read it in the stars once,” she whispers, awe and confusion in her voice. “But even the stars could not prepare me for. . .”
She trails off, shaking her head in wonder and leaving the rest of her thought unspoken, like a prophecy that never fully revealed itself until now. She presses her frail hand to her chest. as if to steady her pulse. “Is it really you?”
It takes everything that I have not to burst into tears. This old woman showed me more affection in my childhood and teen years than any other adult in my life.
“Yes!” I subdue the wail in my throat as quickly as the word rushes out.
Her fingers are shaking as she touches my face. After several seconds, her entire palm cups my cheek, grounding me in this moment. Her hand is thin-skinned, blue-veined, cold. Quivering like a baby bird. “It’s really you.” Her eyes water, the lid of her left eye sagging slightly at the inner corner. She blinks back the tears as I cover her icy hand with mine and hold it against my cheek to warm it.
So many things I’ve longed to tell her, but it was always too late. She died after I left the priesthood, sometime after I’d been exiled with Siobhan’s baby. I have my second chance now, but I can’t find the words. I was just a kid when I knew her, and she never got to see me grow up. I’ve waited so long for this second chance, to tell her everything I couldn’t before.
But now, standing here with her, I realize that words are useless. Everything I wanted to say is caught in my throat, lodged there with the weight of time.
Hits different as an adult, I think to myself.
I couldn’t understand the generational differences when I was fourteen, let alone that my bones would ever creak, or my skin would grow loose on my arms or that the day would come when I’d no longer be comfortable sitting on the floor to read. I understand Cora differently now and appreciate her all the more. I have years of epiphanies to tell her about, and the deep want to make her proud of me. I yearn to share it all with her, but I’m the one who doesn’t have the strength.
“Oh, baby girl. I’d know those eyes anywhere. I don’t know how this is happening, but I will cherish this miracle as one of the greatest moments of my life.”
I can’t hold back any longer. I glance quickly to make sure the girls are out of sight and then throw my arms around her neck and sob. She pats my back before pulling away.
“You had such a hard upbringing. Have you had a happy life, Maeve?”
“Yes,” I croak out. “More than I could ever have imagined.”
“And love? You were such a shy thing. Did you ever find love?”
“So much. So much love. And purpose. And I’ve been loved back by the most wonderful man. And by the most wonderful daughter.”
Cora pushes me away, examining me. “Daughter? I’ve read your chart. Siobhan’s, too. You were childless in my charts. It’s Siobhan’s daughter who takes on the mantle of leadership. Both her daughters, the older after the younger.”
I nod. “The High Council sent me away with her elder daughter. Siobhan never knew her baby.”
“Oh, dear. And your husband? You live here with him?”
“I do.”
“That Spencer von Windlach boy.”
“Yes!”
She grins. “I knew it.”
“Because you read it in the stars?”
Cora laughs and pulls a small, delicately embroidered handkerchief from the pocket of her pantsuit and wipes her tears away. “Because I read it in the way the two of you looked at each other at your high school orientation.”
The incident—best I can recall—must have taken place a week before this trip, when the priesthood had brought together all of the “legacies” to create a boarding school for us to train together. It had been the High Council’s idea to give the children of members of the order a head start, particularly as we Initiated into the priesthood. I had sat next to Spencer and asked him about the cartoon dog he was sketching on notebook paper while mimicking the cartoon dog’s style of talking and making me laugh. As shy as I was, we had taken an instant liking to one another until Siobhan noticed and started to flirt with him. I’d given up because who could compete with Siobhan?
Cora shoves the damp handkerchief into a square purse I hadn’t noticed before and readjusts the strap on the inside of her elbow. “I’m confused, though. I’ve read Spencer’s charts. I was sure he was the father of Lady Jaryx. I—” She gasps. “Oh. I see.”
“Hmmm, yes. Which is how I ended up raising Siobhan’s daughter. But Cora, I want you to know, I’ve had an amazing life. I skipped most of the 80s and 90s. Some of the twenty-first century, I got to live through three times before retiring back to the 1960s. It may seem quiet and unimportant to other people, but my life has been everything I’ve ever wanted, and more. I want you to know I’ve had an amazing life and that I’m truly happy.”
“You’ve had an amazing—” Her eyes grow wide. “No. No, baby girl. No. Wherever you’ve been and however you’ve been there, you’ve come back here to die. Haven’t you?”
Sighing, I weave my arm through hers. “Why don’t we make our way to the archive? I’ve so much to show you.”
She unhooks her arm from mine. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Sorta. I came back here to fulfill a purpose and spend a dozen years with my husband with no drama from the priesthood. I’m not in good health anymore, so I’ve been pushing hard to get everything done to fulfill my purpose before my time runs out.”
Cora bends to sniff a red rose. “I suppose I understand. I can read the stars, in the charts I cast. I can use horary astrology to ask them questions about my last day. I can practice the darker sciences of medieval astrology to find that date. You and I, my dear, may be in a race to our ends.”
I want to speak of Aetheryx, the apprentice who will take her place and become a danger to both Veronica and to me. The words burn on my tongue, but I swallow them down.
“Don’t trouble yourself, my dear. I already know. The stars never lie,” Cora murmurs. “Even when we wish they would. At least tell me that the girl who hastens my end and takes my place gets what she deserves.”
I flash back to the pack of wolves protecting Veronica. “Yes, what she deserves,” I murmur.
“Good. Good.” Cora pats my hand and threads her arm through mine. “It’s a blessing, really.”
“What is?”
“Knowing the end is coming but not yet. We have time for preparations. And time to say our goodbyes. Time to spend on what matters most to us.”
I glance at the archive, its weathered facade holding centuries of knowledge, and the carriage house behind it. “That’s just it, Cora. Spencer and I have been time-travelling across decades. We can go anywhere, maybe once or twice more. We have time at our fingertips, but there’s still more to do for our daughter’s destiny. I have two books left to write for her and I’m trying to finish the one on wormholes. I need to teach her how to manipulate time through astrology, but bouncing around in time doesn’t actually give a human body more time. Even mastering time doesn’t mean I have enough time to leave the legacy I need to.”
Cora leans into me and pats my forearm. “Take it from an old woman: you always think you have enough time.”
“And the moment you realize that is the moment you know you don’t.”
“Oh, baby girl. I’m so proud of—”
A scream rips across the gardens. From inside the archive.
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