My hand flew to my heart. “I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I didn’t see you there.”
His head tilted slightly sideways at my words, as if he found the idea of someone being surprised by a speaking statue curious. What a strange man, I thought. With his slicked-back, dyed-black hair and the huge eyes that projected surreally from bottle-thick glasses, he looked like a cartoon version of the store’s avian namesake. Serious creep factor, I decided, shuddering.
“Um . . . someone told me that I could find a guérisseur here?” I said, my voice coming out embarrassingly timid.
He nodded oddly and stepped from behind the desk to display a skeletal frame dressed in strange, old-fashioned clothes. “My mother is the guérisseur. What ails you?”
I thought of my conversation with the woman in the next-door shop and blurted out, “Migraines.” There was something about this man—about this whole situation—that made me very nervous. If meeting the revenants was like traveling to a strange new country, this made me feel like Neil Armstrong, touching his toe to the virgin surface of the moon.
He nodded in comprehension and lifted a stick-figure arm to gesture toward a door at the back of the room. “This way, please.”
I wove my way through stacks of old books and waist-high statues of saints, and then followed him up a steep and winding set of stairs. He disappeared through a door on the landing, and then reappeared, waving me inside. “She will see you,” he said.
Upon entering the room, I noticed an elderly woman sitting by a fireplace in a worn green chair, knitting. She glanced up from her work and said, “Come, child,” nodding to an overstuffed armchair facing her own. As I stepped into the room, the man left, closing the door behind him.
“I hear you suffer from migraines. You are young for that type of affliction, but I have cured children as little as five years old. We’ll fix you right up.”
I settled myself in the chair.
“Now tell me about the very first time you experienced this problem,” she said, continuing her knitting.
“Actually, I don’t have migraines,” I said. “I came to talk to you about something else.”
She looked up, curious but not surprised. “Do tell, then.”
“I found this really old manuscript. Immortal Love, it was called. It talked about a guérisseur living in Saint-Ouen who had special abilities regarding . . . a certain type of being.”
Although I had planned my speech ahead of time, it wasn’t coming out right. Because now that I was here, I wasn’t at all sure of myself. Even though everything seemed to point to this being the right place, honestly . . . what were the chances that this old lady was the descendant of the healer in the book? After all these years? And out of the thousands of guérisseurs that must exist in France?
The woman’s needles stopped their clicking, and she stared at me, giving me her full attention for the first time. Suddenly I felt extremely foolish. “A certain type of immortal being . . . called a revenant,” I clarified.
She stared for another second, and then, placing her knitting in a tapestry bag next to her chair, she put her hand on her chest and leaned forward. At first I thought she was having some kind of attack. And then I realized she was laughing.
After a few seconds she stopped to catch her breath. “I’m sorry, dearie. I’m not making fun of you. It’s just that . . . people think that we guérisseurs are magic, which leads to all sorts of misconceptions. And I know that the shop below must add to my mystique—all the religious artifacts make locals think I’m a witch of some sort. But I’m not. I’m just an old lady whose father passed a simple gift to her: the gift of healing. But that’s all there is to it. I can’t conjure up spirits. I can’t cast evil spells on your enemies. And I don’t know anything about . . . immortal whatever they are.”
I felt my face redden, not only from shame but from the weeks of pent-up expectation that had been mounting inside me. Which had all just run headfirst into a brick wall. My eyes stung, and I took a deep breath to keep myself from crying. “I am so sorry to have bothered you,” I said, and stood to go. “Um, am I supposed to give you something for your time?” I began fishing in my purse.
“Non,” she said sharply. Then, her voice softening, she said, “All I ask is that you write your name on one of those cards, and place it in the dish. That way I can send you good wishes in my prayers.” She nodded to a stack of index cards on the table next to my chair. I scribbled my name on the card and leaned over to place it in the bowl. And froze.
Painted on the inside of the dish was a pyramid inside a circle. A pyramid surrounded by flames. I spun to see the old woman sitting immobile, staring at me with one eyebrow raised. Waiting.