Enchantment book 1 : The Moonstone

CHAPTER 3 (PART3)

           

I love when he speaks; he seems to choose every word carefully before saying it. Even if his honesty is harsh, I can see how he might have had those thoughts.

"When, exactly, did you change your mind about me?"

"You must've been five years old at the time. I had just come back from my Asian tour, and I went over to visit Gertrude and Gisèle. The two women were at the park. I sat with them, taking advantage of a lovely sunny day and then suddenly you were there, with your adoptive parents, playing in the sandbox. You were smiling and running around, and I don't know why, but I had a sudden urge to run and hug you to let you know that everything would be ok, that I would be your guardian angel. I saw you as the child I should have had with Anne, and from that moment on, I swore I would respect her wishes. You were, and still are, an incredible young girl. I hope I've managed to erase that horrible confession I made earlier."

"Charles, you didn't know me when you had those feelings, and you were acting out of love for her. Who would accept losing the love of their life based on a simple vision?"

Charles looks at me; a small smile plays on his face. I'm not sure he can feel relief after all. He loses no matter which way you look at it; he lives with the regret of wishing me dead, and he also lives with the loss of his one and only love.

"I wish I could've known her."

Charles opens a small, mirrored box and an image similar to the one I saw yesterday at Gertrude's is projected onto a violet colored smokescreen. It's my mother; at least, I think it's her. She smiles and dances to the tune of "You are my Sunshine". She hums the song for a few moments and then puts her hand in front of her face, asking Charles to stop filming, and then the projection suddenly ends. She seems so young and so full of life!

"It's the only souvenir I have left. You can have it; I've watched it enough, and it's become torture more than anything."

I take the box he hands me, with the song already becoming a pleasant earworm in my head. I feel sad that poor Charles had to give up my mother for her fateful choice, he must have felt so helpless. I can see how much she loved him just from watching the short video. If only they had had that conversation, maybe she wouldn't have chosen to sacrifice herself. Or maybe she knew how much he loved her, but she knew it would have been impossible for her to follow through with her plans if they had been together in that way. Whatever the case, he might not ever recognize the look in her eyes the way I do, and there's no point in my sowing the seed of doubt in his head. He's hard enough on himself the way it is.

"Could you enlighten me as to what I should do? Gertrude told me about the Emerald Tablet, that somehow I'm the key to it and that everyone wants to find me, or something like that, but I don't know any more than that."

He smiles as if to thank me for changing the subject and takes a deep breath before starting up his speech while tapping on the top of his desk.

"Did she tell you about the two magical worlds?"

"Yes, briefly, we were all created by the Gods, who then left."

"Exactly, the great Gods created us, the enchanters and the humans. As I told you before, humans have a greater scope of emotions and are therefore more vulnerable. You know, sometimes when a family has one child who is weaker than the others, the parents have a tendency to take care of that child a little more than the others and to over-protect it. That's exactly what the Gods did with humans. When they saw that the humans were hunting us and isolating us, they did nothing to protect us. There was one God, Hermes, who took the humans' side to such a degree that he wanted them to become our equals.