Invisible World Read online

  “He doesn’t like to talk about it,” Bronwyn told us.

  “I forgot something,” I lied, backing toward the door. Turning, I ran for the outside. “I’ll be right back!” I shouted over my shoulder.

  It was still raining lightly, and I loved the feel of wet grass under my bare feet. Where was I headed? I didn’t know. But I had to get out of that house and out into the open so I could think my dangerous thoughts alone.

  When I got as far as the wide forsythia bush, I slowed, panting. “Little bird! Little bird! Let your spirit rise up!” I shouted, raising my arms skyward. “Fly beyond the veil!”

  Something chirped.

  A bird — exactly like the one we’d just buried — sat atop the forsythia, looking directly at me. I shut my eyes and my mind filled with images of clouds. I could see the ocean very far below me — and then I saw canyons of sun-drenched white clouds. Suddenly I was happy and free, filled with an expansive joy I’ve never forgotten.

  Was I seeing what the bird we had just buried was seeing? Was this that bird — come to life for a moment before departing for Heaven — or another bird?

  When I reopened my eyes, the bird was gone.

  Everything seemed absolutely still. Not a breeze. No more rain. Faintly I heard the ocean waves crashing at the bottom of the nearby cliffs.

  Had I done it?

  I was sure I had. With the force of my will and of my love, I had lifted the bird’s spirit up and out of its earthly body. I had sent it on its path to a new life.

  Was this what a witch could do?

  I was the great-granddaughter and granddaughter of witches. Might I also be one myself? Then and there, at the age of six, I vowed that somehow, I would work on developing my natural talents and study the ways of witchcraft.

  It was my family legacy.

  FATHER’S TESTING OF OUR SPECIAL CLAIRVOYANT POWERS went on for many years. By the time I was fifteen, it was only me he tested. Kate had been excused nearly three years earlier when her powers abandoned her, slowly becoming less and less each day. Sometimes I suspected her of faking this decline, though she swore to me that her lack of ability was real.

  Truthfully, I hoped she was tricking Father because she hated the long hours of testing. The idea that my abilities might also disappear with age upset me deeply. Through the years I hadn’t lost my enthusiasm for learning witchcraft one bit, but the idea had become more refined. I had no intention of wearing a black coned hat or cackling maniacally in the night. I certainly wasn’t planning on acquiring warts of any kind.

  I pictured myself in a cozy apartment in London, living independently, supporting myself on the money I earned from my special powers. I might read someone’s mind to learn if he was cheating my client. Or I could possibly use my special sight to see into a locked safe to discern its contents. Maybe I would hear the thoughts of a man to learn if he really loved my client.

  This picture of living without help from anyone thrilled me. Nothing else would do. I had to make it happen. The only way I could think of to set myself free from a humdrum domestic life — the only life a girl of my station could expect — was to continue developing my mental powers here in Father’s study.

  Besides, I couldn’t abandon Father. I was his primary test subject. His work was well known among his colleagues, the other members of the Royal Society of London, a group of investigative scientists who were so well regarded that they advised kings and queens.

  On this sunny spring afternoon, however, my mind was simply not engaged. Father appeared at the doorway of the cubicle where he’d stationed me within his large office. My chin was propped on my hands and I stared up at him, sighing forlornly because I had failed to see the drawings he was holding up in the other part of the laboratory. “I am trying, really,” I insisted.

  Father pushed back the long, black academic robe he wore over the flowing sleeves of his white shirt and dark pants. Returning my sigh with one of his own, he raked his hand over the thin remaining hairs of his balding head. “Maybe it’s finally happened,” he said unhappily.

  “What has happened?”

  Father lifted a pitcher containing water from a nearby table and poured it into a goblet. “Maybe not,” he allowed, speaking more to himself than to me. “Perhaps you’re only getting tired or thirsty.”

  “What do you think has finally happened?” I pressed. “Do you think I’ve lost the power?”

  Father sighed again, studying my face.

  “What?” I challenged. “What aren’t you saying?”

  “Let me explain to you as best I can. Earlier research has proven that most psychic ability is inherited and that in many cases, psychic ability diminishes with age; for most children it is all but gone by the time a child is five years old. My belief is that as verbal speech becomes firmly imbedded in a child’s ability pool, telepathic power falls away, is suppressed. But in some cases, it is not.”

  “Do you mean, in cases such as mine?”

  Father folded his arms thoughtfully. “Possibly.”

  “Do you think I am like a baby?” I asked a bit irritably. “That my mind is similar to that of a child?”

  Here Father smiled and the expression on his face grew very tender. “I believe you are a pure and innocent girl with a beautiful mind, Elsabeth. I am always so proud of you. Psychic ability expresses itself most naturally in people with happy, outgoing natures such as yours.”

  Father’s words made me smile, though I still worried that he meant I was childish. “What about Kate? Has she lost the power?”

  “Yes, definitely. She lost the power completely by sixteen.”

  “Then I might too.”

  “Yes, you might.”

  I considered how I felt about this. Being able to see into the minds of those around me was the most natural thing in the world to me. I had been doing it for as long as I could remember. It had shocked me when I’d first learned that others couldn’t do it.

  “On the other hand,” Father said, “there have been cases in which the power does not go away. In fact, it can also increase with age and practice.”

  “Is that what happened to my grandmother and my great-grandmother?” I knew it was a calculated risk to mention them. But I wanted to know.

  Father nodded as the same faraway expression as always crept into his eyes.

  “Tell me about both of them,” I urged.

  “You know about your great-grandmother?” Father questioned, looking very surprised.

  “She advised Mary, Queen of Scots that she would be beheaded,” I said, nodding. “Bronwyn told us years ago, when we were very young.”

  Father scowled at this and shook his head. “Bronwyn and your mother were so close they were like sisters. Otherwise I would have never kept her on as your governess.”

  “You wouldn’t have?” I asked, surprised. “Why not?”

  “Bronwyn and her entire clan can’t let go of the old witchy ways of the backcountry. She’s filled your and your sister’s heads with her superstitions.”

  “Tell me about my grandmother and my great-grandmother.”

  “For centuries, our family has possessed psychic powers. It’s an inherited ability. Some, like you, can see into the minds of others and can also envision what cannot actually be seen with the eyes, as with the pictures you can see even when they are not in front of you. Others in our family can predict the future.” He looked at me as though trying to read something in my face. “It has produced both good fortune and terrible tragedy for us.”

  “Was your mother a witch?” I dared to ask.

  “My mother was not a witch,” Father insisted with feeling. “She was a midwife.”

  “She helped with the birth of babies?”

  “Exactly. She was knowledgeable regarding herbal medicines and had surgical skills. But, in addition, she also had the family power.”

  “Is that why they thought she was a witch?” I asked.

  Father nodded. “My mother could hear the thoug
hts of the unborn. It saved many little lives because she could hear when they were in distress.”

  “And that’s why they killed her?” I thought of Bronwyn with her medicines and potions, and my skin prickled with fear for her. “Do such things still happen?”

  “They do, I’m afraid. This is why I devote myself to testing for psychic ability — to prove it is not the work of the Devil but a legitimate ability. We live in a time of rational thought. Everything must be tested, measured, and quantified. I record how many pictures you see correctly, and I measure it over a long period of time and under varying conditions. I need to prove that psychic ability is a natural talent that can be cultivated rather than a thing mired in superstition and the suspicion of” — he circled with his hands as though searching for the right word — “mystical rites.”

  All at once it struck me. “You’re afraid for Kate and me.”

  I stared him in the eyes and I saw clearly what image he harbored: Kate and me swinging from a hangman’s noose. It was so horrifying that a startled gasp escaped my lips.

  “What did you see?” Father demanded.

  Opening my mouth to reply, I discovered my throat was too dry to speak. I kept seeing my own face, ashen and hollow-eyed, lips parched and cracked — my black tongue wedged in the right side of my mouth, protruding slightly. My head hung at an unnatural angle. My neck was broken.

  I stumbled forward as the room spun.

  Father caught me by my shoulders. “Elsabeth! What is it?!”

  The room turned once more before I collapsed.

  I AWOKE A SHORT TIME LATER ON A COUCH IN FATHER’S LABORATORY. Father sat beside me, stroking my hand. “Are you all right, Elsabeth?” he asked.

  Sitting up, I leaned on my elbows. My mind was strangely blank. I didn’t want to recall what I had seen. “I saw something frightening that I read from your mind” was all I was able to tell him.

  “But you can’t recall it now?” Father pressed, his face filled with worry.

  “No.”

  “I think you can but you don’t want to.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed reluctantly as the image of a figure dangling from the gallows returned to me, though this time it was a memory and not a vision.

  “What you saw was in my mind. It is not the future,” Father insisted. “It is only my fear.” He sensed that I had seen something horrible and wanted to assure me. I wanted to believe that what he said was true.

  “So I am able to mind read but not to see the future,” I said, seeking clarification.

  “Yes, I believe that is right.”

  Father took his powdered white wig from its stand and quickly fitted it over his balding head, tugging it into place. It was still quite crooked, so I stepped forward and adjusted its position. “What are you preparing for?” I asked.

  “I’m expecting a guest,” he replied with a final tug. There was a rap on the door of the laboratory, and Father looked sharply toward it. “I have a most exciting visitor today.” He hurried to admit the knocking person.

  “Greetings to you, sir,” Father said with enthusiasm as a stocky man of middling height strode into the laboratory. He wore brown breeches and a brown robe over a flowing white shirt with a large ascot at his neck. Dark curly hair, which looked to be natural and not a wig, fell to his shoulders. He had a broad, round face, lively dark eyes, and high cheekbones. In his right hand he clutched a large, black, scuffed case.

  “Allow me to present my daughter, Elsabeth James,” Father said proudly. “Elsabeth, this is the great inventor and scientist Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek, come to visit us all the way from Delft.”

  Van Leeuwenhoek waved his left hand dismissively. “No need to be so grand, Sir Alexander. I am but a cloth merchant. I merely stumbled upon my discoveries in an effort to better see the cloth I deal with.” His voice was gravelly and his Dutch-accented English was foreign to my ears.

  “You are too humble,” Father disagreed. “You are a man of indisputable brilliance, perhaps the greatest mind of our time.”

  Van Leeuwenhoek turned toward Father, beaming proudly. Laying his case on a table, he opened it and lifted one of the several smooth, round glass pieces inside. “This is my latest microscope lens. I’ve told no one about it yet. It magnifies up to five hundred times.”

  “Astounding!” Father cried.

  Van Leeuwenhoek lifted a metal contraption that I recognized. I had seen a microscope in the science books Father had us read. “It’s the invisible world of spit that I present on this day,” he said, directing me toward the lens he’d placed on the microscope. He spit on a glass slide and set it under the microscope lens.

  Peering down, my eyes widened in amazement at what I saw there. “What is that?!” I cried, backing away from the microscope.

  “I call these tiny tiny creatures animalcules, my dear girl! Are they not marvelous?”

  Marvelous wasn’t the word I would have used. Although intriguing, they were also repulsive.

  “Are those things alive?” I asked. “Are they actually animals?”

  “They most certainly are!” Van Leeuwenhoek exulted. “They breathe, reproduce, and excrete. I also suspect that they communicate with each other.”

  I was stunned. And horrified!

  Animals were living in my mouth?

  “They are only one-celled organisms, you understand,” Van Leeuwenhoek explained. “Infinitesimally tiny, but when magnified they are undeniably there.”

  “Are these one-celled things everywhere?” I asked.

  “Everywhere!” Van Leeuwenhoek shouted. He studied me closely. “Ah, yes! You must be one of the psychically gifted, mind-reading daughters. I should have recalled that. Sir Alexander has told me all about your powers. How goes the work?”

  “Encouraging,” Father answered, though he scowled.

  “You’re not convincing me,” Van Leeuwenhoek remarked.

  At this, Father sighed. “There are so many within the Royal Society who don’t believe in psychic research as a real science. I encounter ridicule and skepticism at every turn.”

  “Hold steady, my friend,” Van Leeuwenhoek advised. “Just as mine was scorned and then vindicated, so too shall your work be.”

  “Elsabeth,” Father said, “would you please excuse me and Mr. Van Leeuwenhoek? We have business to conduct and need a bit of privacy.”

  “Certainly, Father,” I agreed, dipping into a quick curtsy and heading out the door. What could they need privacy to talk about? I stood with my ear to the door, trying to hear, but their voices were too indistinct to make out. When I tried to focus in on Father’s mind, his stream of thoughts ran too fast for me to follow.

  I burned to know what they were saying.

  Closing my eyes, I breathed deeply, trying to picture Van Leeuwenhoek, to recall his face as clearly as I could. Once I had a picture of him in my mind, I took a few deep breaths to help me clear my mind of its own eager thoughts and allow Van Leeuwenhoek’s words to flood into my brain.

  His thoughts came to me clearly. She’s the one I need. If anyone can help me with the animalcules, it is she.

  My fear and surprise shut down the mental communication. He was talking about me! How could I possibly help him with those eerie, tiny creatures?

  I thought about this all day and all night. The next day after my lessons, I changed into my swimming dress and headed out to the back lawn. After hours being cooped in Father’s laboratory, to run in the fresh air was revitalizing. I pulled loose the blue satin ribbon binding my hair and let the salt air from the nearby ocean blow freely into it.

  I reached the rocky bluff facing the ocean. Gazing down, I saw Bronwyn and Kate at the edge of the crashing ocean shore, the hems of their bathing dresses blowing as the white foam sprayed at their knees. It was no use shouting to them as I knew the surf would drown my voice, but they noticed me immediately and waved. Waving back, I began to navigate the rocky descent.

  “So how was your afternoon in the stuffy old lab?” Kate
asked tauntingly. “How did your witchy powers work today?”

  “Not so well,” I admitted.

  “Pretend you don’t have the powers, then. If you use them, everyone will say you’re a witch. Even if they don’t hang you for it, what man would want to marry you?”

  “Elsabeth is not a witch,” Bronwyn insisted. “Evil intent is required to be a witch. Psychic ability does not make her a witch.”

  “I’ll be a witch if I want,” I stated boldly, splashing Kate in the surf.

  She laughed, dancing away from me. “Stop, Bethy!” she cried, kicking water back.

  I grabbed at her ankle and pulled her leg out, sending her flying backward. As she toppled, Kate grabbed my wrist, dragging me into the ocean with her.

  Laughing, we lifted ourselves, only to be taken down once more by the surprise of a crashing wave breaking on us from behind. I lost sight of Kate and the color-soaked world above as the white foam closed around me. Lying pinned by the ocean’s force, I felt strangely content to let it hold me prisoner, knowing that in a moment it would release and allow me to rise again.

  Hands appeared, groping in the foam. I was abruptly pulled into the sunshine, gasping and staring into Kate’s laughing face. “You got a good dunking there,” she observed brightly.

  “Thanks for the hand,” I replied, spraying her as I shook my wet hair.

  Bronwyn rested a strong hand on Kate’s arm. With her free hand, she held mine. “Girls, I must speak to you,” she said in a serious tone. “When I heard that the great Van Leeuwenhoek was coming, I was filled with the strong intuition that some tremendous change would soon be upon us.”

  “Father will stop all this boring testing and start studying microscopes with Van Leeuwenhoek,” I guessed with enthusiasm.

  “I don’t know, pet. You might be right,” Bronwyn said.

  “Do you really think so?” I asked, surprised at how her words alarmed me. I’d been joking, never really thinking Father would abandon his work.

  “I don’t know,” Bronwyn admitted. “But last night while I was wondering what Van Leeuwenhoek’s visit might mean to us, I decided to try an astral projection to see what I could discover.”