The Beautiful Ones - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,26
it. It happened, though.
“But then I started reading about people like you. And I realized that there are those who have a better grasp on the ability than I do. The other night, you were completely in control. You made mirrors spin and cards fly through the air. It was effortless! I thought maybe you’d tell me how you do it.”
Hector’s face was serious. It reminded her of the statues lining the boulevards.
He digested every single word she had spoken, taking his time to think what he would say.
“It’s not a matter of telling you what to do,” he said. “You don’t tell someone how to dance.”
“You can’t teach it?”
“I can teach it. But it’s not a task you learn from one day to another.”
“I’m a quick study when I put my heart into it. And I’m good with memorizing facts. I can identify hundreds of butterfly and moth species with absolute certainty. You can ask Gaétan or Valérie or anyone,” she said, briskly moving to stand in front of him.
The suddenness of her movements jolted him, and he cleared his throat. “It’s not about memorizing, Miss Beaulieu. The dance metaphor is more apt than you can imagine. I can tell you the steps of the dance and I can even practice the steps with you, but if you have two left feet, I’ll never be able to make a dancer of you.”
“I do not ask that I be able to juggle mirrors onstage. Only that I not shatter them or make pots clang at an inconvenient time,” Nina said. “Besides, you don’t even know if I have two left feet. For all you know, I am more naturally talented than you.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her, looking skeptical.
“Let us see what you can do,” he told her, walking toward the table and uncovering a pack of cards that lay hidden under a pile of books.
He grabbed a handful of cards and tossed them on the floor; then he stepped back. “Can you move those, send them in my direction?”
If he’d seemed serious before, now he was amused. Perhaps he expected her to fail in this demonstration. But she had not been called the Witch of Oldhouse for no reason.
Nina looked at the cards, concentrated, and sent them scattering in his direction, as if a strong gust of wind had blown them away.
“Not bad. Do it again.”
She did. Three times. He was more amused than ever, a faint smile on his face.
“Not bad at all,” he declared with a hearty nod. “And you were, what, two years old by the time you were manipulating objects?”
“I’d say so.”
“Does anyone else in your family have the same ability?”
“If they did, they never said.”
“Let’s do it again, but this time I want you to move only the red card,” he said, shifting the cards. There were six black ones upon the floor and a single red one.
Nina concentrated again, fixing the red card in her mind, and pushed it. Unfortunately, she also pushed three black cards. She tried again, shoving four cards across the floor. By the fifth time, she was growing frustrated and unintentionally scattered all the cards.
Nina took a deep breath and another, her fingers curling tight.
“It’s fine, Miss Beaulieu, don’t fret,” Hector said, and as he spoke, the cards returned to their place on the floor in the same pattern they had been before she lost control of them.
“I’m sorry. It’s hard to focus on a single one.”
“I know. You need to use your hands.”
“My hands?” she replied.
“Yes. Use your hands to direct the objects, a bit like a conductor with an orchestra,” he said, making a motion with his right arm as he spoke. “The hands don’t do anything per se. It’s your mind. But they help you focus your actions. I don’t always use my hands, because I’ve been doing this for a long time, but in your case it’s different.”
“How should I move my hands?”
He had been observing her, arms crossed, at a distance. Now he moved next to her and held her arm, lightly raising it in the direction of the red card.
“Point.”
Nina extended her index finger. His hand was on her wrist. He moved it in a sweeping arc, left to right and back again, though it accomplished little. He paused, his hand still resting on her wrist.
“When you manipulate an object, what is it like? What do you feel?” he asked.