Mind Diver

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

Gillian leaned deeper into her window seat on a Scenic Airlines flight bound for Sedona Airport. The elderly woman sitting beside her had finally stopped prattling about the upcoming visit with her grandchildren.

Gillian hadn’t wanted to be rude to the woman; she simply wanted to be alone with her own thoughts. She had merely nodded in a deliberately distracted manner and murmured toneless affirmations at the old woman’s relentless monologue. The woman, Myra – Gillian hadn’t caught her surname – had finally allowed her chatter to ebb once she realized that her seatmate was not actually paying attention to her. Soon Gillian heard the furnace-susurrus of deep sleep beside her as the elderly woman fell into slumber. Blessed surcease.

On impulse, Gillian reached into her handbag and brought from it a small box. Carefully opening the lid she gazed at the box’s single occupant: a gold-filigreed eighteenth century battersea box. She traced its lacquered cover gently with her finger, staring at the portrait upon it. A beautiful young girl with light brown hair appeared to stare blankly into the space between herself and the portraitist.

The girl’s face had haunted Gillian ever since she had purchased the tiny box at a London auction two years before. She been its only bidder and indeed the auctioneer had looked upon her with a grateful fondness as she’d held up her paddle. Soon, for five hundred pounds-sterling, she held the tiny objets d’art in the palm of her hand, the girl on its cover staring blandly up at her.

Now she studied the girl’s face more closely, wondering what kind of life she’d led. The girl, whose identity was unknown, had a face that would have been considered beautiful even in the twenty-first century: indeed, the face of a supermodel. Instead of the doughy and dimpled countenances of eighteenth century women Gillian had glimpsed in history texts, this girl’s face was all sharp angles. The forehead was high and curved softly into the girl’s scalp, the bridge of her nose an elegant line with narrow nostrils. The eyes were long and tilted slightly upward at the corners, promising a playfulness; the eyelids were not owlishly wide and deep, but narrow and sharply creased. The girl’s mouth was small, the lower lip full and pouting – although, luckily, not of the Hapsburg variety.

Gillian wanted to be this girl – in the eighteenth century if need be.

She had made several phone calls to the television station and later to the production company which produced the talk show she’d watched. It hadn’t been easy coercing the name of the channeler from the show’s producer – no doubt visions of lawsuits danced in his head as Gillian spoke with him over the phone. In the end she had secured a name at least: Audrey Maher of Sedona, Arizona.

Gillian had spent a whole day and evening searching the Web, exhausting one search engine after another. By midnight she’d scored: a random posting on an online forum led her to an address: Audrey Maher’s shop, Crystal Visions, in the Village of Oak Creek just outside Sedona.

She had booked a flight immediately for Phoenix, with a connecting flight to Sedona Airport via Scenic Airlines. Gillian had packed only enough clothing for a weekend trip: for she would either return home – or she would be traveling three centuries into the past.