Chapter Twenty-Four
Pixie returned to the chair in the VIP room and sat down.
With trembling fingers she tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter.
Her vision misted as she felt Cavill’s vibration through his handwriting; indeed, the very paper seemed to carry his essence.
Thus, he came back to her in a wave of memory, and her heart ached with longing and tenderness, and regret too.
Searing regret for the way they had parted.
To the soul of my soul, Pixie.
I promised you I would recognise you if you were a light among a million lights. But when the moment came, I did not.
But let me start at the beginning. I have time, after all; you are ninety years into the future.
That strange conversation we had last year, on the evening of the fire that destroyed The Aphrodite and took the life of Nessa Blunt, has repeated itself in my mind a thousand times over the last nineteen months.
During those incessant examinations, I have analysed with the focus of an obsessive scientist the behaviour of both Hermione and Constance, as you described them to me.
I have searched for the truth and every time I have doubted it, another clue has surfaced to prove that that which my mind tells me is impossible, is, in fact, an extraordinary feat of paranormal experience, which no scientist could ever substantiate.
It was only when my brother, Ivan, sent me A.
A. Milne’s book of poetry, When We Were Very Young, with a note to read the twenty-fifth poem, ‘The King’s Breakfast’, that I realised, without a shadow of doubt, that you had been speaking the truth.
That book was only published this year. How could you have known that poem in 1895 if you didn’t come from the future?
You are, indeed, a time traveller, and I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.
I have had many dark nights of the soul, Pixie.
Haunted by memories of my beloved Hermione, and of Constance, to whom I lost my heart aboard the ill-fated Titanic.
I realise now that it was you I loved. A deep soul connection that I didn’t recognise, but felt all the same, in the very core of my being.
You asked me what I was going to say to Constance on the Bethesda steps in New York.
I was going to tell her – to tell you – that I loved you.
That I couldn’t explain why so profound a feeling could come over me so suddenly, but that I could only surrender to it. I was going to ask you to marry me.
As you rightly pointed out, Eddie and I fell in love before you ‘appeared’, and in my blindness, I lost her.
In my stubborn refusal to believe you, I blamed Eddie for her moment of what I could only describe as madness, and she left Seacombe and my life, which has, in the months since, been dreadfully dark. I miss her with all my heart.
I miss you, too, Pixie. I fear I will never find you again.
You said you had to finish what you started in loving me, and I fear that you have succeeded.
I confess, I search for you in the faces of strangers, but so far I have not found you.
I am certain now that if you return, I will know you.
I will know you as I know myself. We are one.
I will leave this letter in my will, with instructions that my descendants deliver it to you, by hand, on the 26th October 2014, at the Aphrodite Theatre in Seacombe. If it has the good fortune of finding you there, I have an idea that might appeal to you.
Return to me, dearest one, on the 5th December 1924.
I am at home, writing this letter at my desk.
It is quiet. No one is in the house. I have given the servants the evening off.
It is snowing. It is quite beautiful. Feathery flakes fall like fat feathers in the glow of the streetlamps.
I call to you from the past with all my heart.
I hope that my longing is enough. I would like to say good-bye.
I wait for you now.
Cavill
Pixie’s heart was thumping so hard against her ribs, it reverberated throughout her entire body.
Her eyes were swimming in tears so that the words were now smudges of black ink on the paper.
Would it be possible to engineer a slide to that specific time and place?
Even Avril hadn’t known exactly how to do that, and Pixie hadn’t yet achieved that kind of mastery over her art.
Avril’s words came back to her then: You won’t be free of each other until you allow your love to fully and honestly express itself. Didn’t that mean that both she and Cavill had to recognise each other on the level of the soul?
She had to recognise him, and he had to recognise her. Until that moment they were still tied together. Until that moment, the Law of Attraction was still active in its drive to bring them together.
She was quivering with excitement now.
She closed her eyes and took three deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth.
She steadied her jumping nerves, focusing on her heart centre, imagining the light expanding into every corner of her body and radiating out into the room.
She thought of Cavill, of him writing in his study in that beautiful white house in Seacombe.
And she realised then, in a flash of enlightenment, that tailoring her slides was not about knowledge, but about purity of heart and intention.
It was about her state of consciousness. About love.
With this awareness dissolving her uncertainty, as sunshine dissolves fog, she was no longer her mind, but her emotions, and on that ray of intense feeling, she floated out of her body and into the realm of the eternal.
With her whole being pulsating with joy, she slipped through the veil. To Cavill.
She knew without any doubt that she would find him because he was pulling her to him, and she was willing herself there. With those two forces working in tandem, they couldn’t fail to be reunited.