Six October 18, 2023
ELSIE PEERS at Zander’s house through the windshield of Bailey’s little red car.
His home is walking distance from the ocean, so he’s doing okay in the horoscope trade.
While neighbouring houses have a lawn out front, he has a vegetable garden, though his tomatoes are wilted now in mid-October.
At the entrance to the path leading to his house there’s a sign that reads: Zander Moore, Astrologer.
“Can’t you come with me?” Elsie asks her sister.
“These sessions are private,” Bailey says. “Things can get personal. Do you really want me listening in?” She unfastens her seat belt. “I’ll walk you to the door, say hello.”
Bailey had agreed to drive Elsie down to Victoria after work as Elsie doesn’t like driving in the dark. The sisters are both still dressed for the office, Bailey in her straight-legged pants and blouse, Elsie in her black T-shirt and hoodie.
After Elsie knocks, Zander opens the door wearing a turtleneck, chinos and slip-on sneakers without socks. “Hello, Elsie,” he says.
But, with her meltdown at the lookout on autoplay in her mind, she can’t work up the courage to look him in the eye. “Hello,” she says, to his rhododendron bush.
He extends his arms to Bailey, for a hug. “I got my invitation to your wedding,” he says. “Congratulations!”
Bailey beams. “It wouldn’t have happened without you,” she says, over his shoulder.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s true,” he says, stepping back.
“You helped,” Bailey gushes. “You don’t know how much you helped. I know what I want now.”
Which is more than Elsie can say for herself.
“Do you want to come in for a coffee?” Zander asks Bailey.
Her sister waves a hand. “No. I’ve got some shopping to do. I’ll be back in an hour to pick up Elsie.” She turns to her sister. “Unless you want more time?”
Elsie bows her head. “No, thank you. An hour’s good.” More than she feels up to at the moment. But she’s here.
As her sister walks to the car, Zander ushers Elsie into the hall. “Come in.”
“Thanks for making time for me on such short notice,” Elsie says, slipping off her shoes and placing them on the mat next to his.
Zander closes the door behind her. “No problem. My Wednesday evenings are usually wide open. And, like I said, I wanted to take a closer look at that atlas myself.”
Zander leads Elsie down the short hall towards his office, which appears to have once been a parlour.
There’s wainscotting on the bottom half of the walls, ornately flowered wallpaper above.
A bank of high windows shower several healthy potted tropical plants with light.
Artwork, mostly seascapes, hangs on every wall.
In the centre of the room, there’s a circular counter-height table with high stools all around.
A laptop sits open on it. There’s a box of tissues.
Elsie takes a stool, her feet dangling, heels banging against the foot rests until she catches herself and stops.
“Coffee, tea?” Zander asks. He picks up a cup and a coffee carafe.
“Tea,” Elsie says. “Orange pekoe. Decaffeinated, if you have it. Nothing if you don’t.”
“Orange pekoe it is.”
“Skim milk if you have it. Nothing if you don’t.
And just enough milk to make it milky, but not enough to make it cold.
” Elsie’s spiel is on automatic. It’s what she tells nearly every server.
“And the skim milk can’t be shaken in the container at all, or there’re bubbles in the tea. That ruins the cup.”
Still holding the coffee carafe, Zander appears amused. After a long moment he says, “Just the way I like it.”
“Really?” Elsie asks, sitting up straighter.
“No.” He pours himself a coffee and flicks on the kettle. He takes a container of skim milk out of the small fridge. “But these things are important.”
They are. Sometimes that perfect cup of tea is all she’s got to anchor her day. A safe bet in an uncertain world.
“How are you feeling today?” Zander asks.
Elsie’s eyes dart to the stained-glass transom, the closed barn door across the hall, the Persian runner—anywhere but Zander. “I’m fine,” she says, warily. “Good.”
“I realized later that I shouldn’t have phoned Bailey after we left the trail on Sunday. It wasn’t my place.”
Elsie nods and nods. “I get it. You were worried.” She looks up at the intricate tin ceiling tiles, the fancy crown molding as she wipes her sweaty palms on her thighs. “I’m sorry I acted like that. Really. I feel so stupid.”
“Oh, god, Elsie. There’s no need to apologize. We’ve all been there.” His eyes are moist. In his kindness, her nervousness evaporates.
The kettle whistles and Zander makes Elsie her tea: orange pekoe, decaffeinated with skim milk, but not too much skim milk. “No bubbles,” he says, handing Elsie her cup.
She takes a tentative sip, ready to set it aside without drinking it, as she does in most cafés. But it’s perfect. It’s never perfect, not unless she makes it. And he’s offered it in a bowl cup, rather than a mug, which rests soothingly in the palm of her hand. “Thank you,” she says, surprised.
“You’re welcome.” He sits in front of his laptop. “I guess we should get down to business. I’ve got your birth chart printed off. May I see the atlas?”
Elsie hands it to him and he opens it, comparing the first page to her birth chart.
“Is it the same?” she asks.
He nods. “Yeah, as you suspected, this inner ring on each of the pages is your birth chart.”
“And you really didn’t make it?”
He glances up briefly before paging through the atlas. “No. I wish I had. It’s quite a sophisticated and beautiful piece of work. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I’m not even sure what these pages are made of. You?”
Elsie shakes her head. The material is glossy, slippery to the touch, papery, but not paper.
The letters and symbols have an almost metallic glow.
Just before the atlas threw her back in time, she’d gotten a buzzing sensation in her hands on opening it, almost like pins and needles, as if from a mild electric shock.
But there’s no sign of a power source or battery.
“Whoever made it has to be someone who had access to my birth chart.”
“Or at least knew your birth date, time and location,” Zander says. “Give me a few minutes to look this thing over, make a few notes.”
As he studies the atlas page by page, typing notes into a file on his laptop, Elsie sips her tea, drinking in Zander over the rim of her cup.
His state of mind is written across his face.
The squint of concentration, the furrow of confusion, the smile of wonder.
A blush. Brows raised in surprise. Under ginger bangs, there’s a sprinkle of freckles over his forehead.
Long reddish-blond lashes might have made him pretty, if he didn’t have that square chin, that somewhat large nose, his uncanny golden eyes.
A crooked canine makes him seem a little less intimidating.
Still, she imagines his clients regularly crush on him.
Finally, he closes the book and smooths a hand over the illustration on the cover, the moon phases in a starry sky. “Okay, this is interesting, a clue to what I think this atlas is about.”
“When I first saw the cover, I thought maybe it was a moon atlas,” Elsie says.
Like one she had at home, a collection of maps outlining the moon’s terrain.
A gift from her mother. When she was a girl, her mom had given her a telescope one Christmas, and they used it to look at the moon, the many craters there.
Zander nods as he takes a sip from his coffee. “In a way it is. The phases of the moon that you see here in the illustration point out how the moon will energize each house in turn as it transits—”
“Transits?”
“Moves through each house. It starts as the dark moon at the eclipse and progresses through the lunar cycle, ending just before your birthday.”
“Which falls on the next dark moon,” she says. What Bailey told her.
“Yes.” He opens the atlas back to the first page.
“As the moon transited through the first house this past weekend and on Monday, its light illuminated the self, calling for self- awareness. The eclipse was on your ascendant, so I’m guessing that trend towards increasing self-awareness is only going to intensify throughout this lunar month. ”
Elsie looks back up at the ornate tin ceiling. She tunes out when Bailey talks about this stuff. “What do you mean, the eclipse was on my ascendant?”
“It’s a big deal,” he says. His eyes grow wide. “A very big deal. The ascendent is the part of the zodiac that’s rising on the eastern horizon at the moment you were born. So, it’s all about your identity, your sense of self. Saturday’s eclipse happened on that spot in your chart.”
“I don’t understand.”
He holds out both hands. “To put it simply, you’re going through a powerfully transformative experience this lunar cycle. I’m guessing all hell is breaking loose. And it’s only going to get worse.”
She sits up, alarmed. “Worse?” How could it get worse?
Zander grins, presumably at the look on her face. “Or better, depending on how you frame it. You’re going to get to know yourself in a way you never have before. It’s going to be a crazy ride.”
You have no idea.
“What about the outer ring?” Elsie asks. “On every page, there’s another ring around my birth chart with more astrological symbols.”
Zander slides his finger around the one on the first chart. “That’s where the moon and planets are in relation to your birth chart at any given point in time,” he says. “That tells me each chart has been worked up for a specific day.”
“So, you’re saying the way the planets line up in the outer ring of the chart is sort of like coordinates on a map, except it’s for a date.” Thirteen dates, one for each page.
“Yeah, exactly. Coordinates in time.” Zander pages through the atlas. “While I’ll have to check them, some of these dates appear to be in the past and some are in the future.” He stops on the second to last page. “Some are in the far future.”