Eva's World

She was three years old, Maria Evangelina Eugenia DosSantos, walking on the beach not far from her mother. Her tiny feet gripped the grains of sand, making the knuckles of her toes turn white. The wind was swiftly moving out toward sea, whipping Eva’s thin black hair in wisps around her plump and rosy cheeks.

"Look Mama!" her chubby finger pointed unsteadily at something shiny in the sand. It looked like a dropped coin shoved partially into the ebbing tide. Eva raced toward the token with youthful excitement. She pulled the shiny prize from the sand, revealing a long silver chain linked to the original object of interest. Eva tried to untangle the mess of silver and sea-weed, making puzzled faces while she pulled at opposite ends of the chain.

The water rushed up to meet her ankles and embraced the soft skin briefly, then quickly retreated, leaving almost unnoticeable moats around her small feet. She smiled brightly as she joyfully held the necklace, "It pretty," she said to her mother who sat nearby watching the incident. A soft smile crossed her peachy lips as Maria watched her young daughter delightfully play with her new-found joy.

Eva carefully cleaned off her treasure in the water, getting the bottom of her white cotton dress damp. Her fingers clung to the chain as she dragged it over her hair, dripping salty water on her golden-brown shoulders. Eva felt successful for only a moment, then became confused upon realizing the pretty part wasn’t across her chest. She turned in circles with her head thrown over her shoulder, trying to catch the gold she could see out the corner of her eye. When she gave up and stopped, her head was spinning and her legs wobbled, collapsing beneath her.

She looked over at her mother, who was smiling in enjoyment. Rising, she staggered to her mother with an inquisitive look on her face, "Where’d go?" Maria laughed softly as she turned the necklace so the gold re-appeared upon her chest. Eva picked up the object dangling from her neck and asked, "Money, Mama?"

For the first time, Maria carefully examined the necklace. Gold yet dull, smooth but sandy, the object was intriguing. It looked like a sand dollar with the intricate design of a flourishing flower at the center. On an even more magnificent scale, there was a miniature four-sided directional star inside the design. The precision may have been overlooked by others, but to Maria the minuscule compass rose, in effect, pointed to a microscopic world.

[Does Eva stay young the entire story? What does the necklace mean to Eva? What exactly is on the necklace?]

She was six years old, Maria Evangelina Eugenia DosSantos.

"Mama, my teacher says we can bring something to school to show the other children. What should I bring?"

Maria stared thoughtfully across the room while her practiced hands finished braiding Eva's long black tresses.

"Why don't you take that medallion you found on the beach?"

Eva jumped from the stool and ran to the dresser, leaving Maria's hands in mid-air still attempting to slip a band over her daughter's left braid. Eva reached up and gently lifted the lid of a little ornate box. She stood on her toes, her eyes barely able to look over the lip of the open case. She spotted the silver chain among the tangle of keepsakes. It had been nearly half Eva's short life since she had discovered the bright object in the sand. Her memory of the occasion was only kept alive by her mother's recounting.

She pulled at the chain and a large coin shaped object followed reluctantly. Eva walked slowly back to her mother, fondling the gold disk.

"Tell me the story again Mama."

Later, when Eva returned from school, she handed Maria a small envelope of the type used by elementary grade teachers to send report cards home to parents. The envelope contained the medallion and chain and a short note from Eva's teacher.

That evening, Alfredo DosSantos read the note at the dinner table. It read:

"Mr. and Mrs. DosSantos: When I saw your daughter's show and tell item, I was a little concerned that it might be too valuable to entrust to the care of a child. I don't really know much about these things, but the medallion appears to be very old. I took the liberty of taking some digital photos of it. I hope you don't mind. Since you let Eva bring the medallion to school, I thought you may not know its true worth. If you like, I will have my uncle take a look at the pictures. He is a professional appraiser of antiquities and often does work for the auction house, Southby's. Let me know. Yours truly, Rebecca Thatcher."

She was twelve years old, Maria Evangelina Eugenia DosSantos.

The screen door slammed. The loud noise on the otherwise quiet Fall afternoon announced Eva's arrival from school.

"Mom" Eva hollered into the apparently empty house. "Where is that paper we got on the gold medallion? I have to write an essay on something mysterious in my life."

Maria was sitting in the sunny light of the parlor windows. She was used to these abrupt non-hello greetings from her daughter. She looked up from her sewing and responded to Eva's distant voice without hesitation.

"I think your father put Mr. Thatcher's report in the file under M, for medallion."

"Hmmm" Maria was already doing the essay for her daughter in her head.

"I guess that would be a mystery in your life. I don't know what you're going to be able to say about it except that you found it."

Eva was making herself a jelly sandwich on the breadboard at the sink counter.

"Didn't Mr. Thatcher say it was very valuable and that there was only one other in the world like it?"

Maria put down the dress she was hand hemming to re-thread the needle.

"Yes." They were talking to each other from one room to another as Eva began to riffle through the family file cabinet in the den.

"He said that it was very old, perhaps 300 hundred years or more. It was from Spain. When your father heard that, he put the medallion in our safety deposit box at the bank. Don't get jelly all over those files, your Dad will have a fit."

"It's too bad your grandpa DosSantos isn't alive. He probably would have been able tell you all about the DosSantos family history in Spain going way back to the time that Medallion was made."

The light was fading. Maria began to think about what to make for dinner. She folded the dress and set it aside to work on later.

She was ...

... fifteen years old, Maria Evangelina Eugenia DosSantos.

Her father was giving her a lavish quinceanera. She was waltzing around the church hall floor with her boyfriend, Jim Fernald. As if he didn't have enough drawing his attention to that area, the golden medallion gleamed upon her breast.

Though it was understood to belong to her in some unspoken familial sense, it was also understood that the medallion's antiquity and value made it something that she could not casually display whenever she wanted. That her father had agreed to her wearing it on this occasion was another tribute to her on her special day.

And it gave her a strange thrill, knowing as she did now, that it had been made for a Spanish noblewoman whose ship, on its way to the colonies in America, had been sunk by privateers. Though there was no way of knowing, Eva had always imagined she had been young and adventurous. And she liked to think that when she wore the medallion, she was living the life that the young noblewoman had not been allowed to live.

The music came to an end. She and her boyfriend stood clapping with the other dancers, and looking into each other's eyes. She felt a warm glow against her breast. Glad of the excuse to look in that direction, Jim pointed to the medallion and said "Wow. That's a nice effect. Does it have an LED in it or something?"

Eva, not knowing what he was talking about, looked down at the medallion, and then lifted it and held it between them. The windrose at the center of the flower, while remarkably intricately engraved, had always been the same gold as the rest of the medallion. It was now softly glowing a beautiful ruby red. She stared at it for a moment, looked up at Jim, and then fainted into his arms.

The sensation was, as Padre Pablo had predicted, like waking up from an afternoon nap, except without the sense of urgency to dress for vespers. She was in the arms of a young man. The Padre had warned her to expect something of this sort, since the amulet's magic would eventually be triggered either by strongly felt emotion in the wearer or by vigorous aerobic exercise. Possibly both.

She knew she was in the future, because, as she had learned at the Padre's knee, the next thing to happen is never in the past. The question was: How far in the future? She marshalled the facts before her: She was indoors; this meant they still had doors. The young man whose eyes peered anxiously down into hers had evolved no new features. No third nostril had developed (even two seemed wrong; had there been more than one? Why? Her mind, she realized, was not fully recovered from its trip). No outsized forehead or permanently affixed snuff pouch was apparent. Evolution, while it might possibly have been invented by now, had not had time to proceed far, she concluded with relief. She batted her eyelashes two or three times ("Pray Dios we still have eyelashes," she thought), testing his reflexes.

He was trying to say something. In his excitement, he spewed forth gibberish. Or perhaps English. That could also explain his poor showing in the area of the mustache. "But do they not wear Van Dykes?" she worried. "Which is odd, because Van Dyke was Dutch, was he not? Or perhaps I am remembering it badly, as with the nostrils. No matter. He is a man. Or is he? No way to check. He sounds like a man. What woman would wear her hair that way? I'm going with man." She uttered a small experimental moan. Jim leaned in closer.

He said, "Maria! Maria!" Because Americans don't know that in Spanish everyone is named Maria. Even the men. It makes no sense when you think about it. After all, what is the point of a first name to which everyone on the beach answers at once? But Jim, in his ignorance, was in no position to satisfy himself that the Spaniards were as inane in their customs as the English. Nor is he likely to have cared, being of that nationality which, in this tale, has been reserved for later designation.

Senorita Maria Eulalia Para Fernalia's eyes widened on hearing the familiar name, and she tensed in Jim's arms. Then she relaxed, thinking, "Oh, that's right, we're all named that." However, Jim continued to call her that, and, finally, tired of waiting for specifics, she determined to forge on in the face of uncertainty, and, casting aside caution, uttered a second experimental moan.

"Maria! Say something!" said Jim, shaking her so hard that her teeth involuntarily clacked together. She held up a staying hand.

"I hope," she breathed in Spanish, "that the progress of dental science in your country is such as to compensate for my treatment here today."

She was eighteen years old, Maria Evangelina Eugenia Dos Santos. Bright morning sunshine, unsullied by smog, shone through her balcony's French doors, waking her at the same moment that her little maid, Concha, entered the bedroom with morning chocolate on a silver tray.

"Buenos días, Señorita Lali," said Concha, with a tiny bob of a curtsy, careful not to spill the drink. "I hope you slept well."

Eva was accustomed now to being addressed as "Señorita Lali," accustomed to being waited on hand and foot, accustomed to hearing the oddly accented Spanish spoken all around her, and speaking it herself with easy fluency.

But three years ago, when she had found herself, incredibly, in 1849, living on an early California rancho and being taken for Señorita María Eulalia Para Fernalia, the daughter of Don Jose-Maria Enrique Fernalia, favorite of Queen Isabel II, her disorientation had been complete. Happily, Lali, as Maria Eulalia was called by all who knew her, had apparently just recently gotten over a bout with the flu that had carried off half the rancho's native caballeros, and Eva's odd behavior and temporary inability to speak properly were taken by her father and Padre Pablo as signs of a relapse. Treated as a complete invalid for three months, Eva had ample leisure to get over her astonishment, and to pick up all she needed to know of the language and customs of the time.

And now she sipped her morning brew and watched as Concha tidied up the room, humming a new tune to herself.

"That's one of the new malagueñas we danced to last night, isn't it?" she asked. "What a lovely ball it was!"

Yes, Eva was throughly enjoying her new surroundings and its adventures. Although she still missed her late-20th century life, her first terrible homesickness had gradually turned to acceptance, and then to love for her new family and friends, especially Lali's father, the man she teasingly called "Don Papi."

Her old life in Camarillo seemed like a dream now. Was this young lady, who had travelled to Europe on a four-masted schooner, been entertained by the Queen of Spain, and had just returned to "El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula" to fireworks and balls and parties in honor of her homecoming -- was this the same person who had boogied to N*Sync with Jim at her quinceañera? It was hard to believe.

But she had never stopped wondering what had happened to Lali that day. Was she, too, transported to a new time, and even now living in 20th century California in Eva's place?