Prophecy of the Sisters

by Michelle Zink

  “Excuse me, Miss! Miss?”

  It takes a moment to find the person belonging to the voice. She is so small — only a child — that I look around and above her before coming to the conclusion that it is, in fact, the little girl who is speaking to me.

  “Yes?” I look back toward the carriage, but Alice is hidden inside and Edmund is bent over, inspecting one of the spokes with both hands and singular concentration.

  The child walks toward me, golden ringlets gleaming and a confidence in her step that makes her seem older than she probably is. She has the face of an angel, plump and pink at the cheeks.

  “You’ve dropped something, Miss.” She bows her head a little, holding out her hand, her fingers closed into a fist so that it is impossible to make out the thing she holds.

  “Oh no. I really don’t think so.” I look down at my wrist, noting the small bag still swinging there.

  “Yes, Miss. You have indeed.” She meets my eyes, and something there makes me hold very still. My heart beats hard and fast in my chest until I look more closely at her small hand. The white teeth of my small ivory hair comb are revealed in the girl’s fingers, and I exhale a breath I did not realize I was holding.

  “Oh my goodness! Thank you ever so much!” I reach out and take the comb from her hand.

  “No, thank you ever so much, Miss.” Her eyes darken, her small face sharpening as she dips in a curtsey every bit as odd as her gratitude. She turns and skips away, her skirts swishing behind her, a childish hum fading with her footsteps.

  Alice leans forward in her seat, calling to me from the open door of the carriage. “Whatever are you doing, Lia? It’s positively freezing, and you’re letting all the cold air into the carriage.”

  Her voice shakes me from my position on the street. “I dropped something.”

  “What is it?” She surveys me from the cushioned seat near the window as I climb in beside her.

  “My comb. The one Father brought me from Africa.”

  She nods, turning to stare out the window as Edmund closes the door to the carriage, wrapping us in muffled silence.

  I am still clutching the comb, but when I open my hand it isn’t the ivory comb that gets my attention but a loop of black velvet that trails from behind it. Something cold and flat lies in my palm behind the comb, within the velvet, but I do not dare unravel it for fear of Alice discovering it at the same time.

  The teeth of the comb bite into the soft flesh of my palm as I close my fingers around it, and it is then that I remember. Reaching back, I touch my hair, recalling my rush to get ready for Wycliffe this morning. I didn’t have time for coffee, and in my hurry I barely managed to pin my hair into place.

  But I had used the pins — it was the comb I’d skipped in my rush to leave the house. I can still see it, sitting on the dressing table as I rushed out of my room a few hours before. How it traveled from my chamber at Birchwood all the way to town and into the little girl’s hands is another mystery I cannot begin to solve.

  In the safety of my room, my hands tremble as I pull out the comb, studying it as if it might have changed during the hours spent inside the darkness of the velvet bag.

  But no. It is just the same.

  The same comb Father brought back from Africa, the same comb I have put in my hair almost every day since, and the very same comb given to me by the girl on the street. I set it aside. Whatever answers I need are not to be found in its soft sheen.

  When I reach into the bag again, my hand finds the whispery ribbon and with it the hard thing I felt in my palm in the carriage. I spread the velvet out until the black ribbon snakes across my white nightgown.

  It’s a necklace of some sort, I think. The black velvet surrounds a small metal medallion, suspending it between two lengths. I think it a choker, but when I lift it to my neck, I find it is not nearly long enough to go all the way around. My eyes are drawn to the pendant hanging from the ribbon. It is featureless — nothing but a plain, not-very-shiny gold disc. I rub two fingers against the cool surface on either side, feeling a ridge on the back. When I flip it over, there is a dark outline shading the surface of the circle. The darkening room forces me to lean in, the outline slowly coming into focus.

  I take the tip of a finger and run it along the edge of the design in the circle, as if this will make real the image I see there. My finger sinks into the etched circle, its surface slightly indented in opposition to the one on my wrist.

  And yet it is nearly the same. The only difference is the letter C in the center of the pendant. I turn my wrist over, looking from the cold circle in my hands back to the mark. Now there is something else, something called forth by the medallion in my hand. The smudge inside the circle of my wrist seems to clarify, becoming clearer by the moment until I am sure the unknowable shape inside the circle will soon become the letter C just as on the pendant.

  And now I know.

  I’m not sure how, but somehow I know what the velvet ribbon is for, where it belongs. Wrapping it around my wrist, I am not surprised that it fits perfectly or that, when I close the clasp, the black ribbon lies snug and flat against my skin. The medallion sits atop the matching circle on the inside of my wrist. I can almost feel the raised skin of my wrist nestle into the engraved circle of the pendant. A wave of terrifying belonging ripples through me.

  It is this that most frightens me — the call of my body to the medallion. It is this inexplicable affinity for the thing that feels as if it has always been mine, though I have never seen it before today, that makes me remove the bracelet. I open my bedside drawer and push the coil of velvet to the very back.

  I am profoundly tired. Lying back against the pillow, I fall into a sleep that is sudden and complete. The blackness that smothers me is total, and in the moment before everything falls away, I know what it feels like to be dead.

  I am flying, up and out over my body. My sleeping form lies below, and a surge of exhilaration takes hold as I move freely away from it and straight through the closed window.

  I have always had strange dreams. My earliest memories are not of flesh-and-blood things, not of my mother’s voice or my father’s boot steps in the hall, but of mysterious, unnamable shapes and my own swift escape through wind and trees.

  Even still, until Father’s death, I had never had a flying dream that I could clearly remember. But I have had them almost every night since and am not surprised to find myself floating over the house, the hills, and the road leading away from our property. Soon enough I am over the town itself, and I marvel at how different it appears in the haze of my dream, the mystery of night.

  Making my way past Wycliffe and the bookstore, past the house where Sonia Sorrensen lives, I leave the town behind for the blackness of sprawling fields. The sky above me, around me, glows. It is not the black sky of night, but a deep and endless blue with the hint of violet somewhere in its depths.

  Soon, I am over a larger city. Buildings rise toward the sky, and great factories spit clouds of smoke into the night, though I cannot smell a thing. I come to the edge of the city, and for a split second, an ocean stretches before me as far as the eye can see, and then, gloriously, I am over it.

  And this I can smell.

  The briny moisture fills my nose, and I laugh aloud at the wonder of it. A humid wind blows my hair, and in this moment I would be content to fly forever, to give myself over to the indigo sky through which I travel.

  I move farther and farther out over the water until the city is not even a speck in the distance. As the water rushes below, a small voice cautions me to go back, whispering that I’ve gone too far, but it is only the shadow of a warning. I ignore it, reveling in the utter abandon of my journey, allowing myself to swoop past the waves and fall farther into the mysterious sky.

  But the warning grows louder and more insistent until it is more than a whisper, until it is an actual voice I hear. The voice of a girl.

  “Go back!” The voice calls to me, muffled and broken. “You’ve g
one too far. You must go back!”

  Something about it makes me stop, and I am astonished to find myself hovering, not quite flying, but not sinking into the sea of my dream either. And then I feel it. Something ominous roaring behind me, coming at me with a speed that finally prompts me to move.

  I push myself through the sky, back toward the area I think is land. The fantastical ability to control my speed and direction has grown stronger during my brief flight, and even through the fear my body hums with this new knowledge, this new power.

  But under my elation, terror builds by the second as I speed toward home, the forbidding thing sounding nearer and nearer, swift on my heels. There is still a long way to travel, though it seems I cover the miles as if they are merely feet.

  The thing behind me now has a noise, a shrieking howl that fills me with a panic so debilitating that my pace slows just when I need it the most. I can see the dark outline of town in the not-so-very-far distance. I am close, and yet I’m pulled backward both by my pursuer and my own fear. I might stop altogether, if not for the figure sweeping toward me from the direction of town.

  At first, it is a pale glimmer in the distance, but soon she is right in front of me, and it takes only a moment to realize that she is the spiritualist, Sonia Sorrensen.

  “Come! Come! There’s no time to waste! Oh, why did you have to go so far?” She no sooner says it than she is waving me forward. “Go! Go back as fast as you can. I’m right behind you!”

  I do not stop to wonder how or why Sonia Sorrensen has appeared in my dream. I hear the panic in her voice, and I fly. She follows on my heels until we come to the town.

  “I cannot risk going with you. It’s not safe.” She is already drifting away from me. “Become one with your body as quickly as possible. Do not allow yourself to be detained. Not for any reason.”

  “What about you?” My voice is distant and small. I cannot feel its vibration in my throat.

  Her eyes meet mine. “It’s not chasing me.”

  Her words move me forward. I fly over the fields, the road to Birchwood, and up the face of the house. When I reach the window to my room the snarl of the thing behind me grows angry, hissing words I cannot quite understand.

  Guard the… Mistress.…

  I stop unwittingly, trying to decipher the strange message.

  It is a delay I cannot afford.

  The dark being snarls and snaps, close enough that I could touch it if I had the courage to reach out a hand. I cannot see anything within the black mass, but I sense thundering hooves and a great many wings, all beating in a timeless rhythm that is at once familiar and terrifying. I have a flash of panic before a peculiar resignation settles into my bones.

  I am too late. It is too close. I am frozen, unable to move with the apathy that has seeped into every cell of my body.

  And yet it cannot touch me.

  It hovers around the periphery of a barrier I cannot see. The whispering that at first was so near, so immediate, now seems muffled and distant. The great wings that were before so close now seem to beat from behind a blanket of thick velvet. The thing howls in anger, but it is a useless show of frustration, for I remain behind an invisible shield of safety.

  My lethargy shakes loose, and I push through the window, stopping over my sleeping body for a mere second before dropping into it.

  It is a strange sensation, feeling my soul click into place like the piece of a puzzle and knowing for certain it was not a dream.

  7

  When I come down the stairs, Henry is sitting in his chair by the window in the parlor. Treasure Island lies open in his lap, but he is not reading. Instead, he stares out at the grounds on the other side of the window pane.

  I don’t bother trying to silence my footfall as I approach. I know well what it is like to be so deep in thought, and I’ve no wish to startle him. Even still, he takes no notice of me until I speak.

  “Good morning, Henry.”

  He looks up, blinking as if I’ve woken him from a trance. “Good morning.”

  I tip my head, looking deeper into his eyes and trying to define the expression I see in their brown depths. “Are you all right?”

  He stares at me a long moment and is opening his mouth to speak when Alice rounds the corner into the room. We both turn to look at her, but when I return my eyes to Henry, his gaze does not leave Alice’s face.

  “Henry? Are you all right?” I repeat.

  Alice raises her eyebrows as she looks quizzically at our brother. “Yes, Henry. Is everything all right?”

  It takes him a moment more to answer, but when he does, his response is given to Alice, not to me. “Yes. I’m only reading.” A note of defensiveness has crept into his voice, but before I can think more about it Aunt Virginia enters the room, stealing our attention.

  “Lia?” She stands in the doorway, an odd expression on her face. “Someone is here to see you.”

  “To see me? Who is it?”

  Her eyes skip nervously from my face to Alice’s and back again before answering. “She says her name is Sonia. Sonia Sorrensen.”

  Sonia and I don’t speak on our way up the hill to the cliff overlooking the water. In the vacuum of the words we do not say, I focus on the sky, an endless sapphire that goes on and on. I can almost see the curve of the horizon, and I wonder how anyone could have thought the Earth flat when faced with this kind of sky.

  I try not to think of Alice, of her barely concealed fury at the mention of my visitor. I was both relieved and surprised when she left the parlor before Sonia was escorted in by Aunt Virginia. It saved me from having to come up with an explanation, but I am under no illusions; Sonia’s arrival and Aunt Virginia’s presence only bought me a little time with my sister. Alice will not let so curious a caller go unquestioned.

  By the time Sonia breaks our silence, my nerves are taut with unspoken words.

  “You mustn’t go so far, Lia.” Her gaze remains fixed in the distance as if nothing was said at all.

  A swift and forceful anger fills my chest. “Tell me, how does one measure ‘far,’ Sonia? Perhaps you can tell me how to measure distance when I am flying out of my body in the middle of the night.”

  She takes a minute to answer, her profile as clear and beautiful as the marble statues we sketch at Wycliffe. “Yes. It must be confusing. If you’ve never done it before, I mean.” Her voice is a murmur.

  “If I’ve never… Well, of course I’ve never done it before!” I stop, tugging on her arm so that she must stop, too. “Wait! Are you saying you have done it before?”

  She looks into my eyes, shrugging and pulling her arm away. Turning, she continues to climb the rise leading to the lake. I hurry to catch her and am breathless when I finally reach her side.

  “Won’t you answer?”

  She sighs, looking over at me as we walk. “Yes, all right? I’ve done it before. I’ve been doing it since I was a child. Some people do it without realizing it, thinking they are dreaming, for example. Others can do it on command. Many, actually. Many people in my world anyway.”

  She says this as if we are not walking side by side on the very same ground, as if she occupies some strange corner of the universe, invisible and unreachable to me.

  “In your world? Whatever do you mean?”

  She laughs a little. “Are we not from different worlds, Lia? You live in a grand house, surrounded by the family and things you hold dear. I live in a small house governed by Mrs. Mill-burn, with only the company of other spiritualists and those who pay us to describe the things they cannot see.”

  Her words silence my questions. “I… I’m sorry, Sonia. I suppose I didn’t realize it wasn’t your home, that the woman, Mrs.… uh, Mrs. Millburn was not your… relative.”

  Even from her profile, I see the flash of anger in her eyes. “For goodness’ sake! Don’t pity me! I’m quite content with the way things are.”

  But she does not sound content. Not really.

  We finally reach the rise
, that last invigorating moment when we step onto the top of the hill making me feel, as always, that I have stepped into the sky. Despite all that has happened on this ridge, it is impossible not to appreciate the majesty of the view.

  “Oh! I didn’t know there was a lake here!” In Sonia’s voice is the awe of a child, and I realize she mustn’t be much older than I. She takes in the view — the lake, shimmering below us, the trees swaying in a breeze too soft for autumn.

  “It’s well hidden. Even I don’t come here much, actually.” Because my mother fell from this cliff, I think. Because her broken body lay on the rocks of the lapping lake below. Because I simply cannot bear it.

  I gesture to a large rock set back from the edge. “Shall we sit?”

  She nods, still unable to remove her eyes from the call of the water below. We settle side by side on the boulder, the hems of our skirts touching over the dusty ground. I have questions. But they are unfathomable things, dark shapes that swim just below the surface of my consciousness.

  “I knew you were coming.” She says this simply, as if I should know exactly what she means.

  “What? What do you —”

  “Yesterday. At the sitting. I knew it would be you.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”

  She looks right into my eyes in the way that only Alice ever has. As if she knows me. “Lately, when I try to hold a sitting, I close my eyes and all I see is your face. Your face and… well, many strange things I don’t usually see.”

  “But we have never seen each other before yesterday! How could you possibly see my face in your… in your visions?”

  She stares toward the lake. “There is only one reason I can think of.… Only one reason why I would see you, why you would come.”