by Nikki Hyson
James regarded her for a pirate’s moment, swift and decisive. She reminded him of Sophie, the head librarian. Kind. Relaxed. Easy. Glancing round, he sought only a way to lengthen the pleasure of her company. Ah. Perfect. “Want to play a game?”
The twinkle in her eye offered quick assent.
He continued on. “Those three heading to the table. What will they pick?”
She gave each a quick up and down, head cocked slightly to gain focus. Before the first one could reach for a cup, she pointed to the middle-aged man and went down the line. “Black coffee and a biscuit. Diet soda and a few almonds.” Pointing to the last, she chuckled softly. “He’d like a pint and some chips, but will settle for the iced tea.”
James watched each claim exactly the refreshments she’d predicted. “Nicely done.” Hampered with the cup, he offered his artificial hand. “James.”
“Agnes. Nice to meet you, James.” She didn’t touch his plastic hand, moving farther up to squeeze his forearm where he could feel it. The gesture reminded him of Lily. “Why weren’t you writing with us?”
“I…” He should’ve been prepared for such a question. James pulled the journal from his pocket. “Not quite ready. My friends had questions.”
“Oh! You’re a Luddite. How wonderful. I use to be one, but the arthritis finally got to me. Had to switch to typing last year. Now Lily won’t be the only one among us still using pen and paper. So, what are you writing about?”
Another question he should’ve prepared for. Buying a moment, he took a sip. Three write-ins had taught him one universal truth. All writers were individuals who spent a great deal of their waking hours sitting alone and silent. As a result, when given the chance, well over half of them could talk a blue streak.
Deciding to keep it simple, James swallowed. “It’s the ramblings of a honey bee. What are you writing about?”
Agnes warmed to the question before she even opened her mouth, a smile betraying her love of the topic. “It’s my fourth about a little girl named Katie. She meets a family of wood gnomes in the garden of her uncle’s house. They have adventures and she learns all about plants and animals. I might want a peek at your honeybee research. Insects. I hadn’t thought about those.”
Looking over Agnes’ head for Lily, James tried diverting the conversation. “Is Katie one of the children you looked after?”
“She’s little bits of all the children I’ve loved. A long blonde ponytail like Cara, and loves pink like Jan. Mary’s dirt obsession, and she hums like Celine.”
“Have you tried to get them published?”
“Oh no. They’re not anything as grand as that. I just love spending time with my girls even though they’re all grown and gone.” She looked across the room with great tenderness to where Lily had taken a knee beside a teenage boy. “I have her to thank for these magic hours. Lily can be quite persuasive.”
“Yes, she can. She got me interested.”
“Did she?” Agnes chuckled. “I’m not surprised. She’s likely bullied, cajoled and wheedled her way into the lives of half of us. She always promises the same thing. ‘Try it once and I’ll leave you alone.’ Course, there never is just once.”
“How many times have you done NaNo?”
“This’ll be my fifth. I’d never written a word of fiction before that first time. Only letters to my girls. You?”
“My first.” Emotions rippling through him, James leaned into his cane for support. “First time for everything.”
Agnes nodded. “Yes. That’s her way. Time to get a move on. Nice to meet you, James. I’m glad she found you.”
“Me too, Agnes.”
Stepping from his side, Agnes took his empty cup with her. The rest of the room starting to settle, no one looked his way again. It gave him a moment of silence James dedicated to watching Lily.
Still crouched beside the boy, hand resting on his arm, she listened. The noise of the room left James with no idea of what they talked about, but her face reflected a mixture of warmth and concern. In the end, a smile of absolute joy lit her face just before she pulled him into a fierce hug.
“You are a tactile little creature,” James mused to himself, searching for a solitary perch. The stairs beckoned despite the likely discomfort to his backside. He limped his way there. Halfway up and halfway down he found a step to his liking and leaned into the metal bars supporting the rail. Less than comfortable, he waited for the next round to begin.
Moriarty stared at the papers before him, words blurring into silence. “Related?” His gaze lifted to Irene. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Of course she was. She wouldn’t have brought it to him had she been otherwise. He leaned back in his chair, fingers laced together. Two choices unspooled before him. He knew his pawns. He couldn’t have both. The most powerful Oracle that ever was? Or a writer capable of pulling anyone from their pages.
Might be tempting, trying for each.
Sunlight, piercing a fold in the curtains behind him, cast light across the wall opposite. Doyle watched with unblinking eyes.
26
With the fifth word war playing out across keyboards, James watched the Others pull themselves from the shadows. Those no one seemed to see. The muses who visited a precious few, and remained.
The first of these stepped from between two rows of reference books, passing through writers hunched over their laptops. A child of seven or eight, dressed quite plainly in grass-stained jeans and a pink sweatshirt. Katie. Yellow hair tied back with a matching pink ribbon, she walked along several tables. Pausing a few times, she peered over a shoulder, reading words here and there. Some made her smile. Some made her frown. Only one writer did she stop fully beside.
Agnes. Lips pursed thoughtfully, the old woman’s gnarled hands moved over her keyboard with slow determination. James watched a bead of sweat form on her worn brow. Grimacing, she flexed her hands and he knew this moment of emotional release cost her physical pain.
The little girl stopped, leaning close beside her. A smile forming sweetly, she read the words flickering to life on the screen. Leaning closer, Katie dipped her pale, ethereal cheek to Agnes sleeve. Humming softly, rocking gently from one foot to the other, she watched Agnes type.
The old woman picked up the melody almost instantly, soft enough to not disturb the others but loud enough to ignite her own smile once more. Peace descending, blind determination slipping away, she ceased the pauses, the fits, the starts. No longer telling the events on the page. She lived it.
The little girl, lifting her gaze to Agnes’ screen again, read every word. She giggled.
Before James could marvel long, a second figure stepped from the children’s corner to join them. It wasn’t human, but a cat; a long, sleek Siamese. It leapt onto the last table in the row and sashayed down the center of it. Somewhere near the middle, it drew even with the stairs James had claimed. There it paused, turning to gaze unblinkingly upon him. James, never knowing cats before, stared back. He supposed a person more familiar with the little beasties would be able to read the look. James read only contempt in the slow, amber gaze.
It lingered over him for little more than a passing thought before showing him its back. The cat crossed the table to the teenage boy Lily had been speaking to a couple hours before. His eyes were fixed on the screen, fingers flying without visual guidance at a speed it seemed impossible to maintain.
The cat remained there, massaging its whiskers into the corner of the screen. The boy didn’t flinch or look up. He continued on, a hint of a smile touching one corner of his too sober mouth.
James looked at all the assembled writers. Wrimos, Lily had called them. No one saw the little girl. No one saw the cat. Writing continued on as if they didn’t exist.
Behind him, the stair creaked. James glanced back, muscles tensing before an unknown threat. No writer would quit in the middle of a word war.
Early thirties, dark hair cut just long enough to curl at the edges
and clean-shaven. Hand resting lightly on the rail opposite James, he lingered over every step. His eyes never strayed from the writers in the room below, or rather, from one writer.
Knowing where it would end, James followed the man’s line of sight to Lily. Unconscious of everything else, she continued writing in the journal perched upon her knees. James looked back at the man. Worn canvas trousers, hand-knit sweater and patched overcoat. James already knew his name. He’d learned it only this morn while holding a picture lifted from the Westfell mantle.
“Stephan.”
James wasn’t even sure he’d spoken the name aloud, perhaps he hadn’t, but Stephan glanced down at him.
“You see me,” the younger man said, more sorrow than surprise in his tone.
James nodded.
Stephan gazed upon Lily. “She doesn’t.”
“Time!” Lily’s voice drew every eye.
James looked back to the stair. Empty. He glanced around the room. Both the cat and little girl were gone.
Lily caught his eye, tilting her head at the snack counter. He shook his head. He didn’t want to move from this spot. He wanted to be there the next time Stephan decided to step closer.
A collective sigh swept through the room, as if none had remembered to breathe during the past fifteen minutes. Lily laughed at them, and herself, shaking out a hand cramp before taking word counts. “Okay. I’ll go first. Two hundred and eighty. Next.”
Numbers shouted above the conversations instantly springing to life. Some stood to stretch. Some made swift sprints down the hall to the loo.
Lily finally rose, stretching her legs as she moved about the groups. Listening to snatches of conversation, pausing to give a hug where needed, or joining a round of laughter. It was her favorite part of the write-ins. Uplifting, encouraging, and for the first time, chaffing her to the bone. She’d seen Cris write in the ledger.
Finally, her path round the room brought her before the ledger on the counter. Turning back two pages, her finger passed over the names both familiar and new. There.
Lily flicked a glance at James but he appeared engrossed, eyes on three college girls just entering with bags slung over shoulders. He followed their path through the crowd, shrieks and giggles soon erupting from that corner of the room. Accident or premeditation that caused him to miss her discovery of Cris’ entry?
“James.”
Lily’s voice beckoned, her alarm reflexively lifting him from the step. She stood before the ledger, one finger marking a name.
James resettled onto the step, almost casually enough to believe. “What is it?”
“Cris Wilmore? Tell me he isn’t who I’m thinking of.”
James flinched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lily turned to him. “Wilmore.” No reprieve, not this time, she spelled it out. “One of Edmond Dantes many aliases.” Standing before him, her hand dropped to his knee. “Cris. Cristo.”
Still refusing to meet her eye, he deflected, but didn’t deny. “No one is supposed to know these things.”
His fear rattled her. The pain crinkling at the edges of his eyes made her want to stop badgering, but she couldn’t. Not if she wanted to help him. As gently as she could, she asked, “Is your friend the Count of Monte Cristo?”
“Lily.” A breath, quick and sharp, as if he’d a pain in his side. “Please, stop asking questions I can’t answer.”
“Who was that with him?”
“Lily.”
“Who’s in charge of you?”
He gave no answer, as if silence might be his only defense.
She slid her fingers into his hand, wishing his gaze to find hers. “I’m in this now.” His fingers flinched, closing round hers. “You know they’re already watching me. Why else send all three of them?”
“All the more reason to stay out of it.”
“Is there some way for me to help you?”
With difficulty, he dragged his eyes up to hers. “Time’s up,” he said.
“This conversation isn’t.” A promise she meant to keep, but not now. Instead she went to the head of the table, retrieving her journal. “One minute,” she called above the noise.
Conversations pausing and seats reclaimed, her gaze looped the room. Resting on James last of all, who sat touching the journal he’d yet to open but couldn’t seem to put away. Pleased to see it, she smiled. “Ready?” Silence. “Begin.”
James looked down at the black book he cradled. Is there some way for me to help you? There. She’d said it. If Lily helped him, saved him from this endless enslavement, they would know it was her. They’d come for her. She’d never be safe. How’d the one thing he hoped for suddenly become the only thing he feared?
Fingers curling over soft leather and gilt edges, the moment in the Oracle’s chamber came flooding back. Taunting him. Haunting him.
The Oracle. His Anne. Clinging to her, each breath a gasp. Broken mirror shattered all around. Her words had fallen like snowflakes against his cheek. ‘The more you remember, the better you’ll feel. Write it down. Share it only with her.’ Like butterflies, landing between the shards of pain. ‘Tell no one of this. No one.’ Pain fading into memory. ‘You had nightmares. That’s all.’ She’d given him a brief, not entirely ungentle, shake. ‘Do you understand?’
James understood, but he’d written in the journal only a little, despite the Oracle’s advice. His memory about the Christmas puppy, and the uncle he’d known as a tutor were captured. So were the snippets of a college cricket game and the first date with a woman named Anne. His Anne.
The dreams of her father’s rejection and James’ confrontation with his own father afterwards remained in the gauzy recesses of a world he’d rather forget. They’d all served a purpose. Did he want to know how his story ended? Loss moved writers to put loved ones in books.
A footstep on the stair ceased his errant ramblings, and James looked back. Stephan, waiting to be seen, paused just two steps up. James glanced over at Agnes and the typing boy. Katie and the cat were back, touching the writers they loved. Offering guidance.
Stephan sat on the step beside him. They watched Lily, her purple ear buds silencing the world, her fist flying across the page.
James, staring down at his journal, asked, “Why don’t you go to her? As they do?”
“It’s different. They’re inspired characters that will one day turn into beloved characters. It’s a good thing for them to hold on to. To be moved by their nearness. Dwelling in the past is not wise.” Admission falling on a sigh, he murmured, “Twould be better if she let me go.”
“So, you’re a ghost,” James said at last, bluntly. Because he knew it would feel foolish no matter how long he waited to ask.
Elbows resting on knees, Stephan hesitated only a moment. “No. I’m the copy she made to fill the hole in her heart.” Stephan looked thoughtfully at his hands, drawing James’ attention. They both studied the scars made by heat and iron. James recognized them from his pirate’s life. This man was no scholar. He was a smith of some kind.
Stephan nodded slowly, fingers curling into fists. “She gave me his memories, his hopes, his love for a girl, but I’m not that man. I’m just a…” He drifted, searching for the right words. They failed him. “I’m not that man.”
“A paper soul?” James offered.
“Yes. Exactly so. A paper soul.”
“What now?”
Stephan lifted his shoulders. “You could always tell her what you’ve seen. Tell her to embrace someone new. Lay me to rest.”
“What if this is her way of doing that?”
“James, it’s been three years. She writes of nothing else.”
James traced the lettering on the front of the journal, gold glittering under the tip of his finger. There’s a story in you that only you can tell. Swallowing hard, he asked, “Who told you that?”
Stephan flinched. “What?”
“That you’re nothing. Only a copy.”
�
��I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you? Who told you my name is James?”
“She did.”
“Lily?”
Stephan shook his head, No. “A woman in a mirror. She comes during the quiet moments, between the words. When Lily isn’t writing. She told me it would be better for Lily if I stayed away. She said…”
Across the room Lily lifted her gaze, looking right at James. A hint of puzzlement puckered her brow, head tilting to ask a silent question. He smiled, as if all was right with the world, tapping his wrist where a watch should be. She made a little face, then dropped back into her pages, her world.
“We call her the Oracle,” James said softly. “What did she say?”
Stephan considered his choices; then, opted for the truth. “She said if I loved Lily at all, I should let her move on.”
“It isn’t you.” James stopped. Gathering his thoughts, he pictured the Oracle before her mirrors. He hoped he understood her reasoning. “She’s trying to protect Lily. There are men capable of great evil. Who would use you against her. The Oracle is trying to make you less real so they can’t use you.”
“I would never do anything to hurt Lily.” Stephan fixed his stare upon James. “I couldn’t.”
“You wouldn’t have a choice.”
Words sinking in, the gentleness Lily had written into his fiber hardened about the edges. “How do you know this?”
James recognized the distrust flickering in Stephan’s eyes, but he had no choice. He had to be equally honest if he was to earn that trust back. “Because I’m one of them.”
Stephan hissed out his anger, starting to rise.
“But, I’d never harm Lily,” James vowed, hopelessly aware he was repeating Stephan’s own words back to him. “Not ever, but it doesn’t matter if you believe me. You will, or you won’t. Either way, hang on to one thing.”
Stephan gazed across to Lily now. “What?”
