Whisper of Souls

by Michelle Zink

  “I’m sorry, Thomas.” And she was. Thomas was a good man. A man who loved and understood her as no other man could. “I’m still not well.”

  He adjusted the cuff and then straightened, surveying her with a tired smile. “You look well to me. More beautiful than ever, in fact.”

  “Thank you.” She bowed her head. She could not find the words to tell Thomas that the kinder he was to her, the more shameful she felt. The more undeserving.

  He pulled her into his arms, nearly crushing her against his own body. “How long must you punish yourself?”

  She could not answer and he continued.

  “I miss you. I miss your body next to mine, your breath in my chamber. Come back to me, Adelaide, if only so that I can hold and comfort you.”

  Emotion threatened to overwhelm her. She pulled back, taking Thomas’s dear face in her hands, looking into the blue eyes that had captivated her since the day on Altus so many years ago when she had first seen him skipping stones into the sea.

  “Of course I’ll come back to you, Thomas. I love you. I simply need time. Just a little more time, my darling. Can you grant it to me?”

  He hesitated before nodding. “I will grant you anything. But you must stay with us. You mustn’t surrender yourself to the Souls, to the Plane. Things cannot improve if you are not here to make it so.”

  She nodded, rising on tiptoe to kiss his whiskered cheek.

  He looked at her a moment more, his expression grave. Then he forced a smile.

  “I must be going. The girls will be finished with breakfast soon, and I want to conclude their lessons early today.”

  Adelaide reached up, straightening his waistcoat, brushing imaginary lint from his strong shoulders like she used to when they were newly married and she sought any excuse to touch him, to brand him as her own.

  “Hurry along, then,” she said. “I think I’ll walk this morning. Clear my mind with some fresh air.”

  He nodded approvingly. “Very good. I’ll see you at supper, if not before.”

  He turned and left her, closing the door behind him. She stood for a moment, the room larger somehow without his solid presence filling it. His words echoed in her mind. They were a bell chiming the coming end. Reminding her that she would not be able to maintain the charade forever.

  Someday soon, she would have to choose.

  She left the room and made her way down the hall. She could hear the nurse cooing to little Henry behind the door of the nursery but did not consider stopping in to see him. In truth, she was afraid to hold him. She had done him enough harm.

  The door to the girls’ chamber was open, but when Adelaide peered into the room she found it empty, the beds already neatly made.

  She continued down the steps, hoping not to meet Ginny on her way out. Her sister did not approve of her solitary wanderings about the grounds and almost always tried to force companionship on her.

  She knew it for what it was; an attempt to keep watch over her. To glean information about her well-being, her use of the Plane as a way to bring forth the Souls, her growing loyalty to Samael.

  She preferred to keep her shame private, though it was likely Ginny already knew of her weakness.

  “Good morning, Mother.”

  The small voice came from behind her as she reached the bottom of the staircase.

  When Adelaide turned, it was too meet Lia’s clear green eyes. It was like looking into a mirror, though Lia’s gaze held none of the confusion Adelaide sometimes saw in her own.

  Adelaide stepped toward her daughter, bending to her level. “Good morning, my darling. Did you sleep well?”

  Lia nodded solemnly. “But Alice didn’t.”

  “No?”

  Lia shook her head.

  Adelaide tried to smile. “How do you know that, if you were sleeping?”

  “I just know,” Lia said. “I felt her.”

  “Tossing and turning on the bed?” Adelaide asked.

  “No. I felt her in my dreams. She wasn’t sleeping.”

  The blood seemed to freeze in Adelaide’s veins. “Well, yes. You are twins, my darling. You will always feel each other in ways that others don’t.”

  Lia’s gaze was knowing, as if her mother didn’t understand the complexity of what she was saying. As if Adelaide herself needed to be humored.

  Adelaide’s gaze was drawn to Alice as she stepped into the hall. “I don’t need sleep like Lia,” she said.

  Adelaide straightened, forcing a laugh. “Whatever do you mean, Alice? Of course you do. Everyone needs sleep.”

  But she knew well what Alice meant. That allowing her soul to leave her body, to lift into the sky of the Otherworlds, to allow the Souls to show her wonder after wonder, was better than sleeping.

  “You know what I mean,” Alice answered, as if hearing her mother’s thoughts.

  For a moment, Adelaide could not move. She could only stand, locked in Alice’s gaze. Then she went to her as if nothing at all was wrong when, of course, everything was.

  “I’m sure that I don’t, my dear. And I’m afraid you’ll have to explain it another time. I must be going.” She bent to kiss Alice’s cheek before touching her lips to Lia’s.

  “Where are you going?” Lia asked.

  “I’m taking my morning constitutional.”

  “Can we come, too?” Lia asked.

  “No. You have your lessons with Father. I’m sure he’ll be looking for you any moment.”

  She turned to leave. She was lifting her cloak from one of the hooks by the door when Ginny came down the staircase.

  “Good morning,” her sister said. “Are you going to the cliffs?”

  Adelaide smiled. “Yes.”

  “It’s quite chilly out.”

  “Is it?” Adelaide tied the cloak at her neck. “Well, I need the fresh air. I won’t be gone long.”

  “Come to think of it,” Ginny said, hurrying toward her, “I could do with a walk myself. Do you mind if I join you?”

  Adelaide did mind. She wanted to avoid Ginny’s worried gaze, her prying questions. Still, declining would be rude, to say nothing of the increased worry and observation it would cause.

  “Of course,” Adelaide said.

  Ginny grabbed her coat from one of the pegs, buttoning it hurriedly as if she were afraid Adelaide would change her mind. When finally Ginny had done all the buttons, she turned to Adelaide.

  “Shall we, Addy?”

  Adelaide nodded, clamping her tongue over the rebuke that rose in her mouth. She did not like to be called Addy. Ginny knew this, had been told time and again. But she never seemed to remember. Either that, or she enjoyed raising her sister’s ire, because she continued to call her by the dreaded nickname, as she had done since they were small.

  They stepped onto the stone portico. The air hit Adelaide like a slap, cold and sudden. She relished the sting of it on her cheeks, the winter wind forcing her into an awareness she had seldom felt since Henry’s birth. Now it was as if she floated through the days of her life, a ghost inside her own skin. She felt things only distantly—unless she was traveling the Plane. Then everything was sharp and vivid, her pulse beating in time to Samael’s, the dark soul of all dark souls, as he lured her closer and closer with each passing night.

  Continuing across the stone walkway, Ginny followed Adelaide as she stepped onto the grass to the right of the house.

  “Are you certain you wouldn’t rather go to the river today?” her sister asked.

  “It’s so much closer.”

  “You may stay at the river if you’d like.” Adelaide did not slow or look over at Ginny as she spoke. “I’m going to the cliffs.”

  She hoped Ginny would stay. That she would choose to forgo the long, cold walk to the cliff. But she only sighed, hurrying to catch up.

  “All right, then.”

  They began the ascent up the hill. The grass was already dry underfoot. Adelaide knew from the scent in the air—moisture, dried leaves, and a distinct m
etallic tang—that it would snow early this year. She did not relish the idea. Did not look forward to the long months inside Birchwood Manor. Months in which she must hide her desire to travel, her need for the sleep that would set free her soul from the body that seemed more and more cumbersome with each passing day.

  “Did you sleep well last night?” Ginny asked. “I thought I heard you in the hall.”

  “I slept fine.”

  Ginny said nothing in response. They continued their climb up the hill, the sky a dark woolen blanket overhead. The wind rushed through the trees, blending with the distant sound of the rushing river until it was impossible to tell the two apart. It became colder as they ascended, the wind fiercer. By the time they reached the crest of the hill, Adelaide’s hair had escaped its pins. She heard a little cry from Ginny and turned to see her sister struggling to keep her own hair in some semblance of order.

  “Why do you bother?” Adelaide asked. “It will only come loose again in this wind.”

  “Yes, well, we needn’t have come up here in such harsh weather,” Ginny snapped.

  “You needn’t have come at all,” Adelaide reminded her.

  Ginny glared as they crossed to the bench that sat under a tree at the top of the hill. She sat, leaning back to gain as much cover as possible from the tree’s large, overhanging branches.

  Adelaide walked to the edge of the cliff, gazing out across the expanse of water below. It did not glimmer blue-green the way it did on a sunny day. Today it was unreadable, a murky shade of gray not unlike the large granite cliffs that descended in a sheer drop to the lake.

  “Adelaide, come back from the edge, will you?” Ginny called to her.

  “Why?” Adelaide spoke loudly, wanting her voice to carry across the wind though she did not turn to face her sister as she spoke. “Do you fear I will fling myself to the rocks below?”

  “Addy!”

  Adelaide heard the horror in Ginny’s voice.

  “You mustn’t say such things.”

  “But that is what you fear, isn’t it?”

  Ginny’s footsteps sounded behind her. Adelaide felt a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  “Addy, I—”

  Adelaide shrugged off her sister’s touch. “Don’t call me that!”

  “I’m…I’m sorry.” Adelaide paused before continuing. “I’m worried about you. For you, Adelaide.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. I’m fine.”

  “I don’t think you are,” Ginny said softly.

  “And you would know more than I?” Adelaide asked coldly.

  “It is simply that…” Ginny dropped her voice, as if she were afraid someone was listening. “I feel you traveling the Plane at night, Adelaide. I hear you walking the halls of the house.”

  Adelaide turned to meet her sister’s eyes. “And what of it? Am I not allowed to walk the halls of my home at night? It is my home, Ginny. Not yours.”

  Adelaide felt a moment’s shame when she saw the color rise in Ginny’s face. Ginny insisted that she would rather be alone than married to any of the simpering men from town, and the Brothers from which Thomas descended were in short supply in New York. Perhaps if Ginny had traveled more frequently to Altus she would have found a match. As it was, she was already a spinster.

  “I’m well aware that Birchwood is your home, Adelaide. That Thomas is your husband. The children whom you barely look upon are yours. If my residing here makes you unhappy, I will leave.”

  Adelaide dropped her gaze, the rocks at her feet blurring as tears formed in her eyes. “Of course I don’t want you to leave,” she said. “I’m sorry, Ginny. I know you’re here to help.”

  Adelaide was ashamed. If the truth were told, she needed Ginny. Who else would embrace the daughters that Adelaide herself skirted with fear and worry? Who else would hold her tiny son with love when she, his mother, could not?

  “What happened to Henry is not your fault,” Ginny said. “It is simply the way of things sometimes. And he is a happy baby. You would see that if only you would hold him. You would see him smile, his eyes bright with a light that can only be happiness. He needs you, Addy.”

  “He needs to gain his strength. Then I will hold him,” Adelaide insisted.

  Ginny was a silent for a moment, the only sound the wind whipping angrily around them, the trees swaying with the force of it.

  “You must stop traveling,” Ginny finally said softly. “It is dangerous for you. For everyone.”

  “I don’t travel any more than you do, Ginny.”

  “Yes,” Ginny said, “you do. I rarely travel the Plane anymore, though part of me does miss it. But it is too dangerous, though the threat to me is different.”

  Adelaide knew what she meant. Ginny’s role as Guardian made her a target not for the seduction of Samael and his Souls, but for detention in the frigid Void, her soul trapped for eternity while her physical body passed into death.

  “If you don’t travel, how do you know that I seek the Plane?” Adelaide asked.

  Ginny reached for her sister’s hand, favoring her with a sad smile. “I feel you, Addy, as I always have. You are my sister. My twin. The Gate to my Guardian. I will always feel you. When you seek escape in the middle of the day, fleeing to your chamber though the sun is high in the sky, I know you seek the Plane. When you pace the halls at night, stopping outside the doors of your children before retreating to your bed, I know you seek the Plane.”

  Adelaide looked out over the water. “I am not as strong as you, Ginny.”

  Ginny squeezed her hand. “Nonsense. You have been through an ordeal with Henry’s birth. You are tired and weakened. But if you stay with us here, in this world, we will help you. Thomas and the children and I will help you find your strength again.”

  Adelaide wanted it to be that easy. She wanted to believe that the love of her family, that their care, would weaken the hold of the Souls. That she would realize what she had in this world and no longer seek solace in the others.

  But it was not true.

  Still, Ginny was her sister. It was her love for Adelaide that caused her concern. In a moment of clarity, Adelaide knew it was true. She turned to Ginny, trying to smile.

  “I’m sorry. Sorry for causing you so much worry. I will try to be better. To be present for you and Thomas and the children. Truly, I will.”

  Ginny wrapped her in an embrace, her sister’s thin arms still somehow more solid than her own. “I know you will, Adelaide. I know you will.”

  The words traveled across the precipice of the cliff, drifting out over the water. Adelaide tried to think them true, tried to believe them. But something in her already knew that it would not be enough.

  They spent the rest of the day indoors. Adelaide forced herself to sit by the fire as the girls did their lessons. She tried reading for a time, but finally set the book aside and took up an old piece of needlework on which she had not laid eyes since before Henry’s birth.

  Ginny sat beside her, reading quietly. It was this that kept Adelaide from retreating to the dim quiet of her chamber even though her eyes grew heavy as the day wore on. She had promised Ginny, promised her just this day, that she would not seek the Plane. That she would try to do as others did and live in this world, the flesh-and-blood world of her husband and children.

  But it was not easy to find enjoyment in the quiet of the fire, the rhythmic motion of needle passing through cloth, the soft voices of her daughters as they compared handwriting. Not when the Plane awaited.

  Finally, Cook called them for supper. Adelaide tried not to hurry through the meal. She forced herself to lift the spoon to her mouth slowly, deliberately, to engage in the conversation between Ginny and Thomas.

  But she was not really there. She felt as if she were moving through the thick syrup tapped from Birchwood’s massive maple trees. As if everything were happening outside her and she was only an observer, watching it all—Thomas gesturing as he spoke of politics, Ginny laughing, the girls sneakily hiding b
its of onion in their napkins—from afar.

  At last, Thomas retreated to the library to work, and Ginny to her chamber and whatever book awaited her there. Adelaide kissed the girls’ milky cheeks before they were taken to bathe. Relief washed over her like a salve as she ascended the stairs, the careful facade of nonchalance slipping from her shoulders.

  Making her way down the hall, she stopped at Henry’s door, listening to the cooing of the maid. She leaned forward, peering through the crack between the door and its frame. The maid sat in the rocking chair by the window, the chair Adelaide had ordered placed there before Henry’s birth so that she might look over the fields as she held her son.

  She had always known Henry would be a boy. She had risked her life—and his—to bring him into the world, and had known almost from the start that he would be the son Thomas hoped for. Thomas loved the girls. Adored them with his whole heart. But he longed for a son to teach the ways of the Brotherhood, ways that seemed lost to him here in the gray, chill landscape of New York. He wanted a son to take up the mantle of manhood that would someday, upon Thomas’s death, be vacant, a son to stand between his daughters and the Souls.

  She had failed them all. Poor Henry would have a difficult life, though it would be made easier by their wealth. Thomas would teach his son all he could, of course, but there was no telling what other injury the child had suffered with his birth.

  And the girls might have no protection at all upon Thomas’s death.

  Adelaide watched as the maid looked down at Henry with adoration. His tiny fisted hand flailed, the skin plump and dimpled at the forearm and wrist. Adelaide’s heart swelled with love, and she wondered if the maid—was her name Mary?—felt maternal toward the child. Did her heart tighten when she gazed upon his perfect beauty? Did she raise his head, covered in fine, soft hair, to inhale the scent of him, as Adelaide longed to do?

  Adelaide didn’t know. But her heart was heavy, her body almost incapable of carrying it, as she gazed upon them. She couldn’t bear it, and she turned away, making her way silently down the hall to her chamber and the relief she knew she would find there.