The Year of Shadows

by Claire Legrand

  “All you saw was fog, you said? Light and warmth?”

  “So warm.” She looked up at me. “Do you know where I can get more of that? It’s that other place, outside. That’s where the warmth is. We like it there. We want more of it.”

  I lay back on the snow, staring at the inside-out sky. “You didn’t mean it. You were confused.”

  Mom lay down beside me, shadowy tendrils tickling my wrist. “This is nice. I lie here a lot, but not with friends.”

  Tears filled my eyes, turning the sky wobbly and black. “Mom. I’m not a friend. I’m your daughter, Olivia. Remember?”

  She placed her hand in mine. “They can be the same thing.”

  After a few minutes, Igor nudged my cheek. Olivia? We need to go.

  Yes, we did. But how? I had found her at last.

  “I have so many questions,” I choked out.

  “So do I,” Mom murmured, wonderingly. “Like why the sky is white here, and the stars black. I’m sure if anyone hurt you, Olivia, they didn’t mean to. We don’t mean to do a lot of things here.”

  Igor was peering over the mountainside. Olivia, we really should go.

  I joined him. The other shades were inching toward us, pulling themselves up by their sharp, black fingernails.

  “I thought they didn’t mean to hurt us,” I said.

  Igor backed away, his fur standing straight up. Remember what Frederick said. To them, you are warmth and light and blood, the very things they want and don’t have—and can’t have. Think about that. They might not mean it. But they want it.

  “Mom, we need your help.”

  “Anything, baby.”

  “There’s a doll here, somewhere. A little girl’s doll. We need to take it back with us.” My throat tightened, but I shoved through it. “And we need to go back. Now.”

  “Oh! That. Why, Olivia, it’s right here.”

  Mom dug through the snow, and the next thing I knew, she handed me the doll. A tiny rag doll, covered in years of dust. I could barely see its smile.

  “See? I found it for you. I found it before. I thought it was warm, but it turned out to be just a toy. A fake you.”

  “We need to take it back. Do you understand? Back to the other place?”

  “The warm place.” Mom nodded. “I can do that. And then we have to say good-bye?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  Mom smoothed my hair, sending tiny dark icicles flying. “Good-bye again. I don’t like that.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Promise me this, Olivia.” And Mom leaned close, and the color flickered across her face, and it stayed. She was her old self, smiling down at me, pale hair in her eyes and shadows around the edges. “Try to forgive your father. He’s a good man. He showed me many beautiful things. But sometimes even beautiful things fade and change. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” I tried to memorize her face. I wanted to draw this moment. “I’ll try.”

  She flashed me a brilliant smile. “That’s fine. I know you try hard.”

  Shadowed hands reached for us. Long, thin heads with drooping mouths slithered up over the edges of the cliffs surrounding us.

  Igor hissed at them. Olivia! Action, please!

  “Mom, we have to go.”

  “Very well. Hold this.”

  She folded the doll into my arms. Then she scooped me and Igor up against her chest and leapt out into the wind.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. We were going to fall to our deaths. “Mom? Mom!”

  “Open your eyes, baby.”

  I did.

  We were flying.

  Mom was still made of shadows, but they were beautiful and strong, streaming behind her like wings. The stars had turned into birds, like us, flapping and soaring beside us. We dipped and darted, we dove and danced, and they matched us. They were swans. Mom’s swans.

  She folded the doll into my arms. Then she scooped me and Igor up against her chest and leapt out into the wind.

  “Mom.” I laughed. “You taught me how to make these. You put them all over the house.”

  “I remember. You liked making things. Hold on tight, now.”

  She kissed my head, and I grabbed Igor tighter. My skin was melting away, becoming normal again.

  “Is this it?” I whispered.

  “Yes. You see?”

  Following Mom’s eyes up to the very top of the sky, I saw the birds gathering there, a storm cloud of wings. And then they weren’t birds at all, but an opening. Warmth rushed toward me, flooding my mouth. I saw beautiful lights.

  “Is that home?”

  “Live.” That was her answer, whispered at my cheek. “Live, for me.”

  Then, she threw me out of her arms and pushed me up, up, up . . .

  I reached for the birds, for the tips of their wings, for the warmth. I would see Henry soon. I had kissed his cheek. And the Maestro. He needed to wake up.

  Once, I turned back.

  Mom was there, waiting in the middle of the white sky. She waved. I waved back. I took a deep breath and reached for the birds.

  And right then, right before I pulled myself out, I saw Mom close her eyes. The shadows faded from her, and she was a woman, all smiles and fingers and hair and warm arms, and she sighed, and was gone.

  So was I, tumbling out.

  I was home. I was in the Hall, on the stage. Tabby’s doll fell at Mr. Worthington’s feet. I couldn’t hold myself together anymore. My skin felt fresh and raw, tingling all over, and it was warm here, and so, so bright. I got sick, careful not to get it on the doll. I lay there on the ground and cried so hard that not much came out but gasps.

  Mr. Worthington tried to hug me, his arms slipping right through me. “Okay? Yes?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Have you been waiting here for me?”

  “Yes.”

  I pushed myself up and tried to hug him. It didn’t work, and I screamed in frustration. “I wish . . . I’m going to miss you.”

  He paused. “Yes.”

  “Just do it, okay?” I stepped away from him, even though it hurt. “Do what you have to do.”

  “Okay?”

  “Is it okay? Yes, it’s okay. Do it.”

  Mr. Worthington hesitated, staring at me with those drooping, shimmering eyes. He didn’t have much time left, I would bet.

  “Do it!”

  My shout still echoing in the Hall, Mr. Worthington crouched by his daughter’s doll. His fingers hovered over her tiny hands.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s time.”

  He looked back at me, his hat dripping down to his feet. “Friend?”

  “Yes.” I nodded, squeezing Igor to my stomach. “Now, hurry up.”

  With both hands, he picked up the doll, holding it like it was made of glass instead of rags and dirt. He kissed its head.

  A tiny bright cloud shimmered around him. I saw the figure of a girl, smoky and soft like a ghost, but better. Something better than a ghost. Something happier.

  Tabby threw her arms around Mr. Worthington’s neck.

  “Tabby,” Mr. Worthington gasped. He picked her up, swinging her around till they were a blur of color and smoke. As they moved, he started to come apart. First his hat flew off. Then his tie.

  He looked up at me, right at the end.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  Then Tabby’s light swallowed them up. I had to look away, it was so bright.

  For half a second, the doll hung in midair. Then it plopped to the floor. Its head slumped heavily onto its chest.

  And that was it. He was gone.

  All of them were gone.

  HENRY FOUND ME in the morning. I’d fallen asleep onstage. Thank goodness he found me before anyone else.

  “Olivia?” He shook me awake.

  “Henry?”

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  I stood up, my knees wobbling. “What time is it?”

  “Seven a.m. It’s Saturday. Ted brought me here last night. You know
, my . . . Mr. Banks. I kept him out of here, let you get some rest.”

  I nodded, leaning on the conductor’s podium to find my balance.

  Henry put out his arms, then stopped and stepped back and put out his arms again. Then he dropped them.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

  “I just . . . I don’t know. Are you okay? What happened?”

  “It’s done, Henry. They’re gone.”

  “Mr. Worthington? You found the doll.”

  “Yeah.” I felt like everything had been sucked out of the world. My head ached, and my arm felt . . . strangely naked. When I pushed up my sleeve, I saw why.

  My burn had disappeared. Henry nodded and pushed up his pant leg. “Yeah. Mine’s gone too.”

  “It’s done,” I said. “All of them.”

  Henry looked out into the Hall and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I should’ve been there with you.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have.” That was just for me and Mom. And I would explain that to him. Someday, maybe.

  “Well. Okay. I’m here, though, just . . . well, you know. In case.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  Igor grumbled. Such profound conversations you two have.

  “Richard Ashley was so mad when he figured out you came back here. But he said he understands. He might come by after a while. Ted’s camped out in the office, in case we need anything.”

  The mention of Richard Ashley had triggered the memory of Mom leaning close, asking me for a promise. “Henry?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The Maestro. How is he?”

  “Oh!” Henry slapped his forehead. “I’m such an idiot.”

  “I’ve been saying that for years.”

  “Ha-ha. I should’ve told you right when I came in. I mean, I was going to, but I saw the doll, and . . .” Henry shook his head. “Anyway. Olivia, he woke up. He’s going to need a lot of recovery time, but he’s going to be okay.”

  A rush of something filled me. It was like I had been chained down and then set free. It scared me, a little. I wobbled where I stood.

  Henry found my arm. “Whoa, you okay?”

  “Yeah.” I smiled at Henry. Something twisted in my chest where Frederick, Tillie, Jax, and Mr. Worthington used to be. But it was a good kind of twist. “I think I am.”

  Henry and I went out to the grounds and found Tillie and Jax’s tree, swaying silver and pink in the morning light. Right there in the shade, in the cool, dewy dirt, we buried the doll.

  When we were done, I lay flat on my back, looking up at the sky through the leaves above me. Closing my eyes, I spread out my legs and arms and fingers, airing myself out. Henry did the same.

  We lay there quietly for a while. It was cool in the dirt.

  “I’ll miss them,” I said at last.

  “Yeah,” said Henry. “Me too.”

  I stretched out the tiniest bit more, so I could touch the tip of my pinkie to the tip of his thumb.

  His thumb poked me back, gently.

  Well. At least, after everything, we had that.

  LATER THAT DAY, Richard Ashley drove me back to the hospital. I settled into the chair next to the Maestro’s bed, drawing up my knees to my chin and watching him.

  He looked better today. Not as many tubes.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to remember the bleeding tube monster from Limbo, but I couldn’t forget it.

  You’ve killed me, the monster had moaned. Why did you kill me?

  Why couldn’t you forgive me?

  I wiped my eyes on my jeans. I rocked and rocked. I wished they allowed cats in hospitals.

  “Because I was mad at you,” I whispered. “I still am, you know.”

  And that was the truth. Yes, I made Mom a promise, and I would try. But it wasn’t like I could snap my fingers and do it immediately, and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to.

  I lifted my head so I could see the Maestro’s face—his eyes closed, his hair greasy and falling over his forehead, his mouth slightly open, the tubes in his nose.

  So small. All of us, we were so small.

  “You should’ve told me,” I whispered to him. He probably couldn’t hear me, they had him so pumped full of drugs. But I said it anyway, over and over, and lay my head down on the edge of the mattress, and found his hand under the thin white sheet.

  APRIL

  FOUR FLUTES. FOUR oboes. Three clarinets, two E-flat clarinets, four bassoons, ten French horns, ten trumpets, four trombones, one tuba, seven percussionists, a huge choir, harps, one pipe organ, and, as it instructs in the score: “The largest possible contingent of strings.” So, basically, a string army.

  As many people as you can cram onto one stage is the general idea for Mahler’s Symphony no. 2.

  And somehow our orchestra had to do it without a conductor. The Maestro was still at the hospital, in no condition for rehearsals. Dr. Birdman had prescribed four weeks of bed rest, or at the very least, minimal activity.

  That wasn’t going to stop us.

  Richard Ashley was the one to call the meeting. Two Wednesdays after the Maestro got hurt, the entire orchestra gathered onstage without their instruments. Some of our old donors had put together just enough money to get the Hall in working order for one last concert, and it had been approved by the city’s department of engineering. Nonnie and I had been staying with some of the musicians, and the Maestro had started making calls from his hospital room to Gram. Even I’d talked to Gram. I didn’t recognize her voice, but she recognized me. She burst into tears right when I said, “Hello?”

  We were good to go for what may have been the Hall’s most important concert ever.

  Richard stood on the podium with a clipboard in hand. Henry and I sat at his feet, Igor in my lap. Richard had requested we be there, front and center.

  “Many of you suggested we meet today,” Richard Ashley said. “It wasn’t just me. But I’m up here right now because I have something to say before we get started planning this farewell concert. I want you to look around you. I want you to really look.”

  The Maestro had said that the first day we moved in. Now Richard was saying it. Both times, when I’d looked around, I’d seen the same thing: faded chairs with threadbare cushions. Gaping holes all across the ceiling. Paint the color of grime and dust.

  It wasn’t the prettiest of sights.

  “Ugly as mud, isn’t it?” Richard Ashley said. “Or something worse.”

  A few people laughed.

  Igor started cleaning himself. Typical trumpet player. Always putting on a show.

  “Hush,” I whispered.

  “Now look again, and remember.”

  That’s all Richard Ashley had to say: remember. And I did remember, looking around the Hall, two hundred pairs of eyes looking around with me. I remembered sitting with Mom in the dress circle to watch rehearsal. She would pay such close attention, never taking her eyes from the stage. “It’s like magic,” she whispered to me once, holding me in her lap and pointing out the different instruments. Sometimes the Maestro would whirl around and blow us a kiss with both hands.

  The musicians would whistle and hoot, and Mom would hide her cheeks in my hair.

  I remembered when I first discovered the catwalk and declared to Ed and Larry that this was now my official hiding spot. They helped me make a flag for the railing so everyone would know.

  I remembered spying on Henry from the catwalk through a paper towel roll. Hiding in the basement to draw. Lying on the stage and trying to perfect the tentacles of pipe organ monsters.

  I remembered thinking this could never be my home. And then somehow it had turned out to be just that.

  The musicians were smiling, chuckling, wiping their eyes. Gazing up at the curtains, the ceiling, the balconies, like they’d never seen anything quite like it.

  “This has been our home,” Richard said. “Some of us for years. And it deserves a good send-off. So a few of us have been working hard the last couple of
days, making phone calls, pulling some strings. And now it’s time to get to work. Olivia?”

  I turned around, surprised. “Yeah?”

  He smiled, holding out his hand to me. “Come up here with me.”

  Scrambling up into place beside Richard on the conductor’s podium, I almost reached into my bag for my charcoals, and then I stopped. It was an automatic sort of thing, but I stopped anyway. Balled my fingers into fists. Put them down straight at my sides. Stared out at the orchestra and didn’t look away.

  Dreams—even ones you were good at—weren’t for hiding yourself in.

  “Olivia, what you’ve done for us—and what you’ve done, Henry, and your friend Joan, too—you need to know how much it means, to all of us. You helped us get through a hard time. You brought life back to this place again. And we’re family here. I promise you, no matter what happens, we’re not going to let you fall. Our homes are your home. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I whispered. I blinked down at my feet. “Thank you.”

  Richard tilted up my chin. “We want to give your father an ending, Olivia. A finale.”

  “Mahler 2?”

  He nodded. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw some of the other musicians smiling and nodding along with him.

  “But how?” I said. “He’s . . . the Maestro, he can’t . . .”

  “No, he can’t. Not right now, anyway. So we’re bringing in help.” Richard turned toward the side of the stage. “Okay! We’re ready.”

  A tiny parade of smiling people headed out onto the stage. I recognized them vaguely, like they were from another life.

  “Oh . . . my gosh,” Henry breathed, trying to flatten his hair. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Maestro Ogawa,” I whispered, as the first man reached me, his black hair flecked with gray. He smiled and shook my hand with both of his.

  Henry whimpered.

  “Olivia, it’s good to see you again,” Maestro Ogawa said. “I’m very glad to be here.”

  He moved to the side and the curly-haired man behind him stepped forward.

  “Maestro . . . Thompson?”

  He grinned broadly. “I’m impressed you remember me, Olivia. You were only seven or eight years old the last time I saw you.”