A Midwinter Fantasy

by Leanna Renee Hieber; L. J. McDonald; Helen Scott Taylor

  She looked up at the boy and peered over their books, her voice a whisper: “Science is a man’s profession, Mr. Clarke. I am a woman, and I must make a choice, whether to live as my sex, or to deny it and take the man’s profession I crave. The demands of our age unfairly divide us. I’m sorry I cannot choose you.”

  Mr. Clarke appeared crestfallen.

  Constance turned to Rebecca, tears in her phantom eyes, her greyscale face taut with sorrow. Rebecca recalled all the young women to whom she’d boasted of choosing to run an institution rather than a household, justifying her life choice. But it had been a damned lonely choice, especially when secretly pining for a chance to run the Rychman estate.

  “I realized my mistake too late,” the ghost said. “My greatest folly was to deny a lovely soul who asked nothing more than to remain by my side. Of all the places I could have been a scientist and a woman, it was here at Athens; these blessed bricks never asked me to choose. I never gave him, us, a chance, despite having no true objection. I pushed him away for three years before the fever took me.” The spirit’s eyes narrowed, and her voice was cool. “You’ve pushed someone else away for twenty. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Rebecca replied.

  “Is there any more beautiful a calling in life than love?”

  “I have loved,” Rebecca hissed. “Desperately.”

  The ghost nodded. “So did I. I loved science—something that couldn’t love me back. There’s safety in that solitude. Do you understand?”

  Rebecca could only nod.

  “Safety, but no solace. I haunted this Earth until Miss Percy found that book, revealing the one critical experience I denied. There come many callings on Earth, and heaven allows us them all. You’d do well to realize the same, and to do it before you’re dead.”

  “But that’s just it!” Rebecca began, her eyes wide. “I . . . I don’t think I merit being alive right now. I think the heavens made a mistake.”

  Constance’s eyes glittered threateningly. The deceased had an uncanny ability to make one shiver, it was certain. “Ah. Indeed,” the ghost replied. “And this is not the only time you’ve wished yourself dead.” These were condemning words and they chartered their next course. Rebecca didn’t know what the Liminal was, this force Constance wielded, but it responded.

  Rebecca had no time to protest. The environment whirled, spun and shifted, and suddenly she stood in a darkened foyer of Athens Academy. There was the distant sound of an argument.

  Rebecca turned, wringing her hands. “Oh, not this. Please, not this. It is my penance, I am sure, for my failures, but please . . .”

  Constance gazed upon her with pity. “We’ve not much time, and I’m not the only visitation. There’s something you didn’t see, then, that you must see now. And through your pain you may yet make it right.” The ghost sighed. “And I beg you, do so while you yet live. Come.”

  Rebecca gulped, trying to prepare herself. She knew exactly what she was about to see, and her body felt colder than if a horde of spirits was accosting her.

  Constance led her toward her office, where the door was shut. The ghost gestured her forward. Rebecca fumbled at the door but passed through as if she too were a spirit. These were chimerical things, past memories; thinner than paper; visions, illusions . . . yet potent and all too real.

  Rebecca’s throat constricted. A younger Professor Alexi Rychman paced in her office, his dark robes billowing about him as he moved, his face set in characteristic consternation. She herself sat stoic, though she remembered her pain.

  She looked at herself, in this moment fifteen years or so younger, and noticed the lines of worry already beginning to form, the thin mouth so prim and composed, those blue-grey eyes that stared at the imperious man before her, secretly drinking in his striking, stifling presence.

  “Damn it, Rebecca,” Alexi hissed. “I am no closer to telling you when Prophecy might come than I was years ago when the Goddess heralded our destiny and pronounced us The Guard. How should I know how long it will take?”

  “It isn’t about when Prophecy might come, Alexi, but how you’re thinking of it. Tonight at the exorcism, when we stumbled at the force of that devilish blow, when you buckled in strain, I heard you mutter, ‘My bride shall make it well.’ ”

  Alexi stopped pacing and turned. “And?”

  “Alexi—Prophecy won’t be your bride. She’ll come as a companion to all of us, not some predestined lover of yours.”

  Young Alexi’s features went slack. “What do you mean?”

  “The prophesied seventh member was never specified as yours.”

  “Yes, she was,” he replied.

  “Tell me the precise words the Goddess said that make you think so.”

  “Why, everything she said.” But Alexi thought back, clearly trying to latch onto a specific phrase.

  “Nothing more than insinuations.” Rebecca closed her eyes, using her gift of texts, the library of her mind, and plucking free an exact transcript of the Goddess’s words: “ ‘I hope you will know her when she comes, Alexi, my love. And I hope she will know you, too. Await her, but beware. She will not come with answers but be lost, confused. I have put protections in place, but she will be threatened and seeking refuge. There shall be tricks, betrayals and many second guesses. Caution, beloved. Mortal hearts make mistakes. Choose your seventh carefully, for if you choose the false prophet, the end of your world shall follow.’ ” Rebecca stared hard at Alexi. “What in that promises you a lover?”

  “Everything,” he replied. “When she comes, I will love her. You may be the Intuition of the group, but your belief does not therefore supersede mine. On this point I am sure, and that’s final. Good night, Headmistress.” The young Alexi exited in a rustle of black fabric, and the room expanded; breathing was easier.

  It was the first time this particular argument was voiced, the elder and wiser Rebecca recalled, and most certainly not the last. They argued these precise points for the next fifteen years until Prophecy finally did show up, a snow-white girl unlike anything The Guard expected, and Rebecca would grow blinded by jealousy and make dangerous mistakes in an effort to disprove an undesirable fate.

  Yet, it was not this failure that Constance wanted her to see; it was the next torturous few moments. Rebecca watched herself sit stiffly in her chair, watched her eyes cloud, watched her shoulders tense against the thick wool of her jacket. Such pain, Rebecca felt and saw, shocked by its magnitude. Such pain, all to love a man who was saving himself for some future stranger, when she was yet so close and could grasp those black robes and pull him near . . . Even looking back, knowing all she knew, she could not think herself wrong for urging caution in the matter of Prophecy, or for loving him. She had never been able to help it. But then, as now, such love was futile. Empty. Hopeless.

  A sound came from the windowsill. Frederic, her raven, a single blue breast feather indicating his service to The Guard, had alighted upon the ledge outside. He rapped again upon the casement.

  “He’ll never love me,” her younger self said. “I do not want this fate. I do not want to patrol the dead if I feel dead, and this shall surely kill my heart. I don’t want this destiny, for I am ill suited to it.” Her face held no expression, though Rebecca recalled all too well how her body had shuddered against her corset bones, how her heart lurched in agony. She’d never been fond of emotions, and they’d certainly never been more useless or cruel.

  Her young self rose, went to the window and dragged a finger across the glass, absently mollifying the bird. Then she walked out of the office, her elder self and Constance in silent pursuit.

  The younger Rebecca descended and burst from the school into the cool London night. A host of spirits followed, curious, worried by her air of misery, and they turned to one another in consultation. Frederic was immediately upon her, squawking and swooping to get her attention, but she paid him no heed. The bird went so far as to pull on a lock of her hair, but this only caused her to whirl, batting
at him and hissing in the language of The Guard, “Leave me be!” The bird offered one more gruff call before flying off.

  Frederic, her stalwart companion. One couldn’t know how such a creature might be missed until he was gone. Rebecca suffered a pang watching the raven fly off. She wished to run forward and chide her younger self: how foolish it was to go out into the night unaccompanied, how it was begging for trouble. She remembered how this had crossed her mind, and how she hadn’t cared. In that moment she’d cared for nothing but finding a drastic solution to the unnecessary complication that was her heart.

  Out into the dark London night she glided, in and out of the pooled light of gas lamps as if she were already a wraith, past clattering carriages, avoiding puddles of filth and ignoring the occasional inappropriate comment hurled from the safety of shadows, likely by gentlemen with wives awaiting them at home. Rebecca remembered how sickened she’d been by humanity as a whole, how she’d wondered why they even deserved any protection.

  “To hell with them,” she heard her younger self hiss. “To hell with all of it. There is nothing here worth saving, not even myself.”

  The hazy night held the buildings in a wet fog that rose from the riverbank, and young Rebecca moved through it to the crest of Westminster Bridge. She stared down at the deep black Thames, at the cargo ships and ferries so far below and at countless manner of traffic, all ringing bells and making noise. She stepped onto the ledge, grasping the parapet beside her. She pulled up her skirts as if preparing to climb, intending to pitch herself into the air, to hurl herself to freedom, to end it all.

  Constance touched Rebecca’s sleeve. “You may think, Headmistress, that this is just a recollection, and will unfold just as you remember. But the Liminal is far greater than mere memory. It can change. So I beg you, beware your heart, right at this moment, lest it alter the outcome before you.”

  Rebecca turned back to watch herself, her heart pounding in fear, terrified to speak lest the wrong words send her tumbling . . .

  Her younger self trailed death in her wake, literally. The spirits that had followed her from the academy rushed close, trying to save her from her sorrow. They bobbed before her, making a barrier though they knew full well she could slip past and through their transparent bodies to her death if she tried. Still, they attempted to make her see, tried to make her pause and think. Rebecca remembered this scene as if it had happened yesterday. But, this time, she could hear what the spirits were saying.

  “Headmistress, don’t!” the spirits cried. “Don’t you understand the balance hinges on all of you? It affects the whole city, everyone we love. Don’t you see you can’t just break rank, walk away and kill yourself? You mustn’t! And, Athens—what about Athens? And The Guard? Michael. What of poor Michael?”

  As the spirits exclaimed, phantom images began to float through the air like reflections upon water. A shimmering picture of a dusty Athens came into view, its fine Romanesque windows shuttered and boarded. The scene included Rebecca’s friends, all in black, flowers hanging limply from their hands. They descended those formidable academy steps to never again enter its now-locked doors. Spirits were everywhere. Too many of them. The Work was faltering.

  Michael stood at the rear of the procession, his once jolly and engaging face entirely devoid of colour, of life, of anything recognizable. His luminous heart was doused. It was the most terrifying sight Rebecca had ever beheld, watching this unfold on the mist before her eyes, her hand to her mouth, tears in her eyes.

  Constance spoke gently, but gravely. “In this delicate space between time and memory, any one of these phantom reflections could become reality. If you accept it, down you go into the cold, deadly kiss of the Thames. What say you?”

  “No,” was all Rebecca could manage, in a desperate murmur.

  In a panic she rejected those images. She did not want to see or to bring about this future. Yet her younger self still stood precarious.

  Constance gestured behind her. “See here what you missed.”

  From a dark alley, a figure broke from shadow. He wore a dark, modest coat, his hair was disheveled, and his cheeks glowed bright with a blush even in the dim lamplight. His beautiful blue eyes were wide with panic, and he was prepared to run forward and save her. But he was far enough away that, even if he ran full tilt, he might not cross the distance before she fell.

  “Michael,” Rebecca gasped into her hand. “Oh, Michael, I did not want you to see this.”

  “He was the Heart,” Constance murmured. “He felt it before he saw it. Before Frederic summoned him, he was already on his way.”

  “He was there,” Rebecca choked.

  “He always has been.”

  It was a solid truth that turned Rebecca’s stomach.

  “Now you must watch and accept,” Constance added.

  As Michael ran forward, she saw that he held something large and black in his hands, something surprisingly docile for being a wild creature. It was Frederic. Michael held the raven in his palms, its blue breast feather aglow. He released the bird with a soft prayer, and it flew to the younger version of Rebecca on the bridge.

  Rebecca watched herself pause. She remembered how she’d reflected in that instant, seeing the swarm of spirits wishing to block her. They did not want her to join them, she’d realized. Not yet. And when she’d felt Frederic alight on her shoulder, she’d reached a trembling hand up to his talons and her heart had grown less heavy upon contact.

  The blue glow of the bird’s breast feather faded. Rebecca saw now that Michael had used Frederic as his gift’s conduit, to impart what his hands were too far away to bequeath. Her younger self’s foot shifted, slid back off the ledge.

  “What am I doing . . . ?” she heard herself mutter. Tears were pouring down her younger cheeks. Frederic rubbed his head against her, and she stroked his feathers. “I’m so sorry, Frederic. I love you. Thank you.”

  Michael had saved her. His talent for leavening the heart had bridged the gap until her gifts could regain control. Instinct now reassured her younger self, but Michael’s gift had pulled her back from the edge. The bleak alternate future dissipated like fog in a breeze.

  Rebecca glanced over at him and absorbed the intense relief on his face. It was beautiful and poignant, his tears tiny glimmers in the gaslight. He stepped back into partial shadow but did not leave.

  A spirit approached her younger, shaking self, and though silent, she’d understood as the ghost, a young woman in century-old clothes, perhaps who had thrown herself off that same bridge, carefully mouthed the words, “Thank you.”

  The elder Rebecca heard the words this time, and she was moved to reply, “No. Thank you. Thank all of you.”

  Constance, who had stood as still and as impassive as a statue, smiled.

  “That simple exchange, that thank-you,” Rebecca murmured, “fed my lonely soul for years. I knew that while I wouldn’t receive the love I craved from Alexi, that crowd of spectres alone was evidence that I did have a purpose.”

  Her focus shifted to Michael, still standing in the shadows. “Why didn’t he say anything?”

  “You know him,” Constance replied. “You know why.”

  “Because he knew the shame and horror I felt,” Rebecca said, watching those sentiments so evident on her younger incarnation’s face. “He was not worried I would try again, and he felt my embarrassment would overshadow any benefit. This was a private moment so unlike me, something I’d never share . . . That was why he said nothing.”

  She turned to Michael’s shadow and said words she’d never known to utter. “Thank you for being there, Michael Carroll. It’s not the last time you and Frederic would prove my valorous knights, but thank you for being my champion here, when no other living person was.” She faltered as she recollected the grim images presented as an alternate future. “And I don’t want to ever see that heart of yours broken. That was a sight more terrible than the face of Darkness itself.”

  Little Mary floated at
Michael’s side. He was forced to watch the scene on Westminster Bridge and wondered if Rebecca was watching it, too, from elsewhere. And, what would she see? Were each of them trapped in their own memories, the events once again unfolding? Was this what the ghosts had in mind? If so, to what purpose?

  The scene grieved him now like it had then. Worse, even, for his love for Rebecca had only grown. He again wanted to run forward, to take her in his arms and ask her what on earth was she thinking, she the strong and stalwart second in command, she to whom they all looked for strength, guidance and sensibility. He yearned to kiss her madly and wipe all thoughts of Alexi Rychman from her consciousness, just as he’d wanted to do then and hadn’t.

  He turned to the ghost and said, “I am a coward.”

  “Are you? Or did you surmise that it would have been worse if you shamed her by your appearance? Didn’t you really know that strong silence, your secret guardianship, was a better choice at that moment?”

  “I maintain that I am a coward.” Michael set his jaw, unwilling to be praised.

  The little girl smirked. “It is true that it is safer to love someone unattainable than to love someone in reality. This moment could have changed everything. You were as scared for yourself as you were for her, weren’t you?”

  He stared at the ghost. “You’re wise for a child.”

  “Death expands the mind,” she said airily, then grinned. She touched his hand, and suddenly they were at a dance.

  Rebecca threw her hands up at the bright light. Everyone was dressed in finery, and there was music.

  It was the same autumn as the scene at the bridge, though some weeks afterward. The academy ball. The glorious ballroom of Athens was thrown open for one day, its gilded and glittering interior packed with guests bedecked in jewels and garbed in fine dresses and frock coats, accessorized with buttons, bows, lace, silk and perfume. In addition there were ubiquitous floral bouquets, confections and the finest in modern music played by a string quartet. The students relished this one day of freedom to stand close, to chat, to touch, and even the chaperones were not fully averse to camaraderie and flirtation. Rebecca herself remembered hoping to find an opportunity.