It was her year to chaperone, and she remembered thinking that while she was headmistress it was still a chance to look stunning. She’d put Alexi’s name on the chaperone list as well, praying that perhaps he’d notice her this time. He hated such frivolities, and she knew he’d likely stand in the corner and scowl, looking every bit the brooding, Gothic hero of sensationalist novels, a trait that garnered him endless teasing from The Guard. But if Alexi dreaded the event, all the better if she looked stunning. He might be discomfited in the very best of ways.
She saw herself in a corner sipping the champagne reserved for the faculty, indeed looking lovely in a rich red gown that matched the colour of Alexi’s favourite accessory, his crimson cravats. Complemented by all the staff, she chuckled at the raised eyebrows of every student who had never dreamed to see their headmistress’s uncovered collarbones. Her younger self didn’t yet know that Alexi would never come. That he would claim family business with his sister. That she would soon feel the bitter sting of rejection.
The room brightened just a bit. “Ho-ho, Headmistress! Why . . . My God!” came a voice through the open side doors. Michael strode in, wearing a fine navy suit coat over a charcoal vest and lighter cravat that enhanced the oceanic blue of his eyes. His usually haphazard hair was combed neatly, his sideburns trimmed to accentuate a firm jaw, his dark brown mustache shaved away to reveal a firm mouth. The only wrinkles on his kind face were laugh lines.
Had she seen then how handsome he looked, how engaging and endearing? Had she felt the breeze of fresh air that was his constant good cheer? Watching how his smile drew out that of her younger self, Rebecca remembered being glad to see him. She remembered thinking what a good husband he would make for some kind and uncomplicated woman, for some soul as devout as he, someone saintly and flawless, some angel. She still felt he deserved that, but her older self gasped at the way he looked at her. The desire and appreciation she saw in his eyes made her realize his intentions were anything but saintly.
He wanted her. She’d grown used to the idea that she was not the type of woman a man would crave, but this . . . Something shifted in her body and Rebecca moved forward into the scene, yearning to be closer to Michael, to warm herself at the fires in his eyes.
“I hope you don’t mind my stealing into the party,” he said to her younger incarnation, his hungry appreciation curtained by winking camaraderie. “You know I cannot resist social engagements.”
“Oh, please,” the young Rebecca said with exaggerated weariness, raising her hand to her head. “My students’ shock at seeing their headmistress in her finery has palled. Do save me.”
“I’d save you from anything,” he replied, “even yourself.” Then he must have realized how that sounded, for he offered a gracious explanation: “And by that I mean how dangerously fetching you are in this dress, Headmistress. You ought to be warned!”
Her younger self blushed, ignorant, but the older Rebecca saw exactly what he meant. Suddenly she knew how very truly he spoke, and how he had striven to save her, to rally her, to care for her, each and every time they were together. When they hunted as The Guard, when they sat at their favourite café, when they commiserated as friends—he was always there for her. More memories flooded forth, countless scenes flashing before her eyes: grim confrontations of malevolent spirits, glad conversations at La Belle et La Bête. Dining at the Withersby estate. Strolling about Regents Park. Running off to intercept violent poltergeists. There had been so many moments where this man had made her smile and laugh and forget that there was such a thing as pain and spectral horror in the world.
So many times he’d saved her, with tiny, life-affirming gestures. No one else had such power over her, she realized. And no one else had ever looked at her like this. She recognized his look; she’d aimed it for years at someone unattainable. But had she even shown this same fire? For there was a fire in Michael’s, and that was a thrilling concept: the fire of love, not just the cold emptiness of the unrequited. What a silly game they’d played! How silly she was not to have taken each of these small moments and made sense of them.
Something must have been writ upon her face, for Constance looked pleased and the flickering ball vanished. Rebecca swayed upon her feet.
“A good beginning to your journey,” the ghost said. “Everything you need to know you already do. Here, somewhere”—her transparent finger poked at her temple—“and on its way here.” She pointed toward Rebecca’s heart. “Trust the journey. You’ll be a lovelier woman if you choose happiness.”
The ghost flickered, and, reeling, Rebecca found herself at the entrance to the Athens foyer.
“Farewell, Headmistress, do find your peace, for it shall aid in securing mine forever. We rest happier in heaven if we’ve helped those on Earth.” Constance’s gaze darkened. “But if you falter . . . you might bring us all down with you. And now the next guide shall take you onward.”
Chapter Seven
Students twirled past Michael where he stood oblivious within memory. Little Mary seemed just as captivated. The headmistress was stunning in her crimson gown; it brought out a bloom in her cheeks, accentuated her every feature and highlighted the pallor of her smooth skin.
“Is this just to torture me?” he choked out, overtaken by fresh desire.
“No, no,” Mary said. “It’s to remind you. To embolden you. You called yourself a coward, and that cannot be. But, come. Billy’s got you next.”
She took his hand and warned, “You’ll feel seasick. The Liminal presses hard against this academy to drag the two of you through the veil of time like this. But thankfully these mysterious stones can take whatever’s thrown at them, can’t they? I heard your recent battle here was rather brilliant. Now close your eyes.”
Michael did not hesitate; he closed his eyes and felt the world change again.
Rebecca glanced around, wanting to bid Constance a final farewell. Instead, a familiar spirit floated at face level: the young boy from the chandelier, a spirit she’d made a fond habit of greeting.
He grinned. “My turn, mum.” He had a Scots accent.
“Well, hello there, young man,” Rebecca said, finally able to talk to the boy and glad of it, but the world was suddenly a dizzying blur in front of her, and her question was lost in her throat. Years whirled by. She, Alexi, The Guard and students came and went, appearing and disappearing, moving in hurried motion through this hall and foyer of Athens, and all the while the young man from the chandelier watched and smiled. Each day, a wink was offered up to him by an aging Rebecca. And, suddenly she understood: he was showing her everything he’d seen in two decades.
She found her voice. “I don’t know your story, young man.”
He shrugged. “Street urchin. Ran away from an orphanage up north. Bad lot, that. But not much better, London. Fell ill. Nurse who worked at Athens took me in, died up there.” He gestured toward the wing with the infirmary. “But this was home, as much as I ever had one, while I was here. Didn’t feel like leavin’. Liked it when you winked at me. Only mum I’ve had, really,” the lad admitted.
Rebecca turned away. She had wanted to be a mother once, as she supposed most women did.
“But enough o’ that,” the boy said gently. “This is about you. Keep watchin’.”
Rebecca cleared her throat and watched the whirlwind of images. Alexi stalked across the foyer and back again like some great, swooping raven. Rebecca saw herself pace to and fro, realized how unnecessarily stern she looked. “Most certainly, unnecessarily stern,” she muttered.
But then Michael would enter. He would make no pause, see no other sights, just make his way surely and directly across the foyer to her office. Each and every time, there on business or as a friend, her door was his only destination. His hesitation outside struck her. He would stride confidently forward, then stop and stuff his hand in a pocket. Did he tremble slightly? He’d close his eyes, loose a prayer, perhaps, and finally, after that less-than-confident pause, knock. It ha
ppened over and over.
Rebecca shook her head. “Good God, Michael, you’re not nervous, are you?”
“Always,” Billy replied. “Every time, he was. Reminded of it now, too, as he’s living this, right now. Or, reliving it.”
“Why is Michael enduring this trial?”
“To learn.”
“What on earth does he need to learn? He’s always been the perfect one, the one that never needed any help.” Rebecca’s breath gave out. “I’m the broken one.”
The ghostly boy’s hand touched hers. It was a freezing connection, but Rebecca subdued her shiver. The contact was fond, however uncomfortable, and she appreciated the gesture.
“He needs to trust his heart. Especially now. He fears he’s worthless since his power is gone.”
“Why, that’s ridiculous! His heart was always beyond capacity. Just because our Guard spirits went and—”
“Have you ever told him so?”
Rebecca looked at her feet. “No.”
“Do so. But first he must believe it himself. You need not be separately broken to together make a whole, but separately whole to remain unbreakable. Only that makes a healthy home.”
Was it so easy to just say yes and make a home together, as the ghost intimated? Perhaps it was. She eyed the boy. “You’re wise for a child.”
“Staring down eternity will make one so,” he replied, but he bobbed his head and she could tell he was greatly pleased.
Despite herself, Rebecca chuckled. “I imagine so.”
“So,” the young ghost continued, “while you may think you’ve a thousand things keepin’ you from happiness, a thousand flaws and mistakes, here’s a man who thinks himself a coward. He wonders if he has enough to give you. He’s nervous every time he’s alone with you. All for love.” The ghost’s eyes grew a bit cold, and his face ominous. “You both live in fear, and I tell you the whole of the spirit world fears you cannot overcome it. You’ve given much of your life to these blessed bricks. Do you want to give your eternity to hauntin’ them? There are two paths here. Now from the darkness, choose.”
And then Billy gave her a small but decisive push and everything went black.
“Percy, come closer!”
Constance appeared at her side, and Percy started. She had maintained her perch overlooking the foyer, rosary in hand, sitting on a bench on the second floor of Athens, remaining inconspicuous but on guard. Constance and Billy had been told to call upon her if something needed attention. Nothing had raised an alarm until now.
“The Liminal presses in, right into the heart of us, she’s in the Whisper-world now,” the ghost warned. “The shadows will be close and they’ll not want to let the headmistress go. She’s a perfect candidate for a state like mine, forever haunting these bricks.”
Percy moved to the edge of the landing. She’d been mesmerized by visions below, all done in a misty, giant picture frame, the hazy clouds of shifting images filling the foyer and then vanishing as the memories moved elsewhere. She’d never seen anything like it; hundreds of images superimposed upon one another, shifting in and over and across in curling tendrils of smoke and mist, like ink bleeding into water to form ever-changing shapes, all of them individually poignant. These were private matters played out in mist, and so Percy did not strain to make out the particulars; all she heard were murmurs, and all she saw were greyscale silhouettes.
But, then, Percy wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for. The precise nature of angels, demons, ghosts, guardians and the worlds between wasn’t something any of them would ever master. But Percy chose to believe in angels. While she’d never seen them, during the course of the Grand Work she was sure she’d heard them. She hoped they heard her now and could sing at her side.
Constance grimaced. “The Liminal can change many ways. Let’s make sure it twists the way we hope. I’ve seen two possible futures, one I like a great deal better than the other! Come to the threshold edge. Fate cuts along a razor-thin line.”
Chapter Eight
All was darkness. The chill went to the bone, and Rebecca shuddered. She might appear as stoic and fearless as their leader Alexi, but she knew her frailty all too well.
“Mortal hearts make many mistakes,” she murmured, ruminating on her various failures. The longer she stood in the dark, the more the chill of death itself began to seep in. She wondered if she’d been abandoned in some corner of the dark netherworld.
“And what is this, then?” she asked, feeling nothing on her skin but cold, seeing nothing in her gaze but blackness. There was no echo of her voice; it sounded flat, enclosed, like a coffin.
She stretched out her hands in a panic, wondering if she was indeed entombed. But she was free to move. She was standing upright.
There was nothing at her back. Nothing before her. But considering the extent of the darkness she dared not take a step. “This must be the ‘yet to come’ part, Master Dickens? Did you have any idea what you were toying with, sir? I maintain your tale was overwrought,” Rebecca murmured. “Tell me, is this where I see my headstone and repent my every sin, where I pray for a second chance? I do regret. Repent. But what if there’s no second chance? Is darkness to be my final judgement? Is there to be no spirit guide through this last, harrowing phase?”
There was a long silence. Rebecca had held a glimmer of hope, had begun to feel the lightness of a heart opening to its true call; she had begun to truly see the man who loved her as she is and always was. But all was precarious. In vain. Too late. There was no one to guide her.
“Oh, no! Don’t ye dare let go of that glimmer, Rebecca Thompson, or I can’t do my duty and we’ll all be bound to these damned stones! And who would want to see ye happier than I?” came a familiar, chiding Irish brogue, an accent always heightened by anxiety. Suddenly there was a grey light, a silver halo around a solid woman who wore the greyscale of the dead.
“Jane!” Rebecca cried and threw her arms around her. “Oh, how we miss you! Wait. Am I dead?” In this existence, in this time and place, Jane was solid.
“No, you’re not. Yet. But the spirits are all in agreement—”
“That it should have been me!” Rebecca cried.
“No!” Jane hissed. “That’s not the answer.”
There was a rumble of thunder. Lightning illuminated the shadows, and Rebecca screamed as pillars of human skulls were revealed marching off into the endless distance. Shadows lurked behind those pillars, and Rebecca squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting any further illumination.
Jane shook her head and whispered, “None of that nonsense, now. Watch your words in these parts.”
“Where are we, exactly?”
“This is the Whisper-world, Rebecca.”
“Here? Me? I’m not supposed to be here, am I?”
“No, it’s dangerous while you’re alive. You’re on the edge of a dark realm. Ahead of us sits the Liminal threshold. A powerful place not to be trifled with. It’s what allows us this final examination.”
She led Rebecca forward. As they moved, the darkness lightened; the air became a luminous silver, and her muffled footfalls over the wet stone sounded across something more like glass. The air was less dank in her nostrils, the breath of sadness less oppressive.
“Are you happy, Jane?” Rebecca asked. “Where is your ghostly love, your Aodhan? I’ve prayed so dearly for your peace.”
Jane spoke carefully. “I chose my path. Aodhan awaits me in the Great Beyond, but I can’t go to him ’til I see you choose your path. No matter what happens, I regret nothing. But if you fail. . .”
“What. . . what will happen?”
“I’ll be trapped here forever. It’s the price that the Liminal asks. But I love and believe in you that much.”
“Oh, Jane—”
“Hush your mouth, we’ve work to do.”
A great proscenium of a stage was gleaming before her. Both females looked onto a scene that Rebecca recognized from her very recent past. The scene was still, frozen,
waiting to leap to life. Rebecca’s heart raced. It was a darkened Athens, right before the spirit war.
Hearing music from the upstairs foyer, she anxiously turned to Jane. “In Dickens, the past was the purview of the first spirit alone. How are you showing me this?”
Jane pursed grey lips. “I thought you didn’t like Dickens.”
Rebecca paused. “Well . . . I suppose he’s my only reference here.”
Jane smirked. “You’re an infinitely more complicated creature than Ebenezer Scrooge, Headmistress, and so the same methods of salvation cannot apply.”
Rebecca sniffed, straightening her shoulders. “I didn’t think he got it exactly right. Too dramatic.”
Jane laughed. “Oh, but he got it exactly right. Yet while we’re not following his script, we must teach you and repeat until you really see.”
“I see—”
“Do you?” Jane insisted, placing an icy hand upon her chest. “No. You’re not free. Not yet.”
“No,” Rebecca agreed, looking down. “I don’t know that I’ll ever be free.”
Suddenly, she emitted a torrent of confession. “All I’ve hoped for in life is to valiantly serve those who depend upon me, to be an efficient, respected headmistress, a member of The Guard, an upstanding citizen. Of course I wanted to be loved in return by Alexi! I wanted a home and a family with him. But our Grand Work had its own agenda, his heart its own call. So now, as I stare down my life, I find my past ruled by cowardice and second-guessing. What could I have done differently? I’m nothing of what I wish to be.”
So satisfyingly low, the words felt good the moment they dripped from her lips. But their effect was anything but. As they escaped, Rebecca’s guilt only magnified. Sorrow crested in her blood, and the darkness around her intensified, pressing in, urging her to simply wallow in a deep well of never-ending self-pity. She could drink from this bubbling font of misery, as she had every night for twenty years, from now unto eternity. The better air she had begun to breathe again went rancorous, the shadows around them lengthened.
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