A Midwinter Fantasy

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

  “Rebecca,” her friend warned. “This is a deadly place to go melancholy. Do not ingest such a drug—”

  “But I’ve so much pain—”

  “Well, mitigate it before it’s too late!” Jane exclaimed. The Liminal stage of possibility went black. Shadow pressed in upon Rebecca’s heart, and she recognized the sensation. While The Guard had briefly halted Darkness, its ruler, the Whisper-world was its own entity and lived on, attuned to misery and fear, an ethereal, subtle and dangerous predator. That predator was hungry for a restless soul. Her misery was just the sort of food the Whisper-world craved.

  Suddenly, in the distance, far outside the now-black picture frame through which she gazed, in the thick shadows becoming recognizable as Athens, there came a bright white gleam, like a star, widening. It was a beautiful light, a familiar light, and there was a petite figure within and drawing inexorably closer.

  “What’s that?” Rebecca breathed.

  Jane offered a partial smile. “A guardian angel, watching out for us beyond the Liminal edge. But we mustn’t test her. This realm wants her for its own more than any of us, and if she has to come in for you”—Jane shuddered—“who knows what it might do to her again. Look what surrounds you in the Whisper-world. Do you want to join them?” She gestured to the shadows, to figures Rebecca saw there that moved listlessly, shapeless, aimless.

  Jane continued. “These souls are here because of second-guessing themselves, because of mortal frailty or selfishness. You’re hardly the first to come. What keeps them here is their inability to let go—which is their greatest crime. To err is mortal. To not forgive is the stuff of the Whisper-world. Who knows why events needed to unfold as they did, to press, madden or even kill”—she gave Rebecca a meaningful glance—“some of us as they did? Who are we to question? We must forgive.”

  Rebecca could not meet her gaze. She gave a sob and the air thickened further.

  Her friend sighed. “You’re a powerful woman, Rebecca, but stop thinking you’ve power over everything. You can’t make someone love you who doesn’t, and you can’t change what fate has already wrought. You cannot live well if you’re unable to discard regrets! In the end, this isn’t about me, or Alexi, or Percy. It’s about you—and the man who’s always loved you. The man who was meant for you, though you never let yourself believe it. You hid from the reality of his love in the dream of Alexi’s. Try, for once, to be unselfish. Be grateful.”

  Rebecca bit her lip, helpless. “Show me the scene,” she gasped, turning to the Liminal stage. “Help me see what I must . . .”

  The Liminal agreed, and the bright guardian star remained visible, a soft glow in the corner of the stage frame as the past began to play its chosen scene:

  The Guard were all assembled on the dark third-floor foyer of Athens Academy, where Jane played the fiddle for the waltzing Percy and Alexi. Elijah and Josephine were arm in arm, and Michael was . . . staring at Rebecca. She had been too focused on the waltzing couple to notice before, always too preoccupied.

  She wasn’t much to look at here, having already given over to an identity built around efficient administration. And yet, there Michael was, staring at her with the same desire he’d worn on his face when she’d done herself up for the ball years prior. Here she was drawn and shadowed, her face a grimace, so sure she could never be loved—some part of her was still certain of that—and yet . . .

  “He must see something I cannot,” Rebecca murmured, baffled to see that he not only desired her but cared for her, ached for and knew her—truly knew her, knew all the complications of her life like no one else possibly could—and here he was, likely as scared as she to reach out and take what he wanted by the hand.

  “After all you’ve seen and been through, he still looks at you that way. He always will. You must trust it,” Jane said.

  “I . . . don’t understand how. I don’t know that I—”

  “What? You don’t deserve love? That’s the talk of a person who jumps off bridges, who does terrible things or lets terrible things be done to her. You are not she. You must not fear that look, and you must not fear what it means. You must open your eyes to what shines in him and embrace it.” Jane pressed her hand to Rebecca’s heart again. “But there’s a catch here, a hiccup. Thinking you understand and feeling that you understand are two different beasts. Stare what you fear in the face.”

  “I’ve stared down death,” Rebecca said.

  “But what about love? Because that, Headmistress, is your greatest fear. Look at it,” Jane insisted, guiding Rebecca toward the frame.

  Rebecca stared. She watched Michael Carroll and let herself entertain the idea of what it would be like to receive, accept and possibly return his look of adoration and everything it contained. It was true, she was afraid. Pining, unrequited love was indeed of one dimension. This look, this heart, this love of Michael’s was all-encompassing. Yet it was not desperate, cloying or imbalanced; it was simply solid. It could be her foundation.

  She’d never conceived of anything quite like this. Her heart began to expand from its tiny, huddled, clutched position and allowed for something new to take its place. She felt like a phoenix being reborn—

  But, she was not a woman who liked earth-shattering change. She was fond of routine, not the unknown. The unknown was terrifying. Her heart huddled close again, clutching at its familiar loneliness, a reflexive contraction. An interior door somewhere slammed closed.

  The shadows were ready for her this time, lurching close. A distant beat of horse hooves, a cacophony of whispers, hisses and deadly threats filled the air. The rushing river of restless souls again gurgled in the distance, its currents churning upward, beckoning her to drown herself at last, in waters worse than the Thames . . .

  “Rebecca,” Jane chided.

  An inward chill spread inside her, the sort of dread she’d felt when facing demons and the stuff of eternally damning horror. The cold had hooks into her, a fluid invasion and perversion such as blood into a pure spring. It was as if a possessing spirit had slipped cold, wet fingers in around her heart and was digging a hole. That unwelcome guest found her melancholy and made a nest within, birthing a wasting madness and inescapable loathing. Rebecca cried out in physical, mental and spiritual pain.

  But then there was that bright angel’s light again, coming closer, as if from across a long room—as if from across Athens’s foyer. Brighter, brighter . . . The shadows sliding inside Rebecca seemed to jump back scalded, no longer as bold if still nipping at the hem of her skirts. She felt her body warm; the forces that wished to keep her prisoner were for the nonce held at bay. That light was no match for this shadow and Rebecca longed to warm herself in it.

  Jane glanced from the light to Rebecca, gauging her progress. “I’ve told you before, you and Alexi would never have been a good fit. All you’d have done was scowl at each other. You loved him because he was safe, because he felt familiar. Because you didn’t trust anyone else, didn’t trust that anyone could love you, hardly even yourself. But at some point you have to let go and be loved, for there are people who love you.”

  She pointed. “Look at Michael Carroll. Imagine turning the tide from the first moment you know him, from the very first moment. This should be a good trick,” she added in a mutter. “Please, God, let it work. Maestro, from the top . . .”

  Jane snapped her fingers, and the world whirled into something entirely different. But familiar. Suddenly Rebecca was a youth on Westminster Bridge. It was a grey day in autumn, and six unlikely children had been called to police spirits throughout London. It was the first day of the Grand Work. It was the first day she fell in love with Alexi Rychman. The very first day.

  Rebecca watched her spindly, awkward, confused self waiting and shifting upon her heels, not knowing what trials and tribulations lay before her. Alexi hadn’t arrived yet. Instead, she and Michael were alone. Why hadn’t she remembered that they were the first to arrive? He was staring at her with such kindness and admirat
ion, from the very first. And his smile . . .

  This, she realized, was destiny. She’d cursed a fate that hadn’t provided for her, but fate had provided and she had turned away. She was destined for Michael from the first, but she’d been intimidated even then.

  “Can you see?” Jane murmured.

  “Yes,” Rebecca breathed. Honestly. She did. “I see that it’s right.”

  She stared at Michael, at her young self and her current self, and she truly saw him, completely, for the first time. With clarion focus she knew that he would never be second-best. He was, simply, best. For her, he always had been.

  Her huddled heart exploded with joy. Her body shifted, expanded; her every muscle, so tightly clenched in quivering fists, finally let go. The transformation was whole and glorious, a revelation that could never be undone, a knowledge so sure that it put all other pain in distant shadow. Her love of Alexi had no power here. She was broken free from the unwitting spell he’d never intended to cast. The gentle heart before her, fiercely passionate for nothing but her, had overcome all. It was the greatest power yet seen in all manner of strange in her life of spectral mayhem.

  She turned to Jane in wonder, and the friends shared a beautiful, moved silence. Rebecca saw the new light in her eyes reflected in Jane’s.

  “Now,” her friend pressed. “The last question. Do you forgive yourself for the past?”

  Rebecca faltered, the word “forgive” an impossible obstacle. She felt the chill of shadow pierce her again, finding that hollow, tender place and ripping the fresh stitches. She groaned, a terrible swinging pendulum in the pit of her heart, bloodied and razor sharp. Oh, to feel such joy, only to regress again and feel it ripped away . . . The scene on Westminster faded, and she was again in grey shadow.

  Jane was talking again, giving words of reassurance to again turn the tide. Rebecca couldn’t hear her. The shadows encircled them both, and they seemed too powerful. These shadows didn’t think she deserved a second chance; they wanted her a wasting form, unable to pass on, doomed for eternal regrets. Why had she made so many mistakes? Why had she wasted all the time she’d been given with Michael? What was left for her when so much time had passed and the Grand Work was done? She began to weep.

  Her shoulders felt a gentle pressure. Jane held her. But Rebecca still could not hear her. She saw the hideous form of the defeated Whisper-world lord, Darkness, a form of bones and rot, a force comprised of everything one wished humanity could just leave behind. Rebecca saw him in her mind’s eye, in that serpents’ nest within her; reassembling. Digit by digit, vertebrae by vertebrae. Eyes of hellfire and a tongue of damnation.

  But she recalled that she had life yet to live. She had the power to retaliate, just like when her feet were on the bridge’s edge. She did not want Darkness, so recently torn apart, to so easily be put back together. Not by the mere regrets of her weak, mortal heart. She did not want Darkness to win her as a bride. She would not let Darkness win her.

  “I reject thee . . .” she murmured to shadow.

  She wanted the bright hearth of Michael’s heart. She would be lured, fooled and seduced by misery no longer. Jane was right: the heavens had made no mistakes. Darkness only wanted her to think so.

  “And now I see,” Rebecca murmured. “Forgiveness.”

  And suddenly everything was light.

  Chapter Nine

  Percy maintained her position in the Athens foyer and watched how the shadow shapes responded to her light through the portal before her, how she curbed them. This was her power, her gift, and it had saved them all once before. While it hurt, dearly, to let it burn, it was worth the discomfort to know that she could turn tides, that so long as she focused, she could strike back and declaw misery’s talons.

  “Oh, Percy, look how it worsens,” Constance murmured, bobbing in the air beside her. “The headmistress chose correctly, at least I think, but it’s not over.”

  The whole vast room had grown dark over the course of the journey. There were terrible murmurs and whispers through the portal hung like a curtain in the middle of the foyer, seeping out into their mortal reality, and the blood chilled in Percy’s veins. She rushed forward to its very edge, staring in, straining to see the dim figures beyond. A dark mist rose within, and Percy could hear its familiar hissing, trying to invite her in, insidious and also eerily seductive. This edge of shadow was a dangerous place for coming and going. And it wanted her, like it had before.

  As if through a veil, Percy recognized the headmistress, unsteady on her feet, surrounded by flickering shadows. The headmistress was in the midst of a battle.

  “This is the Liminal?” Percy asked.

  “Yes,” Constance murmured. “It’s here that the greatest change of a soul can take effect. The danger is necessary because the transformation can be the richest. The Liminal can be a beautiful place, but it edges the Whisper-world, and with any darkness present . . . Well, it amplifies all things.”

  The mists of the Whisper-world swirled up around the edge of Rebecca’s skirts, clearly trying to hold her like shackles. But, Rebecca fought. And, who was the spirit beside her?

  Percy’s heart swelled in sudden recognition. “Jane!” she breathed. Close enough to touch her friends if she reached through the portal, Percy kept to the side, a bright candle at the base of a vast altar. She dared not step up and inside, not because she feared for herself, but for the child she carried.

  Jane looked out from the portal and smiled. “Hello, Percy. Could you spare us just a bit more of your light? Rebecca’s done what she must, but we’re still precarious. You’re just the one to tip the scales.”

  Rebecca didn’t seem able to hear past her internal fight.

  Percy squeezed in her hand the rosary Michael had blessed, staring deep into the offending, greedy shadows that wanted to make sadness a forever state throughout Creation. The burning in her breast intensified, searing. The unfortunate effect of a divine power using her mortal body was that there were limits, but as Percy had herself once lived a life domineered by melancholy, she was more than ready to give what she could for this battle. She’d be damned if such melancholy was going to hold Rebecca and feed the beast they’d already bested.

  “Headmistress, go on. Release your tears,” Jane was saying. “Don’t hold them in or give them power. Shed your tears upon the stones and leave them. When all is done, step into the light.”

  The headmistress looked up. She seemed to hear. Her cheeks were wet, but her face was more open than Percy had ever seen it.

  “Let that caged heart of yours free,” Jane urged. “I love you, Rebecca. I always have and I always will. You’re right about forgiveness. It’s time to begin again.”

  The friends embraced, and Rebecca’s healing tears flowed faster. Seeming to realize what came next, the two said good-bye—and Merry Christmas.

  Jane stepped from the portal. She appeared at Percy’s side, floating, changing from her solid form in the Whisper-world to her transparent, spectral buoyancy upon Earth. Inside the portal, Rebecca looked around, squinted out at them, apparently seeing only light and feeling that she was alone. More tears had to drain before she could start life anew.

  Placing a cool draft of a hand on Percy’s shoulder, Jane murmured, “Let her have a good cry; she needs it. Let sorrow drain into the river. When she’s done, carefully help her off the ledge. Now that the headmistress’s change of heart has freed me, I must be off to shake final sense into a vicar.”

  When Jane grinned, Percy returned the expression. “Sense? Indeed.” But her heart was heavy; they’d have to say goodbye again.

  “I’ll be back to spook you and your beloved,” Jane promised, anticipating her. “I know Alexi will be insulted if I don’t give him his fair haunting. He’ll never forgive me.”

  “Thank you. It’s so good to see you,” Percy murmured. “But, I am—we all are—so sorry to have lost you. Grateful for your sacrifice, but sorry.”

  Percy’s inner light, that oth
erworldly beacon of hope, flickered. Jane rolled her eyes. “Not you, too! All of you with your regrets,” the Irishwoman scoffed. “My fate was what was meant to be. Now, tend your light.” Jane turned to Constance, floating patiently at Percy’s side. “Good work, my lass. Stay here with Percy ‘til the last, and then I daresay we’ve all earned our blessed peace and then some!”

  Constance nodded, and placed her ghostly hand on Percy’s shoulder. Percy’s light burned brighter for friendship. Being a beacon was exhausting and painful, and she wondered if her skin would bear the mark of a burn.

  Graceful, dark movement from the floor above caught Percy’s eye. Alexi stared down at the scene from the floor above; down at the roiling portal, the headmistress’s vague form within, at the ghosts of Jane and Constance, and then at his luminous wife. Tears stood in his dark eyes. He made no move to stop Percy, or to move her away from the perilous edge where she stood guard, only stared at her with awestruck pride. Jane smiled and waved up at him.

  “Merry Christmas!” Jane whispered and vanished.

  Alexi blew Percy a kiss and turned away, leaving her to her miracles as she had requested. Percy’s light was sustained anew.

  Rebecca looked up. The light yet blinded her, but she was done; her tears had run their course. Everything was different.

  She stood. “What do I do?” she murmured, seeing only the light, unsure.

  “Come,” said a sweet voice. “Give me your hand.”

  Rebecca reached out toward the light. A soft, small hand met hers and pulled. There came a whirling sensation. She found herself stepping down onto firm ground in the foyer of Athens Academy. A small pop sounded behind her, and the portal, shadows, mists and encroaching danger were no more.