Worlds of Ink and Shadow

by Lena Coakley

  Emily stared. Tabby had acted out the little scene, and when she’d gotten to the part where Branwell had offered up the shell, she had held out her empty hand, palm upward, just as Charlotte and Branwell did whenever they crossed over.

  CHARLOTTE

  LOOKING AT HERSELF IN THE MIRROR WASN’T usually something Charlotte did any more than was necessary, but now she forced herself to stare. She had finished her drawing of Anne and was sitting at the dressing table in the bedroom she shared with Emily. There was nothing more starkly real than her own pinched features in the glass; examining them kept her mind from wandering back to Verdopolis.

  There were many things she could be doing—starting another drawing, planning tomorrow’s lessons, helping Tabby in the kitchen—but a heaviness in the air and in her heart kept her from acting. She got up and opened the window, but there was no breeze. Emily was in the backyard. She was gazing out across the moor, where storm clouds were gathering. As Charlotte watched, Emily climbed the low stone wall and set out toward the darkening horizon. Foolish girl. She was sure to get caught in the rain and miss her tea, but Charlotte found she didn’t have the will to call her back.

  “I seem to be made of sorrow,” said a voice. Mary Henrietta’s voice.

  “No,” Charlotte said out loud.

  There would be no more hearing the voices of her characters, no more writing down their words. Writing would keep them alive for her somehow, and if they lived she would eventually cross over to them. It was inevitable. She must turn away from her beautiful people forever.

  She sat back down in front of the mirror and sighed. Her hair was particularly limp this afternoon, and there was an angry red blemish in the center of her forehead, but there was something strangely steadying in the plainness of her own face. Nothing so ill-favored could ever exist in Verdopolis. From the mirror came an answering sigh.

  Charlotte’s stomach tightened. The sound hadn’t been in her head; she’d actually heard it. She looked around, thinking something might have fooled her senses—a piece of paper falling to the floor, perhaps, or a bird fluttering past the window.

  “Why does tragedy hang around me like a shroud?” said Mary Henrietta. “It is the truest thing about me.”

  This time Charlotte knew what she heard was real. The voice had come from the mirror, she was sure of it. She leaned forward. There, in the mirror’s depths, was an image. It was blurred and dark at first, but it soon began to coalesce. An elegant jaw. Rose-petal lips. A sadness around the eyes. Mary Henrietta, the beautiful duchess, turned her head this way and that, oblivious to Charlotte, examining her perfect complexion.

  “All Zamorna’s wives and lovers end this way,” she said. “In sighing.”

  Mina Laury was behind her, working through the duchess’s chestnut curls with a silver comb. Though less refined, the maid was almost as pretty as the mistress, with her bright blue eyes and buxom charm, but now those eyes were dimmed and her brow was creased with worry. “Do not trouble yourself with such unwholesome thoughts, milady. I pray you.”

  Charlotte blinked, expecting this vision to disappear at any moment, but everything was perfectly clear now. Beyond the two women, a lady’s dressing room was visible, ornate with lace and frills and dainty furnishings. It was not the dressing room of Wellesley House, but of course it wouldn’t be, Charlotte thought with a pang of regret. Wellesley House had burned.

  “I feel that I have been all Zamorna’s loves,” Mary Henrietta said. “Lady Helen Victorine, poor Rosamund, Marion Hume—they are all me. We are all the same idea, and we all die.”

  “Die! Sweet lady, do not speak the ugly word! I cannot bear it.”

  Charlotte had no sense that she was creating this conversation, and yet Mary Henrietta was voicing a truth that sometimes troubled her. All her heroines died, though she never intended it when she created them. Each time, she believed that Zamorna and his new love would live happily ever after—but this never came to pass. Now it seemed to Charlotte that all his lovers had been doomed from the start, that their deaths had always been there, overshadowing them—and she found she didn’t want this for Mary Henrietta. Branwell had been right when he said that there was something luminous about her.

  A thought sprang to her mind. Not only did Zamorna’s lovers die, but there was often some loyal friend or servant who followed her mistress to the grave. With a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach, Charlotte realized that Mina Laury might be doomed as well. Branwell was right about that, too: Charlotte’s stories did repeat themselves.

  “Why, Mina,” Mary Henrietta said, “you’re crying.”

  “I’m not.” The maid bent to the mirror, blotting her eyes with a handkerchief. “It’s only . . . I’m sure I would not wish to live without you, milady.”

  “Oh, my dear, sweet girl. You must not take my foolish talk so seriously. I have had such horrible dreams of late—I’m certain they are to blame for my dark mood.”

  Mina sniffed. “You have told me nothing about your dreams.”

  “I did not wish to trouble you—and you have no right to scold, my dear. I hear you calling out at night, and yet you do not confide in me.” She patted her maid’s hand. “Our nightmares are not so remarkable, I suppose, considering the upheavals in our lives. Let us blame my wicked father. I know that Zamorna blames him for all our woes. How strange that Rogue has set the whole city buzzing about the Genii. Do they exist or don’t they? Is he mad or isn’t he?”

  Mina laughed through her tears and picked up the comb again. “He is a fool, I say.”

  Mary Henrietta smiled up at her. “Get my other comb, will you, my dear? This one pulls my hair.”

  As soon as Mina turned away, Mary Henrietta’s smile fell, and sorrow returned to her face. “I wish the Genii did exist,” she said softly. “I would ask them why death pulls at me so.”

  “And I wish I could save you,” Charlotte whispered to the glass, but she somehow felt it was beyond her power. Her story was progressing without her now—but perhaps that’s what stories always did. Perhaps the control she’d always thought she’d had was an illusion. She and Branwell created characters with needs and desires and flaws and then set them on their paths. Everything that happened afterward, all the collisions and disasters, were inevitable as clockwork, and even the Genii couldn’t stop them.

  “Oh, strange gods,” Mary Henrietta said, “if this mirror were a portal to your world, I would smash through and make you answer me.” There was a hint of anger in her voice that surprised Charlotte.

  Mary Henrietta leaned toward the mirror, her brow furrowed, and Charlotte thought she must have found some minuscule blemish, but then a look of dread struck her face. “Oh, Mina, come look! There is something in the glass. Something hideous.”

  Charlotte put her hands over her mouth in surprise, afraid that they could see her, afraid that her own face might seem hideous to such perfect people.

  Mina reappeared, bending over her mistress’s shoulder. “But there is nothing, milady.”

  “You do not see it?” Mary Henrietta’s eyes widened. “Oh, heavens. Am I going mad?” She touched her cheeks, her hair.

  “See what?”

  “It is . . . myself,” Mary Henrietta said, peering close. “But I am so changed. Oh, Mina. Is this some harbinger?”

  “There is nothing. Come away. Come away now.” Mina put her arm around her mistress and tried to get her to rise from her chair.

  “Oh, tell me this face is not my own.”

  “You are becoming overwrought. I beg you, come away!”

  Charlotte stared into the glass, and for a moment she seemed to catch her heroine’s eye. Then all at once Mary Henrietta began to transform, the perfect symmetry of her face twisting to irregularity and ugliness. Her cheeks grew gaunt and hollow, her lovely hair matted and uncared for.

  “I have nightmares of this face,” said Mary Henrietta’s voice, but it was faint and fading, and the words didn’t match the lips of the woman who now
grinned at Charlotte from the mirror.

  “Who are you?” Charlotte breathed. She felt sure that this new person could see her, could see into her. “What are you?”

  The woman only smiled wider, showing a blackened bottom tooth. There was something terribly unnerving about her expression, something wrong and broken in her eyes, and yet there was something familiar about her, too.

  She began to laugh—a low, slow “ha . . . ha . . . ha”—and Charlotte felt a shudder go through her body. She knew that sound, had heard it once long ago. She put her hands over her ears.

  The strange woman lifted her fist and began to knock at the mirror glass, so hard it set the dressing table vibrating. Beyond her, the dainty frills and furnishings were gone, replaced with unpainted walls and a single candle guttering on a plain table.

  “Go away!” Charlotte said. She stood, knocking over her chair, and shrank back into a corner of her room. She was afraid of this creature, afraid that there was only a thin sheet of glass between them.

  The woman’s laugh was loud now. It seemed to echo through the parsonage—a mirthless and tragic cackling. She knocked harder and harder upon the mirror. Charlotte’s dressing table rocked back and forth. Then—crack!—the mirror broke outward, scattering shards of glass onto the bare floor all the way to Charlotte’s feet.

  EMILY

  WHEN EMILY STOOD IN THE FRONT YARD she was in town: The graveyard, the church, and the Sunday school were straight ahead, and beyond them were the tavern and the main road leading down to the center of Haworth. Guests and parishioners saw the front yard. When Emily stood in the back, however, she was on the moor, with nothing beyond the low stone wall but rolling heather and heath. The only guests who came here were the wild moor sheep that sometimes wandered in through the wall’s gap, leaving behind little tufts of wool caught on the shrubbery. It made sense that Tabby had seen Branwell standing at the wall trying to bargain with Old Tom. For the Brontë children, this was the place where civilization ended and wilderness began.

  Emily stood there now. The air hung still and heavy. Even if she hadn’t been able to see the dark clouds gathering over the moor, she would have known a storm was coming. The whole world seemed to be waiting for it. She closed her eyes and held out her hand, feeling as foolish as a child. Was it as simple as this? Had her brother and sister simply held out their hands, making offers to Old Tom until one was finally accepted? And if so, what had they given?

  Perhaps Charlotte had offered up her beauty. But no, she had been plain for as long as Emily could remember; beauty was not a gift she had to bargain with. What then? Not cleverness. Neither Charlotte nor Branwell would ever give up that. Their health? Branwell and Charlotte were rather prone to illness. Emily shivered at the idea. That was a terrible bargain, but it was one she would give to see Gondal again. And Rogue.

  Emily glanced behind her and saw Charlotte at an upstairs window. Quickly she looked away so as not to catch her eye. Emily was too close to the parsonage here, too close to town, to her sister’s watchful eye. This might have been the right place for Branwell and Charlotte, but Emily had another place she’d always gone when she wanted to feel close to wildness. Without looking back, she climbed over the wall and set out quickly across the hills.

  It wasn’t until she slowed her pace and began to pick her way down the steep gully of Sladen Beck that she noticed the silence. The wind was almost always blowing on the moor, and so its stillness seemed eerie. Never before had she been so aware of the sound of her own breath and of the grass brushing past her legs. Around her, purple foxglove drooped, the flowers too heavy for their stalks. In his novels Sir Walter Scott called these deadman’s bells, and Tabby said that if you ever found a white one it meant there would be a death.

  When she got to the beck she found the water strangely dark, reflecting a sky that was nearly black. She sat down on her favorite stone and looked out across the rolling landscape. Everything was so still. She loved the way the crevasses between the hills grew so green this time of year, hiding secret valleys, but the darkened sky made everything ominous and dim as twilight. Above her a hawk screamed, but somehow it was just a part of the stillness. She could hear its wings beating the air—whump, whump, whump.

  Something bright caught her attention—a smudge of rust against the green. A fox. He came toward her, bushy tail held straight behind, eyes scanning the ground for movement. How long and sleek he was, what luscious fur, what perfect and precise movements. He seemed to be a visitor from an even wilder place than this.

  The fox came within a few feet of Emily’s stone, and she held her breath. She could see his sharp needle teeth, his twitching whiskers; she even caught the scent of his musk. Suddenly he leapt, all four feet leaving the earth. Something squealed. Emily gasped.

  A moment later the fox was staring at her, a dead vole hanging from his mouth.

  “How beautiful you are,” Emily whispered. “I’d give anything to make a world as beautiful as you.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Once there was an island in the middle of the sea. It was called Gondal, and it was a harsh and lonely place.”

  She clasped her hands together. “Old Tom, Old Tom. Everything my sister Charlotte and my brother Branwell have given in their years of crossing over, and everything they will give in years to come, this I offer, all at once, for one passage to my beautiful world.”

  She opened her eyes. The fox was gone, with nothing to prove he was ever there but a stain of blood on the ground. Beyond where he had been there was a strange blurriness, a slight warp in the light as if she were looking through a lens. It looked like a rip in the world. She stood up and held out her hand to the rip in the world, palm upward. It hurled itself at her, swallowing her whole.

  At first everything was dark, and then a dim light appeared in a great, gray sky, illuminating a flat and empty world. “The island of Gondal was full of wind and weather,” Emily said. A wind blew up, and dark clouds poured into the sky. “Heather and hills.”

  She smiled as what she invoked appeared. She’d had years to imagine what she’d make, a place like her own moor but wilder—more beautiful and horrible. A warm rain beat down on the brim of her bonnet and she pulled it off, lifting her face to the sky.

  “Foxes and hawks!” she said. “Voles and mice and rabbits.” Her world would have everything she loved best. “Rocks, crags, linnets, curlews, dogs, cats!” She broke into a run across the heath, shouting now.

  “Lightning and catastrophe!”

  Thunder cracked, and something bright knocked her off her feet.

  “Oh!” She suddenly found herself in the mud on all fours. There was a black circle of scorched earth next to her and the smell of electricity in her nostrils.

  She stumbled to her feet. The rain was harder now, not so pleasant as it had been a moment before. Thunder boomed, and another bolt of lightning struck a sapling just ahead, splitting it in two, making her scream.

  “Help, someone!” She turned and started to run. Wind and rain drove at her, and she could hardly see where she was going. Ahead of her was a stand of trees, and she raced toward it as another flash blinded her. She ran straight into someone’s arms.

  Emily lifted her face to dark eyebrows and heavy, brooding eyes. “Rogue?” He was hatless and drenched with rain. “We must run or we’ll be struck!” She tried to twist away, but he held her tight.

  “It’s no use running,” he said. One hand was on her waist and he moved the other to her cheek, drawing her closer. For a second, Emily thought he would kiss her, but instead he only stared into her eyes. His deep voice seemed to reverberate in her chest. “Listen to me. You made this place. You must make the lightning stop.”

  She gazed up at him, heart bumping. His hand was warm against her face. She felt that if he moved it, caressed her in any way or showed her any kindness, she would shake apart into a thousand pieces.

  “The storm is ended,” she said, pushing out of his grasp. The lightning abruptly stopped. She turn
ed away and looked out over the hills. In all directions, clouds were scurrying away from them, like rabbits who had seen a wolf.

  Emily wiped her face with her sleeve. “This is Gondal,” she said without turning around. “It is a wild, lawless place, where ships are wrecked upon the rocks and storms rip the sky asunder . . .”

  Thunder rumbled far away, making her give a little gasp. Rogue put a hand on her shoulder. “Yes, yes. I’ve had an adequate display of the storms.”

  Emily stiffened at his touch. “It is inhabited by only the worst criminals and scoundrels.”

  “I like it already. Did you make it for me?”

  “Certainly not.” She stepped away from his hand, but felt the weight of it on her shoulder even after it was gone.

  “And yet I’m here.”

  She made no answer.

  “Come, come. Aren’t we friends now?”

  She turned to face him. “Friends? You had your hands around my sister’s throat. And a knife to mine.”

  He shrugged. “That was in another world, far away. If you will forgive me my many crimes, I will graciously agree to forgive you.”

  “Forgive me?”

  “That’s right, little goddess. When we see each other in Verdopolis, we can renew hostilities, if we wish.”

  “There is no more Verdopolis,” she said a little sadly. “The other Genii have vowed to abandon it. I fear they mean it this time.”

  “Indeed? Well, all the more reason.” He turned and walked away from her down the hill, lifting his arms to the sky. “A new beginning for a new world.”

  Emily followed after. Now that the rain had stopped, Gondal began to blossom and burgeon before her eyes. The grass grew greener, and the stand of trees ahead of them burst into pink and white bloom. One tree towered over the others; it seemed too big and old to belong to such a young world.