by Lena Coakley
“This way!” she said, pushing past him. The ground was spongy and waterlogged under her feet.
Before she could reach the tree, its blossoms began to fall, white petals drifting toward her like snow. She laughed, turning to Rogue in wonder, and saw that the heather was blooming behind him—tongues of purple fire spreading over the hills.
“I can’t tell if it’s spring or summer,” Emily said, petals swirling around them, getting stuck on their clothes and wet hair. “Everything is happening at once.”
Rogue raised an eyebrow at her and shrugged. “Such things are beyond my understanding.”
I’ve done it, she thought. I’ve made a world. And it will be so much better than Charlotte’s.
“Apple?” Rogue asked. He ducked under the tree’s spreading branches, beckoning her to follow.
It was a different place there—dark and holy and still. Emily felt the urge to whisper. It reminded her of her father’s church, but it smelled like green moss and blossoms and turned earth. All around them little green apples were swelling and turning red. Rogue pulled one from a branch and tossed it at her.
Emily took a bite. Crisp and sweet. “Just imagine,” she said. “The taste of this apple came from my own brains. I’m really quite brilliant, aren’t I?”
Rogue grinned at her and took a bite of another apple, wiping juice from his chin. “A Genius.”
“Now, don’t this bring back memories?” said someone. From around the tree slid the figure of an old man not five feet tall. His face wore a sour smile.
“S’Death,” Emily said. “What are you doing here?”
He made a sweeping gesture with his arms. “I have come to see this new-made world.”
Emily knew the character from Verdopolis and was vexed by the interruption, but Rogue only laughed and slapped his friend on the back. “In a world of scoundrels and thieves, I suppose we must expect Mr. R. P. King.”
“Scoundrels and thieves?” S’Death repeated. “Well, I never. You’ll pardon me, miss, if I say you don’t look the part of neither. Isn’t this chit a bit young for you, Rogue?”
Rogue put his arm around Emily’s shoulder. “This chit, as you call her, is one of the Genii. She is the goddess who has pulled this new world from the black ether of nothingness.”
“The black ether of nothingness. You don’t say.” S’Death raised an eyebrow in doubt, then glanced out over the green and purple hills and shrugged. “It’s very pretty, I suppose.”
“Pretty!” cried Rogue. “It’s miraculous.”
“To be sure, to be sure. Far be it from me to criticize a goddess . . .” He paused.
“But?” said Rogue.
“Well, if I might inquire: What are the likes of you and I to do in this land of only wicked scoundrels?”
Emily stepped forward. “You, Mr. King, may go to the devil.” Both men chuckled at this. “He is Alexander Rogue, highwayman and thief, leader of bandits, wickedest of them all.”
S’Death snorted.
“What?” Rogue said. “You don’t approve?”
“In the name of murder, you sweet babies, you can’t have a world with just thieves and blackguards. You’ve got to have a few cullies.”
“Cullies?” Emily asked, unfamiliar with the word.
“Dupes, sapheads, people to rob, my lovely,” S’Death said with a leer. “Victims of our wicked outrages.”
“That’s true, you know,” Rogue said. “Do make us a few cullies, Genius.” He slapped Emily heartily on the back as he had slapped S’Death. She didn’t like it. “And make them rich and fat, while you’re at it.”
Emily lifted her chin. “The Genii do not take orders.” But at that moment a man riding a white donkey came up over the hill in front of them.
“Drink to the maiden of bashful fifteen. Now to the widow of fifty . . . ,” he sang. “Here’s to the flaunting, extravagant queen and here’s to the housewife that’s thrifty.” He was obviously drunk. The donkey stopped at the top of the rise, panting. It was a very small donkey to be carrying such a large man, and the beast was further burdened by a dozen saddlebags that looked suspiciously like they might contain gold coins. The man shook his reins, but the donkey only lowered his head and began to crop the grass.
“Let the toast pass. Drink to the lass. I’ll warrant she’ll prove an excuse for the glass.”
“Exactly,” Rogue said with a laugh as the song continued. “He’s the very thing.”
“A bit too on the mark, if you ask me,” S’Death murmured.
“Don’t be such a crosspatch.” Rogue reached into his jacket, pulling out a pistol that hadn’t been there a moment before. “Look, the lady’s thought of everything.”
“No!” Emily cried, grabbing his arm.
Rogue furrowed his brow, not understanding her displeasure. “I’m going to shoot him. Isn’t that what highwaymen do?”
“Not in cold blood,” she insisted. But wasn’t he right? Wasn’t that exactly what highwaymen did?
Rogue lowered his pistol. “Well, S’Death, we are on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, I am becoming rather fond of this fetching little goddess. On the other, it seems a bad precedent to set, letting her get her own way so early in our acquaintance.”
S’Death sucked his teeth, nodding. “Add to that, the cully is so clearly meant to be shot.”
“Here’s to the wife with a face full of woe! Here’s to the damsel that’s merry!”
S’Death winced at a sour note. “If only to stop that caterwauling.”
“I’ve got it,” Rogue said to her. “Tell me the name of one of the elder Genii—who he is in Verdopolis and how I may recognize him—and this cully may go on his way.”
“Certainly not.”
“But you yourself said that they have abandoned Verdopolis. What does it matter now?”
That was true enough, and Emily didn’t want the cully to die. She didn’t know why the idea of shooting him bothered her so much. It simply didn’t seem right. There was something innocent about him, in his white tunic on his white donkey. It would be murder, the first murder in her pristine new world, and that would be a grave thing, not to be taken lightly.
“All right,” she said with a shrug. “Since it doesn’t matter.” She smiled. “Tell me, Rogue, didn’t you ever suspect that Lord Thornton Witkin Sneaky was more than he seemed?”
“Thornton? Never!” said S’Death in amazement. “And he a fellow redhead!”
Rogue said nothing, but as Emily watched, his face hardened to a look of pure malice. It frightened her. He looked more like the old Rogue, the one soured by drink and wickedness. “I counted him among my friends,” he said.
“Never trust anyone, that’s the lesson here,” said S’Death.
“Well, that’s that, then,” said Rogue. He turned and lifted his pistol. A shot cracked. The singing ended. The cully slid off the donkey and fell to the ground with a thud.
“You’ve killed him!” Emily cried.
The white donkey brayed pitifully. All around her, the leaves on the tree grew brown. Red apples shriveled and shrank.
“For a Genius, she’s a bit dim,” S’Death said, chuckling.
Rogue turned to her, his face no longer quite so hard. A curl of smoke rose from the pistol in his hand. Rotten apples fell from the tree, splatting at her feet. “Poor little girlie,” he said, and there did seem to be genuine pity in his voice. “I told you you’d get your fingers bit.”
S’Death’s chuckle had turned into a full-blown howl of laughter. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “Oh, the look on her face.”
Emily backed away. She wanted to scream. She wanted to tear both their eyes out. But hadn’t she said she would make a world as wild as the fox?
She held out her hand, palm up. “Take me back,” she said. And then she was sitting on her stone by Sladen Beck again, cold and shaking, a heavy rain pelting down.
BRANWELL
IT MIGHT HAVE ONLY BEEN THE RAIN.
In, out.
It might not have been the rain, though. It might have been someone breathing. It might have been someone breathing just behind him, just outside the mirror’s frame.
No.
Yes.
The breath was labored. Rattling. It hurt. It was fought for. Last breaths.
In, out. In, out. The rain grew harder. He didn’t turn around.
Every stroke he added to the canvas was a disaster. The figures of his sisters were all right—Charlotte looked rather pretty—but his own face was distorted. Bloated. His brush made staccato jabs against the palette.
A cough.
Was it a cough?
In, out. In, out.
“If I turn around, will you be there?” His voice shook.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The rain was like fistfuls of shot hurled against the house.
“Thirsty,” someone said—or didn’t say. Branwell winced.
In the mirror, a flicker of movement. Without thinking, he wheeled around.
His paintbrush dropped to the floor. All sound stopped, even the rain.
“Elizabeth.”
She wore a white shift. The urge to take her in his arms was as strong as the urge to run, and so he did nothing.
“You are so small.” She had been his older sister once, but he had grown. She had not.
Elizabeth’s shoulders rose and fell. Her mouth gaped. She could barely stand.
“Why is it always you and not Maria?” he asked, tears in his eyes. “She’s the one I want to see.” It occurred to him that perhaps his question contained the answer.
“Banny.”
Her hand, heartbreakingly small, reached out to him. He’d forgotten the smell of a dying person. Sweet. Horrible.
“Would you get me a drink of water, Banny dear?”
His heart lurched. It was the last thing she’d ever said to him—her dying words.
“Branwell,” said a voice through the door. Charlotte’s voice. “Will you go and look for Emily? She’s out on the moor in this rain. Papa is growing worried.”
Branwell didn’t take his eyes from Elizabeth’s face. “Coming,” he whispered.
ANNE
WE HAVE BEEN FRANTIC,” ANNE SAID, holding open the back door. “Papa and Branwell are out looking for you.”
In the doorway, Emily looked hunched and small. She wore no cloak, and her clothes were wet through.
“Heavens above!” Tabby said, coming into the kitchen. “Get her in. Get her in!” Tabby bustled Emily toward the stove. It had already been stoked for the eventuality of wet people and for the making of beef tea, which Tabby believed could cure all ills. “Where’s her bonnet, I ask you? In her hand, where it does no good.” Emily’s bonnet was, in fact, dangling by its strings from her fingers. “Now don’t you touch her, Anne. You’ll get those bandages wet.”
“I’d like to help,” said Anne, who was standing aside while Tabby peeled off Emily’s clothes.
Tabby only blew out her cheeks and shook her head. “Why, Jasper Pheasant’s got more sense ’an you chicks. One gets herself burned, t’ other don’t know enough to get out of the rain.”
Anne felt a little stung by this. Tabby had treated her like a baby since she’d come back from Verdopolis, hardly letting her near the stove. Charlotte had told everyone that Anne burned her fingers while making gingerbread. No one questioned this, even though there was no gingerbread to be seen, and none of her siblings seemed to give the lie a second thought. It was only Anne who felt mortified by it, who hung her head whenever anyone asked after her hands. She remembered how shocked she had been when Papa had called Charlotte a liar at the breakfast table, but now she began to wonder if lying hadn’t become a bit too easy for her siblings. They were beginning to remind her of the stories in her Sunday school book about wicked children who came to bad ends.
“Rub yourself all over with them towels, now,” Tabby said to Emily, “while I tell Charlotte and Miss Branwell you’ve returned.”
“I don’t want to see them,” Emily said. She was down to her shift now, and she hugged herself in front of the stove, her head lowered, a curtain of wet hair obscuring her face. “Tell them I am going to my room.”
“Not dripping all over my floor, you’re not.”
When she was gone, Emily grabbed Anne by the arm. “I’ve done something terrible,” she said. She lifted her face, and Anne was shocked by how very pale and harried she looked.
“Are you ill? What’s happened?” But even as she asked, the truth began to dawn on her. “Oh, Emily. What have you done?”
“Something is gone!” There was anguish in her sister’s voice and in her eyes. “Something was ripped away from me. Oh, Anne, am I ugly? Is my eye still blue?”
“Calm yourself!” Anne fumbled with a towel, managing to wrap it around her sister’s shoulders. “I don’t know what you’re saying. You look exactly as you did before.”
“Take care of your bandages.”
“Never mind that. Sit down. You’re shivering.” She steered her sister toward a chair.
Emily sat in silence for a few moments, staring straight ahead, her breath in shallow gasps. “I felt well when I was in Gondal,” she said after a while, “but the moment I crossed back home . . .” She took Anne’s bandaged hand, looking up at her. “When I crossed back home, I felt something leaving me, draining away from me. I was so tired, I could hardly make the walk from Sladen Beck.”
Anne forced herself not to wince in pain as her sister squeezed her fingers tight. “You’ve done it, then? You’ve made a world?”
“Yes. And I paid a price. I paid a price, but I don’t know . . .” She blinked back tears and looked to the floor. “He wasn’t worth it, whatever it was.”
“Rogue? You saw him?”
Emily nodded, and her story spilled out. Old Tom. Her bargain. Her world. Anne could hardly believe her sister’s foolishness.
“I shall never go back,” Emily said. “I can’t. Rogue was too wicked.” She looked up at her again. “But what did I pay? It was something, something important, I know it. Oh, Anne,” she cried. “What if it was my soul?”
CHARLOTTE
CHARLOTTE’S MIND WANDERED ALL THROUGH evening prayers. She jumped at every sound and twice caught herself chewing her nails, a habit she had broken herself of years before. Even Tabby remarked on her nervousness, and, before Charlotte went upstairs, made her down some of the beef tea she had made for Emily.
She’d heard the laughter once more that afternoon, but a fierce wind had arrived with the rain, battering the house and whistling around the chimney, and she told herself it was only its blowing she had heard. If it weren’t for the broken mirror in the bedroom, she might have been able to convince herself she had imagined that awful woman as well, but every time she saw its empty frame, she knew with a sinking feeling that it wasn’t true. When she tried to tell Branwell what had happened, he only snapped, and Charlotte didn’t wish to burden the girls. And so, with no one left to confide in, she found herself standing in front of her father’s door.
“Come in,” he called, when she had worked up the courage to knock. He was sitting in a high-backed wooden chair loading his pistols for the night. “And how is dear Emily?”
Emily. Wandering about in a rainstorm. Making everyone sick with worry. Dear Emily is as selfish and thoughtless as always, Charlotte thought. “Recovering well.”
He motioned her toward the chair opposite, and she sat down. Beyond him was a small mirror over a chest of drawers. She dreaded seeing a glimpse of that woman’s face in its depths, and yet Charlotte’s eyes were drawn to it again and again throughout their conversation.
Papa looked up at her expectantly but resumed his task when she didn’t speak. He det
ached the ramrod from the barrel of one of his guns and used it to tamp down a round ball and some paper wadding, the pistol’s one shot. Then he primed the pistol with powder from his horn and set it carefully on a side table next to its mate. He looked up once more, but still Charlotte couldn’t find words. I am hearing voices. I am afraid of mirrors. I made a bargain with a creature out of one of Tabby’s stories, and now I might be lost. How did one begin such a conversation?
“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”
Charlotte froze. The windows rattled like something trying to get in.
“There are demons on the wind tonight,” Papa said. He didn’t mean this literally—he was a modern man—and yet he touched the nearer pistol when he said it, as if part of him believed there was something real to fear.
Charlotte made an attempt at a smile. “Yes. Aren’t there.” The awkward silence dropped over them again.
Papa gestured to the two weapons. “You know, every night I load these, and every night they go unfired. And yet in the morning when I awake I feel as if I have left my family unprotected, as if something has been taken in the night.”
Charlotte blinked in surprise, sure he had divined that all was not well in his home. Guilt sliced through her. She and the others kept so much from him.
“I worry,” he continued. “About you and the girls. About Branwell. He took it very badly when you were away at school, you know. His nerves. Soon you will leave us to make your living, and I fear for what will happen to him when he is parted from your influence.”
“My influence?” Charlotte gave a short laugh. “He pays no heed to me, I assure you.”
“He worships you—no, do not frown. He might not show his feelings, but they are there. Remember when he walked all that way to visit you at Roe Head School?”
Charlotte had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. “Yes, yes. Forty miles. A very long way.” Papa often brought up this incident as proof of Branwell’s affection for her.
“But you are not here to speak of him,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.
