In the Shadow of Blackbirds

by Cat Winters

  She lifted her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

  “I need to tell you something, Aunt Eva, but you have to swear you won’t bring up Julius’s spirits.”

  She nodded as if she wanted me to continue. “Go on.”

  “Do you swear you won’t mention his name?”

  “I swear.”

  I swallowed, which made my parched throat ache. “I left my body and sat on the branch of your eucalyptus tree for a bit. I saw myself down there, with my clothes smoking and the neighbors gathering around me. It didn’t feel right, like I was stuck between life and death, and I wasn’t sure where to go.”

  “You mean … you were a spirit?”

  “I’m still not saying I believe in all that.”

  “Was Wilfred there? Or your mother?”

  “I didn’t see anyone. An ambulance showed up, and I decided to push myself back into my flesh, which hurt like mad.”

  She squirmed with excitement. “We should tell him.”

  “Don’t say his name. Don’t you dare compare what happened to me to those photographs.”

  “He should know you’ve been to the other side. Oh, Mary Shelley, can you imagine what he’d photograph now if you posed for him? Do you realize how much serenity your body is emanating? I can feel it in your touch. It’s like you’re partially still in the spirit realm.”

  “Don’t say that.” I snatched my hand away from hers. “I’ve had a hard enough time fitting into this world without thinking I’m only halfway here.”

  “That’s what it feels like.”

  “Stop.”

  “Oh, Mary Shelley.” She clutched my arm. “What an opportunity you’ve been given. You’ve gone somewhere the rest of us have only dared to imagine, and you’ve brought a portion of its wonders back with you.” She removed her glasses and wiped her watery eyes with the back of her wrist. “This is going to change everything. I just know it.”

  I studied the hand that had soothed her and tried to figure out if I looked or felt any different than before. My trembling fingers still seemed to be made of flesh and bone. No heavenly glow surrounded my body. Spirits didn’t huddle around my bed and try to make their presence known.

  But she was right. Something had changed.

  THE HOSPITAL RELEASED ME AS SOON AS I COULD STAND up on my own. I wasn’t gasping for my last breath; therefore, they didn’t have any spare time for me. Nurses were tying toe tags around flu patients who hadn’t died yet, so I made no complaint about vacating my dark corner.

  My head still throbbed, as did my fingers wrapped in bandages, and my back was sore from being thrown to the ground by the force of the shock—not to mention the bruises sustained during that ambulance ride. Aunt Eva hired a taxi to take us home so I wouldn’t have to walk.

  I stared at the back of the driver’s black cap and balding head through the window of the enclosed passenger area. “My father goes on trial in December,” I told my aunt. “Uncle Lars sent a telegram.”

  “He did?”

  “I dropped it on your front lawn. I don’t know if it’s still there.”

  “It’s on my front lawn?” Aunt Eva clutched her handbag to her stomach. “It doesn’t mention the word treason, does it?”

  “No. But Uncle Lars said Dad could be sentenced to twenty years.”

  “Twenty years?”

  I tried to nod, but the movement hurt my head. “He shouldn’t even be in jail.”

  “Do you know what he did up there, Mary Shelley? Do you know his crimes?”

  I wrapped my arms around my middle. “I believe he helped men avoid the draft.”

  “That’s right. Uncle Lars said your father was running some sort of group out of the back of his grocery store. Do you know how much trouble the rest of us could be in if anyone learns we’re related to a traitor?”

  “Don’t call him a traitor. He’s a good man.”

  “Then why are you a thousand miles from home, sticking yourself in lightning storms, winding up half-dead in a hospital? If he was so good, why didn’t he worry more about keeping his own daughter safe?”

  I leaned back against the padded taxi seat and clenched my jaw, unable to come up with an answer.

  BACK AT HER HOUSE, AUNT EVA TUCKED ME INTO BED and told me to push aside all the unpleasantness that had coaxed me out into that lightning storm.

  “Your job right now is to heal,” she said as she pulled the warm sheet up to my chin. “Don’t use your brain to do anything else.”

  So heal I did.

  I lay there in bed with my skull splitting in two and my fingers burning and itching inside my bandages, but I refused to take any medicine to kill the pain. I wanted to be able to think without any substances blurring my mind. While Oberon chattered downstairs and Aunt Eva divided her time between the shipyard and me, my body repaired itself. All the tiny cells, nerves, and tissues worked like an efficient machine below the surface of my skin, and I longed to learn more about anatomy and physics and lightning and to listen to music that would challenge the recovering synapses of my brain. But the schools remained closed, and my body continued to stay stuck in a bed with springs that sounded like an accordion, my head and arms surrounded by bags of garlic-scented gum. Aunt Eva insisted the bags would chase away the hospital’s flu germs. She also made me wear a goose-grease poultice on my neck and stuffed salt up my nose. I felt like she was preparing me as the main course for a dinner party instead of protecting me from an illness.

  Stephen’s photographs watched over me from beyond the foot of the bed the entire time, their presence a source of both comfort and anguish. Sometimes, when I let my body relax and my mind go numb, I almost believed I saw him standing there, directly in front of his photos. I almost believed the lightning had indeed brought me in touch with the spirit world.

  And sometimes, when I was feeling strong enough to lift my head, I investigated another odd new phenomenon I’d discovered shortly after Aunt Eva first put me into that bed. It involved Uncle Wilfred’s brass compass in the wooden case, which I kept on my bedside table.

  The needle no longer pointed north.

  It pointed to me, even if I moved the compass around. It followed me.

  “Holy smoke,” I whispered every single time I saw the needle swing my way.

  I was now magnetic.

  ONE WEEK INTO MY CONVALESCENCE, WHEN I WAS ABLE to sit upright without feeling like someone was whacking my spine with a sledgehammer, Aunt Eva came into my room with a forced smile on her face. “I’ve sewn a covering for Oberon’s cage to keep him quieter during the day while you recover.” She carried a long beige cloth as well as a white envelope.

  I tilted my head for a better look at the envelope. “What’s that?”

  She drew in her breath. “It’s from your father.”

  “My father?”

  “I forgot to look at yesterday’s mail. I just found this below the bills.” She gave me the letter. “I’ll let you read it in peace, but try not to get agitated by whatever he has to say. Let me know if you need me to come back.”

  I nodded, and murmured, “Thank you.”

  She left me alone to stare at the top line of the return address—the name of my father’s new home:

  PORTLAND CITY JAIL

  Those three brutal words churned up all the hurt and rage from the night he left me—the night before I climbed aboard that train crammed with paranoid passengers bound for San Diego.

  I remembered the two of us huddled around the kitchen table, finishing a bland meal of rice and beans and dry bread made of cornstarch instead of wheat. Dad ran his fingers through his whitening brown hair and told me, “Mary Shelley, if anything happens to me—”

  “You’re not going to die from a measly flu germ, Dad,” I said.

  “I don’t necessarily mean dying. If something—”

  “What? What’s going to happen to you?”

  “Shh. Let me speak.” He wrapped his sturdy fingers around my hand. “If something happens, I w
ould like you to go straight to Aunt Eva’s. The weather’s not so cold there. You’d be more likely to survive the flu with open windows and sunshine. And we’d keep the Oregon side of the family out of trouble.”

  “What type of trouble?”

  He avoided my questioning stare.

  “Tell me, Dad.”

  He cleared his throat. “Trouble that comes from doing the right thing, even if it’s not safe. That’s all I’m going to say about it, because I don’t want anyone pressing you for information.” He swallowed down a sip of coffee. “Eva’s been living all alone in that house ever since Wilfred succumbed to his illness. I’m sure she’d be grateful for the company. Pack your bags after supper, just in case.”

  I glared at him, my nostrils flaring.

  “Mary, please don’t ask any questions. I’m not going to give you answers.”

  He only dropped the second part of my name when he was deadly serious.

  I jabbed at my food with my fork until the tongs screeched against the porcelain and made him wince, but I didn’t ask anything else. There was no point. If he didn’t want to elaborate, he wouldn’t. He was as bullheaded as I.

  And here I was, more than a thousand miles away, all alone except for a jittery aunt, a chattering magpie, a broken heart, and an envelope with the words PORTLAND CITY JAIL.

  I inhaled a calming breath and ripped open the paper.

  October 20, 1918

  Dear Mary Shelley,

  I hope you are safe. I hope you are healthy. I hope you can forgive me for what I have forced you to endure. You may not be able to understand the reasoning behind my sacrifices, but one day when you’re older and your anger at me has diminished, perhaps you will see the two of us are alike. We have a great deal of fight inside us, and sometimes our strength of spirit forces us to choose truth and integrity over comfort and security.

  I know the world seems terrifying right now and the future seems bleak. Just remember human beings have always managed to find the greatest strength within themselves during the darkest hours. When faced with the worst horrors the world has to offer, a person either cracks and succumbs to the ugliness, or they salvage the inner core of who they are and fight to right wrongs.

  Never let hatred, fear, and ignorance get the best of you. Keep bettering yourself so you can make the world around you better, for nothing can ever improve without the brightest, bravest, kindest, and most imaginative individuals rising above the chaos.

  I am healthy and, for the most part, doing well. No need to worry about me or the store. I’m letting the bank take possession of the business so we don’t have to trouble your uncles. Take care of yourself. Please write me soon so I know you are still alive.

  Your loving father

  I gritted my teeth and breathed through silent tears that plunked wet stains upon the paper.

  “Oh, Dad,” I said to his tidy loops of black handwriting. “Why should I bother making the world better when some of my favorite parts about it are gone?” I wiped my eyes. “You’re locked away and Stephen’s dead, and I don’t feel like one of the brightest, bravest, and kindest individuals without you.”

  THE FOLLOWING EVENING, AFTER AUNT EVA RETURNED from work, a familiar baritone voice drifted up to my bedroom from the entryway.

  My father’s voice.

  I swear up and down—I heard my dad.

  I hurled myself out of bed in my nightgown and bolted to the staircase, wondering if the telegram and the letter were mistakes—or mere dreams. Dad wasn’t going to be sentenced after all. He had come to fetch me.

  “Dad!” My bare feet scrambled halfway down the steps and slipped out from under me. My backside slammed against wood.

  “Don’t break your neck, Mary Shelley!” said Aunt Eva from down in the entryway. “Why are you running?”

  I regained my balance and pulled myself upright. “I heard—” My fingers went limp around the banister when I got a good look down below. My aunt stood by the front door with a slender stranger in a brown suit. Not my father.

  “Oh.” I stooped with disappointment. “I didn’t know you had a visitor.”

  The gentleman’s face, aside from his blue-green eyes, was hidden beneath a flu mask. He removed his derby hat and said, “Good evening, Miss Black,” and I saw receding hair the glistening golden red of copper wire.

  I lifted my chin. “Do I know you?”

  “No,” said Aunt Eva, “but you’ve heard of him. This is Mr. Darning.”

  “Mr. Aloysius Darning?” I took a single step downward. “The photography expert who’s been investigating Julius?”

  He nodded. “The one and the same. I was just across the bay at Mr. Embers’s house, paying my respects for his brother, and he told me the young model from his handbill had experienced a recent taste of death.”

  “I told you not to tell Julius what happened to me,” I snapped at my aunt.

  “Don’t get huffy in front of our guest, Mary Shelley. I simply telephoned Julius to let him know you’d been badly injured.”

  “He seemed concerned about you,” said Mr. Darning. “And once I learned your name, I realized I knew your aunt.”

  “Mr. Darning attends my church.” Aunt Eva rubbed the back of her neck in a nervous manner. “While I don’t care for the fact that he questions Julius’s photography, he is a kind man.”

  Mr. Darning’s eyes smiled above his gauze. “I appreciate that, Mrs. Ottinger. I know supporters of Julius Embers often view me as the villain.”

  “I want you to know,” I said, traveling two more steps, “I had no idea Julius Embers used me in that advertisement until I arrived in San Diego over a week ago.”

  “Oh … really?” He lifted his copper eyebrows. “He didn’t obtain your permission?”

  “No, and I wouldn’t have given it to him, either. Stephen told me all the ways Julius doctors his images. Double exposures, alterations in the developing process—”

  “Believe me, I know all about the tricks of the trade, Miss Black. I’ve investigated all those possibilities with Julius Embers numerous times, but I’m afraid the man is either outsmarting me or genuinely photographing spirits.”

  “But Stephen was so insistent it’s all a hoax,” I said.

  “I know, I know—I understand Stephen’s concerns entirely. An amateur photographer who becomes a false celebrity is just about the worst thing a real photographer can encounter. But I can’t find one shred of evidence that Julius is a fake.”

  I squeezed the handrail. “Isn’t there anything else you can do?”

  “Mary Shelley.” Aunt Eva shook her head at me. “Please don’t tire yourself out with subjects that upset you. Go back to bed.” She turned to our guest and grabbed the doorknob. “Thank you so much for stopping by to see how she’s faring, Mr. Darning.”

  “If there’s anything I can do to help with your investigation,” I said before Aunt Eva could shut the door on the man, “please let me know.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Darning. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He took a parchment-colored business card out of the breast pocket of his brown coat. “And when you’re feeling better, I invite you and your aunt to come to my studio for a complimentary sitting. I’d love nothing more than to show Julius Embers I can create a superior print of one of his prized subjects—even without a spirit involved.” He handed my aunt the card, placed his derby back on his copper hair, and bid us a cordial good-bye in that gentle baritone voice that made me ache for home.

  Aunt Eva shut the door and looked my way, her eyebrows raised. “Why were you calling for your father when you came down?”

  “His voice sounded like Dad’s.”

  “Oh.” She averted her eyes from mine and hugged her arms around herself. “I know how that feels. There’s a man at church who sounds like Wilfred.”

  “May I have Mr. Darning’s business card?”

  “Why?”

  “Just to have it.”

  “No.” She tucked the card into her apron
pocket. “I don’t want you trying to get Julius in trouble when he’s grieving for his brother.”

  “I wouldn’t. If Mr. Darning is interested in debunking frauds, I’m guessing he enjoys science. I’d like to write to him and ask him some questions—to give me something to do.”

  “You don’t need to be corresponding with a grown man you barely know. I’ll put his card in my file in the kitchen, and we can consider the complimentary photograph in the future.” She pointed upstairs. “Now go back to bed before I make supper and draw your bath. You’re still paler than a ghost.”

  “Have they buried Stephen yet?”

  She lowered her arm. “What?”

  “Have they held his funeral while I’ve been recovering?”

  “No. Not yet.” She cast her eyes away from me again. “They’ve been waiting for his body to come home.”

  A sharp pain pierced my stomach. “Let me know when they do, all right?”

  She nodded. “I will.”

  I retreated back up to my room on unsteady legs.

  To chase away images of Stephen’s body coming home in a casket, I forced myself to imagine him crawling through the porthole windows of his family’s studio to save the photography equipment from the salty air, as he told me he did. He probably had to somehow scale the outside walls just to reach the high openings and risked breaking an ankle to jump down to the studio’s floor. My lips turned in a small grin at the thought of Stephen’s acrobatic feats of heroism. But I had to wonder what was happening to the camera’s precious metal and glass now that he was no longer there to protect it.

  I pulled a box of matches from the top drawer of my bedside table, lit the pearl-hued oil lamp, and checked in with Uncle Wilfred’s compass before climbing back into bed. My legs found their way under the sheets, and I was about to sink my head into the pillow when my brain registered something my eyes had just seen. I sat upright and looked again at the compass. My mouth fell open. A shivery chill breezed down my spine.

  The needle had stopped following me. For twenty-two more seconds, the little metal arrow directed itself with steadfast attention toward two objects across the room—two objects related to the person who had just dominated my thoughts.