Jane of Fire

by Jessica Penot

  Chapter 23

  It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.

  ~ Emily Bronte

  The next night I knew I had to tell Sara and Mary about everything. Sinjun was hiding in his room. Mary and Sara were packing for the Haiti trip. They still thought I was going.

  They sat on the sofa and I brought them each a drink. “I have to leave tomorrow,” I told them.

  “What?” Sara asked in disbelief.

  “CPS came for me. I am an unsupervised minor.”

  “That is insane. We’re watching out for you,” Mary said. “We can vouch for you, and you’re the most responsible person we know.”

  “It isn’t that easy. When they came to find me, there were beer bottles everywhere and they are holding the whole Rochester thing against me. I have to do what they say. It could have been worse.”

  “Where are they taking you?” Sara asked as she took my hand.

  “I’m going to live with an uncle in New York.”

  Both girls sat in stunned silence. Finally, Mary spoke, “Maybe it’s for the best, Jane. I don’t want to sound terrible, but you are just barely seventeen and some family support wouldn’t hurt you. You could have ended up homeless after the Rochester thing. We want to take care of you, but I’m only twenty. I can’t. We couldn’t even afford an apartment with a room for you.” Mary put her hand on mine. “We were really stressing out about it. We aren’t equipped to take care of you. Family will be good for you.”

  “And we will come visit you every break!” Sara said. “I love New York. You won’t be alone. I will text you and email you.”

  I hadn’t realized how much of a burden I had been on the girls, until that moment. They had felt responsible for me. They felt like they had to care for me. I hugged them both. It was for the best…and Edward was there. I could find Edward in New York if I could just slip under CPS’s radar.

  “Thank you, both.” I was choking up again. “You have no idea how much your friendship has meant to me. I believe this is for the best. I just hope we won’t drift apart.”

  Sara threw her arms around me. “There is no way we will drift apart!”

  We spent the night packing and eating sushi. I was going to miss my friends. Sinjun stayed carefully tucked away in his room. I never saw him again.

  That night I didn’t get any sleep. How could I? I was standing on the precipice of a new life. I had stood on this precipice many times before. I knew it well. After three foster homes, living at Thornfield, and then moving in with the girls, the only constant in my life had been the knowledge that everything I knew and trusted could be yanked out from under my feet in a heartbeat. Every time I had begun to feel safe and secure in any environment, that sense of security was snatched out from under me. So, I sat awake all night, wondering what new wonders or terrors awaited me in my new home, and figuring out how I was going to get away and find Edward.

  Ms. Brocklehurst and Mr. Crumbly showed up at 7:00 a.m. to escort me to the airport. The girls woke up and hugged me. They cried but somehow tears eluded me. It was as if I didn’t have any tears left. Ms. Brocklehurst and Mr. Crumbly were quiet and stiff for our entire journey. They made me feel like I was being escorted to jail. The two sat in uncomfortable silence, on either side of me, for the entire plane ride. Ms. Brocklehurst walked with me to the bathroom when I had to go. It was like she expected me to try to sprint for the emergency exit.

  When we landed, she didn’t let me out of her sight for a second. She practically sat on my lap for the entire cab ride. I tried to pretend I wasn’t on my way to potential lockdown. I had no idea what my uncle was like or what his expectations would be. It was entirely possible that I would have to sneak out my window to try to find Edward. I had never really felt like a normal teenager. I had never felt constricted by rules or trapped in my age. I had never had any rules and if I had, there would never have been any reason to break them. I suddenly felt like how all those girls I hated in high school must have felt. I had looked at them with disdain when I heard them talking about breaking rules or sneaking out for a boy. I finally understood them. I understood what it felt like to be a prisoner of your age.

  Chapter 24

  I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!

  ~ Emiy Bronte

  Despite my brooding, I couldn’t help but become increasingly aware of the city we were driving through. We drove over the Brooklyn Bridge and New York surrounded us like a living organism. There was life everywhere. People crowded the sidewalks and traffic came to a standstill. Buildings towered above us like testaments to the innovation of civilization. My worries began to fade as I became mesmerized by the landscape. We turned by Central Park and I got a view of lush green trees and fairy tale playgrounds. We turned down a street lined with beautiful brownstone buildings, and I watched in wonder as the busy city landscape transformed into a quiet, elegant neighborhood.

  When we finally arrived at my uncle’s townhouse, I practically sprinted to the door I was so desperate to escape my new wardens. The townhouse was a magnificent old home of dark red brick with a stately front door, painted in a glossy dark red. A beautiful fountain featured three young women holding hands in a circle. They wore long flowing robes and wreaths of flowers in their hair. The fountain was situated on the small patch of green that made up the front yard.

  Mr. Crumbly let us in and my two wardens allowed me to explore while they bickered about details and made phone calls.

  The inside was not so magnificent and definitely strange. It didn’t feel like a house at all. It felt like something out of a circus sideshow or a morbid gothic museum. It was filled with artifacts that looked as if they had come from other worlds. Skeletons and bones littered bookshelves, and statues of strange gods and pagan monsters cluttered the tops of tables. I wandered in and out of rooms, filled with shelves of old skulls and shrunken heads and ancient vases, and tried to pull myself together. The oddity of the place helped me with this. The townhouse’s vast open spaces and cold stone floors echoed with the sound of old and dead objects. Tiny skeletons of malformed children stood in glass cases next to ancient relics that claimed magical powers. The townhouse was massive for the Upper West side of New York. It was at least 7,000 square feet of rooms, filled with strange junk covered in dust. There were three bedrooms, a kitchen, and three bathrooms, but the rest of the place was ominously useless. I focused on the old objects and tried to steady my breath. I closed my eyes and tried to remind myself to be calm.

  I found what was clearly meant to be my room and began unpacking. Time lingered. Ms. Brocklehurst and Mr. Crumbly were yelling in an old room filled with pagan dolls. Their voices echoed through the silence. I could tell Ms. Brocklehurst was upset that my uncle hadn’t met us at the door, but I couldn’t fix that. The room that was meant to be mine was clearly set up for a much younger girl. It was pink and had flowers on the wallpaper. The bedspread had tiny roses and there were teddy bears and stuffed animals on the bed. It was the bedroom I would have begged for when I was seven. I lay down on the pink bed and found myself oddly at peace. I drifted off and when I awoke, I could hear them still fighting. I stayed tucked away in my room and waited. Finally, Mr. Crumbly knocked on the door. He escorted me down to the massive kitchen.

  When I first saw my uncle, my impulse was to run. He smiled brightly, but every part of me wanted to head for the door. Of course, that wasn’t an option, so I stood quietly and studied my new legal guardian. I knew his face well. I had seen it in a hundred dreams and nightmares. He had dark skin and dark hair. He looked young, too young to be my uncle. His face was angular, with very high cheekbones and his eyes were dark. If he’d had yellow eyes, skin made of wood, and horns, he would have been Liliana’s Dark Lord.

  “I am your Uncle Cerrus,” he said, extending his hand.

  “I’m Jane,” I responded wi
thout taking his hand.

  “Sorry I was late. I had things to do. Thank the gods for Crumbly, otherwise that stupid cu…bitch would have taken you away.” He smiled again. A perfect smile, with perfect teeth. Why did it creep me out? “You can leave, Crumbly. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  Crumbly bowed. He bowed to my uncle like a serf and ran out of the townhouse like my uncle was King Henry VIII. We stood in awkward silence. I felt small and helpless and he looked completely pleased with himself. He was smiling from ear to ear.

  “You aren’t my uncle.”

  Chapter 25

  Who Knows the end?

  ~ H.P. Lovecraft

  “I am Cerrus.”

  “What are you? Twenty-five years old at the most? You are not my uncle.”

  “Why would you say that?” He seemed more curious than offended.

  “I know you.”

  “Really? How specifically?”

  I ran. I sprinted toward the exit, but there was no way out. He was waiting for me at the front door. He stood calmly, blocking the door with the same stupid smile plastered on his face. But with one difference. His eyes were no longer brown. They were yellow.

  “Don’t you want to know who you are, Jane?” he asked. “Don’t you want to know who you really are?”

  “Let me out.”

  “Jane. Lovely Jane.” He was still smiling. “You can’t leave. I adopted you. You are legally mine.”

  I shuddered. My skin was cold. The only warmth on my body radiated from the tattoos that now covered my entire back. I couldn’t fight him. He was right. I had to stay with him.

  “I know that,” I said quietly.

  “Would you like to know who you really are?” His voice was a caress. It hissed its way through the room like a serpent. I could feel it slithering up my spine.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Or have you figured it out already and you don’t want to believe it?”

  “I am Jane Marsh.”

  “No.” His eyes flashed with a yellow fire. “You are not Jane Marsh. That is their name. You are not one of them and you have never been. You are my Jane. Jane of the morning. Daughter of the Air Spirits. Ghosts follow you and curses are lifted in your presence. You are a daughter of the old ones. You are mine.”

  “You’re crazy. Check yourself into rehab and let me out!” I backed away from him and saw the masks on the walls smiling, too. Their hollow eyes flashed yellow fire. I couldn’t breathe. My heart was pounding in my head. The room started spinning around me. He reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders and I saw his horns. The horns on his head. I screamed and then everything went black.

  I woke up in my pink bed in my pink room. Something cool was on my forehead. And someone was sitting beside me, holding my hand.

  “Are you okay, Jane?”

  It was Cerrus. He was gazing at me in concern. The horns were gone and his eyes were brown, again.

  “You-you said I was a daughter of the air, of the old ones. What does that mean? What do you want with me?

  “You must be tired; you’ve been through so much Jane…You’re overwrought…”

  He squeezed my hand. “Do you want me to call a doctor?”

  I shook my head. “Who are you, really?”

  “I’m your uncle and your legal guardian. You’re safe Jane. There is nothing to be afraid of.”

  My breathing began to steady. I must have had one major freak-out session. Cerrus looked just like the horned man from my dreams. I must have imagined he’d said those things. I was tired. I was stressed. I wasn’t making sense. I had panicked; that must have been it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said in a shaky whisper.

  Cerrus helped me sit up. “No, don’t be sorry. I’m sorry for scaring you.”

  “You are truly my uncle?”

  “I am family. I was there when you were born.”

  “Then why did you leave me?” I hadn’t realized how angry I was. “Why did you abandon me when I was a little kid? They said my mother ran away from home and was in a cult…” I was acting like a crazy person again, but I was having trouble controlling my own emotions.

  “I never left you. I have always watched over you. And those are just stories, told by people like Ms. Brocklehurst, who need to cover up their mistakes. It was horrible what happened to you. But you’re safe now.

  I tried to calm myself. “So, what now?” I asked. I was still crying, but at least I wasn’t hysterical.

  “Now, you don’t need to worry about anything. Go to school. Find happiness. I will take care of you.

  You just need to check in with me daily. Crumbly will stop by once a month and Brocklehurst will be with him, so I’ll be here for those visits. But I won’t stifle you or try to cage you in. You are an amazing young woman. You’ve done fine on your own, so far. I see no reason to scare you or force you to change the way you live. I won’t bother you. I’m hardly ever here, anyway.”

  I covered my face with my hands. “I’m not comfortable with this.”

  “You have been through so much worse, Jane. This is a small hurdle. You were brought here for a reason.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You have to find Edward. True love awaits.”

  “How do you know about him! They told me to stay away from him.”

  “I am not they, Jane. I am Cerrus. I will protect you from them.”

  Nothing he said made any sense. He was so weird and utterly off-putting.

  “This world is only a dream, sweet Jane, and everything up until now has been a nightmare. Nothing will be as it was. I promise you, that you will never be afraid again…Come, I want to give you something.” He helped me up and led me back downstairs to a sitting room, just off the foyer.

  He went to a shelf lined with old books and various artifacts and picked up a small wooden box. He placed it in the palm of my hand. “Open it.”

  Inside, was a handwritten note. It looked like something that had been lost in time, but I recognized the handwriting and the paper it was written on. It was Liliana’s. “Love is the gateway. Love is the key that will set the old ones free.”

  “What does it mean?” I whispered.

  “I wrote those words on you when I left you at the hospital.”

  Fear vanished and something else crept in. Rage. “Why would you do that?” I yelled. “What does it mean?”

  “You were right,” he said. “I am not your uncle…I am your father.”

  All thought fled from me. I felt like a seven-year-old girl again, back in Mrs. Reed’s home when I had to stand up to John Reed, the bully. I was ready to do battle. All the years I had spent hiding my emotions and keeping myself calm and rational vanished. I was young and wild, and I couldn’t contemplate anything beside the moment I was in. I punched Cerrus hard in the face. “Why?” I demanded with clenched fists.

  He grinned at my paltry attempt at violence. “Because my beautiful daughter, you are the one. You are the door to the past and the future.”

  “Are you mentally ill? What does that even mean?”

  “You have to accept that magic is real. Ghosts are real and, just outside this flimsy thing you call reality, there are universes teeming with gods and monsters and magic and beauty and horror. You have to let go of everything and know, in your heart, that there is power in you that is so old and so magnificent that kings and presidents will fall to their knees and shake at the sight of it.”

  “You’re full of bullshit!” My face was flushed with anger. “How do you expect me to believe what you’re telling me, let alone accept it.”

  “You can accept it because you know that it is true. You know that I am the horned king from your dreams and that I am your father. You know that everything you have ever done, or will do, was fashioned by the gods. The tattoo on your b
ack is calling to you. Edward is calling to you.” He stepped out of the room and pointed to the front door. “Go. Answer the call. Open the door. Let your passion set you free to be who you were born to be.”

  I shook my head.

  Cerrus laughed. “Sweet daughter, I am not here to upset you. Take your time. I have traveled through time and space to bring you here. Time doesn’t matter. Find joy. Spend money. Go shopping. There is an amazing library here. Read. Go see a play.”

  He handed me a check card. “Everything you ever wanted is yours now. There is nothing you can’t do or have.” He handed me a piece of paper with an address on it.

  “What is this?”

  “Edward.”

  I took the paper. The address was only three houses down.

  You can’t escape who you are and what your destiny is Jane. Edward is part of it.

  Had Cerrus spoken or had I said those words to myself?

  I looked up. Cerrus had vanished, which made me even more furious and confused.

  Chapter 26

  The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them. They walk serene and prima, undimensioned, and to us unseen.

  ~ H.P.Lovecraft

  I sat on the floor of the foyer with my back against the front door and pulled my knees up to my chest. I remembered the dream I had about the old house with the red front door. The door to Cerrus’s townhouse was red. Everything I had feared was happening. I wanted to curse and scream. I wanted to yell, but instead, I sat curled up in a ball and quietly tried to make sense of everything. I looked down at my arms. The vines from my tattoo had moved down to my wrists. I looked at the paper with Edward’s address on it. Without thinking, I stood up and opened the door. I stepped outside into the sunshine and walked to Edward’s house and found myself staring up at the elegant brownstone.