Mistress of Souls

by Michelle Zink

  The house was strange and quiet with everyone gone. Alice hadn’t realized how many everyday sounds had made their way to her, even when she was Spellcasting in the Dark Room. Now there were no servants moving about, the wood floors creaking under their heavy footsteps. There were no pots clanging in the kitchen, no occasional crash when something was dropped on the floor, shattering to pieces. There were no baritone voices of men speaking outside the windows, discussing with Edmund the groundskeeping, the supply of wood, the maintenance of the carriages. The horses didn’t nicker when she walked to the top of the hill overlooking the lake, for there was no one to exercise them.

  There was only the wind whistling through the trees, branches smacking the window in the dead of night, the sound of her own voice turning circles in her head, the sound of the Souls calling her to the Plane, whispering.

  “Join us, Mistress…. He waits….”

  She began to wonder if she was going mad, for there had been a time when she could only hear them in the place between wakefulness and sleep, or on the Plane. Now she heard their whispering inside her head even as she paced the empty halls, the grandfather clock ticking slowly, heavily from the foyer. They called to her when she walked the grounds, their voices rushing with the wind through the bare branches in the trees.

  “Alicccccce…Come….”

  Eventually she would find her way back to the Dark Room. She would pull back the rug and sit in her circle. Knees folded under her, she would mutter the familiar words, words taught to her by the Souls almost before she could speak. It had come as a surprise that Lia had never learned them, though the Souls had explained that Lia had no interest in learning the darker side of her craft. Is this why they had chosen Alice? Why Samael himself aided her? Because she was instinctively aligned with their dark purpose?

  She pushed the thought away when it arose. There was no point questioning her position. No point wondering why she was not like Lia, why Lia was not like her. They were who they were, and Alice had learned long ago that there was no pleasure in trying to be her sister. She could not beat Lia, could not best her at being the good one.

  But here was something Alice could do. She could commiserate with the Souls. She could work to their gain, and they would look upon her with pride. Samael himself, the Beast who would rule the world, gazed upon her with something akin to adoration. And if the darkness of her soul inspired fear or even revulsion in her father, her aunt, her sister, at least it was hers and hers alone.

  It was something.

  After the servants were dismissed, she had emerged from the Dark Room only when the hunger gnawing at her stomach became unbearable, her head dizzy with faintness. She would make her way to the kitchen and pillage the icebox and pantry, hurriedly shoving anything she could find into her mouth. Pieces of stale bread, hunks of cheese, apples beginning to grow mealy, spoonfuls of honey. It didn’t matter. She ate until the hunger pains subsided and then left everything as it was, not bothering to clean up.

  Sometimes after eating she roamed the house, humming the tuneless melody, running her hands along objects that should have been familiar but which inspired no feeling, no memory in the part of her mind still cognizant of the physical world.

  Now, she rose and stretched, pushing thoughts of the past aside, the hunger at last more than she could bear. Her legs were stiff as she made her way through the quiet house to the kitchen. She gave no thought to what she would eat. She would simply open the cupboard and eat what was there, as she had been doing since the servants left.

  Except for one thing: This time, the kitchen was barren of food.

  She did not remember eating the last of it, but she opened every cupboard, every drawer, and finally had to admit that there was nothing.

  After considering her options, she put on her boots and headed for the icehouse, surprised to find that the snow had melted. She searched her mind for clues as to how much time had passed since Virginia’s departure. Was it one month? Two?

  Alice had no idea. The thawing ground was her only clue.

  The icehouse door creaked as she opened it, and she had a fleeting hope that there might be meat, something she could cook until it was tender and juicy, the flesh falling off the bone. Her stomach growled at the thought.

  But the hope was futile. There was no meat. No anything.

  In a fit of desperation, her stomach so empty it felt like it was turning in on itself as if she were eating herself alive, she made her way to the barn. The animals shuffled listlessly as she stumbled into the stable, and she was horrified to see that many of them were gaunt. She had not given thought to their care when firing the servants. She had only wanted to be left alone.

  Ashamed, she forced her own hunger aside long enough to haphazardly shovel forkfuls of hay into each stall. Then she turned her attention to the cattle.

  She’d never milked a cow before, but it didn’t matter. Their udders were full, swollen and leaking. It was a simple matter to get the milk, and she drank from an old tin cup until her stomach was full. Then she collapsed into the hay, despair weighing heavily on her shoulders until she accepted the inevitable.

  She would have to go to town for supplies.

  It took her some time to rig the carriage. She had never had to do so before, as Edmund had always brought it around to the front of the house, leaving her and Lia with nothing to do but climb into the cushioned interior.

  The horses stomped and shuffled while she worked, her hands numb with cold as she put the bits into their mouths and struggled with the harness. When at last she was done, she boarded the driver’s seat with trepidation, encouraging the horses forward with a soft flick of the reins. She held them back—half fearing they would detach from the carriage because of some forgotten piece of the process—as she steered the carriage toward the long drive leading from the house. But by the time she turned onto the road leading to town, she felt braver, the carriage secure behind her, though it did creak and groan mightily, something she had not noticed while cocooned within its interior.

  Her bravado grew as she continued on the straightaway toward town, and she loosened her grip on the reins, half standing in the seat and prompting the horses to go faster with a loud and raucous “Hyah!”

  They picked up speed, the carriage slipping precariously on the snow-covered road. She laughed aloud as the wind whipped at her face, stinging her cheeks and causing her hair to fly like a banner behind her. She hardly noticed the approach of town, the stares of passersby as they headed the other direction. It was like flying on the Plane, and for a moment, she was as free in this world as she was in the others.

  She entered the town proper with a clatter, pulling the carriage to an abrupt stop in front of Owning’s General Store. She looked around, suddenly unsure. Did one tie the horses to a post while one went inside? Pay someone to keep watch over them? She thought back to Edmund, trying to see him as he was when he dropped her and Lia in town for errands or when he accompanied them to the door of Wycliffe. No, she was quite sure he simply left the carriage by the walk, which must mean the horses knew not to run.

  She stepped down from the carriage and marched toward the shop, holding her head high, though she heard the whispers on the street, saw the not-so-surreptitious glances. The Milthorpes had always been a curiosity, but where before she had been proud of the attention, now it was disconcerting. Somehow, without Lia’s quiet presence and the knowledge of her family ensconced safely at Birchwood, Alice felt on display, an oddity.

  She stepped into the warmth of the store. Her eyes scanned the items on display, the shelves and shelves of packages, the barrels full of dry goods. She had been inside the store before, accompanied by friends looking to purchase sweets, but never to buy necessities. She didn’t even know what she required, had never so much as made herself tea or toast.

  “Good morning, Miss Milthorpe,” a voice said from behind her.

  She turned, her eyes lighting on old Mr. Owning, proprietor. “Good mornin
g.”

  “How can I help you this fine day?” His gaze took in her appearance. She thought she saw pity in his eyes, and when she turned her eyes to her reflection in the glass she understood why. Her hair was wild, a tangle of curls whipped into a frenzy by the wind, her cheeks red. She was grateful for the coat over her gown. It occurred to her that she had been wearing the same dress for at least three days.

  She only briefly considered attempting to right herself. Better to appear confident and cavalier. She did not want or need the pity of this man or any other.

  “I require some things,” she said haughtily. “I assume we still have an account?”

  The old man nodded. “Of course. Your aunt informed me of her extended trip to London, said I was to honor your account and that the solicitor would settle it each month.”

  She did not register the whole of his statement. Her mind was stuck on one word and one world alone. “London?”

  Old man Owning looked confused. “That is where your aunt was headed, isn’t it?”

  She nodded briskly. “Of course. Yes.”

  It should come as no surprise. Where else would Virginia run than to be with Lia? What else would she do when faced with Alice’s darkness than run to Lia’s light?

  And yet Alice felt the knowledge like a knife to the heart. One more time she was left behind, forgotten, while Lia had attention enough for both of them.

  She pushed the thought aside, turning her back to Mr. Owning. “Can you help me fill an order, then?”

  He took a notepad from his pocket, and she began to list the things she wanted. At first it was difficult to know what she required, but it did not take long to get over her initial uncertainty. She started with the basics—flour, sugar, coffee, tea—adding to the list as her eyes roamed the store: tins of butter cookies; potatoes; apples; fresh cheese wrapped in cheesecloth; loaves of thick, crusty bread; jars of preserves. If the old man was surprised by the size and variety of her order, he gave no indication of it. He simply turned away when she was done and began collecting things from the shelves and barrels.

  After charging her purchases to the Milthorpe account, she placed the packages in the carriage. Then, not quite ready to return to the isolation of Birchwood, she made her way down the walk.

  It was cold, even with her coat on, and she stuffed her hands inside her pockets and hunched over against the wind, not caring if it was unladylike. Every shop held a memory, and she felt her heart grow heavier with every step. There was the candy shop where her mother had purchased sweet sticks for Alice and Lia when they were little, the hotel where she had taken them to tea. There was the milliner where they had hats made when they did not order them from abroad, the dressmaker who made some of their gowns.

  And there, right next to the stairs leading to Wycliffe, was the Douglases’ bookstore.

  Her pace slowed as her gaze fell on the window, “Douglas’s Fine Books” rendered in gold script across it. She hesitated. James Douglas and his father were the only two people she truly knew outside of Birchwood. Or rather, the only two people she knew who had not yet shunned her.

  She turned and carefully opened the door, wanting to avoid the tinkle of the bell, not quite sure she wanted to speak to the Douglases at all and knowing she would have no choice if they heard her enter the shop.

  It was quiet, the soft murmur of voices in the back room the only sound, save for the clip-clop of horses outside and the muffled rattle of carriages outside the store. She ducked behind a shelf of books that nearly reached the ceiling at the front of the store. It had been ages since she’d been in the Douglases’ bookshop on anything other than a school assignment, since the early days of Lia and James’s courtship, when Lia would insist they stop in on their way to or from Wycliffe.

  She pulled a book from the shelf. It was a book of poems by John Keats, and she opened the cover, inhaling the scent of paper and ink, of cloth and dust. She had always loved the smell, but Father’s library and all the books housed there had been Lia’s domain, and she and Father had ruled supreme within its walls. Alice went there only in the dark of night, pulling books from the shelves, opening them just to sniff the place where the paper met the binding, choosing one or two to secret back to her chamber.

  This she had never confessed to anyone. To do so would be an admission of desire, a plea for acceptance into a club that would never truly admit her. The humiliation of it would be too great. Better to hold her head up and pretend she didn’t want it. To pretend that she wouldn’t accept it even if it were offered, for who wanted to spend their time in the confines of the dull and dusty library when one could be outside in the fresh air and wind?

  She looked down at the book in her hands. It was open to “Ode to a Nightingale,” and she read the first words silently, letting them wash over her like gentle waves.

  My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

  My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

  Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

  One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

  ’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

  But being too happy in thine happiness,—

  That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

  In some melodious plot

  Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

  Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

  She was pondering the meaning of the words when the bell on the door rang, followed by high-pitched laughter. Stepping to the end of the row of shelves, she hid behind them, watching as a group of three girls made their way to the back of the store without so much as a glance her way. She stood, listening as they spoke. She could not quite make out the words, but they were followed by a deeper voice, which she recognized as James’s.

  She clutched the Keats book to her chest as she strained her ears to listen, but she could make out nothing more than a murmured exchange. A few moments later, the girls’ voices got louder, and Alice knew they were returning to the shelves at the front of the store. She held her breath as they came closer, exhaling only when they turned into the row of shelves next to the one behind which she hid.

  “Now, that is a gentleman with whom I’d like to stroll,” one of the girls said suggestively.

  They snickered, and Alice eased forward, peering through a gap in the shelves where the books were removed on both sides.

  Now she could see them, Victoria Alcott and Hope Chesterfield, together with another girl Alice did not recognize. They were perusing the books aimlessly, more intent on their observations of the man who had been her sister’s beloved.

  “I wonder if he’s still pining after Amalia Milthorpe,” said the unfamiliar girl.

  Victoria laughed harshly. “If he is, he’s a fool, and I’d not like him to court me anyway. Everyone knows the Milthorpes are cursed.”

  Alice’s heart thumped wildly in her chest, a slow fury beginning to boil in her veins.

  “Do you think so?” the girl asked softly. “I think it’s very sad, everything they’ve suffered.”

  “When I was home on holiday, my mother said there have been dark goings-on in that house,” Victoria said. “She said there always have been.”

  “But don’t you think that is nonsense?” Hope asked. “Superstition? Perhaps they are simply unlucky.”

  Victoria snorted. “If it is simply a matter of luck, I’m the queen of England. Both parents and a brother dead in ten years? And no disease? No injury?”

  “I heard the brother fell into the river,” Hope said.

  Victoria raised her eyebrows. “In a wheelchair? What, pray tell, would a crippled boy be doing close enough to a river that he could drown in it?” The other girls were silent as she continued. “And I’ll tell you something else I heard: Amalia and Alice were with him when he drowned.”

  “You’re not suggesting they had something to do with it?” Hope asked.

  “Well,” Victoria said slyly, pretending to scan the books on the shelves in
front of her. “Lia has run away to London.”

  “Lia?” Hope gasped. “Surely not her. Why, she was as meek as a mouse. If anyone was involved it would have to have been Alice. Weren’t you friendly with her, Victoria?”

  Alice studied Victoria’s face through the stack of books, watching as her smugness turned to panic. “Not really,” she said coolly. “We were friendly at one time, but that was ages ago, and I was never even invited to Birchwood Manor. Anyway, Alice always was the strange one.”

  “How do you mean?” the unnamed girl asked.

  “Oh, you know,” Victoria said. “A little too gay, always laughing and making mischief as if her life depended on it, and forcing us to go along, too.”

  “And did you?”

  Victoria hesitated. “Well, yes, but only because we were frightened.”

  “Frightened?” the girl said in surprise. “Frightened of what?”

  Victoria put the book back on the shelf. “Why, of Alice, of course. She had a mean streak a mile wide. You were either her ally or her enemy, and no one wanted to be her enemy. We were only nice to her to stay on her good side, not because we actually liked her.”

  Alice’s cheeks were on fire, her face aflame with shame as the girls twittered about getting back to class before their absences were noted. They shuffled out of the row of shelves, and Alice moved back into the shadows, waiting for the bell on the door to signal their departure. When it did, she leaned back against the shelf, the breath leaving her body in a rush, her heart pounding wildly, though she could not tell if it was from anger or humiliation.

  That little wretch! How dare she? Alice had been Victoria’s friend, had included her at a time when being included by Alice Milthorpe made one part of an exclusive inner circle.