by G A Chase
It didn’t take long for Miss Fleur to explain the situation, though Myles thought the woman overly romanticized Colin’s desire to save his daughter. In the journey of pure spiritual energy, the young child no longer looked like the body she’d been cast into by Colin. She’d reverted to the image she still held of herself as the girl who’d died so long ago. The straight strawberry-blond hair of her replacement body had become curls and ringlets of shimmering white.
The adult version of Sere had let her hair grow long enough that the unruly locks had become gentle waves. “What can I do to help?”
How am I supposed to know? I’m not a doctor of the soul—just the ambulance driver. “She needs to remember who she truly is. All we can do is tell her who she is to us. None of us can see deep enough into her soul or understand how that connects to who she may become.”
The woman smoothed the girl’s disheveled hair from her eyes. “It’s okay, Sere. I know you’re not sleeping. Open your eyes.” The woman’s tone was unnecessarily brusque.
The girl opened her eyes and struggled down from Myles’s arms. “What do you want with me?”
Serephine the adult didn’t even bother bending down to the girl’s level. Her stance wasn’t one of domineering authority, but her straight-ahead face with down-turned eyes carried the message Grow up loud and clear. “I’m here to tell you to stop acting like a little girl. You and I both know who you really are. Your mother and father thought they were raising a sweet, demure little angel. They never bothered to see how much strength it took to take your own life.”
The child cocked her head with a similar look of command. “You weren’t that brave?”
“My bravery took me on a different path than yours did. But then, the man we both called father took two different paths as well. I only know the man you grew up with by looking down at your history. I’m here to tell you one thing and one thing only: you are a badass. Start acting like it.”
Miss Fleur’s breathing was so intense that Myles could hear it. “She’s right, Sere. Your father wanted an innocent version of me, but what neither of us saw was the strength you got from him—not his evil desires but his force of will. If you’re going to survive this world, you’ll need more than I was able to give you.”
Serephine the adult turned to the ghost of her mother. “The woman I see before me also had multiple time lines. You’ve got more strength than you know. As this child grows, hopefully she’ll have a chance to discover the real you.”
Myles had met enough seers to know when one was standing in front of him. “Will Sere grow up to see alternate dimensions as well?”
Serephine turned back to the child. “It’s hard to say. She’s already been through enough to detect the changes, but in the artificial body she inhabits back in the abbey, who she grows up to be is anyone’s guess.”
“But you said I was a badass,” Sere said. “If you can’t see my future, how do you know?”
“You’re the daughter of the devil being raised by an angel. It doesn’t take any special abilities to see what’s possible for you. But with such powerful people in your life, you’re going to have to step up in order to control your own destiny. I still remember what it was like to be your age—who I was and who you still are. You can stop pretending you fit into other people’s plans for you.”
“How do I do that?” the girl asked.
“Be bold. Be aggressive. Don’t worry about being wrong if what you’re fighting for is something you believe in. Accept the strengths your father put in you, but be cautious of his failings. There will always be people around to guide you. Choose your mentors with care.”
Young Sere’s trusting blue eyes made Myles want to protect her from the life the older woman must have seen, but the girl sounded almost relieved at being told she could do more than what was expected of her. “Will I ever see you again?”
“Maybe. Your life is so different from mine that I’m only able to see into your near future. If you follow my advice, you’ll surpass anything I could imagine.”
Sere walked over to Myles and took his hand. “It’s time we went home.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to meet other versions of yourself? We can travel to as many dimensions as you need.”
The child shook her head. “If I’m going to be a badass, it’s time I got started.”
* * *
Though Kendell enjoyed the lullaby, after the hundredth rendition, her voice was beginning to falter. Without accompaniment, keeping to the rhythm established by Miss Fleur was a bit like banging her head against a wall, but she dared not miss a beat. Myles was relying on her to navigate the way home.
When she finally saw them moving on the floor as though coming out of a deep sleep, she gave up on continuing the song. Seeing Serephine sit up between Myles and Miss Fleur almost distracted Kendell from hugging Myles, but she knelt on the floor and wrapped her arms around him so hard she thought she might bruise him. “How did it go?”
He remained on the floor as he came back to full consciousness. “Unexpectedly. We traveled into an alternate time line for Sere. She got to meet an adult version of herself.”
“She was nice.”
Sere’s words made Kendell look down into the light-blue eyes. “Are you feeling better? You look better.”
The girl leaned back in her mother’s arms. “I still don’t know what’s happened to me. This body feels like a dress that doesn’t fit. It itches.” She looked around the room made of stone and lined with old mattresses. “But the demons have left this place.”
Kendell desperately wanted to caress the child’s strawberry-blond hair, but Sere’s quizzical eyes made it clear she was still processing her surroundings. Kendell remembered the feeling of coming out of the demon realm and how paper-thin the divide between dimensions had appeared. Serephine could all too easily revert back to the nightmare she’d just escaped.
“You have experienced something that not many people are able to endure,” Kendell said.
Instead of looking concerned, as Kendell had expected, the little girl smiled as if she had just been paid a compliment. “I’m stronger than most people.”
Myles reached out and caressed the girl’s straight hair. “Yes, you are. Now that you’ve joined our time through Kendell and your mother’s singing, and found your way back to who you are by meeting a version of yourself, do you feel up to working on that body? It will involve going outside. We’ll have to leave the convent. That might be pretty scary. If you start feeling like you’re falling back into that nightmare, just tell us. Kendell will keep singing to you. That seemed to help. If it gets too bad, we can come back here.”
Sere looked at her mother. “Are you coming too?”
Miss Fleur put her hand on the girl’s slender shoulders. “I can’t leave the convent. You can trust these two. They came here to help you.”
The girl looked back at Kendell. “Are you two superheroes?”
“How do you know that term?” Kendell wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.
“I don’t know. It’s just in my head. There’s a lot of stuff in there that I don’t understand.” She looked at Kendell with more curiosity than fear. “How did it get in there?”
Myles leaned on his cane to get off the floor. “Your body and soul are misaligned. I suspect that whatever you’re receiving from the projection in life isn’t just flesh and bone. The sooner we get you comfortable in that body, the better.”
Sere turned back to Kendell. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Kendell wondered if this was how her parents felt when she wouldn’t let go of something. “We’re not superheroes. At least, I don’t think we are.”
Sere scrunched up her face as if she were working out an idea. “You are to me.”
Miss Fleur put her hand against the wall in an attempt to stand, but she only made it halfway before slumping back to the floor. “I think someone needs to help me back to my room. That trip seems to have tak
en it out of me.”
“What is it, Mama?” Sere asked.
One look at the woman’s ghostly-white complexion told Kendell the ailment was more than exhaustion. “Myles can stay with you, Sere. I’ll help your mother back to the nuns.”
“Thank you, my dear.” The woman’s forced smile looked to be hiding a soul in tatters.
Kendell wrapped her arm around the woman’s waist and helped her to her feet. With each step, Miss Fleur trusted more of her weight to Kendell’s shoulders. “I’ll have you back to your bed in no time.”
“Just get me out of sight of Sere,” Miss Fleur whispered. “She can’t see me die.”
As she moved the woman from the room, Kendell tried to make it look like she was taking her time, but Miss Fleur’s words sent panic through her steps. “You’ll be fine once we get you settled.”
“You and I know that’s not true. The nuns warned me about taking too many meetings through their embassy. I suspect they aren’t going to be very happy with me for having left this spiritual plane, but sacrificing what’s left of my life was worth it to save Sere.”
Though the woman wasn’t heavy, each step up the stone staircase required careful footing to prevent her falling.
“Are you in pain?”
“No, but my grasp on reality is slipping. Promise me you’ll take care of Sere. Don’t leave her in this hell alone with Colin.”
Kendell wondered how one little girl could inspire such passion. “She will always be surrounded by love. You can rest easy. We will be her family.”
At the top of the stairs, Brother Aramis and the Reverend Mother took Miss Fleur in their arms. The old nun cast an accusing glare at Kendell. “We’ve got her. Take care of that child before she suffers the same fate. A soul can only exist for a short time when it’s out of sync with its surroundings.”
Kendell rushed down the stairs with a renewed urgency. Though they’d solved two out of Sere’s three spiritual problems, she couldn’t image how they were going to finish transplanting the girl’s soul into the new body. She took a deep breath at the bottom of the stairs. “It’s time we checked in with the band. Professor Yates will want to know what we’re dealing with. Hopefully, by now he’s figured out how to stabilize body and soul.”
Myles gave her a half nod of understanding then turned to the girl. “Do you trust me?”
The girl looked up at Myles, gripping his hand. “Just don’t leave me.”
Kendell’s heart ached to hear those words.
“Never,” Myles said. “Keep hold of my hand. If you feel weak, I’ll carry you. Once we get to the club and talk to our friends, we’ll figure out a way to make you feel much better.”
Sere took Kendell’s hand as well. “Will Mother be okay?”
Kendell found it hard to talk past the lump in her throat. “I hope so.”
Getting through the convent dormitory without exposing Sere to the rush of people attending Miss Fleur was a challenge, but the nuns walked with their customary calm determination without displaying any panic on seeing the child. Kendell wanted to offer some words of encouragement to the caregivers, but the trusting hand in hers made it impossible to speak without breaking down.
Myles led the way out of the building and into the sun-drenched yard. “Your alternate self was right. You’re a very brave girl, Sere.”
“I don’t feel well.”
Myles scooped her up and put her on his shoulders. “Just hang on. We’ll be with friends soon.”
Kendell started singing the lullaby before they left the front gate. Her fear for the child made it hard to control her voice.
Myles held onto the girl’s legs. “Have you ever ridden a horse?”
Her eyes were drooping, and she seemed to be having trouble keeping her balance. “A long time ago.”
“Well, hang on, and I’ll do my best horse trot for you.” He broke into a steady jog.
Running made it even harder to sing, but each time Kendell stopped, Sere started jerking as if she were having a seizure. Her mumbling was accompanied by wild shakes of her head. As they turned the corner toward the club, Kendell was grateful they’d made it that far without the girl slipping into a coma or, worse, an alternate reality.
Myles swung Sere off his shoulders and into his embrace before opening the door. His worried look conveyed to Kendell what he didn’t want to say.
She nodded. Their only hope was that Professor Yates had figured out the problem and had a solution at the ready. Sere’s connection to the strange body wasn’t going to last long at that rate. The music had kept her calm, but like a sedative, it was only masking the problem. Kendell ran ahead and had the speakeasy open before Myles carried Sere into the courtyard.
In the land of the living, the band was already seated with Professor Yates when Myles finished drawing the veve that activated the gate. He took Sere onto his lap. “Her body and soul aren’t matched up. That’s about all I know.”
Like a physician diagnosing a mental illness, Professor Yates stared at the child. “Is she talking like someone from the 1800s, or is she at ease with modern life?”
“She’s not at ease with anything,” Kendell said.
Myles put his hand on Kendell’s back. “She called us superheroes. When we asked how she knew the term, she’d didn’t have an answer. Her use of language doesn’t sound odd, so I’d guess she’s more at home with modern day than when she was a girl in the 1800s. Other than that, she knows she’s Serephine Malveaux, and she recognized her mother. Now that she’s away from her father, she’s been going by Sere. I’m not sure if that’s an emotional-comfort thing or a desire to modernize her name.”
Professor Yates nodded. “I expected something like that. Any fundamental understanding of life that she learned in the 1800s has become a part of who she is—like emotional scars or feelings of love. She has retained that level of self-awareness from her previous life. But traditional learning, like math or science, she acquired from the brain of the child we’re projecting. She’s basically trying to reconcile two streams of mental awareness.”
Polly stood beside the professor. “What can we do? Clearly, she doesn’t have time for philosophical ramblings.”
He shook his head as if realizing he’d let his speculations get the better of him. “We need to modify that body into accepting a soul. If Sere is still with us, as she clearly is, then the problem isn’t with her spirit. Children are much more pliable in accepting a changing reality than adults.”
Polly put her hand on the man’s shoulder. “How do we modify her projection?”
“Ultimately, she needs to be self-sufficient. We can’t let her be dependent on the power we’re sending into hell forever. But for her immediate needs, we’ll need to increase the energy sent to her body. That’s going to drain what we provide to the rest of our virtual reality.”
“At this point, it no longer matters,” Kendell said. “Colin knows what we did. That’s old news. Use all the energy you need. Just save her.”
“You do realize this is paranormally derived energy,” the haggard man said. “It’s not like we’re just using a stronger battery to make a toy run longer. The marionette people in that hell of yours were meant to entertain Colin, not support a human soul. If we’re successful in making her new body independent of our support, I don’t know what that magic will do to her.”
Myles held Sere to his chest. “As always, let’s just face one problem at a time. Colin wants his child revived, but the loas of the dead have other ideas for Sere’s soul. At this point, I don’t intend on giving her to either authority. Once she’s made whole, those two entities are going to be our next concern. Sere needs to be her own person. She has that right. What magic she might possess from our cure will have to wait until later.”
Professor Yates pulled out his cell phone and turned to Polly. “Let’s get started. I’ve developed an app to remotely control the equipment. You watch the girl through the gate while I dial up more power. I don’t
want to overdo it, but we need to get that child back on her feet.”
Polly signaled to the rest of the band, and all four women hunkered down in front of the gate. “We’re going to sing to you, Sere. When you feel up to it, we want you to sing along if you can, okay?”
Kendell hoped the nod from the groggy girl in Myles’s arms was an acknowledgement and not just a sign that she was fading away.
Polly started quietly singing “Come as You Are.” By the second time through, Minerva had added a soft rhythm by tapping on the metal table. Even without their instruments, the band was able to ramp up the energy of their singing in time with the power Professor Yates was sending to the child’s body.
Sere popped off of Myles’s lap, stood in front of the band, and started bellowing out the words with wild abandon. Her shouting echoed off the brick walls. At first, Kendell was relieved to hear the child reveling in her body’s newfound power, but when the fog bank lowered over the club, she started to fear that too much energy had been sapped from life’s projection.
The band members lowered their voices, indicating that Professor Yates was dialing back his instruments. Sere continued to sing at full volume, but her decibel level fell back to a normal human range.
Polly was out of breath from singing. “And I thought my brother’s kids were loud.”
54
Kendell held Sere’s hand as the two of them walked out of the club. Myles, the band, and Professor Yates could discuss the long-term plan for stabilizing the child without her having to listen in. A dense fog remained over the city. Kendell couldn’t see farther than a block in any direction. “How do you feel?”
“Like my brain is channel surfing. I can’t focus on anything for more than a few seconds.”
You guys better figure out something better than this damn fog. “Let’s go walk by the river. I find the water helps calm my thoughts.”