by Hester Fox
34
I POUND DOWN the stairs, right to the front door when I stop. Catherine is standing by the window in the parlor, bathed in the predawn light of a snowy day. Her shawl has fallen off, and she bites at her fingers as she gazes out into the palette of whites and grays.
“Catherine?”
She doesn’t move and I catch my breath, wondering if perhaps she too is nothing more than a spirit. But when I say her name a second time, she slowly turns around. Even in the dim light her face is pale, her eyes bloodshot.
“When Cyrus was here yesterday I heard him say you and he had an agreement. What did he mean?”
“Oh,” I say with a little breath of relief, “I thought something was wrong.” There’s no time for this, to explain everything. And even if there was, what does it matter? “I don’t know. I suppose it was just drunken rambling.”
She nods, but doesn’t look convinced. “Lydia,” she says, not meeting my eye, her fingers hovering near her lips, “I think that I...that is, I’ve been—”
“Can this wait?” I glance out the window where the first weak fingers of light are struggling over the trees. “I have to go.”
She opens her mouth to say something, but there’s no time. I might already be too late.
* * *
The first snowflakes are starting to fall as I plunge into the still December morning. I’ve barely gone as far as the front walk when a pale little form appears out of the frosty mist.
As soon as I see her all else is forgotten.
Emeline looks much the same as the last time I saw her; she has not decayed further, nor is she crawling with maggots, and thank God. But she is pale to the point of translucence, nearly as sheer as Mary Preston.
I run to close the distance between us, mindless of the ice and snow. “Oh, Emeline.” I skid to a halt, falling to my knees in front of her. “Thank God you’ve come back. I... I know how to help you now,” I tell her. “You need only say the word and I will make sure that you are free to rest.”
She shakes her head. “Not yet,” she says. “Not until it’s over. I won’t leave you until it’s over.”
A chill—heavier than the December cold—settles over me at her words. “Where are they, Emeline?” I ask in a whisper.
“You know where they are.”
I close my eyes. Surely the pond is too deep in the woods for even tall men like Cyrus and John to be able to reach in the snow. I visualize John waking up, throwing on his greatcoat, and going to his desk to retrieve his pistol. Where does he go next? Where would he have told Cyrus to meet him? I take a deep breath, clearing my mind. And in an instant, I know.
I open my eyes, and Emeline is gone.
Joe cleared our drive of snow but one look at the road reveals that little carriage traffic has passed through in the last few days. I might be able to make it to town, but all the way to the old mill? My boots are a lady’s boot, pretty and sturdy enough for a turn around the park, but not for trudging through ankle-high snowdrifts.
But there’s nothing to be done about it, so I gather up my hem and start picking my way to the road, trying to ignore the icy bite of the wet snow through my stockings. Oh, why could John not have left well enough alone? What happened after they left the house yesterday? How could they have talked or argued or whatever it was they were doing right through the night until dawn and come to this conclusion?
I’ve hardly gone three steps when behind me the door slams. “Miss, wait!”
Ada is throwing on a shawl, hurrying toward me. “Where are you going? And without your good cloak. You’ll catch your death!”
“Mr. Barrett’s in trouble.” I swallow. “I think... I think he and Cyrus are going to duel.” It seems so ridiculous when I say it out loud. “I have to stop them.”
There’s silence for a beat, and then Ada’s thin voice and determined step falls in behind me. “I’m coming with you.”
“Oh, Ada, I can’t ask that of you.” I don’t tell her that I’m afraid she’ll slow me down, that I already don’t know if I’ll make it in time as it is.
She gives a stubborn lift of her chin. “I’ll not let you go alone.”
I’m already turning around, hands out at my sides for balance as I navigate over the icy gravel. “And I love you for it, but for God’s sake then, hurry.”
But when I glance back, Ada isn’t there. She’s running back to the house, door banging behind her. She must have seen the road and changed her mind. I can hardly blame her. I’m nearly to the bend in the road, lungs already aching from gasping in the cold air, when the sound of horse hooves crunching on the ice stops me.
Bundled up like a fur trapper and leading one of our carriage horses by the bridle, Joe trudges toward me. “It’s no use trying to stop me, Joe. I have to go.”
“Ada said you were determined to take a jaunt into town,” he says with a crooked smile. “Ajax isn’t much used to the saddle, but he’s sure-footed, and so long as you give him his head, he’ll take you as fast as you please.”
Ajax bobs his head impatiently, surveying me out of the side of his dark, rolling eye. I swallow, sure that he would just as soon buck me and leave me with a cracked skull on the side of the road than take me to John.
Joe is already turning him about, looping the reins over the big bay’s head. “What do you say, miss?”
It takes only one look down the winding, icy road to make up my mind. I hitch up my dress, the cold air greedily embracing my stockinged legs. “I say whatever Father pays you, it isn’t enough.”
Joe grins, helping my foot find the stirrup and swinging me up and astride the saddle as if I were a man. Ajax dances nervously, bucking his head up and down. My fingers curl around the reins and into his thick mane.
With a hearty smack to the horse’s flank, Joe sends us off. “You be careful now, miss,” he calls after me. “And you tell Mr. Barrett to leave off this foolishness and bring you home safe.”
Oh, how I hope it’s that simple.
* * *
Joe was right, I need only to give Ajax his head and he carries me swiftly across the icy road, plowing through the snowdrifts as if they were nothing more than tall grass. The wind stings my eyes, tears freezing on my face. I think of the book of magic stories, the one about the girl who could turn herself into a yellow bird at her whim and fly fast and undetected above the treetops. But if such magic is possible, it is still well beyond my meager abilities. It’s all I can do to hunch into Ajax’s neck and try to stay on. He must sense my urgency, because without asking my leave he extends his long legs, gobbling up the ground. We pass the fork in the road, veering into town and across the first bridge. The sleepy little village flies by in a blur of smoking chimneys and tightly shuttered houses.
We follow the path that I took that day with Catherine and Emeline in our pursuit of Snip. What an eternity that seems, another life. John was walking the first day we met him, caught by the summer rain, searching for Moses. And now I must find him in the swirling snow and gray mist.
My fingers are red, purple almost, and cracking at the knuckles. I should have heeded Ada’s advice. It doesn’t matter. I pass over the bridge, the water gurgling and at odds with the still, snowy landscape that surrounds it.
I can barely breathe, and my legs are rubbed raw from the saddle. I just have to go a little farther. The gaping windows and crumbling chimneys of the old mill are already visible ahead. I rein in Ajax, his breath coming as fast and labored as my own, and slide off him, falling hard onto the ground. Scrambling to my feet, I ignore the pain radiating from my sore hips and follow the two sets of footprints that lead around the mill to the river embankment behind it. My heart is in my throat, a silent plea running over and over through my head. Please let me be in time. Please let him be all right.
But it’s too late. Just as I’m closing my eyes and gathering my streng
th, the first shot rings out.
35
THE COATING OF snow that moments ago I cursed I now thank God for, as I slide down the hill faster than I could ever run. My ankle twists under me as I tumble to the bottom, but I’m up in an instant, hobbling as fast as I can. The water runs swift and icy, pounding the mill wheel round and round in a deafening roar. That’s when I see them.
They must have forgone a witness, because it’s just the two men, their figures slashes of black against the white landscape. John stands on the embankment, coat flapping behind him, his shirt open, oblivious to the fast-falling snow. My breath comes out in a hiss of relief, my body slumping into itself. I follow his line of sight to where Cyrus is struggling to load his pistol. John must have had the first shot, and missed.
“John!” My legs are numb, my throat hoarse as I limp with outstretched hand. The wind carries away my words. “John, please! Stop!”
The snow comes faster. Cyrus raises his gun, pointing it into the dizzying whiteness.
My heart lurches to my throat. John might have shot wide on purpose; a gentleman never shoots to kill. But Cyrus? Cyrus is no gentleman.
My ankle is on fire and I can barely do more than hop forward a few slow, painful steps at a time. Even if I could reach John, what good would it do now? But I have to try, so I hobble as fast as I can, trying to attract his attention.
Something is wrong with Cyrus’s pistol—jammed, I think—and he struggles to cock it. All that I know about duels comes from my novels, highwaymen meeting at the break of dawn with their flintlock pistols to settle debts of honor. If those stories are in any way true, then Cyrus will have to count to ten once his pistol is primed and aimed. There is a little time yet.
“John!” I ignore the pain shooting up my leg as I stagger through the snow. My feet are numb and heavy. I’m so close now that I can see his hair dark and plastered to his temple.
It isn’t fair. After everything John and I have been through, do I really have to watch as he throws it all away for the sake of honor? What if Cyrus misses and it goes to John again? Will John aim straight and true this time? He could be arrested for murder. He could hang.
Finally he looks up and sees me. With a quick glance at Cyrus struggling with his pistol and then back to me, he starts running to close the small distance between us. “Lydia, my God, what are you doing here?”
I collapse in his arms in a heap of relief. I made it. I didn’t have to turn myself into a yellow bird, I didn’t have to mutter some arcane spell. I made it here with only the help of Joe and Ajax and my own sheer force of will.
“John, please call it off. I don’t care what he does. He can publish any story he wants. Please, just call it off.”
But John isn’t listening to me. He’s taking my hands in his own and rubbing them. “You shouldn’t be out here. Your hands are frozen. How did you get here? We need to get you back home.”
He scoops me up before I can utter a word of protest. And oh, how wonderful it feels to be in his arms, to know that he is safe after so much heart-pounding anxiety. “Cyrus!” he cries out over my head. “Hold your fire!”
Cyrus looks up in surprise, his pistol fumbling in his hands before he regains control of it. “Lydia?” He gapes for a moment.
But instead of lowering his pistol, he raises it, training it on John. “Put her down, Barrett! We still have unfinished business.”
John’s fingers tighten around me. He mutters a curse. “Don’t be a fool! Would you see her hurt?”
Through the snow I can see a ripple of uncertainty move through Cyrus’s body, but his pistol doesn’t waver from John. “Put her down and let her see who the real man is.”
“John.” My voice comes out in a whimper.
Gently, he places me down, and I wince as my weight lands on the twisted ankle. He takes me by the shoulders and squares me to look at him. There are dark smudges under his eyes and I wonder what happened last night. How did it go from talking sense to Cyrus to coming out here in a snowstorm to point pistols at each other?
“I want you to go back to the edge of the woods and wait for me there. If...” His words trail off and he shakes his head. “Just, wait for me there and don’t move.”
It’s no use. With Cyrus’s pistol still trained on him, both men watch me as I hobble back to the trees.
Tears sting my eyes as I brace myself against a pine tree. Anger roils my insides. It’s not fair, it’s not right. But I’m not helpless. I may not understand the breadth of my abilities, or even how to channel them quite yet, but I know enough. I have my memories and my natural instincts, as well as what I learned in my books and from Mary Preston. But, I promise myself, this will be the last time I use them in anger.
It doesn’t matter if John sees what I am now, what I can do. If he is disgusted by me, at least he will be alive and capable of such thoughts, instead of dead in a box in the ground.
I’m not cold anymore, a warming calm wrapping itself around me. Tingles run down the length of my arms to my fingers. My body vibrates. Red tints everything around me from the porcelain snow to the gray sky above.
I feel alive, at one with every snowflake that melts on my skin, every lick of wind that raises my hair off my neck. My blood runs in time with the river. My ears roar. It’s all so clear now.
The darkness that has hovered at the periphery of my vision since coming to Willow Hall—the same darkness that gave me strength when I fought Tommy Bishop, the same when I almost lost control with John after Emeline drowned—I can use that. I can grasp it and mold it, make it mine to use as I see fit. The book showed me how. I feel my blood run with the power of generations of women before me, feel Emeline as if she were standing right here beside me. Mary Preston was right, it’s part of me. I see my mother’s kind face, remember her gentle words. There’s not one drop of evil in you, Lydia.
It seems an eternity, but when I look up again at Cyrus, he has only just called out eight of his count to ten. I slowly raise my hand. The air around my fingers is alive, taut, like dogs at the end of their leashes awaiting the command. The sensations that I’ve tried to ignore, to push down inside of me for years come alive. I never knew what to do with them before, but I know now. I will not hide anymore.
My eyes bore into Cyrus as I reach deep inside myself to use every power I possess. I envision his arm twisting around, snapping, the pistol falling as his fingers stiffen. The words from the pages of my book swim through my mind. A witch has a third eye that she may use to see the world not as it is, but as it may be. See what you want to see, bend vision to your will. Everything stills. I focus, hard, on his arm. Far away I hear John’s voice, raised in alarm as he calls my name. Cyrus counts ten.
Three things happen at once.
Cyrus lets out a piercing cry. The crack of a shot rings out through the early morning. And a force slams against my body, searing me with heat and flinging me into the snow, just as my world goes black.
* * *
I’m so cold.
It’s dark when I open my heavy eyes, the only light a hazy orange glow from the dying embers of a fire. Swallowing hurts, and there’s something heavy pressing down on my chest. I try to sit up, but my arms are too achy, and whatever is on me won’t budge. Something wet and cold prods my face.
“Snip,” I manage.
His name prompts two happy thuds of his tail. I let him give me a sloppy kiss on the chin before he tilts his head up, ears pricked at the rustle of movement in the corner.
“You’re awake.” Catherine appears by the bed and Snip lowers his head back down, watching her with wary eyes.
“What...what happened?” My voice comes out in a raspy whisper.
Catherine raises a brow. “What happened? You ran off to play knight in shining armor and almost got yourself killed, that’s what happened.”
An image flashes across my mind of
Cyrus standing with his pistol outstretched. My heart tightens, more painful than the ache in my shoulder. I can barely get the question out. “John?”
She gives an impatient sigh. “Mr. Barrett is wearing out the carpet downstairs waiting to see you.”
I melt back into the pillows, hot tears of relief springing to my eyes. The details don’t matter. John is alive, safe.
Catherine crosses her arms. “So, you and him.”
It hurts to breathe but I take long breath. “Yes, me and him.”
“I suppose I should be congratulating you.”
I don’t say anything.
Catherine moves to the window, restless, worrying at her shawl. “It’s over now, all over, isn’t it? You’ll be married and I’ll be the spinster sister, living with Mother and Father. Who would ever have thought? It’s almost funny the way things turned out.” But there’s no hint of humor in her voice.
I could tell her that it’s a light punishment for everything she put this family through, but what’s the point? If Mother or Father had cared to they might have sent her away, far away, but they turned a blind eye and so her reckless behavior went unchecked. She’s lucky that she’s been afforded the chance to live any sort of normal life at all. But despite it all, I can’t help but feel sorry for her. Maybe it’s because I’m tired of losing those close to me, or I am finally realizing just how fragile and precious life is, but it brings me no joy to see her miserable and cast down.
“I’m sorry, Catherine.”
She turns back to me, her brow raised in surprise. “Sorry?”
“For everything. That we aren’t friends, that you’re stuck here with me when you’d rather be with—”
“Stop it. I don’t want your apologies and I certainly don’t want your pity. You won the day, isn’t that enough?”
“I don’t feel as if I’ve won anything.” Why doesn’t she know it was never a competition? I never wished bad things for her. I close my eyes, wondering yet again what drives Catherine. All my life I’ve tried to understand my sister and the restless spirit and meanness inside her. But now I know, there’s no use trying to understand.