The Land of Yesterday
Page 15
Widdendream’s spirit reeled as if slapped. “I would have never done anything to hurt any of you purposely—I loved the Dahl family without question or measure!” It turned its back and paced through the water up to its knees. “Not that it matters anymore. Don’t you get it? There is no moving on from here. Without a family, I have no purpose. That’s why I left my cage, which house spirits never do because once we leave, our cages crumble, and then . . . we die.” The soul spun to face her. “And soon after, our houses die, too. It’s over, Cecelia. So do me a favor, and leave me alone.”
Cecelia reached out and grabbed its frigid hand. “Sorry, Widdendream, but you don’t get to dismiss me that easily. I’ve lost a lot, too. Besides,” she continued as the slippery soul pulled away, “if what you say is true, then what have you got to lose?”
The grim soul stared at her a long time before it relented with a sigh. “Very well. If you’re so interested in hearing about the devastating string of events that occurred that dreadful night, I’ll tell you.” Dual sparks blazed in its eyes. “Like all good tragedies, this story begins with love.”
When a horrible truth drew near, fear tagged along, no matter how brave the one receiving that truth had grown.
Cecelia clutched her pen tighter, bracing for what was to come.
“Long ago, when my walls were sturdy and my paint fresh, I was truly a sight to behold. One of the first homes in Hungrig, I settled alone on the largest hill. The air was crisp and clean. Daisies sprang up at my feet. I had the mountains and lake for a view. It was wonderful. But inside, I was empty.”
“You had no family.” Cecelia glanced back at the wall into which her family had entered and never returned. Photographs of their happy faces drifted lazily upon the groundwater in currents of tears. She pushed back the steel lump of sadness rolling up her throat and turned around to face the small sad soul. “That must have been lonely.”
Widdendream nodded, staring out the dark attic windows and into the sea. “It was—at first. But soon, new families came. Some I loved, some I liked, others I didn’t understand at all. Yet every family that moved in treated me as if I were an object, a soulless structure without a heart, mind, or feelings—until your mother’s family came along.” It regarded Cecelia with a shy glance, its mist brighter than moments before. “Until Mazarine arrived, no one had even bothered to give me a name.”
Cecelia smiled fondly. “I remember Mother telling me that story. ‘Widdendream,’ she proclaimed at tea, then clinked her teacup against her bedroom wall to seal the deal. She told me you laughed so happily, she never wanted your laughter to end.”
“That was the greatest day of my life.” Widdendream’s soul pushed through the calm water, mists trailing it like a veil. “Right after your mother named me, the W appeared on my chest. I was happy, for many years. I had Mazarine, then Aubergine, and for a while, I had you and Celadon. But those days didn’t last long.”
Cecelia sighed and thought back on her life with Widdendream. How she got older and let it go. She never realized how much more she took than she gave, but she wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“You and your brother got older, and often had better things to do than spend time with a broken-down house. Still,” Widdendream continued with a half smile, “at least I had Mazarine. From the moment that girl came through my door, she always had time for me. To read to me, talk with me, or just sit in silence with me. She knew me better than anyone, and I knew her.” It covered its face with its hands. “I loved her,” it sobbed. “I loved all of you.”
“Widdendream—”
“No. I don’t want your pity.” The broken spirit waded toward the windows. It gazed upward through the darkling seawater as if beholding a starry night sky. “Once you hear my confession about how your brother died, you won’t want to pity me.”
Oh souls. She’d been right. Widdendream was hiding something about Celadon’s death. Cecelia gripped her pen tighter and shifted on her knees.
“The day before Celadon’s fall, the winds blew so hard off the lake they whipped through the cracks in the attic walls and into the bars of my cage. My spirit grew feverish, my cage sick, and I shook with cold. Your mother sat in the attic with me for as long as she could, while you and Celadon fought in your room over paper dolls.”
Cecelia nodded. “I remember.” By the troubled look on the spirit’s face, Cecelia knew what came next.
“After supper, you broke the banister, and offered to let me fix it. I jumped at the chance because you were right—I liked doing things for myself.” It paced faster now, the twin fires in its eyes blazing. “So, sick or not, I agreed. Even though it’s not what Mazarine wanted, I wanted to—for me! Getting older, everything starts falling apart. It’s terrifying. Big things you have to let others repair for you. But until the spirit leaves the house and dies, fixing those small broken things keeps us alive, makes us feel like we still have worth.”
The small greenish-yellowish soul faced Cecelia. It moved toward her, bathed inside her growing light. The tears around it swirled.
“After you and Celadon went to bed, I placed the banister knob on the top of the railing where it belonged, ready to fasten it, good as new. But at the same time, Mazarine approached the stairs. I couldn’t let her see me fixing myself after she told you to do it.” It flicked its eyes onto her. “I didn’t want either of us to get in trouble, so I stopped what I was doing and told myself I’d come back for it later. Mazarine had been on her way to the attic to bring me a vase of daisies to cheer me up.” Misty tears rolled down its cheeks and merged with the seawater below. “But, me being sick, they made me sneeze. Mazarine apologized and whisked them away to second floor, to the table at the top of the stairs. Time passed, and then . . .”
Cecelia gasped. “You fell asleep, too.”
“Yes,” it replied quietly. “Everyone did.”
“I see.”
“I woke a few hours later, shivering and coughing on dust. And, the light sleeper that he was, Celadon woke up, too.” Widdendream sighed. “He didn’t have a lot of time for me, what with his schoolwork and friends, but he did visit from time to time. So it wasn’t unusual that he walked to the attic and”—Widdendream swallowed hard—“sat with me, hoping to make me feel better. And he did, for a time. Then, right before midnight, he started nodding off. I woke him and said, ‘Time for bed, young man,’ and like a good boy, he went.”
Widdendream’s spirit stared up at Cecelia like a lost child, chin shivering with regret. She lowered herself and met its gaze. “Go on, Widdendream, don’t be afraid.”
It blinked a few times and continued.
“Celadon, still groggy with sleep, headed to his room. I shook with fever but watched him go anyway to make sure he got back all right.” Widdendream clenched its tiny fists and pushed them into its eyes. “He stopped to smell the daisies Mazarine put in the vase at the top of the stairs. At that exact moment, I got a chill and shuddered so violently, the vase and table shot forward, and Celadon fell back. The water from the daisies spilled and flowed down my crooked staircase. He grabbed onto the broken knob, but it didn’t hold because I’d forgotten to come back and fix it, and Celadon . . . slipped.”
Shuddering, Widdendream removed its fists from its eyes. When it looked at Cecelia, its sadness mirrored her own.
“Can you see why I hate myself? I was so distraught and scared I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stop coughing long enough to help him, not in my house form anyway, or my thrashing body might have hurt him even more. But if I left my cage to try and help, as the law of house spirits demands, I wouldn’t be allowed back into my cage. And if I wasn’t allowed back in, I’d have to leave. And if I told your parents what happened, they’d leave me. So I did nothing. I just . . . let him die.”
Widdendream fell on its knees before her, lay its head in her lap, and cried. “I was so ashamed of what I’d done; it was easier just to blame you.” It sobbed into her armor of daisies. Cecelia stro
ked its soft, trembling hand. “I never wanted to hurt anyone. But I thought if your family found out the truth, you’d all leave me. I couldn’t bear being alone, Cecelia. I never could, but getting older made the loneliness worse. I was so afraid of dying alone. But now, after pushing my cage away, too, that’s exactly what will happen.” Its eyes beamed with soft golden light. “It’s shameful how I treated you. And I don’t expect your forgiveness. How could I, when I can’t even forgive myself?”
Cecelia’s tears floated on the water’s surface like blue diamonds as she beheld the small sad thing. The light in its eyes tugged a memory from her mind by the roots.
“Widdendream, do you remember reading me a book called The Wildflowers of Queen Morose? In the story, moments before the heroine is put to death by an evil sorceress, she shouts to her crowd of tormentors, ‘Love is like a wildflower: simple and abundant, able to grow in the most desolate places.’ The wicked crowd boos and mocks her, but she doesn’t care. ‘Ripped from the earth, wildflowers leave holes that store their memory. And always, from this emptiness, new wildflowers grow.’”
Nodding, Widdendream answered with the ghost of a grin, “I remember reading you that story. You couldn’t have been more than five years old.”
“That’s right. And then I asked you why the heroine would waste her last breaths telling those ignoramuses the truth about wildflowers—or love for that matter—when they’d all come to cheer while she died.”
No longer green mist, Widdendream’s body shimmered with pale lemon light. “And I replied: ‘Life cannot grow without hope, and hope springs from a desire to love, and love and life always deserve a second chance.’”
“Yes.” Cecelia regarded Widdendream with kindness. “Celadon’s death was a tragedy. But not you, or I, or Father or Mother, or even Tuesday is to blame. That’s something I’ve learned, Widdendream. All we can do is our best, learn from our mistakes and also from those we love. Then, when we’re ready, we can finally move beyond Yesterday and return to living in Today.”
Move beyond Yesterday and return to living in Today . . .
That’s it.
Captain Shim’s words whispered from memory: “The only way to leave the Sea of Tears is to truly want to be in Today. Focus on where you wish to go, picture it clearly in your mind, and when you’re ready to leave, trust the sea to show you the way.”
If she and Widdendream worked together, maybe they could return to Hungrig, house, parents, and all.
“Widdendream, we need to leave here—now.”
The next second, the last remaining section of Cecelia’s nonpapered skin prickled and pinched. She ran her fingers down the back of her neck to the patch of flesh at the top of her spine. Cecelia focused on the beat of the flesh-and-blood heart inside her parchment chest, and the fact that she wasn’t all-the-way gone, and prepared to make her move.
“Cecelia?” the soul moaned in a sleepy voice. “I don’t feel so well.”
“Widdendream!” Cecelia ran to its side as it slipped to the floor. It appeared weak, dull, thin. One look at its fading spirit told her all she needed to know: soon it would die, and the house, and her parents trapped in its walls, would die with it.
They had run out of time.
Chapter 26
The Pen Really Is Mightier Than the Sword
“Widdendream!” The withered spirit fell to the ground, soft and quiet as starlight. Cecelia scooped it up and sped across the room. She knelt before the part of the wall where her parents were taken in, and set Widdendream’s soul beside her. “I have an idea about how to get us home, so stay with me, okay?”
Widdendream, more translucent each second, stared at the wall with remorse. “But how? Even if we could leave the sea and Yesterday, thanks to me, we’d have no house or family to go back to.” It closed its large black eyes. “I would do anything to return to Today with our home and family intact. But that seems impossible now. . . .”
Cecelia regarded Widdendream’s spirit gently, hesitantly, hopefully. When she spoke, it opened its eyes. “Sometimes the most impossible things are the things most worth fighting for. I’ll tell you my plan, but first, I have to ask: Now that we understand each other a bit better, would you please release my parents from the wall?”
Widdendream shook its head. “I’m so weak. . . . I don’t think I’m strong enough. Still, I suppose I could try?”
Cecelia’s hair bounced around her shoulders and her lantern flared. “Yes, please.”
“Very well.” Widdendream reclosed its eyes. A moment later, the water blanketing the floors trembled. The wall where her parents were trapped shuddered. The baseboard shimmied and cracked. Then everything moving stilled.
Cecelia blinked at the wall expectantly, but Aubergine and Mazarine did not appear.
“I couldn’t do it.” Widdendream’s soul, faded to barely a shadow, covered its face with its hands. “I’m so sorry.”
Cecelia gulped back the fireball of emotion stuck in her throat. She took a few deep breaths and straightened her spine. “Well, we’re still here, aren’t we? And that means there’s still hope. And if there’s a hope of leaving Yesterday and returning to Today, we must keep trying. Mother, Father, and Celadon wouldn’t want us to give up, would they?”
“No,” Widdendream’s spirit answered, mist rising from its body like motes. “They’d want us to fight.”
Cecelia grinned. “All right. Then we must—for them, and for us.”
“For the Dahls,” Widdendream replied with a bit more oomph.
“For all of us.” Just then, Cecelia spotted something from the corner of her eye. Three perfectly cut paper dolls, no bigger than her hand, slipped free of the crack in the baseboard that Widdendream’s soul had made and floated to the water’s surface at once: an aubergine-colored one of her father, a mazarine-colored one of her mother, and a translucent one of celadon green for her ghost brother.
“Oh souls.” Cecelia lifted her family gently and set one atop the other in her palm. “Widdendream, you were strong enough to let them go after all.” She smiled through tears. “Thank you for giving their spirits back to me. Now I can carry them home, too.”
Widdendream, almost invisible, looked away, ashamed. “Tell me your plan.”
“Okay. I know it’s not the same as having a cage of your own, but what if, just for now, I shelter you in my cage alongside our little family, as you did for us all these years? Maybe it would keep you alive and safe until we find you a new cage of your own.”
Widdendream wheezed in a breath. “You are a kind and clever girl, Cecelia. All this time, I always knew that.” It rested its hand on hers. “Your idea just might work.”
Cecelia grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that.” With her free hand, and the generous help of her hair, Cecelia moved the vines covering her middle. The doors of herself opened at once, flooding the attic with light. To her surprise, Cecelia’s cage was no longer rusted or broken, but pristine and new. The brass door unclicked and swung wide. “If you’ll trust me, Widdendream,” Cecelia said, holding out her hand, “this time, I promise to take good care of you.”
The spirit, sheer as a golden haze, smiled gratefully up at her. “Thank you, I would like that very much.”
Widdendream climbed onto Cecelia’s hand and entered her cage. Once inside, the tiny spirit surged with warm yellow light. Grinning like a person-shaped sun, it leaned against her lamp, and lifted one hand in a not-quite goodbye. Widdendream sighed with contentment, made itself at home, and cried tears of joy.
“There,” Cecelia said. “Now that you’re safe, think about your wish to return to Today with our home and family intact. Focus on that wish with your whole heart, all right?” Widdendream’s spirit nodded with eagerness.
Right away, the intoxicating scents of home met Cecelia’s downturned face in a wisp of sweet familiarity: mountain winds blown in off the lake, Widdendream’s library and beloved old books, her freshly washed blankets, green grass and daisies.
A rush of peace, unlike anything she’d ever felt, filled Cecelia so completely, her lantern glowed brighter than ever, even after she closed her doors.
Something Captain Shim said the first time they met rushed back to her: that only those who’d been sad enough to write letters with their unhappiest tears could turn into paper and see such miracles. That the real secret was remembering what made someone shine. Cecelia realized her answer right then.
Her family made her shine brightest of all.
I am their shelter now, she thought. And it’s up to me to protect them.
All at once, songs of home and Hungrig, of lakes and fields, and of wind scented with blooms drifted toward her, calling her from downstairs.
Time to go, Cecelia thought, and hurried toward the door.
The moment she passed through the door frame, Cecelia raised her miraculous pen from her pocket, unscrewed the elaborate brass cap, and removed the corked inner canister of her saddest, most desolate tears. Cecelia took a deep breath, popped the cork, and let her tears go. They fell to the water at her feet in a pale-blue stream and blended with the tears of the world.
Cecelia had never felt so free.
In a slow dance of daisies and hair, Cecelia descended the staircase. And every joy and happiness her family had brought her whirled back in a flood: giggling with her mother over silly jokes nobody else would understand, heart-to-heart talks with her father as they worked on inventions side by side, the safety of being wrapped in their arms. She remembered the elation on Celadon’s face whenever he’d asked her to play and she’d said yes—and, oh, it was the most beautiful smile. She recalled Widdendream singing “You Are My Sunshine” to her on cloudy days, and how good it always made her feel. At the same time, Cecelia remembered how strong she was. How she laughed from her belly, smiled at strangers, and treated animals with tender care. And she made sure to forgive herself, as she had forgiven everyone else. She remembered that she was good. That she loved her family eternally, and also, she loved herself.