The Kingdom

by Amanda Stevens

  “What does any of this have to do with Asher Falls?” I finally asked.

  “I’m coming to that.” My aunt seemed to muster her thoughts as she idly picked at a loose embroidery thread on her tunic. “Your mama and papa…they lived up there for a while.”

  I almost gasped. “In Asher Falls?”

  “It was a long, long time ago. Caleb hired on with a stonecutter that summer. He loved the work, but Etta hated living in the mountains. She hated that place. Said it was oppressive. It did things to her, played with her mind. She tried to tough it out, but she missed her family. Missed Chaa’stun. So she came home. Eventually, Caleb quit his job and followed her. They reconciled, but things were never quite right. I’ve heard people say that the hardest thing in the world is to live with someone you don’t love. But I’ve always thought it would be far more difficult to live with someone who doesn’t love you.”

  “You don’t think Mama ever loved Papa?”

  “In her own way, I guess she did. But he was never going to be the love of her life and he knew it. That’s hard on a man. Hard on his pride. Understandable, I guess, that he would turn to someone else.”

  “Papa had an affair?” I could hardly imagine such a thing.

  “That was Etta’s suspicion. There was a woman in Asher Falls… I never knew her name. She had no family, no husband or children. She worked as a midwife, I think. I guess she and Caleb were both lonely. Something happened between them. Etta knew, but she put it behind her and she and Caleb never spoke of it. She had other worries by then. Other heartbreaks. So many devastating miscarriages. Years passed and they moved to Trinity. Etta eventually gave up on the notion of having a family. Maybe it was for the best, she said. They were getting too old, anyway. Too set in their ways. And then one night seventeen years later, Caleb was called away. When he returned home, it was in the dead of night. With you.”

  My heart was pounding. “Where did he get me?”

  She shuddered. “From that awful place.”

  “Asher Falls?”

  “You were such a tiny thing and so upset. You cried and cried for days.”

  “Why?”

  “You’d been through some trauma. I don’t know any of the details of your birth. I’m not even sure Etta knows everything. But whatever happened the night your papa brought you home…whatever he found in that town…changed him.”

  By this time, my aunt had worked herself into quite a state. She sat wringing her hands, which was not at all like her. Mama was the high-strung one. Lynrose had always been her rock.

  It was strange, but the more agitated she became, the calmer I grew. I felt almost detached, as if we were talking about a stranger or someone I barely knew. “Who is my mother? My birth mother,” I clarified, because no matter what happened, no matter what I found out, the woman who had raised me would always be Mama.

  “I never knew and that’s the God’s honest truth.” She bit her lip. “But Etta and I have always had our suspicions. You see, the woman we think Caleb had the affair with, the midwife… She had a daughter.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Your mama found a picture among Caleb’s things once, long after he brought you home.”

  I shook my head in confusion. “And the girl…”

  “Was Caleb’s daughter. Your mother.”

  “But if that girl was my mother, then Papa—”

  A tear spilled over and ran down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand as she nodded.

  That moment was very surreal, and I knew later on, I would never be able to describe it. The snapping together of those puzzle pieces. If everything Lynrose suspected was true, then the man I had always known as my adoptive father—my beloved Papa—was in reality my biological grandfather. That was why we could both see ghosts. I had inherited my ability from him.

  My mind flashed back to that first sighting in the graveyard and to the look on Papa’s face when I asked him about the ghost. There had been regret and pity in his eyes because he had known what my life would be like from that moment on. The years of loneliness that faced me.

  I looked down at my clasped hands. The knuckles had whitened. “What about my biological father?”

  She shook her head.

  I thought about the porcelain wing I had found in Papa’s treasures and suddenly I knew it was true. Freya Pattershaw was my mother and Tilly, my grandmother.

  “Why did no one ever tell me any of this before?”

  “Because those memories are still too painful. And because…” She trailed off on a whisper.

  “Because why?”

  My aunt reached over and clutched my arm so tightly, I winced. “You can’t utter a word of what I’m about to tell you. Promise me you won’t tell another living soul.” Her nails dug into my flesh, and her face had gone as ashen as my sick mother’s.

  “Aunt Lyn, let go! You’re hurting me.”

  Her grip eased, but her brimming eyes held me enthralled. “The night he brought you home…your papa was covered in blood.”

  * * *

  I had an early dinner with my mother and Aunt Lynrose before heading back to my place on Rutledge Avenue. I hadn’t said a word to my mother about any of my aunt’s revelations. I would never risk upsetting her when she needed all her strength to battle the cancer. Somehow I’d managed to put on a mask and playact my way through the meal.

  But now that I was alone in my own garden, my mind returned time and again to that conversation. Papa was my biological grandfather. That somehow felt right, even though I was still in deep shock. He’d always seemed so old to me. White-haired and stoop-shouldered for as long as I could remember. Mama was older, too, but she had the kind of grace and beauty that wore well with age and seemed timeless.

  I sat in the swing, lost in thought, as Angus became acquainted with his new home. It was a cool, breezy night, one that made me think of summer’s end. Of lost love. Of Mama and her high school sweetheart. Of Papa and Tilly Pattershaw.

  Inevitably my mind turned to Devlin. I wallowed for a moment, and then I tucked those memories away.

  And now it was Thane Asher who occupied my thoughts.

  * * *

  When I arose the next morning, I knew I had to talk to Papa before I went back to Asher Falls. If I went back. I’d promised Thane that I would return, but if I really was the target of evil, then I had no future with him. I had no future with anyone. My loneliness—once an old friend that had sheltered me from the real world—was now the enemy, a monster that threatened to swallow me whole. I searched for an end, no matter how dire, but now I couldn’t trust my own thoughts. Maybe the evil was still inside me.

  I almost expected to find the house closed up, but Papa’s truck was in the driveway, and when he didn’t answer my knock, Angus and I walked down to the cemetery to look for him.

  The scent of fading roses drifted on a mild breeze as we wound our way through the lush trails of ivy and creeping phlox. I found Papa working on the angels, the collection of fifty-seven statues that commemorated those children whose lives had been lost in an orphanage fire at the turn of the last century. It had taken Papa years to restore the memorials, and as I moved among them now, I couldn’t help but compare those sweet, pensive faces to the hubris of the Asher angels. But I didn’t want to think about those arrogant, upturned visages that watched the mountains. I didn’t want to dwell on what had happened between Thane and me in that dreamy circle. Time enough later for brooding.

  Papa glanced up as I approached, then went right back to his work.

  “You don’t seem surprised to see me,” I said.

  “Your aunt called.” His voice had thinned in the past year, and his face was even more weathered than I remembered. But the passing years hadn’t diminished his quiet dignity or his distance. He was right there before me and yet he seemed a million miles away.

  “You know why I’m here, then.”

  “Yes, child.”

  I drew a trembling br
eath. “We have to talk, Papa. No more secrets.”

  “Those secrets were meant to protect you, Amelia.”

  “I know that. But the only thing that can protect me now is the truth.”

  Silently, he gathered up his tools and put them away. “Let’s sit a spell,” he said, and we sank to the ground, facing the angels, our backs to the gate. When Angus padded over and plopped down at my feet, Papa leaned in absently to rub his head.

  “That’s Angus,” I told him.

  “Where did you get him?”

  “In Asher Falls,” I said, and I saw him shudder. “So many strange things have happened to me there. I felt a connection from the moment I arrived, and I’m only now starting to understand why.” I paused. “Who am I, Papa?”

  “You are my Amelia,” he said quietly. “And I love you more than life itself.”

  My eyes filled with tears. He’d never said anything like that to me before. After the ghosts came, he’d withdrawn into himself, never showing me the slightest affection, and for years I was left wondering what I had done. But now to hear the tremor in his voice, that desperate sadness in his eyes…it was too much. I had to look away.

  So many questions lingered, but I wouldn’t ask him about his time with Tilly. That belonged to them. I didn’t condone what had happened—I was fiercely loyal to my mother, after all—but I could understand it. Two desperately lonely people with their secrets—Papa with his ghosts and Tilly with her premonitions.

  Drawing my legs up, I laid my cheek on my knees. “What are we, Papa?”

  “In the olden days, we were called caulbearers. Babies born behind the veil with the ability to see beyond the real world into the spirit world. Nowadays, it’s considered an old wives’ tale, but it happens every generation or so in our family.”

  “Was Freya born behind the veil?”

  “Yes. And she had Tilly’s ability to sense things. She was an extraordinary child, I’m told.”

  I glanced at him. “You never knew her, Papa?”

  He stared out over the graveyard so that I couldn’t see the desolation in his eyes. “She was my daughter, my only child, but I never saw her alive.”

  My heart quickened. “Have you seen her ghost?”

  “I saw her corpse.” And the sorrow in his voice brought a fresh sting of tears to my eyes.

  I dug the little broken wing from my pocket and handed it to him. “I found this in your things. I shouldn’t have taken it.”

  His fingers closed around the bit of porcelain, and he clasped it tightly as he told me his story, how he had not seen or heard from Tilly since he’d gone back to my mother. He hadn’t even known about a baby until Tilly had called one night seventeen years after he’d last seen her and told him just enough to send him flying back to Asher Falls where he’d learned that Freya, his only child, had been murdered.

  “Did Tilly know who killed her?”

  “She never told me. I guess she was afraid of what I might do. But she had a vision of her child’s death. That’s what guided her to Freya.”

  “She found the body?”

  He nodded.

  “But if she knew Freya was murdered, why didn’t she go to the police? Why did she let everyone think that her daughter had died in a fire?”

  “Because she didn’t want anyone to know about you.”

  “Why?”

  “You were born after Freya was murdered.”

  My heart started to hammer. “After?”

  His eyes grew distant. “The girl had snuck out of the house to meet someone that night. Tilly didn’t even know she was missing until she woke up from a dream. That dream led her to the laurel bald where she found a fresh grave.”

  “Freya’s grave.”

  “And yours, child.”

  The shock of his words stole my breath even though I must have already intuited the truth. That was why I’d been so overcome at the gravesite. Why that terrible suffocation had pressed down on me. I had been buried there with my murdered mother.

  Angus had sensed it, too. That must have been how he found the grave. As impossible as it seemed, he must have picked up my scent, not my mother’s.

  I tunneled my fingers through his fur, and he turned, dark eyes gleaming as he nuzzled against me.

  “The grave was so shallow the dirt barely covered the body,” Papa said. “She hadn’t been there long. Only moments. Her skin was still warm, and Tilly prayed that she might still be alive. But when she unearthed her, there was no heartbeat. No pulse. The only thing Tilly could do was try and save the baby.”

  I had been buried alive, I thought in horror. I had been born to a dead mother. No wonder my life was so strange.

  “You weren’t breathing, even when Tilly peeled away the veil. She resuscitated you. She blew her breath into your lungs and brought you back from the other side.”

  Brought me back from the other side.

  An icy hand grazed my nerve endings.

  “And then she gave me to you,” I said softly.

  “Yes, but before I took you home, I had to see my child. I had to give her a proper burial so that she could rest in peace.”

  My poor, young mother hadn’t been able to rest, but I wouldn’t tell Papa. I wanted him to have that solace.

  At least I now knew why he’d been covered in blood when he brought me home. “You’ve been caring for her grave all these years.”

  “It was all I could do for her.”

  “But, Papa, why did you bury her north to south? Surely it wasn’t because—”

  “I didn’t want her facing those mountains,” he said harshly.

  I caught my breath. “You felt it, too.” The wind, the dankness. That awful howling.

  “Yes, I felt it. So did your mother when we lived there. So did Tilly.”

  His gaze moved to the angels. “It was there when you were born. It was with you on the other side. Tilly sensed it that night. There was a terrible struggle, she said.”

  I thought of that day in the cemetery when she had tugged me out of the briar patch.

  “You fought hard, Amelia. You battled your way back, but even as you drew your first breath, Tilly knew it wasn’t over. She was afraid for you. Afraid it would come for you. She knew she had to get you out of Asher Falls. She thought you would be safe with me.”

  I hugged my knees. “Why did you shut me out, Papa? Why did you turn away when I needed you the most?”

  He looked old and defeated, indescribably weary. “I was afraid the ghost we saw that day had been sent to watch over you. I was afraid the evil had found you and it would use my devotion to you—my weakness—to somehow get to you.”

  I couldn’t stop shaking. Angus sensed my agitation and whimpered. “All this just because I came back from the other side?”

  “And because the power it could wield through you on this side would be very, very strong.”

  “Why?”

  “You are the last of the Ashers,” he said.

  I buried my face in my arms, succumbing to a storm of emotions. “Who is my father?” I asked fearfully.

  “Edward Asher.”

  “Was he evil? Was he in league like the others?”

  “I don’t know. But his blood runs through your veins, so your ties to that place are strong. That’s why you were lured back there.”

  “But why now?”

  “The rules kept you safe,” Papa said. “But you broke them, and now that the door has been opened, you’re vulnerable. Those closest to you are the most dangerous because it will try to use them to weaken you. It will lie and trick and deceive you. You mustn’t let it. And you must never, ever return to Asher Falls.”

  I lifted my head. “If it fears me, then there must be a way to defeat it. I can’t live like this, Papa. I can’t live with the loneliness. Sometimes I think I’d be better off dead.”

  “Don’t say that! Don’t even think it.”

  “Then help me destroy it.”

  “You still don’t understand,
do you?” He turned away quickly, but not before I’d seen that same look of pity and regret in his eyes.

  Thirty-Four

  Angus and I returned to Asher Falls that afternoon. I didn’t tell Papa because I didn’t want to worry him. But I had to go back. I had to find a way to protect myself. I had to close that terrible door, and if it could be done at all, it would be in the place where I had been born on the other side.

  A weight descended the moment we entered the foothills. It was raining, and I wondered if it had poured the whole time we were away. The lake looked swollen, and the ditches were overflowing. The deluge subsided as we drove off the ferry, but the sky remained gray and bleak. For the first time, Angus turned away from the window and settled down in the front seat, resting his snout on the console. I put my hand on his head and felt the bristle of his hair.