His eyes dampen from fire to fear as he quickly releases my arm. “My strength is difficult to gauge, especially when I am…upset. This is neither the proper place nor time. Later, Allegra. Please.”
The placation in his tone punctures my anger and it whistles out, like a downed hot air balloon. “I am sorry too.” I lean closer to him, feeling the waves of heat that radiate from his skin. “I am frightened,” I whisper.
His eyebrows rise, but he offers no comfort. He says nothing.
Nothing on the ferry, nothing as we step onto the isle.
My stomach is churning with worry and doubt by the time we head into the ferns.
He starts down the path for the hot spring and retorts over his shoulder, “Please, do check on Lucy.”
He whirls to head into the forest. I huff and stomp behind him, unwilling to be dismissed.
I am panting to keep up with his break-neck pace as he weaves through the Live Oaks, not looking back.
I stare up at the fading light. Lucy returned this morn to collect her effects and Jones will be here at any minute to take Lucy to the mainland.
Thunder rumbles and my breath quickens. It seems all the elements are in place as when I was with Lucy.
Will George appear?
The fireflies descend; swooping, floating sparkles of light against the inky black-backdrop of the tree canopy. I no longer fear them—I thrust out my arm and they descend, wrapping about my arm like a full-length, illuminated glove.
The back of my spine tingles and for a brief moment our heats combine to a pulsing, breathing being and I shiver.
They are blinking and speaking again. I don’t have time to discern their message. I wave a flurry away from my ear and the horde takes flight from my arm as I approach Brighton.
Brighton stands, his back to me, facing the bubbling spring. His chest heaves—I cannot discern whether it be anger or sadness. My chest tightens to think of such a powerful man, crippled by this magnitude of pain.
I yank his arm, spinning him to face me. My eyes scan his face, trying to reach him again, to melt the hard mask dulling his eyes.
“Tell me. Tell me everything this time. You must. If we are to have any chance together—there can be no more secrets.”
Brighton’s eyes flick from the lightning to the rods to my face and back like a pendulum.
My mind registers the dot-dot-dashes and a word appears in my mind.
“Them,” I prompt, pointing up to the lights. “They are saying, Stay. Stay.” I bark a laugh. “That’s amusing. They told me to go, before.”
I startle as heat and fur assault my legs, a winding and purring whirlwind beneath my skirts.
Brighton’s chest is heaving as his eyes jump across the water. The words pour out, rushed and fast. “Injured animals. I began with injured animals. Feeding them the element. They improved, miraculously. I was astounded; limbs regrew, old grew younger.” His eyes tighten, “But it seemed, wrong.”
I feel the burn of the element racing beneath my skin.
“It altered them. Increasing their intelligence far and away from any normal animal I had ever seen.”
The cat’s stalk the pool and meet my gaze. A decidedly shrewd expression on their furry faces. I could not place what was odd about them before.
I swallow. They understand our conversation.
Brighton walks the pool’s circumference, shaking each rod, checking its stability, eyes never leaving the sky.
“It is not up to man to tamper with the hourglass of life.” His voice sounds ancient.
I freeze as images flit across the pond, so quickly they could be mistaken as ripples.
Brighton begins to pace back and forth, like the cats.
“The fireflies?”
“More casualties to my madness. They merely landed on the pond’s surface…”
I stare up as they perform a whizzing, sparking performance overheard; like tiny lighted acrobats contrasted against the black sky like an outdoor big top.
“After the animals off behavior, I had my suspicions. Lodged in the center of my chest was a niggling doubt that refused to die. I found my father’s journal. He had been feeding large amounts of the element to my brother. My brother who’s wits had been addled since a childhood accident. He was like a child.”
He stops. His shoulders slump and his face collapses as if the words have broken through the shell protecting his heart.
His eyes shine with wetness and he blinks furiously. “He was all that was good. Always happy, always giving. And. He…”
I walk quickly to him, whisking past the poles to wrap my arms about him, pressing my face to his back. I feel the rumble of his voice against my cheek.
“He…was better at first. Speaking and reasoning more normally, in a way we had not witnessed since childhood…but looking steadily less happy as his comprehension improved. Then, one night, he disappeared. Then my father began to disappear for long periods, with no explanation on his return.”
I squeeze him tighter and feel his warm hand slide overtop my forearm.
Lightning strikes an arm length from my boot, hissing the ground; the fireflies alight and the cats bound for cover.
His chest catches and he issues a tiny groan. His words spill out, like a dam broken and rushing. “He refused to tell me what happened. So I left. George and Lucy were the only reason I ever stayed on at Morelands, to protect them. The Elementi doesn’t just heal. If you ingest enough, you begin…to become light.”
I loosen my grasp to slip around to face him. “I don’t understand.”
His eyes are wide with wonder and fright. “Another plane. Another place. Many other places. It is not heaven, more of a sideways shift in time. Have you ever heard of a doppelganger?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Neither had I. It means, one the same as you. It is you. Only in another dimension.”
My brain seems to squeeze, trying to fathom his words. “Another me? What is this..dimension?”
“My father mastered these…gateways. Some bodies of water are rife with the element—and are passages to future times, with more science. Father learned they propose that parallel places exist—alternate selves that may have chosen courses completely opposite to our own. An alternate reality of our choices. Or unforeseen occurrences.”
My head rebelled against the idea. “This seems quite impossible.”
Then a revelation hits so hard I almost double over.
“Brighton. My mother—the windows and doors. She knew. She somehow knew about them. She was trying to tell me, some were windows and others were doors…but to where? But the poles? I have seen the images without them?”
“Yes. It is all about the concentration of the element in the water. One needs the right concentration, the right current. If the pond has enough, no rods are needed. But for me, it happened during storms, the electricity in the air. I have managed to see the windows, but open no doors.”
The lightning strikes again a breath from my boot and the suffocating smell of weather and sparks and sea-salt permeates the pond.
“Allegra you must go. It is not safe. You now attract the lightning. It is drawn to the element within your skin.”
“No not till you finish,” but my legs begin to shake as the angry sky rumbles in warning once again.
“The element—my father believes it to be the one used by the Pharaohs in Egypt, before the knowledge was lost, or removed from them.”
“That’s what you meant by cheating.”
He nods and swallows. “One cannot attain indefinite life, whether here or There—” his hand sweeps across the pond, “by this means. This knowledge was meant to be hidden.”
“It still seems mad.”
“Many realities are mad. The fact you can play anything you hear just once, even without the element. That is mad.”
I nod and step closer. “It is.”
He bows his head and his lips graze mine, softly at first. A desperate kiss, lo
nging for hope. I inch backward and my heart falls to my stomach.
The world alters; shifts and drops. I whip my head in time to register my boot slide off the bank.
I plunge into the pond with a tremendous splash.
Brighton lunges forward, hauling me out the water as the first bolt collides with the rod. We stand, clutching one another, slowly backing away.
His eyes rove over me, searching for injuries as he gently wrings the water from my hair.
“The Element changes people. If one consumes too much, it drives you mad…like my father. Perhaps a fail-safe, to stop mankind from using it.”
The flickering in the pond continues, but the images are muddled, like a half-forgotten dream.
I hear Brighton murmuring in time with the flashes and growls of thunder. “One, two, three.”
But the lights above are fading. The storm is moving away. The time between flash and rumble lengthening.
And then I see it. The pearly white of the oyster shell lying on the bank, an animal’s supper, discarded.
Brighton follows my gaze, but even as his mouth pops open to protest, I stoop and boldly sweep it into my outstretched palm, holding my breath, awaiting the prickle and burn and tightening in my chest.
His eyes are wild and bright as he holds his breath.
But nothing. I give a tentative smile.
I exhale through my clenched teeth and manage, “You may pronounce me cured.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Lucy, please. Please be reasonable.”
My sister sits at the scrubbed wood table, wringing her hands like a woman thrice her age. Her eyes are wide and frenzied, like an animal trapped.
“Don’t you see, Bright? I cannot go back there. Please, pleease. Do not make me go back to him. There is nothing for me there. Just a bunch of ghosts rattling around that huge empty estate.” She stands, pacing violently.
“War is coming. Allegra’s father’s soldiers inch closer every day. Silas is a madman and I am never here, ever on the search for George.”
Her chest picks up the pace of her feet and then her voice catches. “When you are here, you see me. You look right into my eyes and ask how I am.” She stands and walks around the room, dragging her hand past vials and pipettes as if they were the loveliest things in the world.
She paces faster and faster. “I shall go mad if you send me back. I will run away. Anywhere is better than Morelands. Your tiny cottage feels a palace to me, because there is love here.”
I feel the prickle of rage spread from my neckline to my face.
How shall I ever protect her? What if I fail her, like I failed George?
Fear and pain are the true culprits; but my learned response is to channel any weakness into a useful emotion. So, anger it is.
I allow my head to drop into my hands and rub my temples. “Let me think, Lucy.”
She dashes across the room and plops into the chair opposite me, leaning over the table to snatch my hand away from my head.
Our eyes meet and hold. “Please, my dear brother.”
Reflected in them are a myriad of memories; a tiny Lucy, the highlight of my days after my mother passed on.
Her rolling playfully in the grass with George, like she was a boy.
Her picking wildflowers, presenting them to me, as a salve to my soul as miniature wars erupted between father and I.
She and George were my anchor to innocence.
A silent reminder of who I was before mother past, before my father went drunk with the Elementi’s power.
I sigh. “At present, my only solution is to ask Jonesy and Sarah to take you when and if they depart Charleston. Till Allegra and I can…can give you a safe place to be.”
She nods, but tears fill her eyes. “Without you. Without Georgie. I might as well be alone till I’m old and gray, because no-one, nowhere, will ever make me forget you.”
I pull her onto my lap and wrap my arms about her, inhaling deeply the clean scent of her hair. As I have since she was old enough to toddle.
Bartholomew walks into the room, his gait growing stronger every day. My conscience prickles and I sigh. “Barty, I am off to the mainland. Please be sure Miss Lucy does not leave the premises, except in the company of Percival Jones.”
He nods. “Yes, sir.”
* * *
I startle awake to the sound of Sarah’s gentle snoring from across the hall in the dark. She insisted I sleep here tonight-afraid I would disappear once again.
I have not told her about Brighton, something holds me back. And after the fight with him…I welcome the quiet space of our cottage, for what may be Sarah and mine’s final night together.
I dreamt of puzzle pieces, filled with bits of lightning and fields where the downy flower heads were made of blinking fireflies. Magnolias, of course.
My mind refuses to let it go, even when asleep. The clues all fit together, somehow.
My chest burns and I scratch at it and frown.
The pendant is hot against my skin. Why? What makes it so?
Light flashes out the window and I hurry over to draw back the draperies and my breath catches.
The fireflies. They swarm about my porch, spiraling down the posts and along the railing like blinking decorative lights. They have found me. Dread fills my mouth. They never depart the isle.
I step outside and fight the vertigo that erupts from being in their ever-moving midst.
They swarm over me, clustering me from head to toe.
I remain very still, closing my eyelids as they congregate over every inch of my skin, stifling my whimper at the troubling, scratchy feel of their insect bodies. They are warm, but still too reminiscent of the whisper-walk of a million tiny spiders.
Without warning they depart, returning to their original position. The flashing strobe re-lights the porch.
I clutch my chest, catching my breath to stare at them.
A decided, patterned, repeated flashing. They are communicating once again.
Brighton said the element healed. And changed the intelligence of any being it touched. What do they know, that I do not?
I run inside, grasping my mother’s journal and begin to scribble the pattern of dots and dashes as sweat forms on my nape and trickles down my spine.
The twinkling swarm takes flight and I rush to the railing, gripping it to stay upright. I feel their departure; as if when together, the element inside me, and inside them, meld to become one stronger field.
A thought chills my blood.
Am I drawn to anything…or anyone who houses the element?
Like human magnets?
The lights now bob and weave and flit down the thoroughfare, past the Guest house and out into the bay, heading back in a tumbling mass of sparkles toward the isle.
I flip open the Morse code book Jones procured for me and set to work. My eyes sting as the sweat pours from my brow and I dab it with my dress.
My fingers finish their decoding and I sit back, blinking, tilting my head in discernment.
I read it once again. To be certain.
“Come to me, Allegra. Mind the magnolias, child. They always keep secrets.”
I drop the book as if slapped and shoot to stand, shaking all over. I clutch the porch rail and battle the swooning blackness.
Sarah appears at the doorway, her face the milky-white of fear. “What is it Allegra?”
“It’s her. They brought a message from her. I must find her.”
* * *
I stride into the bedroom with Sarah right behind me. “Please Allegra, what is going on? Speak to me?”
I whip open the armoire, my hand searching through the dresses till I feel the familiar fabric brush my fingertips. I haul the dress unceremoniously out and cast it across the bed.
“Fetch me your sewing kit, please?”
“Allegra—”
I grasp the Magnolia on my dress. The dress I wore the day I fled father. My only dress from home.
“I sh
all rip it if you do not make haste!”
Sarah bolts across the hallway to her room and returns with the kit, which she brandishes at my face. “Here. What is happening?”
I extract a tool and begin to pick at the stitches that surround the magnolia patch. I had to work diligently; my mother had been an excellent seamstress.
“Allegra, please!” Sarah’s face in pinched in fear.
“You should fetch Mr. LeFroy. Tell him I need him.”
Sarah huffs and stamps her foot. “I will not budge until you explain.”
At her words the final stitch gives way. My breath catches.
Concealed behind the patch is a carefully folded piece of parchment. My mind races back to my mother scolding the ladies maid.
“Take care with Allegra’s patches. Do not get them wet, the colors will run.” Then after further consideration, “I shall wash them myself. Never you mind.”
I smile and feel the sting of tears. “You clever little liar. Water would ruin the parchment.”
“What are you on about? You are going daft.” Sarah begins to pace, her dark red hair bobbing this way and that. “I always knew it would happen.”
I extract the parchment and her eyes grow wide, resembling chocolate saucers.
My hands shake and my heart clenches, fearful I shall tear the paper.
I open the folds to reveal my mother’s perfect script.
An overwhelming sense of joy engulfs my soul; like she is present, stroking my hair, murmuring her reassurances.
Indeed, like she whispers in my ear, from beyond her watery grave.
Tears spill over and I carefully place it on the bed and then wipe my eyes, fearful to smudge the ink.
“Is that? Is that from Lady Manners?” Sarah voice shakes.
I nod, unable to speak and lift it with the care I’d give a broken animal.
Allegra. I would never leave you without good-bye, my darling girl. So if you have found this, something has happened to me. My sketches. Visit the ones with the doors. Stay strong. I love you with every beat of my heart. I shall see you soon.
My chest heaves and a wail breaks my lips. It is like her hand is in mine, giving me the familiar, reassuring squeeze, our silent communication used so many times when under duress, the touch meant; I love you. Stay the course.
The Violet Hour Page 16