by P. N. Elrod
“But—”
Andrews sensibly gave Belle a kick and away they went, heading for the sea. I yelled to encourage the horse to go faster and to draw the soldiers’ attention to me. It worked far better than I would have liked. Calling for help from their companions, they started my way with all speed. I took to my heels, heading south, trusting my improved vision would give me sufficient advantage to escape. On the other hand, I had to keep them close enough on my track to give Roddy his chance to get away.
“Over there!” someone shouted in good king’s English this time. So far they’d likely seen me only as a murky figure; they couldn’t be allowed a better look lest I end up taking Roddy’s place at the gallows. I dodged under the shadows of a small orchard, threaded between the trees, went over a fence, and charged through a sheep pasture. The sheep (apparently this lot had been overlooked by the commissaries) scattered madly, bleating in protest. They made a fine confusion for the soldiers in my wake. God but this was sport, indeed. As I raced along, I laughed aloud to think what Jericho would have to say about this abuse of my riding boots.
I was still laughing when I made it to the top of a rise and paused for a glance back to see where my pursuers were. A foolish thing to do, for I’d underestimated their speed, overestimated my own, and silhouetted myself against the sky. In that instant one of the men raised his long rifle and used it.
A puff of powder smoke obscured the shooter just as it had that morning by the kettle. Whether a Hessian Jäger or Nathan Finch himself returned to finish me off for good and all, the awful image quite froze me.
He was a skillful shot—that, or uncommonly lucky.
It would have made no difference had I sensibly dodged; to hear the report meant it was too late to save myself.
And just as it had that morning by the kettle—time ceased its normal progress; the world was engulfed by the illusion of everything slowing to a halt.
The devastating impact of the lead ball slammed me flat as though my legs had been scythed away. My was chest on fire . . . no, my back . . . my whole body . . . .
Oh, sweet God, not again!
Above, the glowing stars flowed and spun like water in a bright stream, swirling into glittering whirlpools and splashing up into self-made fountains of light.
Below, the black land twisted, exchanging places with the heavens. They merged wildly, broke apart, merged again.
Crying out, I tumbled helplessly, dizzily down the other side of the rise.
Even as I fell, my voice died away, breath gone, crushed from me by the hideous burden of the pain. It completely overwhelmed me, heavier and more horrible than the other time, for I knew what lay ahead—
No, I can’t go through THAT again . . . . No!
The sounds of the night, the soldiers, the sheep, the rush of the sea, the unspeakable pain itself, abruptly ceased, like the snuffing of a candle. One second I could see, the next all was gone, consumed by a thick, gray fog.
The change was so sudden and swift that I couldn’t sort it out. I was beyond thought for the longest time, unable to grasp what had happened. I seemed to drift like a feather on the wind. No, not a feather. The lightest bit of down was yet too weighty compared to me. I was more like smoke, rising and floating carelessly, too faint to have a shadow to mark my passage.
I was floating; I was falling.
Then came the answer: instinct and memory told me I must again be caught up by whatever force it was that had magically seized and hurtled me from my coffin without disturbing one clod of dirt in between.
But that was quite mad.
Quite . . . .
Ah. That was it.
I understood now. The poisons of my Fonteyn blood had finally corrupted my brain. I was as mad as Mother. More so. On the day of the shooting I’d simply taken too much sun and collapsed in a nightmarish fit. The business about me dying and escaping from the grave, drinking blood, it was all nonsense, no more than a dream. When next I woke I’d be in my own bed, wrapped immobile in sheets like a newborn in swaddling. That would be good, for it would keep me from hurting myself or others in my ravings. During quiet interludes Jericho would feed me porridge a spoonful at a time and wipe my mouth when I drooled and good Doctor Beldon would see to it I had plenty of laudanum so my screams would not disturb the rest of the house.
Yes, that was it. Had to be.
Reason slept. Reason itself was an absurdity when measured against this. Instinct told me to be calm and not to struggle, and I listened to it. I was beyond argument, beyond fear. I felt safe, like a tired swimmer who finally ceases to fight the water and gives in to its embrace only to discover his own buoyancy is saving him. So insanity was saving me from . . . well . . . something too strange and awesome to be borne.
After what must have been a great while, my mind eventually began to work again, sluggishly attempting to form questions and find answers. Just because I’d gone mad didn’t mean I was utterly bereft of moments of clarity.
I tried to be orderly about it, taking one sensation—or lack thereof—at a time.
The fog, for example. I seemed surrounded by fog, yet felt no evidence of its damp presence. What sensation remained came from outside my body: the pressure of the wind, the rough kiss of grass and ground flowing by:
Of my own body—I knew I must still possess one—I’d lost awareness of weight and form, if not the memory, of it. No arms or legs, no head to hold my thoughts, no mouth to express them. I could hear things, but only in a vague way as though my ears—if I’d had any—had been swathed in a soft blanket.
Perhaps that shot had finished me off and the fog I drifted in was part of the process of dying. Perhaps I was already a ghost . . . .
Then it struck me how absolutely, utterly ridiculous it all was.
I gave myself a kind of internal shake, half in my mind and half in the body I knew had to exist.
Of course I was not dying or dead or gone mad.
Not dead. Not a ghost.
Ghost-like, perhaps . . . ?
I felt the beginnings of gravity tugging upon my limbs, upon what should be my limbs . . . .
And then I was myself again, sitting on the bare earth as though I’d always been there and with everything returned to its proper place in the universe: stars above, land below, and me in the middle. There was no sign of the soldiers, and if I read things right, I was a good half mile or more from where I’d been before.
How. . .?
I’d traveled downwind. I’d traveled on the north wind coming from the Sound.
Falling and floating, or in this case, floating and drifting.
“Ridiculous.”
But giving thin voice to my first reaction to an unlikely conclusion was no help to my bewildered brain, for my thoughts could only return to the question: how else could I have gotten here so quickly?
And . . . how else could I have escaped the prison of my coffin that first night? The answer, however impossible, was undeniable.
No. I shook my head. It was too fanciful. Frightening.
But how else?
The answer, the impossible answer, lay within me. Brought forth by panic or pain, I had somehow ceased to be part of the corporeal world.
Perhaps I was able, without conscious effort, to slip through some invisible doorway into an equally invisible sphere of existence and walk there—float—until such time as I was evicted back to my own land again. Maybe that’s the place where ghosts resided, and I was but a visitor to their realm even as they visited ours . . . .
That seemed awfully complicated, though. Ghosts? I could almost hear my sister’s snort of derision, never mind my own.
The simpler explanation might have to do with my own body changing form, ceasing to be solid, like water boiling away to steam—but the process being instantaneously fast.
Nora had never mentioned it. E
ither she knew nothing about it, or had correctly concluded it too preposterous for me to believe even with her influence to convince me otherwise.
Well-a-day. I’d obviously stumbled upon something most extraordinary, and even after going through it my credence for its truth was shaky at best.
Could I—dare I—try to achieve that state on purpose? That would be the proof I wanted.
Best to try it now before I over-thought things and allowed reason to talk me out of the possibility.
I recalled what that strangeness had felt like. My most intense memory was of a fierce desire to not be where I’d been.
As if a great gray shadow enveloped the world, my vision clouded over. The wide hum of night noises faded. I raised my hand. It gradually became almost as transparent as glass. The more ethereal it was, the less clearly I could see. Then the grayness took everything, leaving me sightless. That’s when the constraint of gravity ceased its constant and familiar hold and I was floating.
The earth that once supported me was not really solid at all, but porous. Then, as I began to sink in a little past its surface, came the thought that it was I, and not the ground, that was no longer substantial. I gave a kick like a swimmer and felt myself rising until I sensed I hovered a foot or so above the grass. There I was able to hold in place against the wind.
Sweet God, what had I become? What was this . . . ability?
My concentration wavered. The night crashed back upon me. The earth’s pull resumed sovereignty in a most vigorous way. My arms jerked outward to regain lost balance, and I only just managed to land on my feet. As before, I’d moved some distance from where I’d been.
I gaped about me, torn between shock and fascination.
Ghostlike, I had escaped the grave. I’d ceased to be solid and passed through the intervening ground to freedom. Just now I had virtually flown over the ground like a wraith on the wind to escape the soldiers.
And the pain of being shot.
That was gone. There was no sign of wound on my flesh, though it was upsetting to find a hole larger than my thumb torn through my bloodied clothes. The long rifle’s ball had gone in and out, leaving behind this evidence only of its passage, the same effect the sword blade had had on Nora’s clothes. She’d bled, but had somehow recovered. This must have been how she—
My arm. My right arm, shattered and useless for nearly a week—
Restored. Completely healed. Free of pain. I could bend and straighten my elbow with ease, as though it had never suffered injury.
Despite this astounding turn, I felt a thick queasiness trying to manifest and ooze up from within. In the absence of a fast-beating heart, I could interpret it to be a symptom of my near-paralyzing fear of this, my changed state, a fear that I’d pushed away so often before. As entitled as I must be to surrendering to it, I must not give in to the temptation. True, my situation was monumentally strange, but beyond the strangeness, beyond the changes, I was still the same man, still Jonathan Barrett, and I had no need to be afraid of myself.
Accept it, Nora had said whenever I’d witnessed anything supernormal about her. She had only to hold my gaze to make me do so, but always she’d given me the opportunity to abandon the confines of the mundane first. I usually failed her, requiring artificial urging. Whether because of her influence on me or my own temper, I could forgive her, for her gentle coercion had been in a good cause, soothing soothed away all unease between us.
“Accept it,” I said aloud.
Accept your new self . . . for the only other alternative must surely be madness.
Accept without fear, without expectation, and with hope for the best. With God’s grace and guidance I’d be able to triumph over whatever future lay before me.
Accept . . . .
* * *
The sea sound roared in my ears and seemed to bestow a kind of movement to my forever-stilled heart. The shifting water was so beautiful, a living, glittering thing, restless and untamed under the calm luminescence of thousands of minute suns. It stole their silver light, tossed it in the waves, and playfully threw it back again. I could have stood on the bluff and watched for hours, but the night was beginning to turn and I had a long road ahead.
Below, in the shelter of a tiny cove, was Belle, her reins dragging on the ground. I was glad to finally find her. I’d walked along the edge of the coast for a long time, looking. She appeared to be no worse for wear and occasionally dropped her head to graze on a patch of grass.
There was no sign of Roddy Finch or Ezra Andrews. If their boat had been stored here, it was long gone. I wished them a safe journey
I made my way down to Belle, took up the reins, and mounted her. Perhaps she sensed that we were going back to her stable. I didn’t have to guide her in the right direction; she took it for herself and set a good pace. As we moved up onto a clear and well-marked road, I gave her the signal to go faster, and she readily obeyed. Trot, canter, and finally gallop. She would never match Rolly’s speed, but she made her gait smoother and more graceful. I crouched over her, one hand on the reins, the other stretched before me as though to taste the streaming wind.
Accept . . . .
Accept the wind and the sky and the earth and the joy and the sorrow. Accept this new chance at life. Live and laugh again.
And I did laugh.
It grew distant and hollow as my solid hand began to fade and vanish along with the rest of the world.
I stopped the fading at a point where I could just see through my flesh to the horse’s bobbing neck below. The wind tugged at me, but not as hard as before, and I knew I could move against it or with it as I chose.
I’d had much time to practice during that long walk, looking.
Now my hand was only just visible. The world was nearly lost in gray fog, but I was able to hold it like this if I concentrated. I could sense the horse’s strong movement beneath me.
And then I shot free of her. My booted feet lifted clear of the stirrups. I was above her now, arms thrown wide like wings, but carried along by my will alone. I pressed against the wind, matching Belle’s speed for a moment until, with an unvoiced cry, I broke away.
Ten feet, twenty, thirty. Higher and higher.
I soared and turned and rolled like a nighthawk, pushing ahead of Belle or falling behind, but always keeping her within safe sight.
I soared high over the rushing earth, caught up in my own soundless laughter as I embraced the dancing sky.
CHAPTER ONE
LONG ISLAND, SEPTEMBER 1776
“But this is miraculous,” said Dr. Beldon, lifting my bared elbow closer to his large, somewhat bulging eyes. He ran his fingers over the point where the bone break had been. “It’s not possible. There’s not a single sign that you were ever injured.”
Which was of great relief to me. For a time I’d feared I would never recover the full use of my badly broken right arm. Beldon chanced to look in on me this evening just after my waking and had been surprised to see that the sling I’d worn for nearly a week was gone.
“And there is no more discomfort when you move it?”
“None,” I said. Days earlier, Beldon had expressed the unpleasant necessity to re-break the bone so as to properly set it again, but I’d been putting it off. Now I was glad for that procrastination.
His fingers dug a bit more deeply into the muscle. “Make a fist,” he ordered. “Open. Close. Now stretch your arm straight. Twist your hand at the wrist.” Eyes shut, he concentrated on what his touch told him about the movement beneath the flesh. “Amazing. Quite amazing,” he muttered.
“Yes, well, God has been most generous to me of late,” I said with humble sincerity and no small portion of gratitude. Eyes open now, Beldon’s brows went up. “But, Mr. Barrett. . . .”
“You said yourself that it was a miracle,” I reminded him. Our gazes locked. “But I don’t think you ne
ed take any notice of it. Should anyone be curious, you may certainly inform them that my arm has healed as you expected.”
He didn’t so much as blink. “Yes. I shall certainly do that.” The only clue that anything was amiss was a slight flatness in his tone and a brief slackening of expression.
“Nothing unusual about it at all,” I emphasized.
“No . . . nothing un . . . .”
I ceased pressing my influence upon him and asked, “Are you finished, Doctor?”
Blink. He smiled amiably. “Yes, quite finished, Mr. Barrett, and may I express my delight that you are feeling better?”
We exchanged further courtesies, then Beldon finally took his leave. My valet, Jericho, had observed everything from one corner of my room, silent, his dark face sober and aloof yet somehow managing to convey mild disapproval.
“It’s only to spare us all unnecessary bother,” I reminded him, shaking my shirtsleeve down.
“Of course, Mr. Jonathan.” He stepped forward to fasten the cuff.
“Very well, then. It’s to spare me unnecessary bother.”
“Is the truth of what’s happened to you so evil?” he asked, helping put on my waistcoat.
“No, but it is wholly unbelievable. And frightening. I’ve been frightened enough for myself; I’ve no wish to inflict that distress upon others.”
“Yet it still exists.”
“But I’m not afraid anymore. Bewildered, perhaps, but—”
“I was speaking of other members of the household.” He held my coat ready. I obediently slipped my arms—both working perfectly—into the sleeves. Then Jericho saw to it that just enough shirt cuff showed at the wrists. He was exceedingly particular about my appearance. I was never allowed out until he was satisfied with regard to my presentability in polite company.
“What other members? Who?”
He made a vague gesture rather akin to a shrug. “In the slave quarters. There are whisperings that a devil has jumped into you.”