She Dies at the End (November Snow Book 1)

by A. M. Manay

  November wasn’t sure when she’d begun having the vision. It seemed to have always been with her, a frequent presence in her dreams, and the sole vision she had ever had of her own future. When she was very small, she could pretend that the bloody little corpse was a stranger, but as she grew older, resembling the deceased more and more, she was forced to admit to herself that she was watching her own burial. She knew that she would die, violently, and much too young. The vision tasted like fate, not possibility. That certainty, that inevitability, was part of what drove her into the hospital after her grandmother’s death, along with guilt over her father’s death and the mental exhaustion of a power she could not control, a power that seemed to grow stronger by the day even as her mind tried and failed to keep up.

  Grandma Reggie had been the only one who acknowledged the reality of November’s gift. She'd tried to teach her granddaughter that her second sight did not make every tragedy her fault. She'd tried to devise ways for November to cope with the visions. It had been her idea for November to begin drawing what she saw as a way of getting it out of her system. Regina had gotten her art lessons as soon as the child could hold a pencil properly. Too, soon, however, she had died and left November to the abuse and neglect of her floundering mother and the ineffectual-at-best treatments of a series of increasingly depressing hospitals and doctor's offices.

  At first, without her grandmother’s help, the effort needed to cling to sanity just didn’t seem possible or even worthwhile. Why struggle if she was going to die before she could even begin an adult life? Eventually, November had come to an acceptance of her fate. She began to find her happiness in little things, as grim as her life in the hospital sometimes was. Once she got a little older, got a handle on her fear of mortality, she began to gain some control over her power. None of her varied visions frightened her any longer; she no longer scratched at her eyes in her sleep. She found ways of coping with her sightings, blocking them with some success, and seeking them if she wanted to find them. Her periods of lucidity became longer, and her attempts at suicide ceased. Finally, she was able to convince a new doctor at the hospital that she was cured enough to be released. She had found a path through her madness. She’d long hoped her mother would be able to do the same with her addiction, but in this, November was forever disappointed.

  Now, here stood three people in her tent, two of whom she knew for a fact would help put her in the ground before she was old enough to rent a car. The redhead was a little on the short side, with the solid build of someone accustomed to physical work, but his clothes were those of a wealthy man, his aura one of leader of men. He was handsome and imposing, with his dark red hair and the fairest skin November had ever seen. A sprinkling of freckles and a crinkle of laugh lines softened his serious face. The blue-haired girl seemed even more graceful in person than she had in the vision, and she was even lovelier looking happy than she was in grief. Her hair and her eyes were the same improbable shade of electric blue, her ethnicity difficult to guess. The boy was new to her. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a frat house on the way to a beer run – cute but not very impressive. He was blond and cocky and very "California beach bum," though lacking the requisite tan.

  November closed her eyes briefly, trying to regain her balance. They would not kill her tonight; she could be pretty certain of that. The clothes were wrong; there was an extra man, and two of her gravediggers were missing. She clung to that assertion. This focus helped her to slow her runaway heart, and she opened her eyes again. Her fear was gone. After all, she did not fear death anymore. Pain, she feared, but not death. And in the vision, they seemed to be her friends. They were sad that she died, so she didn’t think they would try to hurt her. She was actually more excited than scared, she realized. She had spent her whole life wondering how she was going to come to such a strange end. Now she seemed on the verge of finding out. Showtime.

  “Please, do sit down.” Perhaps a display of power was in order, to get rid of the feeling that they’d caught her flat-footed. She looked at the redheaded leader. “Your name is William, yes?” Now it was their turn to be surprised. They glanced at one another as they sat down in November’s sanctum.

  “Yes,” he allowed. “It’s William Knox. Microphones planted around the carnival, is it? Or scouts to relay what people are saying?” His lips were pursed with amusement. He had the air of an adult humoring a lying preschooler.

  “If only,” November replied with a tired smile. “I’ve been waiting for you for quite some time – well, two of you, at least. I just didn’t know we would meet tonight.”

  William raised an eyebrow. “Is that right? And what do they call you when you’re not playing Oracle, little girl?”

  “November,” she answered, surprising herself. “Em, to friends.” She never shared her real name with clients, but she guessed there was no reason to dissemble with these ones. They would get to know each other soon enough, after all.

  “That is a different one,” commented the girl with a friendly smile.

  “Mom accidentally put the date on the name section of the birth certificate form, and she and Dad decided that they liked it. And what shall I call the rest of you?” November replied.

  “You can’t tell with your magic powers?” sneered the blond youth.

  “I probably could, but it isn’t very polite.” November didn’t mind skeptics, but he didn’t have to be so obnoxious about it.

  William gestured toward his companions. “Zinnia and Ben.” Zinnia gave a wave and a smile. Ben just rolled his eyes.

  “How does this work?” Zinnia asked, tucking an errant lock of her short blue hair behind her delicate ear.

  “Five minutes for five dollars.” She held out a gloved hand into which Knox placed a crisp ten dollar bill. November dispensed with her usual theatrics, assuming correctly that they wouldn’t play with this crowd. “I will begin with the past, to establish my credibility. I then will probe the future, which is so much more uncertain. Much of the future is fluid and can be changed by decisions that lead you down different paths,” November explained.

  “Trying to prepare us for this turning out to be a crock?” chimed in the younger man. November raised an irritated eyebrow.

  “May I continue?” she asked with a touch of hauteur. William silenced Ben with a look. November began again. “In each person’s life, however, there are usually one or more events that are unavoidable. All paths lead to those points, however circuitously. Some things are just inevitable. Some people call these moments fate.”

  “So how do you tell what is fated from what can be changed?” asked Zinnia. Her voice lacked Ben’s condescension. November realized that this member of the party, at least, was actually interested in her work.

  “I can’t know for certain, always. But so far the visions that come unsought and that come again and again, unchanging: those ones seem to come true no matter what people do.”

  “Why the notebook? And the sand?” Zinnia probed.

  “Sometimes I draw what I see, faces mostly. I’m not always able to catch names when I’m under. Plus, clients get a kick out of it, and sometimes they tip,” she said with a crooked grin. The sand was harder for November to explain clearly. She’d never tried to put it into words before. “The sand helps me transition from one person to the next. It kind of, like . . . washes away the old vision, so I don’t get too distracted and muddled. That and digging my toes in the dirt seem to blot out some extraneous noise and fragments.”

  “Did someone teach you that?” The girl seemed genuinely curious.

  “I discovered it by accident when I was little, playing in the sandbox. My grandmother had to drag me away kicking and screaming. It was the only place I had any peace.” It was kind of nice, actually, sharing some of her own story with these strangers, though it made her exposed. People came to the Oracle to ask questions about themselves, not about her, and she hadn’t been able to discuss her gift honestly with anyone since her grandmother
had died. She was accustomed to people looking at her without ever seeing her.

  “Can we get on with this ridiculous waste of time?” asked Ben with an impatient sigh.

  William offered his hand, and November removed her gloves and turned the hourglass over. “Let’s begin at the beginning,” she said. She braced herself and touched his hand.

  The first thing she noticed was that he was cold as death; the next was that this was unlike any reading she’d ever done. She expected it to be painful. Her readings were usually a disorienting agony, but she was pleasantly surprised. It was like looking over a cliff and down into a pool of water so deep that she couldn't see the bottom. Normally, she was sucked right out of time, pulled under like some kind of thrashing drowning victim in a horror movie. But with this man, she had to consciously choose to jump. She fell and fell until she hit the water, then she swam for what seemed like forever, past memory upon memory, year after year after year. She could see William’s life shimmering around her; she could reach out and touch events as she chose, tasting a moment here or there, but they did not reach out to grab her like the pasts of other people.

  A creaky ship with black sails, a battlefield littered with men and horses rotting in the sun, a woman great with child, laughing in a garden. Her businessman, dressed in an ancient style, cradles William’s mangled body, aided by a beauty with golden hair. William bites a man with a hook for a hand and drinks until the light goes out of his prey’s eyes.

  Alternately horrified and fascinated, she wanted to stop and explore everything, and at the same time she longed to flee back to her tent and forget every bit of it. It took all her discipline to keep going, back and back, further into the depths. At last she found it: the beginning.

  A mother rocks her child, singing a song in an ancient tongue, singing in the sunlight to quiet the fussing baby with his bright red mop of curly hair.

  November began to sing along, singing words both foreign and somehow familiar, since every lullaby is the same, really. They all say, “I love you, baby. Sleep well, baby. Sleep safe, baby.” November felt wrapped in the warmth and the safety of the scene.

  Suddenly, she was back in her chair in her little tent, shaking with exertion. William had snatched his hand away as if burned and looked at her with a new respect. “What are you? How could you possibly know that song?” he asked quietly.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know why I can do this.” She paused, trying to assimilate what she’d seen, having difficulty believing what she’d experienced. “You are . . . really old,” she said, forgetting her manners in the face of her shock. William nodded in confirmation. She glanced at the hourglass just as the last grain fell. She absentmindedly turned it over again as she began to quickly sketch the faces she’d seen. “That was . . . unusual.”

  “You are quite impressive, I must say,” he admitted, staring at her hand as faces began to appear on the paper.

  “Do you impress easily?” November asked with a little smile as she sketched, fishing for complements.

  “No,” came his curt reply. “Besides my age, how was this unusual?” he asked after a moment’s pause.

  “Less painful than most other readings. More information, but easier to control. More vivid but less . . . suffocating.” She held up the paper. “Your mother?”

  William nodded, shocked anew. “My human one. I’d almost forgotten what she looked like. I haven’t seen her face in nine hundred years.”

  November finally screwed up the nerve to look into his face. “Are you really a, um, vampire?” she whispered. William nodded. November took a deep breath. “All of you?” William shook his head.

  “I’m a fairy,” said Zinnia with a playful smile.

  November closed her eyes. “Seriously? Fairies are real, too,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I, mean, I’ve seen such things in dreams, but I didn’t put much stock in them. People thought I was crazy enough as it was. I told myself that those visions were metaphorical or something.” She sighed. “I suppose there’s also a werewolf waiting in the car?” she added jokingly.

  “Of course not. Werewolves are our enemies from time immemorial. We are allied against them,” replied William severely.

  “Right . . .” She shook her head in disbelief. “Well, this is all a bit overwhelming.” November pressed her fingers to her temples. “Shall I try to see your future, then?”

  “Oh, I think that’s rather enough for today,” William said quietly. “And as for being overwhelmed, you’ll feel much better after I make you forget that this ever happened. That will give us some time to figure out what to do with you without your running away or telling anyone about our existence. Zinnia,” he said, turning his head, “would you do the honors?”

  The girl’s voice took on a strangely sonorous quality as she said, “Listen carefully to me, November. This never happened. You’ve never met William, Zinnia, or Ben. There’s no such thing as vampires or fairies or werewolves.”

  November burst out laughing, giddy from the adrenaline and the strangeness of it all, covering her mouth and raising a quizzical eyebrow. “I’m sorry, does that usually work?”

  William swore. “Yes, usually. And now we’ve violated the Precepts. Terrific.”

  “Precepts?” November asked.

  “We have laws, November, and one of the most important ones is to prevent the human race from learning that supernatural creatures exist,” explained the fairy. “So we enthrall humans to erase the memories of those on whom we feed and others who discover our existence. It seems, however, that you are immune.”

  “How old are you?” William demanded.

  “I’ll be eighteen on the first of November,” the girl replied. “Why?” she asked.

  “Damn it. You’re too young to turn for three years yet,” William muttered. “The Reforms are such a nuisance sometimes. Sometimes I really wonder why I wrote them. What am I supposed to do with you?”

  “We could kill her,” said Ben. “Problem solved. I’m hungry again.” He leered at her. November looked right at him, showing no fear. She supposed she should be more alarmed. Honestly, though, he was more irritating than scary. Maybe that’s why he was acting like such a jerk: overcompensation.

  “Stop it, youngling,” William growled. “Magic humans don’t grow on trees. We’re not wasting her blood on you. Perhaps we can make a good case for an exception, since she’s so valuable.” He turned to November to add, “Please excuse him. He is a toddler who hasn’t yet learned any manners.” The blond youth glowered.

  “No offense taken,” she carefully replied. “I’m not going to tell anyone about you,” November tried to assure them. “And who would believe me if I did?”

  “You would have been smarter to lie, to pretend you didn’t see what we were, to pretend that you’re a fraud, a con artist.” William looked at her, almost regretfully. “Now you’re stuck with us. You’ll have to become part of our world. Your fate is sealed.”

  November's smile was a touch wistful. “Oh, not to worry, Mr. Knox. My fate was sealed quite some time ago. I could only have perhaps delayed the inevitable. Here, I’ll show you.” She pulled one of the binders out of the battered army surplus trunk that contained her few prized possessions. She’d never shown these drawings to anyone except her grandmother. “Now, you must excuse the quality of the early ones. I was only this many when I started drawing you,” she explained, holding up three fingers.

  The three creatures gathered around her record, flipping through the drawings November had made of her visions. Her habit was to draw all sightings that disturbed her. It helped her process her emotions and put them out of her mind. She kept the ones that seemed important and destroyed the rest. This binder was labeled “My End.”

  The early drawings were stick figures in crayon, sometimes labeled with misspelled words: "blu ladee, ded body, shovl." They grew more detailed later. Some showed the whole scene, others the faces in detail. On some she’d jotted the spoken wor
ds she could make out, or pictures of the flowers. There was a tenderness in the later drawings, almost like affection. These specters that once had frightened her into madness had gradually become old friends, like any frequent visitor is apt to do. “This is the only vision I’ve ever had about my own personal future. I know nothing else about my fate. I’ve tried to look, but it’s all fog and smoke.” She paused. “I assume you know the others in the scene?” she asked as the visitors flipped through her work, stunned into silence.

  “Yes,” the man in charge finally answered. “The vampire who made me is the one you call the businessman. The Indian woman is my sister Savita, made by the same vampire.” He closed the book and inquired, “May I take this with me? I will return it.”

  November hesitated. It felt like giving away a part of herself. Then she relented, realizing that she didn’t really need it anymore. “Sure,” she said. “Please don’t let anyone normal see it. I don’t want to end up back in the madhouse.”

  “Do not worry about that. I am not in the habit of consulting humans,” he said with a small smile. “You seem awfully calm about all this. Human beings are not usually so sanguine about their own deaths. Nor are vampires or fairies for that matter.”

  “It’s kind of a relief, honestly, that you’ve finally appeared. I’ve spent my life waiting for the ax to fall,” she confided. “I stopped being afraid of dying some time ago. I know that's insane, but the world beyond is better than this one, based on what I’ve seen of both.”

  Her guest stood up. “Based on these drawings, you’re going to be stuck in this world even after you die, poor child.” He studied her for a moment. “We will be back for you. I must make arrangements. Do not run,” he admonished her. “We would surely find you, and as much fun as it would be to hunt you, I really don’t have the time to waste. Besides, if you eluded us, you could well find yourself in the hands of someone worse. Diamonds don’t stay hidden forever. When does your little band leave town?” asked the vampire, standing up to depart.