by Lena Coakley
“You don’t like me much, I think,” Rogue said.
“No. I don’t.”
He smiled, amused by this response. “You should. We share a loved one, you and I.” He gestured for Emily to sit down next to him, which she did with a lack of hesitation Anne found vexing.
“I may be brutal,” Rogue said, putting a hand on Emily’s knee, “but my one redeeming quality is that I’d never harm her.”
“In the real world,” Anne shot back, “I’m not sure brutal people can draw such clear demarcations.”
“I’m not from the real world.”
“Thank heaven for that.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, and she narrowed her eyes right back at him, her annoyance making her brave. How could Emily see anything romantic in that brooding frown, those gleaming teeth?
“You bit someone,” she said. “Do you remember that?”
His guilty look told her that he did. Rogue took a moment to answer, shifting to face Emily as he spoke. “Only vaguely. It was like a dream. A dream of death. You had abandoned me. I had no world, no story. There was a light . . .”
“A door,” Emily said. “That was Old Tom opening a door, I think.”
“I remember little else except the desire to find you.” He smiled, and Emily sighed up at him.
Anne frowned at Charlotte, hoping her elder sister would say something about the warm looks they were exchanging, but Charlotte’s attention was on Zamorna.
“Who is Old Tom?” Zamorna asked.
“We hardly know,” Charlotte replied. “He creates magical doors, and we believe he opened one for Rogue to enter into our world. Now he’s trapped us here in yours.”
“Rogue has visited the world of the gods?” Zamorna said, amazed. “Could I do that?”
“We don’t know for certain, but I believe you could now.”
Anne tried to steer the conversation back to the plan she had begun to form when she was in the children’s study. “Rogue, you say you plagued us because you had no world, no story.” She looked around at her siblings. “But isn’t that the solution? Once we get home, couldn’t we write him a world without crossing over ourselves?”
Branwell had been leaning on the wooden box at the end of Anne and Charlotte’s bed, but now he stepped in closer, excitement on his face. “Keep Verdopolis alive, but cheat Old Tom out of any further payments—is that what you mean?”
“Exactly!” said Anne. She had thought this the answer to everything, but the looks on her siblings’ faces told her they didn’t agree. Even Branwell’s smile was beginning to fall.
“Old Tom wouldn’t stand for that,” Charlotte said. “If we’re not crossing over, he’d still open doors for our characters to cross to our world. What would prevent Rogue and Zamorna and all the others from plaguing us then?”
“I would prevent it!” Zamorna cried. “I have no desire to plague anyone.”
“I’m sure that Mary Henrietta, if she were here, would say the same,” Charlotte said, “and yet she haunted me in a terrible way. I think she couldn’t help it.”
“Charlotte’s right,” Branwell said.
“No!” Anne said. “You are giving up too quickly. Your characters are not the true enemy. You must make some pact with them, some agreement. If you tell their stories fully, if you make them truly live on the page, perhaps they will not cross so often or so dangerously. Don’t you see? You must try, at any rate.” She could tell by the way her siblings failed to meet her eye that they were not convinced.
“I shall be honest, Anne,” Charlotte said, after a pause. “If we write but don’t cross over, the doors will still come. You wouldn’t understand this, having no world of your own, but it would be a kind of torture for us. I for one don’t think I could resist forever.”
“Nor I,” Emily said.
Anne felt her anger build inside her. They were still as reckless with their lives as they had always been—but she knew they would not be so reckless with each other’s.
“Emily,” she said, her voice clipped. “Tell Charlotte the price you pay for crossing over.”
Emily hesitated. “Days. I told her. Days of my life, just as she and Branwell give.”
“Tell her the exact words. Tell them both.”
“I . . . don’t think I remember them.”
“I do.” Anne took a deep breath. “ ‘Everything my sister Charlotte and my brother Branwell have given in their years of crossing over, and everything they will give in years to come, this I offer, all at once, for one passage to my beautiful world.’ Wasn’t that it?”
Beside Anne, Charlotte stiffened. “Are you mad?” she said to Emily. “Is that what you promised?”
“‘Everything they will give in years to come,’” Anne repeated. “You see, Charlotte, you have no choice but to never cross again. If you do, you will be ripping days from her life as well as your own.”
“What in heaven’s name is the matter with you?” Branwell shouted at Emily. “How could you offer so much for one passage? Charlotte and I must have crossed a thousand times!”
“Emily,” Rogue said gently. “Have you paid days of your life to go to Gondal? How many?”
“Very many,” Emily said.
“But how can you ever go back if the price is so high?” There was a tenderness in his voice that surprised Anne.
“She can’t!” Charlotte said, on the verge of tears now. “It would mean years!”
“And that debt will increase if you and I cross again,” Branwell said.
“Yes, and my debt will increase if anyone crosses over again, including Emily,” Anne said.
The room fell silent. The heat of everyone’s emotions was so strong now that Anne imagined she could feel it radiating toward her in waves, making the mask she wore peel and crack.
Just a few more words, Anne told herself, and then they will know everything and I can be invisible again.
“This was my bargain,” she said, her mouth gone dry. “I told Old Tom that I did not wish to live longer than my sister Emily.” Emily’s eyes widened at this, and Anne faltered but pressed on. “I told him to take as many days as lets me die within a year of her, and that if she ever crosses over again, he should add those days to my debt.”
Anne knew Charlotte would be appalled, but the look on Emily’s face was truly horrified, and Branwell had gone white as sheets on the washing line. Had they truly believed she would let them carry all the burdens?
“Why?” Charlotte finally said. “Why have you paid this price? You are as reckless and as foolish as Emily to make such a bargain!”
“Don’t you see?” Anne said, her voice shaking. “I did it so you’d never cross over again. I did it because you’re all too stupid to value your own lives! How many times have you vowed to never go to Verdopolis again, Charlotte, and how many times have you broken that vow? Well, now you cannot go, because every time you do, you will be bringing Emily and me closer and closer to our deaths.”
“You had no right!” Emily cried, her face pink with anger.
“Emily . . . ,” Anne began.
“You had no right to take Gondal from me. The days I gave, I chose to give.” She stood, turning toward the door. “I can’t forgive you. I won’t!”
EMILY
EMILY REMEMBERED WALKING IN THIS YARD, round and round and round. It was their daily exercise. She could see the tracks countless girls had worn in the dead grass. She remembered the craggy old tree in the center of this circle, how beautiful it was, and stark, with its wild, black branches—the only thing at Clergy Daughters’ School that she had loved.
She left the school building and walked toward the tree. The anger she’d felt was already dissipating, being replaced by a hollowness inside her. As she walked, she hugged herself against the bitter weather. It wasn’t snowing, but it was cold enough, and Emily had no coat. She closed her eyes, wondering if she could make one appear.
“The great Genius conjured herself a coat out of thin air,�
� she said aloud.
“Lady Emily!”
She turned to see Rogue coming toward her, holding out his own black jacket. The sight of him made tears sting her eyes.
“I can’t go back,” she called before he had even reached her. “She’s made it so I can never go back to Gondal.”
“Do you think I would have let you go?” he shouted. “When the price is years from your life?”
You couldn’t stop me, she thought. No one could have but Anne. “But I want it,” she said, her voice almost a sob. “I want it so badly. Even when I said I’d never go again, I always knew that I could change my mind, but now . . .” He reached her and set the jacket around her shoulders. “That place is my soul, I think.”
“I know,” he said softly. “It’s mine, too.”
Do you have a soul? she almost asked, but if she had one, surely Rogue did. Perhaps they shared the same soul.
“What you need to do,” he said, “is kill me off.”
“What?”
“When you get home to your own world, I mean. Write a story that ends me.”
She gave a short laugh. “We’ve tried that.”
“I won’t resist this time. It will be doing me a favor, and you’ll be less tempted to come, won’t you?”
“I’m not going to kill you, you fool!” Emily pulled the jacket closer around her shoulders. “Besides, we don’t know if we will be able to summon Old Tom. We might all be trapped here.” She looked around the bleak landscape as if the old devil might finally appear and open one of his doors, but of course he didn’t.
Had Clergy Daughters’ School truly been built on such a barren spot, she wondered, or was this simply how she remembered it? Everything from the bare tree, to the pale grass, to the black crows that wheeled around the chimneys of the school seemed to echo the bleakness inside her.
She wondered if the Brontës might be able to turn this place into a replica of Haworth now, with its own parsonage and its own Papa, but it came to her how terribly empty and sad that would be, and she realized that as much as she loved Gondal, there was a place she loved even more. She wanted to be home.
Emily reached up to one of the low-hanging branches, and where she touched, a bud appeared, pale and pink. The bud grew, opening to blossom in moments. The petals fell. The fruit swelled and turned from green to red. She picked it.
“Apple?”
He took it from her gravely, polished it against his waistcoat, and put it in his pocket like a remembrance he wanted to keep.
“Please,” he said. “I don’t want to live in Gondal or Verdopolis without you. I’ll do myself in if you won’t kill me.”
“Don’t say that!” The only thing worse than not seeing Rogue would be knowing that he was dead and buried in some grave she could never visit. “I’ll do as Anne says. I’ll write adventures for you, and make you live.” She smiled up at him, though she didn’t much feel like smiling. “And I’ll write you vexing heroines to make you miserable.”
Rogue drew closer now. He didn’t touch her, but the nearness of his body made her heart beat a little faster in her chest. She put her hand against the trunk of the tree to steady herself.
“It’s no use,” he said. “I want no other heroines. I can only love you.”
She reached out to brush her fingers against his black whiskers, feeling the jacket slip from her shoulders to the ground. “Listen. You will still love only me. And I will love only you. It’s only that we’ll have different names.” Her voice started to break, but she pressed on. “Sometimes I’ll be Augusta, queen of Gondal, and you’ll be a dangerous highwayman. Sometimes we’ll be Alexander and Zenobia, the young lovers. Sometimes . . . sometimes we will just be two lonely children roaming the moors together. But the ‘he’ of the story will always be you, and the ‘she’ of the story will always be me. Forever. For as long as I live. Can’t you agree to that?”
He thought about this for a moment. “If you can.”
Without another word, he leaned in and kissed her. Her first kiss. Her only kiss. Emily put her arms around his neck, knowing she could lose herself entirely in the feeling of warmth and happiness that flooded through her, but pulling him closer just the same.
CHARLOTTE
GOOD GOD, THEY LOVE EACH OTHER, CHARLOTTE thought as she watched Rogue and Emily from the door of the school. How did that happen? Emily had been to Gondal just the once, hadn’t she? Charlotte had spent years on the periphery of her own stories, but Emily had thrown herself in, body and soul.
“You’re simply going to ignore that?” Branwell said behind her. The kiss was going on for rather a long time.
“Oh, Branwell. Don’t be such a prig.”
“As usual, it falls upon me to be the sensible one.”
He pushed past her and strode across the yard toward Emily and Rogue.
Emily noticed them now and waved to her younger sister. Anne dashed off, and the two met in an embrace in front of the tree, Rogue and Branwell looking on. Emily’s anger was like a quickly passing storm. Over the years, this had led Charlotte to believe her sister’s passions weren’t serious. She saw now that she’d been wrong about that.
Charlotte and Zamorna started toward the others across the hard ground. “I’d like you to know,” he said, “that if I can do anything to help you get home, you have only to ask.”
Charlotte knew what she must do and did not think he could help her, but the gesture touched her. “Then you are not angry with us any longer? You don’t hate us?”
Zamorna hesitated. “I hardly know what I feel,” he answered. “Or what I am. I have only just learned that all the days of my life were bought with days of someone else’s. With my own dear brother’s days. Except, of course, that you are not my brother.” He shook his head. “All I can say is that it has made me think of how I’ve spent that time, and your sacrifice seems too great for the dissolute life I have led.”
She stopped walking. There was a new warmth and intelligence in his brown eyes. It had been growing there ever since they were together in the garden. For a moment, she was at a loss for words, though she quickly regained her composure.
“My name is Charlotte,” she said. “Charlotte Brontë.”
Zamorna bowed. “A pleasure.”
When she arrived at the tree, all faces turned to her, expectant, and Charlotte did not hesitate. In a loud voice she cried, “The wicked Old Tom, knowing it was the last time he would ever open a door for the Brontë siblings, appeared in person to negotiate his price.”
Nothing happened at first. She glanced behind her to see if anyone was coming out of the school, and when she turned back, someone was leaning against the trunk of the tree, someone who hadn’t been there before.
“S’Death,” she said.
“In the flesh,” he said with a nod. He was wearing the fine green velvet he had worn to Zamorna’s party.
Emily, who was closest, gave a little scream and jumped away from him.
“You?” Branwell said. Only Anne, standing off to the side, seemed unsurprised.
“Yes, I.” S’Death seemed offended at Branwell’s disbelief. “Don’t I look like all the stories? I could wear my red furs if you’d prefer. Might be warmer.”
Charlotte approached warily. “I see. You liked to keep an eye on us, I suppose. But what are you?”
“Who’s to say?”
“A demon? A fairy?”
S’Death looked at his fingernails and shrugged.
“Hold one moment,” Rogue interrupted. “You are not who you claimed to be, either? First Thornton and now you?” He grabbed S’Death by the collar and shoved him roughly against the tree trunk. “Do I have any true friends at all?”
“Now, old fellow,” S’Death said.
“Tell them what they want to know!”
“I will! I will!”
Rogue let go, and S’Death harrumphed, yanking at the end of his waistcoat.
“I’ve had as many shapes as I’ve had names. I didn
’t always look like this, you know. Before you came, I wasn’t much. Just the sound of wind on the moor.”
“Before we came?” Branwell repeated. “We, the Brontës?”
S’Death rolled his eyes. “No, dimwit, you, the human beings—before you came with your axes and your bows and your telling stories around a fire.” A smile cracked his craggy face. “Oh, the things you humans dream up. I can’t think of nothing on my own, but you. They’re almost real, you know, the things you dream. You’re almost little gods.” He thumped his chest with his fist. “You dreamed me up. Or anyway, you dreamed up different forms for me—fox, fairy, spider—a thousand more. Old Tom’s the story they tell now, but there are plenty of good ones.”
“You made Verdopolis?” Charlotte asked. “And all our places?”
“Nah,” he said. “You done all that. All I done was give your stories a little push. It only takes a breath from me, a little whisper, to make them solid, to make a bubble where they can grow. A world. And then, for a price, you can go there, to that place you made. I poke a little door in that bubble, and I let you in.”
He grinned. “It’s been a long time since anyone’s made worlds as rich as yours, though, a long time.”
Charlotte stepped forward. “Please, let us go home. Take one more payment—but take it from me alone. A hundred days, will that suffice?”
S’Death seemed to think about this, puffing out his cheeks. “Nah. Not enough. Not enough by half.”
“Right, then,” said Zamorna. He brushed past Charlotte, took S’Death by one ankle, and, before the small man could protest, had him upside down and was shaking him back and forth like a terrier with a rabbit. Charlotte backed away with her hands up, and Emily laughed in surprise.
“Come, Rogue!” Zamorna shouted as he shielded his face from S’Death’s free foot, which was kicking wildly. “Don’t stand there like a toadstool, man! This is the villain we’re meant to vanquish, or I’m the son of an ape.”
“I’ve called you worse,” Rogue muttered, but he grabbed S’Death’s other leg.
Their gesture was a useless one, but it thrilled Charlotte nonetheless, and as she watched, a wave of emotions swept over her. He was a marvelous character, her Zamorna. They both were.