Imaginarium 3

by Sandra Kasturi, Helen Marshall (ed) (v5. 0) (epub)

  Jane almost does not hear her master’s words, but they seep into her mind like a rising tide: “That is my wife,” he explains, rubbing the dark stains on his torn sleeve. “Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever to know. And this is what I wished to have,” (here he lays his hand on the governess’s shoulder): “this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon.”

  Jane shudders, almost shrugs the hand off. One of the gentlemen asks a question. With her master distracted, Jane turns away from the madwoman on the floor, and the cluster of spectators. Unnoticed, she slips down the stairs, each step creaking familiarly in a house she no longer feels at home in.

  She does not take much. There is no time: They will be downstairs soon, and someone might run after her with pleas and reasonable explanations.

  She leaves by the servant’s gate. Nobody sees her go.

  Behind her, the attic howls its loneliness to the wind.

  THE MOORS

  She dies her second death on the moors.

  It is cold, bitterly cold, and the changeling is not dressed for the weather. Her flesh suffers the elements as severely as any human, though her fey nature sings on the wind.

  Home, she thinks bitterly. I’ve come home, and in a way she has: Being a changeling, she belongs nowhere.

  At some point she sleeps, or tries to, huddling on a muddy bank under the shelter of a wind-beaten tree. At dawn she rises, scraping away the frost that has formed on her skin.

  She wades knee-deep in the heath’s dark growth. She follows paths no humans could walk, under hills and through stones, through the abandoned tunnels and empty barrows that mark the deserted cities of the fey. No friendly fires welcome her.

  She recalls the words she spoke once, by a warm fireplace: “The men in green all forsook England a hundred years ago.” She had hoped to be wrong.

  Wearily she directs her path out of the earth. She is almost at the end of her magic now; even her fey self cannot keep walking much longer. And yet she sets one foot in front of the other, stubborn to the end.

  Her path takes her to the house at Marsh End, a lonely hermitage of a building. The servant who answers gives this wandering beggar a crust of bread before sending her off. The changeling accepts it numbly. She no longer has the strength for gratitude.

  She does not eat the bread. With her last strength, she draws a splayed cross on the dust of the road and lays the bread on top of the symbol. As charms go, it’s horribly weak, but it is her last hope.

  The changeling lies down beside her charm. Mustering what remains of her strength, she dies.

  MOURNING

  Thornfield is a dark house now.

  The clockwork girl sits in her room, counting the beats of her imperfect heart. Nobody cares if she studies penmanship, or asks her hard questions about the kings of England. Adele should be glad, but she isn’t. The master’s gloom has fallen on them all.

  “Why did you do that?” she demands of the attic. “Why did you have to spoil everything?”

  The attic is contemptuously silent.

  “I don’t see why I had to show her the horseshoe,” Adele says. “She would have left anyway, as soon as she found out.” She adds, carefully, “It’s a scandal,” in the breathy way the maids did in the kitchen.

  Silence. Adele lies down on her bed, facing away from the attic.

  “Well I hope she comes back soon,” she says, and then adds, “I want to show her the new dance I’ve been working on.”

  I need you to do something for me, the attic says. This time Adele claps her hands over her ears.

  THE SICK ROOM

  The changeling comes back to life slowly. Her mind is in pieces and every piece of it hurts. She hears voices, sees fragments of faces. Some of them are there, some are elsewhere, some are long ago.

  She is alive.

  “She’s alive,” says the man, “but barely. We must keep her by the fire.”

  “She looks sensible, but not at all handsome. The grace and harmony of beauty are quite wanting in those features.”

  The changeling groans. She wants to tell them that she knows she is plain; she has never had any pretensions to beauty. Whatever wild looks run in the blood of the fey passed her by. What is left is a dull composite of dreams unfulfilled.

  But her movement brings only questions: “Who are you? Where are your people? What is your name?” They sting her like hornets.

  To make them go away she answers, “Jane, my name is Jane—” then, remembering, she adds “—Elliot. I have no people.”

  After that, they let her rest.

  MOOR HOUSE

  There was a governess who worked in a house of thorns. She fell in love with a man but discovered his past locked in an attic. She ran away, like a madwoman broken free. She was adopted by a family. They lived in the house at Marsh End, and all ended happily ever after.

  The changeling tries out her tale as she sits in the parlour, taking advantage of the family’s absence to test how her words bounce off the walls. It’s true, this sounds like a plausible conclusion, but she would prefer a different kind of ending.

  She hears voices at the door. Her benefactors have returned.

  “Jane Elliot!”

  The alias is easy to answer to. Jane nods and smiles. Both of the women are pleasant enough, but it’s St. John that Jane is most aware of.

  The master of the house is an austere man, a man made of marble, white and cold. The changeling feels obliged to him, on account of his saving her life, and on account of his being a religious man. The truth is, she doesn’t like him.

  “We have news,” says Diana. “St. John has located a position for Mary. She is to be a governess.”

  Jane’s face is slow to smile. For a moment she thinks she hears a footfall overhead, but of course there is no attic here. Her mind is playing tricks on her again.

  She manages to congratulate Mary on her new employment. In truth, it is good news of a sort, for these gentlewomen have very little to live on, and their brother is to go for a missionary.

  The magic that sleeps in these people is buried deep. In the women it almost never surfaces—their dreams are cramped by poverty. Also, they are afraid of their brother, of his torrential ambitions and drive to know God. The changeling senses his magic and fears it, for it flows down the narrow channels carved by his religion.

  St. John does not know he is different. Or if he does, it is because he thinks he is one of God’s chosen. He believes he has a destiny. Such people are dangerous.

  But, she thinks, this family means her no harm. They are the first other changelings that she has found. And where else would she go?

  She must stay here and build a new life, no matter what it costs her.

  CURSES

  “This place is cursed,” Adele says, balancing on her toes. The housekeeper turns and looks at her sharply.

  “Who told you that?” Mr. Rochester asks. He almost never listens. Astonished, Adele loses her balance and lands flat-footed.

  “Oh,” the clockwork girl says, “everyone.” She thinks of the gossiping maids, and of the madwoman brooding overhead, dark and terrible.

  “You should not give credence to idle tales.” Mr. Rochester is staring out the window again, waiting for someone. The woman he is looking for will not return, Adele thinks, not as long as the house has curses piled up at its door.

  “Nevertheless,” he says, as if to himself, “I should send you away. This is not a good place for a child. Not anymore.”

  For a moment, hope flares inside Adele. “Shall I go to Paris?” she says. “To see Mama?”

  Rochester is silent for a moment. Then he says, “No, I will not send you to Paris, but to my cousin’s house in Derbyshire. He has a young girl your age.”

  Adele is horrified. Other girls? She imagines a pair of rivals, their hair curle
d more perfectly than hers, their artificial bodies perfectly poised. “Oh non, monsieur,” she wails. “Do not send me there.”

  Afterward, when she has been sent to her room, she climbs up on one of the posts of her tall bed and puts her fingers against the ceiling. “Do something,” she says, “they are sending me away.”

  You will be safer elsewhere, the attic says.

  “But I don’t want to be elsewhere,” Adele says, outraged. “Elsewhere is exactly the same!” And she knows it—she’s been abroad in the world. It’s full of the spite of women, the jealousy of men. Curses sleep on every tongue. Here, at least, she has a place; she is cosseted and somewhat protected.

  Then you must do what I tell you. The attic is relentless on this point. It has been whispering the same thing for weeks.

  This time, Adele is willing to listen.

  DESTINIES

  In Moor House, Jane is saying her goodbyes again. This time she is bidding farewell to her two protectors, the earnest changelings who do not know what they are. They do not know how to form charms; they have not seen the dead cities of the fey. Jane pities them, and envies them, too.

  While she will miss them all, it will be a relief not to steel her mind against St. John’s ambition. When he talks to her, she does not feel like herself. She becomes the quiet, mouse-like creature she resembles, nodding at his every statement.

  Just as she thinks this, a shadow falls on her shoulder. “May I have a word?” St. John asks, his voice mild and ominous.

  The changeling wipes her damp hands on her skirt. There is nothing to be afraid of, she tells herself as she follows him out.

  THE SUMMONING

  “And if I give you the candle, you can bring her back?” Adele is dubious. Her clockwork mind is turning over the details of the attic’s plan, and however much the voice in the walls reassures her, the part of Adele that remains human feels certain that her governess will never return.

  The fire will call to her.

  “Why can’t I free you?” Adele says. “I’m here already.”

  Fire can burn the prison, but only one of my own blood can free me.

  Adele does not follow this logic. She does not understand what a plain, mousy thing like her governess could have in common with the attic. But seeing as she cannot win the argument, she shrugs and reaches for the candle.

  THE SECOND PROPOSAL

  The changeling walks on the heath with St. John. He looks, she thinks, like an animated statue, the kind that stalks young maidens through Italian castles.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” he says, “about your future.”

  Instantly her heart sinks. She is aware of the magic that swirls strongly around him. She raises barriers against its will.

  “I have observed you for many weeks now,” he says, in his regular tone. “You have been obedient and reserved, though I have reason to believe this has not always been the case.”

  Here he pauses, and she can almost hear him trying to frame what he senses but cannot admit: that the blood that runs in her veins is, like his own, wild and godless, thick with alien magic. “Do you know what you must do to save your soul?”

  Keep in good health and never die. The old, rebellious answer springs to her tongue, but this time she bites down on it. She has too much to lose.

  “You must be purified,” he says earnestly, “in blood and fire.”

  The changeling keeps perfectly still.

  “As you know, I intend to go to India, to do the Lord’s work and—I hope—earn a chance at redemption.”

  To die in flame, in other words. He must know that foreign soil is fatal to their kind. He knows it; she can see the light of martyrdom in his eye.

  “It has occurred to me,” he says, “that I would be benefited by having a helpmate. Someone who can aid me in my labours, visiting the natives, tending to me when I am ill. In short, that I may need a wife.”

  Jane says nothing. All her breath has frozen inside her. She can see his plan now, unfolding before her. Yes, she would be the perfect wife for him: quiet, obedient, tumbling with him into an early grave. And if not? A ring of salt, a circle of iron.

  St. John is getting angry now, his unacknowledged magic constricting the air. Already Jane can feel the awful charm forming, and part of her wonders if this was how the Masons caught the madwoman in the attic. People can pretend you have choices even as they deny you the air you breathe.

  Still, she summons her strength to make her final reply. And it is in the summoning that she feels something tear away from her. On the other side of the shadow someone calls her name as they fall into a terrible light.

  “No,” she says, the word coming out of her in a rush of air. Then she adds, “I must go.”

  Leaving St. John bewildered in her wake, she runs across the heath, her skirt bunched up in her hands, the mud splattering her boots. Someone, somewhere, has done an awful thing. She can feel the narrative buckling around her as the story changes.

  She is, therefore, not surprised to see a bearded man standing at the door, message in hand. Her heart sinks. She slows to a walk, trying to delay the last few seconds before the man speaks, knowing that whatever he says will propel her in a final direction.

  The attic has called her home.

  JANE, HEIR

  The people at the crossroads are happy to retell the story: how Rochester’s mad wife laughed to see the fire creep up Thornfield’s walls, how his young ward ran shrieking through the flickering passages, her pretty white dress crawling with flame.

  The old house went quickly, they say. Its old beams gave up their ghosts with hardly a shriek.

  They saw the madwoman, a candle in each hand, her hair fizzing in tendrils of smoke. They say she laughed as she jumped. Her crazed brains made wet puddles on the stones below.

  “And Rochester?” The lady who inquires listens with a sombre countenance.

  The master tried to follow her as far as he could. To the edge of the roof, and almost over it. In the end, he lost an eye and his hand in the fire. (And his wife, of course, but they do not count her.)

  The lady nods and rises. She counts out her storytellers’ reward. She is too new to wealth to treat each coin lightly, as a rich woman should.

  Since becoming an heiress, the changeling has taken to acts of charity. She has also bought herself some better clothes, and a new set of luggage. The messenger who greeted her at the door that day had promised much more, but Jane didn’t want it. There was too much news to absorb—a sudden windfall from a relative in the West Indies, the discovery that the strange inhabitants of Moor House were her cousins by blood and not by charity—it was too much like the conclusion of a sentimental novel, and the changeling is of a more serious turn of mind.

  So she split her riches with her newfound cousins and parted from St. John as a relation, but no longer a friend. And now, with money and haunted dreams, she has come home to the blackened ruin of Thornfield Hall.

  The changeling walks over the scarred earth, looking for something she can recognize. She pauses at a broken spar that might have come from the attic. No weeds grow here. The wood underfoot has burned to a fine white ash that looks suspiciously like salt.

  Looking around her, the changeling can see the remains of the claustrophobic walls of Thornfield, that for so long protected all their shared and tangled miseries.

  It is time for a new kind of story.

  The changeling draws a booted foot across the white line in front of her, breaking what remains of the circle. When she leaves, she does not look back.

  MEETINGS

  The changeling finds Rochester hulking in a desolate manor house, surrounded by iron fences that cannot keep her out. The kitchen servant jumps when the changeling strides in, and puts a hand to her throat. “Oh my,” she says. And then, “Is that you?”

  In the corner Adele stands to attention, tugging down the skirt to hid
e the burn on her leg. The attic has kept its word; now nobody will send her away.

  Rochester does not receive visitors, they tell her.

  “No fear of that,” says the changeling. “Give me the tray. I’ll carry it to him.”

  So she does. Quietly, so as not to disturb him. She has a streak of fey cruelty in her still, and she has taken a good deal of punishment to be able to stand before him now and say: “I am myself, Jane Eyre, an independent woman.”

  Which she will soon say. But for now, she draws out the moment, dismissing the excited dog with a flick of her pale hands. She stands patiently, as she did for so many dreary months when she was a mere governess in his service.

  She waits for Rochester to notice her.

  PARTINGS

  Reader, she married him. I wish I could say something different, although as far as endings go, this one will do. Let us leave her with what happiness she can gather together, a changeling with a husband and a son and a pretty clockwork ward, living together in a house by the moorlands.

  Her new house has an attic, and ghosts creep around it at night. Sometimes they have names like Bertha or Brontë, and sometimes they are nameless. Still, both she and you know them as you do your own shadow. Your other half.

  The changeling lies awake listening to them, wishing there was something she could do to help. But she cannot change dead histories.

  She sleeps restlessly, the way all in-between creatures must do, awaiting eras in which they might yet be fully born into the world. In the meantime, the women creep overhead, rattling attics with stories that want to be told.

  SAID THE AXE MAN

  Tam MacNeil