Of Breakable Things

by A. Lynden Rolland

  “Don’t worry about it,” Westfall said. “Take care of the banshee. I can escort the children to the medical center if need be.”

  “They should be questioned,” the patrolman argued, trying to smile, but the messy-haired guard held up his hand.

  “There was no crime. The banshee should not even have been here. They didn’t know. Besides,” the messy-haired guard added with a glance at Westfall, “the Patrol can’t override an order given by an Ardor Service member.”

  Westfall gave Van Hanlin a shove. “Come on. Let’s get these children out of here.”

  The patrol turned to leave, stealing glances back at the field, some ogling Westfall, some still trying to peek at Alex.

  Westfall ushered all three newburies back in the direction of the mansion with a push that had much more force than necessary. “That was not supposed to happen,” he growled under his breath.

  Alex could only wonder what he was referring to. What she wondered more was how this whole scene could play out right in front of that little black box, and no one noticed it sitting there, blatantly out of place, spitting its thoughts at them.

  No one had even looked at it.

  ***

  The Patrol recommended that the teachers eliminate the woods from the festivities, but the commotion around town was too intense to ignore. Natives and tourists alike were raving about the “closing act” and how the voices were the greatest illusions they had ever experienced. Skye told Alex that in September and October alone, the insignificant town of Moribund typically brought in more tourism than Redwood National Park did year round, and now the number of guests had risen higher than ever.

  Thus, Van Hanlin promised to oversee the woods at all times. Not that Alex could have escaped again if she had wanted to, because her peers were so interested in the banshee encounter. Her reputation had quickly morphed from “bench girl” to “banshee girl.” At least that sounded slightly cooler.

  But when spirits asked her about what happened, the topic always seemed to shift to Reuben:

  “How could he be so stupid?”

  “He’s not too bright, that kid!”

  “Why didn’t he try to help you?”

  “Who actually hears a banshee and then goes to find it?”

  And Reuben hid in the corner of the yard, his mouth downturned and his eyes despondently turned away from his hecklers. Alex attempted to comfort him once, but he stood up without a word and walked away.

  At the mere sound of the word banshee, Alex could still hear shrill shrieking, and it felt like shards of glass being plucked from her brain.

  Van Hanlin ordered her to stay at the manor and “direct” the chasings outside, which was completely pointless and utterly boring. How much direction was needed to follow sporadic groups exiting one door? The Patrol captured the banshee, and it wasn’t like the monster targeted her specifically. She’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time, so she didn’t understand her punishment.

  “I don’t think it’s a punishment,” Skye assured her. She’d sought out Alex in order to give her a bouquet of chamomile flowers. Alex didn’t ask why, because she figured she probably wouldn’t understand the explanation anyway. “But people do seem to be a little freaked out by you.”

  “Are you?”

  “Nah.” Skye flashed a dazzling smile. It nearly glowed in the moonlight. “I don’t scare easily. I do feel badly for you, though, sitting here and twiddling your thumbs. It can’t be stimulating.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “Duvall asked me to fetch a dozen buckets and shovels, but I don’t really feel like going all the way to the shed. Are you allowed to do it?”

  Alex jumped to her feet. “Probably not, but I’ll do it anyway.”

  Skye tilted her head to listen for something. Alex wondered if she could hear the pounding of Alex’s nonexistent heart. She desperately wanted to get back to that clearing.

  Thankfully, Joey Rellingsworth poked his head out from the doorway and warned the girls that another group of guests was about to exit the mansion. Skye sighed and tugged her mask from her pocket.

  “Take this wave,” Alex suggested, “and I’ll go run and grab the stuff.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Alex nodded. She couldn’t believe she was doing this alone, but the whispers called to her the moment she stepped away from the mansion. They urged her along through the darkness.

  When she reached the field where the chatty box waited, she marched forward and kicked it for causing her so much grief. It slid across the grass like a hockey puck and collided with a tree, spewing its contents onto the ground.

  Alex picked up a dilapidated black and white photo of two young boys grinning widely. One was dressed in shabby play clothes. Suspenders held up his loose slacks, overlapping a dirty white smock. The other boy was adorned in wealth. His slicked hair shone brighter than his shoes, and he had removed his suit coat and slung it over the shoulder of his perfectly cuffed dress shirt.

  The box brimmed with aged brown envelopes tied together with string. Alex carried it back to the center of the clearing where the glow of the moon could provide a reading light. She extracted a random envelope and slid her fingers underneath the flap, breaking the wax seal etched with a capital E. The brittle paper was decorated in the most artistic handwriting Alex had ever seen.

  November 1865

  Dear Sephi,

  Professor Melbourne is late for the morning session as usual, and I am once again avoiding Paul Bond and his embarrassingly zealous offers to proofread last week’s work. Knowing his family’s defiled history, I’d be likely to fail the assignment if I allow him to touch it. Thus I’m writing you this note to make it seem like I’m immersed enough to disregard him.

  I sit here among the mindless prattling, and it’s apparent that plenty of rumors still swirl about your death, even though you’ve been here for several months. The newburies continue to gossip about Ulysses S. Grant, especially the dead soldiers to my left, who claim they knew about your involvement in the war.

  The cockroach of a girl who sits in front of me was far too eager to hiss loudly about what had happened to your family. Let me express my condolences. Now I know why you encourage me to conceal my own talents. To think that a person is hunted for having extraordinary gifts! It dishonors your family the way people talk.

  Admittedly, I was most annoyed with the uproar of excited hysteria during your arrival. I was insanely jealous that you were stealing all the attention, but that was before I saw you. The moment I caught your gaze, I never wanted to let it go. I felt like I’d known you forever, and you filled a piece of me that I never knew I was missing.

  Will you meet me again tonight?

  Alex let the paper rest in her lap and it retracted, curling itself back into a protective bud. The recipient of the letter was dead. These were written by a spirit.

  Alex snatched the next letter from the stack.

  December 1865

  Dear Sephi,

  It must be difficult to be so well known. Especially as a child. It’s a bit tragic that you can’t simply be left alone. You handle the burden with such humility and patience. It only makes my affection for you stronger.

  I’ve put some thought into what you’ve said to me. That you are not encouraged to develop friendships with anyone here. They just want to isolate you; they want your talents for their own. You’ve never been given the chance to make your own decisions. To follow the paths you see before you.

  I’ve seen how they try to detach you from the rest of us. Duvall especially. But you also said that despite your efforts to avoid me, you already knew what was going to happen between us. So why do we need to be given the chance to let it develop when it’s already full grown? Let’s skip the beginning.

  Here’s to backwards thinking.

  Yours,

  Eviar

  December 1865

  Dear Sephi,

  I caught her staring again, sneer
ing at me in revulsion like vermin infesting her classroom. I sat oblivious in class, without the faintest notion of why there were shivers creeping down my spine, and then I realized the witch held me in her gaze. Perhaps she sacrificed a goat and drained the blood of a virgin to coax the devil into revealing her foes. Thus I have more respect for the slugs she adds to her potions. The school can label it “alchemy,” but “witchcraft” is more like it. I hate that you allow her to have so much influence over you.

  Alex was more than intrigued. Duvall! The Bond family! All from over a century ago. Alex lowered her gaze to another sheet of yellowed paper.

  January 1866

  Dear Sephi,

  I hate to admit weakness, but you have completely taken over my mind. I swear on my soul that every inch of my desire belongs to you. Even if I tried to change it, to deny it, I cannot envision a future without you in it.

  I understand that you are apprehensive, and with good reason. You have never been allowed happiness. You are feared in death more than you were feared in life. But I promise that I will always be the one to protect you. We just need to find where we belong. A large city may not be the most favorable. Perhaps a smaller one like Vorbild or Paradise.

  Ev

  Paradise. Where had Alex heard that before? Her brain began to shuffle through its filed memories, and finally an image remained. Her psychology classroom, but she hadn’t a clue why.

  There was something about these letters that was completely consuming. They called to her like a siren song. Alex reasoned that it shouldn’t matter if she took them with her. Beyond doubt, the box wanted her to find it, and if everything she’d heard about visibility was true, some part of her must have been looking for the box if she could see it when no one else could.

  She felt it no crime when she stood up and tucked the box securely under her arm and made her way back to the lights of the manor. Oddly enough, during the journey back through the trees, she felt an iambic pulse, as though the box had a heartbeat.

  March 1866

  Dear Sephi,

  I will admit to only you how much I miss home. I vividly remember my father’s intense eyes and the warmth I felt when I was around him because I adored him so. His words had such eloquence that everything and everyone around him fell silent the moment he parted his lips to speak. I have memories of curiously peeking into our study, which was filled with the clinking of ice in liquor glasses. This was where my father typically presided over a meeting of the most esteemed gentlemen in a town he himself founded. He would smile at me over the misty swirl of cigar smoke.

  I pray that I may always recall the pride with which my parents gazed upon me. I wish you could have known them. I can only hope the death of their only son did not destroy them.

  Gideon brings me comfort. I know you are wary of his sense of humor, but he has been my companion since I can remember. His mother worked in our kitchen, and every opportunity I could muster was spent with him, scrounging some sort of a childhood among incessant lessons to become high society royalty. One day, I will go back to retrieve the only picture I had of us. We have shared so much, including the unfortunate illness that led us here together. I am thankful to have something about my past to hold on to. I think I need to be reminded of myself. Unfortunately he has befriended one of those obnoxious DeLyre brothers. Ben DeLyre is not quite so much of a nob as the others, but he seems to share Gideon’s immaturity and inclination to trickery and cabbaging. Regretfully, their alliance will make the Darwins less prone to assisting me in finding my ancestry because the Darwins and DeLyres continue to clash.

  They must know something. I wouldn’t be able to do the things I can do if my family history was not extensive.

  Yours,

  Eviar

  “Alex?”

  She snapped back to reality.

  “Are you all right?” Gabe asked.

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “You’re really into that homework, aren’t you?”

  She gave him a sheepish grin, stuffing the letter she’d been reading under her ABC textbook. It had become routine for Alex to spend her evenings outside at the ballparks. She would have been perfectly content to lounge all evening in the warm Brigitta vestibule, but the Lasalles preferred the fields, and she preferred to be wherever they were. She clutched to whatever pieces of Chase she could.

  That night, something felt different. A good sort of different. Though she’d grown accustomed to her newly sharpened senses, Alex couldn’t quite trust the scent of hope gripping the coattails of the night.

  “I’m sorry. What were you saying?” she asked, folding the letters.

  He tilted his head towards the field in front of them. “I asked if you saw that play.”

  “Oh,” Alex muttered. “No.”

  There came a commotion at the foot of the stands, and Gabe ducked behind his book, cursing under his breath.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Gabe peered around the side of his book. “Romey’s coming. I missed front desk detention this morning because I was helping Jonas.”

  “With what?”

  Gabe shushed her and tried to crouch further behind his text. Like anyone would actually mistake his blonde curls for someone else’s.

  Romey came to a stop beside them. “Hello, you two.”

  Alex smiled. She liked Romey and the visible softness surrounding her, smoothing the roughness of the world wherever she went. “Is everything okay?”

  “It would probably be better if I hadn’t been pulled from a directors’ meeting this morning to babysit an unattended desk that I’d already staffed weeks ago.”

  “Sorry, Romey,” Gabe mumbled from behind his book-cover shield.

  Romey didn’t seem to accept his apology. “You have double duty at front desk tomorrow night. Be there at 6:00 p.m. sharp.”

  Gabe groaned.

  “Like I said, double duty. And the next time you decide to blow off an obligation, give me a heads up or your punishment will be much more severe.” Romey ambled away, excusing herself because she was due to supervise the fields.

  Right at that moment, Alex felt a marvelous jolt of anticipation. It was the kind of feeling one experiences on only a handful of occasions in a lifetime. Like a first kiss or a last dance. The kind that one wants to relive over and over, even if the memory is less satisfying than the real experience.

  She knew Chase had arrived before she even saw him.

  Each of the Lasalles was mesmerizing in his own way. People were always drawn to them, hypnotized by the melody of their movements. Chase happened to be the worst of them. All he had to do was turn his eyes on someone and they were smitten. And watching him walk out onto the field, Alex knew she had been wrong about the beauty of this world, the colors, the buildings— to rank them the way she had—because Chase himself was without a doubt the most beautiful thing her eyes had ever seen.

  He must have felt her too, because he stopped midstep to scan the valley until he found her face. He stood dumbstruck, with one hand over his mouth in disbelief and the other hand clutching a bag that dangled closely to the ground.

  He was even more stunning in death. Alex would never have imagined this could be possible. His blue eyes filled the air between them, the vibrancy of their color somehow more brilliant than any of the palettes she’d seen yet as a spirit. They flooded Alex’s sight, tinting her world a stunning hue until he blinked and lowered his hand. His lips parted and soundlessly mouthed her name.

  Alex couldn’t catch her breath, not that she needed it anymore. She only noticed the discomfort because her chest began to heave and air ripped through her lungs in sharp gasps. As she said his name, it wasn’t accompanied with a taste of loss and suffering for the first time in so long. Instead, it contained the simplicity of recognition, of happiness. It tasted wonderful.

  The moment was not lost on Gabe, who glanced from Alex to Chase and back to Alex, sighing loudly. Down on the field, Jonas crossed his arms and stared at his brother,
who didn’t divert his eyes from Alex even when a ball clocked him right on the crown of his head.

  Gabe wrung his hands as Chase greeted Romey, who hugged him tightly, like a son. It appeared she was trying to be firm with him, but her warm, maternal mannerisms interfered. Although she shook a reprimanding finger with one hand, she reached up with the other to smooth out a stray piece of his hair.

  Every few moments, Chase found Alex in the stands and when his eyes met hers, the world seemed to stop, and his face would break into an iridescent smile.

  “I’m really not used to that,” Gabe said quietly.

  “What?”

  “I’d forgotten that Chase could smile.” The spectators around them erupted in response to a play Alex didn’t care to see. “Will you do me a favor? You of all people know how Jonas can be. Don’t go off riding into the sunset kicking dirt in his face just yet.”

  “What?”

  “You know exactly what I mean,” Gabe said, intercepting another of Chase’s smiles to Alex.

  “Chase is my best friend,” she replied softly, feeling heat in her cheeks. But the flame was obvious, and no amount of watering down her words would extinguish it.

  “In the grander scheme of things, this isn’t about you. Jonas resents us. Me. Kaleb. Chase.” He hugged his book against his chest. “I don’t want him to think that Chase has stolen something from him. I don’t want it to get any worse.”

  “Why would he think that?” She recognized the foolishness of her question. Jonas was territorial and spiteful, and she knew she’d allowed him to get a little too close.

  “I guess I didn’t really know the extent of it until about two minutes ago when Chase looked at you the way he did. And then the way Jonas looked at Chase.” He turned away to watch the field again. “But I’ll speak to him. Do you think you can just keep things under wraps for a little while? Jonas is pretty mercurial. With any luck, he’ll be preoccupied with something else soon enough.”

  “Under wraps? What do you think is going to happen?”

  She could not stop herself from smiling merely considering the possibilities.