In the Shadow of Blackbirds

by Cat Winters

  The gift she had left for me in my room was Uncle Wilfred’s weighted brass nautical compass, inherited from his seafaring grandfather and mounted in a mahogany case the size of a large jewelry box. A gorgeous device.

  While my bathwater roared through the downstairs pipes, I wandered around my new room with the compass, checking to see whether the walls behind the gilded paper contained any metal strong enough to move the needle. And for a short while, the lure of scientific discovery blotted out the sea of masked faces on the train ride south, the purplish-black feet rattling in the back of that cart, my father getting punched in the gut in front of my eyes, and the first boy I’d ever loved fighting for his life in a trench in France.

  I TWISTED AND TURNED, TRYING TO GET COMFORTABLE IN my new bed. The mattress springs whined with every restless movement I made. Ambulance sirens screamed in the distance. I couldn’t sleep. I ached to see and touch Stephen again. The briny air I’d smelled all afternoon reminded me that we were last together only a few miles from Aunt Eva’s house—before the flu, before my father’s arrest, when Stephen still lived in his home across the bay.

  I reached down to the black doctor’s bag on the floor and fetched Stephen’s second-to-last letter, dated May 30, 1918. The picture he had included fell out of the envelope—a portrait taken at a studio where all the Camp Kearny recruits had gone to get photographed in their army uniforms. He wore a tight-fitting tunic that buttoned up to his throat, narrow trousers that disappeared inside knee-high boots, and a ranger-style Montana peak hat that hid his short brown hair. I could tell from the stiff way he held his jaw that he was attempting to look serious and bold for the picture, but mainly he resembled a Boy Scout ready for camp.

  His lovely handwriting on the letter shone in my oil lamp’s steady light.

  Dear Mary Shelley,

  They’re shipping us overseas soon, even though I’ve barely been in training. We’re needed in Europe something desperate, I guess. I’ll be on a train to the East Coast in the coming weeks and then boarding a ship to cross the Atlantic.

  I’ve been wondering why you haven’t responded to the package I prepared for you the morning I left. At first I worried that I somehow offended you with the gift… or that I offended you by kissing you. But if you were offended, you would have told me so directly, wouldn’t you? You have never been shy or evasive. So I choose to believe the package never reached you.

  If you aren’t mad at me, I would love to hear how you are doing and to receive a recent picture of you. I’m including an Army Post Office address where you can write to me at any point, even when I’m overseas. The only photographs I have of you are from your days of mammoth hair bows—those giant loops of ribbon that looked like they would start flapping and fly off the top of your head. I’m trying so hard to remember the grown-up version of you, with your bewitching smile and those haunting blue eyes that seemed to understand exactly what I was feeling.

  If you would rather not attach yourself to someone heading off to war, I understand. After your aunt hurried you out of my house that day, after Julius told his vicious version of what happened, my mother yelled at me and called me cruel. She reminded me you have your whole life ahead of you and said the last thing an intelligent girl like you needs is to ruin her life for a boy heading off to war.

  You don’t need to wait for me, Shell. I’m aware you need to live your life without worrying about me. If you do want to write, however, if you do think of me, I would love to receive your letters. I miss you so much.

  Yours affectionately,

  Stephen

  P.S. I wish I had those goggles of yours that supposedly let you see the future. I could really use them right now.

  I smiled at his last line and leaned over to my black bag again. Down in the cloth-lined depths of one of the side compartments were the coarse leather straps of my aviatrix goggles—a gift from Aunt Eva, purchased to blot out the memory of the crowd beating on the German man at the Liberty Loan drive during my last visit. We had come across the chaos just as the police were dragging the victim away in handcuffs, his right eye swelling, his nose and mouth a mess of bright red blood. Men with angry blue veins bulging from their foreheads had shouted words like Kraut bastard and goddamned Hun, even with ladies and children present.

  I shoved aside the memory of the violence, fastened the goggles over my face, and lay back against the cool sheets to stare through the bug-eyed lenses at the empty white ceiling. Stephen’s letter rested against my stomach—an invisible weight, but there just the same. My mind opened to the possibility that the goggle salesman’s promises of enchantment had been true, as preposterous as the idea was. I would see the fate of the world through the glass lenses.

  Yet the future refused to emerge.

  Only the past.

  I saw myself getting off the train on April 26 to celebrate my sixteenth birthday in Stephen’s new city … and to distract Aunt Eva from life with a husband wasting away in a home for tuberculosis patients. She and Uncle Wilfred had moved to San Diego for the healthier air, and I jumped at the opportunity to visit her—and perhaps see my old friend again. Faces didn’t yet hide behind gauze masks. Soldiers and sailors arriving for training smiled up at the Southern California sunshine and smacked one another on the back as if they were on vacation, and the air rang out with laughter and war talk and the boisterous melody of a brass band playing “Over There.”

  Aunt Eva had met me on the train platform in a lacy white dress that fell halfway between her knees and ankles. Her hair, still long enough to reach her waist, was pinned to the back of her head in shimmering blond loops of girly curls.

  As soon as we had escaped the bustle of recruits and music in the depot, I asked her, “Have you seen my friend Stephen Embers’s family since you moved here?”

  “Actually, yes.” Her leg bumped into my swinging suitcase, which she did not offer to carry. “Julius now runs the family photography studio. He’s a spirit photographer—he captures images of the dead who’ve returned to visit loved ones.”

  “I know.” I squinted into the burning sunlight. “Stephen mentioned that in one of his letters. He didn’t sound pleased about his brother’s work. And I’ve only received one letter from him since their father passed away in January. I’m really worried about Stephen.”

  “I’ve posed for Julius.”

  “You have?”

  “A couple of times.” The sun glinted off her round spectacles, but I could see a funny little gleam dancing in her hazel eyes. “I recognized his name in the newspaper when he presented an exhibit of his work in February, and I was absolutely flabbergasted when I saw his photos. He’s trying to summon your mother and Grandma Ernestine for me.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “My mother and Grandma Ernestine have shown up … in spirit photographs?”

  “I think so.” She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “On three separate occasions, Julius captured the images of two glowing figures hovering behind me, but their faces haven’t yet fully materialized for us. I told him you’re very much like your mother. I explained she named you after Mary Shelley because of her love of electricity and science, and he thinks you may be able to lure her into making a full spirit manifestation.”

  “What? No!” I slammed my suitcase to the ground. “Dad would hate it if I posed for Julius Embers. Julius always got caught drinking and smoking at school and wound up in all sorts of fights and trouble.”

  Aunt Eva sniffed. “He’s straightened his ways. He’s quite the gentleman now—so tall and handsome, with his dashing black hair. Barely twenty-two years old and already a gifted Spiritualist photographer.”

  I gaped at her. “You sound like you’re in love with him.”

  “Don’t say that, Mary Shelley. I’m a married woman with a deathly ill husband. I simply admire the man’s work.”

  “You’re blushing.”

  “Stop it.” She swatted my shoulder with her white-gloved hand. “I scheduled a sitting fo
r you at Julius’s in-home studio in two days, and if you behave yourself, I’m sure you could see his brother directly afterward.”

  I rubbed my shoulder and felt an uncomfortable twinge course through my stomach at the thought of posing for wild Julius Embers in close quarters.

  However … I possessed a ticket to Stephen’s house—a ticket to Stephen himself—which was exactly what I had wanted when I stepped off that train.

  Two mornings later, Aunt Eva whisked me across San Diego Bay to the Emberses’ home on Coronado Island. In Portland, Stephen’s family had lived in a neighborhood exactly like ours, with homes so squished together that if houses could breathe, their sides would knock against one another when they inhaled.

  This new residence, though—Stephen’s grandparents’ summerhouse, which the family had inherited in 1914—was an enormous seaside cottage covered in vast windows and thousands of cocoa-brown shingles. The neighboring house, a towering brick monstrosity, could have been Thornfield Hall from Jane Eyre, or any other grand estate that ruled over the English moors. I felt like an insignificant speck of Stephen’s former life entering this luxurious new world.

  Julius greeted us and made jokes about how tiny and serious I used to look. He took my photograph in his chilly studio in the family’s living room, and, afterward, Mrs. Embers—a robust woman with ink-black hair rolled into two thick sausages at the nape of her neck—served my aunt and me tea in a dining room awash in springtime sunlight. Through the open windows we could hear the crashing of waves from the Pacific Ocean. Thirteen different photographs of Coronado beaches dotted the dark paneled walls.

  “Where’s Stephen?” I asked, unable to take a single bite of Mrs. Embers’s lemon cake. The anticipation of finally seeing him again had stolen my appetite.

  “I was just wondering the same thing.” Mrs. Embers leaned back with a squeak of her chair and called toward the dining room’s entrance. “Stephen? Come down and visit your friend, please. Stephen?”

  I strained my ears but heard nothing. Sweat broke out across my neck. Stephen is avoiding me, I realized. He hasn’t been writing me since his father’s death because he’s tired of me.

  Mrs. Embers sighed and went back to stirring her Earl Grey. “He’s probably upstairs, packing.”

  “Packing for what?” I asked.

  “Didn’t he tell you in one of his letters?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “He’s leaving for the army tomorrow.”

  It felt as though someone had just socked me in the chest. I clutched the edge of the table.

  Aunt Eva grabbed my arm. “Are you all right, Mary Shelley?”

  I stared into the depths of my teacup and struggled to catch my breath while Mrs. Embers’s sentence replayed over and over in my head.

  He’s leaving for the army tomorrow.

  Back in Portland, one of my classmate’s uncles had just lost half his body to a massive shell explosion on a battlefield in France. Only a week earlier, an eighteen-year-old neighbor from back home—Ben Langley—died of pneumonia at his Northern California training camp.

  “Mary Shelley?”

  I cleared my throat to find my voice. “I didn’t know Stephen had enlisted. He won’t even turn eighteen until June. What is he doing going over there?”

  “About a month ago he started insisting he wanted to get out of this house.” Mrs. Embers blotted a drop of tea before it could stain the tablecloth. “He’ll be training at Camp Kearny, just up north, but he says he doesn’t even want to come back home to visit if he gets a weekend pass. His father’s death hit him hard.”

  “That’s very sad to hear,” said my aunt. “Hasn’t Julius ever helped Stephen through his grief? Perhaps if their father’s spirit showed up in a photograph—”

  “No, that’s never going to happen.” Mrs. Embers smiled, but her brown eyes moistened. “My two boys couldn’t be any more different from each other. They’re like a volcanic eruption whenever they’re together.”

  I couldn’t keep my legs still. I had to hunt down Stephen. “May I use your washroom, Mrs. Embers?”

  “Certainly. Go past the bottom of the staircase. It’ll be the first door on your right before the study.”

  “Take those silly goggles off your neck first,” said Aunt Eva, with a tug at my leather straps.

  Mrs. Embers chuckled. “I was wondering about those goggles. It seems like you were always wearing some sort of new contraption whenever I saw you in the old days, Mary Shelley.”

  “I bought them for her yesterday at the Liberty Loan drive.” Aunt Eva shook her head at me. “Some salesman with yellow mule teeth tried to convince her they’d let her see the future, and I think she half believes him.”

  “I’m hoping they’ll be my good-luck charm.” I rose with as much grace as a person defending quasi-magical goggles could muster. “You know I’ve always admired aviatrixes.”

  “But you don’t need to wear them all the time.” My aunt sighed. “Boys were giving her the oddest looks when she walked around Horton Plaza Park with those things over her eyes. You should have seen their faces.”

  “I wasn’t trying to impress boys at a Liberty Loan drive.” I gripped the back of my chair. “I was desperate to see if there’s anything in my future besides a war. Thank you for the tea, Mrs. Embers.”

  “You’re welcome, dear.”

  As I made my way to the heart of the house, I overheard Aunt Eva explaining my obsession with aviatrixes, electricity, anatomy, and machinery, as though I were some sort of bizarre species—the rare Female scientificus, North American. “I don’t know if you remember, but my older sister, her mother, was a physician,” she said in a voice she probably assumed I couldn’t hear. “Mary Shelley seems to be channeling Amelia’s love of exploration and technology. That girl has always been passionate and headstrong about everything.”

  Dark, knotty wood lined every wall, ceiling, and floor in the Emberses’ entry hall—an immense space that reminded me of the belly of a ship. A brass lantern hung overhead. I almost expected the floor to roll with the swell of a wave.

  The soles of my shoes pattered across the floorboards to the rhythm of a beast of a grandfather clock that rose to the ceiling at the opposite end of the hall. I slowed my pace, placed my goggles over my eyes, and approached the clock with interest. The minute hand ticked its shadowy finger toward the twelve on a face painted to look like the moon, with eyes and a mouth and pockmark craters. The metallic gears spun and clicked deep inside, all those shiny pieces fitting into just the precise positions to make the contraption work. The pendulum swung back and forth, back and forth, hypnotizing with its gleaming brass.

  “The boys who gave you odd looks don’t appreciate originality.”

  I jumped backward a foot at the unexpected voice.

  Through my lenses, I viewed a stunning boy who looked to be an older version of the Stephen I remembered, with hair a rich brown and deep, dark eyes that watched me with interest. He sat toward the bottom of the staircase, a book in hand, with one of his long legs stretched down to the floor. A black band of mourning encircled his white shirtsleeve. A gray silken tie hung down to his stomach and made him look so grown up, so distinguished, compared to my Portland childhood friend.

  I caught my breath. “The Stephen Embers I knew wasn’t an eavesdropper.”

  “Did a man really try to convince you those goggles would let you see the future?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And what do you see?”

  “Only a person who lurks in the backs of houses instead of coming to see his long-lost friend.”

  He grinned and revealed a dimple I’d long forgotten.

  I smiled and pulled the goggles down below my chin. “You’re not as gentlemanly as you used to be, Stephen. I remember you used to jump to your feet whenever a lady entered the room.”

  “I’m far too stunned by the fact that you are a lady now.” He scanned me down to my toes. “You used to be so small and scrawn
y.”

  “And you used to wear short pants that showed off your knobby knees and drooping socks. Plus you always had that scuffed-up old camera satchel hanging off your shoulder.”

  He laughed. “I still have that satchel.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear not everything’s changed.” I stepped closer to him, my heart beating at twice its normal rate. My skin burned as if with fever. “Why are you hiding back here instead of coming out to see me?”

  “Because …” His dimple faded. “I got the impression you came to see my brother instead of me.”

  “That’s a silly thing to assume. The only way my aunt would let me come over here was if I sat for a photograph. She’s madly in love with your brother’s work.”

  Stephen closed his book—Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island. “Julius is a fraud, Shell. He’ll scam you out of your money faster than that goggles salesman. Did you let him take your picture?”

  “I think he’s working on developing it right now.”

  “Then you’re hooked.” He glanced over his shoulder, through the balusters of the stair rail, and then returned his attention to me. “Why’d you let him do that? I thought you of all people wouldn’t be gullible.”

  “I didn’t say I believed in his photos.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “What makes you so certain he’s a fraud?”

  He sat up straighter. “My father told me how Julius is creating his ghosts—doctoring the plates, creating double exposures, damaging his brain with too much opium until he convinces himself the mistakes he makes while developing the plates are spirit images.”

  “Julius is an opium fiend?”

  “Are you really that surprised?”

  “Well …” I had heard tales of artists and depraved gentlemen who frequented dark opium dens, smoking the drug from long pipes until they hallucinated and passed out. But never in my life had I known anyone who tried it. I closed my gaping mouth. “I suppose your brother would enjoy something like that.”