A Midwinter Fantasy (11 page)

“Oh, Percy, look how it worsens,” Constance murmured, bobbing in the air beside her. “The headmistress chose correctly, at least I think, but it’s not over.”

The whole vast room had grown dark over the course of the journey. There were terrible murmurs and whispers through the portal hung like a curtain in the middle of the foyer, seeping out into their mortal reality, and the blood chilled in Percy’s veins. She rushed forward to its very edge, staring in, straining to see the dim figures beyond. A dark mist rose within, and Percy could hear its familiar hissing, trying to invite her in, insidious and also eerily seductive. This edge of shadow was a dangerous place for coming and going. And it wanted her, like it had before.

As if through a veil, Percy recognized the headmistress, unsteady on her feet, surrounded by flickering shadows. The headmistress was in the midst of a battle.

“This is the Liminal?” Percy asked.

“Yes,” Constance murmured. “It’s here that the greatest
change of a soul can take effect. The danger is necessary because the transformation can be the richest. The Liminal can be a beautiful place, but it edges the Whisper-world, and with any darkness present . . . Well, it amplifies
all
things.”

The mists of the Whisper-world swirled up around the edge of Rebecca’s skirts, clearly trying to hold her like shackles. But, Rebecca fought. And, who was the spirit beside her?

Percy’s heart swelled in sudden recognition. “Jane!” she breathed. Close enough to touch her friends if she reached through the portal, Percy kept to the side, a bright candle at the base of a vast altar. She dared not step up and inside, not because she feared for herself, but for the child she carried.

Jane looked out from the portal and smiled. “Hello, Percy. Could you spare us just a bit more of your light? Rebecca’s done what she must, but we’re still precarious. You’re just the one to tip the scales.”

Rebecca didn’t seem able to hear past her internal fight.

Percy squeezed in her hand the rosary Michael had blessed, staring deep into the offending, greedy shadows that wanted to make sadness a forever state throughout Creation. The burning in her breast intensified, searing. The unfortunate effect of a divine power using her mortal body was that there were limits, but as Percy had herself once lived a life domineered by melancholy, she was more than ready to give what she could for this battle. She’d be damned if such melancholy was going to hold Rebecca and feed the beast they’d already bested.

“Headmistress, go on. Release your tears,” Jane was saying. “Don’t hold them in or give them power. Shed your tears upon the stones and leave them. When all is done, step into the light.”

The headmistress looked up. She seemed to hear. Her
cheeks were wet, but her face was more open than Percy had ever seen it.

“Let that caged heart of yours free,” Jane urged. “I love you, Rebecca. I always have and I always will. You’re right about forgiveness. It’s time to begin again.”

The friends embraced, and Rebecca’s healing tears flowed faster. Seeming to realize what came next, the two said good-bye—and Merry Christmas.

Jane stepped from the portal. She appeared at Percy’s side, floating, changing from her solid form in the Whisper-world to her transparent, spectral buoyancy upon Earth. Inside the portal, Rebecca looked around, squinted out at them, apparently seeing only light and feeling that she was alone. More tears had to drain before she could start life anew.

Placing a cool draft of a hand on Percy’s shoulder, Jane murmured, “Let her have a good cry; she needs it. Let sorrow drain into the river. When she’s done, carefully help her off the ledge. Now that the headmistress’s change of heart has freed me, I must be off to shake final sense into a vicar.”

When Jane grinned, Percy returned the expression. “Sense? Indeed.” But her heart was heavy; they’d have to say goodbye again.

“I’ll be back to spook you and your beloved,” Jane promised, anticipating her. “I know Alexi will be insulted if I don’t give him his fair haunting. He’ll never forgive me.”

“Thank you. It’s so good to see you,” Percy murmured. “But, I am—we all are—so sorry to have lost you. Grateful for your sacrifice, but sorry.”

Percy’s inner light, that otherworldly beacon of hope, flickered. Jane rolled her eyes. “Not you, too! All of you with your regrets,” the Irishwoman scoffed. “My fate was what was meant to be. Now, tend your light.” Jane turned to Constance, floating patiently at Percy’s side. “Good work, my
lass. Stay here with Percy ‘til the last, and then I daresay we’ve all earned our blessed peace and then some!”

Constance nodded, and placed her ghostly hand on Percy’s shoulder. Percy’s light burned brighter for friendship. Being a beacon was exhausting and painful, and she wondered if her skin would bear the mark of a burn.

Graceful, dark movement from the floor above caught Percy’s eye. Alexi stared down at the scene from the floor above; down at the roiling portal, the headmistress’s vague form within, at the ghosts of Jane and Constance, and then at his luminous wife. Tears stood in his dark eyes. He made no move to stop Percy, or to move her away from the perilous edge where she stood guard, only stared at her with awestruck pride. Jane smiled and waved up at him.

“Merry Christmas!” Jane whispered and vanished.

Alexi blew Percy a kiss and turned away, leaving her to her miracles as she had requested. Percy’s light was sustained anew.

Rebecca looked up. The light yet blinded her, but she was done; her tears had run their course. Everything was different.

She stood. “What do I do?” she murmured, seeing only the light, unsure.

“Come,” said a sweet voice. “Give me your hand.”

Rebecca reached out toward the light. A soft, small hand met hers and pulled. There came a whirling sensation. She found herself stepping down onto firm ground in the foyer of Athens Academy. A small pop sounded behind her, and the portal, shadows, mists and encroaching danger were no more.

It was indeed the sturdy marble floor of her academy; she was in the school she had run with strength and aplomb, the place that had given so many opportunities otherwise absent to its students and staff. God, she loved this building.

Her eyes found those of the guardian angel whose light had helped her fight the greedy Whisper-world: they were the eerie, ice blue irises of Persephone Rychman. The young woman’s inner light, as white as her skin, faded as Rebecca moved to safety. She was breathing heavily, as if from great pain and exertion; but save for a bit of sweat on her brow she seemed otherwise composed. Her faintly rouged lips curved into a small smile just as radiant as her spirit.

“Welcome back, Headmistress!”

Rebecca swallowed hard, at a loss for words. “Indeed. Th-thank you, Percy.”

There was a short pause.

“Merry Christmas!” Alexi’s young wife cried, and she threw her arms around Rebecca.

Rebecca took a moment to take stock. There was no jealousy. There was no pining. There was only possibility. The spirits had granted her new life. She felt entirely, wholly, utterly
new
. She returned the girl’s embrace, no longer tentative.

Percy pulled back and grinned again.

Curtseying before either of them could say another word, the young woman trotted off up the staircase . . . and the vast room seemed suddenly all the more empty for the lack of her. There was no remaining bitterness as Rebecca’s unwitting rival disappeared. This girl had never wished to be her rival; she had only embraced fate. Something the headmistress intended to do from now on.

“They did it all in one night,” she murmured, wandering to her office, a grin on her face. “Spirits. Good spirits. Of course they did it all in one night. Of course they can.”

Dickens was to the point after all, damn him. She realized she didn’t mind being proven wrong.

It seemed her surprises weren’t done. There was an envelope on her desk bearing the official seal of Athens. From
the board of directors. Rebecca’s heart was in her throat, for she feared something had finally snapped. Perhaps closing the school to battle Darkness had brought about repercussions? Perhaps the board had heard that she’d been acting odd of late, which she most certainly had. But her tension vanished as she read, and a grin again spread across her face.

In recognition of your exemplary work as headmistress, the board of Athens Academy has voted to secure you more spacious housing near but not on the grounds of the academy. We will convert your existing apartments into space for visiting faculty, there being a number who wish to learn from and champion Athens’s impressive and progressive model as their own. Enclosed, please find the keys for 6 Athens Row
.

Merry Christmas
.

It looked like Alexi’s handwriting but she couldn’t be bothered to verify it.

A home. A real home, just down the block. Of course she’d not want to be far, but . . . a home! Not some attic perch or cloistered closet filled with memories of loneliness. She’d now have a hearth. She had someplace to begin her new life, someplace to invite the some
one
she wanted to be part of it. Now that she was whole, now that she knew the heavens wanted something of her—demanded it, in fact—a glorious future awaited.

She nearly ran out the door.

Considering all the spiritual upheaval the school had seen, it was lucky Athens was tucked into an area of Bloomsbury and placed at such an odd angle: the red sandstone fortress was surrounded on all sides by alleys and the backs of other buildings. Billy and Mary floated at face level, their arms crossed, and they were just outside the front doors of the academy, in the cold. The breeze felt good on Michael’s flushed face; bracing.

He was still reeling from admitting his constant nerves when coming to call upon Rebecca. Surely that made him seem less of a man. But Michael had done as the ghosts wished, moved in his own footsteps through years and years, all seen from the spinning temporal axis of Billy’s chandelier vantage. The boy and Mary had taken turns urging him on, and now he was certain he could knock upon the headmistress’s door without trembling. He wanted her and loved her more than any fear could obstruct.

“So ye see,” Billy said, taking a paternal tone, “it isn’t that you fear for your Guard gifts gone. You fear for the very human gift of love being accepted. You fear havin’ what you desire. You’ve feared it all along.”

Michael nodded, dizzy.

“So now what are you waitin’ for? You, of all people! We’d have thought you’d seen plenty to give you perspective. Do ye need to be frightened by something far more terrifying? Do
you want to go back and fight Darkness again? He could live again, could take your bones as his own . . .” Billy threatened. He made a motion and there was a tearing sound. Where the front door of Athens stood, a dark maw of a portal opened to the Whisper-world. A rushing river of bones gurgled by.

Michael gulped. “No, thank you. I’m grateful to battle the heart, instead.”

“And are ye going to win this battle this time, Vicar?” cried a voice in an Irish brogue. Stepping from the portal, a woman floated down to hover over the Athens stoop.

“Jane!” Michael cried. He rushed forward.

Jane wafted close, giving his cheek a phantom kiss of cold condensation.

“I . . . I can
hear
you, too!” He was amazed and pleased.

She grinned. “You’re still under my spell.”

“Your
spell? Are you all right? Is Rebecca all right? Where is she?”

“Oh, yes, I’m grand. She’s grand. She’s still inside, working a few things out. Percy’s watching her, the dear heart. Time’s a bit funny here and there, especially crossing in and out like we’ve been doing, toying with the past. It doesn’t all add up, exactly . . . but then again, that’s the Whisper-world for you, full of baffling wonders and terrors. When has it ever added up?”

Michael’s face darkened. “What do you mean, she’s ‘inside’?”

“Inside the Whisper-world. The Liminal, to be exact. It’s dangerous, but that’s where a soul best gets changed. Would you like to go? Do you
need
to go? Or might we move on to the next phase of this ridiculous and beautiful production?”

Michael shook his head, and his fists clenched. “The Whisper-world? We’re not meant to go in there. That was
the whole point of the war of the spirits—that we couldn’t go in, that Alexi couldn’t run in after Percy, that we’ll go mad if we go in. What do you mean you’ve taken her in? I’ll go in after her and get her out!” He prepared to run inside the gaping portal.

Jane made a motion and the portal snapped closed behind her. “Why, Vicar Carroll, such spirit,” she said.

Michael eyed her with desperation. “You know I’d do anything for Rebecca. Always would have.”

“Except say that you love her,” Jane accused.

“I did! Much too late, but I did! Can’t that count for something? Where is she? Promise me she’s not in danger.”

“Michael, my dear, if anyone was suited for the mental rigours of the Whisper-world, it’s our headmistress. You, dear heart, would be destroyed by the sadness of that place. You’d be unable to break free; it would cripple and scar you forever. Let this moment be. Let
her
be. Focus on yourself.”

“When can I see her?”

“Momentarily. I promise.”

The tension in Michael’s shoulders eased, and his fists un-curled. Jane would never leave Rebecca without recourse. He stared at the greyscale spirit, noting how only colour and transparency differentiated her from when she lived.

“Oh, goodness, what is it now?” she said, smiling as his eyes welled with tears. She’d always loved his sentimentalism but teased him for it.

“It’s so very good to see you,” he explained. “I think the idea of the Grand Work made us take for granted how much we care for one another. Are you well? Are you at peace? It’s so frightfully good to see you, but I didn’t mean to rouse you as we prayed at your—”

Jane drew her cold fingers across his eyes, and the draft
dried Michael’s eyes. “I happily chose to linger on, to help make this right. And there’s only one thing I’ve left to do. Tell me, Vicar, are you ready to start again? It’s my favourite trick, this.”