His Cemetery Doll (3 page)

"Bit odd for a convent of nuns to offer to adopt a student with no plans to take her orders..."

The priest closed his fingers around his mug of tea. "Come now, Conall. You are my friend. You must realize what I am suggesting is the same course I would suggest to any father
and
mother, even the girl's own birth parents."

Conall didn't answer but drew sullenly on his ale.

"Shyla is thirteen years old," Frederick said, "and I believe she can do better than a small-town education filling her time until she is old enough to search for a husband. It is time you start thinking on what manner of future you want for her, and how you can give it to her. She can accomplish so much more at the abbey. She doesn't belong here, not growing up in a place of the dead."

I live in a place of the dead,
Conall thought grimly. Though all he said was, "I'll consider it."

"I hope you will," Frederick replied. "Now... how is your work in the cemetery?"

The conversation moved on to business, but Conall had little left to say.

W
hatever others might believe, Conall was no fool. He
did
realize Frederick had the right of it. Sooner or later, he must consider Shyla's best interests...and letting her go to the abbey
could
be an exceptional opportunity. The church would definitely offer her a better education than the school in town. Conall didn't
need
to keep her home, unlike the men who depended on their sons to help at the farms or mothers whose daughters must help tend the homestead. He gave her chores, yes, but chores he set her to for her own purpose, to teach and shape her. He didn't rely on her to help their household make it through a day.

If she
did
go, his work would still get done.

He didn't mean to keep her because he needed her. He wanted to keep her because...

They were all the other had.

Conall's family died in one of the bombings in Scotland, while he'd still been overseas. He'd come home to mother, father, brother, all dead, and his home laid waste among so many others destroyed. With nothing left in his home country...he'd become a wanderer.

When he accepted the role of graveyard keeper and taken up residence outside the town, he'd finally enjoyed some stability again. The job brought with it a certain level of wariness among the community. He didn't mind. It suited him fine, being mostly left alone. No one had ever been unfriendly, of course—but no one had gone out of their way to try and understand him either.

Then Shyla had come. A little girl lost, with no home or family to speak of either. She was a stranger, like him.

He didn't keep her from the town or from playing with other children. However, she, like him, didn't take personally to most others. Toby and Ora, she liked well enough. Shyla, though, made no secret she preferred the solitary world of the cemetery; the grey tombstones and the long-dead people who had become nothing more than names carved into rocks. She made up stories for them; sometimes the stories changed, when she became bored with one alternative and imagined another. Conall sometimes saw Ora among the plots down there with Shyla. Toby refused to enter, though. At seven years old, he trembled whenever he came near, and might panic if someone suggested he go in past the gates.

Like the boy, most of the other children in town avoided the graveyard, and so none of them cared to play with Shyla or listen to her stories. He'd sometimes seen her come home from some errand, crestfallen because someone had been harsh with her or some other child cruel. She would be sullen for a day or so. The next, though, she'd be back to her usual self as if nothing happened at all.

They were alike. She needed a father; he, finally, found someone to care for. He wasn't ready to give it up.

Perhaps he could be called overprotective. Conall never shook the feeling Shyla's true family fell victim to something terrible, and probably in his woods. He searched, of course, and asked around the town if anyone had been seen. If her mother returned and discovered Shyla missing from her hiding place, she could have asked any of his neighbors and learned who'd taken the baby in. Still, no one came for her.

Conall could not imagine what, beyond death, could keep a mother from her child. So he had always been especially careful with Shyla. Protective, watchful. At the heart of it, Conall believed he owed it to her missing family to keep her safe. Always.

Letting her go to live at the church...what if something happened to her there?

When his meeting with Frederick came to an end, Conall sullenly stood to retrieve his daughter from the Trask's connected kitchen, without bothering to say anything to the alderman or his wife. Shyla made her thank-yous, and his as well—she always looked out for him—and she gave Toby and Ora cheerful goodbyes. Then she fell in at his side for the trip home.

The night had grown cool at last. The moon shone down, bright in the darkness. He and his daughter walked for quite some ways in silence.

Then Shyla spoke up.

"Dad? Did Father Frederick come to take me up to the church?"

"How did you hear that?" he asked.

"Toby."

Conall's grimace tightened. "Toby shouldn't be spreading around other people's business. But yes, baby. Frederick asked me if I would like you to go to the convent, to learn from the sisters there."

She fell silent for some time. Then she asked, "Are you going to send me away?"

He considered it.

"I hadn't decided," he muttered. "It...might not be a bad idea. Proper schooling, for a girl your age."

She remained quiet. Her expression pensive but unreadable. Whatever she said next would matter greatly. What if she
wanted
to go?

In the typical manner of children, though, she changed the subject.

"Do you think our graveyard is haunted?"

"What?" he asked. "Really, Shyla, why would you ask such a ridiculous question?"

She lifted her skinny shoulders in a shrug and avoided his gaze. "Toby believes it is."

"Toby's an unruly layabout with a fool's imagination. He doesn't want you to think he's a coward for never entering the place. You've lived there all your life; you should know better."

"But it could be," she mused. "What if there's always been a ghost...or maybe lots of ghosts? What if they've only been asleep until recently?"

"Shyla..."

"Maybe something's happened to wake them up."

"Shyla!" he scolded. "Stop. It's nonsense, and I don't want to hear you mentioning it again."

She glanced up at him, and hurt and guilt washed over him. He hadn't meant it to come out quite so harsh. He'd never become so frustrated by her storytelling before. With talk like this, though, no wonder the community doubted he could raise her right.

"No more talk of ghosts," he repeated.

"Yes, Dad."

They walked the rest of the way home without another word. As they approached the house and the cemetery gates, he caught Shyla glancing furtively toward Maya's circle. The angel stood bright in the glow of the full moon. As he noticed his daughter's curious searching eyes, his irritation flared again.

"Go on," he urged. "Up to the house, and ready for bed."

"Yes, Dad."

She continued up the hill. He remained, now searching Maya's circle himself, exasperated by whatever troublesome notions his daughter might be entertaining.

Wondering why he'd ever carved the angel in the first place.

"D
ad...she's back."

Conall awoke to Shyla's careful nudge for the second night in a row. He ran his hand over his mouth and shifted, aching from falling asleep once more in his hard wooden chair.

"Shyla," he grated. "What did I tell you not two hours ago about—"

He blinked. Shyla wasn't there.

Conall glanced around. Wind groaned through the eaves outside, and the shutters shook. His brow knit.

"Shyla?"

No answer. The dying fire in the hearth flickered. Without thinking about it, he gathered a fresh log and fed it to the embers, renewing them into a healthy flame. Then he headed up the stairs.

Shyla slept safe in her room, a tiny pale face and a mop of messy blonde hair visible above the edge of the blankets. He puzzled it for a moment before deciding he must have dreamed her hands on his shoulders and her plaintive voice in his ear. Turning from her room, he descended the stairs.

He stood, staring at the house's main room for a long time. The wind groaned again, sliding and sluicing around the corners and under the eaves of the roof, shaking the ancient boards. A shiver slipped down his spine.

She's back.

He snorted. Rubbish.

By Maya. In the graveyard.

"Bah," he grunted. He wouldn't be getting any more sleep until he ruled out mischief in his graveyard though, so he reached for his hunting shotgun and exited out the house's back door.

For a second, the scene left him dumbstruck. The graveyard lay
blanketed
in chill, freezing fog. The night had been pleasant when he'd fallen asleep. Pleasant and clear. Now it appeared to have plunged in gloomy, creeping winter. He actually shivered, and when he stepped down from the back porch, he found the ground brittle with ice.

"Bloody hell," he muttered. "What..."

He fell silent as he heard something through the fog on his left. He trained the gun in the direction of the sound, waiting for an animal to leap at him. Nothing came.

Then...the sound again. Soft, barely audible, save for the softest crunch of frost on the grass.

A footstep?

"H'lo?" he said into the mist. He spoke no louder than he would at the table. He sensed if there
were
someone hiding in those cold, roiling veils...they were
not
very far from him.

Something
stood mere feet in front of him. Studying him through the gray.

"If you need shelter, I can offer it. I have food and blankets inside. Come now, I won't hurt you, long as you aren't here to make trouble."

There came another footstep. This one, farther off. Retreating.

"Wait, now—" he began, but it already moved down the path, sounds fading quickly. Too quickly. He knew if the person had run, the noise would be bigger, weightier. Instead he heard one step as if already down near the edge of the stones; then another, almost too far for him to hear at all.

This is
foolishness,
Conall. Wind blowing through the frozen brush. It can't be...

A person's footsteps?

Careful as he stepped out into the blinding mist, Conall crept down the path.

Silence closed in on him, isolating him from the safety of the familiar. He walked this path daily, but he stumbled now, distracted and uneasy. At any other time he'd know exactly where he stood, but tonight he'd been wrapped in a cocoon of blind white smoke. The world fell away, and he wandered, alone, into a silent space of night.

He moved on anyway, trusting his memory to lead him. He held the gun at the ready, anxious.

Finally he made out a shape in the fog. At first she appeared only tall and vague, but as he drew closer he found...Maya.

She looked as she always did. Standing still and serene, reaching out.

He glanced around the statue, listening.

"Hello?"

Nothing. He still
sensed
something though.

After several long moments, many tense, shallow breaths, he noticed the fog had started to lift... a little. Slowly, the shapes of the tombstones became visible.

And so did she.

He gasped, falling back onto the base of the statue and grasping at the corner of the stone.

A woman
did
stand there. Like Maya, she appeared to be made from pure white stone. Her skin perfectly smooth, alabaster. She wore no clothes, but gray wrappings and ribbons shrouded her body. More ribbons trailed around her, floating on the wind. In fact, they seemed to float even in the quiet ebbs between gusts.

She had long, soft, straight blonde hair, ashen and pale. Her features appeared smooth, gentle, but strangely...stiff. Expressionless, remote. Like the statue.

It was the eyes he focused on...because she had none.

Well, not precisely true. She might have eyes... but swaths of those satiny gray ribbons hid them, like a blindfold or bandages across a terrible injury. Under the wrappings, on the right side of her face, spidery black marks reached down her cheeks.

Like...
cracks.
Cracks in...

A mask?

She waited at the foot of the path, where he'd just come from. He must have slipped right past her—within a hair of touching her.

Or perhaps he'd moved
through
her.

"Who are you?" he asked in a hush.

The woman didn't answer. She canted her head—those features still didn't move, didn't so much as tic—and stepped lightly forward.

She moved like a dancer. Her small, delicate foot pointed with a conscientious grace as she slipped closer through the fading mist. Her hidden gaze had to be focused on him, however: as she started to circle, her face remained fixed in his direction.

"Who are you?" he demanded again. "What are you doing in my graveyard?"

Still no answer. As she came near, he noticed something else about her. It tugged at the back of his mind, an instinct from his time as a soldier.

Her movements proved graceful and careful, yes, like a dancer—but also predatory. Fluid.

Like a wolf.

More ribbons ran around her throat, like a choker. Thin lines—
seams?
—marked each shoulder, each elbow, and each knee and ankle.

Joints.

His mind raced, putting the pieces together.

She...was a
doll.
A living, porcelain doll.

He pressed himself hard against the statue, his mind in a stuttering panic. He could feel her studying him, even through her blindfold. As she moved, she remained utterly silent, even her footsteps on this softer ground. Where she walked, more frost marked her passage: he could see the shapes of her delicate bare feet in silhouettes of crystal white trailing behind her.