The death priestess and her partner march into the manor without knocking. Their footfalls hammer out a shared rhythm: one-two, one-two, one-two. A pair moving as one, united in their mission to banish me from my home.
If I could, I’d shove them out the front door and slam it behind them. But I’m just a glint of light floating by a grimy portrait of my parents. I blur. I split. I fuse. I’m nothing but a blotch at the edge of their vision.
They make their way through my home like it’s theirs to decode, paying no heed to the history I built here. To them, the music room is a place to sing in, not where I spent my days playing the grand piano that sits before them.
To them, the study is a place to read in, not where I toiled through my homework, rhyming off times-tables to the tune of “A Fine Team, We Make.”
To them, the dining hall is a place to eat in, not the setting for the happiest day of my life, where I proposed to—
Where you proposed to—
Tendrils of light shoot out of me and wind themselves in knots. A chill pulsates from my core and fogs up the windows, blocking the summer sun.
The death priestess snaps her gaze to me. She clutches the handle of her suitcase, prepares for me to strike at any moment.
Her partner rolls down her shirt sleeves and grips her arms with a shiver. “Isabelle?” she asks, for a layperson like her can’t see me.
The cold dissipates. My light untangles and fades. Predictable, yet disappointing. It’s midday; at this hour, I can’t summon enough energy to take my true shape. I can only do that at night.
“It’s nothing. Nothing yet,” says the death priestess—no, Isabelle. She has a name. Beneath her magic and holy air, she’s just as human as her partner. Two humans can’t stand against a spirit like me.
At the back of the dining hall, Isabelle opens the door, letting the sunlight cut through the manor’s gloom. Birdsong vanquishes the silence. Goodness, how that sound unwinds me, even now.
I follow the two women as they walk through the garden to Lake Cherub. A wooden pier carves its way across the surface, holding no boats, no rafts, no signs of life.
“Old man struck lucky with this place. Think he’d sell it to us?” asks Isabelle’s partner.
Isabelle unlocks her suitcase and pulls out an armful of white, blue, and violet blooms. “I’d imagine the manor’s worth more than the eighteen coppers in our bank account.”
“Oh hush with your logic. Just picture us, taking a dip in the lake—”
“You can’t swim,” Isabelle says as she lines the edge of the pier with her flowers.
“—All right, lying on the grass, then. Me, reading a good book, and you, pouring over the Verses of Kadan, again. A bottle of wine, a few candles, a sprinkling of stars above.” She looks to the clear sky and back at Isabelle. Who smiles, just for her.
Unwelcome though they are, I’m pleased to see them recognize this lake for what it is: a melody without lyrics to push you to duty. Some of my fondest memories are of lounging by the lake, letting my thoughts swim from banality to creativity without intrusion.
Intrusion? Is “intrusion” what I call being asked to do my share? Is ‘intrusion’ what I consider a frank conversation with the one I love? How dare someone interrupt me in the middle of all that nothing I did. Some of us had a factory to run. Some of us had staff to keep.
My light twists up inside itself, overlapping, underlapping. Its heat dies, leaving nothing but a chill, like the seasons have spun to winter in a blink.
Isabelle whips towards me, clutching a flower in her hand. “Florence, get inside.”
“Is it here?” asks Florence.
The sun drains all of the energy I’d mustered, and my light loosens from its bind. I fade to a glimmer once more.
No, I am not here. Not fully. Not yet.
“Too volatile by the lake. Come on.” Isabelle picks up her suitcase, places her free hand on Florence’s back, and leads her to the manor.
Dropping her suitcase at her feet, Isabelle sits at the dining table by Florence’s side. She grabs a slice of bread from Florence’s plate and slathers it with a thick layer of butter.
I float by the far wall, watching the pair play house. The curtains are drawn, and the candlelight coats the room in copper. The sun must be setting—I can feel its hold on me fade.
“Finished prepping upstairs?” says Florence as she reads an accounting book dotted with tea stains.
“For the most part. I’ll need to wake at the crow’s hour and recite Kadan’s Elegy eight times. But I’m a free woman ’til then.” Isabelle hands the buttered slice to Florence, who accepts it without looking up from her page.
“On the fourteenth, we’ve a cleansing in Rotterdale,” says Florence. “Would we be able to do another in Fallon on the twenty-ninth?”
Isabelle picks up another slice of bread and takes a bite. No butter, no cheese—a travesty. She, of all people, should know how fleeting life’s pleasures are. “The Rotterdale cleansing, that’s the one where the parlor keeps shaking in the middle of the night?”
Florence flicks the pages forward. “That’s the one. Paintings keep falling off the walls. The client wrote to me all about it, devoted a whole page to how damaged the frames had gotten.”
“Something in the parlor must be stopping the spirit moving on. Single-room cleansings shouldn’t take more than a week. Well in time for the twenty-ninth.”
“All right,” Florence scribbles something in her book. “I’ll send word to the Fallon client tomorrow.”
On like that they go, a gentle back and forth as their schedule fills. No arguing, no shouting—not even when they disagree. Their business is both of theirs to nurture. One cannot continue the work without the other.
I too had a business when I was alive: the textile factory I inherited. No one had ever told me how much time it took to keep a company alive—sourcing the materials, paying the invoices, cultivating relations with suppliers and sellers and staff alike. I’d work all day, and sometimes all night, yet more invoices would land, more meetings would emerge. More, more, more; the factory was an insatiable beast and I, its keeper.
Then why didn’t I sell the thing and be done with it? The factory wrung out my days, squeezed every last drop. Not once did I consider letting that burden go. I could have been happy, yet I chose not to be.
I chose not to be happy, by keeping the factory? That was rich. The factory was the only reason I could live in this manor. How else could I have kept the maids, maintained the grounds and, oh yes, put food on the table? What should I have done instead? Lounged by the lake all day, drinking myself silly? No, I couldn’t do that. I wasn’t lazy and useless like—
Like me?
Like you?
My light spools around itself like a ball of twine. The sun must have fallen below the horizon. Nothing can stop me from taking shape.
“Do you smell that?” Florence sniffs and looks about. “That musty stench…is there damp in the walls?”
“Leave.” Isabelle grabs a bottle from her suitcase, rises from her seat, and stares right at me.
Florence runs out of the room, taking a few extra bread slices with her.
My light, colder than the lake in winter, unravels. It traces out my torso, arms, legs, and head. Its glow engulfs the room for one glorious moment, then it vanishes, leaving me with a body that night grants me. I appear as if I’ve been wrapped in reams of sheet music and tweed. The only part free of my bindings is my wine-red hair, which falls to the small of my back.
Isabelle stands yards from me. She’s not going to run? She’s a fool.
I take a step closer—something stops me, like a wall. But there’s nothing in front of me, nothing keeping me from taking back my home.
On the rug at my feet, a trickle of water rings around me. Lilywater, blessed by the Church of Kadan. Isabelle has bound me. She must have done it while my light gave me form. How dare she. How dare she.
I clutch at the tweed and paper around my head and try to rip myself apart, but there’s no give to the bindings. I fall to my knees, and try to scream, but no sound comes from where my mouth should be. I’m trapped in this circle, in this house, in endless memories of the factory and the lake—
What is that? A song?
Isabelle has pressed her palm against the gold circlet bound in her hair. She’s chanting something in a language I’ve never heard before. Yet each word chips my bindings, neutering my rage to a dull hum. Is this some sort of soothing prayer? How dare she calm me, how…
I don’t even have the energy to be annoyed.
She finishes, and I’m a husk. I clench my fists in some half-hearted attempt to regain what I had felt moments ago. Nothing.
So here we stand, the death priestess and the spirit. If she thinks chanting is enough to purge me from this house, she’s mistaken. She may have emptied me of feeling but this is still my home, no matter how miserable it is.
“Tell me,” Isabelle says. “What’s your name?”
I shake my head. By now, she should know I can’t speak.
She picks up the accounting book, pen, and ink well from the table. Quick as a snap, she drops them in my circle. “Do you remember how to write?”
I crouch, pick up the pen, and find a free page. The materials wrapped around my fingers make my grip clumsy but I persevere. I dip the pen in its well and press it to the page, letting the nib bleed black.
Isabelle wants my name.
My name.
What was my name?
Pe…
Ed…
No, no, that’s wrong. Whatever words have entered my head, they’re wrong, they’re not my name.
Did I ever have a name? Did anyone ever say it out loud? Was I nothing to no one?
The tweed and paper wrappings crush my wrists. I drop the pen and clutch my arms.
Isabelle chants, and the wrappings slacken. “Forget the page.” She grabs a teacup and spoon and places them in the circle.
I pick up the spoon. Its curve warps the candlelight, a blaze within the silver. It’s like a spirit, warm inside its body. When I was a child, I believed objects were alive and had souls, like my piano. But objects needed people to give them purpose, or so I thought.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve spent the past months in this house slamming doors, clanging dishes, and scraping chairs against the wood. These hands are too bulky to play the piano, but I gave the other objects life.
No. I made them sing.
I set the cup down at my feet and tap the spoon against it three times: clink, clink, clink. That alone softens the bindings around my arms.
Isabelle smiles. “Keep up that rhythm.”
I do so, tapping the cup every half second. A simple beat, but it brings a million memories. The slosh-slosh-slosh of the lake on a windy day. The secret rhythm amid the textile factory’s din.
Isabelle nods in time and claps on the offbeat:
Clink-clap-clink-clap-clink-clap.
Now those memories bring a partner. A lover wrapped in my arms on the grass by the lake. A companion standing at my side as we survey the factory floor.
Arms entangled. Dreams intertwined.
I am the first to lose the beat: my hand fades to a pale glow, and the spoon falls through it. Something pulls at me, urges me away.
I resist. Despite this peace I feel, the manor has a hold on me. As a child, its walls kept me safe, while its books and instruments nurtured me. As an adult, I stayed within it and kept it alive. I can’t abandon this house—in fact, I don’t know how. The manor and I are a knot, frustrating the hands untying it.
So my form fades but my being clings to my home. I am a gleam of light once more, waiting for another night, another bout of fury to make me whole.
Last night’s tantrum has caused quite the hangover. By morning, my light is a speck, lost in sunlight. Yet the beat remains; the clink-clap-clink-clap anchors me in the absence of purpose.
I spend my day floating by Isabelle, as she blankets the pier with her flowers and soaks them in lilywater. She sits among them and chants to the same rhythm as the clink-clap-clink-clap. The day blurs, and the sun sets. Yet still my light is dim, my rage snuffed out.
She rises, grabs her suitcase, and returns to the dining hall, where Florence serves her chopped sardines on toast. Another blur, and the plates are empty.
Isabelle and Florence bring their plates to the kitchen and retreat to the music room. As Florence sits at the piano, my light twirls. Will she create a new rhythm? Will I have something to hold on to?
Florence plays a familiar tune, “The Weight of Duty,” hammering its block chords with the grace of a five-year-old. It’s a rudimentary song, but that doesn’t mean she has to beat it into submission. If she gives more thought to the dynamics of the piece, she could communicate its story: the gentle beginnings of a prince and princess in love, the rising tensions as they gain countless responsibilities, the tragic conclusion as their duties drain them of all affection for one another.
Not that I can give her my critique. Still, perhaps I should be grateful for her shoddy work. I haven’t formed thoughts this clear all day.
She finishes, and Isabelle claps—out of politeness or ignorance, I can’t tell.
Florence spins on the bench and faces Isabelle. “All right, my dear. Your turn.”
“I don’t know how.”
“You’ve never been taught?”
“Never.”
“I’ll have to write a stern letter to the Church of Kadan.”
“Write all you like. The bishop will probably ignore it. Pianos don’t appear in the Verses of Kadan, after all.”
Florence scoots down the bench and pats the free spot. “Then I’ll teach you.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t.”
“If you make a mess of it, I’ll be the only one to hear. Well. And our housemate too, I suppose.”
Housemate? She speaks as though we’re equals, yet they’re more like intruders in my home. Eating food from my plates, butchering songs with my piano…
Isabelle sighs and takes her place beside Florence.
“Play these notes over and over.” Florence hits C, E, and G.
Isabelle taps the keys much gentler than Florence did. The rhythm brings back the calm I felt last night. I settle by the piano, my light soft and warm, as Florence plays a simple melody on her side of the keys. Ah, this is “The Farmer’s Goats,” a children’s song. It’s a pleasant tune, one to listen to while napping by the lake or balancing the account books. Their hands hop along the keys, slow and controlled yet mesmerizing. Both uncertain of the melody but both working through it together.
They say nothing, yet somehow, their music respects this house better than any words they could speak. Throughout my childhood, I spent hours at this same piano, feeling out melodies until I made them mine.
No, that’s not right. I didn’t do it alone. There were two pairs of hands on the keys, just like now. Only smaller. Children’s hands.
One pair was pale with long fingers. Those hands were mine
The other pair was tanned with a scar on the left thumb. Those hands were… also mine?
How…
My light freezes cold enough to burn skin. In a blink, it eats up the room and, in another, it vanishes, granting me my form: the tweed, the sheet music, the wine-red hair.
The music stops. “That damp smell again,” says Florence. “The spirit’s here?”
Isabelle rises, gripping Florence’s shoulder. Does she know? The history of this room, of those two children, of…
I shoot through the back wall and land in the study, where I once spent hours at that oak desk—
No. There wasn’t one person at the desk. There were two. A boy of thirteen, pale with shoulder-length red hair, and a tanned girl, her chestnut hair tied up in a bun. They had put their maths homework to music. Together, they made it sing.
I hurtle from the study to the dining hall. The pair had been here too, so many years ago. The boy, just turned eighteen, had crouched on one knee and opened a velvet box, revealing a diamond ring. The girl, sitting before him, had squealed and wrapped her arms around him.
Marry her, booms a voice, much older. Stern. You two are inseparable as it is. It would make a good match.
Oh but you ought to, says another voice, fluttery and warm. You’ve been so close all your lives. The spirits must have willed your union.
My union?
No. Our union.
Penny and Edmund. Those were our names.
We look down at our hands, the paper and tweed spun around our fingers. Two pairs of hands bound into one.
“I’ve seen cases like this before.”
We turn to Isabelle standing in the doorway, her suitcase sitting at her feet.
“Intimacy’s a powerful thing,” she says. “At times, it binds two spirits so tightly together, they believe they’re one.”
We nod with the single head death gave us.
“It’s a blessed fate, for the lucky ones. The fused spirit wakes up in the afterlife brimming with joy. But you’re still here, so… you’re not happy?”
We should have been happy. We were destined to be together, weren’t we? The spirits willed our union.
For a time, we were happy, we supposed. But my father—
Edmund’s father—
Our father.
He died a few years after our wedding. Our mother followed the year after. To us, they left the textile factory. The beast.
We both would have dedicated our lives to music: composing, singing, playing the piano. But one of us poured their soul into the factory and gave up on their musical dreams. The other ignored the factory, retreating to the lake with a bottle of wine in one hand and half-scribbled compositions in the other.
Who ran the factory and who shied away? We can’t recall. Now that we’re one, the line between Penny and Edmund no longer exists.
In those days, we rarely saw each other. If we spoke, we’d end up arguing. Later, we slept in separate beds. Later still, separate rooms.
Now and then, one would push the other to their way of life. It never worked. In fact, that’s what finished us.
We walk through the dining hall’s back wall, across the garden, and down to the lake. The moonlight falls on the flowers coating the pier. We try to set our foot down among the blooms, but we can’t. Some mental or perhaps spiritual block urges us to return our foot to the grass, to where we are safe.
Isabelle must have known, then. Must have cleansed this pier before we remembered what happened here.
The argument we’d had that day wasn’t exceptional—it tread on the same ground as the rest:
Help me run the factory.
Sell the factory, be rid of it.
I can’t sell the factory, what would happen to the workers? I’m responsible for them. Not that you’d know anything about that.
Oh, how dare I live a life that makes me happy.
Are you really happy? Lazing around like a slug, drinking from morning to night?
Around and around and around.
One of us turned away and started back for the house, but the other yanked their sleeve, wrenching us both off-balance. We toppled off the pier, wrapping our arms around us, shielding each other from the slap of the lake’s surface. But the depths were worse.
It was cold down there. Murky. Suffocating.
And neither of us could swim.
Soft footsteps approach us from behind. Isabelle stops at our side, no suitcase in tow.
“You remember now, don’t you? You both died here. Fell from the pier. An accident?”
We nod.
“How dreadful.”
A breeze glides across the flowers, a patchwork quilt rippling on the pier. We can’t discern the individual plants anymore—only the whole matters.
“Florence and I aren’t married. We might do it, in the future. But right now, it seems so scary.” Isabelle chuckles, as low as the wind. “That sounds funny. I mean, we run a business together. But marriage… it’s harder to walk away from that. You’re meant to stick together through the good and the bad, and maybe that’s a comfort. But what if there’s only the bad and the worse and the worst? What if there’s no light, no joy?”
That was what our marriage became. Yet in all that time, we never considered ending it.
Because we’d been so close for so long.
The spirits willed our union.
We were meant to be.
But what if we weren’t meant to be? What if that’s what everyone told us, and we went along with it, because that’s what we were supposed to do? Goodness, we married so young. No time to mature and learn what we wanted.
Did the factory doom us or would something else have eventually torn us apart? Countless troubles would have emerged as we aged, ready to play upon our weaknesses. If we couldn’t cope with the first setback, how could we have dealt with the second, third, or twentieth?
No. We wouldn’t have lasted. If the spirits willed our union, then perhaps they hadn’t intended it to go on forever. All things must end, after all.
We turn to Isabelle. Kneel on the grass. Bow our head. We can’t tell her we’re ready but she must know.
She presses her hand to her circlet and chants a melody, soft, tremulous, yet powerful. It pushes through our wrappings, seeps into us, and untangles our light.
The sheet music rips, the tweed unravels, and from beneath, our light blossoms out and blanches the world.
It fades, and amid piles of cloth and paper, we stand as two. A man. A woman. Beautiful, separate beings.
We grip each other’s hands one more time. Tap our fingers to the beat of Isabelle’s song.
And we let go.
| Laura O’Brien is a science fiction and fantasy writer who lives in Dublin, Ireland, with her husband, Conor, and their cats, Mulder and Scully. Her work has appeared in Abyss and Apex Magazine and Apparition Literary Magazine. Find her online at lauraobrn.com. |  |