I.
(Victoria)
The first thing I notice is the wind being knocked out of me.
Strange; I always thought I'd feel the air ripping past my cheeks, or the mist and spray from the churning ocean below, but as I fall from Widows' Hill, the sensation of falling itself could not be farther from my mind. A curious floating feeling, an indescribable weightlessness, but I can't breathe.
I can't scream. I can't move. I can't grasp poetically at nothing as my descent continues, much slower than I expected, than I wondered, than I ever thought possible, and Jeb Hawkes' face stays in focus at the center there and I can't breathe and there. There it is. There's the dampness on the back of my neck and my hair twists its way around my throat and no, no, no, I can't breathe, no, please help, please help, please somebody, Peter, please, I can't breathe, I'll tear the word from my mouth if I have to dig into my throat to do it, help, help, he -
The darkness does not threaten me.
The darkness does not, cannot harm me, not when I've walked through fire and felt the burn of the hangman's noose around my neck, not after I've screamed my throat raw watching the ones I love drop one by one. The darkness does not threaten me. It doesn't hold anything that I haven't faced already. Collinwood's doors opened things to me that I never expected, never dreamed of, never believed in until I walked up the drive to the house on the hill. Nobody can say that I haven't grown. Dug myself a place in the earth (in the dunes, in the cold mud left by the tide), sprouted, and bloomed. I've seen the Collins family wither and bloom within a single season. Watched them grow in reverse. Seen the roots retract until the prestige is nothing but a seed in a new country's soil. Maybe I understand them better than anyone.
I do not fear the darkness, but a sob burns blue in my throat anyway. Nobody believes me.Not until they're faced with no other options. Not until the rope marks on my neck are almost healed; even after I've disappeared and returned. I've been dreaming. Of course. I'm dreaming.
Of course I'm dreaming.
I first notice it as my skirts continue to billow in the wind and my hair twists wildly around my face. It's when I first notice the rocks in the ocean stretching farther and farther away from me as I continue to fall, but Widows' Hill doesn't disappear in the distance. The darkness may be unable to threaten me, but it can consume me in ways that I never thought possible. The night. The shadows. I think I see the moon, bright and nearly full in the sky and it's there and it's gone and there is nothing but the night. Nothing but the shadows. Nothing but the darkness and the wind as it finally (Finally? This is familiar) tears at my skin and pricks at my eyes. As it throws me around like a doll, like a plaything, like a toy that the centuries have always made their own. This way and that. Up and down. Maybe I'm flying, but of course I'm dreaming.
I harness enough of the whipping wind to take it deep into my lungs (and it stings, like the first breath after nearly drowning) and I yell, "You can't hurt me if I'm dreaming! None of this is real!"
The wind takes that opportunity to strike me in the middle of my back and I feel my body seize, feel my shoulders and my legs drop as my spine tries to bend the wrong way. A punishment for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. I never did understand the vice in lying, or how white lies erased someone's guilt. The truth is the truth; maybe there honestly is no "right time" to deliver it. And maybe the universe thinks otherwise. I've struggled against my situations enough to learn to take it gracefully. I can't say it's been a deterrent. But I am dreaming, aren't I? I have lost sight of reality, of the world, of the hill where the widows cried, of the ocean where the sailors died. For it to be there and then gone is -
I can't say it's impossible. I've learned quite a bit in that mansion with its spires and its creaking hinges. Impossibility, as I once knew it, does not exist.
It's a feeling I can't describe, the one that overwhelms me. I still tumble through nothingness, through empty space with no destination I can fathom, but my body straightens until I curl in on myself, until I'm able to pull my knees to my chest and lock my fingers with those of my other hand, until I can hold myself in one place. Whole. I am whole. And it's not peace that comes over me, there's no serenity that I feel, but in all my years, I have had myself. Me. I am my only thing. As the world crashes down on my shoulders or dissolves before my eyes and I become nothing inside of nothing, I have myself. I am here. I am whole. As my life ceases to exist the way I've known it, I'm still here. Spun around and dizzy, but I am here.
I have myself.
I am real.
I can't ground myself. There's nothing solid in the air around me to dig my heels into, so I grasp my knees as tightly as I can in any attempt to restrict myself. Shackle myself to something. Wrap myself in the wind and use it before it uses me, before it stifles me, before it slices my throat raw and tangles my hair, the strands damp and whipping around my cheeks, stinging, wet trails in their wake. Wrap the wind around my wrists and twist myself in it, let it make me warm, let me soften it, let me, let me, let me.
"Let me live," I hear a voice say. It's soft and hoarse and hardly a whisper at all, but it echoes through the darkness all the same. I try to answer, but the wind rings in my ears, the air buffeting against my head so much that the noise is a roar, hot against my ears.
I reach out. I try my hardest but the air I'd wanted to use to my advantage is now against me and my arm won't bend at the elbow. I'm trapped, unmoving in the fetal position, my hair around my throat and my mouth covered one minute and open the next and I gather whatever energy I have and I scream. I shriek. I cry loud enough to silence any banshee which may haunt Collinwood now or in the hereafter.
It's muffled. It's dowsed and muffled but I hear it, I hear it all the same and I feel it pouring from my throat and something is hot against my nose and wet against my face. My hair. My hair, around my neck, my skin, my, my, my -
I reach to tear it away, to unwind it, to breathe again but I can't, I can't move, the wind still holds me back, but while I still have my voice I let, "Let me go!" dash from my mouth in some vain attempt to free myself.
Something cool against my arm. Something soft. It winds itself into my restrictions and pulls my arm free and my first move is to turn around, to pull the rest of myself out of whatever it is that's got me. I struggle back and I knock my head against something hard before I've even turned around, and of course I'm falling again, but it ends quicker than it started and it registers that I've hit something soft.
Fabric. I feel the stitches. The fibers rub against my weathered cheeks.
A sharp, feminine voice says, "Eli."
Finally, finally, finally, I open my eyes.
The room is small. Smaller than mine at Collinwood, made up modestly but comfortably, antique furniture luxurious and out of place with the threadbare makings of the place. Candles adorn every available surface, some freshly lit, some in danger of setting the wood on fire with how low they burn. I lie on a bed, the focus of the room, the sheets a mess in a pile, my ankles still buried in them. The fabric twines around my ankles, and the rest of me lies sideways on the pillows.
"Where..."
My voice is hoarse. Dazed. A woman sits on the edge of the mattress, tall and pale, dark eyes, a braid of auburn hair falling over her shoulder. She says, "Eli," again, clipped this time, and reaches over to a man curled up next to the nightstand. His face is cast in shadow, but as the light flickers, I see his angular features to match hers, his sleeves rolled up as he rests his head on his arms, dark hair falling into his eyes. The woman's hand touches his arm and he sits up so, so quickly, like a bolt through his skin, and I hear the creak of his joints as he shuffles out from the corner.
"What is it?" His voice is thick. Sleepy. He rolls his wrists and moves his hair from his eyes. This is Eli, and I study him as opposed to the woman. When my eyes do move back to her, she's staring at me.
"Look," is all she says, voice lowered to a whisper, and my throat closes when her eyes meet mine. I move in bed, ignoring the whine of the springs in the mattress as I attempt to bring my knees close to me again. Eli stands where he is, but I feel his gaze on me as well, and I have so many questions but the one that pushes itself to the forefront is simple:
"Who are you?"
What, when, where, why, and how. Five more questions, and I don't know how soon I'll be able to ask them. Not when Eli and this woman were so quick to spring into action. The words fill my throat as bubbles but I bite my tongue and hope they pop themselves; I breathe in the clean air to keep them down.
"We're honored," the woman says, and the emphasis and passion in the word are heavy and thick and the weight of it sits on my shoulders, but somehow, it feels warm. My legs are still bound in the blankets, but I have less of a desire to pry myself free and run.
But it doesn't answer my question.
"My name is Victoria Winters," I say, and it's hasty. My throat catches on the vowels and it stings and burns; maybe talking quickly will allow it some relief, but I have to explain myself. I have to coax them. "Who are you?"
"You're -" The woman cuts herself off and I see the flames flicker off of her dark eyes as they well up with tears, and she turns to Eli next to her and she breathes, "She's the angel."
Eli pauses, says nothing, sees how the woman's shoulders shake and reaches out to still her as he lowers himself to one knee. His hand moves through his thick, dark hair again, and I notice the way his eyes match hers, the way they catch the light.
"My lady," he starts out, but his brows draw together and he says more cautiously, "Miss Winters. I promise, you're in safe keeping. My name is Eli Trask," and he reaches out toward the woman, "and this is my sister, Tabitha."
But before Eli can continue his sentence, I am tearing through the fabric to disentangle my ankles, to throw myself from the bed, but my knees are weak and they give way under me, and my throat stings as my cry slices through it. Tabitha and Eli are at my side before I hit the thick carpet that awaits me on the floor, and Tabitha's icy hands grip my shoulders tightly as the siblings guide me back to bed.
"Let go of me!" I insist. I squirm against Tabitha's hold and my legs kick and the side of my foot grazes Eli's leg. I feel the fabric of his pants against my skin before he merely side-steps out of my reach. "You can't – I said! Let go of me!"
"Eli, the tea," is all Tabitha says, all warmth dissolved from her voice. She's the clink of ice at the bottom of an empty glass. Eli listens to her, for what it's worth, and somehow with her thin frame (tall and broad shoulders and her hair is pulled tight against her scalp and with her dark robe I can see him, I can see nothing but him, I see the preacher in the forest and I feel the ropes around me again as she wrestles me down) forces me into bed, pulls the sheets up over my shoulders, and tucks me in tighter than the grave.
"You must rest," she says. I hear the Reverend's voice out of her mouth. But over that, I hear the clink of a spoon against glass and Eli comes into my view again, ducking to fit through the door frame. He comes with a teacup between his palms, blowing steam away from the liquid inside. He shuts the door behind him.
He smiles at me, a crooked twitch of his mouth, and says, "Even angels need their rest," and I muster up what I can to spit on him, but my throat and mouth have gone too dry. The smile doesn't fade from his face as he comes to sit next to me, stacks the pillows on his lap, and places the teacup on the nightstand. He lifts me up by my shoulders, despite my wrenching, and maneuvers me to sit up against the pillows. He picks up the teacup again.
"I'm not -" I protest. I try to roll away from him, toward the other edge, but it's too far and Tabitha has wrapped me too tightly in the thick, flannel sheets. I turn my eyes back on Eli and choke out, with all the venom I can manage, all the poison I couldn't muster to spit on him, "You're fanatics. Both of you."
Eli's smile does not falter. He lifts the teacup toward me and ignores the way I twist my neck. His other hand grasps my jaw and forces my mouth open just so, just enough to pour the tea inside. Spit it out, spit it out, I think, but Eli is quicker. He tilts my head back until the tea has no place to go but down my throat.
It soothes my throat.
I let it.
He jerks my head up, repeats the motions over and over until there's no more tea left in the cup, and the heaviness sinks down on me midway through. My breathing slows. My heart beats loud in my chest. The darkness cannot threaten me, but the mattress can with the way it tries to fold around me and swallow me down.
I clench my fists. I am here. I have myself. I am whole.
Something icy rests against my forehead and it takes me all too long to register it as Tabitha's hands, brushing my hair away from my face. I don't fight her. She whispers, "Rest now, Angel," and I do not argue.
The room and its warm glow begin to fade, blur together, and the glow of the flames behind Tabitha blend together to form a halo.
She says, "You have to save us," and I am gone.