Disclaimer: Shades of London and its characters belong to Maureen Johnson. The title is from an old English lullaby, which was made popular in the 1961 film The Innocents. It doesn't have much of anything to do with the story, but I think it provides a certain atmosphere. I encourage everyone to check out the song because it is genuinely the most creepy song I've ever heard written for children.
A/N: this is part of the one-shot series I mentioned in my previous story (this is the second installment.) And it falls *before* Re-Arrange Me, as is evident when you read it. ;) It's not the best thing I've ever written (I'll go ahead and warn you), but it was nice to sit down and write something for a change. It was my birthday gift to myself. Enjoy!
Willow Waly
Rory thought British funerals were a lot more sombre than any funeral she had been present at in Louisiana. At her home in Benouville, people were no longer buried in the town limits. It had taken the original settlers of the town a while to understand it all, but it had eventually sunk into the townspeople's minds a few generations before Rory's birth that burying people in a swamp never left them buried for long. After the first hurricane had blown through and her great-great-great uncle Graham had seen his mother's pine coffin floating down what would have normally been the main street in town ten years after she'd been buried, he and the rest of the occupants at the time had decided to start burying their dead about twenty miles outside the town proper.
But a change in location in Louisiana didn't mean much when one spoke of atmosphere. The few funerals she had been present at back near her home had been awash in a weird haze of cloying and suffocating humidity, mixed with a strange sense of beauty. Her heart felt a sharp pang when she thought of where Stephen would have been buried if he had been someone she had grown up with — there would have been weeping willows nearby (she couldn't help but picture) and they would have kept him company when she couldn't. There would be birds — not the annoying English pigeons and swallows, but PROPER birds — mockingbirds to sing him songs and maybe a brown pelican if he had somehow been buried near one of the area's many marshes. It would have been beautiful and hot and humid and…not at all what Stephen's actual funeral appeared to be.
The English burial was a lot quieter. It was not raining — there was no cinematic movie quality to it — but the ground was damp, much as it always seemed to be in the colder months. Rory could see her breath rising in front of her face, and she nuzzled her nose and chin further down into her scarf, which she had to constantly move with her hand to resettle it near her face. She never had been able to convince Stephen or Jazza or Boo to teach her how to wrap it properly as all British people seemed to instinctively understand. It was just one of many ways in which she knew she would always be separate from them now. There were no musical birds or weeping willows. There were only large obelisks and graves that seemed almost to be stacked one atop another, and Rory couldn't help but feel that Stephen would hate it. All those other bodies invading his privacy and personal space. It almost was enough to make her smile, for nothing was more amusing than a petulant Stephen Dene.
The only mourners present were herself, Callum, Boo, Mr Thorpe and the priest. That small number felt both too small (Stephen deserved so much more, in her opinion) and far too large (she wished everyone would go away so she could have a moment to mourn him in peace.) The previous two days had felt like a strange push/pull. She wanted to be with everyone else and she wanted to be alone; she felt continuously hungry and yet nothing looked appetising; she was convinced Stephen was still around and positive he had crossed over. She was, by turns, hopeful and despondent, angry and sad, denying and then accepting what had happened. There seemed to be a perpetual fog around she, Callum and Boo when they were in the flat – the silence between them all stretched on for interminable lengths, only to be broken by half-hearted chokes parading as conversation. Their confused and adrift silence was painful; the speech that said nothing was even worse. If they could only see where their words and conversations would take them, then Rory felt they had a chance of reaching clarity (or something like it), but it seemed a weak hope. Callum was too bitter, Boo too sad and Rory too pre-occupied with finding Stephen's ghost for the three of them to have an enlightening conversation. And so the grey aura of uncertainty persisted. At least their aura matched the atmosphere of the cemetery, Rory thought.
The lack of ghosts had surprised her at first. As a child, she had always walked quickly passed the small, family owned grave plots in Benouville (none of which had suffered the same problems of flooding that the town cemetery had borne in the years before her birth), always dreading that familiar trickle of fear that would start at the back of her neck and shoot down her spine. She had assumed that England, as old as it was, would have ghostapalooza in their cemeteries. She had even imagined a bit of a "monster mash with a graveyard smash," but she had seen only a couple of spectres, and they had all seemed rather withdrawn and moody. There would be no partying between the grave stones with that lot, she was sure.
Rory watched as the priest poured dirt on Stephen's coffin, finishing the service with the age old adage of "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust," before he took a respectful step back. Mr Thorpe followed his example, his emotion for his employee coming through in the slight tic of his jaw and the clenching of his right fist. Callum went next, practically throwing the dirt into the grave in his haste to finish the proceedings. Boo followed, trying to stay strong while tears worked their way from her eyes despite her best efforts. And then it was Rory's turn. She wanted to say something moving – something that would mean something to Stephen if he could hear it. But it all sounded cliché and stupid in her head, and she'd had her fill of saying cliché things over the previous two days. So she let the silence speak for her and felt the dirt drift into the grave from between her fingers like a sieve.
"I'm going to find you, Stephen. I promise," she whispered.
After Mr Thorpe and the priest had left, (Rory and the others promising Mr Thorpe that they'd let him know as soon as they'd located Stephen), the three friends stood around outside the cemetery gates, all of them wanting to leave but afraid to take that first step away from what remained of their old boss and their friend.
"So, I'll search Eton first," Rory announced, reiterating the final portions of their plan that she, Callum and Boo had been fine tuning for days when they were supposedly focusing on Stephen's funeral. "I'll spend a week around there and Runnymede." Rory didn't mention it, but she was also hoping to find the ghost that had saved Stephen's life; maybe he would know something about him that would give her a clue as to where to search if he wasn't at Eaton.
"And I'll search for some clues at Maida Vale," said Boo. "Maybe there's a vacation home or something that he liked as a boy."
Rory doubted it, but she wasn't about to say no to any clues; she'd search the entire world to find Stephen if she had to do. She had gotten him into this mess, and she was going to get him out of it. Or at least apologise for it. She owed him that much.
"Can I just state for the record once again that I think this a really bad idea?" threw in Callum.
"Noted and dutifully ignored," Rory replied, folding her arms across her chest and thrusting her hands under her arms to warm them. Standing still for so long was making it difficult to ward off the chill. "Stephen is out there somewhere, all by himself, and we owe it to him to find him."
"And he wouldn't be out there by himself if it wasn't for you."
"Callum!" yelled Boo. She cast an embarrassed look at Rory, but Rory shrugged it off. It wasn't as though Callum was wrong.
"You're right. And I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not. I'm not sorry at all that I made him a ghost, but I am sorry that protecting me got him killed. And I'm trying to fix that. You may not believe this, Callum, but not all ghosts are bad. And if looking for Stephen is going to cause problems for you, then let me know now. I will walk away and I will search for him myself because if you're going to talk to him, or even look at him, as you have all the other ghosts we've faced, then I'd rather he not see you. I don't need that on my conscience."
Callum was silent, and the air was thick around them. Rory had to remind herself that it wasn't Southern humidity this time; it was merely her mind.
"Don't worry," he finally answered. "I won't hold your poor choices against my friend. I'll do my part. I'll search for him in Waterloo."
Callum turned from them on the pavement and stalked away, the tenseness in the air following after him like a pungent odour.
"Do you two have to be like that all the bloody time?" asked Boo, rubbing her already reddened eyes and hiding her face behind her short bob of dark hair, the fresh blue highlight on her strip of fringe contrasting darkly with the drab, colourless surroundings.
"Sorry, Boo. I know where he's coming from, but I can't just leave Stephen out there all alone. I've *got* to make this right."
"He wouldn't blame you for this, Rory. You know that, right? I mean, you didn't ask us to follow you when you went back to Jane's. That was all Stephen…and us. We were assigned to protect you, and to follow through on that was our choice. It was *his* choice. You don't owe us anything."
"Yes, I do," Rory whispered. "He was my friend. I owe him *everything.*"
Boo stared at Rory for a few seconds, her head tilted slightly to the side as though searching for something. Whatever it was, she must have found it, for she gave a small smile (which seemed out of place with their current situation) and nodded. Rory was once again struck by how much conversation the Shades had always had without saying any words and wondered if it was a language she would ever learn. She thought she had begun to understand Stephen's particular codes, and she was beginning to crack Boo's. Callum, Rory feared, would always remain something of a mystery to her, no matter how hard she worked to crack his codes.
Rory pulled Boo into a hug, hiding her face from the cold by pressing it slightly into Boo's shoulder, which was cushioned slightly by an overly large and thick scarf. She breathed in the scent of Boo – tea and sharp spices and a bit of aftershave that was probably a side effect of living in close quarters with boys – and Rory allowed herself the brief moment of comfort.
"We'll find him, Rory," Boo promised, drawing back from the hug. "No matter how long it takes. We'll find him."
Rory clung to the promise with everything she had; all she had to sustain her were half-cocked theories and her natural optimism and Southern stubbornness. It didn't seem like much, but it was more than she'd have if Callum and Boo were to disappear from her life. Rory wasn't going to allow that to happen.
Boo turned and walked across the street, away from Rory and the cemetery gates. Rory turned and looked into the graveyard. It was vast and hollow and silent; she leaned her forehead against the gates and tried not to think. She was tired of thinking. Thinking led to madness and despair and madcap plans like driving one's police car into oncoming traffic to save your undeserving friends. Thinking seemed to cause her nothing but heartache and trauma. It was time for her to do something.
She turned and walked the opposite way of her friends. She needed to disappear. For all its size, London seemed too small at the moment. She needed to hide, from the authorities and from Jane and from her parents. She needed to disappear from London, and then she needed to find a way to blend in with the rich and the intelligent. After all, she'd made a promise. She intended to keep it.