9
Everything was off to a very worthy start. Now Victor only had to hope fervently that he didn't manage to foul it up again.
He considered it a good sign that they remained more or less side-by-side as they walked. It was hard to avoid the temptation to glance off toward the girl every few seconds to gauge her reactions, but her face remained placid and her eyes mildly engaged in the sights that they passed in the street. She skipped to a brief stop as they passed the Bloody Fountain on Botched Appendectomy Avenue, and frowned curiously at a wicked, long-dead owl which had made its home in a crumbling brick wall. What an experience it must be, he thought, to see the Land of the Dead with fresh eyes. He didn't recall very much of his own first visit, beyond a general sense of terror and confusion; the girl seemed to be enjoying herself as much as anyone could be expected to. Victor led her carefully through the area near Blackbowels' Square, a downtown filled with black shop fronts and services carts. How nice it would have been to be able to show off the town when it was at its bustlingest, but there was nothing to do for it tonight. Anybody not already at the Ball and Socket had certainly made a conscious decision to head Upstairs or be alone for the evening; no stores were open, and there was nobody passing on the street. It was, for all intents and purposes, a ghost town.
In ten minutes' walk they reached the long, shallow staircase leading up to Daughters Leap and ascended together, her before and him behind. She walked noticeably widely, taking the steps two or three at a time as though she were much taller than she actually was. It was indelicate, but Victor could hardly fault her for wanting to climb quickly. He always did the same thing. As they rounded the top, she let out a surprised "Oh!" and he followed her out onto the small lookout, with a wooden bench and familiar view. Daughters Leap had once been his first true look at the Land of the Dead, more years ago than he could count. It seemed as good a place as any to make a proper introduction. Victor stayed by the wall while Helene leaned out over the edge of the viewpoint with wide eyes and a small smile. She did have a pleasant smile when she chose to show it. The skyline stretched across the whole horizon to the east, spindly and black against the dark green atmosphere. "It's enormous!" she said, not really to him. "How long does it go for?"
"I'm not sure," he admitted.
The girl looked back with a question clearly in mind, but for whatever reason chose not to ask it. She lingered at the guard for a moment longer before slowly leaving the ledge to sit upon the bench and pat her skirt down, her face beginning to fall from interest back into determined inexpressiveness. He liked to believe they were at some sort of understanding for giving this a second try, but she was curiously difficult to read. "S-so I wanted to ask," he said, stepping forward to take up her spot perched awkwardly against the railing, "really, this time… how are you?" She looked up and he smiled as welcomingly as he could. The girl frowned.
"This has been the strangest night of my life," she said.
"I can see why you'd feel that way," he said equably.
"I went to bed last night with everything quite normal. I didn't – I didn't have a family and -" She stopped, but his mind ended the sentence for her. 'And I was perfectly alright with that.' "Though I suppose that's not fair," she added after a second. "Grandmother and Grandfather have always been good to me."
"Are they well?" he asked.
"Quite well," she said.
"The canning?"
"Oh, yes." She rubbed at her nose a little. "Grandfather wants to open a factory up north in Pearshire next year. Business is good. He'll be buying tin while the price is down. I sit in on his talks with Dr. Nottermann some Wednesdays."
Victor listened to even the lightest of business talk with surprise. "I never paid as much attention to the fish as I ought to have," he admitted, fiddling with his collar again.
Helene in turn pulled her hair over her shoulder and began to comb it with her fingers, catching every few seconds on a tangled lock. "I didn't have much choice but to," she said. "My husband will run the company someday. Grandfather expects me to understand enough to keep him up to speed."
"That seems reasonable," Victor said absently, before fully realizing what she'd said. He swallowed and ventured, "N-now, when you say, ah, husband. You aren't -"
"No. Not for Grandmother's lack of trying," she said sourly, dragging her hand down with a yank that made her glower with the effort to not wince. "The village boys aren't good enough for us, so she goes out to her, her baronesses and dukes and asks after every well-bred son with inclinations toward business." Her fingers were trapped again, and she struggled to pull them through the tresses before finally giving up in visible anger and throwing all her hair behind her shoulder again. Victoria had never been one to grow frustrated so quickly. "Not that I want a village boy, either," she added hotly.
They were both silent for a few seconds. "Those were always the worst sort," Victor said finally.
"Who?" she grumbled.
"The well-bred sons, with inclinations toward business." He smiled again as she met his eyes. "Rather boorish, I think."
"You don't know the half of it," she said with her hands steepled over her mouth. "She brought me to Oxford in June. Lord Ruttersby took a liking to me. He's eight years my elder," she added with a tone bespoke of conspiracy, and kicked at the ground. "He spent four days talking about his family's butchering enterprise and how we were perfectly matched to feed every mouth in the Empire. Grandmother said we can do better than a viscount. Maybe she'll keep looking forever."
"I remember that," he said without realizing he'd spoken. Helene looked up. "Waiting," he clarified. "For someone to tell you whom you're going to… m-marry." She propped her cheek up on her fist and cast her eyes to the ground.
"You were lucky, though," she said in a low tone. "I hear you and Mother got along famously."
"Yes," he said, and tried not to think about it. "We did."
She took a deep breath that could have bespoken of either frustration or sadness, but told him no more than her face did. "It won't happen for me."
"Well, don't give up hope yet," he said gently, but she stayed quiet and looked back across the skyline. She took so long to speak again that he thought she was done talking altogether.
"I've never gotten on with anyone," she said, and with the words, he recalled walking through the village square as a child, watching the other boys fastidiously ignore him while they played knucklebones. He gripped the rail tightly with a dozen things to say and an uncertainty as to whether any of them was the right one. Helene looked perturbed, but must have noticed it at the same moment that he did, because she fixed her expression up immediately and seemed to decide that it was time to change the subject altogether. "So," she began again impassively, brushing her hair behind her ear so that it fell immediately back down in her face, "you said you don't know how far the…" She gestured to the town at large. "How long it goes for."
"No," he said. "No, I – I haven't been far from home."
"Well, that seems mad," she continued with a somewhat distrustful curl of her shoulder. "I'm sure no one could possibly live in a place like this and not do a bit of exploring."
What a jarringly familiar sentiment. He picked at his shirt collar with the feeling that he was being accused. "Yes, well," he mumbled, "Before I died I – I thought the same." He could remember that. "I don't suppose any living person could see the view and… not imagine it. But you find a routine and it all sort of goes out of your mind." He waved a hand vaguely in the air. "It's not so different from life Upstairs, here. Things come up."
Helene was looking up again with the strangest expression on her face he had ever seen. Had he said something? Her countenance was deeply disturbed, but she pursed her lips and ultimately said nothing of it. "Well… bosh," he heard her sniff. She turned to the city again. "I'd hardly do anything else if I were dead."
"You'll get to someday," he said. The girl gave him a peeved look and he bit his lip. "I mean – th-that's incredibly depressing -" He was an idiot. He let his voice catch for a minute before falling forward with a quick, "I'm sorry. I'm not v-very -" Tactful? Articulate? Smart? All applied, and her expression clearly said that she had noticed.
Victor started pacing with an agitated little twitch for a few seconds, before stopping abruptly and looking her straight in the eye. Her face did not change. "You know, I just thought I – I owed you a proper apology. For how I acted. Foolishly, I mean. I acted f-foolishly. I didn't expect…" The end of the sentence dangled for a good moment before he gave it up completely and let his shoulders sag. "I'm terribly sorry," he said.
The girl picked at her sleeve and said, "It's alright."
He didn't dare believe her. "Really?"
She was the one looking away from him now. Her voice was a bit sad. "Well, yes," she said, straightening up on the bench. "I mean, it's – it's not as though being family means two people must get along."
He didn't know what he'd expected to hear. "Oh," he said. "No, I suppose not."
"And I should apologize too, you know," she said. "For imposing on you."
"Oh, no, no," he said, protesting perhaps a bit too quickly to sound as though he meant it. "Never."
"Here, now, don't lie," she said, looking up finally with a very dry, pointed look. "I'm not delicate."
"I'm – I'm sure you're not," he said. He truly hadn't thought of her as an imposition for even a second. As a surprise, yes – as a bit peculiar, certainly – but not as an imposition. "I do mean it."
She lowered her chin and shifted on the bench. "Well, it's good of you to say so." Her profile struck him as he looked on; she cut an odd form on the bench. Her dress was distractingly chaotic, with mixed-up socks and a navy skirt under a shirtwaist and brown frock coat. Victoria for one would never have been seen dead so underdressed. Neither would she have let her hair grow so tangled, and too long to manage, or even let it down at all outside of bed-time. He could almost see her standing in front of the bureau and pulling out each pin so that the locks fell around her shoulders one at a time, and brushing her hair a hundred strokes before retiring, while the bedroom lamp lent the brown tresses a little shine of gold. The girl was looking at him very curiously as his mind wandered, her face far heavier and more skeptical than Victoria's would have ever been. But she's not Victoria, he thought, and pushed the memory from his mind.
Yet he knew he wasn't the only one who had noticed the resemblance. 'He called me by her name,' she had said before. What, what under earth was it that made him feel so uneasy at remembering those words? An uncanny idea niggled at the back of his brain, calling to mind something like a bad dream – too long ago to remember, too horrible to forget. 'A man, with a knife!'
"I do believe you, you know," he blurted, with the sudden feeling that maybe he hadn't made it clear before now. He scrambled to seat himself on the bench next to her as she looked up. "What you said, about the man. In the c-cemetery."
"Oh, that," she began to protest, but he rushed ahead of himself to at least finish before he ran out of nerve.
"No, now, I know that stranger things have happened. I-I lived most of them. And just because I don't understand something doesn't mean…" He shook his head and took a deep breath. "I mean – all I mean to say is – I do believe you. And –" He looked over with a timid smile, "I p-p-promise I wouldn't let anything hurt you. I'm sorry." He thought perhaps he ought to pat her hand, but the moment felt wrong, and the girl seemed less touched by his acknowledgment than he would have hoped.
"I wouldn't worry about it," she murmured, shrugging away from him a little.
"I think maybe I would, now that I've thought it out some more," he tried to assert, but she would have none of it.
"No I mean – I wouldn't worry because I… I suppose I oughtn't be here long anyway." She was avoiding looking at him with steadfastness. "Mrs. Hall will have a fit if I'm not back by morning. You can imagine."
He felt that he could indeed imagine being on the receiving end of the housekeeper's ire, though he wasn't certain it had ever actually happened. "You're still going to go?" he asked.
"I have to," she insisted, looking up and pursing her lips in a manner shockingly reminiscent of her grandmother, the Lady Everglot. "It's just a matter of practicality. And maybe -" She glanced at the sky as if expecting to glean a sense of time from it. "Perhaps we should be getting back about now."
Victor stayed seated as she stood, brushing off her jacket with a sharp, decided brusqueness that certainly hadn't been inherited from him. He'd managed to botch it up after all, then, and once again wasn't even sure how. He'd thought things were going well. "I'm sorry," he said once more.
"There's no need to apologize," she said briskly as she moved past him to light upon the downward stairs again. Helene took two steps and then stopped, apparently having noticed that he wasn't following. They stood in silence for a second before she sniffed lightly and said, "Thank you for the walk. It's a lovely view." She looked back to Victor and bit her lip as if she wanted to say something else, but did not, and continued down without a further word. He watched her go with a growing empty feeling, and as she disappeared raised his head to the sky.
He'd failed again, then. With every effort he knew how to make, he'd failed. If this was what his best attempt at fatherhood looked like, it really was better off for her that he'd spent all of her life dead. He stood and walked slowly back to the guard, leaning upon it to stretch his neck out into the air and see just how far the buildings really did go for.
He truly couldn't believe it had been seventeen years since he'd first set foot here. In just a few years more he'd be at that special anniversary by which a man finds he's been dead longer than he was ever alive, and what had he done with all that time? Not any exploring, certainly. What under earth had he found more important for so long?
Victor was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn't notice the sound of quick footsteps making their way back up the stairs, or a very flushed Helene resurfacing with her skirt bunched in her hands to avoid tripping and a cross look on her face. She stared at him for a good minute before managing to catch his attention with a loud, deep breath.
"Actually, I've decided I'm not leaving yet," she said loudly as he turned back to look at her in surprise. "I'm not much for being involved in others' business, but there's something I just can't get out of my mind." She dropped her hem back around her ankles and stood straight-backed as a soldier with a scowl and very heavy brows. "What on earth did you mean when you said you'd thought about going exploring Downstairs, before you died?" He blinked at her. "Exploring. In the Land of the Dead, before you were dead. You wanted to. You said that."
Had he? Victor pulled at his collar a little bit. "Oh, well, yes," he said, while the girl stood before him with squared shoulders and a piercing look. "That's a rather long story."
Her eyebrows raised an impressive distance. "Well, I'm very interested to hear it!"
"I don't -" Victor stopped and ran a blue hand through his hair, pondering what to say next. "I d-don't remember much," he said tentatively, because it was only half true. "It was a very long time ago, and -"
"Bollocks!" Helene blurted, and immediately clapped her hands over her mouth. "I'm sorry. No, I'm not sorry!" She marched back to the bench and sat down with great force, splaying her skirt across the wooden planks and crossing her arms solidly. "I am not moving until you explain just what exactly you meant." And she took a deep breath and lowered her chin to glare at him.
Victor wasn't entirely sure what to say, or how to begin, or even whether he still had the whole story in him anymore. Sometimes he spoke casually of things he could hardly remember when he actively tried to, and others found himself trapped in daydreams of the past that disappeared immediately upon their realization. His was a long and sordid tale at the best of times; he did remember that it had started here, though. The long familiar view over Daughters Leap hadn't changed in the least, and that was a moment he'd likely never lose.
Best to start at the beginning, then. "Well. Erm." He took looked down. "Has anyone told you that your mother and I were both married to other… people… before we wed?"
The expression on the girl's face said clearly that no one had. "That's impossible," she said slowly.
"I assure you it's not," he said, and took a few long steps forward to sit upon the far end of the bench from her. She noticeably kept well to her end. "It wasn't v-voluntary on either of our parts, but Victoria was wed for several hours to a nobleman who…" He couldn't remember the lord's name. "I suppose it's not important. Whereas I rather – hrmm – married… a… corpse."
She took it better than he expected by failing to react at all in favor of giving him the flattest look he'd ever seen. "No, it's true," he said, rubbing the back of his head. "Nobody believed me then, either. I made the mistake of practicing my vows on the wrong grave and – well."
Helene looked incredulous. "You didn't really marry a – a dead man?"
"Woman," Victor said tetchily. "Goodness. Yes. And she was… very kind, actually. Not that it was a proper marriage, what with her being dead." The girl seemed to be slowly sliding away from him. "Now, you asked," he said.
"You're mad," she said.
"I'm dead!" he said, raising his blue hand well for her to see. "Is it really so hard to believe?" The girl frowned but said nothing. "Yes, good. I had a bit of a run-in with the Land of the Dead before I died. There's not much to the story."
Of all the things he could have said to get a rise out of her, he would have thought that to be one of the least likely, but clearly he knew her even less well than he thought. "Not much to the story?" she asked, looking like she'd been told her hair was on fire. "My father married a corpse! How could I not have heard of …" But then she stopped and pressed a hand to her mouth. "Oh no," she whispered. "The greengrocer's son -" She looked at Victor as if with new eyes. "It didn't actually happen?"
"What?"
"The dead, walking the earth!" she said, wringing her hands. "We were sure he was only telling tales."
"Oh, the wedding? Yes, that was us." Victor was slightly affronted that their grand celebration had amounted to nothing more than a disbelieved children's tale in the end. "Pastor Gallswells never let me into the church again after that."
"You raised the dead?" she asked faintly.
"They raised themselves," he said. "It was a special occasion."
The girl's pallor didn't speak well of her bearing, but in a few seconds she took a deep breath and seemed to steel herself. "Alright," she said, voice even and face placid. "Please… do go on."
"Oh, yes. Your mother was wed to a nobleman whilst I was away, so the… the corpse woman and I thought we'd go Upstairs to make a proper marriage. But there were confounding c-circumstances, and…" What had they been again? "Well. It didn't go according to plan, anyway. She left, and Victoria and I were married two weeks later. That's… the end."
Helene kept looking at him for a moment, clearly expecting more to the story despite his wrap. "That's it?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
"But… you've only made more questions! Who was Mother's husband? Where did the corpse woman go? Did you say you married her twice? How can – how can all this have happened and no one told me?" She buried her head in her clawed hands with a strangled cry.
Victor would have taken his words back if it meant being able to allay her confusion and frustration. He placed his elbows on his knees and wished sorely there was something more he could do. "I'm sorry," he said to her. "I can't remember much more than that."
"But they're the important parts," she said accusingly. "How can you forget all the most important parts?" He thought he heard a sniffle, but when he looked up she had turned away with her hands clenched in her lap. What more could he say?
He said, "I'm sorry."
She didn't respond.
Silence crawled between them like a spider, and its silken thread was leaden with regret. Victor wished so badly that he could have done anything at all to answer her questions, which were swiftly becoming his own questions as well. The gaps in his memory felt like cavernous wells into which the past had been dropped and might never be recovered. The corpse woman. The corpse woman. She'd had a name, he should have known her name, and yet he'd titled her like an extra in a play. It felt like the ground had been pulled out from underneath him. The girl at his side on the bench hadn't moved, and still had her head turned out toward the city, as immobile as stone.
"How did you die?" she asked him quietly. "And don't say you don't remember," she added before he had a chance to try. "You all have to at least know that much."
Now it was Victor's turn to maintain the silence. "Your mother was very ill," he said finally, but it didn't feel much like his voice at all. "I thought maybe – maybe there could be a cure for her, here, but in the end…" The guardposts along the edge of the leap stood like a condemnatory jury. "I didn't make it." He took a deep, false breath and tried to unclench his hands.
"I failed."
The words hung in the air like cobwebs that should have long since been cleaned out. From a far-off rooftop, a raven took wing and soared across the sky above their heads, almost invisible against the black but for the glassy glint off its wings. "Mrs. Hall," Helene said jerkily, "said that you left the house one day in perfect health and came back that night to die. Mother p-passed because of…" She gave a watery sniffle, and he carefully averted his eyes to allow her privacy. "Because of me, but you, they never knew why. B-by all indications -" She took an audibly deep breath to steady her voice. "You should never have died at all."
Her knuckles were white against the bench's dark wood. Her chin was steady, but her eyes were wide and forward-staring, as if she was afraid of what might happen if she allowed herself to move. The sight of it split a little crack in his heart. Had she spent her entire life wondering why she'd been left alone, in the wake of a father who should have lived long and old? Could she have ever thought that, perhaps, his grief for Victoria had proven stronger than his desire to stay with her?
"I had to," he said, with the hollowest of hopes that it might stand as any sort of comfort. "I had to die, to come down here again." Helene hiccoughed and finally broke her thousand-yard stare, turning to him with watery eyes.
"You died for her, then?" she asked in a small voice. "You did that?"
Victor looked at his daughter with the strangest feeling. "Of course," he said, and he hoped that she could see that he meant it, truly and with all his heart. "For both of you. And I'd do it again."
Helene bit her lip and tears began to stream down her face. "Why did she leave, then?" she asked with a sob. Off to the south in the maze of rooftops, the library tower bells were beginning to chime midnight. "Why wouldn't she stay here? Didn't sh-she think I'd need her someday?" She turned her head down with shaking shoulders.
To take her hand and wrap her warm fingers securely in his cold ones seemed the most natural action in the world. "I don't know either," Victor said, with the sorrow of deeply shared pain. "I don't know." She shook with tears, and the two of them held hands at the top of the world, while each peal of the bells echoed off the sky around them like a sweet lost ghost.
They took their time coming down from Daughters Leap, walking slowly and without an excess of noise. Victor considered it a good sign that they remained more or less side-by-side as they walked. It was a show of solidarity, maybe.
They approached the Ball and Socket with a sad air between them and, for the first time, something resembling understanding. Father and daughter stopped before entering the pub and stood across from each other in the dark doorway, Victor somber but smiling, Helene dry-eyed and maudlin.
"You really ought to be back before morning," he offered.
"Yes," Helene said. She took a deep breath. "Thank you for your time tonight."
"I wouldn't have spent it any other way," he said. He meant every word of it. "This has been the most interesting Hallowe'en I can remember."
That made her blush a bit. "And my most interesting birthday, by far." She hiccupped. Victor smiled. He was sad to see her go, but it was time.
He pushed the door open for her and gestured her inside. "After you."
She smiled back. "Thank you."
And in a solemn but considerate silence, they entered the pub together.
"THEY'RE BACK!"
The din that took up in the Ball and Socket immediately upon their entrance was shocking and swift. The lights in the room went on immediately and the two found themselves greeted by what could have been a dozen dead men and women, surrounded by half-hanged paper streamers and bright, slamming music. Hats were thrown playfully to the ground at their arrival, and laughter came easily and raucously. Bonejangles was sitting up upon the stage, grinning maniacally and tuning a cello.
"Caught in the act by the guests of honor!" Dottie May swept up to them in a feathery dress and planted kisses on both of their cheeks, an action neither of them had been anything near expecting. "But we're nearly done anyway. Oh, this is going to be perfect. We've had threescore attendees répondent so far and we're expecting more. It's time for a party!"
Helene looked exactly as baffled as Victor felt. "What…?" she asked slackly.
"Midnight's passed, darling," Dottie said, pinching the girl's cheek so that her jaw snapped immediately shut. "The longest part of the night's over, we've a deathday to commemorate, and there's a family reunion!" She threw her hands up in the air ecstatically. "Why wouldn't you celebrate? We're throwing a ball, dearest!"
Helene looked to her father with slightly desperate eyes that he felt helpless to offer aid to. "I don't think I can," the girl started. "I have to…"
"Change? Don't you worry about it, sweetie, we'll fix you up right as rain." Dottie spun the girl around and took her by the shoulders. In the corners of the room, two skeletons on ladders finished hanging their banners along the ceiling.
HAPPY DEATHDAY VICTOR! WELCOME DAUGHTER
"But -" Victor tried to interject.
"Think nothing of it!" Dottie said cheerfully as she steered the girl away through the crowd. "It's a little something for all of us! Put on your finest, Victor-kins. This is going to be a night to remember!"
This chapter was a pain in my ass to write, but I'm glad to have it done, because it represented the last hurdle before we start getting to the fun stuff. Like dancing, and dresses, and kidnapping, and torture. Fun stuff.
If any of these characters mangle their French, it's because they're bad at French, and not because I'm using Google translate to spice up the dialogue with fancy words. ¡Si yo sólo tenía tomado frances en escuela secundaria en lugar!
