5
The landscape changed dramatically once they'd left the beautiful gardens behind. The air was no longer warm. Indeed, the world took on a bluish cast, even more depressing than the gray of her own story. Thriving trees gave way to scrubby growth and untended patches of garden. The atmosphere made Victoria tense up. This was not a good place.
From a sideways glance she could tell her companion felt it, too. It was hard to breathe here. The colors were dim and drab, the sky a leaden gray. Rickety, half-finished buildings rose up to one side of the lane, stretching on for what looked like miles away into the distance. A narrow lane of broken cobblestone ran between these...houses? They must be, though Victoria thought them very grim places to live.
And the quiet. It was eerie. The air in the places she'd seen earlier had been filled with piano music, laughter, low conversations, birdsong. Sounds of life and happiness. Here, silence lay like a blanket. There were no birds. Certainly no laughter. When Victoria glanced at the stone wall that they'd been following, keeping it always to their right, she saw that it now appeared totally solid. If she touched it now there would be no mist or movement. Only solid stone.
Almost unconsciously she took a step closer to the older Victoria, who took her arm in a maternal sort of way. Or at least, what Victoria imagined to be maternal. Despite having her mother present, she'd never really experienced a maternal presence. In that moment she realized that this older self was old enough to be her mother. At a bit of a stretch, of course. But Victoria was only seven years older than her daughter.
"I'm certain the children wouldn't stop here," the older Victoria murmured, eyeing the decrepit buildings, the lifeless gardens, the deserted lane. "Not even to explore. Emily knows better. And Will might be a little monkey, but he's not that fearless."
"We should at least ask," Victoria said. "Just in case they came by. If there is anyone to ask."
And there was. A lone figure sat on the stone steps of a decrepit terraced house. Or what would have been a terraced house, had there been other houses on either side of it. Unsurprisingly, it was another Victoria. This one was wearing the same gown Victoria currently had on, which was a little eerie, and looked to be the same age as she.
Eerier still was the way she was sitting. It was as though she was waiting for a train. She held no book or knitting. Her hands were folded on her lap. Every now and again she fiddled with the lace on her wrist. Her expression was vacant.
As the two of them grew closer to the woman on the steps, Victoria noticed that there was something...off about her. Unsettling. In the same way that the honeymooning Victoria had been too pretty, this Victoria was too plain. Victoria was not vain, nor did she have any illusions about being any great beauty of her age. But she knew that she was at least nice-looking. And this new Victoria, as guilty and unkind as she felt to think it, was downright unfortunate. Her eyes were a bit too far apart and her face had a pinched look about it. Her lips were thin and her cheeks were pale and scattered with freckles.
When they approached, the pale Victoria very slowly let her gaze settle on them. Given how lackluster her eyes were, it was hard to tell if she was actually looking at them or not.
"I beg your pardon," Victoria said gently when the older Victoria did not speak first, "I don't like to trouble you, but have you seen two children come by here recently?"
The pale Victoria's blink seemed to take an hour for her to complete. "Children?" she repeated. Her voice was as vacant as her look, much higher-pitched and girlish than Victoria's own. As though Victoria herself were putting on a voice. Victoria frowned a little. She did not like the way it sounded.
Victoria turned to her companion for help. The older Victoria took a deep breath and said reluctantly, "A girl and a boy. My daughter is twelve, quite tall, already nearly my height. Dark hair and eyes. My son is only six. He looks quite a bit like me. Brown hair, slightly built."
There she stopped. She'd dropped Victoria's arm and had crossed her arms under her bosom. She looked edgy, uncomfortable. Victoria understood. This place made her feel the same way.
"No," the pale Victoria said slowly. It was unclear whether or not she was thinking. "No. No one came by. No one ever does. No children. Most of our children are babies. And over there."
She pointed off to the right, in the distance to a little hill that overlooked the half-built homes. When Victoria looked, she gasped sharply, a sound immediately echoed by the older Victoria. They were looking at a cemetery. Filled with small crosses, stone lambs, little angels. A huge dead oak spread its skeletal branches over the graves.
The older Victoria had her fist pressed to her mouth. Victoria thought she heard a stifled cry, and looked at her companion with concern. Unable to think what to say to her, she turned back to the pale Victoria.
"I'm so sorry," she said uselessly. The pale Victoria gave a little shrug. "That's terrible."
"Everything is terrible," agreed the pale Victoria pleasantly. Victoria was taken aback at her tone. Then, tilting her head, added, "You are very well described."
"My medium is visual," Victoria replied modestly.
"Let us leave now, the children haven't been here," the older Victoria put in. Then, in a lower voice, "I do not like it here."
Neither did Victoria. But she couldn't just leave this poor girl without talking to her at least a little. Especially since everything was terrible and no one ever came by. Because the cemetery was too full.
Gently, as though approaching a skittish horse, Victoria took a seat on the step beside the pale Victoria. The older Victoria, arms tightly crossed again, sighed an irritated sigh and hung back, closer to the path. The pale Victoria allowed her to sit, her face betraying nothing.
"Are you all right?" Victoria asked her. The pale Victoria just sat there staring off into nothing, tugging at the lace on her wrist. The cuff was starting to unravel.
"I didn't get there in time," she said. Something about her voice, the pitch, the childishness, truly put Victoria on edge. It felt as though someone were play-acting as her, and cruelly. Still, she tried to be kind.
"Didn't get where?" Victoria asked, trying to catch her double's eye. When at last the pale Victoria did meet her eye, Victoria wished she hadn't. Looking into that face was like looking into a warped mirror, a bad painting of herself. The hairs on the back of her neck and on her arms stood up. There was no one behind those eyes. The lamps were lit, but no one was home. Victoria bit her lip, hoping her feelings weren't showing on her face.
"The church," explained the pale Victoria. "I was too late. Victor drank the poison and died. He married Emily and went to the Land of the Dead."
Victoria's heart seized. "What?" she finally managed. "That did not happen."
But the pale Victoria was nodding. "Yes, it did. I was just a little too late. Just a few moments. I watched him drink the poison and die."
She might have been describing watching paint dry on a fence. Victoria tried to swallow but her mouth was too dry. At last, she felt one of her headaches coming on as she tried to imagine such a horrible scene.
"And I remember. I remember I went to him, because I did love him, you know, but I married Barkis," the pale Victoria continued. "And Victor wanted to marry Emily. He wanted to die. Because he'd fallen in love with her."
"No, he did not!" Victoria exclaimed, unable to bear it. Little pinpricks of light were starting to show at the periphery of her vision. She'd broken into a cold sweat. "He did it because he thought I didn't love him! As soon as we were together again, when he saw that it wasn't as he thought, the moment I was there again..." She stopped because her voice was starting to crack and it embarrassed her. She was aware that this defense did not show Victor in the best light, but she couldn't help the truth of her story. Or of his.
Finally, some ghost of an expression appeared in the pale Victoria's slack face. Pity. Victoria pressed her lips together, biting back both hysterical words and sudden nausea.
"No," the pale Victoria said slowly. "No, he didn't love you. Didn't love me. Only thought he did until Emily came along. She can play the piano. Just like him. He fell in love with her and he told me so. I remember it. I remember he was dead and I asked him why and he told me that he was sorry he hurt me but he really loved Emily and was so glad that he realized it and that she was perfect for him because she was so beautiful and fun and passionate and could play the piano-"
"Please," the older Victoria interrupted. She'd stepped a bit closer. Her mouth was drawn down at the corners, making the lines on her face more pronounced. Her eyes were sad and her voice was a little hoarse. "That's enough. Thank you for your help, but we really must-"
"But what happened to you?" Victoria asked desperately. Her stomach was rolling. The beginnings of the pain were blossoming behind her right eye. Oh, everything this woman said sounded plausible, the more she thought of it. "Barkis had no money! What happened to Mother and Father? What became of you?"
Again a glacially slow blink of those expressionless eyes. "To me?" she asked as though she'd not understood. "I don't know. Does it matter?"
Now it was Victoria's turn to blink, only in astonishment. It hurt to do so. She pressed the heel of her hand against her right eyebrow, trying to push the headache away. The older Victoria was silent, troubled, looking at the broken cobblestones and dirt at her feet.
"I think it was all right, though," the pale Victoria continued in that same blandly pleasant tone. Oh, it was wicked and cruel but Victoria dearly wanted to slap her. "At least he was dead before he saw me. Sometimes it happens that he holds my hand and Emily stops him and he even fights with Barkis and then he says he can't let Emily go, that he loves her so much and then he kills himself in front of me."
Victoria thought she was going to be sick. She leaned over and put her head between her knees, clutching her head. The pain was pulsing with every beat of her heart. But the pale Victoria was still talking. Very chatty once she got going, this one.
"But then no, perhaps that's not even so bad," the poor broken Victoria went on. If she'd had the capacity to sound as if she were musing, she'd have done so. "It is very bad, I think, when we're married and he still loves Emily and he writes all sorts of poems and songs and ignores me. Or that and we have children and he names them Emily but then ignores them, too. And he goes to the graveyard a lot and sometimes he uses magic to see Emily. Or then I die and he's free, that happens a lot. I die and the baby dies and he can go die and find Emily. Or he dies and he's free, and he and Emily can be happy. When we live a whole life and Victor really loves Emily the entire time, that is not nice. Is it? Or then all the times-"
"STOP!" Victoria cried at last, sure that her head was about to burst into pieces. She was still bent over into her skirts, in agony. Through the pain, with labored breaths, she said, "None of that is true! None of that happened. None of it could ever happen. Every word Victor said to me was a lie? Every look he gave me? Every touch? All of that was a lie, you say?"
"Well," said the pale Victoria, not sounding insulted or bothered in the least. "Emily is very fun. She can play the piano."
Victoria took a shuddering breath. After a moment's silence she heard quick footsteps. An arm slid around her back and she was enveloped in the scent of beach roses and salt air.
"Come, up now," the older Victoria said, carefully pulling Victoria to her feet. She wobbled. Even her eyes hurt. "We must go. You'll feel better soon."
"It was nice to meet you," the pale Victoria intoned, back to staring into nothing. That was where they left her, just sitting on her steps, surrounded by rubble and death and memories of abandonment. Underneath her pain and her anger, Victoria spared this unfortunate self a great deal of sadness and compassion.
The older Victoria helped her back to their path alongside the high stone wall. Out of the immediate vicinity of whatever that place had been, Victoria's headache eased enough so that she could at least walk upright. Within a few careful steps, her nausea started to abate and she could see clearly again.
"None of that is true," she managed to say, her mouth dry and her head still fuzzy.
"I know," replied the older Victoria.
"Victor does love me."
"I know he does."
As they walked on, leaving that wretched place and that wretched creature behind, Victoria thought about Victor. Meeting him at the piano. Handing him the sprig of jasmine. Three hours of holding his hand, lighting his candles, seeing the way he looked at her during their wedding rehearsal. The way he'd looked into her eyes and told her he wanted to be with her always. How he'd reached for her and called her name. The astonishment that turned to pure pleasure when she'd turned up at his wedding. How he'd ordered Barkis to unhand her. How he'd shielded her with his body after she'd helped him up. How they'd held one another until the very end.
The way he looked at her. The way she looked at him. The way they touched one another. The way they both knew they wanted to be together always.
Victoria's migraine was gone.
She took a deep, slow breath and let it out, and then straightened up. "I am all right now," she told her companion, her head at last clear, her inner ship righted.
"You're certain?" the older Victoria asked, taking her arm away and studying her closely. "Oh, I knew it was a mistake for you to come here, to hear such things. What would it do to the story if you doubted Victor's love for you? Or your own for him?" If she doubted the very essence of her story, in other words.
"Many doubt it, it would seem," Victoria said, remembering the pale Victoria's infuriatingly pleasant and unbothered recitation. "What was wrong with her?"
The older Victoria was quiet for a moment as they continued to walk. "I think she's been written so many times she's a walking theme. And I think she reflected precisely the amount of care and thought that was put into her," she said at last. "Poor thing."
So that, Victoria realized, was what changing the story meant. It had been difficult to conceive of earlier. Back there, that pale and addled Victoria, the blasted landscape, that was what changing a story looked like. Changing characters and their motivations, their truth. Her Victor, while not without his flaws, would never behave in such a way. Emily, who had grown and learned a lesson, would never behave that way either. And she herself, Victoria, would never be so broken. Of that she was sure.
She glanced over her shoulder. The pale, unfortunate Victoria was only a shape at this distance. Victoria wasn't angry anymore, and was ashamed of herself for having been so. That Victoria couldn't help how she'd been written, no more than she herself could. Poor thing, indeed.