6
Victoria was beginning to feel the pull. The tug, the one deep in her chest, that told her when she was needed back in her story. It was still faint. She had time, but she might be cutting it close. She'd never missed an appearance before, and did not want to know what might happen if she did. She wasn't even sure if such a thing were possible.
Then, of course, she'd seen a great many things today that she'd never have thought possible.
"I'm sorry, but I think I will need to leave soon," Victoria told her companion. The older Victoria smiled a small smile that did not reach her eyes.
"I understand," she said. "It's been quite nice to have company. Though you truly needn't have bothered yourself."
Victoria ignored that. "But there's still no sign of your children," she said. "I said I would help you find them. And I want to."
The older Victoria didn't reply. It was clear she was losing hope. Worry lines creased her forehead and her mouth was turned down at the corners. Victoria reached and touched her elbow, just briefly. Before she could speak, the older Victoria stopped.
"We're here," she said quietly. "This is it."
Puzzled, Victoria waited in vain for an explanation. So she looked up ahead of them. Yet another location, this one bursting with color. Green lights were strung everywhere. Incredibly high, crooked buildings rose into a dark sky. Laughter and music, of a decidedly different and more raucous type that she had heard earlier, flowed toward them.
As though drawn by an invisible cord, Victoria took a few steps toward the crooked village, so much brighter and bigger and full of life than the one she knew. She would love to have just a peek, imitation or no. On that disastrous occasion that she'd tried to meet Emily in the Land of the Dead, she'd just been whisked immediately to Emily's...home? Room? Alley? Victoria still wasn't quite sure what to call it. She'd not had the chance to see much.
Beyond a gated wall, not unlike the one around the village at home, she could see alleyways and buildings. They were plaster and stone, like the ones she knew, but warmer. That green and gold light was everywhere. As she neared, she noticed abandoned coffins propped up here and there. And other odd things, like birdcages, kettles, bottles, all manner of detritus. How did all of these things get down here? Did anything buried, even refuse, find its way here? And that music! It was like nothing she'd ever heard before.
It was a moment before she realized she'd left the older Victoria far behind. She turned, a little ashamed of herself, and trotted back to her side. The older Victoria had her arms crossed firmly against herself again. She was just standing there, staring at the village of the dead, with its bright lights and cheerful music, inviting laughter and dance. The older Victoria did not look at all tempted by it.
Suddenly, a voice came to them out of the shadows. Another very familiar one. Victoria's stomach dropped when she again recognized her very own voice speaking to her.
"Are you two lost?" it said. They turned to look, and both gasped at the figure that slid toward them from the shadows along the path.
It was another Victoria, and this Victoria was dead. Not freshly so, either. Her eyes were yellow and sunken. She was wearing a wedding dress. Victoria's wedding dress. The one currently hanging in her wardrobe, ready for tomorrow. Only it was ragged, threadbare in places, soiled along the hem. Some of the buttons had come off and never been replaced, so that there were gaps here and there along the front. This dead Victoria's hair was unbound, hanging stringy about her face and shoulders. Worst was the ghastly slash across her throat, the old dried blood all down her front, spattered on her face.
"You don't look like you belong here," the dead Victoria remarked. As she got closer, Victoria instinctively backed up. Her dead self was bluish-purple, even her lips and hair. The way she spoke, though she sounded like Victoria, was all wrong. But Victoria couldn't quite put her finger on why.
"We're looking for my children," said the older Victoria in a steady voice that Victoria did not think she could have managed just now. "A girl and a boy."
"That is very irresponsible, to lose your children," drawled the dead Victoria. "Are they dead ones or live ones?" There was a nasty, teasing element that ran under every word she spoke. Victoria was sure she had never spoken that way. Was that how she might speak, when she was dead and had no more strictures upon her? Or had this Victoria's manner of death, which was easy to guess, turned her that way?
Victoria swallowed a wave of nausea and tried to stand up as tall as her other self. She was grateful when the older Victoria took hold of her arm again in that sure, motherly way.
"They are alive," the older Victoria said firmly. The dead Victoria smirked at her.
"When last you saw them, anyway," she said. The older Victoria looked stricken. The dead woman said over her shoulder, "Ladies? Have we seen any little live ones?"
More figures came out of the shadows. Victoria felt dizzy and sick, her vision beginning to stitch and glitter again. There were at least a dozen. Every single one of these women were her. All of them were dead. So many. So many. Why were there so many?
"W-why are you all here? Why aren't you all in the land of the dead?" she asked as the dead formed a ragged circle around them. The familiar pulse of pain was beginning in her eye. It throbbed in tandem with the tug in her chest. She leaned against the older Victoria for support.
"We never get to go there," said a Victoria whose head wobbled on a hideously broken neck. She held it still with a firm hand on her chin as she spoke. "But where else is there to go? We are left in the shadows, no explanation."
"We might interfere with them," put in a Victoria who was soaking wet, her blue face swollen and bruised. She wore nothing but a dressing gown, also wet and dragging on the ground. "That's the explanation. It doesn't matter what happens to us beyond getting out of the way."
"Too true. Can't interfere with Victor and Emily!" agreed the first dead Victoria. She was the scariest of them all. Her manner. Her throat, slit ear to ear. All the blood. And the insane glitter in her eyes. She leaned in and put a sisterly arm around Victoria's shoulders. The corpse smelled terrible, absolutely rotten. "No, cannot have that! But we have to get out of the way for them. So we die. And it would be so awkward if we showed up Downstairs and ruined the fun."
Victoria twisted away from her dead self, her skin crawling and her stomach turning. She covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a cry of disgust. Her older self did the same, and tugged Victoria away, out of the dead woman's reach. The circle of the dead was tightening around them. They were too close. Victoria couldn't bear it. This was not like seeing the dead in the village, not at all like being touched by Emily or catching her bouquet. This was personal. This was her very own mortality, played out in so many creative ways. It hurt her heart to know that such fates had been dreamed up for her, fully written or not.
"Childbirth is a very popular way to go," said a hollow-eyed Victoria, whose nightgown was soaked in blood.
"And tuberculosis," coughed another. She was emaciated, skeletal, her pale blue skin taut over her skull. "Tuberculosis doesn't leave you with any unfinished business. Except the rest of your life," she added as an afterthought.
"And murder!" the Victoria in the wedding dress sing-songed horribly. She gestured to the one with the soaked clothes, the one whose neck was broken, one with a stab wound to her heart, one with horrible livid bruises on her neck. "Oh, murdered by Barkis is terribly popular! And even then we're somehow magicked or rules-lawyered away from the Land of the Dead! After we've earned it, wouldn't you say? Wouldn't you say we deserve some fun after all this?"
While the dead Victoria had been speaking, one of the others had crept up to them. The older Victoria jumped as the corpse in the bloody nightdress twisted her thin blue fingers into her sleeve.
"I'll help you look for your children," she said. Her voice was hoarse, as though her throat were raw. Her slightly sunken eyes had deep black circles all around them. Her loose blue hair frizzed crazily about her face. "I had three and I never saw them again. The last one died with me and I never saw that one again either. I would love to see some living children..."
The older Victoria wrenched her arm away, tightened her grip on Victoria's hand, and marched them both backwards toward the gray stone wall along the path. The corpse Victorias moved to get out of the way. None of the dead followed. They just stood there, surrounded by shadows, staring.
"No need, we are fine," said the older Victoria. She started walking up the path again, dragging Victoria along with her as though she were a child. "Goodbye."
"Good luck!" called the dead Victoria in the wedding dress nastily. "Do be careful, our sort has a lot of accidents out there! And so do our children!"
Her voice faded away as the two of them put a lot of quick distance between themselves and the bevy of corpses. Victoria glanced back. No one was following them. The dead Victorias had melted back into their shadows, left behind and alone once more.