Chapter 4 - Something Blue
In the Land of the Dead the preparations for Victor and Emily's grand wedding were taking place.
Victor was loitering at the doorway of The Ball & Socket, while Emily was playing a new, giddy tune on the piano. She sang to herself, "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue…"
A skeleton approached Victor at the doorway and Victor looked up to see it was Elder Gutknecht. "My boy," he said. "I'm afraid there is yet another complication with your upcoming wedding. It seems Emily has already gotten you a wedding present, your dog Scraps. But you have yet to give a gift to her."
"What?" Victor gasped. "I completely forgot! I'll go get a present at once."
"Emily," Victor called to her over the tinkling of the piano. "I'm going to work," he lied. "I"ll be back home at the end of the day."
"But darling, you don't have to do any work in the Land of the Dead. You can just do whatever you want to."
"There's something I have to do. I'm not telling."
"But dearest, we don't have any money either."
"I have a little, as I was to inherit from my uncle Lord Barkis and he gave me a bit of pocket money."
"Lord Barkis?" Emily said with a shudder, remembering the night she eloped.
"Yes. I was even to inherit the title of Young Lord Barkis."
"Well that explains that," Emily said matter-of-factly. "Because in the Land of the Living they said I was to marry a Lord Barkis and I didn't know who it was."
"It was me, dear," Victor explained. "Anyways, I'll be back soon." He ran out the doorway before Emily could wrap her clammy arms around him and kiss him good-bye. Their skeleton dog Scraps followed him.
"What would she like?" he muttered to himself as he walked through the dark half of town, Scraps dogging his feet. "Think, think, think. She's so different from anyone else. I know!"
He went to Elder Gutknecht's library. "Elder Gutknecht, I need a book for Emily! She probably loves to read."
"A romance novel, perhaps?"
"Yes, something . . romantic. But a little dark and scary!" He started to look through shelves and shelves and stacks of books. He climbed a ladder to the romance section. "Here! This one's got her name on it." The book read Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. "Perfect!" He slid down the ladder with the book in one hand.
"Good job, my boy!" Elder Gutknecht said.
"I should get her two gifts," Victor said on a whim. "No, three! Elder Gutknecht, what if I get Emily a new dress?"
"My boy, I'm afraid Emily is doomed to wear her bridal dress in the Land of Dead for eternity, because that's what she was wearing when she died. Heed my warning. Giving her a new dress would-"
"I know, I know, and I'm to wear this suit around to match her," Victor interrupted, waving his arms. "That doesn't matter to me! She would love me if I gave her a dress."
He made his way back down the dimly lit street, lit in shades of pumpkin-orange, luminescent green and violet purple. He stopped at a tailor's shop with old-fashioned dresses and suits in the window. "Something blue!" he said, remembering the old rhyme about a bride that Emily had been singing. He picked out a lavender blue dress with a low-sweeping neckline, fluttery half-sleeves, and a skirt that swept on the floor. Thirdly, he picked out a cobalt blue pair of low heels to match. Scraps barked happily in approval.
"Emily, I'm home!" he shouted at the door of The Ball & Socket. Emily seemed to materialize out of nowhere and floated toward him ethereally, arms outstretched and the ghost of a smile on her face. She wrapped her skeletal arms around him in a cold embrace.
"Where have you been?" she asked, putting one skeletal hand on her other arm. "For so long?"
"I was getting you your wedding presents! Surprise! You can open them now."
Emily went through the bags. "A book!" she said delightedly. "A romance novel! Oh I love it! How did you know?"
Then she pulled out the dress and shoes but only stared at them wide-eyed. "Victor, I don't know what to say."
"Well go on - try it on!"
They went up to their room where Emily changed into her new lavender dress and Victor laced up the laces in the back for her. "There," he said, pulling the laces tightly and tying them in a bow. "All done!"
Emily looked at herself in the full-length mirror, with Victor standing slightly to her left and looking over her shoulder. "When I was little," she said nostalgically, "I read that if a girl looks in a mirror at midnight, she'll see her true love's face over her left shoulder."
Victor looked at her. That's exactly where he was now in the mirror. "And that's exactly where I belong," he said.
Then something happened. Emily started to glow with a bluish light. A swarm of moths fluttered up around her in spirals. Her cerulean blue hair turned back to golden blonde, and the lavender blue dress transformed to a shade of rose pink.
"Victoria?" Victor said with his eyes wide in recognition.
"The spell on me is broken," the girl said in a dreamy voice. "You've given me a new dress instead of my wedding dress, so I no longer have to wear it around. I'm free to be a normal girl, alive again. You've freed me, Victor."
"You'll always be a bride to me," Victor said.
THE END
