~7~
Now
Midnight.
The fire in the private common room had died down to glowing coals, and Cub was a comfortable weight on Elsa's toes. She nursed a tepid glass of water while Haley told her story of her trip home; it was a prop as much as anything else, a reason to turn her glance away from the weary and bewildered girl in front of her, whose face was far too pale under her bubble gum pink hair.
Elsa would have to force herself to stop thinking of Haley as a girl. She would be turning thirty in only a few weeks. It was horrifying that she and Anna looked the same age now.
Elsa remembered the quick look Haley gave her at the dinner table, and knew that it was time to talk of things they couldn't speak of during the day. They could speak of these things only at night, when Anna was good and dead, when the world was dark and awaited its daily resurrection to sunshine and life. Haley turned the green rabbit's foot in her hand over and over again. The movements were strangely rhythmic, as if to a foreign and ancient cadence that only she could hear.
Haley had had a breakthrough while she was home.
"Where did you find her?" Elsa asked quietly.
Haley wasn't looking at her; she was looking beyond Elsa to the darkness that pressed against the windows of the inn, a curious and perhaps malignant darkness eager to hear stories of hurt and bloodshed. "Just over the border into Florida, in fact," Haley replied, adopting that same quiet. "The name of the town was Malone."
"How did you find her?"
"She certainly didn't have a web page. All she had was a small sign in the front window of her house."
"How did you know she was the one who could, you know, help?"
For her reply, Haley gripped her rabbit's foot even tighter, finally looking at Elsa in the eyes. Another wave of warmth and admiration flooded through Elsa as she looked at Haley, Haley who was so incredibly brave, able to stand on haunted bridges at night and not freak at the sound of noncorporeal knocking.
Haley, perpetually alone. Did she ache for the touch of a warm body at night, as Elsa did?
"I've been in this business too long," Haley was saying. "Just woke up the one morning knowing I needed to get into the car and drive. This was before the Prestwood Bridge incident, so Trish let me borrow her car, though I obviously couldn't tell her what I was using it for. She probably thought I was going to go get another tattoo or piercing at the mall."
Elsa looked away, sipping her water. It tasted a bit stale and old. Ancient hurt and resentment was deep in Haley's voice.
"So I got in and just started driving, you know? Before I knew it I was over the state lines and into Florida. So sticky hot down there at the tail end of September, with greenery so lush it's almost invading your senses like a hostile takeover. You could practically feel the spores climbing into your lungs. It made me think of those urban legends, where you accidentally inhale a watermelon seed and it grows vines in your lungs."
Elsa could see it, could fashion a story around the gory image, to market and sell along with the rest of her hidden work.
"I found myself in Malone, made precise turns here and there, and then I saw her house, in some tract housing of the sixties, a lawn made of dandelions and quack grass. The minute I saw her sign I knew I had come to the right place. And when she opened her door, she was not surprised to see me."
The rabbits foot was still being manipulated in Haley's hands. It had been a gift from Gerda, the year after they had met, the same year that Haley came to the library in Bath. It used to be white, until it got in the way of a St. Patrick's day celebration.
"What was her name?" Elsa asked. Cub was snoring on her feet, and the sound was comforting. Elsa wished she could hear Anna snore at night, but it was midnight, and Anna was dead.
"Nadya. She was tiny, and young. No older than me, or so it seemed."
Appearances could be deceiving. Just look between Anna and Elsa, who was supposedly two years younger.
"As a formality, she did a tarot reading for me, using a standard ellipse spread. I was just as interested in her house as I was in her. She had a picture of Christ on the wall behind her, one of those fantastically ornate pictures you see in Orthodox churches with the gilded gold paint, you know?" Elsa nodded. "The frame was flanked by tea lights on each side," Haley continued. "She also had a curio cabinet, with dozens of shot glasses from destinations like Vegas and New Orleans as well as wooden kissing dolls. I think the picture that clinched it for me was a photo of a winter scene, with half a dozen people outside under some trees. Some of them were dressed in shaggy bear furs and the others were dressed in sheepskin. It helped that there was a label under the picture, saying 'Urş şi Capra'. I googled it later on, to be sure of who she was."
Elsa could see her as Haley painted her in words. "She was Romani, wasn't she?" Elsa asked softly, coming to her own conclusion.
"We have been in this business too long, haven't we?" Haley asked, a rhetorical question with no comfort.
Elsa sipped her water, and the last of the fire died out, leaving only lamplight.
"I didn't need to hear the reading to know she was authentic," Haley said. She hesitated, as if worried that Elsa would ask what her tarot reading revealed.
Some things needed to stay secret; Elsa knew that well, so she stayed quiet.
"I asked her to do a psi retrocognition reading for me. She wasn't surprised that I knew the lingo, but I think she didn't want to do it. She charged me a hundred dollars, as if to scare me away with the price tag, but I had come prepared. I put the money on the table and gave her the ring."
Elsa had known what was coming, which of Anna's possessions Haley had taken, but her sip of water still stuck in her throat. Of course it was the ring. Hands, heart, and crown.
Let love and friendship reign forever.
"The minute she took the ring, she flinched and put it back down on the table. I put down another hundred dollars, but I think it was the look on my face that convinced her that I really needed her to go on."
Haley wouldn't look at her anymore, nor at the hungry darkness outside. She stared at her hands, and the rabbit's foot. When she still didn't continue, even after Elsa gave her some space, a heavy stone seemed to drop right into Elsa's stomach, weighting her down as if about to drown her in seawater.
Time hesitated, shy and scared.
"What did she say, Haley?" Elsa finally asked, somehow pushing the words through her scarred and abraded throat. Her tongue was rank with guilt and fear.
"I taped it," Haley said, bringing out her tiny digital recorder, the same recorder she used to tape all her supernatural encounters, all her interviews, and all the bloody recitations of red nights.
Despite the warmth of the slumbering fire, and Cub on her toes, Elsa shivered. She didn't want to hear it.
Be brave.
She kept her eyes open and averted as Haley scrolled to the correct file and plugged in the wafer thin speakers. The voice of Nadya, the fortune teller, was earthy and low; Elsa would have been surprised at it, seeing how young Haley said she was. Sometimes seeing meant nothing.
That's one reason she always kept her eyes open.
Yet after only a dozen words, Elsa cupped her aching hand around the device, tears pounding at her eyes and chest. "Don't make me hear it, please Haley?" she asked. "Not from her. Could you just tell me?"
Haley swallowed as she turned off the recorder, and then showed her brave heart once again. She clasped Elsa's damaged hand with hers, drawing Elsa's gaze, and said, "We may have gotten everything wrong, Els."
Her heart skipped a beat, and then resumed in a frenzy. Nine years of dead nights, all for nought?
"What do you mean?" Elsa breathed.
"We've been operating under the assumption that, if we found our fortune teller, the one who cursed Anna to begin with, and that if we got her to sever Anna's tie to the unseen world, that Anna would automatically return to the world of the living."
At 9 pm every night, Anna would be compelled to answer the summons of the fortune teller, and find herself in the unseen world. She was chained there, caged and mere property. Dead all night, Anna would stay there and be assaulted by the newly sundered spirits, both red and blue. Hordes of information could be imparted at night by these souls; did the fortune teller use this information to fuel her psychic abilities?
Was Anna her familiar, a spirit bobbing in the ether, whispering of otherworldly secrets? Knowledge was a weapon of the unseen world.
Only water, applied at precisely 6 am in the morning, could bring Anna back to life. Water was the lubricant of the unseen world, transportation more sure than shadows and mirrors.
Why those hours and no other, they still did not know. The hours followed her when they shifted time zones for their trip to the Arctic; it was always 9 pm, and 6 am, no matter where they were.
They could not fathom the reasons for Anna's capture and imprisonment. They had paid the advertised price, and they paid it in life and water, yet the outcome had unforeseen consequences. Anna was dead at night, and Elsa was so very weary.
Haley's last words, spoken so softly, seemed to reverberate and take on evil intent. Elsa was a storyteller; she knew how to read between the lines.
We may have gotten everything wrong.
"You mean that Anna might die for good?" Elsa whispered, hating having to say the words, hating the fortune teller again with a fervour she usually reserved for God alone, a hate that was nearly nourishing in its purity. "Even if we sever the tie at day, when she's alive, and not at night?"
Haley sunk deeper into the couch cushions, hugging a pillow to her chest. "When you cut the string on a balloon, sometimes it comes home, but sometimes it just goes away," Haley said.
More silence gorging on their pain like the blackness outside the window panes.
Shifting in her chair, Haley said, "She apologized before I left, you know. For the actions of 'her sister'. She also gave me all my money back, saying that she wouldn't take it, for it had been tainted by the unseen world."
More white space between those words, making them perfectly clear. Elsa sat up straighter, her jackhammer heart bashing her chest. "Then she knows? She knows the mechanism, the curse?"
"I wondered the same thing, and asked her to tell me, for God's sake, to tell me! She gave me back the ring and was already pushing me out the door, tiny thing as she was. I dug in my heels like some tantrum-throwing child and grabbed the door, begging her to tell me. She said she would not be implicated, that she could not bear to contaminate her soul, but she did say one last very strange thing before I was shoved out the door."
"What was it?" Elsa asked, knowing Haley would say it in only a second, but she just couldn't wait that long.
Or maybe she wanted to prolong it, because ignorance really was bliss. Wasn't it better not to know anything at all, and let your fantasies provide all the life and truth you need?
It was midnight. Anna was naked and dead in their bed, just as she had been every night for nine years, more than 3200 nights in total. Her chest did not rise nor fall with breath. Her lips and her nails would be a pale and ghostly blue. Elsa had arrayed her hair on her pillow like a crimson flood, had tucked her so carefully into sheets she couldn't feel. Cold, but not stiff.
Dead to this world, but not to the other one.
"She took my hand, and she said, 'Had you ever considered that your Anna is a mount for God?' Then she closed the door and locked it."
Elsa had her eyes open, yet she could practically see the curtains of the door billowing in the motion of the door closing, could practically hear the oiled snick of the deadbolt as it would slide home. The dandelion puffs would disintegrate as Haley crunched over the lawn in her laced-up combat boots.
Mount for God.
A dark horse.
"That's a rather strange thing to say, isn't it?" Elsa said, feeling a little light-headed, disconnected. She could see her good fingers clasping the water glass, trembling slightly. Haley had since taken her other hand away to clutch her pillow, so Elsa folded her mangled left hand over her waist, tucking it under her right arm, as she often did.
"Yes, it was. I decided not to pound on her door; I didn't think it would do any good." There was a tight grimace on Haley's face; they both remembered what had happened nine years ago at Katja's house, the house of their fortune teller. Their enemy. "It sounds vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite get a handle on it, and then the last week of my visit was too busy for much else."
"Anna wouldn't like to be called something like that," Elsa mused.
Haley smiled, a raw and bitter smile, and said, "God died to her a long time ago, just like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy."
In the dim lamplight, for there was no other light now erupting from the fireplace, no other light to glisten on the glass of water or to cast reflections on the windows, Elsa saw the chain around Haley's neck that was always there, a fine silver chain upon which hung a tiny silver cross. "After all that you have seen, how do you still believe?" Elsa asked, wishing she could just sleep, for she was so very tired.
"After all I've seen, I find it impossible not to," Haley replied.
Then
Anna's first pay check was not significantly more substantial than the ones she had earned at the garage; especially the last part of the year as she spent more and more time as a mechanic than a clerk. Still, Anna celebrated the pay check with some well-deserved indulgences: premium ice cream (not the generic stuff half wax and half caragheenan), and her own copy of the A.E. Cannon book. It intrigued her, for it didn't have a happy ending.
That weekend, eating the ice cream so very slowly, letting the exquisite coolness of it invade her tongue and senses, she devoured the book again, lingering over passages that were unexpectedly poignant and moving. It was titled The Ledger, and delicately revealed throughout the book were nuggets of pure expression. At one point she sat back in her donated chair, closing her eyes and letting her imagination unfold the scene.
Warm and secure, ignoring the noise from the apartment upstairs, ignoring the whispered slur of the heating register, Anna began to drift into a state of half sleep and half wakefulness, where the characters of the book took on new identities, finally morphing into a dreamed version of herself and another.
White-gold hair like a shower of sunshine and snow, skin the creamy shade of vanilla ice cream and just as sweet, a pencil tucked behind the ear and the most hesitant smile that hinted of grand mystery and adventure.
Her eyes were the blue of seawater.
When she realized what she was thinking, Anna abruptly yanked herself from her daydream, her heart pounding and she felt that strange and near painful ache in her gut. She had almost forgotten how heady and stormy desire was. Had she ever really felt like this for Hans?
At odd quiet times throughout the entire weekend, Anna found herself thinking of Elsa. Those thoughts were always accompanied by an increase in the tempo of her heart, flushed cheeks and a slowly growing realization: she was attracted to her.
The thought was terrifying.
Resurrected in full force were the teachings of her childhood, of pulpit denunciations of sin and the dangers of passion and lust. She recalled in minute detail the lecture given in the kitchen before she left on her first date as a shy and excited sixteen year old girl. The boy's name had been Mark, and when he held her hand in the movie theatre she felt as light and bubbly as marshmallow fluff, that strange and terrifying ache in her chest.
Their first kiss had been a disaster. Anna broke up with him the next day, to the silent gratitude of her parents.
When nearly every kiss with nearly every boy ended up the same way, Anna had begun to think of herself as broken, damaged goods, wrecked forever by the horrifying experience she had had as a child, the experience she had never related to anyone, even Hans.
Yet she also thought of Sergeant Carter, her hair down from her ponytail, the adoration of the universe in her eyes, felicity in her smile.
Then erupted her father's sermons on homosexuality, a consequence of fire and brimstone for the unrepentant sinner. Supposedly there was only lofty and charitable love in the eyes of a God who looked upon the sinner as His child, yet that same God delighted in the judgment that would follow, the exodus of the soul from heaven into hell for daring to love that which should not be loved.
The bible said that God remarks the fall of every sparrow.
But the sparrow still falls.
Anna was glad she had found that God was dead, and heaven a sham. That was the day of the gunman, the cranberry drops, and the dead dog. If God was anything at all He was only a prankster, playing Russian roulette with souls.
She was terrified of the idea blossoming within her, yet she began to allow those thoughts, and started to cultivate those daydreams, until she and this dream-Elsa held conversations; they shared light touches and friendly banter. She could not dream of more than this. Not yet.
The tide of her heart was slowly shifting. She read the opening line of the beloved book again and again, repeating it to herself in the thin tides of night, already astounded at the miraculous beauty of her transformed life.
The brave may not live forever, but the timid do not live at all.
She ached for a kiss.
Several days passed in this quiet revolution. When Tuesday came, Anna found she couldn't lift her head when Elsa entered through the library doors. It was a studied and careful ignorance on both parts as Elsa retreated to her habitual carrel and Anna hovered with the returned books. Haley, laconic and far too observant, sporting an electric blue streak in her hair now instead of a purple one, said, "Geez, you guys have a fight or something?"
There was instant mortification shown on Anna's flushed cheeks, and she wished she could just control herself like a normal twenty eight year old girl, and not blush every single time someone said something suggestive.
She always read those sexy portions of A.E. Cannon's book furtively, as if she would be judged by her greasy walls for reading about intimate encounters. As if her father would somehow know what she was reading, romantic trash more suited for library auction bins and displays in gas stations than shelved in pride on her bookshelf.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Anna replied, just loftily enough for Haley to roll her eyes.
Anna found reasons to look in Elsa's direction many times throughout that day. When the end of the day rolled around and the girl was packing up her notebook and pencil, Anna was half hopeful and half terrified for a conversation before Elsa left.
Courage eluded her. She looked down at the counter when Elsa looked at her, missing the answering flush and confusion in Elsa's cheeks.
Haley saw everything and said nothing.
On her solitary walk home after work that day, Anna paused to look at her reflection in the mirrored glass of a storefront window. She tucked her hair behind her ears and tilted her head, her light scarf soft against her throat. Her makeup had survived the ravages of the working day; looking at her reflection in the mirror, delighted and surprised, Anna discovered something rather astonishing: she was actually pretty.
That night as she cooked up a Hungarian goulash with noodle kuchen, the cheese between the eggy noodles all soft and foreign and bewitching, Anna discovered something else: she was actually interesting. How many librarian car mechanic chefs were there?
Reading the book by lamplight, entranced by the love between the characters, their sacrifices and hopes, the great ledger of joys and pains, Anna paused to look at her hands, not so oil-spotted now nor grubby, and discovered the last great truth: she was as deserving of love and happiness as anyone else. It seemed that she had taken the first steps to regaining her happiness, which left just one more question.
Just what would that love look like?
Anna carried home three bags of groceries the following day after work, cooking in the evening with her heart in her throat, always doubting, never stopping. As she prepared her evening repast, she forced herself to recall Elsa's peanut butter sandwiches, battered bananas, and bottles of water. Boring. Empty. Meaningless.
Wanting.
Elsa's food looked exactly like Anna's former life.
Anna would show her something different by preparing a lunch for her. That this life, like food, was irresistibly delicious, sometimes comforting, sometimes exotic, sometimes a surprise, and every moment, just like every mouthful, was a celebration.
What was the worst that could happen, should she go through with her plan?
Elsa could take Anna's offering of lunch and throw it on the floor, grinding it into the carpet and stalking away in a huff. Which was unlikely, given the girl's lack of histrionics and general love of peace and quiet.
She could take it politely, taste it and frown, and when Anna wasn't looking she could wrap the food in a plastic bag to store in her backpack and throw away without Anna noticing. She could then avoid Anna at every opportunity and stop coming to the library.
Or she could taste it, and like it, and thank Anna for thinking of her.
And then, Anna, and then?
What was the worst that could happen?
Elsa could enjoy the meal, and praise Anna's cooking, and then reveal that she had a huge and knuckle-cracking boyfriend. She could invite Anna to join them on a double date, which Anna would politely decline, and then neither of them would expect Anna to cook for her again.
She could speak of Anna to this muscle-bound boyfriend in the sticky heat of night, and chuckle over how mousy and misguided Anna was, how deserving of pity, the poor divorced dear, so desperate for a friend. He would chuckle in return, and crush her as he moved inside her, sating her hunger in a way that Anna never could.
But then, as she pulled sizzling hot lamb skewers from under the broiler, squeezing fresh lemon that danced and jumped on the metal, Anna allowed herself to think just a little further.
Think it, Anna. What was the best that could happen?
Elsa could enjoy the meal, smile that shy smile as she asked how Anna learned how to cook. As each week passed, Tuesdays and Thursdays would become sacred, blessed with light conversation, friendly banter, sidelong glances.
Then devastating touches, on the hand or wrist, skin soft as clouds.
Hands that could would clasp so hesitantly at first, the sensation of long, womanly fingers so foreign, so addictive. Walking hand in hand near the Kennebec River, knowing but not caring about the people staring at them, aware of the rush of blood, the great and all consuming ache growing, widening the midsection, delirious in its painful joy.
And then? What then, Anna?
Her first kiss. Warm lips, so soft, so full, so knowing. Always giving, always taking, always wanting more. The great chasm filled, the great hunger appeased, the great and all encompassing need of her entire life consumed in this one single moment.
The kiss she left Hans for.
The kiss that would save her.
Anna ate her dinner slowly at her tiny table that night, a void of sound in her apartment. She did not eat to the television screen, nor to music, nor to any book. She ate to the whirling maelstrom of her thoughts, daydreams flickering, calling to her like mythological Sirens. She imagined Elsa sitting at the table with her, Elsa understanding that food wasn't simply carbs or calories or fuel. Food, good food, just like music or books, was just another vehicle of pure expression.
She finished her meal and looked at the large amount of food leftover, hesitating. The resulting decision was such a soft one, so meaningless in the current shadow of time, but it would end up being another two percent shift, diverting not only her own future, but Elsa's as well, to the taste of seawater, the hatred of calliopes, the debt that could never be repaid.
Anna evaluated those worst case scenarios in her head, the frightening idea of taking lunch to Elsa, and then made that soft decision.
Whatever the consequence would be, it would still be worth the attempt.
The brave may not live forever, but the timid do not live at all.
There, in her kitchen, to the smell of lamb and the creamy taste of labneh, Anna found her courage.
And later, when the curtain of night had fallen, ushering out the cares of the day, Anna lay in her narrow bed, her eyes screwed shut, her skin throbbing. Slow, luscious breaths as she concocted a fantasy more astounding than any of the others, for she was no blushing primitive stalker now. No, Anna was pretty, and interesting, and soft, her laughter as sultry and rich as marzipan, and there was an endless bonfire of desire in her eyes.
She imagined Elsa in her arms, and the embrace was no mere meaningless contact; it was a torment that increased with every passing moment. The imagined sensation of Elsa's breasts against hers, the exquisite softness of Elsa's skin. That slight gasping inhale of breath as Anna drew her fingers over her lips, down her chin, tracing the smooth line of neck, following the trek of those fingers with her lips.
Skin like ice cream, just so sweet.
Elsa would crane her head back then, and arch upwards in Anna's arms. Her skin would glow in the moonlight, as if kissed by a million motes of stardust. In Anna's kiss, Elsa would discover the secrets of the moon and stars, their eruption into being after Apollo pulled the chariot of the sun to the other side of the world, where there would be spice, and there would be ivory, and there would be the sensuous scent of night-flowering orchids in the sticky heat of the tropics, where it wasn't only wet, it was slick, it was hot, it was a hard nub of pleasure above silken folds, and when her mouth would encircle Elsa's breast, and when her tongue would journey down along the sweet path that led deeper, hotter, wetter, her fingers seeking and then finding that slick hot silken fold, thrusting inside to the maddened syncopation of heartbeats, every moment lifting higher, thrusting deeper, whispering and then screaming of the promises to come.
And come.
Anna only realized what she had done when she shuddered into the throes of a long-needed release, the imagined imprint of Elsa on her skin, her own fingers slick and warm.
Only one thought cascaded before sleep overwhelmed her.
She never knew it could feel so good.