~14~

Now

Alliance, Nebraska smelled like cows and dust. The locals called it the smell of money, but even they closed their windows when the wind came from the south east corner of town, over the feedlot. It was October, so the smell of manure was softened somewhat with the smell of dust and fallen leaves. Unlike Maine, autumn had hit Nebraska with a vengeance, and many of the trees had already slipped out of their summer garb.

Haley had arrived late last night, and was glad she had thoroughly researched the town on the Internet before she arrived. She did her necessary shopping in Scottsbluff, where a nearly disreputable plane had landed her at the Western Nebraska Regional Airport, and she had picked up the cheapest car rental she could find. Her first stop had been a grocery store for hair dye and road food.

It had been a boring drive from Scottsbluff to Alliance, and the only radio she had found was country or news talk, neither of which set her heart a-flutter. Thank goodness for her iPod.

She was loathe to put on her disguise before she had to, so she packed away the new dye and the nice clothing she had borrowed from Renee and Anna, choosing to wear her favourite scruffy jeans and a t-shirt. She would get the feel of the town before she changed her hair colour and her looks.

Her first stop in any new town was the cemetery. In her endless googling, Haley had discovered that the Alliance cemetery was just out of town, to the north. Along this same road was Carhenge; a replica of Stonehenge built out of cars. When Haley had discovered it online, she decided that there was a small chance the town wasn't as dull as she thought it could be. She may be able to keep her bubble gum coloured hair after all.

There was no one else at the small cemetery, this blustery autumn day. She parked her car near the front and shrugged into a her favourite leather jacket. Slinging on a backpack, she began to stroll down the manicured lanes that led between the headstones, with the newest markers flush to the ground. Haley wasn't sure she liked the new way of marking graves; there was something more tangible about a marker that erupted from the ground, as if being vertical meant the deceased could still somehow keep an eye on the world. With those markers flush to the ground, all that they could see would be sky.

It did not take long to find the newly riven earth, and the mass of footprints on the grass that testified of a recent service. She had to get close to see the marker on the ground; she sidestepped the new earth as if a zombie would burst from the grave, but she told herself it was for the sake of reverence. When she saw the flat marker, everything made infinite sense, and she blessed whatever intuition Anna had in such abundance.

Brin Emily Hall, it said. Born July 4, 1993. Died October 6, 2010. Beloved daughter and friend.

But not a sister. She had no siblings.

And right next to her grave? Haley's throat clumped up when she saw it. Kathryn Rose Hall. Born April 2, 1969. Died December 21, 2006. Beloved wife and mother.

Certainly Kathryn and her husband had never intended for Brin to be in one of these spaces, whatever day they had come to purchase the resting place of their bones. Did they finance their plots, or roll pennies for years to pay the price of dying? Surely they had laughed at each other, especially when drawing up their wills, never thinking, never believing that the unseen world could swallow them so quickly and angrily, their deaths not peaceful of time and liquid muscles but blow-outs of blood and pain.

Kathryn had died four days before Christmas. In the red night recording, Anna had said something about black ice and a car accident, and that the girl's father was already a widower. Now all they had to do was find a connection to the fortune teller, and maybe, finally, they could get some answers.

Haley tried not to get her hopes up. They had been down this path so many times before, and the fortune teller always stayed just out of reach. Haley had never known it was possible for people to disappear so quickly and so thoroughly. She had heard stories of people living off the grid, unknown to society; not just transient workers but those who chose to live as Neanderthals in the woods, on squirrel meat and tree bark.

The new worry was always in the back of her mind. So what if they found the fortune teller? So what if they found the artefact, the mirror? So what if they managed to break the curse, if Anna stayed dead and not alive?

What would Elsa do?

What would Haley do?

Answers, first. Questions later.

From her backpack Haley withdrew a digital camera, about to start taking pictures of the graves, but then she heard the crunch of tires over the gravel. She quickly took the pictures, and heard a car door slam. She put the camera back as quickly as she could, very aware that someone could be disturbed by a random, pink-haired stranger taking pictures of a brand new grave.

As footsteps crunched closer, Haley kept her back to the approaching person, already shifting her posture, loosening her shoulders, making herself appear insignificant. Only as it became apparent that the person was coming to this same spot did Haley turn slowly, easily, exuding this sense that she belonged, that she wasn't a crack job who haunted cemeteries; she was distant family perhaps, or a long lost friend, bonding with Brin again over her grave.

One part truth, two parts lie.

The girl who was coming up the narrow concourses of yellowing grass was the same age as Brin had been, with that same loosely held beauty in her clear face and dark hair. She was dressed quite fashionably, yet there was no stab of revulsion or disgust when she looked at Haley; a response the pink-haired girl often got. But there was something else about her that Haley instantly recognized, in her stance, in her face, for she had seen it reflected so very often in her own mirror.

After the fair. The seawater.

The way this girl was walking up here, a half-ashamed shamble, screamed of guilt and trepidation. Haley had years of experience in this sort of situation, and she instantly perceived that whatever the girl had told her parents and even the police was not the entirety of what had happened. The girl had stumbled on the same recipe for lies, and had been able to speak them to the police and the father and whoever else had badgered her on the events of the evening in question.

Self-loathing crept into the girl's face, a hint of some despair that could never be eased.

Did she lay awake at night and wonder what would have happened had it have been her instead? That ripping obsidian knife, to the kidneys and out, that grotesque waterfall of blood; did she see it happening to her? Or did she weep in deep shame for being glad that she still lived even though Brin was dead?

Survivor guilt.

Anna knew only the story of the dead girl, who had pulled at her in the spaces of a dead and red night. What story would this girl tell?

"Who are you?" the girl asked, hovering some dozen feet away. She shifted from foot to foot, uneasy and belligerent, no doubt hoping that Haley would run away from the fierce tone in her voice, and leave her in some semblance of peace so she could say her apologies to Brin in private.

"My name is Haley," Haley replied. "And you are?"

"None of your damn business is what I am," the girl growled.

Haley could have smiled had the situation not been so unfunny; she understood her more than the girl would ever imagine.

Careful now. This girl knew something.

"I am sorry for your loss," Haley said quietly, carefully. "I understand that she was a pretty amazing girl." Haley deliberately looked back at the fresh new marker, and continued, saying, "All she wanted was to ride horses and climb Mount Kilimanjaro."

From the corner of her eye she saw that the girl's eyes had grown wide for a moment before she shut them back down again. "Who are you?" she asked again. "How do you know Brin?"

"I am a stranger," is what Haley replied, taking the risk of not answering how she knew Brin. There was truth, and then there was Anna's truth, which most people would deem as fiction. Hauntings, ghosts, the unseen world; this girl was alive and unaware and needed to remain that way. "I am not from here. I have no interest in your town or your rules. My only interest is in catching Brin's killer."

Two parts truth, one part lie.

"Are you a cop or something?"

Haley allowed a small, self-deprecating smile as she waved her hand over her clothing and her hair. "If I were a cop, even a cop in disguise, would you be able to see the roots of my hair? Or see the worn out patches of my jacket? Look at me. I'm a mess. Most people would run away from me."

"What do you already know?" the girl asked, testing her. She had put her hands deep in her pockets, and was hunching her shoulders into her jacket. Every move she made screamed of her unhappiness, and Haley's heart ached for her as much as the dead girl in the ground and the doubly bereaved and still nameless husband and father.

And then there was Anna, and Elsa, and Casey.

Could the world ever redeem itself?

Or would it simply drown itself in briny tears of seawater?

Haley looked away from the girl, for that's what the girl needed, and she addressed the empty and dusty and manure tinted air. "I know that it was late, and that she was alone. The place was not terribly familiar to her; she was surrounded by strange shapes. I know that the man who killed her used an obsidian knife, and that he shielded himself from view by wearing a hooded jacket."

"You could have read any of that in the newspapers," the as yet nameless girl accused.

Haley felt the slightest of flutterings in her gut, her own intuition, telling her just what to say, just what to do. She unconsciously put her hand in her jacket pocket to touch her lucky rabbit's foot.

"I know you feel guilty," Haley said, looking at the space near the girl's head. "You're here today because you think you owe her an apology. What could you have possibly done that brings you here today, when you should be in school? I know guilt, kid. I've drowned myself in it. You certainly don't deserve to end up like me, alone and chasing shadows."

There was a pause, and a barely concealed war on the girl's face.

Haley waited.

"What if you don't believe me?" the girl asked, and her voice was very small.

Haley instantly thought of that ancient warrior ghost on the mounds near Andalusia, the night she tasted of the unseen world for the first time. She thought of Anna, wet and drowned; dead for the first time of many many times, and Haley had seen every minute of it.

A sentinel.

A survivor.

Guilt could kill. She was sure of it.

"I don't know your name yet, kid," Haley said, "but I've seen things that would make your eyes fall out of your head. My best friend died once, too. Whatever you have to say, I'll believe you. And honestly?"

The girl was nodding her head, and her eyes were still tight. She held herself so carefully, so still, and Haley thought of Elsa, the day she came back to them. Haley had been on the stairs that day, her heart about to burst with emotion that had nowhere else to go but knock against the confines of her chest like a condemned prisoner awaiting death rattles the bars of his cage.

"I'm a stranger," Haley repeated, her voice soft and bitter. "I watch, and I listen, and I say nothing. I have no opinion of you to lose. You can tell me anything you want."

Thus reassured, the girl spoke.

Then

For Anna, her world had been distilled to the searing presence of only one thing: Elsa. She could barely tear her eyes from her, and her voice had trembled when she asked Haley to lock up the library for her. Haley had nodded eagerly, her eyes also shining with tears. She also hugged Elsa, fierce and quick, angrily wiping away the few tears that dashed on her cheeks.

Elsa still hadn't said much of anything. Their reunion had been warm, but now questions raged inside her; it took all her self control to keep from bombarding Elsa with them.

The April sun was affectionate. They paused for a moment by Elsa's car, and Anna was terrified that Elsa was going to leave as precipitously as she had come. Then Anna would have all evening, all her life, to debate whether or not this had actually happened, or if her daydreams had simply become more lucid than ever before.

Elsa merely checked to make sure the car was locked; she then hovered in hesitation. "Would you like to come home with me?" Anna asked. "I'll make you some dinner."

Elsa nodded and smiled a game little smile, and there was a coruscating line of intense spring light on the edge of her pale blonde hair, igniting it as if a halo. The walk home was in near silence; close enough to brush up against each other, but they did not hold hands. From time to time Anna would glance at Elsa, still that incandescent light upon her hair, the April sun bathing her in beauty, the lattice of red at her throat a travesty the girl tried to hide with a light scarf.

She also kept her left hand in her jacket pocket.

As they neared her apartment, Anna was infinitely glad that she had kept it tidy and that she had gone grocery shopping only the day before; her fridge was loaded with ideas. Elsa followed her inside to her "loft", her ramshackle bachelor's suite that smelled delightfully of flowers and fruit. Her tiny bed was off in one corner of the open space, and the kitchen table was no more than a fold-out card table with folding chairs, but it was still home.

Elsa looked around in apparent appraisal; Anna hung up their jackets and said, her voice thick, "It's not much, but it's home."

"I like it," Elsa replied. The softness of her voice was capable of ripping Anna to shreds; Elsa had never had the voice of an innocent, but now there were even deeper tidal waves of hurt and sadness under those soft layers.

What had happened to her?

Inviting Elsa to sit at the kitchen table, Anna began rummaging through her fridge, mentally evaluating dozens of recipes for their merits of quickness and ease, always always aware of the blonde woman sitting at her table, no halo now, but no less beautiful than before. To her delight, she found ripe tomatoes, pitas, frozen chicken, limes, onions, and avocados.

It didn't take long for her to create sizzling chicken shish-kabobs, drizzled with vinaigrette and feta cheese, wrapped in grilled pitas with caramelized onions and fresh guacamole.

She squeezed a tiny dash of lime on each of the creations before bringing them to the table; Elsa was sniffing appreciatively. They sat across from each other and began to eat. Elsa ate carefully and slowly, just as Anna remembered, her left hand slower than her right, and Anna was astounded at the difference between this woman and her ex-husband. He had wolfed down his food, barely tasting its beauty. Elsa savoured it, each and every bite.

When the plates were clear, Anna could bear it no longer, and she asked, "Are you all right, Elsa?"

Elsa put down her fork and looked at Anna. A wall fluttered there behind her eyes, and Anna's heart melted even further. "I had an accident," Elsa said.

Placing her hands on the table, Anna stayed quiet, her heart burning and burning under the inferno of words that began to come from Elsa's mouth, words of ice and frostbite and despair, so close, so damn close to the closing of the curtain of her life forever.

Exit stage left. No applause. Just silent and alone, trapped in the maw of white night and oh so cold.

Elsa had her hands on the table as well, and the mutilated one, the one missing two fingers, twitched lightly in either pain or memory. "I was riding Snowbelle on New Year's Eve," Elsa began. "I had taken her out for a ride in the fields, for my brothers had gone to Richmond for the day and I wanted to be outside. It was so beautiful that morning, so crisp and clear and sunny."

A velvet pause.

"I was thinking about my father, about the farm, about my future. I was thinking about you."

She still wouldn't look at Anna, her voice barely above that of a whisper. Anna was glad she was sitting down, for her legs were weak, and her heart was a butterfly. The story tumbled uneasily from Elsa's lips, with many a pause and a swallow, Elsa often looking at the wall just beyond Anna's head instead of at Anna herself.

A crow, a submerged log, and barbed wire that violated her, stringing her up, poor Snowbelle's neck and front legs broken, her pristine white body splashed with virulent muck. Frost creeping up Elsa's legs as the hours passed, as pain advanced like an army throughout her entire body, her fingers ripped from her by the leathery reins; they hung from her hand by stretched ligaments alone, popped completely from their sockets. There was the smell of rotting mud.

Hesitation in her voice spoke of other motivations, other thoughts she didn't share with Anna, yet Anna didn't care, not now. Not when they had been rejoined.

Her heart burned. Tears assailed her eyes.

And God sent her Kristoff, who was supposed to be out on the town with her other brother, Paddy. Kristoff, who came home early because he felt discontented and strange, ridiculed by his younger brother for giving into such feelings. By then her mother had been frantic with worry and the late hour; Kristoff had been sent to find his sister.

The desperate ride back to the farm, hanging like an ornament from Kristoff's arms. The furious drive to the Richmond hospital, then the ambulance to Augusta, warmth coming back to her limbs, the pain raising her from the faint that had enveloped her, hypodermic needles of pure agony in her frost-bitten limbs. Fingers blackened, hanging by gristle. Blessed anaesthesia, and surgery, and waking up to amputated fingers, her throat mummy-wrapped in gauze. A brown-skinned nurse named Renee with the love of the world in her eyes, a Fijian princess in Maine.

There Elsa paused, sipping her glass of water, and somehow Anna was able to force words through her constricted throat. 'Why didn't you call?" she asked, her throat tearing on the words. "Why didn't you let me know? I would have come to you, Elsa, in a heartbeat I would have come to you."

Elsa could only look at her for a moment, and there was still such agony, such pain. Then Elsa looked away, as if meticulously examining the walls that no longer smelled of grease or second-hand smoke, the heat register blessedly silent. "I was shattered in every way possible," Elsa finally said. "I developed pneumonia. My body was so compromised that I also developed sepsis as well, and I stayed in the intensive care unit of Augusta for weeks, at the mercy of fluids and machines and nurses."

Anna could not stop the tears now. They fled from her eyes and carved tracks down her cheeks. She angrily wiped them away, and could not help but remember what she had been doing the day that Elsa lay dying in her prison of barbed wire.

She had been laughing with Haley, and flicking popcorn, and drinking wine. As night fell, they celebrated the New Year of every time zone with cheers to upset the neighbours. She had been happy.

Damn her for being happy!

"I am so sorry, Elsa," Anna breathed, aching for her in every crevice of her body. "I am so sorry that something so terrible happened to you. I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you when you needed it most."

Elsa hesitated again, and Anna could practically see the words hovering behind her eyes, the words she still didn't dare say.

Through the silence they could hear the distant noise coming from other apartments, masked somewhat by the CD of Norah Jones that Anna had playing in the background. Though the sun was setting over the mainland, there was only sunrise in Elsa's hair, love inscribed like symphonies in the scars on her throat.

Anna would never forget it.

Elsa's words, validating Anna's life and sacrifices. Elsa's pain, felt anew in Anna's flesh. And words, blessed and substantive words, locking firmly in the bedrock of Anna's mind, more beauty to savour in the spaces of twilight, melding forever with the truth she had already discovered.

The future unfolding, unknown and scintillating. Anna's heart lifted, set upon a track that would end in water. Elsa spoke these words, and Anna would die on them.

But not yet.

The dishes were cleared. No words other than those sung by the sultry jazz singer, crooning on a tide of emotion, the type of emotion that resides deep in the gut. Elsa sat at the table and watched Anna make hot chocolate from scratch, using liberal amounts of cocoa and cream. Anna's fingers trembled under the gaze, but stayed strong. Expectation hovered, unfulfilled.

Elsa rose to accept the hot beverage, coming to the counter and holding it carefully in both hands. Blowing softly, they sipped, the rich taste of cocoa and cream coating their throats.

Elsa looked at her over the rim of her mug, slight wisps of steam arising, an incomprehensible look on her face. An almost audible click then, in Elsa's mind, echoed in her eyes, some decision made. Elsa put her mug on the counter. Anna looked at her in surprise as Elsa stepped closer; she took Anna's mug and placed it next to hers. Happy steams arose from the mugs, melting into each other.

Anna realized with some bewildered delight that Elsa was staring at her lips. She watched, dumbfounded and glowing, as Elsa lifted her beloved and mutilated hand to touch Anna's face. She drew her two cocoa-warmed fingers down the silky smoothness of Anna's cheek, and Anna's eyes went wide, her breath high and delirious. "I missed you more than I thought possible," Elsa whispered. She was so close to her that Anna could hear the warm puff of these words, inoculated with cocoa and cream.

Anna opened her mouth slightly as Elsa's thumb brushed by her lips. Elsa was slightly taller than she; Anna looked up into her eyes. Half-lidded and soft, Elsa returned her gaze with no sign now of hesitation or unease. Anna found herself slipping into the tangible heat of Elsa's space, her hands lifting to touch Elsa's shoulders, timid, unsure, rejoicing. Exquisite joy inflated her chest like a balloon.

With her mouth open, she meant to say that she missed Elsa as well, more than Elsa would ever know. The words climbed into her mouth and stopped there, blockaded by the delicate majesty of Elsa's lips pressing against hers for the first time.

Oh. My.

That first moment of shocked unreality did not last long. When the second moment arrived, Anna was carried along with it, down a speedway of passion and intense desire, clutching at Elsa's shoulders, pressing and moving her lips. A tilt, a breath, and growing exploration as her heart kept expanding. The beauty of Elsa's breasts against hers. The freshness and fullness of Elsa's lips, so different from Hans's. Her first kiss, the kiss she had risked her whole life for, and it deepened with every moment.

One of Elsa's hands was on her neck, holding her so carefully. Her other hand, the muted and shy one, remained locked on Anna's waist. And Anna, wanting to gift Elsa with every ounce of desire she possessed, Anna pulled back just slightly, just enough to recapture Elsa's mouth from another angle. Oh those lips, those tilting and rearing lips, so beautiful, so delicious; Anna decided she could make it her life's work to memorize them and the landscape of Elsa's mouth. She ran her tongue along the soft swell of Elsa's lower lip, gently kissed it, her own lips delighting in this most wondrous exploration.

Elsa's fingers were irresistibly shifting her neck, Elsa in charge again, their noses rubbing together as they broke apart only to come together again, quick and downy breaths between kisses, hard kisses, soft kisses, hot and dry kisses of surpassing tenderness and beauty and Anna could have wept for the joy of it. To have waited so long, and sacrificed everything her old life had possessed; the day of the gunman and the dead dog now made infinite sense. It had led her to this moment, the moment she'd waited a lifetime for.

The moment she would sacrifice her future for.

...

See you Saturday/Sunday for the next chapter! Things are getting interesting, yes?