~21~

Now

Elsa's fingers fumbled at the door in her desperation to get inside the house; she broke her nail and chipped off a flake of paint.

She heard barely subdued sobbing the moment she got into the door. Surely it was midnight, and her heart was winter, and Elsa skidded into the kitchen feeling as if she had no way to grasp reality. Surely this was not happening, not a tragedy such as this.

It was sobbing in stereo, for her brother was on the kitchen floor on his hands and knees, scrubbing and scrubbing at a huge expanse of tacky blood, and tears poured down his face, striking his trembling hands. All Elsa could see was that great expanse of blood, and there was a distant roaring in her ears, some avalanche in those winter mountains after midnight, a cold flood of snow and ice to bury her in darkness forever. Sparks burst at the edge of her sight and she grabbed a nearby chair just in time to keep from falling over.

"Is she...?" Elsa gasped, and when she closed her eyes she could still see the scene in the back of her eyelids, a horrifying retinal reflection, so she opened them to see that great expanse, looking at it and wondering how much, oh how much blood had Anna lost and God oh God was Anna still alive?

"She's alive," Kristoff managed to say, his voice wobbling. "Renee stitched her up and I put her in your bed."

The sobbing continued from down the hallway, an unfamiliar refrain, and Elsa was confused. "Then what...?"

"Cub was killed."

This time Elsa had to sit down. Merely holding the chair was not enough. "Someone killed Cub?" she asked. "The same person who hurt Anna?"

Kristoff nodded, his jaw taut. He wiped at his cheeks with one of his fists, and a disconcerting line of suds and thin blood was transferred to his skin, catching on the stubble of his chin.

The world was far away now, for Elsa was packing it away, wrapping it in boxes that she would mail to herself, and she would only look at them again when they arrived. And not a moment sooner.

Her clay feet, they still managed to stay on the floor, and she was then standing up, her heart torn in two directions at once, for the blood of her beloved on this floor, and the memory of the dog who liked to doze on her feet.

It was as she was walking past her brother, wet and weeping on the floor, that he lifted a hand to touch her. She was but a zombie now, all her problems mailed away, and his eyes were wet just like hers never were. She wouldn't cry, not here, not now. "Elsa, Renee and I, we're having a baby."

Elsa paused to process the words through the gauze padding over her brain. When she realized what he had just said, a tidal wave of emotion started to crash through her, but she forced it down; not even the gravity of the moon could break her now, no tides, no earthquakes, nothing, for she was a mountain, and she had lived through all of this and worse.

So she turned to Kristoff, and put her sundered hand on his shoulder, and said with all sincerity, "I'm so happy for you, Kristoff. That's wonderful news. Congratulations."

"You are allowed to cry, you know," Kristoff said. "It's in the job description, really. Aunts cry."

"I'm not an aunt yet," Elsa said, and she knew her voice was empty, for she was only a hollow mountain.

And she walked on. Nebulous. Unafraid.

Had she ever been less a human?

Her eyes floated over the form of her lover in her bed, but her feet kept walking, down to the common room, drawn by the sobbing that rose and fell in uneven cadences, impossible to analyze and predict. Hitching breaths punctuated sharp sobs with no ear for harmony; the discord of it grated on her ears.

Renee was on the floor of the common room, and the dead dog was in her arms. It had once been Cub, tall and thin with hair like spring snow, alert eyes and thin Borzoi ears, a tail that often wagged in greeting. Now it was just a poor dead thing, inert on Renee's lap, just an ornament really, just like Anna after midnight.

What could Elsa say without falling apart?

"I'm so sorry, Renee," Elsa whispered. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"The matured taro comes easily out of the ground, or so my mom would s-say," Renee said, her voice quivering. "Cub h-had a full life, but I will still miss her."

"Thank you for saving Anna," Elsa said. She was proud of how her voice stayed even.

"I'm glad we were home in time to h-help," Renee stuttered over her tears.

"I'm very happy for you and Kristoff, and the baby."

Renee was looking at her strangely now, over the carcass of her dead dog. "That wasn't exactly good timing," Renee said, gasping a little over the sobs that still shook inside her chest. "Kristoff is usually better at stuff like that."

"Nothing like a little blood and tears to lubricate the vocal cords," Elsa said. One of her characters had said the exact same thing, once, when the despair was just too deep for other words. And who was Elsa really, but a rivened soul who spoke nothing except lies?

Just a storyteller. A liar.

"Elsa, sit down. You're in shock."

Elsa shook her head, and turned to return to her lover, dead now in the afternoon. That wasn't in the agreement. Nothing like this was in the agreement. Wasn't it supposed to be a happily ever after?

Just hours ago Casey had asked why her book didn't have a happy ending. Casey, who was dying of cancer, and whose parents had just split up.

Anna, stabbed nearly to death and left as a mannequin on the floor.

Cub, her eyes glassy and her mouth already beginning to pull back, into that gleaming sarcastic rictus of a smile that Anna sometimes spoke of, those moments she vilified heaven.

Renee, blooming with new life even as her clothing bloomed with spilled blood.

Kristoff, crying in the kitchen.

Wooden sticks for her limbs, Elsa walked to her bedroom and closed the door behind her. Anna had been covered up with a sheet, so Elsa drew it back to take a look at what had been done. Her freckled skin was covered, here and there, with gauze and tape. She tentatively drew back the corner of one to see bristly stitches emerging from the skin.

Anna's lips were still colourless, and her hands were cold, as cold as if it were midnight.

Elsa crept into bed beside her, and the sobbing down the hallway eventually diminished, as did the light in the room. She put her three-fingered hand on Anna's bare abdomen, and watched the shadows on her cheeks, the long dark eyelashes against the white of her skin, and finally she closed her eyes, unable to bear the sight of her lover in this room splashed in red and blue writing. The mocking sun finally slipped beneath the edge of the world, and there was a knock on her door, and her brother wanted her to come out and eat.

She could not move. She was a hollow mountain.

She did not cry. She had learned not to.

Elsa was nearly angry when she was forced to her feet near midnight. She stumbled into the bathroom to use the toilet and then splashed cold water on her face, rubbing it hard with a towel. Only blankness of space to look at, that void of space above the sink where there was no mirror.

Hunger then, and more anger, that her body could just keep on going, as if it didn't really need her mind or her heart to function. She tentatively stepped into the kitchen, but the vast stain was gone now, and the kitchen was tidy, and there was only the hissing of the bread machine and the slow ticking of the clock for sound. When she flicked on the light she could see her own vast and watery reflection in the window glass.

What a poor and forlorn woman stood there in the glass, looking back at her. What a puny mite of a thing, frail and meaningless. Greying hair, sagging skin and breasts, surely a hag or some witch who couldn't even entice the characters anymore, couldn't bring them in her gingerbread house and make stories of them.

Elsa ate a bowl of cold cereal, ignoring her reflection in the mirror. When she leaned against the counter to wash her bowl, she felt a crackle of paper and finally remembered the letter that Casey had given her, those light years ago.

Her fingers felt numb as she drew it out of her pocket. She ripped the envelope along the side and then drew out three pages of densely packed handwritten paper. She read it entirely once, and then twice, and then she picked up the phone and called Haley.

It was near eleven o'clock in the Midwest, but Haley's voice was not tired or groggy. It was an exhausted voice, a spent voice, and Haley explained that Kristoff had phoned earlier in the evening to share all the news he had to share, the good and the bad.

Haley had wanted to come home, but there were no flights until the next day, so Kristoff persuaded her to wait.

Elsa felt the first emotion she had in a while: gladness that Haley had not left. She read Haley the contents of Casey's letter; Haley had her read it again once she had turned her recorder on.

"That changes things," the girl said softly.

Elsa nodded dumbly, forgetting that Haley couldn't see her through the phone. "Can you do it, Haley?" she asked.

"If I have to. I'll hate lying to Rick, though."

"We do what we have to sometimes," Elsa said, and heard Haley's wilted chuckle at the oft-said family proverb.

"Nuff about me. What about you? What will Anna think?" Haley asked.

Elsa thought about the body in her bed, dead now that it was past midnight. When dawn came, would Anna come back to her?

If the curse were broken, would Anna come back to her?

Or like everything else, would she just stay dead?

Haley interpreted her silence too well. "You are going to tell her, aren't you? You can't just leave her without telling her."

"Are there even words for that sort of thing?" Elsa wondered aloud.

"Don't even think of not telling her. You and your secrets. You have to tell her. You owe her that much. Don't you dare leave her without saying goodbye. You'll kill her."

Soft, despairing, Elsa hung up the phone. When it rang again, moments later, Elsa ignored it. She walked back to her bedroom, her eyes burning with the sights of this most horrifying day.

Anna standing just outside the car door, kissing her before she drove away.

Cub's last grin, dead on Renee's lap.

The empty crossword puzzle on the table in front of a dozing Gerda.

The thin line of water and blood down Kristoff's cheek, catching on his stubble.

The central line coming from Casey's chest.

The red and blue walls in their bedroom, and the bristles coming from Anna's skin.

And Gerda, who had no reflection in the car window, and now that lack of reflection made perfect sense. She was revenant, just like Anna. Another dark horse.

Damn her and the fortune teller both.

Then

It was the worst fight Gerda had ever had with Kai. She could never have imagined these sorts of words, this hot anger, not with the man who was the light of her life. He used to take her dancing, and in the middle of the music he was always as young as when they had first met. The starlight used to be friendly on their skin, desire used to shiver through her bones, made them liquid and hot. That was when he was young as well, his face a symphony of promise, not this threnody of pain.

He was sitting across from her at the kitchen table, and her cup of tea cooled, neglected. He looked so incredibly tired; this exhaustion must be some symptom of working two fulltime jobs in a meagre attempt to placate the bill collectors, but that mountain of money they owed the world could never be quarried sufficiently. There would be no miracle of money, just like there would be no miracle cure, not for the leukemia that melted the organs of their only offspring. Their miracle baby.

They could scream as much as they wanted to here; it was the end of October and Casey was in the hospital. They could scream, and they did, as childish as it was. It was a Saturday, and Gerda should have been at the library - Haley was sick and Anna had long ago booked the day off for whatever amusements she and her platinum-haired girlfriend imagined.

They were young. They probably had plenty of imagination between the sheets, just as she and Kai once had.

In between hospital sheets, reeking of industrial laundry detergent, lay her little girl. For nearly a year Casey had hung on, living when everyone else said she should die. This time it would be different, the doctors warned of it, and there was nothing she could do about it but prepare for that little casket, a eulogy among the fallen leaves. Surely rain would fall, like it did in the movies, because the Apollo sun would not dare to shine, not when her little Cassandra had fallen into the depths of the cold and hard earth.

Nothing to do except this.

"It's one thing sacrificing yourself," Kai was saying, his voice weary and sharp. "It's quite another using someone else. Don't you remember? It has to be someone we know, someone we love and someone who loves us. You can't be serious. This has to stop."

She had not told him, but she had already decided who it would be, who would pay the price this time. She tried not to think of her plan, the wolf she was. It would be painful, but the pain wouldn't last, not forever. Wasn't she proof of the principle, still alive, still young?

For all that Gerda didn't age, it was apparent that Kai was aging nearly double. No mysticism was needed to understand this; the man worked too hard and had too many cares, even on this side of the unseen world. He was only forty-two years old, and already thick with labour and anger. Yet he looked nearly sixty, with grey at his temples, permanent wrinkles near her eyes, his jowl descending further and further every year.

Gerda had never loved anyone else as deeply as she loved Kai, except perhaps for Casey. Casey, the little girl they had ached for, had planned for in futile hope, had gone to fertility clinics and had finally shelled out thousands of dollars for unnatural fertilisation in Gerda's lonely womb.

By then they had begun to understand this problem was hereditary - her sister suffered similarly with her own husband when trying to start a family.

"Do you want our daughter to die?" she asked, hating the words she deliberately used. Her fingers twitched on the handle of the cool tea cup. Inside it she would never see her reflection. They had not removed any mirrors from their home; what would the neighbours or family think? For herself, she had grown accustomed to the emptiness staring at her from the mirror. The little good angel of her soul was gone, payment to the fortune teller, trapped in the mirror.

"You know I don't," he replied, his voice even sharper. "How could I? I adore her. But how can we ask her to keep living like this? In and out of the hospitals? She should be learning how to read, not what the sting of chemotherapy feels like. She's a child, Gerda, and if she can't be a child, then maybe she should just be allowed to go somewhere there is peace, not this eternal suffering."

Gerda desperately wanted to take a sip of tea, but her hands were shaking too badly. Her decision terrified her, even as she didn't think of it.

"Better to let her go with dignity than to put her through this again," Kai was saying. "The sacrifice is simply too great."

Gerda glared at him in stony silence, reproachful. He had no idea really, of how great the sacrifice was. He could still look at the stars at midnight.

From his security post, that is, hepped up on caffeine pills and anger.

His eyes softened, the worst possible assault on her heart. "Damn it, Gerda, I miss you."

For a moment, Gerda wavered. Maybe it was too much to ask, too much to keep hoping for things to change. The fortune teller had repeatedly warned her that fate could not be diverted forever. Gerda's sacrifice was simply to buy some time, time for the doctors to figure out what was going on, time for a cure to be discovered, time for Casey to get well and be just a little girl.

Time was dying now, as surely as her four year old daughter, time all sickly and thin.

She had to look away from him, but what she saw on the wall behind him brought her no comfort.

Hanging on the kitchen wall was her favourite picture of Casey. She was sitting on the floor with mounds of spaghetti and meatballs in orbit around her. She had been laughing, her cheeks were rosy, her tiny baby teeth a most perfect white.

That was the very day before the monstrous "C" word, and the explosion of cells in her body. Gerda hadn't known it was possible for her whole world to collapse on the vibrations of one single word. Leukemia.

There should be more pictures there, in frames that actually had glass to reflect the world, of Casey riding horses with her cousin, and riding roller coasters with her dad, and splashing in unseen oceans, like the Pacific and Adriatic, with her mom. There should be a picture of high school graduation, a royal blue cap on her head and a tassel as gold as her hair. Then a wedding picture, in front of a church whose steeple was not so high as to puncture the heavens it believed in. Babies, and Gerda would be a grandma, set on spoiling the children as fast as Casey could produce them.

They were such simple dreams.

And by Gerda's power, Casey would have them. No matter the cost.

"I'm going," she said.

Astonished and hurt, Kai tried to chasten her with his eyes. It didn't work. He tried reason next. "You'll be out late," he said. "Past your curfew. Have you thought of how you are going to wake up in the morning without me to wake you?"

As a matter of fact, Gerda had. Her sister would be meeting up with her in Salem. Kathryn didn't know the whole story yet, and she might just pass off everything to Gerda's general eccentricities regarding ghosts and the occult, up to the moment of 9 pm, at least. 9:01 pm would make a believer out of her.

And at 6 am, Kathryn could pull her into the bathtub, fully clothed, and bring her from the unseen world. She had checked the motel, and had even asked the taciturn clerk to send her a picture of the motel bathroom. It had a tub and a shower wand, so it would do just fine.

"I don't even know if it's going to work," Gerda admitted. "But I have to try."

She looked into her comatose cup of tea. There was still no reflection.

"I can't go on like this," Kai said, pleading now, his last assault. He slid his hand over the table, his cracked and swollen knuckles, his callused fingers somehow feather light over her smooth hand. She allowed his touch, because she needed it. "Please, Gerda. Let it go."

How does one choose between husband and daughter?

She could start by cursing that God that brought her to this choice. So many people could have both husband and children, why not her? Even Kathryn had overcome her hereditary malady, and she and Rick had a daughter. Brin would grow up, and eventually she wouldn't ask Santa for a pony every Christmas. Brin would be alive, would giggle with her friends, sit in dim movie theatres with a boy and steal kisses in the dark, marry in that little white church where Kathryn and Rick had been married, and produce that horde of offspring to dismay and delight their grandparents.

What Gerda wanted she shouldn't have to ask for. Just equal chances, that's all, at life, and at love. Casey was still too young to even articulate her own personal dreams. Once she outgrew her need for ice cream and her love of throwing spectacular tantrums, what would she dream of? Maybe eating gelato in one of the grand piazzas of Rome. Maybe being discovered by a talent scout and singing her way to fame and fortune. Maybe just the quiet and wholesome dreams of middle America, a nice house, a loving husband and family, trips to the mountains in the summer and a boat in the driveway.

Casey should have that chance. If there was anything in Gerda's power to see it done, it would be done. After all, Kai had those chances already. Maybe it was all right to choose the daughter over the spouse.

Kai's prematurely lined face closed up tight. The legs of his chair squeaked as he hefted himself up and away from the kitchen table, and he strode away, his shoulders blocky and tight. He would take a short nap before going to his other job. Gerda would visit Casey once more before visiting hours ended, leaving her with a little time before the drive to Salem. Her overnight bag was already packed, clothes, brush, hair elastic, deodorant.

No makeup. She hadn't gotten the hang of putting it on without a mirror.

She looked in on Kai before she left, a half hour later. He was snoring lightly, sleeping on his side, clutching a pillow to his chest. Gerda kissed his cheek, touched the spot of grey near his ears, and left.

As she drove to the hospital, she began planning her conversation with the fortune teller. She would use all her arguments, all her persuasion, and, eventually, all her carefully saved money. Cursing was nearly as expensive as dying.

By hook or by crook, the fortune teller would give her what she desired. Gerda would see to it. She was relatively calm when it came to thinking of the fortune teller; it was thinking of the other essential person that terrified her.

Casey was puking and crying when she got to the hospital. Gerda could barely stand it any longer; the sad crayon drawings on the walls, the paper cranes hanging from the ceiling, the leftover snacks and desserts that Anna and Elsa always brought with them.

Casey was only four years old. Time to perfect motor skills, and she took endless delight in doing the same thing over and over again. Whenever Elsa visited, Casey loved to touch Elsa's left hand, to trace her fingers and then the amputated stumps. She looked at them as if she couldn't understand why they couldn't just grow back, and be like her other hand.

Gerda forced herself to stop thinking of Anna and Elsa, forced herself to be a little hard, for the sake of her daughter.

After all, was the wolf ever really sorry for the lamb it devoured?