There was a trick being played here.
Of that fact at least the ghost now known to all as Robin was certain of. A trick. It had to be. It was a pretty good trick. It had certainly fooled the other ghosts.
They were all much too focused on smelling the deep aromatic smells of the combined forces of a takeaway Chinese, Indian, and Italian. Not to mention the various different pastries and cakes that had been delivered to the house in bright pink boxes – to ask why they seemed to have been laid out purely for the ghost's benefit.
And when they weren't doing that, they were sat prone on the various sofas around Button House. Staring at their war documentaries, or their mystery shows, or their talk shows, or their musical high school movies. Or their strange forced sitcoms that seemed to think the very act of being 'Friends' was something worth commenting about. Robin had never been able to get into that show, it reminded him too much of the Moona Dance he had missed.
Which reminded him too much of…well, best not think of that.
Not while there was a trick to be figured out anyway. Why would Alison and Mike, Alison and Mike who were always short of money, and who often only just restrained themselves from screaming at the Ghosts' antics, do this?
The ghosts had done nothing spectacular lately, nothing that would have warranted such a treat.
Thus, it must be a trick.
Although it was hard to see how giving them exactly what they wanted was so deceitful. Unless… it was a distraction.
But why would Alison need to distract the ghosts?
What was she hiding?
There was a mystery here, Robin knew the signs. In his long life he had known many, had been the keeper of more than a few, and there was nothing harder than untangling the many lairs, and lies hiding the truth from the seeker. Sometimes the secret was stupendous, ancient powers long held at bay by the mere fact that they had drifted from mortal memories. Sometimes it was as simple as discovering where Mike had hidden his secret stash of chocolate chip cookies.
Not that Robin could eat said biscuits, he just wanted to know. He didn't like mysteries that went unsolved. They left an itch under his skin that he could never quite get at. Hence his current predicament.
And if nothing else, it was something to do for the next couple of hours.
It didn't take long to find Alison. All he had to do was follow the silence. That was, go looking in the places of the house were the noise from the tvs were not pounding through the walls.
Where the sound of singing greasers, or feuding New Yorkers, did not scrape against his poor ears. Or at least where their noise was slightly muffled. Probably from all the books lining the walls.
The book room, for a moment Robin struggled to remember its proper name. It did have one, he was sure of that but like so many words before it, the thing
floated up and out of his grasp. Vanished into the swirl of memory and confusion inside his skull. English was a particularly difficult language to remember.
Not like Saxon.
Or Norman.
Or one of the hundred thousand or so languages the Celtic tribes had held between them. Even Latin was easier to remember than the odd cobbled together thing that the modern people of this land spoke.
Latin words for the room began to float around in his skull, almost visible and brilliant in the haze of his struggling mind. But he shook them away like they were nothing more than flees on the ears of a dog. He knew he didn't need them anymore. He didn't even really need the English words anymore. For he had found her without them.
There she was, hidden in one of the old high back green chairs in the middle of the room. The kind who's top curled and hid your face from anyone walking by. She wasn't the first Living he had seen use them to hide from others in the house. Though she certainly had to be the first to use them to hide from the ghosts themselves.
On the small table to the right of her elbow sat a little plate, containing one of the triple chocolate chip cupcakes he had seen her take from one of the pink boxes earlier this morning. As well as a mug of something brown and sweet smelling – 'hot chocolate' his mind supplied for him almost on instinct – and strangest of all, the tattered remains of something made of cardboard.
There was black writing across its front.
Amazon.
He sounded the word out silently in his head. He didn't want to say it out loud, she hadn't noticed him yet, and he'd really like to try and figure out what she was doing before she did. He played the word over again, and again, inside his mind.
Amazon.
Amazon.
What was Amazon again?
A memory of a forest then. A forest somewhere far away. In a different land. Why was Alison receiving packages from such a faraway place?
He didn't think he understood, there was something missing, something he had heard more recently but he couldn't put the pieces together. His head hurt. He decided to stop thinking about the package and where it had come from. It mattered less than what was in it.
The thing that Alison had torn the carboard into pieces to get at.
He looked at the Living Woman full on then, she still hadn't noticed him. She was so engrossed in her…in her…book!
It was a book!
That was why she had lured the ghosts to stay in the other part of the house. She was reading a new book and maybe…maybe she didn't want to be…disturbed. If Robin had been a younger ghost he would have left then. If he had been a kinder person in life he certainly would have. But the mystery of the book had caught his focus now, and he couldn't leave.
He just couldn't.
Not until he understood it.
He sat down then and stared at the cover hoping maybe the book would reveal its secrets through that, and he wouldn't have to bother Alison at all.
There was a shoe on it.
A pink shoe.
It was pointed.
It was…he could remember this…it was a dance shoe. No, it was a ballet shoe. Ballet. He remembered that word, there had been a Button daughter a few generations back that had become a ballet dancer. Or at least she had run away to be one. He didn't know if she had succeeded, for the family never spoke of her again. He hoped she had. That would be a nice thought.
He shook the memory away and focused again on the cover of the book. In loopy letters the book proclaimed itself to be called…Tendu.
Another word…a ballet term. A stretch, or a dance move. He could not recall anymore, the memory of the girl saying what it was much too faded by now.
Tendu.
He let his eyes trail up the cover, past the tips of the shoe, no shoes. Pointe shoes, up to where the dancer's ankles cut off. Right to where the author's name was written proudly for all to see.
Ailish Sinclair.
Ailish Sinclair.
That name seemed slightly familiar. Did Alison have other books of Ailish Sinclar? He should ask. He really should. And yet he didn't want to make Alison sad, he really didn't, and she was so engrossed in what she was reading. But he really wanted to know what the book was saying.
So, he got up from the ground, moved silently around her chair and began to read the book over her shoulder. And that was where he stayed, silent and still as only the dead really could be, for the next half an hour.
He would have stayed silent longer, but well…at this point in his ghost-hood sometimes things popped out of his mouth without his consent.
"Why they not do it in the circle? It what it wants."
Alison jerked back to reality, her cheeks faintly pink, and started moving her head left and right desperately trying to see which ghost had disturbed her this time.
"Behind you," said Robin finally, taking pity on her.
The living woman looked up and her face didn't so much crumple, as freeze and then ever so slightly fall into resigned acceptance of his presence.
"Robin," she sighed. "I thought you were watching tv with the others."
Robin shrugged in reply and then at the irritated spark in her eye he elaborated.
"Nothing good on."
Desperately Alison turned her face back down to stare fixedly at the open pages of the book.
"Well, could you please go and find something else to occupy yourself with. I really want to read this book. Please, in peace if you don't mind."
Robin shrugged; he would have continued reading the book himself but it was his own fault. He was the one who had spoken. As quietly as he ever could Robin began to shuffle out of the room. He was almost to the door, when Alison's voice, soft and almost regretful, called from the armchair then.
"What did you mean when you said 'It's what it wants'?"
For a moment Robin was quiet, looking down at the living in the chair with a slow kind of caution. Finally, when the silence grew too much for either to bear, he said.
"Mean what I say, it what circle wanted. Is always what circles want. It what they made for. It only thing they made for."
"What?" said Alison, her voice high and squeaky as if she didn't want to believe what he was saying.
"But that's not true…stone circles had other uses other than…than that."
It was strange considering the kind of story she was reading that Alison couldn't even say the word sex. For a moment Robin thought hard, no, it was true that there were other kinds of ceremonies and magic done in stone circles. Of course there were, these kinds of things were multi-purposeful if nothing else. He thought of his own stones, of the treasure they had guarded down beneath their roots. Of the treasure they still guarded even though they were all broken up and now part of Button House's foundation.
And yet…
"What about that Moon Ritual? That wasn't about sex?" Said Alison, in an almost triumphant way.
And Robin couldn't help smiling at that even despite himself.
"Used to be."
Alison snorted. "I don't think the Captain would have agreed to be part of it, if he had known that."
"Why me not tell him."
And Alison laughed at that.
Robin couldn't stop himself from smiling because she was smiling at him. She wasn't angry or disappointed in him anymore. She didn't look as tired as she had for the last… year. Since the guest house had burned.
Alison sighed, though it was not the defeated sound she had been letting escape her mouth more and more recently. It was more…what was right word…indulgent.
"Alright, if you want to stay and finish the book with me, you can. But you have to keep quiet – I need to…I want to finish this today. Preferably before the other ghosts get bored and come poking round to find me."
Robin nodded hurriedly, pleased to be allowed to stay at all.
Quickly he shuffled around the chair again, so that he could better see over her shoulder as Alison reopened the book and found her place in the story again.
This was going to be fun.
Tears were in Robin's eyes.
It was a silly thought, to be so moved by the words on a page when you had so many of your own real memories swirling round your head.
And yet…
There were those tears in both Robin's and Alison's eyes.
Tears at the tale of the little dancer.
Her pretty Teacher.
And her smelly boy.
It was a happy ending, he was sure of it, how could it be anything else?
It ended in a Circle.
And yet…
"Well, she never disappoints. Can't wait to read the sequel." Said Alison.
A sequel.
The next part of the story. Really, this wasn't an ending at all.
"We read it now?" Said the caveman.
He was excited, he was shaking really, but he couldn't help it. He wanted…he needed to know what happened next.
"Oh Robin, the sequel's not out yet."
Inside his dead chest, Robin's heart sunk.
"How long?"
He wanted to use more words than that, but the tears…the tears were making it hard to concentrate and English had never been an easy language for him. He much preferred Saxon.
"Don't worry, it's only a month." Soothed Alison.
"A Month!" Cried the dead Neanderthal.
An emotion filled his head then, but he didn't have the words in English to describe it anymore. He tried in Latin. But that was a word that sounded wrong in his head too. So in desperation he tried Saxon. Understanding filled his mind then and English returned soon after.
Annoyed.
He felt annoyed.
"Don't wanna wait whole month, wanna know now!"
He stomped one of his feet, more like a petulant child than the ghost of the man he really was. He knew that, but right now there wasn't quite enough of him still awake to care anymore. Alison shrugged her shoulders.
"What can I say Robin…we can't make her publish them any quicker. This is already pretty quick as far as sequels go. Ask Mike how long he's been waiting for the Winds of Winter."
Words circled inside of Robin's skull again. Words he only half understood when he could see them at all. But he knew he had to find the right one, the right word to use that would convey all his longing, his desperation, his need to see the next part of the story. And at the same time his annoyance at the author for not simply providing it now.
Yes, that one would do.
"Diabolical. That woman diabolical."
And at that Alison smiled, a smile so large and so filled with laughter, that it almost hid the tears still in her eyes.
"Yes, that's what she says anyway."
The End
A Note from the Author:
Ailish Sinclair's first instalment of her brand new Dancer Series – Tendu, is out today (that is October 20th 2023, the date of this story's publication). I would thoroughly recommend that anyone reading this story head on over to Amazon and give the book a read and a buy, not necessarily in that order.
Tendu - A Dancer's Journey
"When dance student Amalphia Treadwell embarks on a secret relationship with her charismatic new teacher, she has no idea of the danger that lurks in his school in Scotland.
She's soon dealing with her boyfriend's obsessive ex, the strange research taking place at the castle school and her own ever-evolving relationship issues.
Amalphia works hard to be the best dancer she can be, but as tension builds within the old walls of the castle, she begins to wonder if she will ever escape the dank dark of the dungeon…
Dark, witty, steamy and fun, Tendu is a compelling and seductive story of love, dance and obsession."