45. February 1918
One flower, buried in white.
One note Beverly heard before her fingers had gone back to work.
I can feel you.
She was currently resting, wafting in breaths and the tiding breeze of the city. Slithering to and fro, in the folds of coats and gowns. Wings, invisible, spread at her back like a canoe along the tide. For the New Year had long gone by and marked the anniversary of her death and she needed some reward for the feat.
A good rest would suffice. She even felt compelled to give in to gravity, forsake all protective positions she held for one moment, and allow herself to sink onto the cold concrete of New York. A solid resting place.
But other matters called to her. Her light curtained unwanted eyes from the men she protected. These roads connected her to her family, to the glassy walls of the building within which her father now sat.
This city needed a pianist. This misery, this darkness. Beverly played for them.
Cecil and Peter traveled tonight through mazes of beating hearts and stumbling beasts. Pearly's men were fragments of a puzzle, spread out along an intricate carpet. Paper faces had flooded the streets and all of them were at Peter's grasp. Presents to be taken.
Beverly had known this to be a note in the partiture.
We got some light back. I'm wanted alive!
Peter had known, too.
This is a gift I will not give up.
This was a chance to be found. For his song to be heard after one year of silence.
For a little girl with red hair to hear him, maybe. Perhaps. It all came down to hoping.
And yet Peter hid his face down to the tip of his nose into the depths of his coat, black eyes darting side to side, as he and Cecil emerged into the warm midnight haze of 5th Avenue.
Peter Lake, wanted alive. Wanted alive. All along the sidewalk.
The posters were there for the taking. For him to remember what it was like, to touch, to hold.
The paper was for him, after all. For all intends and purposes, Cecil's rules on gifts and lights applied to this, too.
A light given by a friend of your own making.
Beverly had been air and thought and sunlight for a year, and she missed her limbs and hands and fingers. She could imagine the despair of those who had never lost their hands, instead being restricted from taking anything they weren't specifically given.
Had she been in his shoes, she would have taken all of the posters into her pockets. Reveled in every crease of the worn-down thin page, the runny ink, the frozen edges.
He contended himself with grazing each paper with a brush of his fingertips. No more hints of his presence could be left for Pearly himself to discover.
Because at every corner of every street Peter Lake found a mirror of grey and black. His own face, printed, flung out. The towers of New York felt heavier upon him now and Beverly knew it.
She felt the rain pouring on the roof of the tent, the walls of fabric growing heavier.
Feel me as I feel you.
So she tiptoed from lamppost to lamppost and puddle to puddle and the hooves of horses and the wheels of carriages and the umbrella handles and the watches and the teeth of grimacing gentlewomen.
No one would find him until she tucked in her wings and called upon a certain cricket.
You're a musician, yeah?
Peter Lake looked up at the long hallway of starlight framed by the buildings. He reached out his hand and this time let it linger, for Beverly to drip into it in a dewdrop of golden light. He recognized her there. Her presence relaxed him.
"Have a little faith, Peter," Cecil said, ever-so observant.
"I'm the one who took the poster, wasn't I?"
"Every time we walk through here, you tremble."
This was true. He shivered now. And yet he kept moving.
Peter hesitated before replying. "It's terrifying, the prospect of being found. By anyone, really. When one has been stranded for so long. It's something I knew in life and something I know in death, too. Or… whatever we are now."
"It's only been a year… Is that how you felt, when I found you?"
This was a story both of them owed her. A little promise for the next time she joined them entirely.
"Yes."
Peter closed his hand. Inhaled. Kept her there for a beat.
The gentle exhale. He was calm.
You're here. You're real.
And he perceived her, in his hand, in his lungs. The same way he'd felt the tug of her music to the piano room on December 26th, 1916.
I want to hear you sing!
And he listened. He began to hum as he walked.
Eventually, he was singing softly. Posters flapped in the breeze. New York spoke and a dead man sang, accompanied by his friend.
And Beverly touched a key, took the risk. Hoped and longed that she hadn't misheard.
A clattering fence would follow. Peter's face…
I trust this. I must. Otherwise we'll never move again.
She flashed across the street and dragged her curtains open and danced, danced, in Peter Lake's voice. Let it reach the ears of another.
I trust this song.
A young man, a bit younger than she'd been, in her last gasps of life.
Black-clad, somber. Little magpie. Pasting the face of Peter Lake on a new wall, under the showering lamplight.
Beverly touched him, struck a golden thread across his eyes, and the boy turned as if a spider had crawled up his nape. And the boy heard. And the boy found Peter Lake's eyes.
And Peter Lake froze.
It squeaks.
Cecil smiled slightly. As if he were reminiscing along with her.
Had he, too, been witness to Peter's shock at finding her once? Had he been watching through the sunlight that took over the piano room that December morning?
The floor squeaks.
The boy swung his head back to the poster, before returning his attention to the men now before him. Both of them. His pale face twisted.
Into the crowd and the fuss and the golden winter night, he went in a flurry of black feathers.
And Beverly trailed behind him in a wave of drizzling diamond glimmers.
Peter Lake gasped. Saw. Understood.
And followed. And Cecil, behind him.
This flower would not falter in her hands or descend into an open grave. This was no suitcase or closed door or hairpin.
Beverly had been an optimist all her life. She longed to conserve this vital part of who she'd been, now that she was dead and reformed.
You're the same you, in every color.
So she played and decided to believe, for the moment, that she was doing the right thing.
The same me.
She saw to her family, too, in the spur of the chase. Cause meanwhile, elsewhere, wherever she was and wasn't, Isaac Penn worked in a glass cage of papers and ink.
The Sun, once the fairest Penn child, was now a heart of darkness and Isaac held the remnants of its former glory.
Beverly curled down the solitary lamp on his desk. The fireplace, barely lit. A woman trapped within every flame he forged, desperate to warm him.
"How are things working for you, dear?" Mrs. Penn crackled from the embers.
The stars watched, always, and some songs were best kept secret. Galaxies flood bellies. Paths collapse.
But it never hurt to exchange senseless whispers. Gentle affirmations. Little bits of her heart.
Beverly whispered back: "I wish to believe that things will go well… Even though, sometimes, I feel like I'm fooling myself whenever I get involved."
"You're braver than I was. Stronger, too."
"Nonsense. You suffered horribly."
"Is your Peter alright?"
Had it become so apparent, since it all went down, and the sky became water, and she became his shelter, that they were bound together? That their bodies were practically forged into unity by the star they inhabited?
You're my miracle.
Your Peter…
"I hope he will be…"
The readers had dropped the previous year. The production had gone on a halt given its chief editor's mourning at the beginning of 1917 and the remaining months had been clumsily handled.
Beverly pitied her father terribly in this instant. He'd always been at his sharpest when fighting for the health of his child. Now he assumed his battle had concluded and no other causes required such devotion to the Sun. Now he sat in the ashes of a fire that was close to burning out.
Beverly found it to be quite poetic. Something worthy of a song.
Hear me.
For there were other lights. Multiple others.
The spectacles. The tired eyes they protected. The paperweight, a dandelion, congealed, a beam of light encased in glass.
And a name, a face, framing accusations, details now lost to the world, sneakily hidden in a blocky jail cell, at the edge of one of the newest newspaper pages…
The magpies stole gold to twist and break maps of starlight. But they also put practical use to it. A few newspaper mentions for the capture of Peter Lake wouldn't harm Pearly's tray.
See me.
And it caught Willa's attention as Beverly brought her hand to the windows and showered a brief drizzle of gold on the discarded papers on the floor. She was seated there, half-asleep, and she crawled to the pages and pressed her tiny cheek to the chilling glass as she brought them closer for her to read.
Isaac Penn only flicked his gaze toward the child for a moment. As if the mere notion shamed him.
Since the governess's absence, Willa had been his shadow. Saying nothing and lingering eternally.
But tonight she spoke. "Peter Lake."
"Huh?"
Little Willa watched the flower flicker against the velvet indigo sky, the stars, the moon. Beverly felt the eyes.
Willa gasped. She slowly stood up. Her hands clutched the page. Her eyes flooded.
"He's alive."
"Willa."
The girl raised the paper to him. "He's still alive!"
And for the first time in more than a year, Isaac Penn saw the face of his dead daughter's lover, black and white, thickly-inked, foggy with light.
Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading!
I'm back! Again! I won't give you any more excuses as to why I took over a month to get this chapter done. Uni and life got in the way. Also, I was severely stuck for a while in how I'd go about getting Peter his first eyewitness and how to incorporate Willa seeing his wanted poster in the paper. But I figured a way around it.
I fear that this chapter is a little messy, but, just like Beverly, I am hoping that I'm moving in the right direction.
It's quite telling that for this chapter, where I struggled to move on in my plot as I'd left it in Chapter 44 amidst all the other things going on in my life at the moment, I actually make Beverly go through a similar epiphany than the one I always go through, regarding my fanfic duology: I cannot just stop moving. Even if I fear that I may have pressed a key too quickly, or jumped to conclusions quickly, like how I made Bev feel after Willa's argument with the governess goes "wrong" (but hey, in case you haven't noticed, the governess's absence is what causes Willa to go with Isaac to work at night, which leads for her to tell him that Peter is "alive" based on the "wanted" notice on the paper - in the movie, everything happens for a reason, and in my fanfics, this same spirit applies, obviously, sooooo maybe Beverly did not mess anything up :3), I need to continue writing. I can't leave these stories unfinished.
I've rewatched "Winter's Tale" recently on the occassion of its ten-year-anniversary and I will admit that, this time around, with all the writer's block and animation assignments and stuff, it made me feel a bit self-conscious for changing the second half of the story so much in my fanfics, so far. Cause the movie itself has only gotten better and sweeter to me the more I see it - its entirety is beautiful as it is.
And it made me briefly question whether I'd made the right decision, jumping into all my headcanons and making Beverly and Peter both be dead, to build a bridge so different from the one the movie builds in-between Peter falling from the bridge and his encounter with Abby in the 21st century... But this self-consciousness lasted very little. For one, the "bridge" in the movie is already super vague cause we literally just flash-forward to Peter in 2014 after he returns from the river and has amnesia in 1917. So. XD And 2, most importantly, the movie already exists, and it always will - in my heart, especially (I'm very cheesy but I have made my love for WT very clear, I think XD), and the first thing I have written out in both parts of my WT fanfic duology is that I don't want to just write a story that's already been made. I want to create my own version of this story that I love. So, yeah, I am, and I have, and I will - I need to keep writing it, no matter the momentary doubts or small pauses I take. I need to finish this.
(Also an additional 3, the idea of Peter not having amnesia, being a spirit in limbo mistrusted by the starlight, and literally sheltered by Beverly's light as he moves through the years, therefore they are not only together, but aware of the fact that they're together, is what I want my version of this movie's story to be like. I want my babies to be together in some way, they already suffer enough :,) So yeah, again, my little early-mid-life-writer's-block-crisis was short-lived and cringe aaaaaand I just wrote a super-long Author's Note again when I should be going to bed XD)
Anyhoo. Always keep moving. Moral of the story. Everything will turn alright in the end, but the thing is, you can never just stop. Move ahead. Always :3 That's a philosophy I certainly adopt every day.
Here's your hug, of course. And my thanks for all your time in reading these super-long fanfictions I make and these super-long Author's Notes I include XD Whoever and wherever you are, thank you. *hug* See you next time!