Chapter 14 #2
‘I am very happy for you,’ Esther replied.
Isaac glanced at her outstretched arm. ‘Your hand is in the wall.’
‘Yes.’
They stared at each other in silence.
‘Righto,’ he said. ‘Bully for you, I suppose. I’ll see you this evening.’
‘Have a good day,’ Esther said, and he tipped his hat to her.
Once he was gone, Esther grew bold enough to experiment further, offering more and more of herself to the shadows.
The more she did it, the more instinctive the process seemed to become—the darkness started to intuit her requests before she could even form the thoughts fully.
In exchange for a mote of her soul, it formed a series of shapes on the wall: silhouettes of ships on roiling seas, spinning snowflakes, a bent-over apple tree.
It felt like offering a dog bites of food for tricks—if the food were herself, she supposed, as macabre a thought as that was.
As Esther made one of the shadow-apples fall to the floor, she noticed a light patter, and looked outside to see that it was raining.
Esther crept down to the kitchen, out the back door, and into the garden.
She took her coat with her, expecting to cover her hair from the rain—but once she was outside, she found the sensation of it pleasant, and she let the water drip into her eyes.
It wasn’t a cold day—likely the warmest day of the year so far—and the rain was soothing as it drummed softly against her skin.
Esther discarded her jacket onto a bench and reached her hands outwards.
She wasn’t certain it would work. It was midday, and the clouds prevented many visible shadows. Little to command, then, but they would be enough; they had to be.
Esther closed her eyes, and she offered herself to the darkness.
She imagined that this spring rain was a storm, that the clouds were seething and furious.
She pictured lightning dancing dragon-like above her, weaving its way toward the ground; that when it touched her, it would not hurt her, but instead embrace her as a lover; and then there was pain as the shadows took their due, a searing sharpness that was both awful and exquisite.
Through her lids, she saw a furious light, and the air filled with the scent of char.
When she opened her eyes again, her hair was floating with static around her face.
A crackling brightness was pooling in her palm: lightning squirming like a living thing, fluttering between her fingers.
‘Esther,’ came a voice, and the lightning skittered away, shooting back into the sky.
Esther turned around. Thomas was in the doorway, watching her with his face blank, as she stood, soaking wet, in the middle of the rain.
He didn’t look surprised. He didn’t look frightened. He didn’t even look angry.
Esther thought that somewhere—in the minute fissure of his pressed-thin lips—there was the beginnings of a smile.
Isaac was at his club for dinner, so it was just her and Thomas left at the townhouse.
They ate in the dining room, a space dominated by a large oak table so tall Esther’s elbows had to raise awkwardly high so she could eat.
Despite there still being some waning daylight, Thomas had the curtains closed and the candles lit.
It could have been much later than it was; there was no clock here, unusually, and so the passage of time was uncertain.
The stuffiness of the room, with its heavy Persian carpets and its dark-green walls, was oppressive.
The air smelt more of damp and candle smoke than it did of food.
Thomas had yet to comment on what Esther had done with the lightning.
He had only told her it was time for dinner, and then walked inside.
She had followed him, dripping water onto the floor, and traipsed upstairs to change.
When she’d returned to the dining room, he’d been sitting at the table, waiting for her.
It was a luxurious spread: red wine, quince jelly, cheeses and sliced meats to start, as well as a gold tureen of hazelnut soup. In their blue china bowls, the soup formed a thin skin as it cooled, wrinkling at its edges like old paper. Thomas’s nose wrinkled as he took his first spoonful.
‘You don’t like it?’ Esther asked him. She had dried off as best she could, but her hair was still hanging limp, and when she’d changed her dress, she’d noticed that the water had made it quite transparent.
The embarrassment had been overwhelming.
Now that she was confronted by him sitting opposite her, she felt a sort of fear, too; fear of some sort of retaliation for the crime of revealing her body to him—or worse, some sort of reward.
Richter’s warnings rang in her mind, also, as clearly as the bell Thomas used to call the servers over when his wine glass was empty.
In his eyes, Esther saw only a resigned discomfort, rather than the virulent hatred Richter had implied.
But she knew better than to take that for granted. Deceitfulness was a family trait.
‘Not particularly,’ Thomas replied, in reference to the soup.
‘Then why did you have it made?’
‘I always do. It was Lily’s favourite.’
‘Oh.’ Esther took another spoonful, warm and thick as blood. ‘I see.’
She didn’t remember much of Thomas’s wife, having only met her a few times before her death.
Esther recalled that she had been quite lovely.
She’d had large eyes, but everything else was tiny—a waist like a needle’s eye.
She’d been shy too, quiet, trying to sink into the wallpaper at events.
But it had always been an imperative for Esther to try to make her laugh.
Esther remembered Lily’s extraordinary laugh most of all, high and clear and sweet as music.
When she did laugh, you always had to smile back at her.
Even Thomas would smile back at her; that was why he had married her.
It had been a love match, everyone had known that.
He’d loved her so much that he hadn’t left his house since she’d passed.
And Esther had killed her.
She ate another spoonful of soup.
‘We were going to name him Christopher,’ Thomas said. ‘Our son.’
‘I am so sorry.’
‘As am I.’
They didn’t speak again until the main course.
It was roast quail, a bird for each of them: honey-glazed legs folded demurely against each other, comically tiny in contrast to their bulging bodies.
The meat was tender and savoury, the accompanying carrots swimming in butter. Esther found it difficult to swallow.
Thomas took a sip of wine. ‘Do you believe in the soul, Esther?’
She paused. ‘The soul?’
‘Yes. All creatures who think, who feel, have souls. Religion, of course, would have that the soul releases itself after the body’s death, and disappears into the aether; but the teachings of many occultists would hold that it is recoverable, that it can linger even once the body is gone.’
Esther took a slow, careful bite of her quail. ‘A fascinating idea.’
‘Isn’t it? I find it brings me much comfort. That the body is only a vessel, and that souls can be removed and returned.’
‘Or swapped,’ Esther said.
‘Oh?’
‘Well—it is only logical.’ Uncomfortable in her high-backed chair, she rolled her shoulders. ‘If one can remove a soul, or return it, surely it could also be replaced.’
Thomas’s lips pulled into a tiny smile.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘How insightful.’
They stared at each other across the table.
Esther felt the distinct sensation that, for the first time, someone else’s perception of her entirely matched her own: in Thomas’s eyes, she saw the anger, the regret, the burden of every death she had witnessed, every person who had left her.
Their shared responsibility, this Harding legacy.
Their inheritance, through no fault of their own.
In some ways, it was as much Thomas’s curse as hers.
We are family. The Harding bloodline: that is all that matters.
‘When our forefathers sought power,’ Thomas said, ‘however many generations ago that was—that power came conditionally. They made a deal with the darkness, and that deal came with a price. Our ancestors accepted that some must suffer, for the good of the rest. So, whenever a First Daughter comes…’
He didn’t finish the thought. Esther didn’t prompt him to do so.
Thomas drained his glass. He stood up from the table.
‘Come with me,’ Thomas said, taking one of the candlesticks from the table.
Esther didn’t move.
‘Do you mean to kill me?’ she asked him, unable to dance this dance anymore, to hide from the horror of it like a lady demure behind her fan. ‘As revenge, for Lily and all the rest?’
‘No,’ he replied.
‘Then what? Don’t tell me again you invited me here out of the goodness of your heart. I know about the rituals, Thomas. About the grimoire.’
A flash of anger in his eyes, quick as a striking blade; then it was gone. ‘I should’ve known better than to keep secrets from a witch, I suppose,’ he said. ‘No matter. Follow me, cousin, and I will explain everything.’
Against her better judgement, Esther stood and followed him out of the dining room.
They went to the second floor, to a door painted with roses: Lily’s old room. Thomas unlocked the door with a key from his pocket, and they entered.
In the dim illumination from the candle, the room’s colours were grey and black, although a corner of the bedspread revealed by the light seemed a pale yellow tone.
The main piece of furniture, as was to be expected, was the bed: a large double, generous enough for two, its headboard carved with flowers.
And on the bed itself—Esther was convinced, for a moment, that she was imagining it.
‘What is this?’ Esther asked, in half a whisper.
‘Your redemption,’ Thomas replied.
It was a coffin, a handsome dark wood coffin, lying heavy on the covers, dipping the mattress with its weight. It only just fit on the bed—but it was a tiny coffin, too, Esther thought. For someone unusually small.
‘Thomas,’ Esther said, slowly, ‘is Lily in there?’
‘Yes.’
Her stomach rolled. ‘But—I saw her buried, last year—’
‘A separate coffin, full of stones. I had this one stored here, at some expense.’
‘Why?’
‘For the ritual,’ Thomas said, blandly. ‘Her soul is still in there, you see. My father always said salt kept spirits away. The moment she died, I lined the house with it—the coffin, too. Her body is dead, but Lily remains. All she requires is a vessel.’
‘A vessel,’ Esther said, and she took a trembling step back. ‘A vessel like me.’
Thomas turned to her. In the darkness, lit only by the guttering candle, his movements seemed jerky and sporadic: a monstruous marionette, strings pulled by the shadows.
‘Don’t you see?’ He smiled at her. ‘All the guilt, Esther, all the cruelty you have inflicted—I am giving you a chance to undo the damage you’ve caused. Release your soul, end the curse. It is the only way.’
‘You want me to die.’
‘The others died,’ he said. ‘And more still will. You love Isaac, don’t you?
You want him to live a long, happy life?
I loved Lily, too. But you took her from me.
I can’t blame you for it—that is your nature.
The First Daughter. My father always warned me, but it took me so long to finally understand. ’
Esther took another step back, toward the doorway. Thomas’s hand closed around her arm.
‘Let me go,’ she said.
With his free hand, Thomas reached into his coat pocket.
Esther flinched, expecting a weapon—but instead, he pulled out a book, its cover black leather, pressed with their family’s crest. The three-headed hawk.
Past, present, future. Seeing it now, Esther had an intangible moment of recognition, as if she had seen this grimoire before, long ago; as if it were something from a dream, now made reality.
‘I tried so desperately to do it myself,’ he said. ‘But it was no use. And I know, now, that it never will be. You are the only one with the power to do this, Esther. To remove your soul and put another in its place.’
‘You want me to replace my soul with Lily’s,’ she whispered.
‘Yes. It must be your sacrifice. Your absolution.’
Esther reached forward, shaking, and took the book from him. Thomas released his grip on her arm.
‘There,’ he said, satisfied. ‘You finally see—’
Esther pulled the shadows around herself and began to run.