From my bedroom, chewing on a hunk of bread to quiet my stomach and give me strength, I watch the scene below, or as much of it as I can in the darkness. Lanterns moving to and fro as Tib and the twins herd the children out, all of them hastily wrapped in coats and scarves. Tib stops at Eli’s cottage, rouses him, gives him his marching orders. His head shakes but the older woman insists, a finger in his face until his shoulders slump. He spares my window a glance, but I’ve no candles and he won’t be able to see me. He’ll be obedient, to his aunt and to my word. I’m relying on it.
He ducks inside, comes back out shrugging on a coat and a hat, heads towards the stables. Tib and her little band scurry into the woods like hounds released on the scent of a fox. Except they’re more like foxes fleeing hounds. To the right, Eli reappears leading one of the bays; he mounts, digs his heels into its flanks and they’re away into the night.
That’s it then, Asher Todd.
I rest both hands on the sill, feel its solidity, the dips and nicks in the wooden surface. It’s grounding. Taking a deep breath, I turn and force myself from the room, barefoot and silent. One, two, three. I stop, legs frozen. Move. My feet shake, toes curling, but I force them: right up, right down, left up, left down. Move.
Clean up the mess you made, Asher Todd.
Hurry before the master of the house rouses from her stupor. Decides she wants something, realises there’s no one else about. No one here but Mother and me.
Move, Asher Morwood.
Luther’s in the library. Heloise is in the library. I tiptoe out the kitchen door, go to the surgery, snow freezing my feet. Once there, I make what preparations I can; ensure the hearth is full of kindling. When I take another deep, deep breath it feels as if it’s the first in a long time. A few more glances around but there’s nothing more I can do. I do not have the time to waste.
I creep to the windows of the library. Normally, the curtains would have been drawn by now against the cold and the darkness. But there are no staff to take care of Heloise-Luther’s comforts, are there? I’ve been locked away two, three days and the household has already fallen apart. I peer through the glass: there is my mother, my uncle, sprawled in a chair in front of the desk, a carafe of wine and a volume open in front of her – perhaps the account book Leonora was reading. Heloise is probably getting her head around what the estate is worth, how it functions; though she can access Luther’s memories, whether she will pay attention is another matter. She’ll make bad decisions all on her own.
I raise my hand and tap on the window. She doesn’t stir. I do it again, harder, louder. Still nothing. Swearing, I go back inside.
In the library now, I can hear her snoring like a sot. I raise the carafe and pour the red wine over my mother-uncle’s face. It’s a moment before she starts sputtering, but as soon as she’s sitting up, I drop the container, let it smash, and dance back to the doorway.
It’s all I need to say. She’s on her feet and I’m haring away along the corridor, towards the kitchen door. I wonder if she’s pulled up Luther’s memory of this very chase? When I led him to the surgery and brought my mother back? Perhaps it’s not foremost in her mind at this point; drunk and sleepy, those befuddling factors will work in my favour, I hope. And I did not wear this face then, but my own.
I bang through the kitchen door, then across the flagged floor and out into the potager. Around the corner and across the lawn towards the merry little light of the surgery, that single candle burning to guide me home. But I’d not banked on Heloise being so fleet of foot: she’s gotten full control of her new body, even inebriated, knows Luther in and out and is using him to her best advantage. She takes me down a few paces from the open door.
The ground is hard and cold, painful on my exposed face. My mother-uncle’s weight grinds me into the earth as if she’ll bury me, then she rears back, flips me over to face the sky and her. I kick up at the same time, catching the soft flesh between his legs. A pain she never expected to feel, I suspect.
A howl, such a terrible howl he – she – gives but there’s no one around to hear it. She falls away, curling around her aching balls. It wins me the time to scramble backwards on my behind, roll over to hands and knees and rise. I’m in the door before Heloise-Luther comes after me, stumbling over the threshold. She kicks the door shut behind her, thinking my aim is to escape – as if I didn’t recall the other door, the one leading to the stream. But I’m not going anywhere.
‘Asher! I will make you regret you were ever born!’ Mother roars, that terrifying mix of her voice and her brother’s but I think hers is worse. It doesn’t matter anymore.
‘Oh, Mother. You’ve done that so many times. Aren’t you tired of it? I know I am.’
Only then does Luther’s nose begin to twitch. He’s finally caught the whiff of it, the white spirit I spilled before I left, over the wood in the hearth, the curtains. I knock over the single candle, hear the breath of the air as the flame and alcohol meet, the whump! as sparks shoot out, onto the floor where I made the pattern of a great circle with a star in it, and inside which my mother and I now stand.
I flick my fingers, wish, and the flames leap higher and Heloise-Luther turns her back to me, panicking, tries to cross that line of fire, to get out of the circle, to the door, but the burning boundary won’t let her go – she’s a creature of magic, has been since I put her in her brother’s body. She’s ruled by different laws. I pull the scalpel from my pocket, the one Leonora used on Archie, the one with which I threatened Luther when he was no more than himself.
He’s very tall, is Heloise-Luther, so I slip the scalpel into his back, into one kidney, quickly, then the other before he’s got the wit to turn on me. When he does swivel around, I slice his throat, the blade a swift silver arc. Slowly, my mother-uncle falls, grasping at my skirts as she sinks.
I take Meliora’s ring from my finger and toss it into the hearth; I’ll die with my own face on. The hair hanging over my shoulders turns from dull brown to fox red. I see my mother staring up at me, at her own face. Perhaps if I’d looked less like her she’d have been able to distinguish better between the two of us. Perhaps she’d have thought of me as a separate thing and not merely a tool to put her will in train. Then again, if Heloise had been less herself, none of this would have happened.
The smoke is getting thicker as the building catches fire properly. I sit down, coughing, and gather my mother into my arms. Hold her as she bleeds and dies in a body not her own; her second death, no better than the previous one. I tell her in a voice I’m unsure she can hear above the roar of the flames that this is for the best. That all will be well. That she’s on the path she should have taken with her first death. That we will go together.
I begin to cough, feel the life seep out of me as the smoke pushes its way in, tries to fill me. The orange-gold of the fire creeps closer. Soon, the grey turns to black.