Eleanor Queen huddled with her knees to her chin, comforter to her ears, and glared at them.
“Sorry, Bean. It’s just the easiest window for Mama to use.”
Shaw held the shovel as Orla sat on the windowsill with her legs out, trying to strap on the snowshoes without bonking her head on the window sash.
“You’re making it freezing in here!” Eleanor Queen pouted.
“Out of your way in a minute.” Orla slipped off the ledge and onto the snow. For a moment she stood out there, expectant, still believing that she might sink into the depths and suffocate. She sank a bit, but it was inches not feet. Shaw handed her the shovel.
“Remind me to thank Julie again next time we talk.” She’d found gaiters among the donated winter stuff, and though her boots were tall, the waterproof gaiters Velcroed over her pants all the way up to her knees. And she was prepared for the brightness this time, though banks of clouds were encroaching on the sun; with her sunglasses on, she wasn’t blinded as she stepped out into the white world.
The window closed behind her with the hydraulic swoosh of new, smoothly fitted frames. It shut out Eleanor Queen’s final complaint, and Orla was on her own.
It was strange to see the tree canopies from this vantage, almost eye to eye and so close, like they were giant dead bushes, not the treetops beyond her daughter’s side window. For a moment she had the sensation of levitating and feared, again, a swift plunge through the deep snow. But as she hooked a right toward the back of the house and the kitchen, walking with cautious, exaggerated steps as she acclimated to the snowshoes, she felt a release from the claustrophobia. Breathing came more easily and the frozen gusts that bloomed from her mouth reminded her of childhood, when seeing her own breath had been a source of wonder and joy. Ahead of her, the forest of trees lay buried, with only the great pine’s trunk visible above the deep snow.
The plan she’d formed with Shaw was to start on one side of the kitchen roof, at the lowest part of the slope (which was almost at her ground level) and see how much snow she could move by shoveling or swiping, depending on what she could reach. The goal wasn’t to clear the roof down to its shingles but to lessen the weight as much as she could. It was more difficult than she’d anticipated, as the snow she needed to remove towered above her. She had to extend her arms fully over her head to even start, but she was relieved to discover it was a feathery snow, light and airy. If it had been dense and wet, it could have been a double disaster of being too heavy to move and too heavy a load for the sloped first-floor extension.
So, without grace, she whacked snow aside. She had no choice at first but to attack lower sections, inevitably causing the collapse of the snow above; snow powdered her face as it was shaken loose. But when one corner was more manageable, she clambered onto the roof itself and did the rest of the work from there, where, using her full height and stretched arms, she could work from the top down.
It felt weird to be standing atop their kitchen. She wondered if Shaw, gathering supplies beneath, could hear her as she shuffled around. As the glare diminished a bit, she perched her sunglasses on her woolly hat, fearing the darkening sky intended to unleash more snow. Gray folds had settled in, hiding most of the sun and confusing the horizon line; all she saw were endless swaths of silvery white. For a moment she reconsidered what had happened; maybe it hadn’t snowed at all, but the clouds had found purchase on the land around their mysterious house.
The trees in the distance, far up on a rolling hill above the road, looked more naked—less consumed by meringue—than the ones in closer proximity. How widespread, or narrow, had the overnight storm been? What if, like the aurora borealis, it was only here?
Think, think, think…as much as anything, she’d come out here to sort out her thoughts. As if to accommodate her, the land was utterly still. Nothing moved. Nothing emitted a sound.
She listened harder.
Not a bird. Not a distant car. Not the wind.
“Hello?” she said into the silence, half expecting to not hear her own voice. Perhaps it was a trick of the deep snow obliterating the nuances in the terrain, but the audience of trees looked as if they stood nearer together than they had before, and slightly closer to the house.
A part of her felt like a warrior, weapon in hand, battling an enemy force. After a short time, her muscles surpassed their achy point, heated by constant motion and abundant with energy; her body became a well-oiled machine. It was a comfortable—familiar—place for her, reminiscent of the rehearsal process, when she and her partners would practice the same movements over and over, on a mission of perfection. Eventually the choreography became so ingrained it ceased to require conscious thought and became…something else. A reaction, an impulse, a necessity created by the music. And forever after, if she heard a certain piece of music, her muscles were prepared. They’d twitch in anticipation of each crescendo and her hand would lead her arm to its designated position; she’d lift to relevé, movement coiled inside her, even as she stood in the checkout line at TJ Maxx.
Music controlled motion.
Other people might find that a strange concept; for her it was the natural order of things. Maybe she needed to turn other concepts on their head to heed the specter’s demand and find the keystone that would give her an answer. Weary but absorbed in a rhythm, Orla pondered the unexplained things that had occurred since their arrival. She’d done her best to find logical explanations—global warming or other meteorological changes; general fear, or discomfort, or a sense of displacement; a shared delusion brought on by toxic elements in their environment. But logic didn’t hold. And though the cure cottage was an enticing detail, it was getting harder to believe that it could be the source of their mystery. People died everywhere; was there any reason this place should be more haunted than any other? New York City should be teeming with ghosts if all that was required was a mortal population.
Her meditative work allowed her mind to wander away from reason and toward the unreasonable, where she felt more free to question the absolutes she’d always accepted. That was where the inky ghoul wanted her to go.
With a rigidity that now struck her as closed-minded, she’d been dismissive of astrology and feng shui, life after death and superstitions. (Though, like many dancers, she had a routine on performance days that was sacrosanct—the food she ate, the time she arrived at the theater, her preparations in the dressing room.) Her inner fuel, turning emotions into movement, would strike a lot of people as indulgent; many nonartists considered artists’ work to be pretentious, even a complete waste of time. But she’d always felt the inherent—even spiritual—worth of it. And she knew, through observation and experience, how agonizingly receptive a person could be—in tune with, and affected by, their surroundings. Her husband and daughter were living examples of people who absorbed the world in a deep, visceral way, as did many of their creative friends. She’d never disbelieved the complex reality of the highly sensitive people in her circle, or doubted the profound personal and interpersonal worth of an artist’s work. She wondered now if she should always have been more open to the other possibilities that human consciousness might tap into.
What else was out there?
Or maybe she was thinking of cause and effect all wrong. In a hysterical moment that morning, she’d tiptoed toward an idea very different from a ghost, something bigger that was responding to their thoughts, desires, fears. Something interactive was going on, action and reaction, but what was its genesis? Were they the music, or the dancers?
Are we doing this together? Are we dance partners?
Orla knew from experience that not all partnerships worked. Sometimes in a pas de deux, movements never became harmonious; the connection was off. That could be happening now. They didn’t know this dance, and maybe the choreographer should have chosen different dancers.
Or, playing devil’s advocate with herself, maybe the message wasn’t written in code; maybe her family was feeling too much and she was thinking too much, and all this time, the damn specter had been holding a billboard.
Wrong choice. Try again.
Shaw could be a painter elsewhere. He could have his turn in another house, with different trees. It was the talk they should have had a long time ago, but it wasn’t too late.
Orla knocked on the now-accessible landing window near the top of the stairs. Knocked and knocked until someone heard her. Unfortunately, it was Eleanor Queen who came to her rescue, glaring as she opened the window.
“Sorry, didn’t want to disturb you. Ask Papa to open our bedroom window? I’ll go around and come in that way.”
“I’ll get it.” Eleanor Queen shut the landing window and trudged off to her parents’ room.
As Orla clomped around to the front of the house, she said a quiet prayer. “Thank you. This has been very magnificent—something I never thought I’d see—but we’re ready to go back to normal now.”
She gave one last look across the tree-filled horizon. It was quiet beyond comparison, as if the rest of the world and every sound it made no longer existed. She wouldn’t allow herself to dwell on the beauty of it, the little overhangs that crested the drifts, like a landscape that had eroded and evolved over millions of years, not mere particles created in hours as they slept. To be in too much awe of it—too appreciative—might invite more wondrous and horrifying events.
Eleanor Queen opened her parents’ window as wide as it would go. Orla wriggled in backward, sat on the windowsill, and removed her snowshoes.
“Much safer now,” she told her daughter. She spun around and ducked in, sweaty beneath her layers but rejuvenated by the time she’d spent outdoors, engaged in difficult work. “Safe as houses.”
Eleanor Queen didn’t look relieved. She didn’t soften or grin. After one final glare, she turned and fled back to her room.