What do you have to do?”
“Open myself. Tell Her I’m ready.”
“Invite Her in? That’s all?” Like a vampire. But Orla kept the shadowy doubt to herself.
“Like She said when She came to you. All this time, Mama, She was never going to take me. She needed me to fully understand, fully agree. Even if I am only nine. She waited.”
“Then…I’ll be able to leave? Get food for you and Tycho?”
“Yes, of course!”
“It isn’t a trick? Offering me my son to get my daughter? What if you say yes—but Tycho might still be gone, and She gets rid of me, and you become—”
“Mama, I’ll still be me. She wants to live; She doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Please let me do this. We can’t fix what happened with Papa, but the rest of us can live on together.”
Do I have a choice? Eleanor Queen would starve soon. They’d be trapped in the house. Her daughter was already half gone, and her son…if this being was telling the truth, her son would go from “gone” to dead if the tree died before She merged with Eleanor Queen. For so long she’d been afraid of losing both of them; resuming her life as a mother to two children had been an impossibility.
Orla’s resolve—her fight—was waning. She still had so many reasons to say no, but equally as many to say yes. She still questioned Her claim that She regretted what happened to Shaw and hadn’t meant to terrorize them. But she had faith that her daughter would maintain her integrity no matter how the spirit might tempt her to change. If she’s strong enough. It lay unspoken between them that their relationship—their souls—would forever be riven if they walked away without Tycho. Though Orla suspected her daughter would have tried to convince her to allow this even if Tycho’s life hadn’t been a piece on the board. Eleanor Queen was already so deeply entangled, her understanding so recently refined. Was she already a different girl? Or had she simply taken up her mother’s challenge to become fearless, the hero of her own crusade?
At least Eleanor Queen was still waiting to receive her mother’s permission. And Orla wanted to believe in the magnitude of her daughter’s character—to tell the truth, to remain herself, to use the powers she gained toward the betterment of their world. Eleanor Queen deserved a mother who’d have that much faith in her.
“You’re ready, then?” Orla asked her.
“Yes.” She bore an aura of confidence, a sense of peace. “Okay?”
Orla gave the smallest of nods. Eleanor Queen replied with a grin, then shut her eyes.
Mere seconds later, the young woman from the photo emerged from the tree—her hair, her dress, the pentagram clutched in her hand, all identical to the photograph. She wasn’t a ghost floating through a wall but a girl climbing, pushing, wrenching herself through a surface that appeared solid.
Orla gasped; she’d expected high drama. Tornadoes of snow. Lightning strikes. But not this.
Eleanor Queen opened her eyes and smiled. “Don’t be frightened, Mama. I showed Her what She looked like once. We thought it would be easier for you. Just a girl, not the unknown thing you fear.”
Orla watched as Eleanor Queen waited patiently, rosy with excitement, while the girl crawled out of the tree, the opening barely big enough to accommodate her. The tree sealed itself behind her once She was free.
It was uncanny to see a photograph come to life; Orla wanted to shut her eyes but couldn’t. She needed to bear witness, to know what happened. The young woman and Eleanor Queen locked eyes, their grins sweet mirrors of innocence.
The dying girl turned toward Orla. “Thank you, for trying so hard to understand me. I’m sorry for the sorrow I’ve caused. Your love is a palpable thing, and I’m honored to join your family.” Orla only swallowed, unsure what to say. The girl turned back to Eleanor Queen. “Do you accept me?”
“I accept You.”
“We’ll be the best of ourselves, together. Just as you promised.”
“I know.”
And they embraced.
Orla pressed her fingers against her mouth, against the temptation to scream, afraid this would be the last time she ever saw her daughter.
As Eleanor Queen kept her arms around the dying girl in her Victorian dress, the young woman’s form dematerialized. She became disintegrating particles that passed through, into, Eleanor Queen. When she’d absorbed the last speck of the other self, Eleanor Queen turned to Orla, a broad smile on her face.
Orla was torn between feeling let down by the anticlimax of it all and the relief that it had been painless, effortless.
“Step back. It’s starting.” Eleanor Queen gestured for her mother to move out of the way.
A shiver ran up the tree. Orla didn’t know how far to go; if the tree collapsed, which way would it fall? How much of the forest would it crush beneath it? Eleanor Queen stayed beside it, focused, unalarmed as bits of dead branches began raining down.
“Bean?”
“It’s okay, Mama.”
At least she still called her Mama; her daughter wasn’t gone.
“Thank you for the years you housed me,” Eleanor Queen said to the tree. “Your protection, your vision. The gift of the slow course of your life and your intrinsic knowledge. You are free to resume the course of your evolution.” She held out her hand, monitoring something, controlling something in the air.
Would this spirit speak such words to Eleanor Queen someday as she lay on her deathbed, elderly and empty? A hollow shell after her other self moved on?
The sound of splintering wood multiplied, amplified, as it surged upward from belowground. Small branches broke off and fell around them, but that wasn’t the worst of it.
Orla tilted her head back to see the very top of the tree. At first she thought it was on fire, engulfed in black smoke. But no; it was crumbling from the top. Soon darkened flakes began plummeting downward. Filling the air. Making it hard to see, hard to breathe.
“Eleanor Queen?” She said her daughter’s name, but it was her son she was thinking of. Where was he? They were almost out of time. They needed to retreat before the ashfall buried them. She tugged her scarf up over her nose to keep from inhaling the fine debris.
Eleanor Queen concentrated on a lower part of the massive trunk. She brought her hands together, a silent clap, then flipped them so they were back to back. As she moved them apart, a crack appeared in the trunk. The farther apart her hands moved, the wider the crack became. Her arms trembled with the unnatural effort as more of the upper reaches of the tree cascaded as silt all around them.
Nestled in the dark womb, Tycho lay curled on his side, asleep.
“Tycho!” Orla charged in, scooped him into her arms.
“Run!” called Eleanor Queen.
Above them, the largest boughs cracked, broke away, and started to fall. One of them smashed down on a tree only feet away, exploding into splinters on impact. Orla clutched her unconscious boy to her chest, ducking as she grabbed Eleanor Queen’s hand. They fled homeward. Behind them, the tree collapsed in a cloud of dust and shattering limbs.
When they emerged in the clearing behind the house, the tree line had retreated to its original place, no longer a threatening encroachment. Orla dropped to her knees, choking. Particles of blackened tree tickled her throat, her nostrils, but the expanse of snowy yard was a balm, a relief from weeks of pressing claustrophobia. And it filled her with hope that her daughter would be able to keep her—their—word: Orla would finally be able to leave the property and fetch food for her children.
Eleanor Queen stopped beside her, hands on her knees as she too coughed, clearing out her lungs, restoring her breathing—as the nineteenth-century girl within her had never been able to do. The forest behind them lay in a blanket of sooty fog. The ash settled like dark snow.
“Tycho?” Orla laid him gently on the snow, shook him a little, brushed the hair from his dirt-streaked, unresponsive face.
Eleanor Queen huddled beside her. “Is he all right?”
“Tigger?” She kissed his cheeks, rubbed his arms. “Why isn’t he waking up?”
“I don’t know…Tycho?” Eleanor Queen gripped her brother’s fingers, and his eyes sprang open. He blinked, groggy.
“We’re right here, baby.” And Tycho smiled at her. “Oh, love.”
As she held him, rocked him, Eleanor Queen wrapped her arms around both of them.
Her son had come back to life. Her daughter contained a powerful, ageless entity. Christmas miracles. Orla laughed even as her scratched throat protested.
“I’m thirsty, Mama.” Tycho pushed himself into a sitting position, rumpled from his long slumber.
Eleanor Queen cupped snow in her hands. “Tilt your head back.”
He listened to his big sister. The snow emerged from her hands as a little stream of water, which he caught in his open mouth.
“Me too?” Orla tipped back her head and opened her mouth. Eleanor Queen scooped up more snow; it trickled like a faucet from her hands.
Not quite a human ability, but a practical one. A generous one. The spirit might not have always remembered Her human relationships, or communicated the way they did, but She had Eleanor Queen now—a kind girl who would become kinder, wiser.
The threat, at last, was gone.
As Orla carried Tycho the rest of the way to the house, great flakes of snow began to fall. They stopped to marvel at them, each six-pointed wonder the size of a hand, with intricate dendrites. The delicate sculptures drifted from the sky to be caught on outstretched woolly mittens.
“Oh boy!” said Tycho, finally delighted by the magic he’d never understood.
Eleanor Queen tried to hide her pleased grin. “You’re welcome.”