Epilogue

Lily

Seven months after Crescent Hill burned to the ground, taking our aunt’s body with it, Violet and I were back at the lake house. We had wanted to go for ages, ever since the fire, but there had been a lot to deal with since Aunt Clara’s death—plenty of paperwork and even statements to the police, though the fire had been ruled an accident, just as we had hoped.

At first, we hadn’t planned on burning Crescent Hill, but then it just seemed safer, since the poison in Aunt Clara’s body would burn away as well, and it would make it easier for us to live on Dina and Joe’s farm. At nightfall on the day of the mushrooms, Violet and I had carried out the most important things—like Gertrud—and then, a little later, Dina had toppled a candle onto the tablecloth in the dining room. It took a while for the fire to catch, but as soon as it did, it moved fast. When the fire truck finally arrived, Violet and I pretended to have just fled the house, and they believed us, too, because we both reeked of smoke and had drizzled hot ashes on our nightclothes. Violet had had to throw away her frilly nightgown after that—the one she got from Mama—which made her very sad.

We had a funeral for Aunt Clara, although there wasn’t much left to bury. Her old nursing friends were there, and also a man we had never heard of before, who said he was Aunt Clara’s “special friend.” He gave us each a mourning brooch with lots of diamonds surrounding a golden C—and even wore one himself on his lapel. Then he asked us what had happened to Aunt Clara’s jewelry collection, and when I told him that the diamonds the firefighters had fished out of the ashes had already been sold, and the money given to Mama’s charity, he seemed even sadder than before. Violet and I gave our C brooches to Dina afterward, saying she could sell them, too, if she liked. Neither of us liked diamonds anymore.

Aunt Clara had also had a lot of debts, and we had to use most of the insurance money after the fire to settle everything. It turned out that she had tried to make her own jewelry line without having the money to pay for it. The designer she had hired had been very frosty with Dina on the phone, saying she had waited for ages to get all her money. I was sorry for that, but I didn’t think it was fair of her to take it out on poor Dina when it was Aunt Clara who had hired her. Perhaps she was just upset that all of her hard work would come to nothing.

When all that was over, Violet and I had spent some time getting used to our new lives on the farm. It was a big change for us, because suddenly we lived not only with Dina and Joe but also with a lot of cows, two cats, and a score of chickens.

We both loved it immensely, though—but not so much that we didn’t still long for the day when I turned eighteen and we could move back to the town house.

The farmhouse was smaller than what we were used to, and Mr. Skye had been worried about that, but Violet and I didn’t need much. We had to share a bedroom now, but that was perfectly fine. It wasn’t as if we were cooped up inside all the time, like we had been on Crescent Hill. We went to school every day and had other things to do besides.

Dina had had a long, serious talk with Mr. Skye after she became our guardian and explained to him how badly we had been treated by Aunt Clara. She did it so that he would think twice next time before dismissing a fourteen-year-old when she called to tell him that things were bad. Mr. Skye was very apologetic and sent us a bunch of roses, which didn’t really help at all, except for making him feel better. But at least he no longer thought that I needed medication.

Violet had joined a drama club and spent a lot of time rehearsing, and I had taken up horse riding with some girls from town, since we still couldn’t find a music teacher. It was fine, though; it really was. Ever since the clearing, playing had been different for me, like it was something personal that shouldn’t necessarily be shared. I still played every day, but I didn’t think about music all the time, or daydream about being onstage. Music to me now had become the time when I could let my hair down and truly be who I was. It was also when Fredric would come and visit me, rapping on the window with his little paw. When I had put Gertrud away, he would come inside and cuddle for a while, or we would go for a walk in the woods. I had never thought that I would have long and interesting conversations with a squirrel, but then again, that wasn’t really what he was. Exactly who our familiar friends were, I still didn’t know—though I had asked—but I imagined they were something halfway between dead and alive, able to look in both directions.

Riding had filled the void that music left behind. Even if I wasn’t very good at it yet, I figured that I could be in time. What I liked most of all was to be in the stable with the animals and take care of them. Nothing felt better to me than to run my hand across a living thing and feel the deep throb of their life within—or even help strengthen it if the animal was sick and no one else was around to watch. I did that in the barn at the farm as well, if one of the cows had an infection or something, bringing with me a bowl of fruit and a cup of water as fuel. Dina knew that I could fix things now and would even ask me to do it.

I had stopped eating meat, too, since I started using my hands on the animals; it just didn’t feel right anymore. I couldn’t help them one day and then eat them the next, and I definitely liked them better alive. Thankfully, Dina understood and never yelled at me for skipping meals, but helped me set up my own menu instead to make sure I got all the right nutrients.

I already knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that whatever I decided to do with my life, it had to be something to do with animals. I had even talked to Mr. Skye about investing in a wildlife sanctuary when I turned eighteen and was thinking about becoming a vet. It was not what Mama and Papa had planned for me—they had always assumed I would be a musician—but I thought they would have liked my change of heart.

Where Violet would end up was anyone’s guess. Things were different for her, because helping the dead was harder than helping the living, it seemed. She was like a light in the dark for them, and they would always find her. No matter where we were or what we did, Violet would often get a distant look on her face, and I knew she was seeing someone dead. She always carried around a hunk of bread, a saltshaker, a candle, and a bottle of water in her backpack, in case she had to help someone move on. I knew for a fact that she had helped a lost janitor in the school’s restroom one time, and a farmhand she found milling around in Dina and Joe’s barn. Sometimes she visited cemeteries, too, where she would find herself a secluded spot and go at it for hours, until all the bread was gone.

A short time after we moved to the farm, a letter arrived, addressed to Aunt Clara. It was from a woman called Miss Margot, whom Violet and Aunt Clara had met while we were on the road, and she begged Aunt Clara for another visit, since her dead father was stuck at the bottom of the ocean.

Violet didn’t remember anything of what had happened during the séance, but she did feel bad for Miss Margot, so she and Dina went to see her, just to talk. The problem with Miss Margot’s father was that he was at the bottom of the sea, so it was hard to find him to do the salt and bread ritual. Violet hadn’t given up, though, and she and Dina had ordered lots of books about mediums and the afterlife to try to figure out a way to coax him to the surface. The two of them also “trained,” as they said, hoping to make Violet able to talk for the ghosts without letting them inside her body. The training consisted mostly of Violet staring into a candle, but I knew that the real work happened inside her head.

I hoped they could help Mr. Brewer eventually, because it didn’t sound fun to be stuck in the sea with only cod for company.

I still worried about Violet, though. I thought that spending so much time with the dead did something to her. We didn’t talk much about Aunt Clara and what had happened at Crescent Hill, since neither of us wanted to think much about it, but when we did, it always left me with a bad feeling in my gut. Not just because I had helped kill someone, but because Violet didn’t seem sorry for it at all.

“It was a crisis,” I said, the one time I confronted her about it. “We did it because she put you in danger and trespassed where she had no business going. She messed up the lady’s rules so she had to go, but we will never do it again.”

“Unless we have to,” Violet replied in a serious voice.

“No, we will never do it again. We will never meet another Aunt Clara. There are no more Aunt Claras.”

Violet looked at me with pity in her eyes. “Lily, there are lots of Aunt Claras.”

“But we won’t…kill them,” I insisted.

“Unless we have to,” she said again, slightly overbearing.

Maybe it had been different before, when our family was bigger and the lady’s power flowed into more people. Fredric had showed me how everyone born in our family got just a piece of it—even the boys sometimes. Like, one person could see colors, while another one could heal the sick, while a third maybe felt things. Then, when family members died, someone else got their gift. Now, with just Violet and me alive, we got everything at once when Mama left, and it was a lot. I didn’t think a ten-year-old was ever meant to spend so much time with the dead. Maybe it was because I belonged to the living side that it felt so horrible to me, but I definitely didn’t like the idea of my sister being so comfortable with murder—even if I had helped commit one.

Still, all through everything, Violet and I had yearned for the lake house. It felt like we had discovered just a tiny bit of what it meant to be in the lady’s service the last time we were there, and Violet was worried about her, too, since she didn’t get any food. I also think she wanted to see colors again, since she hadn’t seen as much as a single tiny flame since the last time we were in the clearing.

Needless to say, we were both overjoyed when Dina finally said we could go.

We packed our bags and loaded them into Dina’s small car but left Joe at home because of the cows. Dina was a much better driver than Aunt Clara, and when we had to stop for the night, she booked us into a clean, nice hotel that was nothing like the Pink Dragon. While we were driving, all Violet and I could talk about was how wonderful the lake house was, so maybe Dina was expecting a palace. If she was disappointed by the sight of the old cabin, she didn’t say it, though, but just strode right inside and started making it her own by unloading groceries and going through the cupboards. We knew that we ought to stay and help her, but we were both so restless that Dina told us to just go. As soon as all our bags were safely inside, I grabbed Gertrud, and Violet grabbed a box of chocolates, and then we slipped into the woods.

It was spring this time so the ground was wet, and the sky above was bleak, but we didn’t mind at all. Irpa was there, too, flying high above us, and even Fredric came to join us as we made the short trek. I wasn’t surprised to see him before us on the path, since I had long since learned that he could travel anywhere I was. It was just how it was with familiar friends.

The clearing looked just the same, though, sunshine or not. It was just as green and just as amazing. And there she was: the lady, looking just as beautiful as before, with her face split in half: one side alive and the other one dead. From under her skirt, the water came bubbling, twisting between brittle old bones and a couple of early spring flowers.

Life and death together.

This was why I didn’t feel too bad about what we had done to Aunt Clara. I had realized that, sometimes, one thing just had to die for something else to live. Even she had believed that, in her way—and maybe that was the reason why she hadn’t come back to ask Violet for anything, not even when we were wading through the ashes of Crescent Hill.

Maybe she, too, knew that it had been inevitable, and left at once when she died.

I had asked Violet what had happened with the ghosts, and she said that they had gone, too, when Aunt Clara died. Then I asked her what would have happened to them if Aunt Clara hadn’t been killed, but had just lived until she grew old and died of a heart attack, and Violet said that they probably would have just continued to mill around at Crescent Hill, looking for a revenge they would never get, so it was good for them, too, what we did. I was especially happy for Miss Lawrence, since she had tried to help us.

All around the lady, flames licked the air, dancing and flickering, making Violet sigh with pure delight.

“Look at that,” she said. “Just look at that, Lily. All the colors…”

“Yes,” I replied, though I admired the other flames as well—those that didn’t have any colors, only gray and black. “She looks just like before.” I couldn’t help but laugh. The clearing was like that—it made you want to smile.

“She’ll like the chocolates for sure.” Violet started across the mossy ground. “Tomorrow, we’ll bring her a roast,” she said, “and eggs from the farm—and honey.”

“Sure we will.” Even if I didn’t eat meat myself anymore, I didn’t mind if the lady did—or if Violet still loved it.

I crossed the clearing in my sister’s tracks, and then—when we were close enough—I put the violin case down by my feet and opened it. “For now, though, she’ll get chocolates,” I said, just as I lifted Gertrud in the air.

“And music.” Violet clapped her hands.

“Yes, music,” I said, and started to play.

I kept going until our toes left the ground.