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Once she had finished her breakfast, Adele ran up the stairs to her room to change into a skirt that gave her more mobility for gathering wood, one that fell above the ankles. She laced up her boots and put on her wool coat, scarf, and gloves. A carriage stopped in front of the house just as she stepped off the last rung of the stairs, and so, to avoid Benjamin, she hurriedly snuck out the back door through the kitchen onto the storm porch. Mei Ling gave her a confused glance when she passed by but said nothing.
As soon as Adele opened the porch door, a blast of frozen air hit her. Clouds had returned, though they were not low enough to warm the earth. A storm gathered to the north, foretold by gusts of wind that prickled her face. Her nose and cheeks grew numb within seconds. Even the steam from her breath seemed frosty. Icicles had formed on the overhang over the back walkway. Fallen leaves sprouted barbs of crystals pointing in the direction the wind had blown.
Safe from her cousin’s eyes, she decided to stay out as long as she could manage the cold. She’d bide her time in the garden and return once the carriage—with him in it—drove away. Hopefully, her aunt wouldn’t invite Benjamin for supper.
She pulled her thick wool scarf tighter over her head and covered her chin. The ground under her feet crunched as she walked, but her wool coat kept her warm enough that the beauty and magic of hoarfrost lured her away from the house. Her first thought was to wander toward the neighbor’s property and see if she could find where the lights she had seen came from. Exhaustion the night before might have caused her delirium, but she never before had been stricken with hallucinations. She had a young and healthy mind and had stared at the lights for a good long while. She swore they were real.
In her uncle’s yard, beyond the stone beds filled with leaves and mulch, past a water fountain and benches covered in frost, a footpath to the neighbor's property ended at a tangled mass of dormant honeysuckle. The vines were thick and in one spot, wrapped around the wrought-iron fence. To open the gate would take a great deal of effort, but she could see a trail surrounded by bramble bushes on the other side. Unable to move any farther than the vines, Adele sighed in frustration and turned around, about to give up. She’d gather firewood from the woodpile near the back door, return to the manor, and face her dreaded cousin. At least the house was warm.
Before she made up her mind, she eyed the same illuminations she’d seen the night before, shining through the foliage on the other side of the fence. Not a white light. The clusters were more of a transparent glow and drifted, floating through the icy bramble first in one spot—then nothing—and then directly opposite from where they’d been.
Determined to find a way onto the neighbor’s property, Adele bent back the strongest limb, pushed on the vine with her shoulder while pulling the gate. The rusty hinge squeaked, the branches moaned, and the gate gave way. A whiff of honeysuckle still lingering from summer’s perfume caught her as she passed. Her heart raced with excitement.
She let the gate stay open and stepped lightly over the frozen ground for fear of scaring the wonder. If it were a ghost, she wanted to see it. The light rounded a bend ahead of her, and when she came to where it had turned, the thicket ended, and she found herself at the edge of what was once a courtyard. A fountain of magnificent size stood before her. Two tiers of pools in the shape of shells surrounded an alabaster woman holding a water jug. The statue had a cracked hand sealed with moss, now brown and frozen, which also grew the folds of her dress. Ice, frozen twigs, and leaves had blown into the recesses of the pools during the latest storm. Frost coated a row of garden beds to her right. To her left, two privets bordered a staircase that led down a hill to a stand of birch trees some distance away. On the slope, headstones jutted out of the rocky ground.
“The family graveyard,” Adele muttered, terrified and yet in awe. She stood quietly, absorbing all that she saw, mesmerized for a moment. What a grand place this must have been in its day—now destroyed and forgotten. She would love to know its history. Who had lived here? Where was this old man’s family, and why had they let the property disintegrate so?
Undecided as to what she should explore first, she was distracted by the mysterious light that appeared near a garden bed beyond the fountain.
She moved cautiously toward it as the whole of its form came into focus.
What she saw appeared transparent and glowing, shaped like a shadow but light instead of dark. It rolled over what was once a rose bed, and she gasped, for as it moved, the moldy dead roses it hovered over burst with color, brightening everything around it. This was the light she had seen from her window. The flowers budded unexpectedly—red and pink—the most stunning roses she had ever seen, with delicate hoarfrost lacing their petals. Her breath left her as the entire garden lit with color—now yellow roses...and white.
Her gasp drew the attention of the light-shadow figure. It turned to face her. In that transparency, a young man’s face stared at her. He had a head of curls, wide eyes and full lips, and an innocence about him. Her eyes locked with his and something inside of her connected to him. A desire to know who and what he was? Sympathy? Intrigue? She wasn’t sure what emotion stirred her. Not fear. It was the miracles which he performed that melted her heart and gave her a grave desire to know him.
A sudden gust of wind rustled the trees and blew mist into her eyes, obstructing her vision. When she could focus again, the light-shadow had vanished, and the roses had wilted into muted brown. Only the frost, the cold, and the threat of an impending snowstorm remained.
She shuddered, stunned by what she had observed, and by the drop in temperature. She quickly wrapped her scarf tighter around her head and hurried back through the vine-covered trail to the gate. When she reached the fence she stopped, for there in her uncle’s yard wandered Benjamin, calling her name.