THE LAST--the beginning

PART I
MIDWINTER



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“Hope springs eternal in the human breast. Man never is but always to be blest.”

Sage Stillington’s small head bobbed upwards. The light of a small gas lantern glinted off a head of fine dark curls. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and stared across the small, dusty parlor to the little fireplace carved into the stone walls.

“Mum, what does it mean?” Sage asked.

A tiny light flickered at the fireplace, throwing the shape of a woman into silhouette against the fireplace. The little light held in the woman’s hand moved gently forward, was coaxed under a small pile of logs that stifled the light. Sage frowned slightly and ran her finger again across the passage. The words meant even less to her the second time she read them.

The little light went out at the fireplace.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” came Elis Stillington’s exasperated voice.

“Mum, what does this passage mean?”

“Not now, Sage,” said Elis. “I’m trying to build a fire.”

“But Mum, you said I had to continue my studies—“

“Bore me with Alexander Pope another time, child, I’m trying to keep us all from freezing.”

She turned towards the deep-set window where a small bit of festive holly had been draped. Bright flakes of snow were fluttering from the black sky and were clinging to the old bubbling glass there. The window was already several inches deep with the snow. Sage shrugged.
“But I don’t understand.”

Elis deigned to roll her eyes.

“Dear me, Sage, it was written a hundred years ago, it isn’t meant to be understood.”

Sage opened her mouth to protest, but Elis ducked her head again over the little folded paper envelope of matches that she held. Another tiny light threw Elis’s form into life against the fireplace. Her long dark hair was loose that evening, and it tumbled lightly over her shoulders. She sighed as the light flickered slightly and died as a gust permeated the stone house. She cursed softly and leaned lower over the fire.

Sage unfolded herself from the sofa and pulled the heavy oil lamp from its spot on the table.

“When will the electricity come back on, Mum?” Sage asked.

“When it does, I suppose,” Elis snapped.

Sage knelt beside her mother on the worn hearth rug.

“I think it means that hope can always be found, if you only look. I think it means that as immortal as the human soul is, that is as immortal as hope is, for where there is a human will, there must be hope. A person has no reason to live if they don’t have some hope for the future. Men and women have hope, forever and always, even if they abandon it temporarily in their despair . . . they can’t be anything but blessed, because they have hope.”

Elis let the match in her fingers die and she gaped at her daughter in the low light of the oil lamp.

“I never understood that passage,” she said, drawing back from her daughter a bit.

Sage smiled, shrugged, and thrust forward the oil lamp.

“Here, light so you can see what you’re doing.”

Elis frowned slightly. “Take it away, Sage, I don’t need it.”

“But—“

“Take it away,” Elis said, kindly but sternly. She ground her knees slightly into the hearth rug and readied another match to strike along the bricks. “Go on!”

“I’m just trying to be helpful,” Sage persisted.

“Be mindful of that next time,” Elis said, giving Sage a gentle shove. “Leave me in dark peace, now.”

And so Sage got up and retreated back to the sofa with the lamp, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees so she could watch her mother’s attempts. She pulled a blanket over her knees as heavy footsteps announced the entrance of her brother.

“How’s it going, Mum?” he asked, his chin raised importantly.

“Oh, divine, Roger, because as you see there is a roaring fire and the house is warm and comfortable. Where’s your father, damn it? He could build a fire in five seconds flat!”

“Outside, putting things inside,” Roger said with a smile. “And I’ll go back out in a moment to help. Let’s see if I can’t do that, Mum.”

Elis frowned.

“I think I can get it.”

“Oh, I’m certain you can, Mum, I just don’t want to wait that long, frankly. We’d all be dead of hypothermia.”

“Impudent little wretch,” Elis muttered, shaking her head. “I gave birth to you, you know!”

“A lot of good that did the world,” Sage commented from the sofa, where she was poring over the book a bit more. Roger and Elis turned to her, but her eyes were flying over the words and she ignored them again.

“Please, Mum, you know that I can do it!” Roger implored. “I am a man!”

“Oh? By whose description, precisely?”

She eyed him up and down. He was taller than she was, though this was not a difficult thing to achieve. His limbs were long and gangling, like his father’s. Sage smiled over her book at his awkward frame. She had always thought that he looked rather like a bird, with great long arms about ready to flap him away into flight, with his thin little legs darting about in ungainly disarray. His large dark eyes were prideful and she had always kept this particular opinion to herself.

He smiled suddenly as Elis sighed and held out the matches. He reached into his pocket to draw out a long white cigarette, but Elis groaned and said, “If you do, I will lock you out in the snow.” So he stowed away the cigarette and stooped down on the hearth. Elis sat down beside Sage and watched raptly as Roger struck match after match. Sage glanced up from time to time, but simply kept her eyes moving across the lines of the book. She had almost forgotten the snow and the cold and the fire and Roger and her mother, when she was touched gently by a hand from behind her. She jumped slightly.

“Oh, hullo Verity,” Sage said, looking up into her sister’s round, smiling face. Verity was three years older than Sage, a young lady in the most stylish of clothes as she drifted loftily around the sofa to lay a hand on Roger’s shoulder.

“Give it up.”

Roger threw the burnt match he held at the back of the fireplace and cursed loudly. Elis reprimanded him sharply and Verity gave him a gentle slap on his shoulder. He gave a great huff of irritation and got a face full of ashes.

Sage sat up straight and set the book aside, staring at the unlit logs there in the fireplace. She rose.

“Let me try,” she said.

“You can’t; it’s impossible,” Roger declared, rising from his squat by the fireplace. He waved at the fireplace to indicate that he, Roger, had tried and failed and that if he, Roger, had tried and failed, then no one else could possibly succeed.

“I can try, though,” Sage said.

Roger huffed slightly as he stared back into the black fireplace. He threw up his arms in defeat, making Verity gasp and step backwards a few feet to avoid his flailing arms.

“Fine!” he declared, sitting down in the nearest chair.

Sage smiled, jumped up from the sofa, and hurried down to kneel before the empty logs. She hummed as she struck a match. She stared into the logs in the fireplace, and rearranged them slightly, placing more kindling underneath and pulling the logs upwards into a tipi formation. Another match blazed swiftly in her fingers, then died slightly, lighting only the shimmering outline of her white skin and dark curls. She thrust the delicate little fire forward, and held it until the fierce red flames nearly touched her tender white fingers. Just as she was about to drop it, the flame caught a bit of kindling, and she drew in a breath. The tiny flame grew, caught another piece of kindling, and then another. Sage smiled with glee and sat back, staring into the fire and letting out the breath.

“Marvelous,” Roger muttered. “I’ll never hear the end of this.”

Elis smiled and sat back in the sofa. She found her hand resting against the book that Sage had been reading. She lifted it; the page was still open. Her eyes scanned over the words. She looked up.

“Why this isn’t Pope . . . this isn’t even English . . . “

Roger had reached again into his pocket for the cigarette, but Elis hissed at him and Verity gave a soft, “Oh really Roger!” and he stowed it away angrily. Elis laid down the book and promptly forgot about it. Verity stared into the fire with a vacuous smile on her lips. Roger thrummed his fingers on his knee and the snow smacked against the window outside.

As the fire burned low and Elis and Verity and Roger talked softly, Sage sat staring into the flames. Eventually, Elis looked to the fire.

“Sage, dear, it needs more wood.”

Sage’s dark curls bobbed as she rocked forward an inch or so and then backwards an inch or so. Her thick woolen green dress glimmered brightly about the edges from the light of the fire. Elis leaned forward to the edge of the sofa.
“Sage. It needs more wood.”

“Sage?” Roger said, his eyebrows darting inwards towards his nose.

“Sage, dear?” Elis said.

Elis got up and walked over, standing with her boot a foot behind Sage. She stooped down but didn’t touch her daughter.

“Sage?” she whispered.

Sage rocked backwards and forwards. Her tiny fingers, long and slender with long fingernails, were moving against her knee. Elis leaned closer and saw that the fingernails were clawing at Sage’s knee, where the green dress had fallen down to Sage’s thigh. A tiny trickle of blood was winding down Sage’s calf.

“Sage?”

A tiny drop of blood shone bright in the light of the fire. Then it slipped to the floor. Sage rocked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth . . . over and over . . . . another drop of blood. Elis gasped, fell to her knees, grasped Sage by the shoulders.

“Sage! Sage!”

Sage’s eyes grew wide and glassy, and her body became suddenly rigid and brittle. Elis screamed as Sage’s hands and feet began to twitch slightly.

“Get your father!” she cried.

She grasped Sage’s flailing limbs in her hands and was suddenly weeping and screaming. Roger disappeared with a white-faced nod and was out in the snow in two bounds. Verity dropped beside Elis, her eyes panicked, and grasped Sage’s head in her lap.

“Oh, Sage!” Elis cried. “My Sage.”

A tall, thin man with a tired expression came in the door with Roger in tow. He stopped briefly to look down at Sage, then he announced gruffly, “Seizure.”

And he lifted the little, twisting body in his arms and clamped it to his wet chest, and he smoothed back the hair gently and he carried her out of the parlor. Elis rushed forward to fling open the door. She was about to hurry behind her husband when Roger stopped her.

“No Mum, there isn’t enough room in the auto. We’ll take her to the hospital and come back later.”

He reached up and gave her a tiny kiss on the cheek before he turned and hurried to the auto which gunned to life and disappeared into the night.



Sage felt her eyelids in the most peculiar and unnatural way. She couldn’t remember ever thinking about her eyelids before. But as she lifted them, they were heavy and achy. The only thing to greet her eyes was blackness. She blinked again, trying to clear her eyes, trying to see where she was. But in a moment’s time, she realized that everything around her was completely and inexplicably black.

She sat up slowly, surprised by how light she suddenly felt. She could see her fingers and her arms and her legs and her feet. A deep blush fluttered over her cheeks; she was wearing only a simple white shift that covered very little. She clutched it close but she was not cold, and there was no one here to see her.

“Am I dead?” she whispered. There was no answer. There was no sound at all.

She turned about in confusion, but there was nothing behind her just as there was nothing in front of her. Her fingers curled into her palms in fright as she held them against her chest. She turned about again, and was suddenly cold.

Then she saw, under her feet, that a thin white line had been drawn from under her toes. She watched, enthralled, as the line extended outwards, broke into two, then four, then eight, then sixteen, until she could not count the lines any longer. They flowed around her like water until she saw that she stood on a wooden floor and that there were walls traced in thin white lines.

“Is this hell?” she asked to the invisible entity that she knew did not exist.

She looked up and saw thin white lines tracing a ceiling over her head.

Then, before her, she saw a white human figure sketched against the floor. It was feminine, as nearly as the ethereal white lines could dictate. Sage moved closer, stared at it but did not dare to get very close. When it moved suddenly, Sage leapt and cried out in surprise. But the thing moved right through her, past her, down what appeared to be a short corridor. Then the ghost stopped, reached forward, and went backwards a step. It was the familiar motion of opening a door. Suddenly, two more figures appeared, both of them male and tall in the sketchy white lines. Sage watched them with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

“Hello?”

They did not answer, of course. She stepped closer, and a sudden dense black swirling engulfed her feet. The floor beneath her had changed to a stirring mist of the deepest, most hideous black. She lifted one foot out of panic, but the mist did not seem dangerous. When she looked up, the sketched images had been filled in with a soft, luminous white light. They were almost human now, but too luminous to have any individual identity. Sage peered towards one, but could tell nothing about it except its gender.

“Are you a ghost, perhaps?” she asked. “No?”

The ghost did not answer, and it made no sign of hearing her. She was content to think of it as a ghost as she glanced around herself. When she looked down at the hands that clutched the thin nightgown, she gasped. They were very peculiar indeed, not the faint pinkish tan of life but a shining gold. She held out her fingers and saw, with some awe, that she could see every last blood vessel in her hand. She twirled her fingers before her.

“Perhaps this is purgatory and I am the ghost,” she whispered.

But as she spoke, something like skin slipped over the veins of her hands, and she was like a life-sized, moving statue of gold. But in a moment she had decided that this was a dream of course, this changing and peculiar place. For only in a dream could she see ghosts and be a ghost at the same time. She looked up at the figures, who were starting to move about very swiftly. As she stood still, they moved all around her, little puffs of their white mist drifting gently over her. She was comforted and warmed by the glow of each of them as they scurried about.

“What is it? Why do you dart about like that?” she whispered to herself, liking the sound of her voice in the void of silence. “What is it? Is something wrong there in your world? Did I read about something like this? Or did my mind come up with this dream on its own?”

But there was no one to answer her.

Then she saw that the two figures were carrying something between them, something large but light. Before she could investigate, they had disappeared out of the door. The woman went to close the door. Sage gasped. Wherever the two male forms were going, she wanted to follow them, though she did not know why. As the woman’s fingers touched the door, Sage darted forward, still clutching the night gown to herself. Then she stopped and stared in consternation, for the two figures had vanished completely.

An auto, she decided; they had driven away in an auto.

Then, she turned with her eyebrows furrowed. It seemed so peculiar, so strangely familiar. The hallway, the door, the step.

And as she turned, and her hand came up to her mouth and she gasped in realization, she saw the tiny wooden plank nailed by the front door and as she read it, she stepped backwards and she disappeared into a dense black fog.

“Stillington,” it read.



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Avril Stillington Tillfield was awoken from a peaceful, restful slumber by a very sharp, rapid tapping at the front door of her home. As she turned over, her eyebrows worked against the urge of her eyes to fly open. A soft, defeated breath passed over her lips and she sat up, the thick covers clinging around her shoulders and holding the warmth close to her. Her thick woolen nightgown clung to her with a thin layer of sweat from the heat under the covers. The rapping at the door came again, more urgently than before. A dog was barking loudly and sharply, its shrillness slicing through a calm frigid night in the village. Avril leaned over and touched her husband’s shoulder, rocked him gently.

“Davin,” she whispered. “Davin, there’s someone at the door.”

He mumbled into the sheets and Avril prodded him further.

“Someone is at the door, Davin.”

“Aye,” he murmured softly, and then he was quiet and his breaths came lugubriously again and he was asleep.

Avril sniffed indignantly but rose from the bed, shivering as the cold air of the bedroom bit through the clinging warmth of the bed. She stared out the window. Snow was falling through an early-morning black sky. She hurried over the short width of the bare wood floor to her cloak, which she wrapped around herself quickly. She let the old door creak as she crept out into the hall and went to the front door, staring out of the small window beside the door to see a short, balding man standing there, beating mercilessly on the door. Avril sighed and threw the bolt, twisted the lock, and turned the old brass knob, opening the door and standing aside as it swung against the wall of the tiny, untidy hall that adjoined the little parlor.

Snow cascaded in the door and landed at Avril’s bare feet. She stared into the eager face of a man she had known since she was very young. It had been a long time since he had been taller than her. His round face was red in the cheeks from the cold and his lips were a faint purplish hue. He extended a hand cordially and smiled.

“Missus Tillfield,” he said genially.

“Good morning, Mr. Amos,” Avril returned curtly. “What brings you hear as this hour of the morning? No one’s died have they?”

Mr. Amos laughed tightly and his smile tugged at the edge of his lips. Then he retracted his hand and glanced at the cozy indoors. Avril narrowed her eyes very slightly and ignored the blatant plea of the old man to be let into the warmth. She folded her arms; the man had never been welcome to anyone in the village, though he fancied himself the town crier. When his eager face appeared at a door, the news was always either bad or scandalous.

Avril was too stolid of personality to find herself in very much fear. The only thing she had ever feared completely was the thought of being alone, and she never had admitted that, even to herself. On the other hand, she was quick to temper, especially by things that threatened the peace of her life there in the village. She had learned of danger and had learned of the ways to avoid it; and she told herself sternly that she feared nothing, not even the bad news lingering on the edge of Mr. Amos’s eagerness.

“No one’s dead, Missus Tilllfield,” responded Mr. Amos breathlessly. He rubbed his hands together, clearly savoring the withholding of the information that he held. His smile tugged at his lips momentarily.

“Then what is the news, Mister Amos, or have you simply stopped by for a sight of my nightgown?”

His cheeks blushed slightly at this impropriety but Avril tapped her foot impatiently.

“Well?” she demanded.

“It’s your sister,” Mister Amos said.

“Yes? What about her? Has she eloped?”

“What, with the awful boy from the next village?” said Mister Amos, clearly startled by the very thought, and forgetting his news.

“I’m joking!” Avril said. “What’s the news?”

“Oh, yes, it’s not Verity at all, it’s Sage.”

“Yes?” Avril demanded angrily.

“She’s in the hospital. She had a seizure.”

“Dear God!” Avril gasped.

Before Mister Amos could go on, Avril had turned, clasped her cloak tighter around her and slammed the door shut against the frigid air and snow. A few flakes were thrown into a swirl by the wind of the shutting door. Avril hurried back through the hall, back into her bedroom, throwing on the electric light and noting without words that the electricity had not come back on. She reached for her trusty old oil lamp and lit it.

“Wake up Davin!” she cried over the sound of her rustling through the wardrobe that took up the greater half of the bedroom. She glanced in the mirror and was again surprised by the passing of time. Her hair was blonde, like her fathers, but she had her mother’s softer features. She touched the mirror where a few lines were beginning to be impressed at the soft edges of her eyes and the corners of her mouth.

Davin was rolling up out of the bed and he gazed blearily at her through the misty yellow light of the gas lamp.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Sage had a seizure.”

“What?” she asked, clearly not trusting what he had heard.

“Sage, my sister, she has had a seizure! She’s at the hospital, we have to go to her. Come on, now, hurry.”

“A seizure? Little Sage?”

“Yes Davin.”

“Why do I have to go? I can’t help any, can I? I sell dry goods. Do you really need my dead weight?”

“Yes,” Avril said, “all of it.”

She was pawing through countless dresses in the wardrobe and finally, giving up, pulled out the next one on which her fingers fell. She pulled it out and sighed at its woeful drabness. It was of a simple, unadorned brown muslin dress with unflattering lines. But it was one of the better dresses she owned, so she pulled off her clothes and began to pull it on. As she tugged the dress over her breasts, a hand clasped her shoulders, and she saw his frown in the mirror. He turned her around and brushed her cheek with a kiss.

“It will be all right.”

“I know,” Avril said, bristling.

“You aren’t afraid?”

“No!” she said, too sharply.

Davin winced slightly and shrugged, retreating to his own side of the wardrobe, where he pulled out a suit to pull over his thickening, manly form. He ran a comb through his hair, a thin yellowish mop. She was ready first, and was lacing her boots when he was pulling on the jacket. There was a long silence as he stared at her sitting on a chair with her chin in her hand and her eyes gazing dazedly into the dark wardrobe. He came over and lifted her from the spot by her shoulders.

“Come on,” he said, without making mention of the fact that she had claimed not to be afraid.

They walked out the front door, locking it behind them. Avril turned to look down the slope of the village and onto the river. It was a dark night, and the snow was rimming the banks where the ice had frozen there. Davin was pulling her along. She glanced back at their home, an unassuming, rather ugly little house of indiscriminate age and make set in a line of such buildings. The cobbled road was muffled by a thick layer of snow. There was no sidewalk here, because the streets were too old and too narrow. She was led through the frigid air by Davin until they reached the main road of the town which twisted down to the water. There she pressed his hand and went ahead of him.

She led the rest of the way, through the narrow, twisting streets of town. They went down towards the abandoned, damp quay and turned left and went winding down three roads that seemed to be circuitous. Finally, they ended up near the edges of the village, half of the way down the slope, staring up at the ramshackle old building that had been converted into a hospital for the Great War. Its windows were lit at night by the white-draped nurses with the large red crosses upon their arms. Avril took a deep breath.

“Avril, she’ll be all right,” said Davin.

“She had a seizure Davin.”

“Aye, and if she was going to die of it, she would have already done so. A seizure won’t kill a person after it’s struck. The worst that will happen is . . . “

He broke off and shrugged his shoulders, shutting his mouth tightly without another word and leading her up the steps.

“What’s the worst, Davin?”

He shook his head.

“The worst has passed,” he assured her. “You’ll see, she’ll be all right. I know how much you adore the little thing, I can’t imagine . . . but she’ll be all right, Avril, no matter what. I trust in that.”

“I’m not sure whether that’s bravery or naivety,” Avril said.

“But, Avril . . . it may sound rather callous . . . but don’t cry too hard if she dies. She’s only thirteen years old, and all of those thirteen years have been happy. Very few people can die without regrets. If she has died or if she does die, she will have died a very happy girl.”

Avril frowned, and he saw tears welling in her eyes, and he hastily went to wipe them away with his thumb.

“You’re right,” she said, “it does sound callous.”

The door was opened and she swept through, clutching her little purse to her chest. Inside, the place was tight with dark red, antiquated carpet and dusty brown upholstery. A broken, wispy woman with mussed gray hair was weeping in the corner, with a well-intentioned nurse standing and cooing over her.

Avril worked her fingers against her bag and peered down the long corridor of the abandoned mansion. A little, wide-eyed nurse came out of a far room and stopped at the sight of them. She walked forward with a beaming smile, as though it was nothing but a joy to see another person there to suffer.

“I hope that you aren’t here to see Mister Harold Gaulling?”

“No,” said Avril sharply.

“Oh, good, good!” cried the nurse happily. “Then you don’t have to hear about his death from me. It’s always awful to tell someone of the death of a loved one, especially when they’ve suffered as Mister Gaulling did. Terrible, terrible case. Leprosy.”

“L-leprosy?” Davin stammered, his eyes bulging.

“Oh, well, yes, but it isn’t something we fear much these days . . . at least, not until after you’ve contracted it.” The woman smiled. “Then it’s rather nasty, isn’t it?” She leaned close. “He lost his nose and three fingers and a bit of his arm before he snuffed it you know.” She leaned back. “Now, then, are you here to see Miss Sage Stillington?”

Avril’s eyebrows had plummeted dangerously, and her lips had pulled in tight to form an ominous, o-shaped pucker. Davin gripped her tightly by the arm and said, “Yes,” before Avril could open her mouth to rebuke the nurse.

“You are her sister, then?” said the nurse with the first hint of sadness that she had yet shown.

“Aye,” Avril answered swiftly. “Is she alive?”

“Oh, yes, quite alive,” said the nurse with a sigh. “I suppose it’s gentler to let you see her, isn’t it? I’m terribly sorry that these things happen to such nice people.”

The nurse clutched a little pad of paper and pencil to her and it pressed under her chin. She sighed again, shook her head, and looked towards one of the gas lights guttering along the corridor.

“So unfortunate . . . but they like it when I smile.”

She smiled wanly and then shook her head as a little tear came to her eye and she led them towards the nearest door from whence she had just come.

“Quite a little case, your sister. She’s been ill repeatedly . . . pneumonia of late. No sign of anything at all, not a blessed thing, she hasn’t even got a temperature. In fact,” said the nurse as she laid a hand on the doorknob, “she seems to be completely healthy for the moment, except for the glaring fact that she’s comatose. We can’t quite say what it is.”

“A weak heart,” Avril whispered. “That’s what they always said at least.”

“Who, dear?”

“The doctors,” Avril said. She found that Davin had woven his fingers through hers.

The nurse nodded and smiled as she pushed the door open.

The room was a most peculiar little place. It was lined with dark blue wallpaper of the most expensive variety, with dark wood paneling beneath a wide chair rail. The floors were glossy with polish. But the bed was covered in starched white linen, and there was a tray of boiled and sanitary instruments, including a long thin glass syringe with a diamond of liquid at its tip. The nurse whispered to Avril.

“She was in convulsions when she was brought her. We had to sedate her. She probably won’t convulse again.”

Avril winced.

The tiny body was laying still under a thick layer of the stiff covers, with the knees pulled up slightly and the arms laid over the covers in the most illusory way. Long dark lashes lay gently against the pale white skin of the young girl’s face. The curls splayed against the pillow in the faint depression where her head rested. Avril stepped forward and noticed for the first time that her mother was sitting beside the little body, with her wide eyes reflecting the light of a bevy of candles used in the stead of the bare electric bulb dangling from the plaster ceiling. Pa was standing behind her, looking down grimly on the tiny spectacle. Roger and Verity were sitting quietly, patiently, nervously by the window. Roger was twirling a cigarette. When he looked up and saw her, he leapt up with a faint smile, clearly glad to see her. Verity didn’t seem to notice that Avril had entered. Her eyes were too full of un-blunted horror for her to register the fact that Avril had arrived.

Suddenly, Avril realized that it had taken hours for them to contact her and that she had been notified by a nosey villager. In another hushed moment, she realized with a pang that she had been in all senses of the word forgotten. It would take her far longer to realize that this hurt her deeply.

She stood mutely at the foot of the bed, and the nurse gave a sympathetic little cluck before she gathered things up.

“I’ll fetch a doctor, if you would like.”

“What for?” Avril whispered, for she felt she ought to whisper in such a place. “Is there anything that can be done?”

“No, dear. I’m afraid not. The damage is already done, and she may or may not awake. I don’t know, no one knows for certain . . . “

“But the doctors, they aren’t hopeful?”

“No,” affirmed the nurse. Her eyes were turned down in pity. “No, there’s isn’t a great deal of hope that she’ll wake. And if she were to awake . . . well, I think you understand that the brain affects . . . well, it affects everything . . . If she was to awake, she would probably not be the girl you knew. Perhaps it is best to begin to prepare to say goodbye to her. The doctor told me to prepare you . . . he said it is usually best that, when something like this occurs, there is a funeral for the soul of the person which has died within the living shell.”

“Should we . . . “ Davin began, then he stopped, cleared his throat of emotion. “Should we begin to prepare a sort of . . . a sort of . . . funeral?”

“No,” said Elis sharply from her seat at Sage’s side. “No!”

“But—“

“We can’t start that foolishness yet. Miracles can still happen!”

“Oh, but Missus Stillington,” said the nurse, “I don’t think . . . damage to the brain is quite irreversible . . . “

There was a sigh from the other side of the room. It was Verity, and she was dabbing tears from her cheek. Roger sat down and stared at her in confusion, blinking slightly in consternation at the twinkling tears slipping down her cheek.

“But I’m not going to give up, damn it,” Elis said.

“I’m so sorry, madam. I really am, she’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she? It’s such a horrible pity to think that she may be . . . that she may never wake up again. You must come to grips with it, Missus Stillington, because it has happened. I hate to think of the pain it causes you to look at her there, but the daughter you knew is gone. She may never come back.”

“But I won’t give up,” Elis said through her teeth. “I can’t.”

Pa’s hands suddenly clenched on her shoulder. He leaned over, whispered in her ear, and she sat straight suddenly, and leapt from her chair. She leaned forward.

“My God,” she whispered, loud enough to be heard.

All those in the room leaned forward. Avril took a step forward, peered closer. Verity stopped dabbing at her tears. Roger drew in a breath. A soft moan came from the bed and the little head of curls tossed.

“She’s waking up,” Elis whispered.




Mister Amos, with the door shut in his face, had huffed angrily and stared up into the snow, which fell into his eyes. He had frowned and pivoted on his foot and lopped down the stairs with an angry gate. His footsteps had been muffled along the street as he came to the main street where he had paused to stare down at the dark village. The only lights had been the old gas lamps that still were in place along the main thoroughfare. The only thing moving within sight was the snow and the few ships that remained anchored in the harbor. He glanced up the hill and down, and reached into his pocket for a cigarette.

Then behind him he had heard footsteps, and had leapt with surprise to see a tall, slender woman striding down the sloping hill towards him. She was a handsome, fine-featured woman of thirty years. She wore a well-cut white dress and was wrapped tightly in a woolen red cloak, the hood laying about her shoulders. Gold-red hair shone in the snowy half-light. He forgot the cigarette in his fingers and raised his voice.

“Lady Dahlia Witson, ma’am!” he called. “What are you doing out at such an hour as this?”

She stopped shortly in the street and smiled.

“Ah, Mister Amos.”

“It’s cold and snowing and it is very early in the morning!” he said to her. She raised her eyebrows slightly and nodded.

“I realize that.”

“Where is your auto?”

“At home. I wanted to walk.”

“All the way from Rhos Manor, up by the moor?”
“Yes. I like to walk.”

“Hear, hear, I despise automobiles, awful stinking things. Not gentile at all.”

“I find them fascinating and excruciatingly useful,” answered Lady Witson coolly. Her big gray eyes wandered over the nighttime landscape.

“Where are you headed, ma’am?”
“The hospital.”
Mr. Amos raised his eyebrows and gave a small start of surprise. He ran his fingers along his thin mustache.

“Oh, to see Miss Sage Stillington? Did you hear already?”

“Sage Stillington?” said Lady Witson sharply. “In the hospital? Why?”

“She had a seizure, and she’s comatose. They called my wife to have her come in early to help there at the hospital . . . she couldn’t you know, rather ill . . . a nice nurse there told my wife all about the dear little girl’s misfortune, and of course she mentioned that the girl’s eldest sister wasn’t—“

“She’s alive?”

“Yes, as I said she’s comatose. They don’t think that she’ll wake—“

“I’m terribly sorry, I stopped listening after the first few words, you know, or I wouldn’t have asked . . . well, well . . . that’s something indeed.”

Inexplicably, she looked upwards towards the heavens, where the only stars were the falling snowflakes. Mister Amos stared up in the same direction and frowned, seeing nothing. When he lowered his eyes, he saw her gray eyes wandering slightly in the sky.

“Is there something there?”

“The moon is going to be full soon.”

“But how do you know—“

Lady Witson lowered her head and laughed lightly. “Almanac, my dear man.”

“You . . . .er . . . if you aren’t going to see Miss Stillington, then who are you going to see at the hospital?”

“A foolish, ill boy.”

“Oh.”

“A boy who I have given half of my soul to.”

She walked past him. Then suddenly she stopped, and stared again to the night sky. She reached out a hand, covered in a black glove. Snowflakes landed there and melted instantly. She clenched her hand shut. And a bright golden light flowed from between her fingers. Mister Amos stared. He lowered his glasses to the end of his nose, rubbed at the bridge of his bulbous nose, but the light still flowed like hot liquid from the woman’s hand. As he stared, she turned, and smiled.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Magic,” she said, just loudly enough to be heard.

Then she walked away. A few minutes later, his heavy steps plodded back into his own bedroom. His sickly wife blinked up at him.

“Did anything exciting happen?”

He frowned, and answered with sincere disgust. “Of course not. This village is as boring and normal as it could possibly be. Nothing strange ever happens!”

CONTINUE READING SAGE IN MY PORTFOLIO.