Chapter Text
Anne’s breath came hard and fast as if she’d just run the whole length of the Lake of Shining Waters. Her fingers fluttered and fumbled as she grabbed her schoolbag and shoved the strap across her body. Her heartbeat was much too loud in her ears, exhausting itself in its beating like when a loon protecting its young flaps its wings until the threat is gone or it dies.
Oh Lord, Anne thought. Please don’t let me die. She hurried to grab her hat so she could finally breathe in a breath of sweet summer air full of life-giving oxygen. Her lungs certainly weren’t getting enough here in the stale air of the coat room. She spun herself round to hasten out of the schoolhouse and was stopped short by—of course—Gilbert Blythe.
Eyes, she thought. Her own eyes widened. She remembered herself far faster than the last time she’d come face-to-face with Gilbert Blythe. Oh, how foolish she’d been too. Eyes, she thought again, sidestepping Gilbert to walk—no march—out the door and down the steps. Was such a statement an observation or a moment of derision? “No reason it can’t be both,” she heard in Marilla’s steady voice. No, Marilla, she argued with the imagined spectre. It was utter foolishness. How can I focus on my studies and be the Bride of Adventure when I can’t even maintain control of my own body? It was far too humiliating.
“Stupid dancing,” she muttered as she crushed the long grass beneath her feet. “Stupid dancing. Stupid boy.”
“Ahem.”
Anne whirled around, still breathing hard.
“Afternoon Anne.”
“Oh,” she replied. The wind thoroughly gone out of her sails. “Charlie.”
“I was wondering, uh… may I walk with you a ways?”
“Wait. Do you mean walk with me?”
“Yes. If that’s all right.”
“Of course.”
Anne turned back towards her destination, now walking slow enough to allow Charlie to catch up and meet her stride. Her face, which had before felt like the nerves were on fire, fell slack. Almost as if there was no more Anne inside to animate the flesh.
“Did you enjoy the dance practice?” Charlie asked.
“No. I did not.”
“You seem to be a natural at it.”
She turned to him in ghostly horror. “Me? A natural? Noooo, nonono!” There was suddenly life inside ghostly Anne, though she was just as pale and horrified as before. “If anything, I found the whole affair to be torturous! What a ludicrous waste of time! Queens exams are on the horizon and yet we’re spinning around like dying bees? It’s ridiculous! In fact, I can think of an infinite number of things I’d rather spend my time on instead of participating in that…frippery!”
Anne glanced tentatively at Charlie. She saw him purse his lips and look away—almost rolling his eyes. The nerve! Anne thought. This is why we would be such an ill match. He can’t even bear my most tame proclamations. How can he not see it? She sighed and look forwards once more. “How could you possibly not agree?”
“I worry for you, is all.”
Anne stopped. “Worry for me? Why?”
Charlie slowed to a stop, pivoting back to face her. “You think so much and you’re very emotional.”
Emotional? Anne thought. She raised an eyebrow. Charlie Sloane, you are a completely and utterly unsympathetic person. And positively patronizing.
“It might damage your ability to have children in the future.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m sorry. Did you not know? An overly active mind causes women to be barren.”
Anne could only stare. Her eyes were wide, and not from the same overload of earthly sensations from before, in the schoolhouse, with Gilbert. Gilbe—no. What does Charlie mean? How is this possible? Anne felt akin to Mr. Rochester’s first wife in Jane Eyre, full of blind rage and misery. “Excuse me,” she said in a voice far tinier than her rage. “I must be getting back to Green Gables. Thank you, Charlie, for accompanying me part of the way.”
“But we only walked a couple hundred yards!” he called after her as she marched on her way.
She did not look back. Her steps did not falter. She continued her march right through into the forest where she suddenly saw brown right in front of her. She felt her whole body shudder to a stop, and then stumbled backwards into a tree.
Anne screamed. She screamed the scream she imagined Bertha Antoinette Mason screamed when she was locked in Mr. Rochester’s attic, confined forever with no earthly friends. She screamed until her throat stung and her voice gave out. It was only then that she realized there was a hand on her arm and someone saying her name.
“Anne,” the calm, low voice said. “Anne, are you all right?”
She looked up. Eyes, she thought again. And suddenly tears were streaming down her face and she was doubled over in agony. The hand moved to grip her wrist lightly and another found its way to her upper back, guiding her to sit on a fallen tree stump.
She couldn’t stop the emotional havoc her body was wreaking. Oh, how she sympathized with Ms. Mason. She’d always imagined herself Jane Eyre of course, but today she didn’t have Jane’s resolve of spirit.
The hands rested lightly on her back and wrist until her sobs turned to hiccups. She wiped her nose and face on her glove, only slightly horrified at the mixture of tears and mucus smeared on it when she pulled it away. She looked up finally—into Gilbert’s concerned eyes.
He just looked at her for a moment, frowning. “Anne,” he said. “What happened? One moment, we—we were dancing—you were smiling. Now, you’re crying. Did something happen on your walk home?” His eyes widened. “Was it something I did?”
“Oh, it just had to be you, didn’t it?” Anne muttered to herself.
“Anne, I’m sincerely sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“No… sorry. It’s not you.” She huffed. “I know I’m not destined to be a woman of romance and beauty and true love, but I thought I might at least have options.” She sniffed.
“What makes you think you don’t have options? Or beauty, or romance, or love for that matter?”
“Charlie,” she sniffed. “Charlie Sloane said that emotional women are doomed to be barren. And what do I know of it? No one will teach us girls about the science of reproduction. No one cares to tell us girls what is happening to our own awkward, unfortunate bodies. So, while I’ve never thought that intelligence would be a barrier to the nature of being a woman, Charlie Sloane has made me quite aware of how unaware of these issues I am.”
“Also, I don’t understand my own feelings anymore. I used to know exactly where each one came from and how to greet it or transform it or chase it away. Now, I feel as if I were dying at the sight of—” She cut herself off abruptly and took a deep breath. She took care to breathe it out as slowly as she could, looking at her disgusting gloves as she did so.
Gilbert shifted so his body was angled towards hers. He tilted his head. His breathing is normal, Anne thought to herself miserably as she continued make an effort to moderate hers. Finally, should couldn’t stand it any longer. She looked up at him. She couldn’t understand what his face was telling her. She bit her lip and widened her eyes at him pointedly.
“I see,” he said haltingly. “Well, firstly, there’s nothing I’ve seen in my medical experience that would lead me to believe that intelligent women are infertile.”
“Secondly, Charlie Sloane should know better than to spread lies just because he doesn’t understand that some women have depths of emotion and intelligence that he will never feel himself.”
Anne laughed through a hiccup at that one. “He is rather unimaginative, is he not?” she said quietly. “Women are everything men are.”
“You’d think that you matching all my scores would be proof enough.” He nudged her gently with his shoulder.
“Matching? I think you meant to say exceeding.”
“In your dreams, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert.”
“Oh, but Gilbert, my dreams are reserved for things that are far too extraordinary to actually be true.”
“Yeah?” His eyes were intense on hers and a smirk played on his lips. “What do you dream of, Anne?”
It took all Anne’s grit not to let the truly moronic answer that was bubbling to the lips spill out. Eyes was certainly not something she wished to repeat. Instead she searched her brain until it lit on what they’d been discussing before. “Oh no. You were in the middle of answering my concerns. So? Thirdly?”
Gilbert frowned, thinking back. “I really would like to help you, Anne. But I don’t think I can. I’ve been having trouble understanding my own feelings myself.”
He looked down at her; she was gazing up at him with her large blue eyes set against her pale face. After a moment, she shook herself and stood up, extending a hand to pull him up. “Well, if the Great Gilbert Blythe doesn’t know, it shall have to be our next subject of inquiry.”
He stood, watching her, as she began to stroll down the forest path. “I’d like that.”
She turned and he was hit with the radiance of her smile and her bright eyes. She was so resilient, his Anne—Anne. Just Anne.
“Come on!” she called.