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It’s rare for two ghosts to inhabit the same space. If they do, it’s usually because they died together. Otherwise…
Well. There was one case.
Elijah had been dead for so long that he was starting to forget his life.
There was a family, he thought. A brother and a sister—perhaps more, but he could remember two most clearly. His brother’s arm across his shoulders, the twirl of his sister’s dress. Their faces were blurry now.
He didn’t know how he died. All he could remember from that night was pain. Pain and shouting.
Well, maybe a few other things.
It had been a busy night at the Tavern. As usual, he supposed; since the Founding a few months ago, there had been a steady stream of customers at all hours of the afternoon and night. Still, that particular night had seen a particularly wild gathering in both the dining hall and near the bar.
He could hardly recall what made him look up—a curse, a shout, a movement—but when he did, it was just in time to see a flash of metal swishing through the air, aimed at the unprotected back of an older man. The older man was a regular drunk, still belligerent despite the long-past end of the war, but that didn’t mean he deserved to die.
Elijah wasn’t even sure what happened after he stepped forward, but he hadn’t taken the knife for the old man. Instead, he had knocked the blade to the ground, only to be shoved back himself. Then he was spinning, spinning around, facing some other direction, and then…
Pain.
The feeling of his skin ripping open, of liquid, blood, running down his chest. It soaked his shirt, some errant thought that it had been a gift, and then his knees hit the ground, and everything went black.
Eventually, he woke again. Days, weeks later.
The Tavern was the same. The people were the same. But he… was not the same.
No one could see him. Sometimes, he would almost meet their eyes, as if he was finally connecting with the real world, and then—
Pain, again, and darkness would fall until the next evening.
And suddenly, he couldn’t recall how many years had passed. At least a few, perhaps a decade or several. The clothes had changed, he knew for certain; men wore shorter coats more casually, and women’s dresses had less layers, or at least slimmer skirts.
It was then that he first saw her.
The Tavern had been closed for several days, but it was not empty. A wedding was being organized and adorned, flowers covering the tables and counters, fresh curtains brought in and hung upon every window. Rooms were decorated upstairs and below for the bride and groom, and new fabric was laid upon the floor to create a fresh aisle leading to a delicate arbor near the far windows, where the light shone best in the afternoon.
The bride had arrived a day early, her matron and handmaid trailing behind her, and took residence in the reserved rooms upstairs. Her golden hair had reminded him of something, someone—his sister, he thought—but the way her eyes glowed blue green in the light of the chandelier was an entirely different sort of captivating. Whoever she was marrying was a lucky man, indeed.
Or would have been, if tragedy had not struck the very next morning.
The fire had ravaged everything, starting upstairs where the bridal party was dressing and preparing for their descent. One of the heavy curtains had caught an errant flame of an open oil lamp, and after the first scream—
The next thing Elijah knew, time had jumped forward. By how much, he still did not know, but he supposed at least a century or two. Not only were clothes utterly indecent now (but fascinating all the same, and he wondered what his sister, perhaps younger than he, would have thought to see women wearing men’s clothing, or even close to none at all), but the lights outside after dark were brighter, the city louder, the carriages of a model that was completely foreign to him.
There were still horses, but… how were the majority of these carriages operating without them? And with such awful noises, at that. Miniature steam engines, he supposed, though even that seemed like a great stretch.
And there were machines behind the bar and in the offices—offices—upstairs now, ones that jumped and shrieked until residents picked them up and spoke to them. He had seen more than one host or hostess—hostess, could anyone have any job now?—writing with unfeathered pens in notebooks of pure white. Reservations, he could tell from looking at the logs, and surmised that the use of the screaming machines must be long-distance communication.
Even that seemed preposterous, and he was doubtful of these hallucinations he must be suffering from long after his death.
And then, some time later, he saw her again.
There was another wedding, the fifth or sixth he had seen in this new world, most of them the same save for a few changes in flowers and colors. There were new alcohols, new dances, an entirely different language being spoken. All so fascinating.
A photographer would take many pictures, pictures that were immediately available, as if appearing from nothing. A white frame, the bottom thick enough to add a stamp or a label or a placard, black bleeding into color with the shake of one hand through the air. Gone were the days of entire rooms dedicated to photography and portraits, to editing with small paintbrushes to fill in what a piece of glass could not capture.
Just how far had things come?
It was as he was watching yet another flamboyant bride traipse down a carmine aisle that he heard a noise and happened to look up. The new stairs looked over the same hall, a clear view across the courtyard, and he saw—
Blonde curls framing a thin face with rounded cheeks. Blue-green eyes glowing in the sunlight but darkening beneath brows lowered in confusion, the verdant shade brought forth further by the jade tint of her silk gown.
More than stunning, she was…
There were no words. She simply was. The breath was stolen from his intangible lungs.
Their eyes met, and all went black once more.
And so it went, for years and years.
Until one day, he saw her on the stairs once more, leaning over the banister with a sad smile, those jasmine eyes crinkled and shining. And as the music began, her eyes met his again, full of something completely different.
Hope.
“I remember you,” she said as he came to stand next to the stairs. Her elbow rested against the railing, gloved palm holding her chin up as she smiled softly. “However, the whens and whereabouts escape me.”
“It was quite a while ago,” he offered quietly.
She hummed. “I suppose.” Then her smile widened, and she held a hand toward the stairs. “Join me for a dance, won’t you? I never had mine, and the bride does look so… so very happy.”
Elijah smiled and stepped sideways to the final step, holding his own hand out to her. “It would be an honor, young miss.”
Her feet landed softly beside his. She was still nearly tall enough to meet his gaze.
Her head tilted as their fingers met. “Caroline will do, I believe.”
“Caroline.” His lips grazed her knuckles as he bowed slightly. “I’m Elijah.”