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“They asked you to carry it?” Sofia asked. He was so glad to see her back up and walking again and not in a cage in the locked ward in the Teaching Hospital, almost completely gone.
“Yes,” he said, placing the unlit candle on the table so he could pick up his cane again. His joints were aching already, not just from having to stand for so long unaided but also the Wunsoc weather phenomenon dragging them into winter weeks before the outside agreed with it. The deciduous trees were already bare and there was rarely more than one day a week when he saw a blue sky or the sun without a cloud cover blocking it. It was slate skies and wet mornings from now to Spring, most likely.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her paw touching the edge of the table beside him. “I know you two didn’t end on the best terms but it’s always sad to lose an old friend like that.”
“It is,” he agreed. “I hadn’t spoken to him in years but ever since last Hallowmas, I keep remembering conversations we used to have in such great detail, as if they only happened the other day. And then other times when I think about him, I can’t even hear what his voice sounded like or what his face looked like without a picture to help.” He sighed, “I wish I had known. I wish I had asked him why now.”
“You could,” she said. “It’s not impossible for you. Especially not tonight.”
His eye twitched slightly, “I haven’t done it in years, Sofia. For a good reason.”
She stared up at him, “It’s your choice, Conall. I’ll not pressure you either way.”
“I know that,” he said, and then exercised his jaw for a good thirty seconds. “It’s good to have you back, by the way. You were… we missed you.”
“Thank you,” Sofia said softly. “It’s good to hear that.”
He’d acquired one of those attachments so that he could hold the candle easily with one hand and use the cane in the other so that he could actually take part in the parade.
It was an unseasonably warm night, or perhaps he was nervous or some such thing since that night he had to peel his cloak off from his shoulders whilst setting up everything he needed.
The ritual wasn’t required, considering his knack. He had been contacting the beyond since before he could tell the difference between the living and the dead, but it calmed his mind, kept his hands too busy to notice that they were shaking, the breath control needed for the chanting stopping him from hyperventilating, from thinking about this too much.
“Onstald?” he said. “Hemingway? Will you see me?”
The candles flickered, once, twice, and then went out.
“What is it?” grumbled a voice which sounded like it was from across a lane of busy traffic.
He dropped his matchbox, “I wanted to speak with you.”
“O’Leary?”
“Yes,” he said.
“You have gone back to using your knack then?”
“Yes,” he said, feeling his chest deflate. Something howled outside his block of flats, the nearby dogs joining in a chorus. He almost turned towards it, but stopped himself at the last minute, determined to maintain the connection. “Only this time.”
“Hm,” he grunted. “And I suppose you’ve taken over the Wundersmith’s education, and the others in your little… group.”
“You founded the Sub-Nine Academic Group, my friend,” he said but managed to keep his tone even. Onstald had always had a way of getting his blood up. Given that no one could remember what his knack actually was, Conall would be perfectly happy to say that it was being irritating.
“I regret it.”
“You saved her life, and the others’ too with Tempus,” he pointed out. “Do you regret that?”
A pause. He blinked a few times, wondering if he had gone too far. “No,” Onstald said. He sounded a little clearer now. The dogs were barking now, rather than howling. What could all the fuss be about?
“Well then,” he said.
“Who carried my candle?”
“I did,” he said. “Proudly. You were my friend once.”
“I was.” He grunted again, “I would like to ask…”
“What?”
“Why did you stop using your knack?”
“I-” he took a breath. This was one person he could tell. Loose lips sank ships but this one was dead and there was no one to tell, not even another medium. It was harder to maintain long term memories beyond the grave, normally all they remembered was their lives. “I spoke to Mathilde Lachance.”
There was a hissing sound, a sudden intake of breath, “I died in her museum.”
“I know.”
“It was an awful place.”
“I heard.”
“From whom?”
“Your student, actually. Our student, I mean.”
Onstald had no response to that apparently. Given what he had heard from the Wundersmith, how he had treated her, this did not surprise Conall, “What did Mathilde Lachance say to you?”
“Nothing,” he shrugged. “She just screamed,” if he shut his eyes he could hear it now. The shrill sound that still rattled through his dreams, left him wondering. The dead usually forgot their last moments, if they died like that, suddenly and violently. The ones who died from a long illness or some such situation could usually put two and two together, and Onstald clearly remembered his own situation, but there were exceptions too. Had his knack been about memorisation? That could be it, actually.
But Mathilde Lachance had screamed, and screamed. And he had cut the connection and sat in a dark room for the rest of the night, shaking and crying.
He had told himself he could go back to it anytime. That it would be okay to go back to speaking to the dead at a later point. But days passed, weeks, months, years and decades, and until right now, until tonight, he hadn’t.
He had thought about it until it made his lungs heavy and stomach hurt, and his skull tried to crush his brain. And when people asked why he hadn’t done it recently, in a while, in a few years, he just brushed them off.
He couldn’t say, and he didn’t want them to know. That his own knack had frightened him so much that he couldn’t face using it again. That he had been scared. Was still scared, if he admitted it to himself.
But he was using it now to talk to someone he hadn’t spoken to for years. Who had been dead a full year before he had found the guts to do it.
“Why did you leave the Sub-Nine Academic Group?” he asked finally, ignoring how hot his eyes felt.
“I saw something I did not wish to see,” he said slowly. “That is all I will say.”
“All right,” he said. “Our time is coming to a close, Onstald. I wish you peace and a path away from suffering.”
“Thank you my friend.”
A gust of wind relit all the candles, and he sank to the floor, alone in the room again, as the dogs outside all howled and barked for whatever inane reason.
He would pick himself back up eventually. He just needed a minute.