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When the skull had first told her about it, she had straight up laughed at him. When he hadn’t stopped telling her more, Lucy had no choice but to listen.
After all, there was little distraction and no one else to talk to during this long, meaningless winter she had barricaded herself in. The flat she had lived in since leaving the place she had called home and the people she had belonged to was just that, flat and devoid of light and any sense of comfort. She just stayed here after a job, ate and waited until the next job could distract her. In all the grey fog she tried not to think about, talking to Skull was actually a delight. And during all those days of brooding and aimless gazing out of the window, she was more than grateful to have someone to talk to. Usually, it was his sarcastic comments that got her through the day, making her laugh and forgetting for a moment that she was far from the place that had brought her joy for the first time in her life. Perhaps the skull had noticed, if a floating skull in a jar could notice such trivial things, but sometimes Lucy thought he knew her better than anyone else and knew what and who she was missing.
He mocked her for it, but lately his words had been more serious than usual. He must have watched her stare into the void once too often, or maybe he was bored by her growing silence, but one day in the cold of that winter, he had told her about the concept for the first time. Surely he had wanted to help her, but after she had laughed, Lucy had just raised an eyebrow.
“Locis anthoenius?”
The green flicker in the jar floated angrily. “Don’t play dumb, you can’t be that language numb. Can’t believe I’m even rhyming now. This requires change!”
“I’m not a hundred years old like you. Please enlighten me.” Lucy replied with a tired look.
There was a sort of eye roll. At least that’s what Lucy could interpret by now.
“Lo-cus A-moe-nus.” The skull emphasised each syllable in her mind as if talking to a little child.
Lucy moved across the bed and closer to the windowsill the jar was standing on.
“And what does that mean?”
“It’s something I've heard of. Maybe I shouldn’t talk about it.”
Now Lucy got curious, which was probably exactly his intention. “I know it’s like you to play around like that, but I’m really not in the mood.”
“You should be. It’s the only thing that might get us out of this senseless hole, if only for a distracting while.”
“This isn’t a hole!” Lucy rose with a look of indignation.
“It's definitely a mess. There are clothes all over this place.”
“It is not!” She narrowed her eyes, adjusted her position on the bed and looked at her room for what must have been the first time in weeks. She swallowed, it really did look horrible. Clothes lying around everywhere, old parcels from deliveries, a couple of used teacups, shoes scattered around and not in pairs, her equipment - and it did not stop there. The chaos in the other place she had escaped from had been somehow charming, but this was far from it. No wonder she was not feeling well. She made a mental note to clean up this mess later and sighed. "Fine. What is this thing?"
The skull didn’t wait a second for his reply, "a kind of concept. Or some kind of sense that can only be furthered by those who are able to listen, and as you’re someone who can talk to me, perhaps you can do it."
"Do what?" she asked, her voice demanding and annoyed, not sure if this conversation would lead anywhere, but if it could bring some colour to this grey mass, what harm could it do? No more than the weight on her shoulders anyway.
"You can return to a place of… joy, that’s how you’d name it. You need to recall a feeling of a place that feels very strong to you, and you need to remember some details." He paused for a moment. "And I know very well which place you'd like to return to."
Lucy looked at him with wide open eyes and slowly realised. "You mean... I think I know that place too, but I don’t actually understand.”
Skull's voice in her head suddenly became more eerie, almost unrecognisable, and floated into her mind.
"Your mind can take you to places your body can't. You can visit them again.”
She couldn't really grasp what the skull was saying, what kind of weird idea this locus amoenus was, but she knew where she would go when she had a choice, she knew where she had always gone to when she needed just a single glimpse of comfort.
Portland Row.
And her heart ached at the thought. She missed it, and she missed the people she cared about so much. It was a sacrifice to protect them. To protect him.
Lucy blinked, "I can visit Portland Row again, I just don't want to. There's no way I could."
"Hush, don't tell me about your strange human attachments and thoughts again.
"It's not..."
"You want to, and what I'm talking about is revisiting it without changing anything.” The glow became even more menacing, “a palace in your mind."
***
After all, this idea was something worth thinking about and after a while she ran out of excuses not to try. They started slowly after the skull had told her about it. As if even this type 3 ghost didn’t want to risk anything. At the same time, he was quite impatient with her. Lucy was still sceptical. She didn’t know what he got out of this intermezzo. It was hard to believe he only wanted to help. But these were desperate times.
So she closed her eyes again and again and tried to follow his voice as he guided her.
“You have to find these pieces in your mind. Relay on your listening skills. What do you remember, what did you hear?”
“My talent is talking to ghosts. Where I want to go is not a ghost.”
“Can’t believe you’re still being silly.” The skull replied, his words ringing far too loudly in her head. “Aren’t our memories, our thoughts just that? Some types of ghosts, not as skillful as Type Threes of course, but still. You just have to connect with them.”
“I didn’t think you were a philosopher.”
“We all grow beyond ourselves in these so-called trying times. And fittingly I want you to try again.”
She sighed and closed her eyes again. Lucy tried to do as he said. Imagine the sounds that bound her to Portland Row, to this place she missed so much. She did what she always did when she listened to the ghosts around her but this time, she turned her senses inwards instead of to the outside. Were there any sounds inside her that she could recall? Any ghosts she could find?
“I only see images,” she said.
“That’s good too. Get closer to the images and let them speak. Turn them into something you can feel.”
She did as the skull had said, focusing on the details of the little things that gave her something to listen to, an espy of a sound, singing a melody to her in her own mind. A sense of comfort. Sounds connected to something deeper, something to hold on to.
She remembered the tone of the kettle, the crunch of biscuits as they arrived at Portland Row and had their first few bites, how they entered the house and dropped their coats against the walls. Everything not in order, yet with a perfect feeling of familiarity resonating to her.
Lucy mixed these sounds with the images she remembered of this place. The constant bliss wrapping her in tightly, the laughter, the banter, the loud voices when they couldn’t decide what to do. Lockwood smiling at her, taking a deep breath before he decided to finally share his plan. His fingers brushing over the thinking cloth. Oh, she remembered the thinking cloth so well.
Just remember this: Your memory is like a sound, taking you in, singing your favourite song.
And somehow, just when she had already lost all hope, it began to work. The sounds became like paintings on a wall, thrown onto a canvas to turn it into a distinctive song and the longer she listened, the more it became something with a soul that was all around her, something she could step into.
She opened her eyes, giving in to the sounds, and her mouth flew open. It was as if she was being dragged and floating in a mass of thick mist. At first it was only fragments she heard calling to her.
Was this what the world of ghosts looked like? A deep shimmering, like a forest enveloped her in pine green and ghostly fog, much like what was floating around the skull in the jar. But it did not feel eerie or haunted at all. Rather, the green was of a soothing softness, welcoming her into a space where the greyness had faded, giving way to something more delicate and precious.
The pine green haze gave way to a kind of room. A treasure was opened before her and the first sound that reached her dim senses was the kettle in the background. It was so lucid, it rang all around, called to her, flooded to her like reaching deep into her bones.
Then she saw the kettle. A glowing object right in front of her inner opened eyes, so vivid, and Lucy realised she'd reached that place in her mind where she wasn't just remembering it. She was in it.
She couldn't stay there for too long, but after her first successful visit, she returned more often, over and over again. Mostly the skull would guide her, running ahead of her with a mischievous grin, a little boy having fun with this little adventure.
When she asked him if this was the world of death, he replied to her that it was nothing but the opposite of it, and that death was a fluid concept full of ideas of another world. These were her inner ghosts and they were very much alive through her. It did not push her away from reality, in fact it only made her more aware.
Sometimes she thought there was a faint glimmer of Lockwood’s presence somewhere but she pushed it away. No reason to think of him now.
Perhaps one day she would be able to interact with that world, just as she was able to talk to ghosts. Would she be able to interact with this place? Mostly there were only glimpses as she wandered around in this cloud of nothingness. But there were little things that flashed through the haze. The kettle became visible again, calling her in. The toaster appeared in her mind, blurring in front of her eyes, as if reality and vision blended into one and she knew she was stepping further into this different world.
But after weeks of visiting and revisiting this place. The sounds felt stronger, became louder, as if she was intensifying her listening skills and sensitising her inner ear. New pictures appeared. At first she didn’t recognise it very clearly. It was just something white unfolding before her sensitive eyes. But then there were small lines of blue on that blank background. As she tried to draw it closer, focus the shaking image in the mist, she suddenly recognised the blue ink on the white sheet. The distinctive fine and messy writing on a familiar cloth.
Different inks, different writers in conversation.
She could see the words so clearly.
Lucy should be here.
I know.
A bittersweet smile crept across her face. Was this a mirror of the present? She almost couldn’t believe that they were missing her but even the sentiment, the image alone, made her heart sink and jump at the same time.
And from then on, her senses had caught fire. The place in her mind was still hazy, but the door was wide open and the rooms of Portland Row moved past her like bright shadows. There was no connection yet, no full picture, and she only observed what passed her by. Sometimes she thought she heard George mumbling.
The sounds were always there, flashing through her, then fading again. But her heart leapt with every feeling of closeness to this place that they brought. The skull had been right. Slowly her smile returned, not bittersweet anymore but with brightness woven into it. They were okay and they got along. The thought gave her relief.
And she always came back to the thinking cloth. From time to time someone would write new messages on it. Lucy noticed them in disbelief. The first one hadn't been some kind of glitch. No, they changed and came back.
And somehow, she could see their life through them. She recognised George's handwriting, the doodle of a new ghost, instructions on what to do, and her heart ached again for what she missed. But as she glanced further, as she focused on the image more strongly, she saw another handwriting underneath the doodle, a curved line, so characteristic that Lucy could almost see Lockwood's slender fingers running over the cloth. Written with fresh ink.
I thought you were a ghost, but I think I've seen you here somehow, Lucy.
She blinked, stumbling away from the table. What?
Her head felt like it was spinning. The world was moving and for a moment she thought she was being dragged back to reality.
He was writing her messages.
As the realisation hit her, suddenly a breeze of a presence touched her senses and she felt like she was no longer alone.
She turned, following the sound of softness coming from the corner of the kitchen. Everything around her was so vibrant out of a sudden.
Somehow the air was still fluid, floating around like a cloud high in the sky, but it wasn't blurred anymore. There were no hazy edges, no fading colours, no unrecognisable scents of mist in the air. Suddenly she was just enveloped in it all and it was exactly as she remembered it, not a single thing had changed. All her senses were filled with the sweetness of this environment, this all-encompassing touch of home that called to her. The colours in the washed out tones that shone so brightly to her illuminated this room like sinking sunlight raining in through the walls, painting everything in shades of green, red, blue, gold. It flew through the air, illuminating the old dust of this familiar place. The dust turned to sparks and there she felt it, the atmosphere filled with the presence of the people who had welcomed her. Instead of closing her eyes to reminisce, she opened them wider, wanting to take it all in, wanting to absorb every little bit of that presence. Every single breath was tinged with a deep force of relief. She was back and suddenly it was all there, the liveliness, the laughter, the smell of burnt toast, the hissing of the kettle at night when everything was warm and soft and shimmering.
She felt as if she were sitting by a fireplace and finally the frigid air vanished. It was all in her mind, Lucy reminded herself, but at the moment it made no difference because this was her home and if only for a brief instant he was back, there would be no threat caused by her presence. She could just let herself be here. She peaked around the kitchen, moving further in slowly, almost feeling the touch of the corners of the table. She saw the Thinking Cloth again and a deep smile caressed her face as she paused for a while.
"I knew I'd seen you."
A gasp escaped her and her head flew up, her eyelids flickering. She had never heard a single voice here, had never met anyone except the skull that tried to direct her. In particular, she hadn't heard his voice here before and didn't expect to hear it, maybe ever again. It was only for his own safety.
"Lucy?" The softness of that voice swept over her like a faint brush of air, running through her hair and lifting her up. But she didn't look back, didn't dare to destroy this sweet sentiment that she had pushed back into the deepest hole of her mind. Yet, as she walked further through this distant and miraculous space, she could have guessed that she would never find a place where he was too far away from her. Too strong a memory, too fragile a feeling to be suppressed.
She had seen his little message on the Thinking Cloth, but she had only thought it was her mind playing tricks on her, wishing for him to be around her again. And maybe this was a trick, too. But would it make any difference? If it was an illusion of her own mind, why not give in to it for once? Her eyes slowly but steadily began to swell with tears as she looked out the window to the back of the garden, where the lavender was in full bloom, as if it were spring and not winter. As if the sun had blessed the flowers’ faces.
"Luce." The voice appeared again, even more tender, even closer, almost like a light breeze against her cheek. And then she suddenly felt the touch of a hand on her fingers, which were almost unconsciously resting on the thinking cloth. A shiver ran through her and she almost flinched. This was completely impossible.
I shouldn't be able to. I couldn't... How? But no one answered her. Skull seemed to have retreated, seemed to have left her alone in her own place of retreat.
She could hear in this world. That's what her ability brought her, that's what helped her create this world. Later she even developed the sense to see it, but to feel it? That should have been far beyond her reach, that should have been impossible. Yet she could feel his hands so undoubtedly, the soft touch grazing over her fingers. Lockwood’s hands.
It made her close her eyes and listen to the beating of her heart again. "Can this be real?" Lucy whispered.
"At first I thought you were a ghost too." There was a small chuckle next to her ear and her eyes snapped open. She could still feel him. Now his arms were almost around her.
And breathed into life by the faint touch, for the first time she gathered all of her bravery to turn around to him.
She looked up at him, Lockwood, almost leaning into him. He seemed illuminated to her, so far from being hollow. There was no darkness, but light emanating from him, and his smile shone like a beacon on her soul and set it in brightness. If Lucy hadn't been floating before, she was now. This was a part of reality, a fragment of something that was real. Maybe, after all, there was hope. In the sight of his glance, she was fearless.
It was as if she was looking through a mirror and seeing shards of what was, what could have been and what would be, all those layers intermingled.
"You’ll make it. We'll make it," he whispered. "We'll get through this blackest of winters alone. And then..." He took her hand in his and she looked up into his glowing, shimmering eyes. Those eyes she had missed so much. So much... and they took her in with all their warmth. The disbelief in her own gaze threatened to be overthrown by the welcome of his smile. This was an illusion and yet it wasn't. There were fragments of Lockwood in this presence before her, as if he were somehow sending her a message through his own senses, as if they were someone connected, giving each other comfort when separated by a distant, disturbing vision. Slowly she accepted, slowly she surrendered to the vision, to the shower of his comfort. Her lips curved into a hesitant smile.
"Then," he said, "you will come back to me and we will find out what went wrong. And we will put it right."
And Lucy couldn't hold back anymore. This was Lockwood, this was his demeanour. This was the way he spoke. There was no deception in his eyes. Somehow Lucy had found her way back to him. To Portland Row, to her own retreat, her own place of bliss. And she sighed, broadening her smile, leaning into his arms as relief washed over her.
Oh, how she had missed him. How much she had longed to see him again, to say that she didn't want to leave him but she had to, that it wasn't his fault or anyone else's. But at this moment it did not matter. Right at this moment, they were here together, in Portland Row. And Lucy fell into his arms as he wrapped them tightly around her and held her in his warm embrace. And then, unable to comprehend that she could feel him, the tears soon followed and with them came the endless joy back to their home. Even if they were separated, they would no longer be alone.
Portland Row had always been there in her heart and would always be there.
A locus amoenus.
