Chapter Text
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:
This is the happy Warrior; this is he
That every man in arms should wish to be.
—William Wordsworth, “Character of the Happy Warrior”
1.
1883
Now, child.
Vanessa’s eyes sprang open in the wee hours of the morning that marked the wedding day of her oldest friend. She shared Mina’s bed, the last time she would before Captain Branson took her place, and she’d fallen asleep with one arm thrown protectively over Mina’s shoulders, her chest pressed to Mina’s back.
Mina slept on, unaware of any disturbance in the night, and Vanessa could almost convince herself that the words in her head were only the fading remnants of a nightmare. But she felt a need—a desperate pull, claws digging into her soul and preparing to drag her into the abyss—to go where the voice directed. No matter how tightly she shut her eyes or how she let the mingled sound of Mina’s gentle exhale and the rain pattering insistently against the windowpane drown out all else, Vanessa could not ignore the command.
She had not yet identified the speaker, though she had her suspicions. It had been years of phantom figures and waking nightmares, beginning with the awful, complicating scene she’d witnessed in the hedge maze as a girl, culminating in a mischievous adolescence of petty thievery. It seemed that with maturity would come darker impulses, more difficult to ignore or to explain away. She couldn’t deny the calls when they came, but maybe this time, if she followed, she could find the one who so desperately wanted her, and put an end to her torment.
Carefully, Vanessa leaned over to press her lips to Mina’s cheek. She unwound herself from her bedmate and the bed linens, and then climbed soundlessly from under the blankets. She pulled on her robe and slippers and eased open Mina’s bedroom door, then allowed herself to be led down the stairs by unseen hands, and thrown directly into the path of Mina’s fiancé, Charles Branson.
He emerged from the parlor, brandy glass in hand, and started at the sight of her. Still, ever the gentleman, he managed a polite smile, which Vanessa returned. The dragging sensation grew stronger; she was meant to be on this collision course with Branson, though she could not yet fathom why.
“You’ve found me out,” he said, holding up the brandy as if in salute, then gently fingering the base. “Last night of freedom, eh?”
Vanessa looked at the floor, making note of his boots—still on his feet, freshly polished, holding him ramrod straight after even what smelled like half a decanter of brandy. She brought her eyes back to his face and wasn’t sure what she saw.
Now, child.
“Would you like to see something interesting?” she asked Branson. It was as if something had welled up within her and spilled out without her ever having meant to make a sound. She paused, waiting, laying out an invitation—a temptation—and then turned away with a serene smile still on her face. She didn’t want this, but the speaker in her mind most certainly did. Vanessa felt Branson’s eyes on her back, and the thing with the claws in her soul was pleased when, after a moment’s hesitation, Branson followed.
Vanessa went directly to the playroom—that was always how the family had referred to it, anyway, though some may have taken one look at the animal carcasses awaiting their second lives and deemed it a house of horrors. She preened as she studied the predators she’d brought to life, the proud falcons with gleaming talons that had been hers since she was young. In the gloom of the storm, punctuated by occasional lightning strikes and the low rumble of thunder in the distance, every creature in the room could be alive, waiting to strike.
Her pride faltered when Branson followed her in and gave a small chuckle of surprise, entirely uninterested in her creatures. “No…my Mina?”
“Your Mina,” Vanessa confirmed, just a drop of acid in her words as she ran her fingers over the pelts and feathers of the nearest works-in-progress. “Although you’ll be relieved to know she only worked with the most…pacific of animals.” She picked up a rodent with a fat tail and held it up for Branson to admire. “This is her squirrel.”
Branson paused to scoff at the absurdity of the ugly little creature. “Which are yours?” he asked, clutching the brandy glass in his fist.
“Not the docile ones,” Vanessa assured him with a smile, setting the squirrel down.
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
Branson took another long draught of brandy, and Vanessa would have gladly ignored his presence in the room entirely, if the tugging at her soul wasn’t drawing her toward him. But she wouldn’t give in so easily. She paused before her favorite bird of prey, caressing the individual feathers of a wing as a mother would run her thumb over the cheek of a treasured child.
“I’ve always felt you have to name a thing before it comes to life,” she mused aloud, “like a witch’s spell.” She felt Branson creeping closer, unable to quite make him out in the shadows. She focused on the bird and said, “His name is Ariel.”
She came around the workbench so that she was standing beside Captain Branson, and crouched before her finest work. She felt she was being rather loose-tongued, but as Branson had yet to make an objection, she continued to speak. “The most challenging bit is the eyes. They’re glass, of course, so by nature are dead and dull. But that wouldn’t do for my great predator. So I put mirrors behind the glass eyes, so they would spark. You see?”
Vanessa’s view was entirely taken up by Ariel’s face, the eyes indeed sparking in the bursts of light from the storm outside. But she was aware of Branson, too, leaned over to study her handiwork, and perhaps to study her, his breath laden with brandy, and something in him, something deeper than the simplicity of his being a man and her being a woman, drawing them together.
“I see,” he said, his voice rough—not with drink, but something darker. “They’re alive.”
Vanessa smiled at this, elated that someone finally understood. “They are,” she whispered in reply.
His hand was on her shoulder; she wasn’t sure when that had happened. Suddenly, she was turned toward him, his brandy abandoned on the workbench, both of his hands on her face, cupping her jaw and drawing her close, and whispering, “I would put mirrors behind the entire world if I could, and bring life to all the dead things that lay wasting away in the ground.”
There was a spark. It was only lightning—it had to be—but it felt as if the world had gone up in flames and been thrown from its axis. Branson’s lips were on hers, tentative at first, almost careful for the first few beats of her heart, and then hungrier, angrier. His hands on her face were calloused and his grip was absolute. He pressed himself close and Vanessa opened her eyes, beating her fists on his shoulders without effect. She swung one leg back and aimed a kick at his kneecap, but managed only to connect with the solid oak of the workbench. Animals rattled; the squirrel wobbled and fell to the floor, along with some of its brethren and a few glass jars. Supplies scattered across the tabletop.
At last, he let her go. But he had one hand wrapped around her neck and the other on her hip, trapping her at arm’s length. He smiled cruelly, and when he opened his eyes, they were black as pitch. She thought it had to be a trick of the nightmarish night, but the next flash of lightning lit his face brilliantly and revealed it to be true.
“Dead and dull, darling, yes?” he rasped in a voice that was both Branson’s and wasn’t. “We’ve been waiting for you, Mother—the goddess who can put the spark back into our soulless eyes.”
“What are you?” Vanessa managed to gasp, clawing at the fingers about her neck.
“I matter not,” Branson said, and then lifted her just an inch off the ground, as easily as a child would a doll. Vanessa’s throat throbbed as she tried in vain to choke down air. Branson held her face up to his and grinned. “The Master is waiting.”
“Van—?”
Branson turned at the sound of Mina’s voice. Vanessa looked past his shoulder and reached out a hand to her friend, trying to indicate that Mina should flee, but Mina stood frozen in the playroom doorway. Vanessa couldn’t even summon the air to warn Mina away, so she flailed her arm for a moment before returning her grip to Branson’s arm, trying to hold herself up to keep from choking to death. Already, the world seemed darker than it had been only moments before.
Branson’s grin widened, so giddy that he looked nearly mad. “My Mina,” he cooed. “Don’t worry, darling. Your time will come.”
There came the cock of a pistol, and Vanessa blinked hard to banish the shadows at the edges of her vision. Mina’s arm was raised, and though her face was twisted with fright, her grip was firm and her aim was sure. She held one of her father’s revolvers, a memento from one of his first African expeditions, and she had it trained on Branson’s nose.
“Mina—don’t…” Vanessa choked, struggling against Branson’s grasp anew.
Branson, in turn, gave a short bark of a laugh. “Shoot me, then, Mina mine. I shall be glad to die knowing I’ve made you a murderess.”
“Let her go,” Mina said. Her voice was as cold as the smooth glass behind Ariel’s eyes. Outside, the storm reached a fever pitch—Vanessa could hear the waves pounding the sand below the house, and the rain thundered against the windows. The wind howled.
There was another spark, a light so blinding and a sound so thunderous that Vanessa was sure it was the end of all she had ever known. Then, all in a rush, the world went dark and she felt herself falling. She hit the wooden floor of the playroom hard, and though stunned, she raised her head enough to take in the shadowed scene. Mina stood with her pistol raised, a delicate curl of smoke rising from the hot barrel. Branson lingered on his feet for a moment, long enough for a drop of scarlet blood to fall onto his shiny boots, and then crumpled on the floor before her, dead.
Vanessa heard Mina calling her name, though from just across the room or across the veil of life and death she couldn’t know. And then Mina was there, pressing her lips to Vanessa’s forehead, shouting for help, cradling her fallen friend and running a soft finger over the bruises Branson had left around her neck. Peter arrived next, his face swimming into Vanessa’s view for a moment and then away again. Footsteps hurried down the main staircase and the playroom filled with feet, with anxious voices, and with the light of a lamp. Vanessa shut her eyes and left the rest of it for the others to sort out.
Soon, child. Soon.