Helen woke late that night, out of breath with a pounding heart, and the nightmare she’d just been having slid like water out of her head. As she blinked and tried to calm herself, images were here then gone; a young girl in a simple white dress, a softly smiling older woman holding her hand, screams and sickening fear as everything turned upside-down…

Instantly she was up and to the door. The house was usually terrifying, with its endless shadows, but tonight the moon was full, and so everything was bathed in silver. Helen loved the moon. Not the night, just the moon. She liked the way things looked in moonlight. So different than sun. The world was such a different place to be in moonlight.

There was no other place to go than this after a nightmare. The plants were her haven, and as she’d once clung to them for survival, now she clung to them for support. The plants, as they always did, ushered her in. A sense of calm rushed over Helen as she stood among her Hyacinthus orientalis, poring over each blossom. “You are looking quite nice,” she murmured to the plant, “but you…” she began and snipped off a dead end, “you must go.”

“And you call me odd for talking to Benvolio.”

Helen grinned and turned to face Silas. “I didn’t say you were odd!”

Silas quirked up his mouth and moved around her. In the semi-dark, he seemed less aware of his limp. He moved quietly. “Mrs. Thornebrook told me the first thing you said about me was that I had a ‘peculiar’ relationship with my cat.” He raised an eyebrow at Helen, who shrugged her shoulders sheepishly.

“I suppose everyone has their pets.” Her finger came to rest on one of the Hyacinth’s many petals. “These are mine.”

“Understandable,” Silas answered. A pause, yet not entirely awkward. “They’re beautiful, by the way.”

“These! Oh.” Helen couldn’t help but flush. “They’re really nothing. Have you seen any of the tropical plants I’ve been breeding? Now those…!”

“Yes, yes, I’ve seen them. They’re gorgeous. However…” Silas turned to face Helen. Half of his face was in the shadows, but what she could see of him, glowed in the moon. She knew, then. It wasn’t her fault. It had never been her fault. He’d made her feel this way. He’d been so beautiful and kind. She hadn’t stood a chance. “I think,” Silas began again, “I think these are special because they aren’t like those gorgeous, tropical ones. These flowers are modest. They’re shy. Not everyone notices them. But when they catch your eye, they hold it there. Not only because they are beautiful, b-but because the-they remind you…” Silas’s eyes were to the floor. “They remind you of the radiance of life.”

Helen knew it then, for certain and for always. She loved Silas St. James.

Of an invitation to the theater and the introduction of Miss Lacey Peterson

Eighteen Years Later

The knock was familiar, so the girl, settled into her favorite overstuffed chair in the library, ignored it. She was far too comfortable on the largest settee in the Library; her feet were bare and warming on a footstool near the crackling fire, and her favorite collection of Poe poems was sitting open on her lap. The page was turned to Annabel Lee, and the girl, having already commit the poem to memory, was dividing her attention between the verses and the light snowfall that had begun just outside her window. However, the intruder would not be deterred, and the knock turned more frantic. A sigh escaped the girl’s lips, but she did not move until she heard a small voice on the other side of the door.

“I know you’re in there, Lacey. Stop pretending you aren’t!” The voice, although muffled, was still whiny enough for the girl in the chair, Lacey, to scowl at. “You better come out, Papa wishes to speak with you.” Pursing her lips now, Lacey slammed shut the book and pushed herself out of the comfort of her chair, taking a moment to make sure her skirts weren’t mussed or wrinkled. The little voice came again. “Lace, did you hear me? Papa-“

“Yes, Camille, I heard you!” Lacey replied, annoyance knotting in her chest as she strode over to the door to the library and threw it open. Standing before her was the most angelic looking seven year old the world had ever known.  With a round face, cherubian lips, blue eyes and a spiraling of butter-colored curls, Lacey knew that the child, her sister, could get away with any crime and still look unquestionably innocent. “Don’t you have lessons right now? Where’s Mr. Downing?”

Camille scowled, but even her scowl looked as pure as fresh snow. “I don’t see why I should locked in my room, being forced to learn Latin with a stuffy old tutor while you get to read in the library.”

Lacey gave the tiniest, bitterest of chuckles before closing the library door. “First of all, I had to do the same thing that you did when I was your age. You should be glad that you’re learning something interesting and useful, instead of all the silly things you’ll learn when Papa thinks you’re old enough.” The younger girl rolled her eyes. “Once you turn thirteen, Camille - and don’t roll your eyes at me, Papa will bring in the siege of tutors designed to teach you all sorts of useless things. Ever cared to sit still for hours on end, just to perfect your posture?  No? Well, you’ll be learning that someday. And then, the only reason the lessons stop is because you’ll be shoved, out into society, like some sort of prize oxen, just waiting to be purchased by the highest bidder. Only in your case, the highest bidder will become…” And for this, Lacey leaned down and stared Camille right in the face. She gave her younger sister a sinister smile. “Your husband.”

Instead of being frightened, however, Camille just grabbed onto Lacey’s hand and began to pull her down the ornate staircase that would lead them both to Papa’s study. “I’m never getting married,” Camille said after a moment. “I’m going to become a pirate and sail around the world.”

“Don’t be stupid, Cam, first of all, pirates no longer exist. Second of all, women weren’t even allowed to pirates when they did exist. And third of all, you will be married. Just like I will be, very soon.” Camille gave Lacey a confused look. “That’s what Papa wants to see me about,” the older girl said. “That’s what he always wants to see me about these days. My…debut.”

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Even after all this time I still attempt to rationalize and explain it. I remember putting my feet up on the theater chairs and looking at my dirty checkerboard Vans where I’d scrawled pictures and song lyrics because I thought I was deep and emotional. I remember that punch in the gut, the explaining. “I didn’t mean what I said. It came out all wrong.” The secret smiles, the whispers behind backs. I remember sitting in the bathroom with everyone and saying “I want him back, I just want him back.” Skipping class to hug him in the hall near the vending machines. Him clutching onto me, his last goodbye.

In front of me, she turns to Chelsea and she says, “Don’t talk about Emily. Don’t talk about that monster.“ 

Sitting in the ancient Jeep Grand Cherokee with you two in the front seat, you two who I saw only a few nights ago. You two who stayed. Me looking out the window, numb and frightened. 

Screaming in the bathtub with the door locked. The ringtone of my cellphone when my aunt called and asked if I was okay. Explaining to my parents. The melodrama. The aftermath. “It’s okay, everyone hurts each other. Hayley and Abby fight all the time.” 

“If you two can’t stay friends, who can?”

“I waited 10 years for you to grow up.”

I still can’t escape you in my dreams. We talk. We’re not friends, but we talk.

I remember everything falling apart, and me trying desperately to catch the pieces and put them back together, while the voice inside me says, “If you’d done this differently. If you done this, not this. If you had really changed when you said you would. If you had been better. If you had, if you had, if you had.”

- Apples apples apples (picking, cider, pies, butter, crisp, bread)

- Crisp mornings running errands in pajamas

- Warm sweaters, scarves, moccassins

- Brightly colored leaves and windy days

- Cracking open the window next to my bed in the early hours of the morning

- Dying gardens and cold-weather vegetables

- Hunting for well-decorated houses with Mansard roofs

- Salem, Massachusetts on October 31st.

The doctors told me I was dead for five minutes. I thought that was pretty strange considering the state I was in when I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me. I figured it was all over then. I looked at the bloody, mangled bodies of my family lying on the ground next to me, and I knew I was next and it was okay. Except then my eyes opened again and it was bright and confusing and the doctors were sighing in relief. 

Momma told me that girls who got hurt by boys were asking for it. “You’re asking to be hurt, Mae” she said - those exact words - to me when she saw me running around with Slim and the other boys. I thought she was crazy, because I thought Slim would never hurt me. Slim was my protector. Slim beat up the boys who tried to come near me.

“Jesus don’t like a girl who talks too loud and wears too much makeup, Mae. Jesus don’t like a girl who kisses boys in cars.” I thought she just didn’t get it, and that she never would. Slim was different. 

But she was right.

I don’t know what it was or why it happened. I can’t really remember much of it, either, except for the pain. Slim and his boys were all around me, after they’d finished with Momma and Poppa and Ben. I don’t really remember saying much. Sometimes I think about it and I think that after they cut Momma’s throat I kinda just blocked it out. What it looked like and what it sounded like. Just a lot of pain, and then I was on the ground and everything hurt and was ruined and I was gonna die and it was okay.

I don’t know if I can blame them much, neither. The truth is, the world got scary after the buildings in the city all went silent. Everything in the world was so big and loud for awhile, but then it all got very, very quiet. Everybody gave up trying I guess. And then there wasn’t much in the way of food or water or nothing. Our town was one of the last places that the silence touched, but it did come. And Slim got scared, cause he was like that. Talked a big game, but was just as scared as the rest of us. We had a lot then, more than the others. They needed something, we had it. I understand why they killed my family, and I understand why they tried to kill me.

I just hope they understand when I go to kill them.

Thank you! The title will come in to play some more throughout the rest of the story. I’m glad you enjoy it so far, though!

Of the departure of the circus and the discovery of a baby

When Lovegood’s circus disappeared, they left behind only one thing: the baby. A squirming, bleating child swathed in dirty linen, left on the half-frozen ground in the middle of the clearing where the circus had once been. It was hours, in fact, before he was noticed by anyone. If Toothless Jim Lawton, the town drunk, hadn’t been wandering by on that early November morning, who knows might would have happened to the child.

Toothless Jim was wandering around that November morning, though, attempting to rid himself of his newest hangover by taking a walk in the forest. Still fairly drunk, Toothless Jim happened upon a moving mass of yellowed cloth and scooped up the bundle. Had he been sober - which he never really was - Jim might have passed over the baby, thinking that it was better for the thing to die before it had a chance to live and suffer. This morning, however, alcohol still numbed him, so, in a curious daze, Jim picked up the baby and headed straight for the town’s only inn.

In later years, the child would regard this as his first miracle.

Toothless Jim left the baby with the innkeeper’s wife. She was the only woman in the entire mining town, situated at the base of the snow-capped mountain range - unless one counted the prostitutes (and one never counted the prostitutes) - and therefore, the only one fit to take the child. However, the innkeeper’s wife, Laura, already had seven babies of her own, and refused to take the baby, whose tiny face was twisted into a desperate plea for food. Not being a completely heartless woman, Laura coaxed some goat’s milk into the squirming thing. It wasn’t mother’s milk, but eventually the twisted face took on a calmer demeanor. By the time the other townsfolk had filed in to the Golden Rose Inn, the child was sleeping restlessly on the inn’s counter.

“He’s an ugly lil thing, ain’t he?” asked Tom Richards, the town’s silver-haired patriarch. All the others, around Tom’s age or younger, mumbled their agreement. Truth be told, the child wasn’t beautiful. His face was blotchy, his eyes screwed up. His skin was darker than normal, and there were strange tufts of black hair growing haphazardly on his almost oval-shaped little head. The others, chewing their tobacco and drinking their whiskey, took turns scrutinizing the baby, adding their voice to Tom’s. He was an ugly child, and nobody wanted the burden.

Richard Lee came in after the others. He was a well-respected man of the group but, being a man of few words, was mostly left alone by the others in town. Usually those in the inn would give Rich a nod of the head as he made his way to get his own drink and then leave him alone to nurse his beverage. He’d come out west after all the others, and had never told anyone where he’d come from. No one even knew if Richard Lee was his real name. The only thing that mattered was that he did good work down in the mines.

As he walked towards his usual table in the back corner, Rich gave a passing glance to the baby. To the others in the room, it seemed that Rich had deemed the baby unworthy of his attention.

When Laura brought Rich his whiskey, the older man put his hand to Laura’s elbow. The innkeeper’s wife, having said no more than a few words to the man, was surprised by his gesture but nevertheless turned back to the man. “What’re you plannin’ on doin’ with the babe, Laura?” Rich asked, his voice gravely.

“If no one takes him by the end of the day, I suppose I’ll send him off with Bud tomorrow when he goes to town. He’ll probably leave ‘im at the orphanage.” Laura didn’t bother asking why Rich was curious, but she did realize that this was the first time Rich had ever called her by her name.

Rich nodded once, and Laura took that as her cue to leave the man alone. As the late afternoon wore into the evening, Laura’s eyes kept returning to the older man sitting in the corner. He’d hardly touched his drink, and his eyes seemed glassy - far away. She noticed him giving glances to the fitfully sleeping bundle that still sat on the inn’s counter. A few others had turned their curious eyes onto the baby, but no one seemed interested in taking him.

Long after all the other townspeople had left, Rich still sat in his corner, a finger of drink left in his glass. His eyebrows were pulled together in deep thought, his worn and leathery skin stretched over his thinning bones. Laura’s steady gaze traveled often to the man as she closed up the inn. The child still lay in a whimpering half-sleep on the counter, but Laura had spent enough time with babes to know that he would be all right for awhile longer. Before she went to turn down all the lamps, she approached the old man in the corner. “Rich, s’about time to close up and go on off to bed now.”

Rich was quiet, but then turned his face to Laura. “I’ll take ‘em.” Laura’s face was confused. “The babe. I will take him.”

Laura’s lips pursed. “Rich, now you know I think you’re a real good man n’all. But d’you know how to take care of a child?”

Now Rich stood, and his aging feet took him towards the baby, still squirming in his dirty swaddling. Laura followed, and the pair looked to the child’s unhappy face and his dark skin and his eyes firmly shut. “Had two babes of my own once. When they were just lads, their mama took ‘em to New York. Never came back.” This was as much as anyone had ever learned of Rich’s past. Laura looked on to the man and saw that his eyes were glazed by tears. Staring at the ugly beast in the blankets, Laura’s heart and stomach churned within her. She couldn’t fathom never seeing her children ever again. Still, she felt honored to be allowed to know a tiny part of Richard Lee.

Finding that her throat felt heavy, Laura swallowed. “Well, then I’m sure you’ll know what to do with ‘im. Not that he’ll need much rearin’, I s’pose. He looks like he could tear the head off any other wee one who come a mile within his grasp.”

A rumble of laughter sounded deep within Rich’s chest. “Yes ma’am, I s’pose you’re right.” His already wrinkled hands came and clutched the dirty towling, and Laura winced - but Rich surprised her. His touch was tender, and he picked up the baby with ease. Laura watched, in awe, as the man held the squirming baby against his chest, as a mother might, and rocked his knees back and forth. Soon, the dirty bundle was still. The innkeeper’s wife approached Richard, who pulled the child away from him and cradled the babe in his arms.

The transformation was astounding. No longer was the child brutish and ugly. His skin was still muddled with tears, but now the long, dark eyelashes lay peacefully against his olive skin. His tiny lips parted peacefully in the center. His little fingers twitched dreamily on his chest. Rich put a hand to his head, smoothing down the newborn’s tufts of hair. “What will you call ‘im, Rich?” asked Laura in a hushed voice - for she knew that once a babe was asleep, it was best to keep him that way for as long as possible.

A rare thing happened then. A smile - the tiniest, most fragile of occurances - bloomed across Richard Lee’s face. No one had ever seen the man do such a thing. “He’ll need a good, strong name. A name that he can conquer, but also the name of kings and princes.”

“And what name’ll that be?” Questioned Laura. She had never heard Richard talk like this.

Rich’s smile only grew. “William. The boy’ll be called William.”

Neither Richard Lee nor Laura could have ever understood what Rich had begun by taking that child and giving him a name. They couldn’t have known that this child was not quite a child at all. They hadn’t seen the bizarre color of his eyes; and they couldn’t have known that strange things would happen to him throughout his life. On that night, however, the abandoned babe became a boy, and someday, that boy would become a man, and that man would do extraordinary things.

Richard Lee could never have known that under his feet, the gears of the earth began to tick as he christened the boy. And for eighteen years, they turned and turned, waiting for the baby William to become a man.