~29~

Now

The blinds were open, so Casey looked out of the hospital window at a landscape drenched in milk and moonlight. The broad lawn of the hospital eventually gave way to tract housing; neighbourly enough in the daytime, though they huddled at night as if scared of the dark. They were foolish homes; nothing really was scary, not to those who were intimate with blood and pain. There was a point where all fear ended.

Casey had reached that sense of nirvana some time ago, but it was hard to maintain. She would touch Elsa's book like a talisman.

The hospital at night was still noisy, with the beeping of machines, hissing of respirators, the shoes that squeaked down the halls and the coughing moaning retching crying cacophony of sound. It all tasted so very acerbic on her tongue. At least she was alone, for now. The nurse would come in an hour to check on her.

Casey loved being alone. She wished for aloneness as fervently as little boys or girls wished for playthings at Christmas.

It was just past eleven o'clock. Her mother would be at home, in bed, and dead. Casey wondered who had taken up the burden of resurrecting her mother in the morning, now that her dad had left them. Casey didn't even know that her mom had people outside family she could trust with that secret. Every day Gerda would come to visit, and Casey would have to pretend she didn't know anything.

At least, that would have been the case. She hated that farce as much as she hated 3:30 pm.

In the daytime, she could hear the school bell from her room, even surrounded as she was by the noise of disease. Little boys and girls would erupt from the school doors, kicking balls down the street, throwing leaves at each other. All of them were like her, trembling on the cusp of puberty, excited and alarmed about the changes within them. Did boys have cooties or not?

Yet none of them were like her; they were blissfully unaware that the unseen world surrounded them at all times, waiting with angry jaws to pull them in, reave their life from their flesh before hurling them into the Marketplace of Souls.

If life were fair, Casey would have been one of them, ignorant and joyous.

She knew better. Her ledger would never be balanced.

Pain didn't mean much to her anymore. Neither did life, or hope. And it seemed like no matter what she said, her mother wouldn't believe her. On the bad days, when Casey vomited and pulled out her hair, when she surfed the purple waves of narcotic-induced bliss, those were the days Casey peeked under the veil of the unseen world and she wished she could find words to describe her detachment from life.

She didn't consider herself depressed or suicidal. Life just didn't mean anything, because too much of it was this; drugs coursing through her system, food turning to ash in her mouth, all her hours devoured by exhaustion.

Casey had to read about life instead. She had traveled the Silk Road and climbed the Great Wall of China. She had floated in a barge down the Niger River. She had climbed the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. Unbeknownst to her mother (any thirteen year old girl must have some secrets), Casey had even read all of Elsa's books, skipping the parts that were too adult for her. Elsa understood. In her words, Casey found a kindred spirit.

Not all stories have a happy ending.

So Casey looked out of the window. A familiar car had parked down the street away from the lamps, and there was a dark figure inside.

And Casey waited for the change to happen. This was the first time she'd known of it in advance.

Soon enough the sensation began to overtake her. Her bone marrow got thicker, stronger. Her blood resumed its position on the battle against the cancer; new reinforcements had come. Her organs began to buzz with vitality, and her muscles twitched in response.

It filled her with equal parts of hope and sorrow. It meant her uncle was dead, but not for long.

Her body crackled with his stolen time. Come morning, the doctors would have woken to another miracle. She would have more time, months, maybe even a year.

But what kind of year would it be?

The last, the best year. Maybe only weeks, maybe only days, if that's all that was given.

No more blood sacrifices. Casey was done with it. Health continued to ripple through her. Her pain eased, her limbs grew restive.

The brave may not live forever, but the timid do not live at all.

Casey forced herself to wait; the nurse would be in soon to check her vitals. She pretended to sleep fitfully as Shanti came in, and she feigned wakefulness at the bite of the blood pressure cuff. She smiled at the nurse, as she was wont to do.

The nurse was young and overworked. She quickly left, off to disturb the peace of the next hospital victim as was her duty.

It was time.

Casey had watched the procedure dozens of times. She turned on the light by her bed and then snatched a wad of tissue paper. She turned the stop-cock off on the tube of her IV. With steady fingers, Casey peeled away the tape that held the IV to her hand. She grimaced a bit at the tug of skin, but kept going until all three strips of tape were hanging carefully from the bed frame.

With her jaw tight, Casey pulled out the IV, dropping it as the blood beaded on her hand. She dabbed it with the tissue, then made an impromptu bandage of the tissue paper and hoarded tape.

The air tubes leading to her nose were easy to dislodge. Soon she was swinging out of bed, tiptoeing to the drawer where she had her clothing. She pulled on loose pants, a shirt and a sweater, grimacing a little at the sight of her central line jutting from her chest. She very carefully pulled on her jacket; it would rustle if allowed.

Her shoes would squeak on the floor and betray her, so she held them in her hands. Socks would have to do.

She peeked at the nurse's station. The light was on, because the light was always on. Mike had his back to her, doing whatever needed doing in the middle of the night.

She crept down the hallway in her socks, towards the emergency exit. It would sound an alarm, but by the time anyone could react, she would be gone. She paused in the alcove to lace on her shoes. How fast could she force her newly rejuvenated body to run?

Casey took a couple of deep breaths, then pushed the door open.

There was an immediate strident buzz. "Hey!" Mike called.

Casey didn't hear him. She was already nearly across the lawn, her lungs burning with the fresh air, her muscles rejoicing. In moments she reached the car door and launched herself inside.

"Put your seat belt on," Elsa said, driving off into the night.

...

Anna stood in her perception of the Marketplace of Souls, surrounded by mists and vapours; the dreams of mortals sent on wings into the heavens. She could still feel Elsa's last kiss on her lips, and her heart wrenched in agony at the loss she would face in the morning.

Dead and gone.

Throughout the mists were pinpricks of light; red and blue, the new arrivals. In time they would forget their deaths, and remember their lives, and become as golden showers of light.

There was a red light that winked at her, that called to her, that sought her out only to bleed on her. Horrified, Anna felt the bone-shocking familiarity and prayed that it was not Haley. Not sweet and gentle Haley.

It was not.

It was the fortune teller.

Dumbfounded, Anna watched the fortune teller approach her, and her face and body were barely recognizable through the slashings and shimmerings of blood. The woman came to her, caught by Anna's gravity, until she stood before her, the hated and dreaded woman who had catapulted Anna into the unseen world, the price to pay far more than she had advertised. "But," Anna spluttered, "if you're here, wouldn't that mean I am free? You did own the mirror, didn't you?"

"Doamna, the mirror was not mine," the fortune teller revealed, a great weariness in her voice, punctuated by anxiety and haste. "In death I will finally show all truth. Will you come with me to see it?"

Katja took Anna's hand, and Anna was astounded; the dead could not touch her. Yet she could feel the slight tackiness of drying blood on Katja's hands, solid reality. Wrenching her hand away, confusion making a whipped mongrel of her, Anna tried to take a step back into the world of nothingness surrounding her, knowing there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nowhere to go until six in the morning. Katja trailed after her with a frantic hand, so Anna finally stood her ground once more, to gaze upon the face of her oldest enemy.

"Then whose mirror was it? You must tell me who owns the mirror!"

"There is no time. I am fading, but I must show you how I died! Someone is trying to steal the mirror!"

Oh, no. Once the ownership of the mirror changed hands, what would happen next? Could her next jailer possibly be worse than this woman? Rather than complain further, when Katja took her hand again Anna allowed it. She closed her eyes and felt the dull whooshing of air, as Katja carved through the mists and deposited them in the crime scene.

They were observers of an event they could do nothing to change. It unfolded in real time; the fortune teller was already dead.

The horror of it scorched the back of Anna's eyes.

They were standing in a bathroom. There was a deep claw-foot tub by the window, strikingly similar to the one that Katja had once drowned Anna in. Above it hung the much hunted mirror, a corner of it slivered and broken off.

(coeur s'ouvra)

Katja pointed to the huddled heap that was so recently her body. Now it was just a husk, discarded without ceremony on the floor.

Anna's sight was arrested by the other figures in the room.

The man must be Rick. His clothing was still sopping wet, and there was a sizeable lump on his head with abraded flesh. He was dead.

A stocky figure huddled over a girl dressed in ratty jeans and a black t-shirt. Anna recognized those jeans immediately; she had personally helped Haley tatter them appropriately.

Dear God, Haley!

The figure lifted an obsidian dirk. Before Anna could cry out, as if her reaction in the unseen world could have any bearing on reality, the knife struck the girl's lower back, carved through muscle and organ, splintering the bathroom tile. A dark rivulet of blood issued forth, seeking gravity, seeking Anna. The hateful man twisted the knife at the bottom of the thrust.

Anna had no substance, no voice. She crashed through him, fire in her eyes, and passed through him as vapour.

It was not Haley.

It was Brin, and she was wearing Haley's clothes.

And the valiant girl was still alive, though unconscious. Anna could see the slight shimmering of the girl's soul hovering over her body, about to leave it as precipitously as she had just entered. Dead again, if nothing changed.

Where was Haley?

"Help me!" Anna screamed to Katja.

The fortune teller shook her head, not in denial, but in deepest shame. "I've been ashamed of my part for years. I am glad to give up my little good soul." The young woman with ancient eyes looked with scorn at the dark figure lifting the knife again. "This Tim, he is a fool. Gerda is a fool. Money cannot buy blood, and the mirror cannot be stolen."

Anna's world, seen and unseen, was ripping apart; Katja's words thundered in her ears, there was the backdrop of blood and carnage, the constant wave of terror for Haley. She had to focus, to concentrate.

But Gerda? What about Gerda?

Katja was disappearing. Her edges danced golden.

"Wait, the mirror cannot be stolen? Whose mirror is it? If not yours, whose?" Anna demanded.

"Elsa knows. The decision has been made. Trust her, and your love for her."

And the fortune teller dissolved in a golden splash of light, off to whatever place existed beyond the Marketplace of Souls, where her ledger would be examined. Would she still be found wanting, and sent to writhe in damnation?

The scene had not faltered in the flow of time. As Anna fought to focus again on the red night that was unfolding itself so horribly before her, she saw the bathroom door slam open.

Kristoff was there, a gun in his hands.

"Drop the knife," he commanded.

Tim's face was smooth, cordial. He began to thrust the knife again into Brin's flesh.

The sound of the gun echoed in the tiny space.

Kristoff was an expert marksman, just like his sister. The bullet spun right through the last two fingers of Tim's hand, the slug finally colliding with the wall beyond in a detonous spray of spackle and paint. The bloody knife clattered to the ground as Tim clapped his wounded hand to his stomach, hugging it tight. With ethereal clarity, Anna could see the bloody stumps where his fingers had been, and wondered what Elsa would think of her thus-marked reflection.

Then she remembered that she wouldn't see Elsa again. Elsa was gone.

I'll love you forever.

She could do nothing but watch, and weep, and pray.

Tim's body was recoiling in shock; she could see the steady grimace on his face as he fumbled a revolver from the waistband of his pants. His hand was remarkably still; the barrel did not waver.

Brin was bleeding to death, again. Her soul quivered even stronger in the unseen world.

The revolver was pointing at Kristoff, but Kristoff was no fool. He was already lunging out of the doorway, and Tim's shot went wide.

The older man stared at the carnage around him, knowing by the stillness in Kristoff's eyes that Kristoff would kill him, given the chance. For Elsa and Cub and Anna and Brin, he would kill him. Tim did the only thing that was left to do.

He grabbed the mirror from above the bathtub, popping it from the ceiling where it had been suspended.

The minute his bloodied hands touched the mirror, the moment he took the mirror in triumph and thievery, Anna almost expected the unseen world to quake and shift, despite the assurances of the fortune teller. How do you believe someone who has always lied?

It did not.

Tim jumped out of the window and rolled, protecting the precious item in his hands. Unsteady now, unnerved by his wounds and the implacable man with the gun, he stumbled down the lawn.

The fortune teller had departed, and Anna's link to the scene was fading. Anna fought her prison, fought it harder than she ever had before, but she was pulled away just as Kristoff peeked over the windowsill, gun in hand. Just as reality disappeared she heard another gunshot.

She would have to wait until dawn for all the answers.

Then

As a teenager, Elsa had identified deeply with Emily Dickinson. The celebrated poet had a broken and haunting turn of phrase; with a mere twist of words she could alter whole perceptions. Emily was brave beyond all understanding; she stood naked in her words. Elsa had always admired and been terrified of that sort of bleak honesty. It was something she could never emulate. In her writing she could bare her body and scrub it clean, but then she always chose to clothe herself with a pen name.

Bravery only went so far.

(My life closed twice before its close;

It yet remains to see)

Three minutes left.

Elsa had her right hand in the water of the bathtub, holding Anna's dead hand. No bubbles of air escaped Anna's blue-tinged lips. She was a millstone; her death would crush Elsa to powder. Elsa still had no perception of time; it meant nothing in heaven. How long had she been dead and gone? And how exactly had she returned? What did she return to?

(If Immortality unveil

A third event to me,)

Two minutes left.

Time was boiling down her remembrances of heaven; soon there would only be a savage reduction of knowledge, knowledge being the weapon of the unseen world. It was while she sojourned in heaven that she realized Anna had always wanted a guitar. In heaven she realized the depths of Haley's eventual sorrows; her parents were headed down the most horrific path imaginable for scholars, down into gauzy depths of dementia where all the coherence of the world was lost.

In heaven, Elsa had been reunited with her father and her brother.

(So huge, so hopeless to conceive,

As these that twice befell.)

One minute left.

Anna's red hair hung suspended in the water of the bathtub. Her eyes were shut. Elsa was barely aware of Haley or the loathsome fortune teller; she had eyes only for her love, her life, the woman that was her corporeal reflection. Anna was drowned and dead; surely some part of Elsa resided with her in the heavens. Her emanation there would not dissolve so quickly.

(Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.)

Did Emily Dickinson ever glimpse heaven? How else could she have described it so poignantly?

Elsa's castle of dreams was desecrated and ruined; Anna was dead, and by her sacrifice Elsa would live.

Quid pro quo. She had never expected Anna to return the favour. Elsa had been at peace when she drowned to death in the crumpled chassis of her car; Anna would live.

She could taste seawater on her tongue, and she realized she was weeping. She didn't dare close her eyes or avert her gaze; Anna was such that deserved her every attention, her every ounce of willpower.

A single bubble materialized from Anna's lips and drifted to the surface. It popped there, and ripples spread outwards from it, melding with the tiny waves that Elsa's hand made in the water.

Anna opened her eyes.

And then Anna sat up, holding Elsa's hand for leverage, and Elsa stared at her without seeing. Her wits were packed in steel wool; bemused, she watched as Anna got to her knees. Her velvet teal eyes were clear and miraculously present.

She swelled with pinkness, with heat and blood. She rose from the water like a horse crashing through oceans of fields.

Elsa's dark horse.

And then she spoke.

"Am I Anna?" her love asked, now holding both of Elsa's hands.

"Yes," Elsa replied, dazed.

"Are you Elsa?" Anna asked. Elsa would never forget the sound of her name on Anna's lips; her heart blossomed with springtime.

"Yes, my love."

"Are we alive?"

"We are now."

Anna didn't bother to ask anything more; with a desperate motion and a keening cry, Anna scrambled over the lip of the tub. She lunged forward to kiss Elsa, and they both toppled in a tangle of damp clothing on the floor.

Surely this was the only heaven Elsa wanted.

Anna's wet lips were pressing against hers; not soft, not slow. Elsa hungrily tilted Anna's mouth here and there, running her tongue over the soft swell of Anna's lower lip, grazing her teeth, exploring every vantage point, every vista. Their conjoined lips moved with a wild fury; teasing and rearing and shifting.

Cataclysmic kisses.

Elsa felt a deep thrumming inside her; joy and trepidation and exhaustion turning her limbs to mush. She had no space in her addled brain to comprehend anything but the majesty of Anna's lips, her tongue, her hands. Desperate, Elsa slid her hand under Anna's shirt, stroking up her back, even as she kissed her again and again until their lips were swollen and still needy. She felt reduced to a most primal form; she was nothing but raging desire, aching hunger.

And Elsa was granted a gift from the heavens, for the moments slowed and grew thin, and every moment was a thousand years of exquisite pleasure. Anna turned Elsa on to her back and softly pinned her to the floor, her hands running up the inside of Elsa's shirt to cup her breasts.

Elsa did not notice the departure of Haley and the fortune teller. Her brain had no space, not for that.

Only Anna. Rebirthed, and rejoined.

...

When Haley saw Anna emerge from the bathtub, alive and breathing and soaking wet, she knew she would never doubt again.

The world had changed in the blink of an eye. Was it God's eye? Did he blink long enough for Anna to snatch Elsa from the unseen world? Or had this been Elsa's fate all along?

The day Anna had come into the library, Anna had been like a pebble; she had diverted Elsa's future forever. Yet their lives and Haley's life and the lives of Kristoff and Renee and Gerda and Casey were all woven together like bolted cloth. How many lives did Anna just divert with her choice to bring Elsa back from the dead?

Free will is the last best gift of God.

"Come away," Katja murmured, slowly heaving herself from the floor. "They have time, but they don't realize it."

Haley realized she was weeping; she could scarce rip her eyes from the sight of them together again; the beauty of it filled her every nook and recess. She felt no embarassment or shame, only the deepest delight, the most joyous satisfaction of their rejoining.

A little needle of envy; would she ever feel likewise?

They would be a while.

So Haley turned to ride in the wake of the fortune teller, sheltered for a brief moment from the new future suddenly thrust upon her. She followed Katja to a tiny and immaculate kitchen. Even here the house hinted of a recent awakening; the air was still dead, and dust motes danced in the steady electric glow. The room ached with the same loneliness that had clamped an iron fist around Haley's heart.

Katja brewed another pot of tea; hot and acerbic Russian tea with lemon. Neither of them spoke.

Murmurs and love words wafted from the bathroom down the hall; if Haley wasn't so overjoyed at having both Anna and Elsa back, she would have been as bitter as her tea.

All her life, Haley had wanted what other people seemed to have. To be in love seemed such a simple thing; maybe not even essential.

Haley knew better. Love was water, and she was dying of thirst, stranded in an ocean that fed on the sour tears of the moon.

The fortune teller watched her warily; Haley wondered if the woman was trying to read her future in the lines of her mouth, the whiteness of her knuckles that gripped the frail porcelain cup.

The fortune teller suddenly spoke. "Little Hierophant, do not despair. You as well will find love. It was meant for you."

Haley had been ready to dismiss anything the woman said. Until she said Hierophant.

Unbidden, the explanation of The Hierophant from the tarot came to her.

A martyr complex; a person who consistently puts the needs of others before her own. She sometimes does the right thing because she's afraid not to. The right thing, for all the wrong reasons.

She also remembered what Anna had asked her this past summer, back when they were all still whole.

Wasn't there anything you ever wanted to do with your life?

Haley sat in silence, giving no ground. She would not reveal herself to this woman. She poured her tumbled energies into the deliberate swirling of her tea cup, watching the liquid dance around the inside of the mug as she imagined someone kissing her the way that Anna kissed Elsa.

"When lost days come, there is something you must remember," Katja continued. She was speaking through a veil of gauze, perhaps hesitant about saying too much. Haley continued to analyze her tea, and she listened to the soft sounds of love coming from down the hall without realizing that she was listening.

"Water is the lubricant of the unseen world," the fortune teller persisted.

A love cry was heard. Haley just wanted to return home, so she could continue the farcical imaginings of her own life, disguises as thick and impenetrable as black or blue or pink hair. No one would ever look beyond the reflection.

Hierophant indeed.

"When comes the dawn, remember that it takes four minutes to die in the water. It will take four minutes to live, as well."

Long and thin minutes passed. The fortune teller, having said her piece, mercifully stayed silent.

The sun rose. The windows were etched in dust and time. The kitchen was cold; Haley shivered. More sounds from the other room.

Finally their ardour cooled. Anna and Elsa emerged fully clothed from the bathroom, holding hands and glowing. Haley's throat stayed thick with devastation. When both of her friends hugged her, and thanked her for her courage, it took every effort not to break down completely.

They needed her to be strong. They needed her.

Did they know what a blessing it was to be needed?

The world was theirs; never hers.

Anna thanked the fortune teller before they left. Haley would later reflect on those thanks, and writhe in frustration. Her fascination with the occult would only grow; the unseen world called to her. Could she interpret its reflection as did Anna and Elsa?

It was steel and bright outside. Elsa and Anna slid into the back seat of the car and Haley settled behind the steering wheel, feeling the frosty bite of the neglected car in the winter air. She wouldn't put gloves on to temper that bite, for the same reason that she pierced her lip.

Appearances were everything. Take away the reflection and maybe there was nothing underneath.

Haley adjusted the rearview mirror and froze, like an eviscerated moose caught in the headlights of fate.

Anna no longer had a reflection.

And by the time they had barged back into the house, Katja had somehow already disappeared along with her oversize mirror, tucked into some cranny or crevice of the house accomplice. Shouts and threats and even some thrown crockery didn't pierce the magic of her vanishing act, so after a time they simply left again, heading into a future as clean and menacing as new fallen snow.

...

A/N: Dearest readers, today is the day! I hope you enjoy the final chapters of my story. I'll say goodbye at the epilogue.