Anne Brontë Nightwalker

Chapter 30

I cradle him in my arms. Woody is glued to his side, still trembling, but less so. My presence comforts him. I long to stroke William's skin, to feel its warmth beneath my fingers. I want to run my tongue up his neck and know his taste, but Emily is watching.

"Anne," she says, regaining my attention. "It was my hope that you would be happy to see me. With such an exceptional heart as yours, I thought you might . . ." She tries to finish, then gives up, turns and peers into the darkness. Her white neck is a taut curve. I fear she will vanish as she did before, and I'm not sure what is worse: condemned to kill in darkness by the one I love or abandoned to walk in darkness alone.

She frightens me, but I don't want to lose her again.

Though Emily was a year ahead of me, as girls we were like twins. How I worshipped and loved her, as much as my own flesh—nay, more. Far more. She could read my thoughts without my speaking. She knew them by the turn of my chin or the glint of my eye. When we looked out upon the world, we saw the same things: raw beauty and mystery, stories, and clouds, and moors. It was as if our every thought and feeling hummed along an invisible current, experienced by us both, connecting us like soul mates.

We grew into young women and I took her place at Roe Head when she, the strong one, could not physically survive being away from home. Then I, the fragile one, went on to Blake Hall and Thorpe Green in search of independence, refusing to cave to my loneliness and despair. Striving to win my employer's approval, and failing, always failing, but still refusing to return home vanquished.

Emily called me a martyr. Claiming I wanted to die on the cross of my sacrifice in the service of soft, rich imbeciles. Would that make God happy? she asked. Is that the God you believe in? He's not my god, she said. My god is freedom and strength, not chains and misery. My god is power, not castration.

Needless to say, it was a painful separation.

While I worked as a governess, Emily stayed behind, roaming the moors for hours each day, attuned to every tremor in the air, every shade of grey in the sky, all the while sinking deeper into fantasy, lost in her tales of beloved Gondal—an obsession as tough to quit as Bran's alcohol. As I spent years amidst strangers and wealth, with barely a moment to myself, she spent years swallowed by solitude and freedom, disappearing for great lengths of time into the moors, protected we hoped by her faithful mastiff Keeper and her own indomitable strength. In time, her will turned akin to the landscape, not above or beside it, but within it—fierce and implacable.

Her Gondal stories became increasingly violent. Brutal. Full of vengeance, betrayal, and torture. But as they increased in harshness, she showed them to me less and less, until my creative confidante became an utter mystery and shut the door on me once and for all.

I lost her before she ever died.

"Emily . . ." I search for the right words. Such masters we once were and yet how they fail us! I'm dizzy with anger and love. She was my best friend in all the world, but as I grew warmer, she grew cold. As I grew kinder, she grew hard. She grew toward darkness as I grew toward light, and then she turned me, punishing me for some wrong I still don't understand!

My own sister sentenced me to darkness. She tried to kill William. Finally, I have found someone, been kissed, and my sister tries to kill him. I don't know whether to take her in my arms or strike her.

Not a single person have I ever loved more than her.

How could she leave me?

"You caught me off guard, but believe me when I say I'm glad to see you," I say. "I didn't know if you were dead or alive. To see you is an immense relief." She frowns ever so slightly, and I inwardly cringe at my choice of words. Relief? It's so much more than that. "However" —I look at her directly, wanting her to understand— "that doesn't erase the fact you tried to kill my friend. He's an honorable man. Why would you choose him?"