hes miserable. im miserable. what a wack ass combo!!
( this is totally mostly second person practice. im totally not rereading Harrow the Ninth instead of finishing The Hollow Boy, no, not at all)
(by the time this actually gets published i'll probably be finished with both Lockwood & Co. and the Empirium trilogy. because i'm clinically insane and have nothing else to do but work and read this summer)//
𓅃
You are eighteen years old when the woman shows up at your door.
Eighteen years, two months, and twelve days. You know, because your younger brother has grown an obsession with dates, and he reminds you every morning. You know, because your older sister collects calendars, and allows your younger brother to track everything in a large, leather backed dated journal that she had given him for his own birthday, just a few months before your own.
You are eighteen years, two months, and twelve days old when your world is shattered into a million shards of glass.
You had always known you were different— your mother calls it special, but you know that isn't what it is, what it is can't be described so simply— and you had always known this difference would one day drag you away, but you hadn't known it would be so soon. So soon after your father had finally agreed that you had spine. So soon after your mother had recovered from the illness that had wrecked her body since you were fourteen, the illness that made her tired and made you angry. So soon after you had grown to accept your fate.
The woman stands in your doorway, dressed neatly and professionally, reminding you of a bitter old nanny you had as a child, now made young and pretty, even with the lines framing her eyes and creases bracketing her smile. She speaks to your mother in polite, gentle tones, and your mother nods and picks at her bottom lip, where you can see the brittle dead skin upon the typical pink.
You watch from the kitchen, taking slow sips from a glass of water you've been nursing all day. You watch, knowing this is the turning point. You watch your mother heave a sigh and you hear her call your name, and you love your mother, so you go to her.
She tells you, "Honey, you know I love you."
You say, "Yeah."
"You know I only want what is best for you."
"Yeah."
"This," Your mother gestures to the prim woman, "is Dulcinea Swan. She takes care of people like you."
The woman offers her hand to you, and you don't want to take it, but your mother is there and you love your mother, so you do anyway. Her hands are soft and frail, and you can feel every bone beneath her ashen skin, and you try your best to look passive. You come from a family embedded with emotion, and passive is near unheard of in your household. It is not easy.
"It's a pleasure, Mr O'Connor. An Irish name, isn't it?"
You tell her, "Yes, it is," and, "My family held the throne until 1475." and, "It's nice to meet you, Miss Swan."
Even though you don't really mean any of it, and you aren't sure your O'Connor line is the same as the noble O'Connor line, and you don't think it's very nice to meet her at all.
"Dulcinea and I have been exchanging letters for a few months now, dearest," your mother tells you, with her gentle hand falling to your arm. You are taller than her now. She walks slower than she used to, and smiles less, and can no longer kiss the top of your head whenever she wants to, because you are taller than her now. "We both agree that the safest option... the best option... is for you to go with her, to her children's home."
This confuses you. "I'm not a child."
"I know, baby." Your mother rubs your bicep, slow and gentle, and you cannot look at her. "But Dulcinea says there are certain dangers that apply to people like you..."
Dulcinea Swan says, "I can protect you in ways your mother cannot, Mr O'Connor."
You say, "What do I need protection for? Who are these other people like me?"
"I'll explain on the way to your new home."
You look to your mother, and she nods and says, "Go pack a small bag, honey," and because you love your mother, you do.
Dulcinea Swan is not a woman you can see yourself liking.
She holds herself as if she is some kind of God, back straight, head held high, each step of hers equivalent to three of yours. This annoys you, as you are two heads taller than her, and you don't like to walk behind people. Dulcinea Swan keeps her umbrella slung over her shoulder, and she wears a long pale blue dress that seems far too out-of-time for you to trust, and she hikes it up when she walks to show off her calf-height boots, laced with glimmering strings. Her hair is long and ginger and loose, and her face is reminiscent of her surname— angular and thin, her eyes hooded beneath round glasses, her lips thin and painted a sickly shade of vermilion and trapped in a permanent slight smile. She's fantastical. She's peculiar.
And currently, she is telling you what you are.
"You, my darling, are what we like to call a deadriser. A fleshworker. A bonemaker." she says, and you frown, because your mother is not here to tell you not to. "A necromancer."
"A freak," you say, and Dulcinea Swan looks over her shoulder and beams at you, her teeth neat and small and slightly yellow, as is all bones.
"No, my sweet." says Miss Swan. "You are peculiar."
When she looks at you like this, you can see the freckles spotted round her small, paper white face, and the wrinkles 'round her eyes make more sense. You say, "Same difference, ain't it?"
"No, little one, not at all." she turns her back to you and keeps walking, and you trip over your feet to keep up with her. "Being peculiar means you are born with something more. Some great and impossible, something that makes you fundamentally inhuman, and yet more human than those without it."
You say, "Okay. Not human. I've heard weirder."
"Have you?"
"I have three younger brothers and two older sisters. I hear a lot of weird shit."
Dulcinea Swan laughs. Her laugh reminds you of spring— gentle and soft and almost warm, and in her chuckling nature you can almost see her tending to a garden. This fuels your dislike of her. She says, "Of course. How could I be such a fool? You're an adult, you've lived an entire life before this. How silly of me."
You say, "What do you mean?"
"I am so used to younger children. My oldest, you see, is only physically eight, and she has a lovely habit of acting far younger. She's such a sweetheart, my Anastasia."
"You're a mother?"
"No, sweetling. I'm a ymbryne."
You've never heard this word before, and you crinkle your nose at the sound of it. It's a humming sort of word, and Dulcinea Swan seems to sound it out. Imm-brinn.
You say, " What is that?"
Miss Swan explains like the mother she claims not to be. "It means, my dear, that I can manipulate time, as you can manipulate the dead. Tell me— are they like puppets to you, or are they more lively? Our next stops resident necromancer takes pride in making his skeletons dance in their shows."
"They're like puppets. Just... do whatever I tell them to." You say, and your frown deepens. " What next stop?"
"My sweet, it takes some time to get back home."
Miss Swan doesn't tell you where you are going until you are on the train.
You watch the world race by without speaking, your bag on your lap, hugged to your chest. Around your middle finger is your fathers ring, a sentimental thing you had owned since you were thirteen. It only started to fit around the time you turned eighteen, and now you were beginning to understand that it would fit the same forever. This little band of iron would never rust, never green with oxygen, never rot away, so long as you didn't do the same. So long as you remained the exact same.
Miss Swam had explained it to you within a complicated and winding speech, most of which you had tuned out. You had never been this far north. The horizon was bruised orange and violet, and it left a sickening feeling in your mouth, knowing this sky was not the same. It was not smeared with thick smoke and noise. This sky was quiet. Gentle. Like the ymbryne.
The town is quiet when you arrive, and it is quiet when Miss Swan fans down a cabbie and drags you inside, and it is quiet on the second ride you took that day. Your eyes are heavy, and so is your soul, and you fiddle with your ring, too unsure to speak.
"It's strange, I know." Miss Swan says softly, when the cab rolls to a stop. "You'll adapt. You're syndrigasti. You'll adapt."
You say, "Okay," and you let her drag you out of the car and through a thick pocket of woodland, where the blooming moon streaks white light across fresh leaves and worn underbrush. Your ears pop about halfway through, and you become aware of the sharp cold and spattering of snow upon everything.
Miss Swan says, "I hope you don't mind late winter much. It's February 21st, here."
You don't mind winter— you like it rather well, actually— but you fail to understand her. "Here?"
"In my loop, sweetling. Come."
The trees break to frame a manor. It is a brick-faced monolith, lined with frost-kissed vines and strangely lively flowers, pink and fat, dripping with frozen pollen. On one side a well-kept hedge stretches a good while, too tall to see beyond, but otherwise the grassy land is mostly unkempt and coated in light snow. You don't think you brought the right shoes for snow. This is Miss Swan's home, you come to realize, but you are too tired to think much of it. You follow her up to the porch, and through the dark wood door, and right up to a room she says can be yours, if you'll have it.
You nod at her and fall onto the bed face-first, too drained to even consider that there might be other people about.
You would live in this loop for thirty-one years.
𓅃
You had lived in the loop nine years before you left it again, in the first breaths of June, 1919. You learned this at breakfast, June first, 1919— on the same day as always, February the twenty-first, 1908.
Miss Swan picked at her shabbily made English waffles, shooting unsubtle glares at Henry Ingram, a young healer that had moved into loop in the summer of 1911, who currently looked very pleased with himself. Henry was a strange kid, you knew, and all he wanted to do was make himself useful. He had offered to test your formalin, multiple times now, ( You didn't let him. He thought "testing" meant "drinking" and you did not want to deal with the aftermath of that.) and had watched with a gruesome fascination whenever you practiced your talent.
There were plenty of dead rabbits around. You made good use of them, and kept the spare parts in murky jars above your desk.
"Enoch," Miss Swan said, and you looked up, not particularly interested in your own breakfast, "I have a request of you, dearest."
You looked to Florence, who pressed her lips in a thin line, and tried to remember what you could have done. "...I didn't leave anything out. I checked. I know I did."
Beside you, Anastasia snorted, and tried to cover it with a cough. You tried to kick her under the table, but her legs were too short to reach the floor, so you just banged your ankle against her chair. This made the little girls attempts to cover her giggling worse, and far less effective. Miss Swan frowned at her.
"We spoke of this, Miss Helm."
"I know," Anastasia squeaked, "But oh, isn't it so exciting?"
This confused you. "What?" you said, sitting up straight instead of hunching over like the dead-tired zombie you happened to be, "What's so funny to you?"
"Oh, tell him, Miss Swan, tell him!"
You said, "Flo?"
Florence shrugged, waved her head about so her hair fell over her face, and focused on her batch of burnt waffles. Henry beamed across the table at you, and you were very tempted to nail him in the nose with your fork.
Miss Swan said, "Enoch, I'd like you to accompany me on a pickup."
This was far less exciting to you than it was to Anastasia, who now had her little gloved hands wrapped around your forearm and was shaking you furiously. Overjoyed, she said, "Can't you believe it? Miss Swan never takes me or Florence, but since you're so calm all the time, she thinks you're perfect for a new arrival! Isn't that so fun? Isn't it just wonderful, Enoch?"
You shoved half a waffle in your mouth and mumbled, "Okay."
You didn't happen to think you were particularly calm. You had almost broken one of Flo's pots last week, after all, by getting pissed at clay that wouldn't mold right. It was a very annoying batch of clay.
"Okay?" Miss Swan hummed, "Is that all you ever have to say to me, Mr O'Connor?"
You shrugged. "Okay, I'll go with you. Whatever. It's something to do."
"Lovely. Finish up, then. We have a train to catch."
By noon, you're on a train again, and you can see the skyline of London rising above dull hills and duller houses. You haven't seen your home city in almost a decade. You wonder if your family is still in the same spot, if your oldest sister is still mucking about in Ireland, if your younger brother ever figured out how to tie his shoes without tying up his fingers too.
You have no time to find out, because when you arrive in London, Miss Swan knows exactly where she needs to go, and you follow her at a slight jog. For a woman half your height, she moves far quicker than you do, and within the hour you arrive outside a dank looking nightclub. A man stands at the door, dark hair flopping over his darker eyes, and he cracks each of his copper knuckles as you approach.
"Dulcinea Swan." he says, rather matter of factly. "You smell of 1908."
You say, "This place reeks of 1919."
The man looks to you and says, "Ah. A baby necromancer. How cute. Built a proper construct yet? No? Awh, poor sweetums. Anywho."
You frown at him, and he smiles right back. He reminds you of a half-dead wolf, both with the way he's all skin and bones, and the glimmer of his sharpened canines against chapped and battered lips. You do not think you like this man.
"Mr Di Angelo," says Dulcinea Swan, offering her hand to him. He does not take it. "I imagine Ms Stoker is all ready?"
He stares at her for a moment, then seems to pop open with realization— his eyes widening, his mouth popping open, his entire face lighting up. "Stoker...? Stoker! Forgot about that... yes, yeah, they're good."
Then he turns and bangs on a metal door you hadn't noticed. It swings open on creaking hinges. You and Miss Swan follow Mr Di Angelo through the door and into an extravagant room, done up with gold and brown leather. You stand at the threshold. Miss Swan greets a man with wild curls and a woman with the same kind of hair, and you watch as someone thumps up the stairs. Mr Di Angelo greets the new person with a wide smile.
They are like no one you have ever seen before. Their eyes are dark and stormy, as if their mind lies somewhere drowning in cobwebs rather than in the Midas-touched room before you, and they are more muscular than anyone their size has the right to be. Across their face is a mangled burn, reddish pink against skin that once must have been tan, judging by the splattered freckles across their cheeks and forehead, and there are twin scars marring their lips. They wear long sleeves and long pants and a heavy trenchcoat despite the heat, and their hair— a mousy brown-red you can't quite decipher— hangs loose around their features, cut just above their shoulders.
They are tall, and silent, and do not even look at you. This, you thought, was a good thing.
Beside them is a little boy, eight at the oldest, and he clings to their hand and leans against their forearm, twisting a ring on their middle finger. He has the same splatter of freckles, the same dark eyes, the same distrusting expression. His hair is far darker, though, and his skin carries a deep tan the tall person seems to lack, and you look between him and them and the other man, the Mr Di Angelo, and something seems to slide into place for you. You think, maybe, this little boy is their son.
"Ms Stoker, I presume?" says Miss Swan, to the scarred person, and she offers her hand. They look at it, but don't make any move to take it. Mr Di Angelo and the others don't tell them to either.
"Yeah." says Ms Stoker, with an accent vaguely German, vaguely Southern American, and deeply bland. "Jo. Jolyne. That's my name. Yeah."
They don't sound very sure of themself.
"I'm Dulcinea Swan, your new ymbryne."
"I got that."
"Did you?"
"From the outfit." For the first time, their eyes flicker to you, and you feel a jolt of cold race up your spine and extinguish at the base of your skull. "And the blond."
"I have a name," you say, without thinking.
Jolyne Stoker says, "Congratulations."
You decide that Jolyne Stoker is a bitch.
Before you leave, they pause and kneel beside the little boy, and say something to him in a language you don't speak. They press their forehead to his, and kiss his little knuckles, and promise him, in English, that they'll write. Their son, you assume, nods, and lets Mr Di Angelo lead him away. When they stand again, they glare at you, and you feel much more positive about your previous decision.
You try not to talk to them on the train ride home, but you do look at them. You are trying to figure out how someone could get a burn scar like that, so perfectly horizontal, following a solid line across their features. It looks intentional to you, and you are trying to understand if they are cruel because of the scar or if they have the scar because they are cruel. You do not want to ask them.
Once, they catch you looking. They snap, "What," and you look away.
Soon enough, you reach Leeds. Jolyne shows little interest, spending their time turning a little box over in their hands repeatedly, and Miss Swan waves down a taxi. It's a rumbly little vehicle, with the label on the side painted horribly in stark titanium white, but Miss Swan pays it no mind as she ferries you and the scarred boy into the taxi and directs the man behind the wheel. The car is stuffy, and the ride is long, and Jolyne Stoker finally asks your name.
"Since we're stuck together," they say, through that strange accent, "I guess you can call me Jo, if you want. Raven thought it was a nice nickname. Shouldn't give him much credit." At this point, they pick open a scab on the side of their hand and promptly shoves the new bleed in their mouth, and speaks around it, "Raven thinks 'Ellie' is the best nickname he's ever heard in his entire life. And 'Firehose.' Oh, and 'Lucky', can't ever forget 'Lucky'..."
"I'm Enoch," you say, trying to cover how grateful you are for a distraction. "Enoch O'Connor. Can I call you Joey? My brother always liked that name."
They look at you, as if studying you with those murky eyes, rubbing their bleeding hand against their bottom lip, and shrug. "If that's what you want. I don't care. It's better than 'Lucky', if nothing else."
"It's nice to meet you, Lucky."
Jolyne kicks you in the shin, and you smile, and this time around, you think you might mean it.
𓅃
You knew Jolyne Stoker for six years before you began to consider them a friend.
They were cold by nature, you learned, and what they could do was unlike anything you had ever seen before. Sometimes, if they slipped out of their heavy coat, they could make an entire room go dark by just breathing, and they could disappear with nothing but a blast of frigid air, and they twisted little snakes of shadow around their fingers daily, round and round, and they'd flick them in your face if you studied it a little too closely. They are a ghost, and you are utterly fascinated by them.
You learn things about them you didn't think you would, like how they have a massive serpent tattooed around a nasty scar, and it winds around the entirety of their right thigh. On the inside of their left bicep, between jagged scars clearly caused by shabby stitching, is an inked crow, completely blacked out, save for the blank circle of an eye. They rarely wear jewelry, but when they do, it's silver. They're missing one of their molars, way in the back of their mouth, and one of their lower canines is chipped, so their smile looks more threatening than welcoming, like some kind of battered animal, victorious from battle. Their hands are broad and well-worn, their fingers long and almost elegant, thick callouses coat their fingertips and palms, and across their knuckles are deep scars, caused by the flesh being broken open repeatedly in short amounts of time. You decide not to ask how they got those. Their fingers seem crooked to you, particularly both index fingers, which are slightly off-set, gnarled by what you imagine are nasty stories to tell, and when they write, they wear thick rings to keep them straight and steady. This, you asked about.
"I've broken both my hands multiple times," they explain, without looking up from their letter. You cannot read their handwriting well— it's messy and the letters bleed into each other, and you can't help but wonder how their son can possibly read it if you can't— and upside down, there is no point in even making an effort. "These are braces one of my friends put together for me. Keeps my knuckles from popping out of place. I used to have a big one for my leg, too, but that just made all the aches worse. A cane was easier in that case."
"You broke your leg?" you ask.
They scoff, shaking their head. "Nope. I've broken a lot of things— my left ankle twice, hence why I refuse to wear heels— those things are dangerous— my hands, a couple fingers, my arm three times now, not to mention the missing tooth— but my legs are relatively unscathed. Compared to everything else, I guess."
"Then why'd you have a cane?"
"I couldn't really walk well, in my old loop. Keeping as much weight off it as possible helped. It's more tolerable, now, thank God. I think I'd kill myself if I had to live with that kind of pain forever."
You disregard that last comment, unwilling to open that particular box of worms. "You lived in another loop?"
Jolyne glances up at you. Their eyes, you've learned, are actually a murky shade of green, and now they watch you with that usual glassy suspicion. "You realize I'm fifty years old, right?"
You did not. You say, "Yeah, so? You look great for your age."
"That's what stopping time at nineteen does to a guy." They slide their letter across the table to you, and you try to look more awake. "That is how you spell 'epitome', right?"
They've spelled it E-P-I-T-O-M-E-Y. You say, "Yeah, I think so."
You've always been better with numbers than you were with letters.
"Awesome. Thanks." and they take it back.
Seven years in, when Jolyne is almost fifty-one and you are very nearly thirty-four, you nick a bottle of brandy, one of the fancy ones Miss Swan keeps buried in the cellar, and you show them your favorite spot. Inside the loop, it is forever February twenty-first, but outside, it is early 1926, and the snow is finally beginning to melt.
Your favorite spot is hidden away in Anastasia's labyrinth. You've learned, over the years, that this house originally belonged to the Helm family— Anastasia's family— and all anyone knew is that they disappeared and left their young, young daughter in care of the house. Miss Swan came along soon after and made it a safe haven. This labyrinth spiraled over and over again, in some places better resembling a maze than others, and in the center was a little garden done up with dainty umbrellas and little metal chairs, and everything was always coated in frost— not because of the winter, but because of Anastasia, running her bare hands over everything until not even the warmest sun could undo the ice. Your favorite spot, though, was in a section far more maze-like, where the path branched off to a perceived dead end. But through that thicket of bush, if you were willing to suffer the slightest cut against your cheek, was a warm little room. An old guest house, overgrown by the hedges, the entrance perfectly hidden away. You brought Jolyne here.
You had retrieved them not long after midnight, when the moon was still wide and silver in the sky, high enough to be just out of reach, no longer close enough to drink. They had opened their door slowly, rubbing sleep from their eyes, and they muttered, "What could you possibly want."
You said, "I want to show you something."
"What time is it?"
"Almost one. It can't wait, I swear."
"Jesus Christ, O'Connor..."
"It's important."
"You wouldn't know importance if it hit you upside the head with a stick," they said and disappeared into their room, and in the low light of the moon, you could see them rummaging through their messy bed. A moment later, they returned, slipping their arms into their coat. "What's this about, anyways?"
"It's a secret," you told them, and allowed them the slightest glimpse of the bottle tucked inside your jacket. Their eyes widened the slightest bit, and they twisted up their face before sighing and finally stepping out of their room.
"If Swan finds out, she'll skin us both."
"Then we'll just have to make sure she doesn't find out. Follow me."
They follow you through the house, muttering obscenities to themself, and when you enter the labyrinth, you have to pause to let them catch up. You aren't much taller than them— two inches, at the most— but they have a slow and staggering walk, the result of some horrid trauma to their right leg they refuse to tell you about. Now, they take in deep breaths beside you, rubbing that scarred spot with the tip of their middle finger gingerly, as if it were still a fresh wound. Once they have collected themself, you press on.
When you pass through the brush, they do not follow. You hear them say, "What are you doing?"
You stick your hand back out through the leaves and grab about for their wrist. You hear them gasp, startled, then groan before the soft skin of their inner arm brushes your palm. You hold tight.
"Come on," you tell them, "Aren't you supposed to be brave? Have some fun."
"Fun," they retort, "In a bush."
"Don't think about it that way. You're gross, Stoker," and you yanked them in.
Jolyne Stoker almost punches you. Luckily, you half-expected it— you know them to be hesitant at new experiences, almost afraid of the unknown, and they tend to react to fear with some kind of self-defense— and you stood aside, allowing them to stumble past you and catch themself on the edge of the sink.
The guest house, you think, is very nice. It's small, clearly intended for no more than two people, and consists entirely of one middling sized room. You keep a lantern burning in the kitchen, which consists of one slab of cold-beaten wood, a separate sink painted a peeling shade of light green, a well-stocked kitchen piano, and a small table, with seats for two. A red couch serves as a barrier between the kitchen and the living space, its back against the short table, sitting nice and pretty across from a bookshelf loaded with all your favorites— your collection of Frankenstein novels (you own six at this point, by 2011 you will own forty editions), two copies of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz ( Anastasia's absolute favorite), The Man Who Was Thursday, The Dance of Death, The Interpretation of Dreams— this particular copy is riddled with your notes, and more specifically, creative insults towards Sigmund Freud— and The Fall of the King, a Danish novel you know Jolyne shows interest in. On the same wall as the bookshelf is a small bed, once again clearly intended for no more than two people, done up with nice red sheets and an army of pillows. Faded photographs are pinned up against the walls, fluttering in the slight breeze like butterflies to a pinboard, and the papers atop the old wooden desk beside you rustle as well, despite the pile of rocks serving as weights. Vines hang from holes in the roof, growing across the rafters and draping down like heavy dewdrops in early spring, still layered with frost despite the warmth of the room.
Jolyne, standing straight and brushing off their front, whispers, "What is this?"
You cross the room and hold your arms out wide, taking a theatrical bow that makes them scoff. Your boots leave marks on the carpet, not that it matters, since the thing is already brown with age. "Welcome to my personal hideaway."
"Seriously?" Jolyne says, crossing their arms and wedging their hands into their sleeves, so they look as if they don't have any arms at all, "You dragged me out of bed for some maze bedroom?"
"It's a guest house."
"Same difference."
"Not really. So? Opinions? What do you think?" You turn and fall back on the couch, craning your neck so they are still in line of sight. They twist their face in that peculiar little way they do when they're thinking, that crooked fang digging into their bottom lip, and they shrug.
"It's very... naturalistic." they hesitate here, then shrug. "Plant-y. It's extremely plant-y."
You say, unimpressed, "Plant-y."
Jolyne wanders to the center of the room, their hands still buried in the folds of their coat, and they say, "Yep. It's accurate, isn't it? Lots of vines. Plant-y."
"You're hilarious, you know." you say, and they shrug and their jacket falls off their shoulders to bunch around the crooks of their arms, what you know as antecubital fossas, sweet little areas of transition between the anatomical arm and the forearm. You can study their shoulders from a distance, since they've long since cut the sleeves off the shirt they're wearing now, and you can see the spattering of burn scars along the backs of their arms, and the jagged scars all over their biceps, and the band-aid over a small neck wound you know they got from trying to cut their hair with a butchers knife.
They stand there and study the room and fiddle with their coat, and softly they say, "Who else knows about this?"
You say, "Nobody, I think. Anastasia probably knows it exists, but she doesn't care, and Swan's too paranoid to spend any much time in the maze. It's our little secret."
Their head snaps to you, those sharp eyes narrowed, and you hear the suspicion in their voice when they echo, "Our?"
You slide the bottle out of your coat and wave it at them. Their nose twitches, and they turn slightly to gaze at the broken open door before they sit beside you. Their weight offsets the couch, ever so slightly— this hardly surprises you, as Jolyne not only eats enough to fill you three times over, but the raw strength they seem to carry weighs them down like nothing else could ever. They rake a hand through the edges of their hair, still that discernible brownish-red, messed by sleep and the lack of their typical hairstyle, and they slide off their battered shoes, and pull their thighs to their chest. They were heavy flannel pants, ones you know must be American, because half of their clothes are anyways.
You say, "Ours. Promise not to tell?"
Jolyne takes the bottle from you and pops the cork out with just their thumb. "Promise."
This is the night you learn what it means to be God, to drink the silver moon like blood from a wine glass, to memorize the curve of soft, unblemished flesh, and the rough mountains of burns along the back of Satan.
This is the first night in a long time that you feel alive.
𓅃
You know better than to count the amount of time you spend with them.
Jolyne has lived in this loop for twelve years now, and over the last five, you have found them in your bed more times than you care to remember. Sometimes you'll find yourself in theirs, in their cluttered and eerily silent room, and you lay there, while they breathe softly beside you, and you wonder how you got here. You've memorized the way their back looks.
The scars are gnarled, ugly things, reddish in some places and pale as salt in others, made up by discolored tissue and spots where the skin seemed to have boiled, and sometimes, if you hover your hand just over them, you can almost feel the heat. You know they won't tell you what happened. They won't tell you why they have those scars on their back and their calves, why they have those jarring ones on their stomach and forearms, why they have that particular one straight across their face. You've almost worked that one out. You think a fire poker is responsible.
Every time you try to ask, they frown at you and tell you to drop it.
And you've grown to care for them, so you do.
Early in the morning, you wake before them, and you listen to them breathe beside you, soft and quiet, so much so that you almost think they've died in their sleep. You've made out the old lines of a tattoo on their back, one you've been trying to piece together, one destroyed by the burns. It reminds you of chalk on a bumpy wall— the fact that something was there is obvious, but it's nearly wiped away, and you haven't the slightest clue of what it could have been before. Their hair cascades across one of your many pillows, in your almost nest of a bed, and two of your blankets are tossed over their legs. They had turned at some point in the night, and you can see the slight indents of their hair pressed into their cheek. You don't think they are beautiful, but you find them fascinating, and that's more than enough.
They'll be gone before the sun rises, pressing their lips to yours before gathering their coat and disappearing. You watch them go, and do not try to stop them, and lay there for a long while, trying to figure out exactly how you had gotten to this point. This wasn't how you expected life to be, when you had finally reached thirty-nine. Is this what Jolyne had expected, when they finally reached fifty-six? It's strange, you think. They look the same age as you, but they aren't. They are no where close.
You bury your face in a spare pillow and wish you could suffocate.
At breakfast, they speak in low tones to Neil, an omnilingusitic boy who moved in during December of 1926, deep in a German conversation. You've learned, now, that Jolyne speaks four languages— English, German, French, and the deep southern version of Spanish. They tell you, "It's none of that Spain bullshit," and since you don't know the difference, you just say you understand. You don't.
This loop has become crowded, the house nearly too small, and mealtime feels almost like a war.
There's Anastasia Helm, who's hands carry a deep frost that seeps into anything she touches without her gloves, and Florence Murphy, a particularly talented Medium, sitting in the bay window and playing chess. Anastasia is clearly winning. There's Henry Ingram, the healer, and Robbie Ballard, who has the talent of finding lost items, hunched over a plate of toast, trying to split it evenly between themselves. There's Irene Powers, with her clouds hovering about her head like a veil, and Mary Howell, her pet rats bunched around her shoulders like a coat, arguing about tea. Again. They do this every morning. There's Eloise Romero, fading in and out of view, and Juliette Newton-Graves, hovering upside down beside her, exchanging thick novels instead of sitting at the table, trying to find out how many it takes to finally weight Juliette down. You find yourself beside the newest loop member, Patrick Zimmerman, who can turn a plant into an iron statuette with ease, and pick at your flaky pancakes.
Irene was in charge of breakfast this morning, and she cannot cook to save her life.
Patrick, who's been in loop for just about a month, is twisting his napkin around his fingers and watching the typical bustle of activity with a strange knot between his brows. He's a young kid, you notice, hardly older than eleven, and he's almost constantly nervous. You hear him whisper, "Your scarred friend is scary."
You try to be at least decent to new kids, so you shrug and say, "Jolyne? They just look scary. They're actually really dumb, if you can believe it."
"They don't look it."
"Trust me, kid. They couldn't do math if their life was staked on it."
"Math can be hard."
"Nevertheless."
You study their profile from this distance, as they scoff at something Neil said and correct him in their almost accentless English, and you notice a strange dip upon the bridge of their nose you hadn't before. It's aligned with their scar, which you suppose makes sense, but somehow you have memorized every detail of their face and yet completely missed this. They're different now, somehow, and you don't really understand what changed. They look the same as they did when they first came here— the shaggy hair pulled into a half-hearted style, the dark coat over broad shoulders, the crooked smile they wear so well— but you know better.
Something has changed, you can taste it, and you're positive it's not just a side effect of Irene's cooking.
Late in the day, when the sun hangs low and heavy through the Febuary mist, a woman shows up at your front door. You're in the kitchen when she comes banging, and you see Juliette get the door, and you can almost see the woman in question from where you duck out of view. She's tall, not as tall as you or Jolyne, but she still towers over little Juliette, and in a thick voice, she asks for the Shadow-melder.
Juliette looks over her shoulder, towards where you were just a moment ago, and she hollers into the house, "Stoker! It's for you!"
Somewhere else, Mary shouts at her to shut up, and there's a clattering of footsteps as Jolyne descends the stairs. You see them pulling their coat up over their shoulders, covering a sweater you know is yours. They're still wearing pajama bottoms, and you've grown to know that habit of theirs, and they aren't wearing their usual pair of non-skids. They nudge past Juliette and say, quiet flatly, "Holy shit."
"Hey, Ellie Graves. You look like hell."
"Hester," they say. "Hester. You're here. You're alive. What the fuck?"
The woman huffs a laugh, wheezing and slow, and says, "Raven did say you'd be surprised. Happy late birthday, little ghostie. Sorry I missed the last couple. I've been busy, getting Ted all set up and everything."
Jolyne glances back, waving Juliette away for good, before they step out onto the front porch and shut the door behind them. Their voice becomes muffled, but you're hardly the type for shame, and you move closer to hear.
" What are you doing here, Quinn?"
"I heard about your little scuffle with Soman. You really pushed his limits this time, didn't you?"
"Why else do you think I'm living in a Bird loop? I hardly chose it. All Ted's idea, you know that."
"Couldn't trust you, with what went on after Germany..." the stranger makes a low humming sound, something like disapproval, " And, of course, the Amsterdam fiasco..."
"I'm not going to apologize for that, and you know it."
" Oh, I know... my little troublemaker, you are... Dot did fill me in about the little nightmare boy and everything that happened..."
"How is Lucy doing? He hasn't written in a while."
"Ted's busy trying to find a Birdie to take him. Columbidae was a special exception..."
"I can talk Swan into it. I know I can. Give me twenty minutes and a coffee pot."
"As if. I don't need to even see the feathered bitch to know she's terrified of you. Didn't take long, apparently... she wrote to Ted, a good week after you started living here... 'They're too violent, they're too intimidating, they're too battered, this wasn't a good fit'... you know the type."
"She doesn't like me. So what? Ymbrynes usually don't care for undercity kids, you and I know that. Swan's no different."
You glance down the hall. Past one of Mary's rats, there is no one, and you make a point to threaten the little rodent before it skitters off. One day, you'll make a pie out of the squirmy bastards.
"This Swan sounds like a basket case, love..."
"She definitely has her moments. You didn't come here to talk about my Bird. What do you want, Quinn?"
There's a slow exhale, and the strange woman says, "Pierre is digging again. Raven, Lucy, Ted, Sophie, and I are the only ones who know where you are. Ellie, if you want to stay off his radar, you've got to split. And fast."
"If he shows his face around me again, I'll kill the motherfucker, and you know it. Soman's not going to be here to stop me."
"I know what he did to you, and I hate him for it too, babes, but killing Pierre won't do anyone any good. He'll come back for you. You know how he gets, when one of his kids goes AWOL. Yes, including you. Especially you."
"I'm not his kid."
"He's entirely convinced you are. So—" here there is a slight clap, and you assume the strange woman has her hands on Jolyne's shoulders, "I say you get gone, as soon as you can."
"Swan will pitch a fit."
"So? She's no mother to you. You owe her nothing, past maybe a good bruise upon her jaw."
"Hester, she doesn't even let me go into town. I can't visit Heligo, let alone just disappear without her raising hell. She's the only one here who's scared of me, the others are fine."
"Is that so?"
"If Pierre shows his face, I'll deal with him. I can't leave. Not easily." Those last two words were an afterthought, spoken dully and quickly, as if they had bitten their tongue as they spoke.
There's a moment of silence, before Hester Quinn barks her strange laugh and says, "Oh. Oh. You've gone and done it again, haven't you? You and your bleeding heart—"
"You need to leave."
"Is it another red-head? Do tell, Graves! Another pathetic girl with the stars in her eyes, clinging to your arm and begging for you?" That horrid cackle.
"Now, Hester."
"Another Janice Spektor, really? And here I was to think, you were better than that!"
There's a sudden crunch of bone against bone, and you catch a glimpse of the stranger stumbling back, clutching the side of her jaw, eyes wide and wild. You can't see all of Jolyne's face, just a sliver of their profile, but you can see the anger brewing just by their shoulders, tense and vile, just like the rest of them. They had just socked her in the lower jaw, and by the looks of it, they were willing to do it again.
The woman, Hester Quinn, raises her free hand in surrender, a strange smile flicking about her lips. "Point taken. Open nerve, huh? Whatever." Her voice is thick, and you can see blood beginning to pool in her mouth. She must have bitten open her tongue. "I'll tell James you went to Montreal. Throw him off your tail. Last favor, Graves."
"It's Stoker."
"Oh, I'm sure."
And just as suddenly as she arrived, she leaves, and Jolyne stands on the porch and pinches the bridge of their nose, breathing heavy, their eyes squeezed shut. You stay crouched by the door for what feels like forever, pressing your nose to the smooth glass of your cup, waiting for them to rip your head off.
But when they return, and they see you there, they don't even look mad. They just look lost. Lost and confused and desperately tired, and they say, "How much of that did you hear?"
You say, "How pissed would you be if I said all of it?"
They sigh and disappear, and you know better than to go after them.
𓅃
October 1937
Mr O'Connor,
You don't know me. If there's any such thing as a God, you never will, but I know you. I know you've gotten yourself entangled in Jo's sticky web, just like I did, just like Janice did. A word of advice, necromancer to necromancer: you better run while you still can. I don't mean to say that they're some horrid monster or something, because Jo isn't anywhere near that. A little fucked up, yes, but if you grew up in a place like they did, you'd understand. But you didn't, did you? You had a nice little funeral home with oak coffins and red carpet, and a gaggle of siblings to call your own. Didn't you?
I'll say this once, and once alone: Jolene Stoker is not who they say they are.
I'm sure you've heard the medium story by now. How they sometimes see dead people, right at the corner of their vision. I've heard it too. It's total bullshit. Jolean does see dead people, yeah, but they aren't ghosts. They're vivid hallucinations, caused by trauma upon trauma upon trauma. I've talked to one of my time travelling buddies, and he's pretty convinced that them seeing Janice and all the other kiddos is the result of something he calls "PTSD". Or Schizophrenia, but he doesn't think Jo fits all the criteria for it, whatever that implies. Don't know what that means, but Bishop has been pretty reliable otherwise, so I'd rather not doubt him. Even though he did shoot me in the shoulder that one time... it is what it is.
Point of the matter: Joey sees things. Joey hears things. Joey gets way too attached and weaves themself into the red, wet soil of your flesh, and that smoke in their lungs is gonna take you down with them. They'll eat you whole.
--R
𓅃
It is the late spring of 1941, and you are listening to Jolyne Stoker argue with Dulcinea Swan for the fourth time in the last two days.
You have known them for twenty-two years, and the last decade of that has been strange. You think you know them well enough, but they still won't tell you what happened to them, and instead of getting mad, they just get quiet now. They've taken up a habit of staring at their hands, counting the strange spots on their forearms under their breath, doing everything in their power to avoid looking you in the eye. It's maddening to you.
They are not the same person as they were in 1919.
They've grown into something silent, a ghost over a killer, shadowing the halls with muffled footsteps and a voice so soft and unfamiliar, you weren't sure if it was even theirs anymore. That woman, that horrid, scratchy-voiced woman from a decade ago, had planted something malignant in them, and now it writhed in their chest, and took them away from you.
Oh, and there was the letter, of course.
You lay in bed and listen, holding that tattered sheet of paper above your head, rereading it again and again and again. You've memorized the small, flat handwriting, the jagged signature of a singular R, the way the author had penned out Jolyne's name, and misspelled it twice. Dulcinea Swan is saying something unreasonable, and you hear Jolyne scoff and say something venomous back, and Swan says something that makes the entire house drop a few degrees.
She says, "Of all the horrid children in those cities, why'd I have to end up with Gwendolyn Hayle?"
There is something on fire in Jolyne's voice when they finally speak again, a stagnant silence broken by a venom you hadn't heard in years. It makes you sit up in bed and stare at your door, wishing you had left it open the slightest bit, just so you could see their face.
"Don't you dare call me that."
"What? Your name? What's so bad about Gwendolyn Hayle?"
Again, that cold seeps through the house. It's been so long since you've felt that ice, that blocking out of the sun, that drinking of the silver moon. That pure and uncontrolled Stoker anger.
"I buried that girl." Jolyne says, and their voice is low and cruel and absolutely horrible. "I dug her grave with my bare fucking hands, in wet, red soil. She's right between my lungs. I could crack open my chest and show you, if you'd like, but then again. You can't handle my face. I doubt you could stomach hers."
There it is again— that suffocating shock, so thick you can practically smell it, and Jolyne breaks it with that sneering, "That's what I thought," and the rush of air that follows can only mean they slipped away into the dark. A rock into a raging sea.
Late in the night, long after Jolyne doesn't come down for dinner, and doesn't say good-night to Anastasia in that silly accent they put on for her, and doesn't teach Henry how to make those german plum dumplings like they had promised, you slip out of your own bedroom and walk slowly down the hall to theirs. They've got the one in the far back of the house, wedged in a corner, made identifiable only by the plaque with their initials engraved upon, hammered into the dark oak of the door, courtesy of Miss Swan. Everyone's door had one.
E.O, of your own; A.H of Anastastia's; P.Z on the newest, already a decade aged.
You stop looking at the metal and you knock.
They don't answer the door, but you can hear a weak, " It's unlocked," and to you, that's answer enough.
Jolyne's room is dark. It always had been: over their windows are thick blackout curtains, embroidered by hand with swirling licks of wind and deep forests of varied shades of green, dark sheets upon their messy bed, a box of stained leather notebooks you had given them over the years. It took you eight to figure out their birthday, since that also happened to be one of the many things they didn't tell you, and to make up for those you missed, you gave them a new notebook for all their things-they-don't-talk-about every year. Those were under their desk. Their coat lays abandoned over their easel, the one they haven't used since early 1924, and their beat up non-slicks are by their bed. They themself are sitting at the edge, Indian style, rubbing their thumb over their medial malleolus, where you know they have a tiny scar of unknown origins.
You say, "Hey."
They don't look at you. Their eyes are glued to a fraying part of their carpet, where the grey boxes give way to loose threads sprawled across the hardwood floor. It's the same part of the carpet you always trip over.
They say, "Swan wants me to leave."
"What?"
"She wants me gone. I can't go back to London. I can't do it. I won't do it. It'll hurt to much."
You sit beside them, trace a finger up the ridges of their spine. Despite the burns, their vertebrae have always been obvious to you. You've grown to love it. You say, "If she makes you leave, I'll go with you."
"Enoch, you can't."
"Bullshit. You're the one thing I like about this loop. You're the one person here who's actually reliable, and if you leave, who am I supposed to harass? Florence? Hell no."
"Mary's taken quite the liking to you."
"Ugh, don't remind me. I found one of her rats in my closet the other day."
"Yuck."
Jolyne falls back into that silence, and so do you, and you sit there for a long time, them staring at their carpet and you watching their profile. There are stars outside when you finally ask, "Who's Gwendolyn Hayle?"
You see them stiffen, just the slightest bit, as if you've just dumped ice down the back of their shirt. They say, softly, "She's me. The little version. Before I became..." they gesture vaguely to their entire self, from the calloused soles of their feet to their scarred biceps to their unruly hair. "This."
"I happen to like this."
"Your lack of judgement always astounds me," they look at you now, their head low and heavy, "I should be used to it by now, and yet, it always catches me off my guard."
You think of how they looked that first night, way back at the seven year point, when you first felt their touch, when they first taught you what it meant to be God. They had softened since then, grown heavier, grown quieter, and you liked this version of them more. You liked them better when they were happy.
Back then, you knew now, they were miserable. Now, sitting before you, that shadow of a person seemed to be slipping back into their features, and it made you sad. There was no other word for it. Sad.
You whisper, "You know I'm in love with you, right?"
They say, their voice low and heartbroken, "I do. I wish you weren't."
"Why?"
"I don't want you to get hurt."
"Don't worry, Lucky. Nothing bad ever happens to the O'Connors. Not if we have any say in it."
They don't respond. Instead, Jolyne Stoker leans against you, and you wrap your arms around them, and you stay like that for a very long time.
𓅃
Swan tries to kick Jolyne out early the next morning. She only fails, because when Jolyne stands, so do you, and the look on the ymbrynes face was so shocked it can't be put into words. They smile at you, that chipped-tooth grin you missed so badly.
"Mr O'Connor, what on earth are you doing?" Swan gasps.
You say, "I'm going with them."
"Absolutely not!"
You shrug. "Too bad. Sucks to suck. Out by noon, Joey?"
The same way you discussed, in the low light of their bedroom, scribbling away in one of their notebooks. All exactly to that plan you had created, after the admission and the silence and the secrets traded in the form of slow, hesitant kisses. Per usual.
"Sounds good to me," they say, and Swan lets out a groan, dropping her head into her hands.
"Fine." says the Bird, "Fine, we'll do it the normal way. God forbid."
And that's how you and Jolyne find yourselves on a little island off the Southern Coast of Wales, looped September the Third, 1940. Cairnholm, it's called. This loop, you will live in for seventy years, four months, and eight days.
You will hate Abraham Portman, and grow to tolerate Emma Bloom and Bronwyn Bruntley, and you'll absolutely despise Victor Bruntley after the summer of 1959, during which he broke Jolyne's wrist in the middle of one of his many, many monologues. You'll learn that Swan's loop will fall victim to a Wight Raid in the autumn of 1966. You'll get mean, bitter. Jolyne will get quiet.
And things will stay exactly the same until June of 2011, and then you'll have to go through hell on earth all over again.
But so long as a certain shadowmelder, the one who likes silver jewelry and homemade strombolis and thick novels by Danish authors, stands at your side, you might be able to take it. Maybe.
Just maybe.