The sky above the city is darkening to dusk. Soon the night-life will begin, with carriages full of fine gentlefolk going forth to the evening's entertainments, and cut-throats and prostitutes will crowd the alleys; but now it is quiet, as quiet as it is ever likely to become.
Lillian Barton thinks the city is a living thing, a creature all its own, in which the ever-moving mass of humanity is the aether, carrying endless messages, thoughts, and feelings from one end to another. It is not a new idea. She has learned it from her instructors, who have learned it from theirs; to ghost-hunters, all things are alive, when they have not left a ghost behind.
She is followed, as she walks down the street, by the crackling and whispering ghosts of her entourage. She is a young ghost-hunter, at twenty-three, and while she is skilled in the way of the apparatus, she has not had much time to gather a collection to her. There are many ghost-hunters that pass through the city, and only a small part of the population leaves a ghost behind.
She carries a heavy wooden box on her back, its leather straps wound around her body, and a large bag of relevant books and notes; but despite all this, when a cabbie at the ranks tries to catch her eye, she shakes her head. Though the cabbie cannot see her entourage, the horse can, and it is already showing the whites of its eyes as she walks by. Lillian has not ridden a horse since her nineteenth birthday, not been in a carriage since her twentieth.
She is used to the slog, though, and tries not to complain. Each week, she must make the trip to the Westlydale household, in order to discuss the findings and events of the week. It is not a terrible walk, being two miles and a half from her small, modest rooms above the clockmaker's (the proprietor allowed her free board in exchange for the occasional repair of ghost-hunting apparatus; the machines are difficult, and there are few enough ghost-hunters who will trust their apparatus to a Sightless craftsman, no matter how skilled) to the sprawling grounds of the Westlydales.
Her compatriots in this strange business are three. Most times when Lillian arrives at the house, it is only Anastasia, who owns the house, there; and the atmosphere is quiet for a while, for Anastasia, unusually for a ghost-hunter, has only one member in her entourage: the shade of her husband, she firmly believes, gone these past seven years. Lillian's ghosts fear it, for it is stronger and sharper than any of them.
When her ghosts enter the confines of Anastasia's property, they gather close to her, and she feels their chill even through the layers of wool and silk she wears. When she rings the doorbell, they shudder as though it were she and not they who sucks the heat out of other bodies. She whispers to them to soothe them and the door creaks open.
There is no one behind the door, so Lillian has arrived last, after Eustacia Harker, the leader of their small group. Eustacia is a distant cousin of the Harker family of London, and is an absolute genius in the handling of her ghosts; Lillian knows only a few other ghost-hunters who have the trick of sending their ghosts away from them, and most of those are twice Eustacia's age. As she walks in the door, her ghosts relax, her entourage and Eustacia's whispering to each other in their own language, which so far as Lillian knows no human can understand.
Anastasia always holds these meetings in the drawing-room, so Lillian walks there. She wouldn't need a guide even if she'd never been to this house before; the fine plush carpet is worn in exactly the path to the drawing-room, and nearly nowhere else. Anastasia Westlydale is a very fine housekeeper but she is still, after seven years, in mourning, and receives only her colleagues as visitors. No one but the two maids ever traverse the rest of the halls.
Eustacia and Anastasia are both awaiting her. Anastasia sits at the piano, her hands resting on the keys without pressing them, and Eustacia stands near the writing-desk, her blonde head bent over a telegram. Lillian enters and drops her books and apparatus on the table, and then greets her friends.
"Good afternoon, Lillian," Eustacia says, without any of her usual effusiveness. Anastasia rises from the piano bench and crosses to Lillian, taking both Lillian's hands in hers in complete silence. Lillian can feel the blood drain from her face; she has rarely seen Anastasia this solemn, and Eustacia, never. It must be horrible news.
"What's happened?" she asks. Her voice comes out a squeak.
Eustacia lifts up the telegraph, and her ghosts gather back to her, a rushing white mist that ruffles the hems of her skirts and tosses her hair about. "We've had word of Signe."
Signe, the fourth of them, far more adventurous than the rest, has been in Europe these last three months - studying ghosts of battlefields. There should not be word of Signe sent by telegram. Signe is an artist and a poet; Signe writes letters, long rambling letters with detailed sketches and unusual punctuation. Signe does not send telegrams. Lillian knows her sister much better than that.
"You should sit down, dear," Anastasia tells her. Lillian allows herself to be led to the small couch, deposited on the cushions, and given a cup of tea. But she does not raise it to her lips; instead she looks steadily at Eustacia, waiting to be given the news.
Eustacia's brow furrows, and her hands grasp at her wrists; but she has the decency to look Lillian in the eye as she informs her that her sister's ship, the very ship that was supposed to bring her back to England and home, has gone down with all hands.
Lillian is a ghost-hunter and much accustomed to shock. She does not faint. But she does feel very near it; her vision fades around the edges, and she feels a distant pain in her hand and her knee; she's broken the teacup, spilling steaming tea over her lap. She ignores it as she takes several deep breaths, and ignores also Anastasia's attempts to clean tea and blood off her skirts. She cannot, will not accept this. Signe was far too full of life, and too much acquainted with death and death's methods to ever allow herself to be taken by it. Somehow, the telegram must be wrong.
Her entourage drifts around her shoulders, tugging at her hair, trying to offer comfort and only succeeding in deepening the chill spreading through Lillian's limbs. They understand death better than even their masters, being already on the other side of it. All of them have seen the living mourn.
Anastasia has found a bandage, and wrapped Lillian's hand in it; she and Eustacia sit on either side of Lillian with their hands wrapped around hers. Eustacia's ghosts whisper to Lillian's, and Anastasia's -
Anastasia's single ghost settles on Lillian's shoulder, its pale mist very nearly resolving into five fingers, as close as it can make to a gentle hand. Lillian hangs her head. Only Anastasia would set a ghost to pretend to be a living person. She finds it repulsive, and she shakes all of them off, standing up and leaving without another word.
Eustacia's ghosts follow her; the living do not.
*****
There is a funeral, though there is of course no body, and Lillian tosses the first handful of soil on the empty coffin. None of the other mourners, save Eustacia and Anastasia, can see her entourage, so none of them understand the brief wind that kicks up as she does so. Lillian's ghosts will miss Signe as well. For many of them, she was their first contact with the living world again, after so long drifting.
Not everyone leaves a ghost behind. But there are enough. They cause trouble where they haunt, in the place of their death or places they loved in life, and they do not understand why they cannot communicate, so they become angry; when one with the Sight first finds them, they are often so relieved that they cling without question to that person. Signe was one such. She did not like ghost-hunting, and never used the apparatus. She preferred to gather her ghosts naturally. And some of them did stay. But many of them did not. A ghost that has not been through the apparatus is free to do as it likes; afterwards, it is bound to the entourage of the hunter that caught it. Lillian's ghosts are all bound to her. That is how she was taught by their father, and how she preferred to conduct herself. Signe, though, had a much more transient entourage than anyone had a right to keep. She felt that the ghosts ought to make their own decisions. And so many of her ghosts fell to Lillian after they decided that they preferred to poltergeist about the city rather than stay by Signe's side.
It seems to Lillian that they might perhaps remember her. Before the gravediggers could begin tossing the pile of earth back into the grave, a great avalanche began at its top, pushed on by the misty forms of Lillian's entourage. They did not cease until the coffin was invisible under the dirt.
*****
Three weeks after the funeral, Lillian receives a final letter from Signe. When she takes it from the postman, her heart nearly stops; she's almost come to terms with the grief, but here, a new letter! The hope is almost more than she can bear, and she rushes it back to her rooms to read, all the while knowing that she's setting herself up for worse sadness.
She is. The letter's a beautiful one, with detailed drawings of the landscapes and battlegrounds and people of Russia; but it's dated long before Signe's death. The post, alas, had gone much slower than Signe herself had managed.
She'd found the objects of her research, though, which was some small comfort to Lillian. She spoke so glowingly of the history she'd discovered that Lillian could almost hear her sister's voice, words tripping over themselves in their eagerness to get out. At least she had died triumphant.
*****
Lillian is quieter, nowadays, and visits Anastasia less often. When she does, she often forgoes the drawing room entirely in favour of exploring the vast library. Anastasia, like her husband before her, is one of the foremost researchers on ghost-hunting. She has what must be miles of shelves full of hunters' journals, observations, letters, and articles. Lillian begins at one end and continues: for one day, one week, one month, three. It is not until the fourth month, on the day when Lillian should have changed from full mourning to half, that Eustacia confronts her about her reclusion.
She sits across from Lillian in the library's second chair, and waits for Lillian to acknowledge her; when Lillian refuses to look up for several minutes, she speaks. "You can’t go on like this forever. We have work to do."
"I cannot work while I grieve," Lillian replies. Her eyes still do not leave the page she's reading.
Eustacia lays a hand on the book in Lillian's lap; Lillian frowns and lifts her head, to find Eustacia's cool blue eyes mere inches from her face. "You are working. This is work. You hardly think of anything besides ghosts."
Lillian shakes her head, still unnerved by the sudden closeness of another living person, her ghosts piling up around her shoulders to defend her. "I cannot go out to work. This - I only wish to keep from being useless to you both when I return to the field."
"You’ll have to face the world again someday," Eustacia reminds her.
Lillian closes her eyes, wishing that she had left her veil on, so Eustacia would not see the tears that well up in her eyes. "She was all I had," she says. She shakes her head, willing the tears not to spill over. Eustacia is her friend, and Lillian would not distress her by a display of emotion that she cannot do anything about.
"I had rather thought that you had us, as well, Miss Barton," Eustacia says. Her ghosts sense her hurt, and rise up around her skirts. Lillian shivers and does not say anything in her defense.
"Very well then," Eustacia says after a while. "I shall see you again when you feel sufficiently emotionless to see us." She strides out, and her entourage chitters at Lillian's as the door swings shut.
*****
A few days later, Lillian is in her own rooms, watching her ghosts as they swirl 'round the ceiling. They're bored, frustrated; she's never gone so long without working before, and they want to do something, to track down a poltergeist, to put right a haunted place. Lillian does not want to do any of these things. She does not want to leave her rooms, and will not until she runs out of books borrowed from Anastasia.
She is not expecting visitors, either; she has no one to visit her, not with Eustacia angry at her and Signe... not here. But there is a visitor, someone knocking at her door. She wills her ghosts to open it or to scare the intruder away, but they carry on with their own inscrutable activity. She sighs, and stands, and answers the knock.
Anastasia Westlydale stands at her doorstep, her single ghost hovering at her shoulder in calm, smokey wisps. Lillian hurries to invite her in and light a few candles, situating her guest as best she can. There is not a great deal of space for company in these rooms, but Anastasia is dignified enough not to show any disapproval.
"I must apologise, I hadn't expected any visitors," Lillian says, stumbling over her words a little. "What brings you here, Anastasia?"
Anastasia leans towards her, and beckons her to sit. She is not more than ten years older than Lillian herself, but she has always had something of the mother about her; Lillian can hardly help listening to her. "I spoke to Eustacia, dear," she says.
Lillian casts her eyes to the floor. "I didn't intend to hurt her."
"I know that, but you know, she thinks of you as something like a sister," Anastasia tells her. Lillian shifts uncomfortably. She does know. Ghost-hunters are not highly sought after in society. Eustacia has few friends, besides the two of them, and her only relatives are distant cousins. When Eustacia's mother died, two years ago, it was Lillian that she came to for comfort. But Lillian... cannot bring herself to go to her.
"I know what troubles you, my dear," she says. "I've been through it myself."
Lillian jerks in surprise, and glances at the ghost above Anastasia's shoulder. Anastasia favours her with a slight smile. "That's when you..." she waves a hand in the ghost's direction.
Anastasia nods. "Yes."
Anastasia has never told Lillian, nor Eustacia, as far as Lillian knows, how she came to have the ghost of her husband bonded to her. Lillian only half-believes that it is Mr. Westlydale; ghosts are hard to differentiate, and have little personality. Even the ones that can speak, speak rarely, and not in a voice that is like any that a human would use. It's not rare to find a family claiming that their house's ghost is the ghost of their great-grandfather, but it's nigh-unheard of to find any proof of such.
"Did he haunt your home?" That might be definitive. Other, previous ghosts could have been ruled out.
"No," Anastasia says. "He died at sea, collecting notes," she says.
Lillian gasps, covering her mouth with her hand. It's too familiar, the situation, the words, but more than that, it's nearly impossible to find a ghost at sea. The rushing water, with no anchor, is too much for them; they dissipate.
"How did you find him?" she asks. She imagines Anastasia at sea, looking over the water for any ghost that might still be hovering on the surface, an impossible task if ever there were one. She imagines her finding some lonely soul out there, and claiming it for herself.
"I didn't have to, my dear," Anastasia said. "I summoned him."
Lillian feels she has no more expressions of shock left in her. "You summoned a specific ghost?"
"Yes." It should not be possible. It /is/ not possible. Lillian cannot allow herself to believe it might be.
Anastasia observes her withdrawal, sighing slightly. "I know it's hard to understand. There are journals, though, that you haven't come to yet, and I think those will help you."
Lillian nods. She feels rather cruelly used, to have Anastasia hold out this impossible hope. She cannot summon her sister back. She could try, but there would be no way to be certain. She thinks of Signe's ghost hovering faintly over the ocean, losing parts of itself with every swell, unable to reach home.
"I'll see you again next week, Lillian, dear," Anastasia says, and sees herself out.
*****
The next morning, Lillian sets out for Anastasia's estate. She rather thinks that the lady will be there alone, but she is not; it's Eustacia's ghosts that answer the door, once again. Lillian slips into the house, and makes for the library, not wishing a confrontation with either woman.
She knows Anastasia's handwriting well, and the sort of notebooks she favours, and with hardly half an hour's searching she finds the lady's own journals. She takes out a great stack of them and begins to read. As with any ghost-hunter's logs, they're uninteresting at the beginning; doubly so because Anastasia never had any ghosts of her own before her husband's death, and so had only second-hand observations to report.
Lillian pages through the notebooks without understanding the words, looking for something, anything that might stand out, and she finds it in the fourth journal down the stack, one year after Anastasia started keeping records: a different handwriting. It is bolder, sloppier, heavier in its lines; a man's hand.
Lillian flips back to the beginning of that volume and reads each sentence this time. A sea voyage, that they had planned for. Anastasia's husband had bonded all his ghosts; a bonded ghost can survive a sea journey if it stays close to its ghost-hunter. And there was another thing. He'd cut a lock of his hair, and braided her a small ring, all with his own hands, putting something of his soul into it, Anastasia wrote. They thought it would be helpful if the worst happened and she had to find his ghost.
The next pages are shakier in their writing, with several spots where the ink has bled, as if spotted with water; but even through her grief Anastasia had faithfully recorded everything that happened. Her husband's ship went down; she brought out her apparatus, and made certain modifications, and fed the ring into the workings of the machine.
And the page after that is full of the new handwriting, and is not notes at all, but declarations of love and longing and sadness. Declarations such as could be made from a man to his wife, Lillian thinks. Some of the phrases are enough to make her blush. She does not think a woman could have come up with this. Not all on her own. Not with such different handwriting..
There is the scrape of the wooden door over carpet, and the rustle of silk skirts, and the susurrus of ghosts. Lillian looks up, guiltily, at Eustacia.
"Lillian, those are Anastasia's private journals," Eustacia snaps. "Leave it be."
Lillian shakes her head. "They're records of her work, and they'd be opened someday, anyhow. It can hardly hurt anything." She does flip a page, so that Eustacia cannot see the different handwriting. She does not want Eustacia to guess what she's about.
"Your research shouldn't come at the expense of your friend's privacy," Eustacia says.
"Anastasia said I might look at them." Lillian will not go into more detail than that; she thinks that perhaps what Anastasia did, and Lillian may try to do, should not be told to everyone who will hear. After all, Eustacia would not like to know of it.
"Do what you like, then," Eustacia says. "Anastasia asks you to come down for tea." She leaves.
Lillian does not come down for tea. She reads all of the journal, and reads it again, making small notes in her own notebook about the technicalities.
*****
"I know what you're up to, Lillian."
Eustacia has once again interrupted Lillian in Anastasia's library. Lillian is putting the final touches on her diagram; the new apparatus will not be so different from the old, but her base model had differed significantly from Anastasia's, and Lillian does not wish to make any mistake. She must be certain that this will work. And so she puts her pencil down before she looks up at her friend.
"I'm only researching," she says carefully, twitching some sheets of blank paper over her diagrams.
"But what are you researching?" Eustacia challenges her.
Lillian looks at the journals in front of her. "Ghosts at sea."
"Dissipate quickly, Lillian, you know that." Eustacia comes around the desk, and though Lillian's ghosts rise up in defense, she ignores them to look down at the table. "These are Anastasia's journals again."
"She said I might look at them."
"Yes, you mentioned." Eustacia sighs and shakes her head. "I've had a look through them, too."
Lillian tries to seem innocent, though she knows the facade is less than convincing. "What's the matter, Eustacia?"
"Signe wouldn't want this," Eustacia says, abandoning all pretense. "She never liked the apparatus. Do you remember what she said about it, once?"
Lillian shakes her head, but replies, "That it was tantamount to slavery."
"Precisely. I don't agree, but - even so - even if her ghost could still be there, which it isn't, and even if you could find her, which you can't, do you truly think that installing her in your entourage would be what she would want?" Eustacia has always had the knack of presenting an argument with such rationality that even considering disputing her seems pure folly. Lillian, though, does not bend. Everything Eustacia says is true. And yet.
"It's different," Lillian says. "His ghost was stronger than the other ghosts. You saw the journals. He was still with her. He could use her hands."
Eustacia's lips have hardened into a thin line, and Lillian would think her angry, but for the furrow on her brow. "You cannot know that it will be the same for Signe. What piece of her soul do you even have?"
Lillian reaches into her breast pocket, and withdraws a sheet of much-folded paper; Signe's final letter, her words, and her pictures. Eustacia sighs.
"It will be enough, Eustacia. I'm sure of it."
"For her sake, and yours, I hope you're right," Eustacia tells her.
Lillian folds her papers up, and this time it is she who leaves her friend standing alone in the library.
*****
The adjustments to her apparatus take mere days. Lillian is good with her hands, and the clockmaker's shop downstairs provides her with everything she could possibly need for it. The procedure itself is harder.
Lillian sits at her desk, the apparatus before her, and the letter in her hand, reading Signe's words again and again. She cannot bring herself to tear the letter. It must be ripped to pieces to be put into the apparatus; the essence of the soul, Anastasia's journals assured her, is not destroyed save by water or fire. But despite this knowledge, despite being sure that this mad idea has a chance, Lillian cannot force her hands to move. She sits in her room until the candles gutter out, and her ghosts set up a howling wind through the room.
She cannot tell if her ghosts wish her success or failure. It is a troubling thing, not to understand one's ghosts. Lillian calms them with a few words, and they settle to twist around her hands, teasing at the edges of the paper. Her hands tremble, and one of the ghosts turns sharply, causing a small tear along one of the folds.
Lillian sets about ripping the letter into tiny pieces, dropping them one by one into the funnel of the apparatus, her ghosts hovering around her hands as each piece of Signe's glorious landscape disappears into the machine.