“
It left me alone in the house to mourn her sweet spirit. I missed her terribly. My studies
would fall short. I would never learn to read now, I thought and I cradled the loss of such an opportunity to my bosom like a child holds tight to a doll. But I would give up books and any chance of ever learning to read if only I could bring her back and somehow magically save her from the fate that had been so callously bestowed upon her.
“
Over the long, lonely months the other two sisters enlisted my help. I became their servant girl. I fulfilled their every need, and there were many. Those two selfish, little girls ran me ragged. I worked my aching fingers to the bones and was paid only with a damp, chilly room below the stairs and a warm meal for my supper.
“
Loneliness sat heavy on my chest, and I sank into a deep depression that could not be lifted. My life would end in starvation or disease. I was sure of it. I almost begged for it to happen as the aching months rolled on. I had nowhere else to go. My family was dead and gone, and I found myself doomed to live a life of servitude to uncaring, unfeeling human beings. They were my only link to the human race and yet they did not seem human to me at all. Never a kind word passed from their lips in my direction. They barely made eye contact with me as if they feared if they dared to look upon me that they would become liken unto me. The solitude became too much to bear. I would cry into my itchy, straw mattress at night as I tried to ignore the fleas in my bed and force sleep to come. My tears it seemed would never cease. Never in my life had I suffered such loneliness. Each night when the moon lifted into the blackness of the sky, I would watch it find its place from my window. It seemed to comfort me: the soft glow of the changing shapes each night. I would whisper fevering prayers to that moon. “Let me find peace. Let me find a home that doesn’t leave me lonely.”
“
Each night, I would whisper those desperate prayers and others. “Give me strength. Give me health. Give me the power to withstand this life and perhaps the courage to live it through.”
“
My prayers went unanswered for months it seemed, and then it happened; I grew sick, so sick that I could not lift my head from my bed. I raged with fever so high that I slipped in and out of delusions. The Lady of the house feared that I would die. Somewhere in her cold, dark heart, she decided it best to send for the doctor. I vaguely recall the small, bearded man being there, hovering over me with his special tools, gauging my fever, and doing his best to determine what it was that ailed me.
“
The fever climbed and climbed until I was scorching with heat. I became accustomed to night sweats so bad that I would wake in the morning with soaked sheets and smelling of death. I wanted death. I begged for it. I thought it was what was meant for me. Even death was a welcome friend, and I so needed a friend in that time of despair that I opened my arms for its embrace. I asked for him to visit me, to stay with me always.
“
It wasn’t death that would answer my prayers though. It was something else all together. At first, I thought it was another delusion, just a ghost that my mind had conjured up, that crouched in my window that night. She was beautiful. Silky black hair flowed in the breeze, lifting away from her black-clad shoulders and blowing away from her pale, breath-taking face. Her lips were full and blood red. She looked at me with eyes so blue that I thought I must be swimming in the sea. I could almost feel the cool waves as they washed over me, easing my fever. I smiled at the luscious thought, and she looked at me most curiously with her head tilted to a side as if examining me, or sizing me up.
“
“You’re ill.” She whispered at last, but I did not see her lips move. In fact she sat there crouched in the window like some statue I had seen in the town square. I stared at her, not believing what I was seeing, yet not doubting it for a moment. She was life. I could see her clearly now. She was strong, powerful, and she was beautiful. I wanted to be like her, and I suspected that she could teach me the way, so with weak, trembling arms I reached out to her. “Take me with you.” I thought madly. “Take me home.”
“
“Home?” her mind spoke to me. “What do you know of my home?”
“
“Nothing.” I whispered on a parched throat, shaking my blonde, dirty head madly. “I know nothing, but I want to know all.”
“
She smiled then, most curiously, as if she knew that I could see right through her, to the very heart of all that she represented.
“
“You see me.” She whispered, her lips moving at last. In a sleek, cat like manner she stepped from the window and entered my room. “You see me.” She whispered once more, and she came to my bed, stretching out her long, slender, white hand. Gently, she touched the warmth of my cheek with fingertips so cold that it seemed to burn into my skin. I closed my eyes and savored the burn.
“
“I see you.” I whispered almost incoherently. “I want to be you. Free me from this pain.” I begged, as if knowing that it was what she had come there to do, to free me from the insanity of what I called life.
“
“You would exchange one world of pain for another.” She warned, letting her hand slip from my face. My blue eyes slit open to widen upon her.
“
“You feel no pain.” I said, reading it in her eyes. She felt nothing, but perhaps a deep curiosity to what I was and what I felt.
“
“I feel alone.” She said, dropping her gaze to the foot of the bed. “It is the world I live in: solitude.”
“
“Then take me with you. You will not be alone any longer.” I promised. It was my one chance at escape. I knew it. I could feel it, though at the time I thought that she was an angel there to take me home to my heavenly rewards. She was no angel, but she was no devil either; not good, nor evil.
“
“You know not what you ask.” She whispered, lifting her wide, blue eyes to look upon me.
“
“You came here tonight for a reason.” I worked my way up into a sitting position to face her. “It was me.” I said strongly, somehow sensing that I was on the right path.
“
“It was your thoughts that called me here.” She confessed, and she stepped in closer. “Most curious these thoughts. You have begged for death, yet you fear it. You crave power and strength, yet you lack the courage to take it.” She said, sizing me up with those two sentences. I lowered my gaze in shame at her words. She was right. I was nothing though. I was a lowly servant girl. Who was I to ask for these blessing of strength and power and why did I crave them so?
“
“Perhaps you were meant to be more than whom you are?” The woman said softly as if answering the question I had not uttered out loud. “I was once somebody else as well, someone not so strong, not so courageous.”
“I gasped in shock at her words
because I knew it could not be true. This creature before me oozed strength and power. I could not picture her otherwise.
“
“But what is strength? What is courage? I know not. They are emotions that I do not possess, but you will not understand that unless you are standing on my side of the mirror.” she whispered smartly.
“
Her words were confusing. I didn’t like the confusion. It made the illness that had consumed me these past few days seem to become stronger against me, and I sank down into my bed, willing myself to get it over with and die.
“
“After death is a rebirth.” The woman whispered softly against my ear. I opened my eyes to her words. A rebirth sounded heavenly to me at the moment.
“
“A rebirth?” I questioned her, and she nodded just once.
“
“From day to night.” She said.
“
The confusion returned, and I wallowed in self-pity and doubt once more. “I don’t understand.” I tried to shout at her, but my dry, parched throat would not permit it. I grabbed my aching throat in agony, trying not to give into another coughing fit.
“
“You are not on my side of the mirror, now, are you?” she crouched down beside me. Her hand lifted to my face. It burned like ice to a fire once again. “Are you willing to step through the mirror, young Lillian?” she asked, knowing my name, though I had not given it to her. I stared at her with the fear that pounded in my heart. I said nothing because I feared if I spoke that I would take the coward’s way out, that I would decline her offer, and I felt strongly that her offer was too precious to resist. Her hand slithered across my cheek to my neck where her long, sharp nails tapped almost impatiently. “Are you ready to kiss this life goodbye, Lillian, to be reborn?” she put to me.
“
Again, I said nothing. I simply waited, with a pounding heart of terror, but also feeling a great anticipation. I could not wait! She reached for me, and I turned my head away, facing the drab, colorless wall and shutting my eyes to the spinning world of delusions around me. The sharpness at my neck bit into me for just a moment and then my dark world began to spin around me. I saw faces. I saw my mother’s face, who had been dead and gone since I was a child of five. I saw her smiling at me, playing games with me and I was filled with delight. I saw my father, who had never been kind to me. I saw him take my brother, Philip, out for a ride, a ride that Philip would never return from, an accident that had taken my dear brother from me forever. Sadness, like the despair I had felt so many times before engulfed me until I was drowning within it. My hands shot out, grasping for something to hold on to, something to pull me to safety. My hands threaded into silk, and I pulled it toward me as the flashes of memories continued to assault my mind. I saw the day that my Uncle Dashing had brought me to the Winters’ Manor. I had been eight years old at the time. Uncle Dashing had assured Lady Winters that I would make a fine playmate for her young daughter, Gail. I had. And then I saw Gail. I saw her forlorn face on the day that she had been married off to that horrid, old man who would take her away from me forever. She had been my only true friend, and she had been sentenced to a life of misery, and so had I. Screams of denial erupted from me and then the suffocation began. I grabbed my throat, feeling as each breath was dragged from my lungs, leaving me spent, and gasping for air that would not come. I felt it then. It was upon me swiftly: death.
“
My eyes, wide with the terror of the unknown, shot open for one last glimpse of the world around me. I saw her there, standing over me, watching me as I spit and sputtered into death, and then suddenly, the terror left me and all was still and quiet. A dark void seemed to fill my eyes. and I could neither feel nor see anything for what seemed like an eternity.
“The first sensation I can recall is the taste, the saltiness as it slipped across my numb lips, pooling on my dry tongue, and sliding warmly down my throat. It came in rivers it seemed, pouring down my gullet into my belly, filling me with warmth and security that I had never known before. Images flashed before my eyes, yet I still could not move. I saw shadows play across the dull, drab walls, shadows that could move and speak to me, and then I heard it: the melancholy music that began with the last thump of my heart. It seemed to have a life of its own as it sang to me. It sang to me of things I never would have thought possible, and I listened as it calmed me and gave me the strength that I needed to rise.
“
I sat there on the edge of my bed and I knew that something was incredibly different. I breathed in the stale air, but it did not make me feel as it had before. My pale hand rose to my forehead, to feel for the fever that had burned inside of me, but I felt nothing, not warmth nor cold. The only thing that I did feel was strength, and it was miraculously substantial. I was well. I smiled happily. I stood from my bed and twirled around excitedly. I hadn’t felt that strong or healthy in years upon years. I felt as if I could dance forever and never grow tired. It was a miracle! I was well!
“
At the sound of a door creaking open I looked up, startled by what I saw there. Widow Winters stood in her nightdress, looking so pink and full of life, like she never had before. In that moment, it was as if I had never truly seen her before. Her skin seemed to pulse with life. I watched the slow rise and fall of her chest as she inhaled and exhaled. Then something deeper came to me. My eyes dropped to the pulse beat at her throat. It seemed to be beating to the same tune as the music in my head was, but that couldn‘t be right. Could it?
“
“What has happened here?” Widow Winters demanded angrily. “You’re up, twirling about when just this morning you were on death’s door.” She said as if complaining. It confused me. Hadn’t she wanted me to get well? She had called the doctor to me after all. “All for naught.” I thought I heard her mutter, and my eyes narrowed on her.
“
“What is that?” she said in sudden alarm. “You’re bleeding, dear child. Lord, but Jesus, is there rats in this cellar?” She nodded toward my neck. My hand lifted, drawing back blood. It seemed only natural for me to suckle the sticky, red liquid from my fingers. Widow Winters looked at me oddly. She took a step back from my room, and I couldn‘t help but to notice that the rhythm in my head had picked up beat.
“
“Since you are well, I will expect you attending at breakfast.” Widow Winters ordered sharply. I nodded because I knew that it was my duty. I was there to serve Lady Winters and her daughters, Samantha and Willis. I would do my duty. Honor was all that I had left.