The Ghost of Providence

Chapter Three

Halle

Halle was hiding a secret from all but family, a secret she herself struggled to understand. But as she watched the cherry blossoms tilt to and fro on the hill leading up to her family house, as always, she let herself be transfixed by their beauty for a moment. A small moment of peace.

The tiny petals of soft pink lilted through the air like winsome snowfall. A few would even catch in her hair in a circular pattern. And when coincidence would align them just so, she often thought of herself as some princess from a storybook: a blonde, young maiden made whole by her shimmering tiara of pink diamonds.

As a lady of the house, her grandfather liked to tell her that she was destined for an unseen kingdom somewhere beyond the water. But it was only at times like this that she felt it may be true.

“Princess...”

She breathed the word against her hair so the petals would scatter down around her feet, and looked at them there differently. “Princess,” she said the word with a scoff this time, and the cherry petals bloomed anew with crimson red. There was no gesture nor spoken word yet they caught fire quick. And wilted away quicker. She looked to the burnt-up remains with a furrowed lip and sighed.

Suddenly a voice echoed along the hillside. “No magic off the estate!”

The crisp, clear reprimand sent the young girl to a frazzled turnaround. Behind her, still making their way over the topmost bend of the hill, two of her most loved people ran up in an equally frazzled manner. They were a familiar sight to her and had hair just like hers. Recently though, they’d both come home covered in sweat.

“Sorry, dad!” She instinctively bowed her head before correcting herself awkwardly.

Halle’s father wasn’t a strict man - she found him rather soft in fact. Her grandfather was another story, however. He’d instilled in her certain manners she couldn’t quite restrain at times.

“Were you out looking for that cobbler again,” she asked with an innocent smile. And though she did smile, she frowned at the thought.

Why they feel so obligated to a shoemaker and his son, I’ll never understand.

The two men, one young, one nearing a middle-age, crested the hilly curve of their property and stopped beside her in panting fits. The younger one looked up to her from his groundward hunch and scowled at her, scolding between breaths. “That cobbler — Halle — really? Uncle Jacob’s — family.” His blue eyes held her in low regard for a glance before returning to the floor.

She scrunched her nose at the remark and readied herself to retort, but her father waved the conversation away before either could say more. He looked to her brother with worried eyes. “Have you talked to Corbyn yet, Olivur? He could use a friend at his side right now.”

Her brother squirmed awkwardly under the question, teetering his shoulders up and down, his head left and right. And Halle squinted at the sight. Weird, she thought. She found his awkward response even more stilted than usual. Something’s going on between them, she surmised, a satisfied smirk trailing the corners of her bottom lip. Looks like he might finally end his young love with that cobbler boy afterall.

Her father seemed to sense suspicion as well. He looked to her brother narrowly this time. “Jacob is gone and you haven’t talked to him yet,” he questioned. “Why?”

Olivur gave a weak ‘eep’ at their father’s stern countenance and looked everywhere but the man’s icy eyes. The brother, who was older than her by nearly a year, fiddled his fingers around each other as he stammered out a response. “He won’t — He won’t talk to me, dad.”

Their father hiccuped amidst his heavy breathing and looked at Olivur with disappointment. It was hard to watch for Halle, but it lasted only a moment. “I see,” he grumbled. “I imagine he’s taking this harder than anyone else.”

Halle turned from her brother’s downcast face to her father’s guilty, forward slump in bemusement. “‘He must be taking this hard?’” She repeated aloud in a snide fashion. “It wasn’t that hard when his dad was taking our money.”

It was Olivur's turn to get angry this time and he shook his little head - which was all very amusing to her.

“Shut up, Halle,” he yelled at her, his spindly chest having finally filled with air once again. “Uncle Jacob is missing. So leave it alone!”

Halle threw her hands up with exaggerated force. “Ah, so because the man who makes our shoes is missing, I’m supposed to clamor through the woods with you? In the Brigs?” she emphasized, raising her brows as she pointed to her leather flats. “The man makes our shoes, Oli! He may be missing, but I don’t think I’m missing anything here.”

Shakes took her brother by the hand, and he clenched them up tight. “By the Ancestor, you’re so - ergh!” he exclaimed. “You don’t feel bad for them? We’ve known them our whole lives!”

“You’ve known them your whole life, Oli, not me!” she angrily interjected.

Halle snapped a finger toward her brother and let her opinion be known. “To me: they’re leeches who clung to dad’s money when they needed it; and they always seem to need more,” she levied. Halle understood she’d be getting into even more trouble saying what she had but, just as she loved her brother for his naivety, she loathed him for it as well. “Think about who you are for a second,” she remarked. “You’re Olivur Harrowbird, oldest son of the family and heir to the House. Our family mingled with royalty. We had our shoes kissed;” she dug the finger she’d been pointing into his sweaty shirt. “And you now dishonor our Ancestor by mingling with the men who make them!”

From the corner of Halle’s eye, she noted their father was growing visibly upset with each passing comment, and so decided to let the argument go.

He’s getting angry, she frowned. I really should stop.

And she really thought she would...but then Olivur opened his mouth again.

Veins visible along his thin neck, Olivur visibly struggled to remain civil. “If you don’t even know them, why do you think you’re better than them! Uncle Jacob’s the kindest person I ever met, and Corbyn’s the best friend I ever had,” he expressed heatedly. “I’m not going to let you talk about them like that when they’re both better than me.” He looked at Halle for a moment like she were stupid. “And they’re better than you too.”

The comment struck her. Damn you. Something about Halle snapped with her brother’s prodding, and she threw propriety to the wind.

“He’s lying to everyone about what happened and we all know it!” She shouted in her brother’s turtling face.

“Halle!” her father rebuked fiercely.

“No, dad, it doesn’t make sense!” she insisted. “What? You really expect me to believe he has no idea where his father went? That he ‘doesn’t remember’,” she quoted with her fingers. “He’s lying to you, and you're lapping it up!”

“Halle Harrowbird!” Her father stood over her, his tall frame fully exposed by the sun, and looked angrier than Halle had ever seen him. “How dare you speak like that about my friend and his family,” he roared.

His reaction startled Halle speechless. She was frustrated that he wasn’t taking her side, and scared because he’d never talked to her like that.

Never.

He pointed a long finger to her chest and motioned up the hill with unfamiliar heat. “Go! Go home. And when you get there, go to your room!”

Halle huffed and hissed, but decided against hollering at her own father. Instead, she gave her brother an angry glare and turned on her heels back in the direction she’d begun.

She brushed over the burnt blossoms in a fit but stopped for a moment as her father and Olivur spoke quietly to one another behind her. They whispered low enough to expect she wouldn’t hear, but just loud enough that she could.

Halle caught only a few words...but the few she did broke her heart.

“...She was so much nicer when mom was around,” Halle heard her brother grumble.

“Yes.” She could imagine her father’s forlorn face as he exhaled a long, mourning breath. “But she’s gone, Olivur. Your sister will have to find her way herself somehow.”

Her gait paused with their words. Her legs trembled. But she kept on without turning around. “I don’t understand”, she sniffled aloud. Angry tears stung at her eyes, but she refused to let them show - refused to cry. Their grandfather rarely spoke to her or her brother but that was one thing he demanded: No crying.

No crying. No crying. No crying.

She recited the words to herself like a mantra, all the way up to a great, white-wood house at the top of the hill. It was the only hill like it on the Plateau. And the only house like it on the island.

After slamming open the fence’s iron-worked gate, Halle tramped over the front yard. Her heavy steps left angry impressions on the fresh-cut grass, then grass stains on the white steps leading up to the door.

No crying. No crying. No crying.

The words persisted on even as she swung the door open and shut, and seemed even louder alongside the soft padding of leather flats against burnished marble.

She hurried through the greeting room now, up the steps, to the second of three stories. There, she ran across the loft to face the only two doors on the floor. One black, one white.

She looked to the white door for a time, her expression shifting somewhere between frustration and fury as she ogled it with wet, red eyes. Deciding on fury, Halle punched the door with all the muster she could spare. The impact left bruises on both her hand and the white door, yet she was unsatisfied still. She punched the door again. Damn. Damn. Damn you, Olivur! You spineless, sniveling...Damn!

Her knuckles bled, and the blood stuck to the door noticeably. She didn’t stop punching for a time however and only did so when an ember licked the pliable door just as noticeably. Damn! She quickly swatted at the spark until it died, and was relieved when nothing caught fire.

With a heavy sigh, she gave her brother’s door a mixed glance once again. “I don’t understand,” she groaned. And it was only after one last swift kick that she turned away to face the other door: the black one. She turned the handle forcefully and pushed her last barrier to privacy open and shut, just as she had the rest before it.

Inside, her back against the soft, black wood, Halle finally let the tears fall; and once the first one fell, the rest tumbled out against her better nature. Don’t cry, she wrestled with her eyes. But the gentle tempo of thick tears hitting black carpet crescendoed. The rhythm grew quicker as her breath did the same.

She panted now, just as her brother had over on the hill before.

Steps unsteady, Halle lurched across the large room, lumbered around a black, canopy bed-frame and it’s cherry-colored veilings, and lingered over a bedside cabinet. It was a simple, oaken thing, yet as she loomed over it her symptoms worsened. Her hands shook harder. Her crying grew louder. And her tears fell faster.

On top of the cabinet were two objects: one candle and one picture.

The candle was well-used, it’s height a fingertip’s length. The picture was hard to make-out, so Halle willed the candle stump's wick lit and it did as ordered. She gripped the picture tenderly beneath the light, and finally, the image could be seen.

It was a beautiful woman. Whose tiny, button nose looked quite like her own, though Halle often felt it carried an elegance her own lacked. The twenty or so year old wore a white blouse and a woven sun-hat that seemed of such natural grace to Halle. The woman smiled happily atop her rocking chair as she swaddled two crying babies in her arms, one boy and one girl. That smile had always reminded her of Olivur’s — that wide, endearing curve…

Halle choked back a sob that was only followed by another she couldn’t. And then another. And another. They ripped through her pursed lips like termites would through reluctant wood.

“I miss you,” she cried to the woman in the picture. “I miss you so much.”

Like a fond memory, she caressed the image with soft, slow fingers, handling it with more care than anything she owned.

She whispered to the picture quietly, desperately seeking advice from a woman who was no longer there to give it. “Dad and Oli think I’ve changed. They think I’ve become mean and spiteful,” she explained. “Have I really?” she asked the woman. “Am I a bad person?”

Halle waited silently for a response from the woman who always had something nice to say.

The minutes ticked away on her mechanical clock, over on the corner of the wall. And along with each tick came a steadier breath; her tears slowed, stopped, dried away; and by the tenth loud tick, she looked as if she had never cried at all.

One last sniffle tickled her nose. She sniffed it away and sniffed in some more, resigned to a fact she knew all along: “You can’t answer, can you?”

She didn’t expect the lady in white to actually respond...But I wanted you to. I wanted it more than anything.

Halle waited for one final tick, sighing lightly when it passed without change. The hand holding the picture went limp by her sides, her eyes now roved to a tall, black curtain. She swiped at it with disinterest, and saturated sunlight poured into the lonesome room. The sun had just begun to set over the only hill like it on the Plateau. It looked sad with it's bloody-red fanfare..

“Look, momma.” She placed the picture gently against the window. “Even the sun mourns your passing,” she smiled weakly.

***

Sometime later, Olivur and their father made it to the fence at last. The sun had long faded and they looked even dirtier than before under the torchlight they carried.

“I bet they were out looking for that cobbler again,” she mumbled.

They were just about to open the gate when someone new ran up the hill after them, shouting all the while by the look of it. Their heads turned to the newcomer and seemed to hear the man out. It must have only been a few words as he was finished speaking nearly as soon as he began.

Halle didn’t particularly care for the new figure, or whatever he had to say. She turned away from the window and vented to her mother as she had when the woman was alive. The sight of her brother incited her fury to return in spades.

“I don’t get them at all,” she grit her teeth. “Why? Why do they take that stupid boy’s side every time? I don’t get it. He’s better than me?” Halle scoffed lightly. “He can’t even use magic.” She kicked the bedpost lightly. “They know how hard grandpa makes me work, so why do they only acknowledge that stupid boy?” She screamed into her shoulder. “Damn him to the dirt!”

She’d prepared to unload more to her mother, but an abrupt thumping from the stairs and into the loft drew her attention to the door, which whipped open and slammed against the wall. Halle yelped in fright at the sudden flurry but grew upset a moment later with the intruder.

“Olivur! What the he—” She stopped herself halfway when she saw his face through the doorway.

Why’s he crying?

She ran up to her brother and threw a hug around the boy, her anger thrown out the window with his trembling body.

“What’s going on, Oli? What happened?” He didn’t answer for a time, not for three long ticks. And his emphatic sobbing didn’t stop even when he did.

“It’s Uncle...it’s uncle..,” he tried twice.

“Uncle Jacob?” Halle finished, patiently rocking his head in her shoulder.

He nodded weakly with his buried face.

“What happened?”

He lifted his head and in his teary, blue eyes Halle saw such devastation and guilt. Such heartbreak. And his voice came out nearly as broken as he looked, with words that would come to pervade her life forevermore.

“He’s dead,” his grieving voice cracked. “Uncle Jacob’s dead!”