The Ghost of Providence

Chapter Ten

Halle

Bits of crusty ash flaked from the corner of a picture in a young girl’s room. The slow shrinkage of a candle at work was the only light in the dark.

“Momma,” the young girl crooned, her hair frizzy bound backward, a faded image glued to her hand like regret to her stomach.

A thumb lifted to her mother’s face, and Halle caressed the picture lightly as she had every night the last few nights.

Regret was a solid foundation to build a harrowed mind.

“Harrowed,” she put a hand to her mouth and laughed. “I guess it’s our namesake.”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

A soft, stiff pound on the front door drew a curious lift to Halle’s eyebrow. Who is that, she wondered. They rarely got visitors, especially this late at night.

She lifted herself from the goose-down duvet to creep out of the room. With a curious ear over the loft, the girl eavesdropped downstairs, listening for who their knocker might be.

Already downstairs in the kitchen, her father paced through the entryway to the door, mumbling things like, “Do they not know how late it is?” and “This better be good.”

Halle rolled her eyes. It’s probably some business partner of his. She thought so, but kept listening anyway. Any distraction was a good distraction.

Knock. Knock. Knock. The visitor knocked again.

“I’m coming!” their father yelled, twisting the doorknob right and back to let their guest in. The hinge creaked as the frame opened, and while that would usually bother her, her father’s gasp took her attention. It was an excited breath, like he had seen an old friend.

“So you showed up after all! Come, come in! I just finished cleaning the dishes, but I can whip up a late-night snack for everyone. Head on over to the table. I’ll grab Oli and Hal. Go on now!”

Her father’s steps hit the first few stairs to the loft, and Halle skittered back into her room as quietly as she could. She shut the door behind her with one hand, while the other stripped her hairband off then combed through her hair. If they were going to eat with a guest, she needed to be presentable.

‘A Harrowbird is always presentable.’

Halle wanted to shed her grandfather’s rules...but sometimes they were good rules to follow.

A small knot caught on a nail and she cringed as it was tugged out. What’s he so excited for anyway, she grumbled. Her father wasn’t an excitable person, but he sounded ecstatic to see their guest. He even wants us to eat with them, she mused. Now I’m really curious.

Her hair combed through and straight, an agitated pound rang on her own door. Even his knock is happy. “Yes, what is it?”

“We have a guest over! I want you and Oli downstairs to eat with us.”

“Who is it?” she called back, curious.

Her father chuckled. “You’ll see.” He didn’t say more.

“Ugh!”

Her father continued the same process with her brother, and the two linen-clad siblings met in the loft a few minutes afterward.

“Who do you think it is?” Olivur whispered. His black hair tied back with a blue band, his lighter eyes seemed to pop with intrigue. He was all smiles as he recalled their father’s voice. “He sounded kind of happy, didn’t he?”

Halle nodded, “He did right? Let’s go see!”

They ran downstairs eagerly, turning to the parlor when their feet hit the floor. The parlor was a grand room, adorned with a long table that stretched from one wall to the opposite one. The family rarely used it. The dining table was largely reserved for large business meetings and the occasional holiday dinner.

Halle squinted at the choice. We’re even using the dining table? So it is a business meeting.

Her quick-footed brother was the first down the stairs and the first to turn the corner. Halle watched his face for a reaction to the visitor, but when Olivur looked into the room, his face surprised her. He took a sharp breath, his pupils contracted, his smile twisted to a frown: he was almost scared.

“Oli! Look who it is!” their father called to him. “Don’t just stand there. Come sit with us!”

Though their father beckoned him, Halle noticed her brother’s legs were stiff, rooted to the ground. He bowed his back a degree, his shoulders peacocking his chest outward. Olivur seemed to fashion himself something respectable, maybe intimidating, but Halle knew her brother better than that. A face floated in her head.

So it’s him, Halle realized. The boy whose respect her brother craved. The boy her father doted.

Halle swept her hair back and followed her brother into the room. She squeezed his hand before passing him up, and walked to the table where two males sat. Her theory proved right as she finally saw the guest for herself. He sat on her father’s right side, a dark, dirty, grey coat wrapped loosely around his thin frame.

Corbyn Pane.

His hood was pulled over his face, so as she came upon the long table, she smelled the boy before she saw him. She scrunched her nose behind a hand as she reached for a seat two chairs from her father’s left side.

His left side? she bristled. Family sits on the right side. Halle wasn’t sure why her father let the boy take Olivur's spot at his right hand. It was the heir’s seat.

The arrangement may have been one reason her brother lagged so far behind. He got to his chair only after she’d already sat and tucked below the tablecloth.

Olivur approached the table in a funk, scraping his chair loudly against the linoleum as he pulled it out and in slowly. He folded his arms across a puffed-up chest, glowering at the glass dinnerware. His awkward silence was shared by the room.

Olivur shifted and Halle followed his scowl and her father’s smile to their silent guest: the cobbler.

The boy had a glare to his eye that confused Halle. He leered at the family of three broodingly, each member receiving their very own scathing glance.

Her father hadn’t noticed apparently. He was too busy stretching the corners of his lips in the widest smile she’d ever seen on him. The beaming man looked between the three children as if a long-forgotten dream had come true.

He spoke first, his hands clasped on the table happily: “I thought you weren’t going to make it tonight,” he chuckled to the mud-caked boy. “Couldn’t resist the temptation, huh? You always did like my crumble.”

He bantered one-sidedly with a boy so solemn, he cut the room with his glower.

“Something like that,” the boy finally spoke. His voice was scratchy, hoarse, distant yet painfully close. His response was clipped, abrupt, comfortable yet disrespectful.

Halle lurched forward to rebuke the boy, but Oli had already begun to ask a question.

“Why’re you so dirty,” he asked with a cringe that followed a painful sniff. “You smell like death.”

The burning question was floated out to everyone’s curiosity. The smell was pungent.

The shoemaker lifted his head, grinning behind his hood. His hair was long and black. It was dirty in a wild way. His eyelashes were so long, they nearly peeked from under the hood, his eyes such an intensely light green that they practically clutched the center of attention.

He tossed his grey hood back and shook his hair. “No, death smells like ice and iron,” he stated matter-of-factly. “I smelled it earlier so I should know.”

Olivur winced at a ball of mud that flew from Corbyn’s hair onto the table.

“Where did you smell death?” her father asked with his first sign of worry. They could finally see the boy’s face then. And one side of his neck was covered in blood. Regan reached to touch the blood on his neck, but Corbyn pulled back, the effort paining him enough to draw a gasp.

Olivur darted to his feet and the chair raked across the floor again. His cold, white face turned red. “What happened to you? Who did that?!” He slammed his palms on the table and the dinner glasses shattered as they flew up and fell.

Olivur’s hands started bleeding, and their father was quick to wrap a towel around his hand. “Be careful, Olivur!” He looked to Corbin at the same time. “And you — What happened to you?! Who did that?!”

Halle’s eyes rolled unconsciously. They are the same.

Corbyn crossed his arms. He blew a lock of hair out of his face and frowned, his eyes taking in Olivur’s red face. “You know...You really have changed.” As he continued, he grabbed a napkin and rubbed at the blood on his neck, keeping eye contact with her wavering brother the entire time. “I used to wonder what changed, you know? What made you so different?”

He stopped and turned to Halle. His bright eyes were so calm, she felt goosebumps rise along her arms.

“And you...I always wondered why you thought you were so much better than me,” he muttered with a rough grip on the bloodied napkin. “No matter what I did, you always acted like you were so much better than me. Like you knew something that I could never understand.”

His fingers tapped along the table, the loose rhythm adding to the room’s tight atmosphere.

Halle snorted uncomfortably. “What do you know about me?” She moved her hands to her linen pits, taking handfuls of the fabric.

Where are you going with this?

Corbyn shook his head. “Not much, princess. But I’m coming to understand a bit.”

“Princess,” she repeatedly disdainfully. “I’m not a princess.”

“But you think you are.” The boy stated it with such certainty, Halle struggled to argue. He took her silence as answer enough and turned back to her brother again. “And the way you've been throwing your ego around lately...You must think you’re some kind of prince.”

He panned between the two a few times and laughed. “Look at you two! The Harrowbird children. Acting like your royalty from your house on the hill. I always wondered…” he trailed off.

Hands steady and sure, the boy threw the napkin on the table, where it landed with a splatter. He pointed at their father while Olivur and Halle sat gawking.

“Now, I know.”

“...You know?” Their father, who had long forgotten her brother’s cut, sat forward, fear etched across his face.

“What do you know?” Halle inserted. She offered a strong front, but she was just as shaken as her father looked. His skin pale, his temples sweaty, he looked like he was talking to a ghost.

What does he kno—ah! She scratched her armpit on accident when Corbyn’s glare landed on her. He shifted his eyes to Halle but kept his face to her father.

“I know, dammit! I know all about it!”

“What do you know, then?!”

“I know about magic!”

Hall’s front faltered. No.

The word was like a bucket of cold water. Chills swept through the room as pressure swelled in the air.

Nobody spoke for a time. All anyone could hear was the sound of their beating hearts, the owl that liked to perch on their gables at night, hooting all into the late hours, and the sound of Corbyn Pane’s ragged breath.

Olivur chuckled awkwardly. “Really, Corbyn? Magic? Did you drink with your cousin again?”

Slam.

A fist rocked the table again, and Olivur stoppered his strange laugh. Corbyn’s closed hand shook on the tablecloth. “I know, Olivur. I know all about the Lightlys and the Harrowbirs and your magic. And I know all about you,” his eyes on their father once again. “Are you going to say anything?”

Oh, no. Does he know about Uncle Jacob too?

Halle fidgeted from her seat. She walked behind her father nervously. But when she got close, she noticed he was so agitated he could hardly breathe. His back was soaked in enough sweat, she’d have thought he went for a dip in the pond.

She leaned in to whisper in his ear, but he stopped her with a hand.

He locked eyes with Corbyn a long while before sighing in defeat. “How’d you find out?”

Halle’s jaw dropped. “What are you doing?!” she hissed, looking around the house. Grandpa’s going to kill you!

Corbyn peeled the dirty coat sleeves from his arms and then off his body completely. With his shoulders exposed, the family saw where the blood was coming from: a hole through his shoulder. It leaked from his chest and onto the white tablecloth.

“Holy shit, Corbyn! What happened?!”

Halle pinched her loud brother until he looked at her with tears in his eyes. She mouthed the word magic to him so that only he could see, and warned him to focus with her eyes. He knows!

Their father loomed imposingly. “Ice and iron,” he whispered the smell of death Corbyn described. “The Lightlys did this? They attacked you?” His face was gaining color.

Cracking his neck one way and then the other, Corbyn snorted loudly to the surprise of the group. “I had a run-in with Hugh. A misunderstanding over some red herring.”

Hugh? Halle recalled. Hugh Lightly, her heart sank.

Corbyn circled around the table until he was opposite their father. He grabbed a shard of glass from the dinner wreckage. “I lost the fight — I don’t know if you can tell — but when the misunderstanding was cleared we had a heart-to-heart.” He looked from Halle to Olivur and Regan and back. “You see, it turns out Hugh had a lot of things to say about you guys.”

He gripped around the glass edge tight and flourished the shard at the family of three. “He told me all about Harrobird magic while a spike of ice was sticking through my shoulder, so sorry if I don’t believe it when you lie to my face!” His words gained volume the longer he spoke.

Olivur shouted back, up in arms at the accusation. “How can you believe that Gully rat—”

“Oh, you call them Gully rats now! That’s my family!”

“Stop.” Their father cut the two boys off, and both complied grudgingly.

Regan looked down the table to the wrathful boy. “Did he tell you about what kind of magic we have then?”

Corbyn glared at him. “He called it Harrowbird Fire.”

Their father nodded solemnly. “He told you about our magic then. But why does it make you upset?”

The benign question sent the boy into a fury. “Why am I upset?!

Slam.

He threw his hands down on the table once again with incredible force, the shard shattering once more in his hands. Sobs slipped through his angry teeth, tears escaped his sad eyes as they ran down his cheeks and off his chin. “My da’ was killed!”

Halle shrunk back as his words lingered in the air and his pent-up frustrations poured out. He kept his gaze on Regan but pointed at Olivur for his next point. “My best friend won’t talk to me!”

Her brother shuffled awkwardly, but Corbyn moved on, his expression something close to blubbering. He gestured to his shoulder with the half-shard. “My cousin almost killed me twice! He keeps telling me you’re liars — killers!”

He paused to cry, and his crying sounded so loud to Halle as it filled the quiet room. It only stopped when he started yelling again. “And all you’ve done to prove him wrong is lie to me, over, and over again!”

Her heart clenched as she watched the sad orphan lower his face to the dirtied tablecloth and shudder. The boy howled hauntingly into the cloth. “I’m tired of it!” He folded his hands behind a head still planted down on the table and wheezed. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

Halle turned to her brother, worried. But he stood there vacantly, stumped, slumped, and slack-jawed. She turned to her father next when Olivur proved too confused and frozen. Her scared, dilated eyes found the tall figure just as he rose from the table.

Step, by hesitant step, her father stepped up to the wailing heap at the end of the table. And just as Halle worried he may hurt the boy for knowing too much, he wrapped him up in a hug.

It was only then that she noticed he was crying too.

The boy sniffled in her father’s arms. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?” he implored.

Regan sniffled and stroked the boy’s back like he might Olivur or Halle. “I’m sorry, Corb. I had to protect you.” The gesture disturbed Halle somewhere primal, but it upset Corbyn more.

He shrugged the man off and pushed him away as he stepped back. “Protect me?” he laughed strangely. “With what you did, you think you’re protecting me?! No,” he positioned the glass piece between them. “You killed him. You killed him! You killed my da’!”

“Wha—I,” her father stammered. “I don’t—”

Corbyn’s arm swept forward so fast, Halle hadn’t noticed what happened till her father touched his chest and red came back on his hand. Immeasurable hurt formed in his eyes as he looked at the growling boy.

A gust of red swept across the table and landed on the boy’s grey coat. Halle turned to find fire whipping around her brother’s arms as he screamed, “I don't know what you’re talking about Corbyn, but you need to leave. Now!”

Fire swallowed the window drapes. It caught the boy’s jacket, spread to the carpet, and flew up the walls.

Destruction was the reason Harrowbird magic was so feared.

The room that was once tense and stiff, exploded into action.

Corbin patted his pants down and yelled — whatever he said, lost to Halle in her adrenaline haze. Fire dripped from the drapes and ate the rest of the carpet whole. An edge of the tablecloth had taken too, and its reach was slowly covering the table in shifting hues of red.

Her first instinct was to run toward her father, but he was busy yelling at Olivur — yelling something that only upset her brother more. Olivur yelled words at Corbyn she didn’t need to hear to understand. His demeanor said it all: his fingers twitched excitedly, his eyes were wide and menacing. He was taunting the boy.

When she saw his lips curl in disdain, and another figure of fire formed along his fingers even as their father stepped in between the two, Halle finally realized what she’d done to her brother.

She closed her eyes and breathed in — deep, calming breaths like she’d practiced a thousand times before. Her blood only stopped clouding her ears after the third intake. At first, all she could hear was soft cackling: the songlike cackle of a house on fire, and the manic cackle of a boy gone mad.

Halle opened her eyes to a scene that wrenched her sense away. It was so startling, the girl thought perhaps she was hallucinating — gone made just like the rest had.

But Olivur’s white cheeks said otherwise. Her father’s worried eyes said otherwise. That’s when Halle knew: the fire coming out of Corbyn’s body was just as real as the fire on the table, and just as real as the fire crawling along the walls.

“No,” her brother hissed. “That’s mine. That’s mine! You can’t have it! This is mine! Magic is mine!”

It’s Harrowbird Fire...

Both boys glared daggers eachother as they leveled their magic. Their father stood to the side mortified, and it was only with Corbyn’s magic that Halle understood why.

Olivur and Corbyn burst into action and she paled.“Olivur, stop! He’s our—”

Boom!

The collision of magic fire on magic fire sent a shock through the dining room as they met in the middle. The impact sent the broken tableware sprawling, sending bits and pieces against the wall; the bright light blinded her eyes momentarily; the loud boom jolted her ears so she could only hear the loudest sounds…like the sound of her brother screaming.

Her father roared and the heat died; the flames dissipated; the close sound of cackling disappeared.

Halle opened her eyes to swimming blurs, but she could identify hazy figures. Her father, who’d swept Olivur into his arms, lifted her brother’s arm, where it fell limp against the linoleum. He checked for a pulse a hurried breath later, and the howl that escaped his mouth was so loud and aggrieved, it rang clear even in Halle’s muffled ears.

She looked to the other side of the room and found only an empty chair and a charred coat.

Corbyn Pane was gone. No, Halle corrected.

He isn't a Pane...He's a Harrowbird.