A Midwinter Fantasy - Leanna Renee Hieber [21]
It was a small comfort. Rebecca pursed her lips. “I know you, don’t I?”
“Indeed. Constance Peterson, haunt of the science library, at your service, Headmistress.” The ghost bobbed a curtsey.
“And . . . why is it that you’re going to help me?”
“Because I was called upon to help you. Because I understand.”
“Who called upon you?”
“A friend. And . . .” Constance pointed upward with a sheepish smile.
Rebecca was silent. Perhaps her secret Christmas prayer was being answered? Perhaps this was divine intervention after all. Though, she’d never thought it would come like this. This was much too dramatic, the stuff of Gothic fiction, suitable for Alexi and Percy. Not her.
“We’re all worthy of an opportunity like this, Headmistress.” The ghost’s eyes sparkled knowingly. “Even if few of us are so fortunate. You’ve never lived a normal life, Headmistress. You should not expect one.”
Rebecca stared at her, ever trying to see sense in the fantastical. “You. How did you . . . ‘see the light’? Did you see errors in your mortal ways and thusly have evolved? For a spirit, I trust you are well and fully at peaceable understanding to be able to lead me now?”
The ghost nodded. “I am indeed at peace, enlightened, free to do what I will, after help from Miss Persephone Parker. She found what I’d been looking for, just as she’s now found her own heart’s desire and taken his name. We’re all looking for something, you know.”
Rebecca nodded, her jaw clenching involuntarily. She felt an icy cold weight press down upon her.
The ghost scowled. “I can feel that, Headmistress; melancholy’s dread march. You must stop. You must not hear the girl’s name and cringe.”
Rebecca looked away so that Constance would not see her shame. “It is a curse,” she admitted. “My heart is cursed, and I want to remove it.”
“That, Headmistress,” said the ghost, “is our task. To cure the accursed. Come. We’ve much to do and I dare not tax you. While you’ve a most stalwart mind for a mortal, too much talk with spirits threatens sanity.”
The young woman held up a hand, closed her eyes and murmured, invoking power. “Liminal; the journey, I pray.”
In response, the air rippled like thin fabric and their surroundings melted away. In an instant they were back in time, in the science library of the academy, when it was fresh and new and all the chandeliers still sparkled like diamonds, before dust settled permanently into their crystalline grooves.
“Before you point out that it is indulgent of me to show you my past,” Constance spoke up, “let me remind you that we recognize problems in others before we recognize them in ourselves. I humbly offer myself as an example.”
The ghost pointed to a table, to herself. She had been quite beautiful while alive, full of health and vigour if the countenance she wore appeared hard, unrelenting, annoyed. She sat poring over a stack of books adjusted quite pointedly to block her from the view of a young man who sat unobtrusively studying different work at an angle opposite. The young man’s face was gentle and kind. He slid a book between them.
The ghost gestured Rebecca closer. The memory did not come without pain for her, Rebecca saw, and she felt humbled Constance should torture herself for the sake of helping her.
The living Constance was staring at the biological reference book that had been shifted toward her; not at the scientific content, but at the scribblings in the margin.
Constant is my care for you, sweet girl, my Constancy.
All I ask is that you, for one blissful moment, put aside your obsession long enough to look into my eyes.
—P.
The young Constance scowled and slid the book back across the table, moving it around the fortress of tomes she’d stacked to buffer herself against his simple request. She was careful that their fingertips did not connect as he received the book. Rebecca noted this with a bit of pride; even under her own rule, students were not allowed to touch members of the opposite sex.
And yet, if the girl had taken this boy’s hand, she couldn’t have said she would mind. She’d likely not