Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [62]
He had thought he had no room, when the woman was there, for considering or scheming, for outwitting her. She took him over, he had thought, and his whole being underwent her visitation, was ground through it like meat through Cook’s great dark mincing machine down in the kitchen.
But tonight he found that he did have an extra thought spare, a small pocket in his mind where ruled, unafraid because unaware, his younger brother—not Dravitt as he would be now, skinny and bright faced and ready to start his new life apprenticing, but Dravitt when he was small and round and red curled, a plaything for Smollett and his sisters; the sleep-sodden Dravitt whom Smollett had carried home after the midsummer bonfire; the Dravitt who had run stout and screaming with laughter, Biss and Clara pursuing him, towards Smollett, whose one hand was tip-fingered on the oak that was Home for this game, whose other reached out to Drav, so that he might reach safety sooner.
The beads began to rattle, from the lady’s hands to Smoll’s, and to weigh on his palms, fall over his fingers. In the cold light of the winter moon pouring through the attic window each bead was vaguely its own color, the ghostly ivory, the implacable jet, the flecked transparent warmth-that-was-not-warm of the amber. They piled and slid on Smoll’s palms; the woman’s white hands were emptying; her breath from the other time blew warm, sour and intent on his forehead. He had only these few moments while she poured, while she reached through from her time to his; once the last bead left her grasp, he would be helpless against her returning tomorrow and including his brother in her terrors.
“No.” Smoll’s voice was small, ineffectual. No matter. The voice it was uttered in did not matter.
He grasped a bead and sprang with it up from his bed. He pushed his arms through from his time into hers, forced his head into the cold syrup of the past. “No,” he said to the woman’s clear, bright-eyed face, to her alarm, to the smell of the past, to the smell that filled the past house of an old, gone meal, part of it burnt. Against the force of her will and her magic, with all his small strength he pushed the loop of beads back through the thick air and over her head.
He forced it down around her neck. Her face, aghast, almost touched his. “Mistress!” cried Smoll into the syrup, dropping to the bed again, dragging on the necklace, all but swinging from it. “Come quickly! She has your necklace, your lock—”
Her hand stopped his cry. It was not a soft lady’s hand; it was worked to leather, cold and strong and real, and smelled of laundry soap. She took him by the mouth and by his nightshirted ribs, and hissing she began to push him out of her time, her eyes wild, her eyes afraid as he had never seen them. He saw the enormity of what he was doing, the disgrace and punishment it would entail for her, not a ghost-woman or a dream-woman at all but an ordinary servant like himself, whose good name in her household was the only wealth that she had in the world. Still he fought to stay, to make his voice heard in the house of her time, to make as much noise there as he could, whether words or no. He yammered behind her hand; he threw himself about to loosen her grip on his mouth, and let out more noise.
Slowly her strength succeeded against his—but he had not meant to conquer, only to delay her, only to keep her fighting and in possession of the necklace until the other person, the maker of the dream-footfalls, reached the top of the stairs and entered. He listened for the mistress through the strain and pain and noise of the struggle. His ears were right at the border between the two times now, and all sounds were warped there, the dream-lady’s grunts compressed