Ghosteria Volume 2: The Novel: Zircons May Be Mistaken, Tanith Lee [classic fiction txt] 📗

to normal. But of course he died, didn’t he. He died the waymost people do, it seems, leaving nothing behind for me, not even – his ghost.

I wish I hadn’t thought of thisagain, sharp as if for the first, in such hollow depth, only an hour or so intomy reborn life.

But perhaps it is an inevitableeffect. The Zombie-brain is memory-emptied. And any new tenant of a home willwant to fill up the bare cupboards. Will even begin to do it without quitebeing ready.

It’s fresh for me again, now, myridiculous and spiteful and pathetic lapse, his utter though gentle andcontrolled rejection of me. I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t her. It’s shame, too, Ifeel. All my adult emotional existence after, I spent trying to replace my dadwith worthless men, the beautiful, the pretty, the seemingly artistic and kind,and so many of them petty, ugly, and worthless–

That’s why I unpacked this onememory. Or, this memory was finally able to hunt me down. Elizabeth, theblack-haired fox, at bay now among the bones of another body, Elizabeth no longer.

It’s that memory, evenunremembered, it’s that subsequent misjudgement of mine with all my malelovers, that’s brought me to what I did tonight. That’s why I chose as I did.

You, my father. Me, yourdaughter.

But now – no longer either.

(Laurel):We – I washed at the rill, and the cold was frightful. Yet too, I luxuriated init – I can touch water, wash and drink, (all my new teeth are sound), I canfeel the cold, shiver – and rub myself dry with grasses as I have only read ofpersons doing (briskly) in novels, long ago.

Already we are walking well, sheand I.

I’ll stop saying We and Our. Iand my. Me.

At the house I will search outclothing. The historic show-clothes which remain will fall to bits if I attemptto sort, let alone put them on. It will have to be modern garments I take, withtheir uncorseted waists and short skirts. And trousers – How shall I feel then?Oh, like Heaven.

Only as I let myself in at one ofthe looser house doors, unable now to pass straight through, although for onesilly moment I almost tried to! Only then memory came to me, a remembrance Ididn’t ever before recall, and don’t properly, now... like something told tome, which, nevertheless, I must believe.

CaptainAshton, my beautiful captain, so brave and able, so couth and fine, who dancedwith me, as so seldom anyone did. Who left me, as did they all. Who, in myfeverish dreams, as the virus known subsequently as Spanish ‘Flu closed fastits talons on me, as on so many others – he, he too, died that night. He diedsince he had never lived. He was part of my fever-dream, that first night of mydeath. So real he seemed. So absolute that I have never doubted. But oh, likethe fool I was – as never would such a man have paid court to me, become mylover, wed me, stayed with me – I dreamed him from the ashes of my evening, andof my life. My brain concocted him from nothingness. He wasn’t real, my gallantcaptain, with his blue eyes and his moonlight hair. I changed my last livingnight for myself. I made it somewhat magical after all. Where, in fact, I’d satas ever on that – what is it Elizabeth says? – that fucking chair. Sat asalways I did, and died myself, early, of humiliation and loneliness. Oh,possibly a couple of diehards, egged on by embarrassed relations, took me forsome loathsome, graceless flounder about the dance-floor. Maybe even one ofthem said he knew an aunt of mine, as if to prove I was safe with him – or morelikely that never would he have danced with me at all if not requested. But he,my love, he never did. He wasn’t real.

Oh, Laurel, what a glitteringjewel your brain was then, no zircon, but a diamond of gleaming facets andsilvery light, to conjure such a demon-angel lover to dance with you the danceof death, before the mansion of your life fell in.

But even I, we note, didn’t lieto herself beyond a certain point. For in the fantasy he left me, too. He waspolite, and just a touch equivocal. No more. Yes, even I, Laurel, the child ofcold stone hearts, colder far than the spring-winter water morning, with itssaffron sky and frost thick as thin snow, even I did not defraud myself to thatextreme. My phantom love bestowed no kiss. He didn’t clasp me to him, promisednothing. He bade me courteous and dry farewell.

More of a ghost than I, ever,Captain Ashton.

But now I am alive. My name isn’tLaurel. I’ll become again my true physical self. Daphne, before metamorphosis.Not quivering and cowering leaves, but a woman.

(Coral):- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

(TheWarrior): Sun is full risen and I see her, my Lady Eliseth – but she isother now. Though I know her still. Under the trees standing, and in a formthat wounds me through. But it is her.

She – or the other now she is – thatlaughs at me.

Go on then, bold knight, shesays. Down in the wood they are, the ones you seek.

A pass of birds, small as beesthey seem to me, feathered arrow flights, passing over, and she or that-she-islooks up and laughs too at them, and so I behold she is not mocking either birdor this man before her. She laughs in gladness. She is happy then to be so atchange, and other. Would it so then for me, I wish. With all my heart.

I pass, and go down the slope,stepping as I do as if I must. But my feet are not upon the world, but in air.And how I long for anchorage, to tread on ground. I will take any I may, itwill not cost me, if it be to be again as alive, and touch whole earth under myfeet.

Itlies below a tall wilden holly, and the spikes of thissen and else have rentit.

Stand I