La Nocturne

"Elaine!" Joseph exclaimed, his voice hardly above a whisper. "What did you do that for?"

Elaine could feel Joseph's nervousness on her skin like static electricity. Charging her up. "Shhh," she said placidly. "I think I hear somebody coming." Her voice had a strange, hypnotized tone running through it like a current, making Joseph even more nervous.

"Elaine," he said again, a note of desperation in his voice. But before he could say any more, the door opened and the Lady of Elsinore Hill faced them.

"Somebody rang?" she asked. Her voice was as light and shimmering as a dew-encrusted cobweb. And like a cobweb, Joseph thought, it was just waiting for some poor naive butterfly to catch itself in it. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to hold on to Elaine, to pull her back to safety. But just as he reached out a hand, she stepped forward out of his reach, closer to the Lady. "I did," she said humbly, curtsying before her. The Lady seemed pleased at this show of respect, and said, "Ah. I haven't had a visitor in quite some time...It's a very solitary life, being hardly more than an island. Pray, what is it you desire of me?" It took Elaine a few tries to form the words, but she eventually whispered, "My sister..." and was unable to go further.

Joseph winced, for he felt both his own pain and that of Elaine's. Instantly, the world seemed to warp and fold in on his head, as if the laws of gravity had gone awry. Through his dizzy, dislocated haze he was barely able to hear the Lady say, "Oh, I understand...I understand perfectly. I've seen this a thousand upon a thousand times." Her voice was immediately as sympathetic as a sweet, cooling salve. The dizziness left Joseph and he blinked, seeing the world folded outward again as it usually was. As soon as he got his bearings back, he realized he did not much like nor trust the Lady. But it seemed to be the exact opposite with Elaine. Her face lit up with gladness and longing, and Joseph felt selfish for wanting to deny her anything that infused her features with such light.

"You really understand?" Elaine asked the Lady. Her voice, more than ever, sounded like that of a person caught in a trance or the lush, thorny brier of a dream. "You can help me, then?"

"Of course," said the Lady soothingly. But the more she said, Joseph thought, the more she sounded like Elaine was her own little game, a pretty amusement she took up for her personal cruel fancies. "There are two things I must say, however."

"What are they?" Elaine asked.

"Once anybody I retrieve is alive again, one cannot ask of me to reverse what I did. One must live with them, since one was so convinced they couldn't live without them. And also, if they die again, that is it. I can only retrieve a given person once, no more. Understood?"

"Yes," Elaine said. "Though I can't see at all why I'd even consider asking for...a-a reversal. And once she's back, oh, I'll look after her so well...she'll be sure to outlive me."

"Very well," said the Lady, moving straight to the matter at hand. "Now, the retrieval process is really quite simple. All I shall need are an object the lost one possessed, preferably one they used frequently, a part of the lost one's corporeal being, and a bit of the dirt over their grave."

Elaine faltered, not having expected this. "Oh..." she breathed. "I never knew..." Her hands went instinctively to the pockets of the breeches she wore. In her right pocket, her hand closed around something cool and metallic. She pulled it out and saw that she held Aria's silver hairbrush. She never remembered moving it from the pocket of her dress to the pocket of the breeches, but there it was. All she'd remembered was that the thought of parting with it had been inordinately strange and heartbreaking. "I - I have got this," she offered. "Some of her hair is still in it, and that's a part of her corporeal being, even though it's from before she left. And some dirt got caught in the bristles - I believe that's from over her...grave." Elaine vaguely remembered the brush slipping out the pocket of her dress and landing in the dirt when she'd collapsed in front of her sister's headstone.

"That will work perfectly," the Lady said. "The only thing we must do now is wait for the moon to rise."

"For moonrise?" Joseph said incredulously, the first words he'd spoken in front of the Lady. "But that's - why, I'm afraid that will far too late."

"No, it won't," Elaine said, a slick carelessness gliding over her words. "My parents are out of town."

"But - but - " Joseph spluttered. "You said they were here at the fair." As much as he didn't want it, a wounded note crept into his voice.

"I suppose I lied," she replied. "What could I have said? 'Oh, I'm at the fair all by myself; my parents are miles away in the next city and they took their coachman with them, so I actually drove myself all the way out here.' Right."

Joseph couldn't think of a thing to say. He simply gaped openmouthed at the unendingly bizarre girl standing before him.

"Intriguing," the Lady murmured. "So very intriguing." She scrutinized Elaine, eyes glittering, and Joseph felt more distrustful of her than ever.

"Well, perhaps your parents aren't around to mind, but mine are," he was finally able to say, and cursed himself for sounding like such a ninny.

"It's no matter. You don't have to stay here, you know," Elaine said dismissively.

Again, Joseph was at a loss for words. He'd thought he'd known Elaine...but had he really? She had become someone else completely as soon as they'd neared the Hill.

"But..." he said quietly. "I want - I'd like very much, to stay." He knew he would stay, no matter what. There was no way he was going to leave Elaine alone with the Lady.

"Fine. I don't mind, either way. I dressed up like a coachman and drove our carriage all the way to Elsinore, after all."

"And you know what they say," the Lady added. "The more, the merrier." She turned her piercing green eyes on Joseph and showed a smile that was less a smile and more like the fleshy curtains of her lips drawing slowly back to reveal her teeth. Joseph smiled uneasily back. "Well!" she said lightly. "I shall just go and get the things I'll need for tonight." She retreated into the Hill.

"So what exactly are we waiting until moonrise to do?" Joseph asked nervously, pulling Elaine farther off from and to the side of the door in the Hill.

"You really don't know?" Elaine said. But before he had a chance to answer, she said, "Well, what did you think she meant by 'retrieving'?"

For the third time in a matter of minutes, Elaine had succeeded in throwing him into a state of utter disbelief.

"Elaine," he breathed, suddenly facing his most grotesque suspicion. "You can't be serious. There is no way - "

"Oh, but Joseph," she replied. "I am completely serious. I am not like other young ladies, and no matter how I try, I won't be able to make myself like other young ladies. I will not sit at home in bed all day, doing nothing but dampening handkerchiefs. I will do something about my situation, and as long as the possibility is still there, I shan't give up. She would have done the same for me." Elaine was quite flushed by the end of this speech, and Joseph was both fascinated and frightened.

"But you don't know that, Elaine," he said cautiously.

"I do! She was my sister, and she loved me...and she was Aria. She wasn't like other young ladies either. You said so yourself we were similar."

"I suppose I did," said Joseph, with some reluctance. "But...she loved me too. I was planning to ask her to marry me."

"You were? I never knew that!" Elaine said excitedly, and for a moment, she seemed like her old self again. But it didn't last. "Well, you can have your marriage after all, then."

With this statement, Joseph felt suddenly sick and cold. "But Elaine - what if she isn't the same? What if it isn't her?"

"The book said no one had ever complained of any adverse effects."

"There's a first time for everything. Oh, Elaine...I fear you are not in your right mind...what if this is a mistake?"

"It won't be. I will not be complacent, sitting there helpless and taking every unfair thing against me with decorum and grace. I have to fight it, I have to at least try."

Seeing Elaine so desperate and impassioned broke Joseph's heart when he didn't think there was anything left to break, and he couldn't help but sympathize with her then. He took one last stand, however - "I still don't have a good feeling about this. Haven't you thought it's a little strange that she brings so many people back to life, yet never asks anything for payment?"

"Maybe she's just nice," Elaine said stubbornly. "Maybe she understands what it's like."

Joseph was about to remark that he highly doubted anyone with eyes and teeth that glittered so would do such things out of simple kindness, but at that moment the Lady reappeared from within her little residence, her arms full of odd paraphernalia.