A Storm Beneath Lightning

Outside, the landscape is a blur of rain and windblown foliage. The downpour is too thick to see even a few feet ahead of oneself, but the lit windows of the mansion dot the darkness.

Inside, Hazel is seated to dinner with her father and Mr.McMahon, coaxing Mr.McMahon into the promise of gifts from Pennsylvania or wherever he next travels on mercantile business.

“We trade for perfumes mostly, lass. There are fabrics enough to make you look like a princess. Or to make your father pass for a fashionable woman.”

Hazel laughs, glancing to Mr.Everill for his reaction, but he only smiles at his colleague.

“Is Miss de Laqua purchasing from the company in Pennsylvania?” Hazel asks.

“I believe so. My apologies, I’m not sure your father could outdo her impeccable style even if she were given rags and he silks.”

“Maybe he would hope to smell better, then,” Hazel says, after taking a sip of wine.

The rain-spiked wind blows open a window, bringing with it the howling wind and a gust of cold that distinguishes the candles. A harried-looking maid rushes to close them, then lights the candles, which cast dancing shadows over the dining room and its occupants once more.

“By buying perfume, lass? I’m not sure he would share your enthusiasm for it. But they’re in such a multitude of colours, and etched by artists. In small coloured glass, and smelling like roses and lilies.”

“Please promise to bring one back for me,” Hazel says, the meal before her forgotten.

“I’m not sure there is a perfume I could buy you that you do not already own in your garden,” Mr.McMahon says between mouthfuls of poached oyster.

“But I don’t have any perfume,” Hazel protests. “My mother had bottles and bottles of it-“ She quickly shuts her mouth and resumes eating her salad.

Mr.Everill departs the room, saying nothing as her slides the door open, then closes it behind him.

“Perhaps I should relocate myself to the woods. He cannot stand even my presence anymore,” Hazel says, without bitterness, as Mr.McMahon sips his wine.

“It is harder for him now. The older you get the more like your mother you are,” Mr.McMahon says.

“I would be more like my sister than my mother if she were still alive,” Hazel counters.

Mr.McMahon puts his glass down on the table.

“There was nothing you could have done, nor he. You were a child at the time and she was of delicate health. Your father simply doesn’t beliee it. He has much to recover from. I am sorry you are caught in the turmoil, but he does love you.”

Hazel ignores his latter comment as she replies. “He has had years to grieve. I never mention mother at all. How much time does he need? He cannot possibly even remember her anymore.”

Mr.McMahon turns his wine glass around, watching it sparkle as it catches the light of the candles in their candelabras. “I have reason to believe your father remembers her with great clarity. I have seen him many times gazing at his accounts without seeing them, and it is not typeset letters or signatures he is looking at. Time is peculiar. Years can pass and something that happened long ago can feel as fresh as yesterday. Your lifetime has gone by without her, and he still sometimes expects her to join you for dinner.”

Hazel does not meet the stare aimed at her. The shifting light enhances the hollows of her eyes. “And my sister? Does he not care about my sister? She died too. He has never spoken of her.”

When Hazel looks back at Mr.McMahon he is regarding her with an expression both sympathetic and guarded. He leans forward in his seat, as though he means to whisper, but the tenor of his voice does not change.

“He never wanted you to carry that burden, lass. He did not want to let you have such a heavy secret.”

“It was not his secret to keep,” Hazel says, her voice rising.

“Yes, you’re right. But he cannot mourn your sister the same was he can your mother. Were he to see your sister’s ghost, he would not recognize her.”

Mr.McMahon’s words pique Hazel’s interest, prompting her to ask him a question she has not dared ask until now.

“Do you believe in ghosts, Mr.McMahon?”

Surprised by her sudden curiousity, Mr.McMahon leans back in his chair. “No. Not quite. Do you?”

Hazel does not answer, instead lifting her fork to her mouth, pausing, and setting it down without taking a bite.

“You want to be weary of the spirits, they envy the living. They aren’t kind things.”

Hazel frowns, the only spirit she has known has never exhibited any sign of malice or even jealousy. “They aren’t all bad.”

Mr.MacMahon looks thoughtful. “Aye, but the angry spirits are monsters. You may not realize it and they may not either, it is the condition of monsters to  blind to their own evil. Do the red caps thing they are cruel for dying their caps with blood? Do kelpies drag their riders to the depths of the ocean to be deliberately unkind?”

“What of spirits that do not harbour anger?” Hazel asks, with reserved attentiveness.

“They are like the fey. The Fair Folk. The fairies are cold and fickle. They are well-coiffed carions, though they do not think it. They want for things they cannot have.”

There is a movement in the hallway, just beyond the sliding glass door of the dining room. While Mr.McMahon or her father might credit the motion to the flickering candlelight or some number of reflections, Hazel knows the cause immediately.

Mr.McMahon continues, noticing nothing amiss. “Fairy tales are important. They tell us that beauty can hide evil, or anger can hide great sorrow.” Mr.McMahon looks up and holds her gaze so she cannot look away. “But they do not just tell us that dragons exist, they also tell us dragons can be beaten.”

Hazel pulls her chair back from the table, bothered by the flickering figure in the hallway. “Perhaps they aren’t always that way,” she says uncertainly, as she stands. “Please excuse me, I must- I must speak with the kitchen staff. I will be back.”

Hazel does not hear Mr.McMahon’s polite response as she exits the room, plunging into the darkened hallway.

She is standing next to the door, a bit of her shoulder disappearing in the light, part of her face a stream of dust motes.

Hazel stands silently, waiting for her to speak. She still exhibits anxiety in and around the mansion, and her presence cannot mean anything good.

They stay close enough to the window that Hazel can see the garden where the fiercest rain has seized it, the dented bushes and splintering trellises hung with forlorn roses.

Hazel must lift her voice to be heard above the din of the rain pattering against the windows.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she says, eyes flickering to Mr.McMahon. “But it’s important.”

“What is it?” Hazel asks, half relieved to escape the dinner conversation with a subject she is sure her father would not deem appropriate for dinner, half frustrated that she has had to leave Mr.McMahon so unceremoniously.

“It has come closer to the house. There isn’t much time, now,” she says, turning her gaze upon the window. She seems to be looking through the glass, into the rain, but Hazel can see nothing but watery rivers on the glass.

“Alright,” Hazel consents, nodding. “But I must come back before father notices I’m missing.” She says this out of habit, and partially concern for leaving Mr.McMahon all alone in the dining room.

They descend several staircases, winding down into the hallway in which maids bustle and go about their chores. They do not glance at Hazel, having grown up with a child as comfortable in the staff’s working areas as the rest of the house.

Hazel knows they cannot see her.

She leads them to a door that opens to a corner of the garden. Unsheltered save for the greenery that lends shade in the summer, and the fountain that is cold as ice in the winter.

Hazel pushes on the door, and for a brief moment is dismayed at the possibility it could be lost.

Hazel pushes on it again and the door gives, swinging open to reveal the wet muddy garden and positions herself so she can see it from the doorway. She tries in vain to keep her drain dry, tugging the hem up to protect it from the brunt of the rain.

The garden smells of petrichor and lightning-charged ozone.

The wind pushes the rain onto the tiles, distorting their usual gravitational pattern. Hazel steps forward and pulls the door firmly closed behind her, and astonishing feat considering the rain, and gasps as the rain engulfs her and she is left in darkness.

“What is it? What are we doing?” Hazel asks.

She puts a finger to her lips, and points into the shadowy garden.

Hazel falters, standing still as she blinks water out of her eyes.

The wolf is prowling the gardens, far enough away that they are protected by the shadowed niche of the wall.

Its progress is almost undetectable, for it moves in a horizontal line through the gardens, as though stalking a perimeter, but it is slowly approaching the mansion.

Hazel inches along the mansion wall, fingers slipping over stone and brick, treading on mud speckled crocuses. She turns to the ghost.

She walks calmly, as though there is no rain. Her hair rests around her shoulders, only shifting slightly, as though a slight breeze passed through it.

The wind whips Hazel’s hair in damp coils across her face.

“What is it doing?” Hazel says, staying as quiet as she can while yelling over the din of the rain.

The rain splatters up off the mud, and pelts the wolf, streaking through it like knifes through smoke.

“Searching. For what has been lost.”

The wolf looks up, toward the pitch black sky, where what once was Hazel’s mother’s window is latched securely, though the glass in its green painted frame rattles with the force of the wind, and the clematis surrounding it trembles in the onslaught.

The wolf appears unaffected by the elements.

Something is forming in Hazel’s mind, and inchoate idea that she cannot quite acknowledge in the rain and the dark next to a ghost.

“I had a sister once, did you know that?” Hazel says, after a significant pause. But when she turns she finds the spot next to her empty. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Demon House

Kitsune-Tsuki lead you down the hall, laughing between their pointed teeth, swaying their long raven black braids, their kimonos, and their tails. Their mischief makes one wary, the men holding their hands to their throats, glancing upward as you pass. Their fingers are stained red, their cheeks printed with lipstick. 

Kumiho mingle in the vestibule down the hall, lingering beneath bowers of cherry blossoms or orchids, stretching their cream-white legs. They wink at you, spangled lashes over slited pupils. 

You sate your hunger with a kiss, brushes of lips that taste of jasmine tea.

Their teeth skim your neck. They slide into skin with the ease of a knife into a crisp white pear.

Your veins fizzle like amber. Their eyes are bottomless. 

They are bait. Your soul is drawn in, like fish on a line. 

It is a far too high price to pay for beauty.

Art by Seb

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Descent

She is standing exactly where Hazel last saw her. Though the blue moonlight cascading over her makes her look more spectral than Hazel can ever recall.

Hazel does not greet her, but she smiles in appreciation and something like relief, as though she did not expect Hazel to come at all.

Concurrently and wordlessly they begin to walk, taking identical paths around trees and through foliage, though Hazel’s dress undergoes a great deal more abuse than her’s, which slides through each obstacle like water.

They walk at the same pace, Hazel notices.

The woods are filled with thick mist. It caresses everything like smoke, and Hazel must suppress a shiver. It will be colder where she is going. Hazel wonders if it will get warmer the longer she is there.

They reach their destination soon; the mound rises from the forest floor like the humped back of some great green beast.

“You didn’t say goodbye to Peter,” she points out as they near the mound concealing the tunnel.

“I don’t like long goodbyes,” Hazel says, and thinks how long her father was given to say goodbye to her mother. Not long, she decides, not long enough.

“You didn’t say goodbye to your father, either.”

“Neither did you,” Hazel counters, and she turns to smile at her.

Circling the mound, they stop before the tunnel, vines hanging over it like tendrils and disappearing into darkness.

“Where is the wolf?” Hazel asks, nervously, scanning the woods around them, though in the mist she cannot see more than a few paces ahead. A breeze blows past them and howls into the tunnel, bringing with it the first chill of approaching autumn.

“I don’t know. Close. Perhaps with us right now. You can never be sure,” she says.

Hazel takes a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the woods, of moss and damp earth and the musk of woodland creatures. Her heart aches with nothing more than nostalgia, as though she has already left it behind.

The tunnel is redolent of moonless nights and orchids and the steam wafting over a cup of tea. With a breath of sugary snow.

“I don’t know what to do,” Hazel confesses. She is certain it cannot be as simple as walking through. No story is ever so straightforward; Peter has told her numerous times, to warn her and to teach her.

“You know the story of the wolf?” she asks.

Hazel nods.

She smiles. “Then you know what you must do.”

“It is as simple as walking in the forest?” Hazel asks, her skepticism obvious in her face.

“It is as simple as succumbing to the wolf.”

“This will restore the balance, yes?” Hazel asks, gazing into the darkness.

“It will draw the wolf back. Don’t worry. It won’t be for nothing,” she says, and her voice echoes in the tunnel.

“I never thought it would,” Hazel says.

The trees creak in an invisible wind. There is the sound of crunching moss, as though a giant hand has pressed it down. The snap of twigs accompanied by the rustle of bushes behind them.

Hazel refuses to turn, her heart pounding a bruise against her ribs.

“You never told me,” Hazel says, partly to distract herself, partly out of curiousity.

“I thought it would be best for you to realize it on your own,” she replies. Then, sounding almost teary, she asks, “Are you angry?”

Hazel cannot find it in herself to be angry. “I have a sister, whom I know better than anyone else, who knows me better than anyone else. How could I be angry with you?” She smiles to reassure her sister, who takes her hand with a caress like a whisper.

Hazel feels breath on the back of her neck, but she does not turn. It is followed by the insistent push of a muzzle.

Her hand slips from Hazel’s, and she steps away, a movement Hazel watches from her peripheral vision, too frightened to move.

“I’ll be waiting,” she says. She flickers and vanishes in the moonlight.

Hazel forces a step forward, and slowly her other foot follows, until she reaches the darkness of the tunnel.

The wolf’s breath is no longer on her neck, but she cannot look around.

A dragonfly, gold and turquoise and whirring like summertime, passes her, and Hazel follows it into the darkness.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Interlude II: Black Birds

The young man has dark hair, as glossy as a raven’s wing, and skin glowing like golden sand. He moves with incredible grace, under a large coat that hangs on his shoulders like a coat, and sways as he walks, so that the dark suit with embroidered lapels appears beneath.

He smiles at you as you move out of the way, making space for him to speak to the lady.

His voice is rich as he says, “I would be grateful for a tale today, Madame.”

The shopkeeper raises an eyebrow he the young man pulls from the folds of his cloak-like coat, like a treasure wrapped in silk, an ornament, and places it lightly on the counter.

It is an origami bird, made of many artful knots, with spearhead wings and a pointed head and tail.

But it is not made out of traditional paper, but a dark oxidized metal, malleable enough to have been twisted and bent.

“It’s lovely, sir,” the lady praises it, rotating around the bird to see it at several views, rather than move the apparently sacrosanct bird itself. “I can tell you quite the dream about a black bird, or several,” the shopkeeper adds, and the man smiles.

“I am much obliged,” the young man says, and waits patiently while watching the lady, clasping his hands before him.

The shopkeeper leans back, setting her hands on the counter and staring at the man pensively.

She sighs deeply before opening her mouth to begin.

Art by Brian Chan

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Black Wolf

“My father used to tell me stories. I could tell you one, that is, if you would like to hear it?” Peter offers. He has not told a story, he thinks, in months, but now that he has the opportunity, the words seem only on the tip of his tongue, instead of far away and out of reach.

Hazel contemplates the offer, her gaze shifting from the roots of the tree below them to the web of green and brown branches above them. She inhales the scent of oak and moss. “Alright. Yes, please.”

Hazel waits patiently while Peter considers how to begin. There are so many words, tangled up, waiting to be spoken. He takes a deep breath before he begins.

“Ghosts are everywhere. They do not lurk in the dead of night on foggy moors, or in the moonlit depths of abandoned places, or the dust filled corners of attics. They do not live on in photographs and souvenirs of days gone by. They are not relegated to cemeteries and fog and haunted placed. They do not fear the sun. They do not appear at midnight. They are everywhere, at every time. They are in the heat of summer, the smell of apples, in shoe cupboards and beside beds and in front of you. They cannot be avoided. There is almost nothing that they fear. Only the wolf.

The wolf is not a mindless beast that howls at the moon from hidden corners of the forest. It is not as cunning creature that dresses in an elderly woman’s clothing to fool red clad little girls. It is a creature of strength. It is black as night, with eyes as bottomless as the ocean. Beautiful as dreams, fierce as nightmares, and he moves like a god through the world.

It guards the ghosts of the world, and keeps the balance between the living and the dead. It dwells near the portals, the doors to the other world. Were something to cross the barrier, it would retrieve them. Or it might return with another spoil. Something of equal value to maintain the balance. Were a spirit to walk from one world to another, it might take one of the living, so that the worlds do not become unbalanced. Regardless of what the price is, it must be paid.

If you were to see it, you could recognize it by the scent of cemetery loam, of starless nights and copper. By its long muzzle, and its claws as sharp and curved as the blade of a sickle. And if you were to see it, there would be no un-seeing. It would burn into your memory like a hot poker into skin.

Where there are ghosts, there is the wolf. That is why one must be weary about inviting in the past, for as surely as ghosts can whisk you away to years gone by, the wolf can curl around your feet and pull you away, to goodness knows where. It is best to keep away, to stay safe from the other world. That is why people have forgotten about ghosts. They cannot see them, though ghosts are there. They make jokes of white sheets and phantom noises in the night. They have forgotten their fear of spirits and the dead, because they wishes to forget their fear of the wolf. If they do not believe in ghosts, cannot stumble upon them, they are safe from the wolf. Their ignorance is their armour, their disbelief is their shield. And over the years the wolf has vanished from their minds.

But it is still there. It lurks, though people have explained it away, with stories and bedtime tales, and rhapsodies and fabrications of the truth.

In a way the existence of the wolf, or rather, its non-existence has become a truth. At least in their minds, and it is almost the same thing. For people see what they want to see, and most often, what they are told. They prefer a weightless truth to a heavy one. And that is why they are safe.

For those that still believe, that still shudder in the marrow of their bones when the wind picks up in the woods, for the children who have not yet been taught that such terrors do not exist, for the elderly with centuries of wisdom still alive under their logic and sense, they are constantly aware. On some plane deep within themselves, they are weary. They are cautious. They are both thankful for their knowledge, and they curse it. Those people know that ghosts are everywhere, and the wolf is ever-hiding. They carry the burden of a heavy truth. They carry it always.”

As Peter finishes his tale the leaves seem to settle, as though the tree itself had become restless throughout the story and is now relieved it has concluded.

“Thank you,” Hazel says, after a moment, hesitant to break the silence. She is unsure of how to voice the sudden anxiety in her, how to articulate her fear. “I liked it. Your father sounds like a good man.”

“He was,” Peter says. “And you’re welcome.”

Art by Sunny Master

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Monkey's Paw

The new customer asked to see the monkey's paw. They all do.
It sits on the first shelf of curiousities at the front of the ship, so one cannot help seeing it there, mounted on polished mahoghany. Father insists it contributes to the shop's ambiance but I think it is just asking for trouble.
It is the most oft-returned artifact and each time it returns (for no refund, as warned when our customers first purchase the paw) the long leathery fingers uncurl, splaying to its full grotesque glory.
Father is a business man first and foremost, though he considers himself a teacher where the paw is concerned. "Each purchase is a lesson," he says. "Each customer that returns that paw is more learned that they were before they stepped through our doors."
The monkey's paw is our most popular item, so when a new customer asks the price , I do not mention it has been owned by some outrageous number of people before them. I do not mention that those who reutnr it are ashed-faced, shadows for eyes and nails bitten bloody and red. I do not mention that the third wish is always the same, that it always undoes the evils preceeding it. I only wrap it up in pastel coloured paper, collect the 6 pounds 50, and wish them happiness with their new purchase.

Art by Luna Louise

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Blood Surfaces First

There are still signs of life in the landscape, scarlet and gold leaves, singing birds, and a hint of summer on the breeze. Autumn has been short lived this year.

Hazel has almost succumbed to her ennui when, in a final impetus, she takes to the woods, following the river in search of inspiration, a sight to bring back to her canvas and watercolours.

Hazel follows the labyrinthine route of the river through leafy aisles. The moss beneath her feet is warmer and more familiar than the floorboards of the mansion, yet there is still a discontent in her bones.

Hazel moves to the riverbank, careful to avoid excessive wetting of her boots. She pauses where a patch of wildflowers have entwined themselves with the weeds, wondering if she could return to the mansion and retrieve her sketchbook before they untangle.

Then there is the growl. It is the deep rumble of shifting plates far beneath the earth’s floor, and it comes from the shadow slowly navigating through the woods in Hazel’s direction.

The wolf three times her height, easily. It slinks from shadow to shadow, glossy black like a raven. Where is crouches the forest seems to bend inward, the sunlight vanishes. It is the personification of shadow.

Where the sunlight hits it directly it is distorted into columns of grey mist. The translucence of it makes Hazel uneasy. She feels that if it can disappear in the light, perhaps it could appear beside her in shadow, as quietly as a dragonfly.

It looks wrong in the daylight, too dark against the blue sky and emerald moss. The teeth too sharp, the haunches too monstrous.

Black terror creeps down Hazel’s spine.

The wolf tilts its head, cocking its ears as it listens to the forest and the river. Hazel tries to maneuver herself around the beast, closer to the river. The water rushes past, a dizzying current with shadowy depths. Slight spray dapples Hazel’s dress like rain.

The wolf turns its head.

Hazel’s foot slips on a wet rock.

The wolf is still watching her with deep black eyes when Hazel tumbles backward into the river.

The current is swift and strong, and the force of it sweeps Hazel away. She tumbles beneath the water, the rush of it sending her downstream, past rocks and flotsam. Hazel reaches for handholds but the river rocks slide from her hands or brush her knuckles, leaving angry red scrapes.

The water rushes around Hazel like a vortex, and she cannot draw a breath.

For a few seconds, before the sunlight becomes too bright, the forest appears as a blur of light and shadow, there is a glimpse of black, then a glimpse of red. Hazel drifts away on the waves.

Hazel wakes curled in the weeds, beneath an oak tree. She wishes she could stay there forever within this moment, drifting between consciousness and sleep, resting in the moss.

It is only the ache and the flashes of pain that rouse her.

Hazel dreads the long walk back to the estate, but she is considerably closer than she had been when she fell into the river. She walks as quickly as she can, leaning against trees as she passes.

Hazel pauses at the edge of the forest, surveying the gardens for easily agitated staff, but they are nowhere to be seen. Hazel continues to the mansion and slips quietly into the kitchen, which is hardly busy, and the few maids and cooks still present are too busy to notice her.

She treads as lightly as she can, taking large steps and cringing when they echo in the hallways. There is a steadily growing line of muddy boot prints in the hall behind her.

Mr.Everill appears from his study, a book of accounts tucked beneath his arm. He stops when he glances at his daughter.

Hazel has a scrape on her knee, her stockings and skirt are soiled and her boots, where they are visible beneath the mud, are scuffed and tattered.

They are silent for some time as the candles flicker around them. Mr.Everill’s surprise fades and he proceeds past her into the parlour without a word. Hazel follows him, wandering into the book filled room, which is laden with books and papers, held down by paperweights on almost every surface.

“I don’t feel well,” Hazel says as she approaches her father. Mr.Everill looks up again briefly from his papers. Hazel is ill so few and far between, and she complains very little when she is or otherwise tries to hide it, that she must be feeling awful to warrant even bringing it up.

Mr.Everill gently places a hand on her forehead and frowns. “You’re very hot,” he says. He tilts her chin up and squints at her pale face and hollow eyes in the light. He lowers his hand. “Perhaps you should go to bed. Get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning, dearest.” Mr.Everill turns back to his sheaf of paper.

Hazel nods and stumbles from the room. 

Art by Annie Stegg

Text by Lucie MacAulay

A Weightless Truth

Hazel’s mother’s rooms are not off limits but Hazel does not feel any desire to go in, any curiousity about what lays inside. Perhaps it is because of the lack of forbiddances that she does not care to explore them. Hazel is drawn to delitescent places, or places her father adopts rules for or boundaries. Her mother’s room holds no mystery, nothing enigmatic or inspiring excavation. Hazel knows her father had most of his belongings moved into separate rooms he them claimed for himself, and he bought a new bed. Now all she can think of that may be in her mother’s rooms are relics from the days she spent with her husband, her perfume, the clothing of hers that has not been passed to her daughter, and mementos of places she has traveled. Hazel always wanders past the door to her mother’s rooms without glancing at it.

Now she stands before her mother’s door and wonders what lies beyond.

The door is unlocked but the wood protests when Hazel pushes it open.

While most of the house is saturated in colour, this room is pale and soft. The walls are white, tinged yellow in some places by water stains. The curtains are ill fitted and the draft coming through the window makes them billow half the length of the room like a veil of white mist. There are silk screens covering an entire wall, raw and papery.

There is a bed of white pillows, covered with a fine layer of dust. A few chairs sit by the window, around a teakwood table where an ash filled incense burner lies, ash trickling over the edges and settles like mould in the inlaid mosaic of the table top.

Pictures of couples and families lined the wall. Mr.Everill and his wife, each with hats casting shadows across their faces, before a cow led by a turban wearing merchant. A gang of children, shirtless and brown in the sun, running down a road lined with stalls, beneath black and white flags that, were the picture coloured, would have waved like a rainbow ocean blocking out the blue sky. Hazel’s mother wearing a half smile, clutching her hat as a wind blows past, a plume of smoke rushing up to meet her face as she bends over a concoction in a pot in the shadow of a derb. A map is tacked to the wall, showing the labyrinth of alleyways in a medhina.

Hazel explores briefly, pulling open drawers and the wardrobe doors. There are only a few articles of clothing in the wardrobe.

The vanity is bare but the trick bottom of one of the drawers springs open under Hazel’s touch, scattering spider husks and beads separated from their chain. There is a collection of papers, yellowed with age.

In the cave of white silk, sorting through business papers and personal letters, Hazel does not notice the other presence in the room until she speaks.

“It is like living inside a pearl, isn’t it?” the voice asks.

Hazel turns in surprise, holding the papers to her chest. She stands on the other side of the great chest at the foot of the bed.

“You’ve been in here before?” Hazel retaliates.

“Yes,” she says. She pauses before gesturing at the chest. “I have never seen inside that. If you would open it, I think it would satisfy both of our curiousities.”

While Hazel is not particularly curious about the contents of her mothers’ trunk, she obliges her. Hazel ascertains there is no lock, and lifts the lid with some difficulty, for it is very heavy.

The trunk is full of clothing. Too precious and formal for casual wear. Cedar, moth-ridden linen wrapped around delicate tulle and lace gowns ad sashes. Silk flowers and crinolines rustle against embroidered bodices and pearl necklaces.

Hazel sees little of interest, but she watches carefully as Hazel pulls out gown after gown.

“You look just like your mother,” she says, tilting her head to a picture on the wall. In the faded daguerreotype Hazel’s mother wears the same gown Hazel now holds up against her own chest.

“You look like her,” Hazel realizes. She does not reply, but watches thoughtfully as Hazel arranged the dresses once more in the trunk, wrapping them in linen as neatly as she can. The papers in her hand are crumpled, all but abused as she folds the last of the gowns.

Hazel guiltily spreads them carefully on the floor. The letters are in worse condition, the business papers, and the three typeset official documents are creased and folded. Hazel draws the latter from the pile, inspecting them carefully.

The first is her birth certificate. Hazel wonders if her father has another copy he keeps in a more accessible place, or if he has no need for it.

The second document is a copy of her birth certificate. Hazel glances between the two papers, confused. The names catch her eye. Same dates. Different names. Twins.

The third document is a death certificate. It bears the same name as the second birth certificate, and is three days post the birth date.

Hazel wonders if it is a draft or something else that has made the room grow suddenly colder.

“I have a sister?” Hazel asks, looking up. But she sits alone, and her words barely stir the dust.

Text by Lucie MacAulay