Chapter 25
Viola does not want to open her room to her. Dani can sense that straight away. There is the same sort of hesitancy that she has when it comes to the gate, when it comes to talking with her at all. But she can’t help but be curious about how the ghost even makes tea. She hasn’t seen a stove in this room before, nor has she seen anything to heat water to the boil necessary to make tea.
But it seems as though that is not why they are here in the slightest. Viola moves about the room with the practiced ease of someone who wholly lives here, flitting from one drawer to the next. Her unease keeps Dani from actually entering. Instead, she stands just inside of the doorway, watching her and trying to file away what she is doing so that she can remember it the next time she dreams herself here, provided she is lucid enough to do whatever it is Viola is doing.
Then the ghost gestures her inside the room and, taking a deep breath to steady herself, Dani follows.
“You need me for something?”
“What flavor would you like?” Viola gestures to the drawer, where a thin basket holds an assortment of different tea packets.
There seems to be some sort of organizational system in place – fruity herbals separated from the more bitter ones, black teas to one side, green teas to another. Further back in the drawer is a little pot, but Dani suspects that isn’t for the tea itself. Likely it has sugar cubes inside. “Um,” Dani says, tucking her hair back behind one ear. “This one.” She draws out a packet of ginger cinnamon tea. Not the best for dealing with her anxiety (that would go to chamomile or lavender or mint, which is what Jamie prefers when she goes herbal), but it’s warm and it tastes warm and comforting. And a little bit like Christmas, if she’s honest. It’s the cinnamon. She’d put it in everything if she could.
(This has been one of Jamie’s complaints. Cinnamon does not go in coffee. But there are cinnamon creamers, so she can’t be right about that. Besides, it tastes good to her!)
Viola takes the packet between her thumb and forefinger, places it in one of the teacups (both of which are a deep blue with creamy stars speckled about them, although one has a huge chip in its side), and then hands the cup over to Dani. “Keep track of your cup,” she says, tapping it once with one long finger. “Don’t lose it.”
Dani looks at her curiously. “How would I lose a cup?”
“The same way you lose other things. You place them somewhere, intending to remember where, only the memory fades.” Viola meets Dani’s eyes. “If that memory fades here, then the cup will be lost entirely. I cannot make a new cup for you.”
Dani’s eyes widen as Viola passes her, back out into the hallway, carrying her cracked cup of stars, the pot of water, and the pot with – hopefully – sugar inside. “You made these?”
At first, Viola doesn’t say anything as Dani follows her. It isn’t until they are back outside, at what looks to be a fire pit with a fire steadily flickering away inside, that she answers her. “No.” She places her metal teapot over the fire and sits on a log just outside of it, holding her cup with both hands. “I remembered it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I cannot explain it.” Viola stares into the flickering flame, her words never anything other than calm. “I remember the pot, the cups, the sugar, the creamer. I remember the books. I remember my bed, my vanity, and the trunk full of clothes. They are there just as I remember them.”
Dani stares at her, still confused. “You mean from your life?”
“Some of it, yes, but I doubt all of it comes from there.” Viola’s full lips press together in a thin smile. “Some of it I’ve scavenged from your side of the gate. That is where I found the fruit to plant my trees, and that is where I found this.” She nods to the fire. “Something in your mind was burning. It sent ash through my stream – when I had a stream, before it was diverged to create the moat. I went to find out what was causing the problem and found the fire. I did my best to put it out, but this…. Well.” She smiled, smug. “I thought it would be useful.” She gestured with one hand. “It never goes out. Nothing changes here.” A pause, then, as though correcting herself, “Except for the trees.”
Viola says this as though the trees themselves are the most miraculous thing of all, and perhaps, thinking about it, they are. If everything on this side of the gate is as dead as Viola herself, then the growth of something new, something living, would be nothing short of a miracle. But Dani remembers the apple she’d bitten into so long ago, remembers how bitter and ashen it had tasted to her. She wonders, briefly, if it tastes that way to Viola, too, or if the ghost is only able to taste the sweetness of it. Worse, if these fruit trees came from fruit on her side of the gate, would her own fruit taste just as broken?
No. Of course not. Jamie taught her about that when they’d planted their own apple tree, hadn’t she? Just because the seeds used to start an apple tree came from a sweet apple doesn’t mean that they will reproduce apples of that same flavor when the tree begins to bear fruit. It is so much more complicated than that. Funny that this imaginary mind fruit should have the same qualities – the same results – as real fruit.
Then again, if how this world works is based on her subconscious, maybe that’s not so funny at all.
The teapot lets out a sharp whistle, and Viola carefully takes it from the fire. Dani winces as she watches Viola’s bare fingers touching a metal pot that must be burning her skin, but on second glance, it appears as though what would destroy her hands in real life has no effect on Viola at all. The woman flinches the slightest bit when she first touches the pot, but past that, there is nothing. She pours boiling water first into Dani’s cup and then into her own. Then she glances up. “You have made your own cup of tea, have you not?”
Dani’s eyes narrow. “I have!” she exclaims. Then she stares at the cup. “Mostly I make it in the pot, not in my own cup. One packet seems a little much. Are you sure this is right?”
Viola takes a little breath, glances upward, and lets her gaze rest on the sky for the briefest of moments.
It is an action that Dani is extremely familiar with. When she was younger – when her mother still cared and her father was still around – the entire family would make the trek to church. They weren’t the every time the doors are open sort of people, although they easily could have been – her mother loved talking to everyone, and her father had his own group to talk over the latest sports game. The sport didn’t matter as much as the talking did, as much as the team lines did. Her father was a Cowboys and Cardinals fan. She still remembers that, even so many years later. Her father was a Cowboys and Cardinals fan.
But that is beside the point.
Dani remembers, even as a small child, the way some of the women would look up towards the sky whenever she said something that disturbed them or confused them or even just strained their good feelings. Except they weren’t looking at the sky, they were looking up at God, plaintive, as though asking for His help dealing with her.
In the years after her father left, her mother still made that gesture every now and again, but she’d done so less and less often as time went by. Dani doubts that had anything to do with her personally. If anything, she thinks it had more to do with how much more her mother had been drinking. Never enough for anyone else to notice, just enough for Dani to realize that she would never be enough.
“I didn’t peg you for a religious woman,” Dani says, watching Viola.
The woman glances over to her, and the look she gives is paralyzing. “I wasn’t,” she says, and venom drips from her lips. It is the harshest thing that Dani has ever heard the ghost say. The only thing worse was when she did that whole unhinged jaw yell bit, which probably had more to do with her jaw moving in a way it really wasn’t supposed to than the actual yelling.
“Sorry,” Dani says, hands up with her palms out in an expression of annoyed apology, her teacup resting in her lap. “It was just a question.”
“It was a statement,” you correct, “and your earlier assumptions were quite adequate.”
You force yourself to stare into the flickering flames again, to take a deep breath and still that ceaseless rage that bubbles up again in the center of your chest. You don’t know why that bothered you as much as it did. Most of the time, you can guess at why the rage has returned – but this time, it is quite beyond you.
Of course, you had acknowledged your previous ties to a church you did not believe in before. There was a verse you remembered – one that your host knew as well – so you must have sat through those lectures and must have remembered some of it. And yet, when you think of it in any further focus, the only thing you can feel is that rage in the center of your chest stoking itself. You cannot say why. Perhaps this, too, is a memory that you should unlock. You certainly cannot imagine why you would have gone through those lectures unless you enjoyed them. More, you wouldn’t have chosen to remember anything from them if they weren’t, in some way, shape, or form, important.
And yet what you have told your host still rings true. You would not consider yourself religious. Even less so now that you are a ghost, stuck in the body of another young girl, who apparently has remained here on this earth murdering people in a bout of endless rage and loneliness instead of…moving on.
Somehow, you are certain that this is your own fault, that somewhere you had been given a choice – not one so dry or clear cut as you might imagine it to be, but one that was given over and over and over until you’d forgotten the option to do anything other than what you were doing was there at all.
You let your gaze return to your host as she remains silent, and you nod to her. “Like this,” you say, lifting your packet out of your teacup and then placing it back in. “You let the tea steep longer to draw out more flavor. Not too long, or the flavor will grow bitter.”
Your host stares at you, her face blank. “Why would anyone want less flavor? Wouldn’t that just be watery?”
“Some people prefer their tea to have a more subtle profile.” You smile at her. “I am not one of them either.”
“And how will I know when it turns bitter?”
“Well, if you want strong flavor, follow my lead. Take yours out when I take mine out, and then make it to your taste from there.” You watch as she begins to take the packet out and then places it back in. “You normally put multiple packets in a pot?”
Your host nods. “Put a few in a pot, let it steep for a while, take the packets out, and put in a lot of sugar.” She smiles, focusing on her cup instead of on you. “Where I was raised, we’d put in the fridge after that and let it cool. Drink it with a slice of lemon and ice. It’s great when it’s all hot out.”
You make a face and shake your head. “That sounds horrible.”
“It tastes good to me,” she says. Then she turns to face you, blinking twice. “You’d probably like it if you tried it.”
“I quite doubt it.” You chuckle. “No wonder Jamie doesn’t like your tea. We don’t make that sort of thing around here.” You lift your packet from your cup and throw it into the fire, where it will burn until nothing but ash remains. Your host follows suit. “Try one sugar first,” you say as you pick two from their pot. “Sweeten it more if you need more, but remember that you can’t take it out once you’ve put it in.”
Your host snorts. She lifts a hand to her nose, covers her mouth, but does not quiet the little chuckle that escapes her lips. “I’m sorry,” she says, and it is perhaps the first time you have ever heard her offer you an apology that she actually means. “You probably don’t think that’s funny.”
“It is a joke I do not understand,” you answer, “and am perfectly fine without your explaining it. I don’t want to know.” You take a sip of your tea, barely watching as your host takes a sip of her own. Her face blanches, and she reaches over, takes another two sugar cubes, and stirs them both into her tea. “You’re a sweet tooth.”
“No, I’m not. It just tastes bad.” Dani makes a face. “Do you have any creamer? That might help.”
You nod. “There is an ice box—”
“Where do you get ice?”
You press your lips together. “In much the same way that this fire continues to burn without needing anything added to it, any snow or ice I take from your side of the gate over here maintains its frozen….” You stop. There is a word for this. There is a better way to say it. And yet, you struggle to remember it. You wave your hand dismissively. “It doesn’t melt.”
“Ah.” Dani nods once, slowly. “And you made a box for it?”
“You did not give me one,” you say, and you mean nothing mean by it, “and so I learned to make do with what I had.” You smile – more to yourself than to her. “If not for that, I would likely keep it cool by leaving it in the moat, and then you really would have no way to get to it, would you?”
Dani glares at you, but there isn’t the same sort of venomous hatred that was there before. “That isn’t funny.”
“I thought it was.” You wave your hand dismissively again. “The ice box is near the house. You should find it easily enough. Unless you would rather I act as your servant and get the cream for you.”
“Would you?” Dani asks, eyes brightening. “That would be so great. I would love—”
“No.” Your smile tenses, and you feel that upset again. That doesn’t make any sense. It was a joke. You had only meant to jest with your host, and now you feel annoyed that she would request you serve her, despite the fact that you were the one who brought it up in the first place.
What is wrong with you?
Dani gives you a glance that you can’t quite read, but it doesn’t matter. As she walks off to try and find the ice box, you find yourself staring at your cup of tea – at the tea itself, more than the cup – as though that would explain to you why you are acting the way that you are. It doesn’t help. You know that it doesn’t help. But it doesn’t stop you from staring.
You close your eyes.
“They are servants, Vi.
Just have them live here.
Then you don’t have to pay them.
It’s such a waste of money.”
Your sister.
Again.
Perdita.
Her dark eyes are dark.
Hair perfectly coifed,
although not as beautiful or thick as your own.
Of the two of you,
you are the beautiful one.
No one questions this.
Not even her.
“We are better than that, Perdy,”
you find yourself saying.
“Servants are people just as much as you or I are.
You know the world looks down on us simply for being women.
It looks down on them, too, simply for being—”
“—peasants?”
Perdita raises one sculpted eyebrow.
She tries too hard.
You grit your teeth.
There is no way of explaining this to her.
You thought the same way she did, once.
It was your father who taught you otherwise.
Your father had protected the two of you,
had struggled to maintain your way of life
without marrying either of you off to
the first rich man who asked.
When your father dies –
and your father will die,
you know that he will,
sooner than you would like –
the two of you will be expected to marry.
Men will swarm like vultures.
You will need to marry first
to protect the family estate.
You will need to marry someone shrewd
but who will defer to your judgments.
But your sister?
Sometimes you think you will marry her to
the first rich man who asks,
the first rich man who she shows interest in.
You have already grown so tired of her quips.
It will be worse when your father is not here.
It will be worse when you must deal with her alone.
“We did not control the status of our birth.
Neither do our servants.
We pay them because we can afford to pay them,
and because they deserve to be paid.
Are they not doing a day’s work?
We cannot force them to live here and
consider that payment enough.”
Your sister’s eyes narrow
as she stares at you.
“We can do whatever we want.
You squander our money on clothes and jewels.
You waste it on peasants and servants.
You refuse to—”
“Viola? I brought the cream with me in case you wanted some…too….”
Dani returns with her cup of tea in one hand and the cream in the other, but her voice fades as she notices the other woman’s stance. The ghost is bent over, one hand on her forehead, eyes closed, as though she is in pain. She wasn’t sure Viola could feel pain, but apparently she can. That’s new.
The woman startles as Dani says her name, and she takes a sudden, sharp intake of breath before looking up, wincing just before her eyes open. She turns and meets Dani’s eyes. “I don’t need any,” she says, but her voice is fainter than it normally is, as though she is suddenly exhausted – or weak. “Thank you for your consideration.”
Dani isn’t quite sure that she believes her. Obviously she uses the cream for something, otherwise she wouldn’t have it. She certainly refuses to believe that the ghost just kept cream on ice just in case she should come to visit her, just for her. That would be more effort than she would expect from a creature who might not be intending to kill her but is certainly taking up residence in her mind – and her body – more than she would like. (Which is to say that she doesn’t like it at all, and no matter what their relationship may or may not end up being, she isn’t sure that she will ever like it.)
“Are you okay?” Dani can’t help but ask as she sits down on the log next to Viola. Okay, that’s a little too close, and she realizes what she’s doing almost as soon as she sits, instinctively scooting away a little bit just in case. She hates herself just a little bit for asking. Like, look, here is a ghost who doesn’t quite understand boundaries and attempted to kill her once (even if said ghost doesn’t remember doing that), and Dani sees her feeling weak and vulnerable and suddenly feels bad for her.
Darn, that compassionate center of hers, always getting her into trouble!
“I’m fine.” Viola waves one hand dismissively. She presses her lips together as though steeling herself and then takes a deep drought of her tea. Then she glances down at her now half-empty cup and scowls, an expression which makes Dani flinch without thinking. “Beginning to regret throwing my tea into the fire.”
Dani’s eyes narrow. Her heart is already set to racing by Viola’s frustrated expression, and she tries to calm herself. The ghost isn’t upset with her. She’s not going to come after her. They are just having a nice little conversation. She’ll be okay. “Why would you keep it?”
“To reuse it.” Viola smiles – a snide thing, not happy or sad but something else altogether. “You really don’t know how to make tea, do you?”
“I make tea just fine, thank you very much.” Dani huffs. “Just because I don’t make it like y’all make it—”
“Y’all.”
“—doesn’t mean I don’t make good tea.” Dani takes another deep breath and squints angrily at the other woman. “It’s just different from yours. And we don’t reuse packets. That’s gross. Can you even get any flavor out of that?”
Viola’s smile doesn’t fade, no matter what Dani says. “Yes. Might want it to steep a little longer to get a strong flavor, but yes.” She sighs and leans back just enough to glance up at the sky. “But enough talking about tea. You were going to tell me why you’ve been feeling so anxious that it’s been bleeding through the gate.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you that.” Dani glances up, trying to see what Viola is searching for in the sky. There are a couple of clouds, but they don’t move across the surface of the sky the way clouds in the real world do. They’re frozen in place. Some of them seem cottony, but in a way that seems almost sketched on – as though the sky here is only a photorealistic drawing and not the sky at all.
Then again, even if the clouds are real, how would they move if there is no wind to push them around?
Viola does not shrug. She does nothing that could be construed as dismissive. Instead, she asks, “Is it more relaxing for you to speak of tea than it is to speak of what is ailing you? If so, then we may continue that conversation.”
Dani purses her lips. “Are you really trying to help me for me, or are you just trying to help because it means things will be better in here for you?” She hates the snappish way the words come out of her lips as soon as she says them, but it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t mean them. “There is a difference, you know.” She crosses her arms, letting her teacup rest on the flattened ground between their shared log and the fire in front of them.
“Why can’t the answer be both?” Viola asks, her voice soft. “I can help you for your sake while also wanting to help you for my own. You might consider that selfish, but everyone must have an element of self-preservation to them. Even you have it. That is why you still keep me at arms’ length, despite my personally being nothing but kind to you.”
“You tried. to kill me.”
“Not in here, I haven’t.” Viola’s lips press together in a thin line. “I think the death would be much more permanent, much more painful in here, don’t you?”
The words don’t sound like a threat. Dani wants to believe that they aren’t. And yet, there is still a cold chill traveling down the thick of her spine. There isn’t a breeze, but there might as well have been a cold gust of air hitting her full in the face.
If the ghost must become more of a human to me, then I must become more of a human to her as well.
“I was going to be married,” Dani starts, slow at first, not looking at Viola. It is easier to talk about this while staring into the fire. It reminds her so much of the bonfire they’d had at Bly so long ago. She should have spoken about Eddie then. It hadn’t been easy to go back and burn what remained of his glasses, and even though she had done it, even though she had come to a peace with the guilt-made ghost of him who had followed her around, it wasn’t the same – couldn’t be the same – as speaking of him with Jamie, Hannah, and Owen the way they had spoken of their lost loved ones with her.
Maybe this could be a recreation of that – confessing her dead ghost to her living one.
She shudders to think of that.
Viola doesn’t say anything. In fact, her entire expression seems to soften as she waits for what Dani will say next. She takes another sip of her tea, but she doesn’t request for her to wait while she goes back for another packet. If anything, she seems determined to make what she still has last for however long this conversation will take.
Dani glances down into her tea, away from the fire. “I’m sure that’s surprising to you,” she says when Viola doesn’t say anything, “considering Jamie and everything.”
“No.” Viola’s voice is soft as she answers. “I knew many women like you who went through the same thing.” She doesn’t bring up what might have happened to them if they did otherwise; Dani didn’t know what century Viola was from, but she knew that it wouldn’t have been pretty. “So no,” she continues, tapping her forefinger against her teacup, “I am not surprised.”
Dani doesn’t really want to ask, but she can’t help but reach for something to pull her out of the explanation she has already started on. “Were you one of them?” she asks, looking up briefly and then back to her teacup as though ashamed for even asking.
Viola’s eyes narrow as she stares forward – not into the fire but past it, not really focusing on anything. “I don’t know,” she says, finally. “I don’t remember.” She chuckles lightly. “It seems so strange that should be one of those things I don’t remember, but it is.” She sighs. “I loved my husband, though,” she says, firm. “I’m certain of that. Whether or not I loved him when I married him, I did, eventually, love him. And he loved me.”
For a moment, Viola seems to freeze – almost the same as she had when Dani returned with the creamer – but she quickly shakes it off. “Your fiancé,” she says, by way of returning to the last conversation, “what was he like? Did you love him?”
Dani smiles. “I think if I could have fallen in love with a guy, I would have fallen in love with him. Eddie was….” She shakes her head, astonished that she had even mentioned him to the ghost by name, but wherever you go, there you are. “Eddie was always very gentle with me. I was at his house with his family more than I was at my own. My mom….” She shakes her head again. “Not important.” She rubs the back of her neck, fingers pressing to that spot even though there is absolutely no reason to do so now. It’s a habit, an idle one, brought on by her discomfort. “I hate saying it this way but Eddie was not like other guys. He was my best friend, and I wanted to make him happy.” She sighs. “But I eventually realized that if I was lying to him, then that….” She hisses through her front teeth. “That wasn’t making him happy. If I was in love with someone and I believed that they loved me and then found out that they were only pretending to love me to make me happy…. I wouldn’t…. If I really loved them, that would be…that would be worse.” She turns to Viola, pressing her lips together. “Does that make sense? It wasn’t that I was putting my happiness above Eddie’s. It wasn’t. It was understanding—”
“—that if he loved you as much as he said he did, then he would be miserable if you were miserable,” Viola completes when Dani’s voice fades away. “That was very wise of you.”
Dani shakes her head. “It was selfish. I don’t think I would have brought it up at all if Eddie hadn’t realized that all of the wedding planning was making me depressed. I just kept wanting to make things smaller and smaller until he realized that I didn’t want to have it at all. And then I had to tell him.” She sighs, and her brows furrow. “He didn’t take it well. We fought. But the thing about Eddie was that no matter how much we fought, we would have always made peace about it later. He was my best friend, and I loved him as much as I could love anybody, other than Jamie. Other than—”
“I know.”
Dani nods again, still staring into the fire, but she is nodding more to herself now than she is to whatever Viola has said. “He got out of the car because he needed room to breathe. He needed to walk it off. He needed to think over it. It would have been fine, but—” She stops and swallows, staring into the fire. “A truck was coming. One of those big ones, you know? And we were parked on the street and there wasn’t any warning and it....”
She can’t say it. She doesn’t want to say it. It is hard to say it, and she doesn’t want to say it, but she has to say it because it’s just words and words can never be as bad as being there and living through it was and she has to say it she has said it before she can say it now just say it—
“The truck ran him over, and he died.”
Dani takes a deep breath. She waits. No matter how many times she says it, it’s still hard, and the worst of it is that she’s never really explained it to anyone else the way she’s explaining it to the ghost sitting on the log next to her. The only other person who got the full story was Jamie, and even then, she’d kept some things out.
Pretending to be in love with Eddie had been like what pretending to be in love with Owen would be like. They were cut from the same cloth. But it could never compare to being in love with Jamie. The feelings were nothing alike.
“After he died, I used to see him.” Dani shakes her head again and glances down into her teacup. “I don’t think he was really a ghost like you are. Eddie moved on to wherever it was he was supposed to go, but the guilt of everything…. It haunted me. And so I would see him. Mostly in mirrors or reflections, but sometimes….” She remembers Bly. It is impossible not to remember Bly. “Those last few days, it was like he was there, like he could feel me falling for Jamie, like he was protectively trying to…to keep me for himself. Even though it wasn’t really him.”
“I have not seen him here,” Viola says, voice soft. “I believe if you were still seeing his ghost, he would linger here somewhere as well.” She takes a sip of her tea as her hair falls back into her face, hiding her expression from Dani. “Perhaps you only have room enough for one of us at a time.”
Dani laughs – shorter than normal, more a chuckle than a laugh. “No, he and I parted ways before I met you. He started showing up any time I tried to get close to Jamie, and I got tired of it.” She looks up and over towards Viola. “I was trying to make space for Jamie, but if you’re right, then I guess I made room for you.” She shrugs and glances back down into her tea. “Anyway, the reason I’ve been so anxious recently is that we’re getting close to the anniversary of his death.” She leans back and forces herself to look up at the sky. It’s still that same almost painted on cloud frozen in the same position it was in before. Still, looking up at the sky? It helps. She sighs. “I always get anxious when I get close to his death. I know he won’t come back, but it’s like…. It’s almost like reliving everything again. It’s hard. It’s terrifying.”
“Well, if he ever should show up again,” Viola begins as the fire crackles and pops in front of them, “come find me.” She meets Dani’s eyes, her voice firm as steel. “I know how to deal with ghosts.”
A thrill of terror creeps down Dani’s spine. It’s similar to the feeling she gets whenever she considers that this ghost could destroy her, closer to when she’d been certain that she would (a certainty that is not quite so certain right now). She does not know what Viola would do to another ghost, but she can imagine it. Her lips press together, and she avoids Viola’s eyes. “If Eddie were here, I would prefer him to you,” she admits, despite knowing that Eddie’s ghost had been far more possessive and antagonistic than Viola is. Eddie might have been more pervasive, but he was less invasive. She could learn to deal with Eddie, if it were truly him and not just a guilt-ridden being that her mind created just to hurt her.
Yet Viola does not flinch at her words. “Of course, you would,” she says, and when Dani looks up once more, Viola’s gaze – intense as could be – has left her and returned to the flickering flame. “If it were him, you would be with your best friend instead of someone who tried to kill you once.”
“I thought you said that you didn’t remember that.”
“I don’t,” Viola replies, and it is almost as though she is snapping at her, although her tone is still just as soft and warm as it has been. “But I don’t think the two of us have had a conversation where you haven’t brought it up. I know it by how often you fixate on it, how often you use it as a weapon against me.”
“I—”
Viola shakes her head and waves a hand dismissively between them. “No matter who or what I am, you will always see me as your beast in the jungle, waiting to devour you, and I suppose that it is right for you to do so, regardless of my intent. I have come to live with that and accept it.” She continues to stare into the fire and lets out a sigh. “First meetings have strong implications for the rest of a relationship. In our first meeting, I tried to kill you. I cannot rewrite that.”
Dani stares at the ghost, waiting for her to continue, but Viola falls silent. Her lips press together, teeth gritting against each other. She wants to ask, but does not. She isn’t sure she could take the answer.
And yet, after a few moments of only the fire flickering between them, Viola continues. “You have such strong faith in my intent to kill you, and I have such strong hope in your intent to love me. Neither is truly there. It is the same.” Her voice is so soft that Dani barely hears it, even though they are sitting just next to each other. Viola takes a deep breath and sighs again. “The next time you are anxious,” she says, changing the subject as abruptly as she can, “come back, and I will make you another cup of tea. You don’t have to talk about it if you do not wish to do so. In fact, you do not have to say anything at all. But the world is far quieter in here than it is out there.” Viola glances up again, past the sketched on cloud that remains, unmoving, in the sky. “And sometimes the quiet helps more than anything else can.”
Dani nods in agreement. “I can do that,” she says, voice soft, although she doubts that she will. She picks her cup of tea up from the ground where she has placed it and turns back to the ghost. “Is this you kicking me out again?”
“No,” Viola says, and she takes a sip of her tea, pinkie out in a way that makes Dani almost laugh. “You may stay as long as you want. As long as you need.” She stands, and her cup hangs, empty, from her fingertips. “I’m going to get more. Would you like any?”
And for the briefest of moments, Dani considers it, staring at the metal teapot and her own, not quite finished cup. She takes a deep breath, and she feels like she’s jumping off a cliff – again. “Why don’t you bring the basket out?” she asks, briefly meeting Viola’s eyes. “Then you won’t have to go back for more.”