Chapter 1
Before she has the chance to utter a word, Maureen knows she cannot speak. It was as if a ten-ton weight had been placed on the center of her tongue, and the plush of the mattress below was perhaps sinking her deeper by the minute. As it is, there is nothing she could really do about it besides sit and wonder. Where is she? Better yet, where is everybody else?
The room is grand and cold. Everything seemed dull despite how light filtered through the multi-colored glass behind the headboard and landed its technicolor rays on the green silk duvet. Maybe it had to do with how fuzzy her head felt, but she must’ve watched the light dance forever and ever.
Maureen wonders if she has died. The last thing she remembers is how Arthur had shoved her into the green-tinged fire, and the lie in his voice as he said he would be right behind her and Mother. She had always been good at snuffing out liars. Nanny always said so. She called Maureen her “Truffle Pig”, and Maureen had always told Nanny it wasn’t very flattering to be compared to a pig, but Nanny would say it didn’t matter as long as the words meant love.
It was too quiet and Maureen hates quiet. Quiet means trouble. Quiet means anger. Moments ago everything had been so loud, so big. And even though it had been bad, she knew what to expect. The loud felt considerate.
The room’s ornate double doors creak open, and as a head so blonde it shines white started to appear, Maureen became certain Mother was just around the corner. Instead, there stands a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance, and for the first time since she awoke, Maureen begins to feel frightened. The woman wears a soft smile, but there stands nothing behind the eyes. As the woman moves to sit in the chair beside her bed, she can see them closely.
Yes, it is in the eyes. Mother’s are a dark amber tinged with flecks of what could’ve been the sun. The woman’s are a cold, cloudy blue.
The motions of fear are familiar. Her body trembles in time with the increasingly rapid pace of her breath.
Grabbing Maureen’s hand the woman says, “Oh Cassie how long it’s been!” The woman’s eyes water and her lip shakes like a child’s. “Father said you were to never return.” The lines of her eyes crease with joy. As the woman caresses Maureen’s hand, Maureen wonders if this is some strange Heaven. She was really dead, and some angel was playing at being her Mother in order to appease her. Well it’s not working. She’d have to have a word with God when this was over.
An awful crack sounds, and a creature like nothing she has ever seen before appears out of thin air. Its eyes bug out of a bulbous head, large ears flopping like a hound out the side. The creature holds a tray of all kinds of colorful liquids and points a stern look, not at Maureen, but at the woman.
“Mimsy has told Mistress Malfoy to keep out of Miss’s rooms three times now!” A scowl replaces the woman’s grin, and her grip on Maureen’s hand tightens.
“It’s not fair.” She pouts. “I want to play with Cassie too!” Maureen wouldn’t constitute what they had been doing as “playing”. The woman seems much too old for that anyways.
The creature — Mimsy — sets the tray on the bedside table before prying the woman’s hand off of Maureen’s. As it herds the woman up and towards the door, Mimsy lifts its linen dress in some approximation of a curtsy. “Mimsy will let Master Draco know you're awake!”
And it is silent once more.
Maureen cannot still her heart. It keeps going and going, thumping its unruly beat in her ears. She wants Mother. Where is Mother? She cannot have her brother or Nanny, so where is Mother? She has to have one of them. It’s been too long and she was getting tired of Heaven and its tricks.
Mother had said they would all finally be happy together, away from Father and his needles and his yelling, and Mother didn’t smell like a liar, never ever.
Maureen makes herself smaller and smaller until the duvet consumes her. As she begins to cry she feels around for the necklace Mother had given her before they’d left. She’d told Maureen to give it to someone called…someone called…
They were simple instructions, and Maureen had always been good at those, so why couldn’t she remember? She begins to tattoo a familiar rhythm on the side of her leg with a balled-up fist, but this time it isn’t working, so she hits harder and faster again and again and agai–
Maureen feels hands grab at her and pull the blanket up and over her head, making her scream and scream. They let go, but it’s as if everything had come to a head, and the reality of her situation hits her all at once. Arthur is dead. Nanny is dead. And Mother…Maureen is beginning to think she isn't coming. Maureen is beginning to think she had…she had…
“You know,” A faint voice begins, “when I was younger I was the same way.” Maureen missed the voice’s stiffness, its slight tremble. “No one could get me to calm down. Not Mother, none of the elves…no promise of treats or toys did the trick.”
Lifting her head Maureen’s eyes make their way slowly up the stranger's face. While he had skipped a few grades, he hadn’t fully graduated to eye contact. So while her eyes traced the sharp jut of his chin and the nervousness of his mouth, they stopped at the point of his aquiline nose. From what she could tell he seems mortified by the situation. He was sitting on the edge of the mattress, looking anywhere but at Maureen.
“There was this one time when I was five or six,” From Maureen’s position she can make out the dull pinstripe pattern of his slacks. The man was picking a small tear at the knee. “And my Mother had dressed me up in this ridiculous sailor’s kit. She had friends ‘round for afternoon tea and they all wouldn’t stop cooing and touching.” Maureen’s punches slow to a dull thump. She tries to picture a tiny blond child, angry and suffocated. Suffocated like her.
“What they didn’t realize was that all I needed was time. Time and understanding.”
Without meaning to, Maureen finds herself calming down. The thumping of her heart fades into the background, and her hands still. Not looking at her, the man’s hand hovers over the tray Mimsy had set on the bedside table, before selecting one of the jarred liquids. He opens it and picks up a tiny spoon. The liquid was blue and thick like cough syrup, but bubbled like it was hot. He holds the teaspoon out to Maureen's handle first and says, “Here. This should help some. It tastes of mint.”
Maureen doesn’t take it.
When she makes no move the man finally looks at her. She catches sight of pale blue before settling her eyes on the ponytail sitting on the man’s shoulder. The hair is the same white blonde as the woman’s before. The same blonde as Mother. It’s held together with a black bow; a bit like a girl’s. It is very pretty.
Maybe he’s an angel too and maybe God had listened and finally stopped the tricks.
“Suit yourself.” He sets the spoon carefully on the bedside table before switching to sit in the armchair. He crosses and uncrosses his leg, smoothing out invisible wrinkles on his slacks. He’s dressed quite smart for being at home.
“You were all alone when you…tumbled out of my floo,” The Angel speaks haltingly and Maureen suspects he too is looking anywhere but her eyes, “I had tried to trace it but it was strange. Whoever was with you was very good with charms, I suspect?” Was he asking her? And weren’t charms the things you tied to the end of your satchel? Or perhaps a bracelet. Mother was awful at making bracelets. She could never start them, and always handed them to Maureen first. The Angel is still scratching at his slacks.
At Maureen’s silence, he huffs a breath and looks past her head and out the window.
“Do you — can you speak?”
Maureen looks down at the rumpled sheets. Her mouth won’t work. One leg is out of the duvet. Tucking them in, she covers them with the nightdress, her pale toes the only part peeking out. Smooshing her face against the fabric and making a curtain of her brown curls.
Maureen shakes her head.
There is an intake of air before it is let out. They sit in silence for some time before The Angel asks with levity she has already come to recognize as unfamiliar with his voice, “Do you like lemon biscuits?”
For a startling moment, Maureen sees his eyes and does not look away. They are a blue so pale they look grey. He isn’t smiling, but his eyes do not look unkind, perhaps tired.
Maureen was always taught to never go anywhere with anyone who wasn’t Nanny or Arthur or Mother or Father. She wasn’t to speak to any of the strangers who came to the door, or the children who lived beyond the trees and in the next home over. Father said they’d meant her harm. Mother said nothing, and the rules weren’t the same for Arthur.
Nanny had told Maureen to always do what she felt was right.
So Maureen nods her head.