Charlotte · Brontë

Alone in my room, I curled my hair and put on the dress... that beautiful midnight-blue dress. And I put on makeup, more than usual. I tried to smooth out my nails (I'm biting them again and it's a loathsome habit) and I painted them a dark color (they still look dreadful).

But on the whole I think it was all right. When I really looked in the mirror, it startled me... that the shadows beneath my eyes are faint red instead of blue now. They're disappearing. My face is not so sharp as it was, and I don't look as unhealthy as I have-- I've always been thin, but I no longer look wasted. I look like I used to. The girl that sat quietly in class that no one really noticed, the girl who never did anything extraordinary except perhaps on paper.

It's peculiar to think that there is no evidence of what I've been through... a name on the bottom of my drawer, a lump of silver and a medallion in the bottom of my jewel box, a vivid pink scar on the inside of my wrist. It will fade away to silver-white eventually, but I am glad of it. Strangely glad. There is a mark to show that I did this all, so I won't ever quite forget.

I sat down on the edge of my bed to take a moment before I left my room. When I looked up, it was midnight.

I haven't cried for days.

Maybe I'm not quite ready for everyone. But I'm ready for some things... to finish this. They say "closure" and it's time.

I need to phone Victor, phone Dot.

And Ron. To see when we can begin a garden.

the ocean a boat water like salt in my eyes i can't see

its gone and i am gone and its dark here endless and arms such strong arms and they arent yours my veins are on fire my bones are frozen my feet are gone eaten away by your blood

lake

snowfalling on your shoulders and we ride

brambles and berries red grown bitter

i know your name remember mine

i will come home

mei oculi...

I can begin to hear the ocean or maybe it is the blood in my ears and a night-rider gallops beside the train with his cloak streaming behind him. I know his name but dare not say it and my shadow has moved to the seat across the aisle as if to leave room for this rider's immense presence. He has a strong forehead. He is determined. He will not let me get away from him. He will not harm me.

I hold Jules's coin in my hand as I barrel into the night and I feel separate from him, yet my heart is inside him if he wishes it. Perhaps devotion is a little sickening but I want to give it all for him, and so ought to be allowed to without fear of sounding foolish or heedless. Perhaps now he has found someone else to call home and has forgotten me in the way of Eupheme, and when I return-- will I return?-- my feelings will be untethered with nothing to attach to. Free-floating ribbons of nothing but air.

If only he were here, with warm arms and his warm temper, this would all seem smaller than us two. I must hold onto him.

I think of Emily and her devotion and I will not leave her, I will not lose her again. She died before me and I will not die before her this time; if a ship sinks, everyone goes down together, don't they? Whatever captains this, we all go down or soar together. We do not abandon ship, not even Anne, not even this strange Anne I do not know.

The night-rider gallops and the horse's breath is crystal cloud in the air and my heart is broken, bleeding, aching.

We have pulled out of the station. The train is largely empty and I am thinking of Miyazaki, of water plains and little mice, shadows that have no name but do not hurt anyone.

The lights flash by and I can hardly write, my pen is heavy, my heart is sick. The egg is in its bag next to me and it breathes so loud I can hear it.

-later-

It sits across from me and smiles.

I have checked into a hotel. I nearly used Anne's name, or Emily's, or God forbid even feminized Jules's-- but I couldn't risk it. I told them my name was Ginny Dickens. They looked at me strangely. It was all right, I didn't mind, and I paid in cash.

In the parking lot, someone asked, hey sister, need a hit, and I felt my stomach turn. I shook my head, made it to my room to look in the mirror. No wonder they asked; my limp hair covered with a hoodie, my bloodshot eyes. My fever is only common, but it's high enough to make me shiver.

I look as if I've fallen into the cracks. Not even through, to the bottom where there are other people; no, just into them, where I am stuck and cannot go any further.

I can hardly think. I need a cold bath, I need to lock the door.

-later-

Oh, God. God.

I fell asleep in the bath and it was there, crouching between the toilet and the washstand, hand splayed on the countertop, ready to spring. I woke up and I saw it, I still saw it, the disease-ravaged face bound up and bandaged and oh, God, it's here.

i can see you looking at me, charlotte.

I cried out. The floor in the bathroom is all over water, a sodden mess of my clothes and towels, but I won't go back in there. I won't.

Mei oculi. I should have brought you with me, I should have brought you with me, I should have brought you with me.

I have been driving all day long.

I am beginning to feel strange.

I realize the strength of my error now... the fever is climbing into my bones again, into my brain. Oh, God, Jules, how I wish you were here. I'm frightened, so very frightened, and I know you will be angry. I have worked so hard to gain your trust and I shattered it so simply, but I need to keep you safe. This is my fault, somehow, or at least I came to be in charge of the fault; the egg fell into my hands and I must get rid of it. I have faith that you will understand me better than anyone, and faith you will forgive me.

I haven't cried since I left Icaria, but to-night is lonely and so very cold. Virginia's car is the only thing that keeps me connected to home, aside from the coin that Jules gave me... and soon only that will be my connection to Eupheme, to my sisters, to him.

I dream and wake and sleep to dream again. They are increasingly worse if only because they have no thread, and there is no way to make any sense of them.

Curly hair vanishing into inky darkness-- into water, but it is thick, viscous. It sucks at my hands as I try to reach the hair, vanishing golden in the depths. There is a roiling storm on the horizon. White wings sweep over us, reflected; they promise quiet, but no peace or release, and I accept. They enfold me.

A man's body facedown in a cobblestoned street, bleeding; a shining pool of gore filling cracks, spilling over, running through the gutters. It does not absorb light; it gleams. No one sees him but me, in my white nightgown; too much blood for someone so thin and I know the dark hair... and his hands, his hands I know as well as I know mine, though I won't turn him over, I won't, I can't. Too late I realize my feet are bare, stained with his blood as if I have danced in it. I do not kneel. He is dead and his blood is my blood.

Her hair is long again, black as nightmares, and she is dying. Her mouth is very red. Standing proud at the edge of the cliff and bursting into a cloud of ravens, wings beating, eyes gleaming, swarming me and tangling in my hair. Too long, too long, cut it off, get them out or she'll suffocate. I hack away at my hair with a knife, dull and pitted. Chunks of it fall away, but the ravens never go; they are tangled in me forever, and I in them.

I suppose technically it is Wednesday morning, but as I have not yet slept, I will maintain it is Tuesday.

I am in a carpark at the back of some little grocery in a small town that I don't know the name of. Thank God I thought to bring blankets, and a goodly sum of them; I am curled in the back seat of Virginia's car with my notebook. The egg is curled in a bag in the front passenger's seat and the night is growing colder. (It's amazing how quickly the heat dissipates from a car once the engine is turned off, isn't it? At this point it is still too warm to be cold, but too cold to be comfortable. So I make my nest and feather it with notebook paper and words, to comfort me.)

I am feeling strong; I'm surprised at how strong I feel. Perhaps it's a prolonged adrenaline rush from leaving, from being brave enough to do this. They will all be so angry when I come back, I know, because I left so suddenly and didn't ask anyone to come with me... but it will bring such blessed relief that maybe it will make up for something. The egg will be gone and perhaps we can all finally get some rest.

I write about this so coolly, but I am terrified. It seems so fragile; what have I done? I am not brave. I am stupid little Charlotte Brontë, and who am I to do this? I don't understand any of it, or what its consequences may be. But at the moment the barriers between my nightmare world and my waking one seem very real and solid, and so I will forge ahead.

I am not entirely sure where I'm going. Just away. I will know when I arrive there that it is my destination.

(This journal is useless, for I'm only trying to sound brave when I am terrified beyond all reasonable comprehension. Yet it feels so overdramatic to say so. What am I afraid of? What?)