“I don’t . . .” He falters then, swallows. “I don’t want to be alone.”
He isn’t, of course. She is there, and so are Hannah and Edgar. And then, out of the darkness comes the ghoul. Arthur Prior sinks to the ground beside his son. He reaches out a hand and strokes the air beside his head. And finally, Matthew closes his eyes and rests.
He doesn’t wake again.
But they stay there with him until dawn.
Epilogue
Olivia kneels among the roses.
A cold breeze rolls through the garden, snatching loose leaves and drooping petals and whisking them away, summer finally losing its hold.
She hisses at the autumn chill, pulling her jacket close. It is her mother’s, the coat, a bold blue thing trimmed with white. It is still too big on her, but sleeves can be rolled, and hems lifted, and one day, she knows, it will fit. For now, it keeps the breeze at bay, and the thorns from snagging on her skin as she prunes the gray weeds that still fight their way up through the injured ground, twist and tangle through the plants. Persistent, she thinks.
But so is she.
Olivia stands, surveying her work.
Close to the house, a few rose bushes survived, but death has washed like a tide over the rest. It took a week to clear the ruins. To nourish the soil and try to start again.
It will grow back, she tells herself. If death is a part of the cycle, then so is life. All things fade, and all things flourish.
The soil felt good under her hands. Better still when the first thin shoots of new grass began to show.
Edgar says she has a gift for it, a green thumb.
It is not a power, exactly, not like the one she had beyond the wall, but it is something. And in time, with care, the garden at Gallant will come back.
Other things will not.
Her gaze drifts down the slope, stopping before the wall.
There is a smooth white stone set in the middle of the ruined grass. It stands out on the shadowed rise, as bright as bone against the dark gray dirt. Edgar helped her place it, to mark the spot where Matthew fell.
He is not buried there, of course. His body is next to his father’s, beyond the orchard in the family plot. But it felt right, and every time she finds her gaze drifting to the door in the wall, it lands here instead.
A reminder, for the nights when the darkness whispers through her head, trying to coax her to come out, come back, come home.
But home is a choice.
And she has chosen Gallant.
There is only one thing she longs for beyond the wall.
A small green book, with a G pressed into the cover.
Her mother’s words, her father’s drawings.
Her fingers itch, the way they always do when she thinks of the journal.
She pictures the master of the house sitting in his velvet chair, beside the empty hearth, turning the pages and reading aloud to himself.
Olivia, Olivia, Olivia.
She makes her way up through the garden, pail in hand. All the roses are gone now, even those safe against the house, except for one. A single stubborn bush continues to bloom, only a handful of red roses left on the stems.
Olivia cuts one and holds it to her nose out of habit, even though Matthew grew them all for color, not for scent. She will plant some new ones in the spring, ones that can be both.
Up on the balcony, Hannah is pounding out a rug.
She claims there is dust everywhere. A patina of ash that sweeps in through the cracks in the shutters and the gaps beneath the doors and settles over everything. Olivia does not feel it, but every day Hannah scrubs and pounds and clears away the ashes of the night before. Edgar says it is her way of mourning.
The sun slips down the sky as Olivia kicks off her garden boots, leaves them by the back door, and goes inside.
She hears Edgar in the kitchen, making stew. If she listens closely, she can hear him humming. An old hymn he used to sing to patients in the war.
The house is too big for three people, so they each try to take up space, to make noise.
Olivia yawns as she makes her way through the house.
She has not been sleeping well.
Every night, she dreams she is beyond the wall.
Sometimes Death is waiting for her on the balcony, dead eyes burning like stars in the dark.
Sometimes he is calling for her as she runs through the house, desperate to find a way out.
But most times, she is in the ballroom, where he conjures her parents from ash and bone. Over and over she watches them meet. Over and over she watches them crumble. Over and over he brings them back and they look at her with hands outstretched, with pleading in their eyes, as if to say, we could be real.
They are only dreams, she tells herself, every time she wakes.
And dreams can never hurt you. That’s what her mother said. Of course, she knows now it isn’t true. Dreams can make you hurt yourself, dreams can make you do so many things, if you’re not careful. She has yet to wake and find herself beyond the bed, but she keeps the soft leather cuffs tucked beneath the mattress, in case one day she needs them.
And she is not alone.
Hannah locks the doors each night.
Edgar checks the shutters.
And her mother’s ghoul sits at the foot of her bed, eyes trained on the dark.
Olivia moves through the house, thinking of the bath she plans to draw, soaking the dirt of the garden from her limbs. But first, her feet carry her as they always do.
To the music room.
Beyond the bay window, the sun continues to sink. Soon it will fall between the distant mountains and vanish behind the garden wall. But right now, there is still light.
A yellow vase sits on top of the piano, and Olivia sets the red rose there, then sinks onto the narrow bench. She eases up the lid, fingers sliding through the air above before coming to rest on the black and white keys.
The light in the room begins to thin, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees it. The ghoul is half-there, half-not, but she can fill in the missing pieces from memory. The furrowed brow, the messy curls, the eyes, once fever bright. The ghoul draws forward, lowering itself onto the bench beside her. As badly as she wants to turn and look, she doesn’t.
She keeps her gaze down and waits, and after a few moments, it bows its half-there head and brings its spectral fingers to the keys. They hover there, waiting for her to follow.
Like this, it seems to say, and she places her hands, just like he showed her, and begins, haltingly, to play.
Acknowledgments
Some stories spill out in a wave. Others come in drips. And now and then, a story sits pooled somewhere, waiting for you to find it. I had to go looking for Olivia’s tale. I had the door in the wall, that was always there, but for years, I wasn’t certain what I’d find on the other side. What I needed to find. Because of that, Gallant was not only a work of love, but patience.
In a world with deadlines and release dates and expectations, it is a luxury, to be patient. To have a publishing team that understands that need for patience and makes space for it.
My agent, Holly Root, and my editor, Martha Mihalick, made space, and I will forever be grateful for it. Just as I will be grateful to the entire team at Greenwillow Books, for their confidence and belief when the story I finally found proved strange and wild, and it was clear it wouldn’t sit easily on any one shelf, that my readers would still find it.
I am grateful to my cover designer, David Curtis, for creating the perfect door into my world, and to my illustrator, Manuel Šumberac, for creating pieces of art that have their own voice on the page.