The Ghost of Providence

Chapter Seven

Halle

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The crack of her grandfather’s demanding whip landed on her brother’s back with practiced ease. It was the third time it had done so that morning. It was the third time Halle repressed the urge to intervene.

“Again,” their grandpa dictated, his fingers curled around the handle of a long and thin, red whip. “Do it again. Do it better.”

“Yes, sir.”

Aside from three fleshed streaks across his back, Olivur’s legs trembled beneath strained efforts. Her brother was a pitiable sight, but he took his lashings with enthusiasm.

As morning light capered through the morning fog, beside the pond in the backyard, Olivur could be seen on his knees, facing a little wooden block that floated along the water every which way. There were five of such shapes in the water: one was gently burned along its leftmost edge, another on both, and a third was lightly seared on all fronts. Two more lay bobbing around, untouched—and her brother focused on one of these now.

“Again.”

With her grandfather’s insistence, Olivur turned a hand to one of the clean blocks. A light-red blur shifted along his fingers then. It was hard for Halle to see the shape clearly through the fog, but she could make out the figment’s bright color as it stretched from her brother’s fingers and reached for the wood in the water. It crawled along the mist like a slithering snake and approached the object greedily.

Olivur’s breath could be heard as it grew labored and loud the further the hazy figure crept. He was near wheezing by the time it reached the block and a faint sizzle could be heard.

“Further,” their grandfather ordered.

Olivur strained further to satisfy the demand and the red snake crept around the wood, coiling it tightly in a steamy embrace.

“Hotter.”

Olivur hissed beneath the pressure but managed what was asked of him. The flame tongue grew hotter. The soft sizzle grew louder. The woodblock burned faster.

Sudden, throated coughs ejected bits of blood from his mouth, and Halle at once prepared to step forward. But before she could step out onto the grass, a different figure, a hasty one, leapt from the white-painted porch and onto the yard, where it swiftly grabbed at Olivur and yanked him up from the ground.

“What are you doing?!” The voice was incensed; it was gravely; it was enraged. Limp in the man’s grasp, Olivur’s chin flung in his father’s direction. “This is over for today.”

Grandpa Harlord arched an eyebrow at her father, a corner of his lip rising up with it. “What are you going to do if I say no? Stop me?” His smirk widened and he spread his arms wide. “Then do it or move! Let the boy make himself useful.”

Her father shook his head, baffled and irate. “You mean to kill him!”

Grandpa Harlord rolled his eyes. “I’m not killing him. The boy just needs some encouragement.”

“Encouragement,” her father growled at the word. He pointed to her brother’s lacerated back. “You call this encouragement? He’ll be scarred!”

Grandpa Harlord shrugged at that. “Like you didn’t go through the same thing?” He pointed to Halle but looked to the other two with a touch of condescension. “Neither of you is gifted like Halle over there, so would you move out of the way so the boy can make something of himself? You want him to live in her shadow his whole life?”

Her father made to argue the point, but Olivur shook from his grip and moved beside their grandfather. He limped around on a worn spirit but sided with the old man anyway. “Stop it, please,” he implored their father. Blood trickled from his heaving lips and he could barely stand, but he defended Grandpa Harlord anyway. He got on his knees and bowed to their father. “I need this. Please. Please let me keep at it.”

“Olivur.” Halle couldn’t believe her eyes. She wanted to ask him— beg him to stop. But that look in his eyes...I can’t.

“You don’t need to do it like this. We can practice in a different way. There’s no need to— “

“Enough.” Grandpa Harlord patted Olivur’s matted hair. “He’s given his peace. Right?” he asked her brother. Olivur meekly nodded and their grandfather turned to his son again. “There. Happy? Now move.”

Their father looked to Olivur and then to Grandpa Harlord again, disbelief obvious from his face. He looked to Halle for backup, but she shook her head. What can I do?

After a tense minute, he shook an aggravated arm at the situation and walked back to the porch in hard thumps.

Olivur bowed his head one last time to express his gratitude.“Thank you, dad.”

Their father faltered along the steps. “Don’t thank me for this.”

“Enough.” The cold insertion of their grandfather’s command put a stop to the conversation. He clubbed Olivur over the head with the butt-end of his whip to get his attention. “Nobody bows in my family. Do you understand?”

Olivur quickly nodded his head and stood back up.

The old man then looked to Halle with a frown. “And you. Go back up to the porch. I don’t know what you were thinking, but your brother isn’t finished yet.”

Suppressing the anger she felt at her brother’s treatment, Halle ran up to give Olivur’s hand a small squeeze before she headed back up to the porch as her grandfather ordered. She had words for the old man, but they were words he would make her regret.

And as she stood above the greenery, behind the ornate railing of the porch, Halle watched with discontent as her brother continued his demonstration under their cruel grandfather. She didn’t like it but she wouldn’t intervene. Olivur wants this, but more than that, she gripped the railing, I’m scared.

How a voice, so husky and rasped, intimidated her to such lengths was a mystery Halle had never solved growing up. In spite of his blood relation, she found her grandpa to be a mean man.

His face, as if drawn upon with storm clouds, perpetually, and quite prominently, shone with the deepest disgruntlement. His thick eyebrows seemed to forever furrow downward, desperately reaching for two narrowed, deep-set blue eyes. He was quick to temper, ornery, and ill-mannered when angered. And, despite his age, he looked quite like her father. A trick of their heritage, she’d found out. Harrowbirds lived much longer lives than the average man.

“Now again.”

In Providence, her grandfather was respected. Feared. He was a mean old man, yes, but with means of another sort.

He was the Magic Man.

It’s so ironic, Halle thought. They have no idea how true that name is.

Their grandpa was called the Magic Man by most because, in the same lifetime, he had gone from Gully to Plateau, skipping a social class with each generation that passed. It was him who made their family infamous; it was he who made their family respected once more.

To the eye, he didn’t seem like anything much— a tumble of traits all wrapped in a bunch. The man had all the features that would make one attractive, yet harnessed none of them favorably. He was an old man who looked no older than fifty, with a wardrobe young people could only call thrifty. And maybe to the eye, he didn’t seem like much, but eyes couldn’t show you how scary he was. Even at home, his bare feet on the fescues, wrapped in white with soft-to-touch linen, to Halle he couldn’t help but leave an impression. She could say that the root of her fear lay somewhere in childhood fright but even standing before him now, a young woman of thirteen, she felt...suffocated.

“Keep going! Almost there!”

She removed her eyes from the scenery to see her brother wrap the wood in fire. There you go, Oli! And he continued on even as his head slumped into his shoulders until he heard what he’d wanted to hear his entire life.

Grandpa clapped measuredly and gave a shallow cheer. “Congratulations, Olivur,” he smiled smally. “You’re finally a Harrowbird.” He even gave her brother’s shoulder a light tap of approval. Halle could tell Olivur was elated with the validation—the whites of his eyes being so out on display shone with a cheer she couldn’t recall ever seeing.

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Halle widened her eyes as well, surprised but happy. Grandpa never praises Olivur. Her brother had been a late bloomer and a regular to the Brigs, but his demonstration just now had proven himself to their grandfather. The only thing the old man valued was magic—and Olivur could finally use it.

Halle was proud. She ran up to her brother then and wrapped him in a hug, a manifestation of her own glee.

“Good job, Oli!” she congratulated Olivur with a ruffle to his hair. It’s gotten longer, she appreciated the length. He shuffled embarrassedly beneath the affection and Halle’s cheeks couldn’t help but grow thicker at the sight. She had been worried about him for a while — the boy needed to change. Finally, he was doing it.

Looking back to the start of that morning, Halle had been taken by ill omen with her grandfather’s demand for demonstration, concerned with how her brother would cope. Her suspicions mounted when the old man had the two of them go out for demonstrations. She’d seen glimpses over the last few weeks, but had her brother at last awakened to their heritage? Surprisingly he had, and her worries, proven unfounded, were replaced by eager expectancy. Olivur is finally part of the family!

He gave a sharp smile, happy even as he rubbed at his lash-riddled back. “Thanks, Halle!”

She smiled too, but their grandfather separated them soon after. “Now again.” Never one to let a moment be enjoyed, Grandpa Harldord grabbed Olivur by the head and said, “Halle, go back. He needs to go again to get the feeling down.”

“But— “

“Go!”

Scared, she scampered over the grass, back up to the white deck where she stood behind the railing once again.

She heard a grunt from behind and turned to rediscover their father in his blue, pinstripe night-pants and t-shirt. He was all business in public with his luxury suits and well-tended hair, but in private he made for quite the dedicated homebody.

Her vision trailed upward and Halle expected to see a smile on his face—some pride for her brother. But the curve of his top lip and the pinch of his nose proved otherwise. He watched her brother complete his demonstration with disappointed eyes.

Halle faced him with shoulders set forward and an upward arch to her neck. “What,” she crossed her arms aggressively. “Not happy to see your son grow up?” she egged her father.

Her snide remarks largely ignored, her father looked away, his fingers drumming against the deck’s nimble railing. His indifference irritated Halle. She huffed, her small hands pinching the cotton armpits of her blouse. “Is being a Harrowbird unimpressive to you? Are you not proud of us?”

His angular face still angled south, her father turned a deaf ear to her comments, fixated instead on whatever lay where his mind had gone. He looked over the fertile lawn with vacant, blue eyes, ahead of the little pond, the burnt blocks, and paddling ducks therein, and settled somewhere between a pack of birds and the trees they hovered over.

His quiet and Halle’s aggression had turned the atmosphere outside taut, fraught with a tension Olivur balked at and her grandfather overlooked. They could both hear her and she didn’t care. Instead of feeling put-out by the man’s negligence, she turned defensive.

“Mom would have been proud of him, you know?” Halle smirked. She knew just what would make her father upset and it was something she’d prepared right after the cobbler’s funeral. “But then again, the way you talk about that Brigham Street whore makes me think you didn’t really love mom at all, did you?”

Olivur, with all the grit of a young tween, was quick to cover his mouth, but the gasp that escaped his lungs wasn't one that could be snuffed out with a hand. Grandpa Harlord gave an amused chuckle, whether at what she’d said or her father’s discomfort, Halle couldn’t be sure, but their reactions were enough.

Her father turned then to her with an expression devoid of emotion. What was he gonna say now, Halle wondered expectantly. She couldn’t remember the last time her father was mad. Is he gonna send me to my room? Or tell me to be quiet?

Looking down at her with all the disappointment a parent could muster, her father let escape a heavy exhale from his lips. It rang low and hollow, and sounded so forlorn and defeated to her. “Halle,” he said with slow emphasis. “Your mother would hate the person you’ve become.”

With the unexpected remark, Halle’s world ground to a halt. Her heart rose to her throat.

Her father reached out for her shoulder, perhaps regretting what he’d said, but she slipped away from the hand.

She let go of her shirt, finding no comfort in the soft cotton anymore. With her family watching from the grass and the morning birds observing from their perch in the trees, Halle shrugged her shoulders as she padded away.

“It’s not like we’ll ever know anyway,” she whimpered as her fingers curled around the sliding door of the white-wood deck and she rushed inside, away from her father’s regretful apologies.

The cool linoleum felt colder than usual—the empty living room larger, darker, lonelier.

Flying through the house on the hill, Halle ran up the stairs and into her room, where the first thing she did was hurry to the drawer-side wall. She picked up the picture next to the little candle and stared at it. Don’t cry.

Chokng back a sob, Halle’s eyes scoured the picture with greedy analysis, in search of the hate her father spoke.

But there wasn’t any hate for her to find. She definitely loved me then.

Loved? Then? She winced as she registered words. Would she still love me if she could see me now? We’re so different, she bemoaned. Though they looked the same, Halle knew they weren’t. I could never smile like that. The longer she thought about it the more it frustrated her.

You would hate me?

She clenched the happy memory with hands set upon with agitated tremors, laughing even as tears flitted down her cheeks like hot streams of summer rain. She lifted the picture to eye level and snickered as it caught fire with an affecting thought.

Yeah, I bet you would.

The picture of her mother furled within itself in her hand, crumpling under the touch of excruciating heat.

“I don’t need your love anymore,” she whispered to the woman in the picture. “I’m everything you couldn’t be.”

She looked on in manic glee as the picture slowly burned away. But the enjoyment was short-lived—very short-lived.

As she witnessed the first corner of the picture fade away, Halle was immediately mortified by her actions. She quickly patted the picture with her free hand until the small fire went out, seething lightly as a finger blistered. Guilt lurked behind her eyes at the bits of ash in the air, her teeth clamored together anxiously as the taste of it hit her mouth.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. She repeated the words all the way to the door, the rapid apologies keeping on as she ran back down and out the house and unto the yard once again. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

Quickly stepping around a father still trying to express his remorse, Halle swept across the grass to her grandfather.

“What,” the old man asked, impatient and unamused with her forceful arrival. “What is it now?”

She quickly offered the picture forward with trembling hands. “Please,” she asked her grandpa. “Please fix it. I didn’t mean—I didn’t really...”

“Enough.” He brought up a hand to silence her stammers and took the picture with his other, but as he saw the woman in it, he scoffed, “Really?” he smirked. “You’re crying over her?”

Halle faced the ground at his ire. She knew he didn’t like her mother, but he was the only person she could think of who could fix her mistake.

Her head still facing the ground, Halle heard her brother gasp for the second time that morning. It was quickly followed by a little heat against her face and the soft sound of fire burning.

Thinking her brother had used his magic near her head, she swiftly stepped back in fright and furiously raised her head to face him. But her anger shifted to anguish with what was actually happening.

“I can’t believe my own granddaughter is crying over a wench,” her grandfather sighed beside the sound of crackling, cackling embers. ”What have I told you over and over again, Halle? No crying.”

More tears tickled the ashen cheeks of Halle’s face, her eyes wide and haunted.

“What’re you...what’re you doing?” The question came out in such a low whisper, you could hardly hear it over the sound of a burning picture in Grandpa Harlord’s hand. She clutched her cotton armpits again, tighter this time, tighter than any time. “What—”

He cut her off again with his other hand and a smile crept along the corners of his eyes. “Quit crying, Halle,” he dropped the picture into the air as it fizzled to ash in the wind. Halle’s breath went with it. “Harrowbirds don’t cry.”

He swept his hand of residue, disgusted, and leered to the three upset faces in the yard. “Are you all going to cry?” he asked with mock surprise.

“You didn’t need to do that,” her father argued. Where Halle was struck silent by what happened, Regan was furious. “Leave.”

Grandpa Harlord raised his arms in surrender. “Fine. I’ll leave,” he accepted. “But she needed the lesson, Regan. I won’t apologize for that.” The old man turned to Olivur and told him practice would continue on another day. Afterward, he stepped off the grass and into the house, where he made his way to his room on the third floor.

When he left, Olivur gave her a small hug she couldn’t reciprocate; words and actions failed her. He left after bumbling through some half-assed words of encouragement.

After him, her father crept down from the deck and settled in beside her. And for a time they both absorbed the morning quietly. They listened to the blackbirds hoot and holler along the other morning birds, smelled the light perfume of the lilies and lavender windflowers along the water’s edge, and watched five burnt blocks of wood bob in the pond.

Her father spoke softly as two of the blocks collided softly. “She loved you, you know that?”

Halle nodded mutely and it caused her father to sigh. “She could never hate you.”

“I shouldn’t have said what I did. It wasn’t true.” And though he tried to convince her so, she could never believe him.

I burned her...I would hate me too.

He reached for a rock on the ground and skipped it along the pond. It reached the far end easily.

“I’m going to talk to your grandfather. I let him do what he wants because he’s the head of the house, but that doesn't excuse his actions. He’s gone too far.”

Halle weakly nodded once again and her father gripped her shoulders comfortingly before he walked away. When he was a few paces from her side, Halle finally found words to speak. “I’m sorry,” she sniffled just loud enough for him to hear. “I’m sorry for ruining the picture.”

She heard his steps stop in the grass. “I love you more than life itself, Hal,’” he turned to her and smiled.

Damnit, don’t say that, she blubbered silently. That’s…

“That’s what mom always said, right?” he chuckled as he left. “Your mother may get disappointed sometimes, Halle, but she could never, never, hate you. You and Olivur were life itself to her. She will always love you.”

When he had cleared the porch and she’d heard the door slide shut, subdued sobs at once leapt from her mouth with repressed fury. She cried for hours out there just by the water, wondering if maybe she’d been wrong this whole time about what she should believe, and who she wanted to be...