Read Online A Midwinter Fantasy by L. J. McDonald, Leanna Renee Hieber, Helen Scott Taylor - Free Book Online

girl, my Constancy
.
    All I ask is that you, for one blissful moment, put aside your obsession long enough to look into my eyes
.
    —P
.
    The young Constance scowled and slid the book back across the table, moving it around the fortress of tomes she’d stacked to buffer herself against his simple request. She was careful that their fingertips did not connect as he received the book. Rebecca noted this with a bit of pride; even under her own rule, students were not allowed to touch members of the opposite sex.
    And yet, if the girl had taken this boy’s hand, she couldn’t have said she would mind. She’d likely not punish them; this seemed innocent enough. In fact, she found herself wishing Constance would brush his hand, for it would clearly mean so much to him.
    Undeterred by her rejection, the young man turned pages and found a new illustration, one that spoke to him, and he began to write. Rebecca opened her mouth to admonish him for defacing school property when she read what he’d scripted so carefully next to a diagram of the human heart:
    Can science explain everything, my Constancy, when my heart beats only for you?
    Constance returned the book, writing on the opposite margin a shaky reply:
    Dear P., though you share my library table, I cannot commit any part of my heart, for I fear I do not have one to divide. The course of my blood flows toward science alone
.—C.
    She looked up at the boy and peered over their books, her voice a whisper: “Science is a man’s profession, Mr. Clarke. I am a woman, and I must make a choice, whether to live as my sex, or to deny it and take the man’s profession I crave. The demands of our age unfairly divide us. I’m sorry I cannot choose you.”
    Mr. Clarke appeared crestfallen.
    Constance turned to Rebecca, tears in her phantom eyes, her greyscale face taut with sorrow. Rebecca recalled all the young women to whom she’d boasted of choosing to run an institution rather than a household, justifying her life choice. But it had been a damned lonely choice, especially when secretly pining for a chance to run the Rychman estate.
    “I realized my mistake too late,” the ghost said. “My greatest folly was to deny a lovely soul who asked nothing morethan to remain by my side. Of all the places I could have been a scientist
and
a woman, it was here at Athens; these blessed bricks never asked me to choose. I never gave him,
us
, a chance, despite having no true objection. I pushed him away for three years before the fever took me.” The spirit’s eyes narrowed, and her voice was cool. “You’ve pushed someone else away for twenty. Why?”
    “I don’t know,” Rebecca replied.
    “Is there any more beautiful a calling in life than love?”
    “I have
loved,”
Rebecca hissed. “Desperately.”
    The ghost nodded. “So did I. I loved science—something that couldn’t love me back. There’s safety in that solitude. Do you understand?”
    Rebecca could only nod.
    “Safety, but no solace. I haunted this Earth until Miss Percy found that book, revealing the one critical experience I denied. There come many callings on Earth, and heaven allows us them all. You’d do well to realize the same, and to do it before you’re dead.”
    “But that’s just it!” Rebecca began, her eyes wide. “I . . . I don’t think I merit being alive right now. I think the heavens made a mistake.”
    Constance’s eyes glittered threateningly. The deceased had an uncanny ability to make one shiver, it was certain. “Ah. Indeed,” the ghost replied. “And this is not the only time you’ve wished yourself dead.” These were condemning words and they chartered their next course. Rebecca didn’t know what the Liminal was, this force Constance wielded, but it responded.
    Rebecca had no time to protest. The environment whirled, spun and shifted, and suddenly she stood in a darkened foyer of Athens Academy. There was the distant sound of an argument.
    Rebecca turned, wringing her hands.