The Keepers' Evil

Eleven: Oh, Anne, what have you done?

Song- Never heard a sound: The Paper Kites

"Oh, Anne, what have you done?"

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Certainty and impossibility used to be friends, the best of friends actually. Whatever was impossible was certain, and that was good, but it had taken me far too long to realise that just because impossibility held the hands of certainty, it wasn't a love reciprocated. It had taken me even longer to understand that not even what was impossible was impossible after all, and the scary idea that everything was in fact possible was true.

"Okay, calm down, we don't know that he's talking about her." The small flicker of a cough on the word her in Madeleine's tone as she unknowingly over-enunciated the word, met with my suspicion and together they puzzled the image of her together before us.

The crunch of snow beneath us grew thicker and the intricate stars of pearly white toppled around our shoulders like a shower of frozen stardust. The sun's mellow glow cropped partially behind the row of trees, only sprinkling light over a few lazy ripples of the lake as if to leave the rest of our space in the darkness we found it in.

Anne had been the stitches that kept our family sewn together, she was the girl holding all of the needles and threads, and she had spent a lifetime picking which colour to embroider over the rips and tears that maybe we were all guilty of creating. Without Anne, we were torn apart.

A crackled attempt at words droned from my throat, none of them audible to anyone except my brain. The only word I could hear, despite the many I wanted to say, was why.

"I know, I know." I wasn't sure if I could ever get used to the blessing that was Madeleine hearing my mind as if it were her own, but the silence was comfortable, the letters of thousands of words nestled away where only we knew. The decision to see Anne wasn't mine, but rather the small boy's who sat at the windowsill. He needed Anne.

"We'll be late." Was all I said, hiding the beads of sweat on my fingers into my pockets, my balance barely stable as I let my fear walk away from Madeleine, trusting that she'd simply follow. As the sun rose higher, brighter, it acted like a guide back to the girl who had her sun taken. It was a guide back home.

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Feldcroft was desolate, so isolated that I could almost hear the snow sticking to the cottage roofs, so barren that the thin ivy branches that curled between bricks seemed like the inhabitants instead. Feldcroft rolled in clouds of grey and polka-dots of navy blue, the rare Christmas wreaths homemade with scavenged pieces of the town like a small thank you to all that it gave.

Solomon's home had never been home, and it was almost relieving that the lights had always stayed off. With the lights off, the shadows couldn't come, with the lights off there was no hope. My lungs felt sharp as we saw the door cracked open and the buttery warmth of the lights seeping through the thin fabric of the curtains. It still wasn't home, but now the thought began to taunt me, and that was scariest of all.

"Sebastian, it'll be okay." Madeleine's smile lullabied my fears, hushed my what ifs, and her fingers poked out of the edge of her sleeve onto mine for a moment as we paused before the door. I noticed how neither of us looked to the open space behind us, images of blood and goblins too fresh to ignore, but better left unspoken.

The edges of my lips pulled into a small smile, just for a second, before they found Madeleine's forehead in a way that we both knew said I'm too grateful for you to tell you just how much.