The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker

The Darkly Luminous Flight For Persephone Parker



Prologue

A most critical evening in the Year of Our Lord 1888

Beatrice Tipton knew a few things as she stood with her eyes closed at the edge of the undiscovered country: She knew that her life had been sacrificed to what she hoped would indeed prove to be a greater good. She knew her corset was laced too tight beneath the sensible layers of her dress-she should’ve thought to bring a traveling cloak, for the Whisper-world was colder than she’d expected. And she knew she was

now something like what she’d once fought as the leader of The Guard. She would not be surprised when she opened her eyes and saw other ghosts; they had been something of a profession. What she hadn’t expected so soon was to hear the scream of her husband.

They had gone into the Whisper-world side by side, hand in hand, to face the next grim adventure. They couldn’t be separated so soon, not again . . . Her eyes shot open. She stood at one end of a long grey corridor of stone. The ceiling was impenetrable darkness, its peak unseen-perhaps it had no rafters-with charcoal clouds heavy in periodic intervals, like trembling chandeliers of mist. These roiled with subtle, unsettling shapes, hissing with soft sighs and eternal regrets.

Water lapped at the toe of her sturdy boot; an impossibly black, onyx liquid as unwelcoming and seemingly alive as the mist.

At the other end of the dripping corridor was Ibrahim, wearing the fine tunic in which he died. Once full of the rich honey brown hues of his native Cairo, he was now fitted with the greyscale palette of a ghost, yet even in death Beatrice was struck by his handsome, distinguished figure. She glanced down to find that the gathered folds of her linen dress and its cloth-covered buttons, once beige, were also grey. Her skin was solidly, sickly white. Death had dulled once-bright colours, replacing them with a wash of grim hues that only darkened as the corridor drove inward toward the bosom of the Whisper-world.

“Bea,” Ibrahim murmured. The water between their ghostly forms began to spread and deepen. Though it was perhaps the depth of a wide puddle, it felt like an ocean now separated them, and an absurd fear gurgled in Beatrice’s ghostly veins, a fear reflected on Ibrahim’s face.

“Come back across, love,” Beatrice said brightly, swallowing sudden terror, gesturing to her side of the water. “Our Lady said the doors are to be knit here from the periphery and I’ll need your help. I cannot do without my Intuition - my second,” she said with a rallying smile. “Come take my hand, it’s only a bit of water.”

Copyright © 2010 Leanna Renee Hieber