The cobblestones clatter with hundred of visiting footsteps, the square buzzes with dozens of languages. The visitors gape at the old buildings lining the square, remnants of an age that the tourists only have a vague sense of- perhaps they're medieval, or eighteenth century baroque, or from this past decade but designed to look old to draw people in. It doesn't really matter to them: old is old is old, whether it's hundreds of years or only two.
But there is one thing in the square that holds the attention of even the most cynical among them: the clock tower overlooking the square. At this hour, it stands silhouetted against the afternoon sky, adding to the sinister aura surrounding it. Its stones are darkened with time and the filth of human history; and with the shadows draped over it, it looks unnaturally black.
Surrounded by dark stones, the clock face itself still shines with splendor. It always does, though no one has ever been known to tend to it. The clock face is huge, circles upon circles showing not just the minutes and hours passing, but weeks, months, years, stars as well. Fanciful reliefs, sculptures, and painted designs decorate the tower. Devils and angels, flowers and thorns, villains and heroes, and one particular skeleton at the top of the clock face holding a rose and a bell rope, all of them watch the time pass them by.
Tour guides down in the square tell their charges that any records of the clock's construction have been lost to time, leading to rumors that it simply appeared as if it had always been there. Superstition has always surrounded the tower, they say mysteriously, and stories of ghosts and devils haunt it. At this point the tour guides drop their voices, leaning in as if to tell the eager tourists a secret: some people think, they whisper, that the tower wasn't constructed by man at all. The story goes that the ghosts and devils from the realm beyond, on the orders of Death itself, created the tower and brought it into this world. To this day it stands as a bridge between our world and theirs, the place where all haunted things begin.
One guide is particularly effective. His group stands silently for a moment, staring at the clock tower with shivers running up and down their spines; but then the guide laughs and they all join in, a little sheepishly. They move on, off to the next site, still laughing at their foolishness. They don't notice that they've left someone behind, a girl still staring up at the clock tower.
She looks fifteen or so, but in reality she's older than that, twenty-three or twenty-four. She's pale, with dark, haunted eyes and short dark hair. With her height and thin, boyish figure, it's no wonder that most strangers mistake her to be a very pretty teenage boy.
She notices the departure of the tour group, but doesn't move to follow them. She had only attached herself to them temporarily, listening to the story of the clock tower with an unreadable expression- it might have been amusement, or disdain, or even fear. But she is only interested in the clock tower, and so lets the tourists move on to the next attraction without her.
She looks up at the clock for a while longer, then looks around at the square. She stands alone in the crowd of tourists; they gape at the tower and ignore her.
"I thought you were taking me to a sacred place," she says to the empty air.
The empty air answers, whispering in her ear with a woman's smooth murmur. The girl flinches a little at the voice. "This is a sacred place, my dear. The very stones around us sing with potential, can you not feel them?" The ghost is faintly visible in the late afternoon shadows, if one knows how to look. She is a beautiful woman with sad eyes, a true lady in carriage, voice, and clothing, the kind who died out a hundred years ago. A shimmer of blood spatters her elaborate evening dress.
The girl looks around the square again, still skeptical. "I didn't think a sacred place would be so… popular," she says distastefully.
The ghost touches the girl's hand and looks deep into her eyes. The girl's hand twitches away and she swallows; but the ghost's eyes hold her still. "Arabelle, you must trust me," the ghost murmurs. "You do, don't you?"
"I- of course I do," Arabelle says. "But, Lady Elaine, I don't think that I-"
"Arabelle," Elaine interrupts in a whisper. She smiles, though her eyes remain sad. "I have known you your entire life. I have haunted the moments of your childhood and the stirrings of your adulthood. I watched you, and I know that only you can do this. I am depending on you. This is the only time in a thousand years this will be possible, and you are the only girl out of seven billion people who is capable of helping me. You are my only chance to be part of the world again, to be free of this curse. But for this to work you must do everything I tell you without question. Can you do that for me, my dear Arabelle?"
Arabelle seems to have lost her ability to speak. She nods instead, and the ghost finally releases the girl from her hypnotic stare. "Before the clock tower rests a stone in the earth," Lady Elaine tells her. "A circle amongst the square cobblestones. Find it."
Arabelle pushes her way through the crowd and finds the stone. It is fairly unremarkable; if Elaine hadn't pointed it out, she would never have even noticed it.
Elaine brushes the stone with incorporeal, translucent fingers. The smooth surface shifts in response, slowly changing into something far more unusual than a cobblestone. An intricate engraving appears on the surface: a sword woven with vines, thorns and roses.
"Stand on the stone," Elaine orders the mortal girl. "Do not be afraid. I am here."
Arabelle looks at the stone, then glances at Elaine. Her expression hardens. She takes a deep breath, waits for a large American tourist to step away, then steps onto the altered stone.
The clamor of hundreds of tourists melts away into nothingness. Arabelle looks around, startled. The crowd around her hasn't disappeared completely, merely faded to ghostly figures passing vaguely through the square. Arabelle turns and gasps. Lady Elaine no longer looks quite so faint and faded. She still only exists as an echo of a memory, not as a living woman; but with the sun shining on her, even in death her beauty is blinding.
Elaine smiles sadly at Arabelle. The girl stares at her, some odd emotion stirring underneath the awe on her face. It's something quite unlike the trust and respect Arabelle has shown so far; but Elaine only sees the admiration. "The clock tower, Arabelle," she says gently.
Arabelle looks up. She now stands directly in front of the tower, centered below the clock face. From this angle, the figures carved in the stone seem to be looking directly at her, grinning fiendishly. "What next?" Arabelle asks, fear quivering in her voice.
"Just wait," Elaine says, standing behind the girl. "The sun must be perfect before we can cross."
"And then the trials."
"Do not be afraid," Elaine murmurs, brushing the back of Arabelle's neck with a translucent hand. Arabelle's shoulders hunch slightly at the cold touch. "You will be perfect, and I will be beside you the entire time." She looks at Arabelle with a greedy expression that the girl doesn't see; her eyes linger on the pulse flickering in Arabelle's neck, envy and excitement lighting them with an unbearable beauty. She is eager for her life to begin again.
The sun shifts slightly, just enough to shine through a single notch at the top of the tower. The angle is perfect. The single ray of sunshine falls directly on Arabelle, suffusing her in a gentle glow and separating her from the darkening square.
Elaine moves suddenly. Stepping forward, she no longer stands behind Arabelle but in the same space. Her long-dead heart shares the movement and warmth of Arabelle's beating one.
Arabelle cries out at the cold, but the beam of sunlight and the ghost have trapped here on the stone. The sun shines brightly on the mortal girl and the ghost for one long moment. Then, with a flash of fire, it disappears completely, plunging the square in complete darkness.
"Whatever happens now, do not move from that stone," Elaine says, standing next to the girl once more.
Arabelle looks at the ghost who has haunted her entire life. "I won't," she says. Her voice cracks, but her face is determined as she turns back to the clock tower.
Above them, the clock tolls the hour. One, two, three- all the way up to twelve, though it had only been four in the afternoon when Arabelle first stepped on the stone. The twelfth ring vibrates in the air longer than it should, resonating in the stones and Arabelle's bones. Around the edges of the square, torches spontaneously burst into flame. They illuminate the square with an eerie flickering light. What was left of the tourists, the faint echoes even less solid than the ghost, have all gone. Arabelle and Elaine are alone in the square.
"Elaine-" Arabelle begins.
"You will do wonderfully," Elaine says, cutting her off with soothing tones.
Arabelle shakes her head. "The trials," she says. "You never even told me what they are."
Elaine looks around the square serenely. "That's because I do not know what they consist of, only that you must bear through them at any cost."
Arabelle flashes her a wide-eyed, almost angry look, then turns back to the clock tower before Elaine sees it. She touches her jacket pocket, where she is keeping something long and thin.
In the ever-changing torchlight, the figures on the clock tower seem to move, dancing in one instant, frozen in the next. The look down at Arabelle and smile, though their smiles are more like jeers or a savage baring of the teeth.
On in particular seems to be watching her: the skeleton at the very top of of the clock face holding a rose in one hand and a rope in another. The skeleton grins at her the way skeletons must always grin. The torchlight flickers, and the rose is by its skull; another flicker and the skeleton has the rose crossed over its ribcage.
Elaine exhales in relief. "You've been granted leave," she says, no longer so serene now that a small part of her nerves have been eased. She curtseys to the skeleton elegantly and glances meaningfully at Arabelle; Arabelle blinks, then bows with surprising grace. "Now say the words, just like I told you," Elaine murmurs.
Arabelle takes a deep breath. "Rose Death, Flowering Blight," she says loudly. Her voice shakes but echoes bravely around the square nonetheless. "I come on wings of shadow and light, and beseech you, open the bridge. With light and shadow I approach, with blood and spirit I appeal: grant me the mastery, and the grace of your seal. Light, shadow, blood, spirit. My life for this request, please hear it. Rose Death, open the bridge."
An unearthly laugh rings out from everywhere at once, a thousand voices shrieking with malevolent glee. The stone beneath Arabelle's feet shivers. The engraving of the sword begins to glow faintly red; then, the glow spills out to race along the cobblestones, lacing the ground with veins of light. The light reaches the clock tower and climbs it, swirling around the figures sneering down at the mortal girl.
The light gives them life.
The figures peel away from the clock tower, all but the skeleton at the top. They leap to the ground and jeer at Arabelle with faces both angelic and grotesque.
The skeleton holds up the rose and the demons quiet. "The words are said, the borders undone," it intones in a deep voice that resonates in Arabelle's bones. "For she who is not dead, the trials have begun." The skeleton pulls the bell rope, and a tiny clink echoes in the larger bells above the clock.
A wind gusts down from the clock tower, tousling Arabelle's short hair, though it doesn't seem to have any effect on the waiting demons. It swirls around her as if examining her; there might be a faint giggle hidden in its folds. It finishes circling her and makes its way to the other end of the square.
The next gust of wind nearly shoves Arabelle off her feet. She only barely collects her balance, teetering on the edge of the stone that is her only link back to the mortal world.
The laughter in the wind grows louder, and now there are whispers as well, and the hum of some hellish music. The wind pushes and pulls at Arabelle while the music swells, a ghostly orchestra playing an infernal waltz. As the wind circles around the square, they become visible: ghosts, dancing around and around in dark revelry. They spin around Arabelle, ignoring her in favor of their dance. But the wind has not forgotten the mortal girl. It tugs at her clothes and slashes her skin and whispers, always whispering. The whispers are indistinct, but they cut at Arabelle like poisonous knives.
A tremor suddenly runs through the ground. Arabelle looks down with wide eyes, just in time to see the earth around her stone crumble and shoot toward her in the shape of thousands of grasping hands.
The hands wraps around her ankles and dig stone claws into her skin.
"Lady Elaine!" she screams in pain, but the ghost remains where she stands on empty air.
"I'm sorry Arabelle, but these are the trials," Elaine says impassively, watching the girl struggle without the slightest trace of pity. "I believe you are being tested by the elements, first air, then earth, the fire, then water. You must endure them."
"Or what? Endure them or what?" Arabelle asks desperately as the wind shoves her toward the grasping hands of the earth.
"Or die," Elaine says. "If you do not pass the trials, your life is forfeit. I thought I was clear about this, my dear Arabelle."
Arabelle stares at her. "Lady Elaine!" she shouts, but the ghost doesn't move.
Lady Elaine! The wind picks up her call with gibbering, mocking voices. Lady Elaine, save me!
And who are you to save? a voice murmurs in her ear. The ghost materializes, curled around her body like a lover. A little girl playing at ghost stories must be someone so naive, so innocent. What do you know of the hells of the world?
"Enough," Arabelle snaps, pushing herself up straight against the wind. She touches her jacket pocket again, but her hand jumps away from it quickly. Her eyes drift over to Lady Elaine. "I know enough."
Ah, she does know, doesn't she, another ghost says, stroking her ebony hair. She is not so innocent, this one. A girl playing at being a girl, but she has thoughts of her own, don't you dear. Who knows what you've done in the dark, alone with the thoughts that float in your head and refuse to disappear.
Inside the cracks in the earth, the imps and demons from the clock tower are worming their way toward Arabelle. The area between the hands of stone glow red and the demons glow red as well; they grin at the girl as she ducks a reaching claw.
I know, a voice whispers from the air. Arabelle's eyes widen with recognition and horror; she spins around, but this ghost remains a voice in the wind, twisting around the girl with insidious words. I know what you've done, Arabelle, who you are, why you are here-
"F-for Lady Elaine," Arabelle says. "I'm only here to help Lady Elaine, she needs me."
Ah, for Lady Elaine, the voice murmurs. You are here to help Lady Elaine. Or is it to help yourself?
The imps and demons reach Arabelle and leap onto her skin. Tongues of flame flare at their touch. Arabelle screams and falls to the ground, which allows the fire demons to claw at her further, burning every inch of her skin until soon she will be nothing but ashes blowing in the wind.
For her, or for you, my dear Arabelle?
"For her, for her!" Arabelle shouts through the flames. The imps jeer and jab their fingers in her face. She cries out and covers her head with her arms.
The voice laughs as well. The lies you tell, my sweet child, such dark, sordid lies weaving a web of darkness. You can never be free of them, can never pretend they aren't yours. Oh, the lies you tell, my dear Arabelle, the songs that you sing when no one's listening…
The creatures around the girl giggle at this and pick up the song. The lies you tell, my dear Arabelle, the songs that you sing when no one's listening. The words dance around her, joining the ghosts and flitting to their music, humming through the earth and poisoning the mortal girl's ears. The lies you tell, my dear Arabelle, the songs that you sing when no one's listening…
A soft rain begins to fall, a soft rain of diamond-hard waters that sizzle on everything they touch. Air, earth, fire, and water. The rain begins to pelt down on Arabelle, denting her burned skin and doing nothing to put out the flames. All around the edges of the square, a wave begins to build, the kind that snaps the strongest ships with barely a thought.
The lies you tell, my dear Arabelle, the songs that you sing when no one's listening…
I know who you are, the voice giggles. The songs you sing…
Poor innocent girl, dreaming of hell, the other ghosts whisper to each other. Poor, wicked child, meddling where she ought not to meddle.
The lies you tell, my dear Arabelle, the songs that you sing when no one's listening…
The wave builds to a crest, ready to break over the square and brush the mortal girl into oblivion. She won't be able to stay on the stone once the waters flow over her head. She will be swept into death as easily as any mortal.
The lies you tell, my dear Arabelle, the songs that you sing when no one's listening…
The lies you tell-
"SHUT UP!"
The wave shudders and stops on the verge of breaking. The imps freeze, their flames flickering feebly. The wind ceases to murmur deadly whispers. Everything in the square pauses in astonishment.
Arabelle stands at the center of the engraved, rapier thin, both pale and dark. The burns or scrapes caused by the trials have disappeared completely. Her gaze finds the skeleton at the top of the clock face; when she speaks, her words address the Rose Death, and the Rose Death only.
"Rose Death, Flowering Blight, I did not come here for useless tortures," she says clearly, though her voice still wavers. "I did not come to be pushed away by pain, nor by death. You have something I need, and I will take it." Her eyes widen as she realizes something. "I will take it through light and shadow, blood and spirit!" she shouts.
Lady Elaine comes closer, her face panicked. "What are you doing?" she hisses. "The trials are to be endured, not contested! You will doom me, and yourself!"
Arabelle, does not look away from the Rose Death. "That was not the trials," she says. "That was a trick to test my spirit. The trials are not the elements, Elaine. The elements have no bearing on the dead, or have you not noticed that in all the years you have been haunting young girls? Light, shadow, spirit, and blood. I came here on wings of light and shadow, and now I pay the price. Spirit and blood."
The imps and demons and ghosts laugh and jeer at this statement. But none of them come close to her now.
Elaine tries to get the girl to face her, with no success. "But, Arabelle-" she begins.
"I will not be pushed away," Arabelle says, her eyes fixed on the Rose Death.
The skeleton grins and her and raises the rose into the air.
Arabelle swallows, and she quickly pulls something out of her jacket pocket and mimics the gesture. The knife glints in the torchlight so that the ancient carvings on the blade shimmer with life. Elaine stares at it in horrified recognition and shock; she looks at her protégé with doubt flashing through her eyes for the first time.
"Rose Death, Flowering Blight," Arabelle intones, adjusting the words that brought her here. "I come on wings of shadow and light, and will earn my privilege." She brings the knife to the palm of her hand. "With light and shadow I approach, with blood and spirit I appeal: grant me the mastery, and the grace of your seal." She slices her palm with the knife in a flash of red and the sound of life rushing from a body. The blood drips onto the engraved stone beneath her. "Light, shadow, blood, spirit," she shouts, pain lacing through her voice; but she stands straight and proud. "My life for this demand, please hear it. Rose Death, I have earned my privilege!"
The ghosts and devils and waters and winds and the very stones shriek with laughter. But Arabelle does not lower her hand.
The blood dripping from the wound slows in the air before it hits the ground. It collects together, sparking with fire and life, twisting and swirling until it resolves into the form of the skeleton, the Rose Death, Flowering Blight, standing before the mortal girl. It grins at her through rotten, decomposing teeth.
"You would have us grant you a gift to be borne once in a millennium," the Rose Death says. Its booming voice shakes the earth and lingers in the air long after any echos have died.
Arabelle crosses her bloody hand over her chest. "I would," she says in her pitiful human voice.
"You would have us grant you mastery of death, the power to give and the power to take," the Rose Death says.
"I would."
"You would have us grant you the responsibility of life, and the weight of its blood on your soul."
"I would."
The lies you tell, my dear Arabelle, the imps sing, but the Rose Death holds the rose in the air and they fall silent once more.
"The time is right, the words are said, the offering painted with lifeblood red," the Rose Death declares.
"The trials are won, the threshold broken, accepting this, my spirit's token," Arabelle answers.
She raises her bleeding hand once more and wraps it around the bace of the rose and the Rose Death's decomposing bones. The inch-long thorns pierce her hand all the wall through, but she doesn't cry out or remove her hand. The Rose Death grins and bows its head.
A red light shimmers beneath their interlocked fingers: Arabelle's blood. The glow creeps up the rose, changing the flower as it moves. The rose lengthens and straightens; the thorns piercing Arabelle's skin curl and connect around her hand. When the glow reaches the blossom at the top, it explodes into a blinding light. The creatures hovering around scream and dart away from the light even as it streams back into the changed rose. As it flows in, it drags something pale and ghostly from inside Arabelle along with it; the Rose Death follows it from this existence and weaves itself into another.
The light fades slowly. Arabelle is left holding a sword alone where once she shared a rose with a skeleton. The sword seems to be made of pure gold, yet it is somehow stronger than any metal known to the world. The hilt wraps her hand in and intricate embrace, almost a part of her hand. The blade stretches above her hand, as sharp and needle-thin as the girl herself.
This is a sword stronger than death itself.
The demons and ghosts shrink away from her as she looks up at her new weapon. They know what this sword is, and what it is capable of. Only Lady Elaine drifts closer, looking at Arabelle with that greedy expression. She also knows what the sword is capable of, but does not fear it. This is what she has worked toward for hundred of years, since the moment of her death. She waited patiently for the right time and searched endlessly for the right person; she groomed Arabelle through her childhood so that when the time came, the girl would give Elaine what she so desperately craved. She knows that Arabelle will not disappoint her.
"Arabelle," she murmurs. "My dear, it is time."
Arabelle barely stirs, still looking up at the sword. "Time…" she repeats, without seeming to understand the word. "At last…"
Elaine peers at the girl's face, that flicker of doubt showing once more. But Arabelle couldn't possibly disappoint her, not after all these years. "Arabelle?" she asks uncertainly.
Arabelle finally looks up and smiles. "Lady Elaine," she says. "It's time for you, isn't it. Sorry, I was distracted."
Elaine's excitement shines in her eyes. "It's quite all right, my dear Arabelle. But if you would, please…." She holds out the memory of her hand. "Give me my life back," she whispers. "A single pinprick, and I can live again. Just a pinprick."
Arabelle lowers the sword. She moves it as if she was born with it in her hand. She points it at Elaine's hand. "A single pinprick, you say," she murmurs.
"Just enough to draw blood," Elaine says eagerly.
"Of course." Arabelle looks at the sword, then smiles at Elaine. Th ghost smiles back, gleefully anticipating her new light- but then her smile falters and she takes a step back, staring at Arabelle's face.
"Arabelle?" she says.
The mortal girl with the immortal sword, her face now distorted with hatred, lunges toward Elaine and plunges the blade into her long-dead heart.
Lady Elaine chokes, ghostly blood rushing into her still lungs and translucent throat. She looks at her protégé with wide, pain-filled eyes as she sinks to the ground with the sword still lodged in her chest.
Arabelle knees next to her, watching her face. "You're a fool, Lady Elaine of Elmsdale," she said, her voice dripping with spite. "Did you really think I didn't know what this sword could really do? That I would just use it to help you and leave it at that? You have haunted every moment of my life, tormented me without rest until I almost couldn't bear it, all the while thinking that you were guiding me, or saving me from some mundane existence. I would have lived an ordinary, happy life if it wasn't for you, one with a living mother and father, one with friends and lovers and neighbors. I long for that mundane existence your saved me from." She pauses, then reaches for the dying ghost. She strokes Elaine's hair gently, the way Elaine stroked her hair for so many years. "You have been waiting a long time for this moment, but so have I," Arabelle murmurs. "I've been waiting for this chance to liberate myself from you. From all of you," she adds in a louder voice, standing once again, thin and hard like the sword stuck in the ghost's heart. The creatures of darkness look at her in fear: the mortal girl who could give them life, or a death beyond death. "For all of time you have haunted us, stealing mortals and holding them in hell for eternities. I will change that. The dead should be dead," she says, looking down at the dying ghost at her feet. "The dead should be dead," Arabelle repeats quietly. She bends over and slides the sword out of Elaine's chest.
The ghost gasps and dissolves into a cloud of smoke, then to nothingness. A death beyond death. A death worse than death.
Arabelle straightens, holding the sword. She looks around the square with a small, hard smile on her face.
The war has begun.
