Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

“Eleanor,” Jane repeated quietly, testing the name on her lips. She met Eleanor’s eyes timidly. “This is probably an absurd question, rather obvious actually, but ... am I dead?” Jane wasn’t sure whether she wanted to hear the answer.

“Do you think you’re dead?” Eleanor countered. She paused and waited for Jane to catch up to her so that they could walk together.

Jane furrowed her eyebrows. “You have a little more experience in this realm then I do,” she replied awkwardly.

Eleanor smiled but didn’t answer her question. She closed her eyes and looked up to the sky. “Isn’t the sun lovely?”

Jane looked around the bright field. In the distance she could see the edge of the woods that bordered Southerby but all she could see was endless fields around her. For a moment she forgot she was dead, and she thought of proposing that Daniel do something practical with the land, like turn it into farm land.

“This is my favourite place, I always thought that Daniel and I should farm it,” Eleanor sighed, still smiling.

Jane gasped. “I literally just had that thought.”

“Did you?” Eleanor asked, raising her eyebrows.

Jane wondered if Eleanor was being cryptic on purpose. She had said that she had been watching her; perhaps she knew how she felt about her husband. Was she telling Jane that she was damned and sending her to hell? She panicked – she hadn’t been committing adultery, has she? “Elea ... Mrs Winchester ... Lady Southerby,” Jane stammered, feeling embarrassed.

“Just Eleanor,” she corrected.

“Eleanor,” Jane breathed. “Why am I here? Do you need to tell me something? If I’m dead I think I’d rather meet Saint Peter sooner rather than later.”

Eleanor dropped to the ground and sat cross legged in the grass. “I told you I would show you my favourite place, it is everywhere in Southerby. This place was my home for my entire life,” Eleanor said distantly, looking around. “It was not meant to be a sad place with sad memories. Wonderful things have happened here, marriage through the generations, dozens of births and all the happy memories that come with that. Having my name being a taboo is a bad thing, don’t you think?”

“I don’t want to be remembered sadly,” Jane replied. The thought of her being ‘remembered’ was terrifying. What would her mother say? What would her mother do? Not to mention Sebastian and Emilia and their children. Why did she have to get on that horse?

“I can’t imagine anyone would,” Eleanor sighed and played with the long grass at her sides. She looked up at Jane with tears in her blue eyes. “Isn’t your Sabine lovely?”

Jane was taken aback. “My Sabine?” she repeated. “I don’t understand.”

“I think you do, Jane, she is yours, is she not?” Eleanor replied simply. “I gave birth to her, I gave her a name that suited her lovely, cherub like face, but she is not mine to claim anymore. She is yours now, as you are the one who loves her like a mother would.” Eleanor didn’t seem upset at the thought that she was no longer Sabine’s mother, but neither was Jane, when she was alive or dead.

“Regardless of how I love Sabine, she is not mine, now, either, for I am here, and not there,” Jane said sadly. How she wished she had the opportunity, a proper opportunity to love Sabine like a mother would. She would tell her everyday like Emilia did to her children.

“It is still a comfort to me, Jane, to know that Sabine is loved properly. Such a lovely girl, both inside and out, she will make a fine bride one day, don’t you think?” Eleanor smiled proudly.

Jane nodded in agreement. “That she will be, she will make the right man very happy.”

“I can think of another man who was very happy,” Eleanor said knowingly. She shifted her body a little so that she was fully facing Jane.

“Are you referring to Daniel?” Jane checked.

“Do you think I’m referring to Daniel?” Eleanor shot back.

Jane huffed impatiently. “Why are all your answers questions?” she demanded to know.

“Why are all your questions answers?” Eleanor said calmly, the same simple smile returning to her full lips. “It is no fault of mine that you answer your own questions when you ask.”

Jane had to give her that one. She was right. “I suppose I do ... but what did you want to say about Daniel.”

“He is happy when you are near. He is smiling, he is laughing, and he is fathering Sabine, things he has only started doing since you have entered his life. You saved him, Jane, and for that I thank you,” Eleanor said sincerely, taking Jane’s hand in hers.

Jane was shocked to feel the sensation. Her hand was incredibly warm. To her it felt like bed sheets that had been warmed before bed on a cold winter’s night. She wondered if she had to enter heaven before her hands felt so wonderful. “You needn’t thank me,” Jane said bashfully.

“Why do you feel so embarrassed when people show you gratitude?” Eleanor asked curiously. “You know deep down inside that you deserve it.”

“I know,” Jane replied. “But it doesn’t make it easy to accept it. I feel awful now, though, as I have ‘saved’ Daniel, all that progress will disintegrate.”

Eleanor shook her head. “You have given him the strength to love again, Jane, a power he had forgotten, with or without you, he knows how to survive, and you have shown him that.”

Jane let go of Eleanor’s hand and began to play with the grass as Eleanor had done before. That too felt cool on her fingers. It smelt like mint. Everything was so perfect, almost unbelievable. “Are you angry at me?” Jane asked after a few minutes of silence.

“Why would I be angry with you?” Eleanor asked, confused.

“I fell in love with your husband,” Jane pointed out.

“I know,” Eleanor replied, the same smile still on her face. “Why would I be angry with you? What reason would I have? You have made my husband and my daughter happy, what more could I ask for?”

Jane could not believe her understanding. “You are a good person, I’m sorry you died.”

Eleanor nodded, still smiling. “As am I, but I experienced everything I could have wished for. I was loved, and I loved. I married and had a beautiful baby daughter. God chooses when to recall us, my time was then, perhaps so that you could come and raise Sabine, perhaps so that I could be with you here and now.”

Jane couldn’t understand her reasoning for being so understanding. “But how can you not resent me for that? And I never raised Sabine; I have spent a matter of weeks with her.”

Eleanor let out a light, musical laugh. “I could never resent you, Jane, I don’t question my fate and neither should you. And you have raised, Sabine, you gave her back her father. Raising them is not simply being with a child every hour of every day, it is being there for the child in any way you can, no matter where you are, you know that, don’t you?”

Jane nodded, seeing sense in Eleanor’s point. “Yes, I know. I’m flattered that you think so highly of me.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know, it’s a strange feeling. It is like you know every thought that passes through the back of my mind,” Jane commented.

“Perhaps I am,” Eleanor nodded. “Maybe we can do that here. You have no secrets from me, Jane, and I have no secrets from you. This place is a haven. It is what you wish to see and I am who you with to see in it.”

Jane furrowed her eyebrows. Eleanor seemed all knowing. “Why you exactly?” she asked.

Eleanor sighed and looked into the distance. “I am the one you seek answers from,” she replied simply.

“You don’t answer me though, you only counter my questions,” Jane responded immediately. “You tell me what I already know.”

“Perhaps that is what you need to hear,” Eleanor suggested, still not looking at Jane.

Jane’s eyes wandered down to Eleanor’s hands which were supporting her body on the ground. She noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and Jane didn’t know what to think of that. “Where do I go from here?” she asked softly. “Do you take me with you? Or am I allowed to stay and see my family members?”

Eleanor’s eyes came back to Jane’s. “If you stay here, Jane, then you won’t ever see anyone. You are alone here. If you come with me then you will meet Saint Peter as you said before.”

“Why am I alone here, you are here, aren’t you?” Jane asked, sounding a little frightened.

“Am I?” Eleanor asked mysteriously.

“What is going on, Eleanor, give me a straight answer,” Jane said firmly, trying not to sound angry.

“Jane, you are here by your own free will. You can leave whenever you please; all you have to do is make a decision. I am here because you sought approval that only I ... or perhaps my memory can provide,” she replied.

Jane buried her head in her hands. She didn’t know what was going on, was she in heaven or somewhere in between? “What do you mean by ‘memory’ ... I have never met you, how can I ‘remember’ you?”

Eleanor smiled. “You have seen my face in my portrait and you have learned of my nature from Daniel, how could you not create a memory of me?”

Jane groaned impatiently. “Are you really Eleanor?” she demanded to know. “Or am I hallucinating?”

Eleanor shrugged her shoulders. “That is for you to decide. Perhaps you know what Eleanor would think because you know how kind and understanding she was. You know in your head, Jane, that she would have approved of you. She cared about her family most of all, and you now do the same. You are the best thing she could have wished for them.”

Jane tried to put the pieces together in her head. She had no idea if she was hallucinating or not, but she could decipher through Eleanor’s mysterious speech that Jane was seeking approval from a ghost even though deep down inside she knew she had it. She imagined Eleanor in her head, which was why she was so impeccably perfect in every way. It was how Jane saw her in her head when she was alive, as she felt that she could not compare to her.

It was why Eleanor answered Jane’s questions with questions, letting her get to the answers she already knew. It was why she shared the same views as Jane about farming and how lovely Sabine was. Inside, she knew what the real Eleanor would have said to her, it was the imagined one that was getting through to her.

“You are not the real Eleanor,” Jane stated slowly.

“No,” Eleanor smiled. “But as I said before, you know of Eleanor’s nature, so you know how she would react to you. All I have said, you already knew. After all, this is you thinking.”

“So I am hallucinating?” Jane raised her eyebrows.

“Are you?” Eleanor replied.

Jane realised that she needed to work that out on her own. Technically she was talking to herself, as the beautiful Eleanor did not exist. Was she really dead? “You said that if I stayed here then I would be alone, but if I went with you then I would be with Saint Peter at the pearly gates ... it means that I am dead, yes?”

Eleanor cocked her head to the side. “Do you think that you are dead?”

Jane huffed impatiently. “I know that I’m talking to myself but it would really help me if my subconscious gave me a direct answer,” she snapped.

“I did give you an answer, Jane; I told you that you had to decide,” Eleanor said simply.

“But you gave me the choice of being dead here or dead somewhere else!” she said exasperatedly. “What if I don’t want to be dead?” she challenged. “What if I have so much else to do in my life? I have not yet lived!”

“Like eating apples?” Eleanor giggled.

Jane blushed. “You do know everything, don’t you?”

“I am you, Jane, I know every single thought you have had. I told you, you are here by your own free will. If you don’t want to be here, Jane, then will it,” she suggested simply.

Jane rose from the ground and looked around her. She was in an alternate Southerby, did she have to walk back to the stream and close her eyes? Was there some sort of magic incantation she had to say? “If I will it, do I live?”

Eleanor stood up also. “You decide, Jane, not I. I am but a memory; you are the one with free will.”

“I am not ready to die,” she said intensely to Eleanor.

“Are you ready to live?” Eleanor asked.

Jane nodded once as tears gathered in her eyes. “Where will I be when I wake up? Am I still by the stream?”

Eleanor smiled widely. “No, you are sleeping, in what will be your bedchamber.”

“Mine?” Jane repeated in a whisper. “How do you know that?”

“Jane, are you forgetting that what I say, you already know?” Eleanor reminded her.

“He put me in your marital chamber?” she gasped. She knew Daniel had not entered that room since Eleanor had died. It haunted him. Eleanor’s memory haunted him. It reminded Jane of her earlier conversation with Eleanor. She knew of Eleanor’s nature, as her hallucination had said, and because of that she knew that Eleanor would not want her name to be a taboo in that house, she would want to be remembered fondly.

“You can feel him, Jane, he is holding you hand, praying for your survival.”

At that moment Jane lifted her right hand to feel it warming. She could feel a pattered being drawn in the palm, as if someone was tracing their index finger over the lines.

“Your brother talks to you, your sister – in law cries for you. You mother cries beside your bed. You can hear her,” Eleanor said soothingly.

Jane closed her eyes, listing to the faint sobs that she knew belonged to her beloved mother. The sound broke her heart; there was nothing worse than knowing your mother was in pain.

“And what of the children?” Jane whispered.

“You hear Kitty at night time when she is supposed to be sleeping, she and Sabine and James sneak in when everyone is sleeping. You haven’t heard the younger ones, you are sure that Emilia is keeping them away to protect them,” Eleanor replied.

Jane smiled. “Kitty’s fixes my hair for me,” she remembered feeling it.

Eleanor smiled and nodded. “Open your eyes, Jane,” she instructed softly.

Jane did as she was told, and instead of being with Eleanor in the fields at Southerby she was staring at the white canopy above the four poster bed.

----

Dedicated to SugarTheReader for hitting the nail on the head with the alternate universe. I didn't get the idea from Harry Potter, but I do remember the scene well :) Read that book in four hours when it came out back in 2007 :P I reused the idea of an alternate universe that I created in a short story I wrote when I was about ten years old for homework :)

Anyways - I hope you enjoyed the chapter, if you found it confusing, feel free to say something or ask a question and I'll explain it to you if I didn't do it well enough in the chapter.

Vote and comment if you liked it :D