Varden's Lady by Maren Smith

Seven mounted riders and two footmen lined the grassy hillside that marked the lip of the Wooler forest. With green grass under their boot heels and endless meadow spilling down below, becoming a golden ocean of rippling autumn grass, they waited and watched as the sun gradually sank to the horizon. All but one wore the green and blue plaid kilts of the Kincaid clan. The one without wore the noose.

"Why nae get on with it?" the eldest among them said. As his dappled pony shifted nervously, the grizzled old man rested his sinewy forearm across his kilted thigh and chewed on a stretch of dried mutton. "Hang the mon so we can all go home!"

"We wait for the Sassenach," said another mounted rider--a man Varden presumed to be the leader. "The bloody English kins t' watch and I kin t' get paid."

Varden de Lyssoue, Duke of Cadhla, the fourth Baron of Landborough and holder of several other minor titles, struggled to remain in his saddle. The snorting, restless beast had been his mount for four days, a length of time that proved just long enough for Varden to cultivate his new-found hatred for ornery Scottish ponies. As it stamped and shifted impatiently, each jerk pulled the noose that much tighter around his throat. Varden had nothing to hold onto. His hands were tied so far up his back that his shoulders ached and his fingers felt numb from a lack of circulation. His legs ached, too, though not so much from injury as from clinging to the saddle for so long in so awkward a position without any help from his arms.

While a footman held tightly to the reins, the pony leaned an inch forward and the noose pulled Varden another inch back. Balance was a precarious thing, and he was out of inches. Any more and Varden would hang himself by toppling backwards out of his saddle. An undignified death, to say the least.

Concentrating only on breathing, Varden closed his good eye. The other was swollen shut, a remnant of Scottish hospitality. He shivered. Little better than rags now, his once fine linen shirt did nothing to protect him from the cold. Or to hide the nasty blue-black bruise that had spread the previous night from a few inches below his left armpit, down over his ribs to his chest, and around his back almost to his spine. Breathing hurt. Leaning backwards in the saddle was nothing short of agony. But even the acute pain of a few broken ribs vanished from thought as the noose tightened again and suddenly Varden found that he could not breathe at all. An aristocratic urge to die with dignity abruptly gave way to the indomitable need to force his next breath of air into his aching lungs.

While the Scots looked on with interest, Varden choked. His mouth gaped like a fish on land, opening and closing as he strangled. Like the relentless boots of a marching army, his blood pounded in his temples. Pin-pricks of light flared and died before his eyes.

The leather saddle creaked as the footmen forced the pony back and the noose loosened. Varden could breathe again. He gulped air greedily, glaring daggers at a point between the pony's ears. One more step and Varden could sit comfortably in the saddle again.

Above his head, nature bowed to a chilly gust of wind. Trees waved their branches to the sky. Like the beckoning arms of children, they reached ever upwards to touch the pink, orange and red hues cast across the clouds by the failing sun. Multi-colored leaves shivered and let go of their branches, flying free for only a moment before tumbling back to earth, swirling and scattering dryly across the ground around the ponies' hooves.

With each passing moment, the evening sky dulled, its earlier brilliance fading into shades of indigo, while thunder rumbled overhead. Swelling black clouds stalked them from the east. Varden breathed in the heavy scent of rain, wincing as his ribs complained. It was a gloomy night, perfect for a hanging. Even his own.

He shouldn't think such things, he chided himself. He couldn't die right now. He was simply too busy. And what of Claire, his tiny, green-eyed sprite? If this really were, as he suspected, the beginnings of yet another border war, his executioner would hardly be likely to spare his wife and child.

The older Scot laughed. "One less Sassenach in Scotland be payment enough for me, lad."

"Aye." The leader urged his mount to the rump of Varden's restless brown pony. He studied Varden with a dark, remorseless stare. "For what it's worth, lad, t'were an honor t' match wits wi' ye. A good soldier, ye are. Kept us right on guard wi' all those patrols. It were a stroke of bluidy good luck seeing ye and yer lass out alone. Imagine that, bluidy luck felled a giant."

The black clouds were now overhead and still chasing the sun, which had finally disappeared below the distant horizon. As the first few drops of icy rain hit Varden's face, lightning split the sky. A booming roll of thunder promptly followed, shaking both heaven and earth. The pony tensed beneath Varden. It tossed its head nervously and the noose again pulled taut around Varden's throat.

The old Scot looked up. "That's done for it, lads. We're for a good watering now." He pulled the folds of his tartan up over his head just as the first scattered raindrops became a freezing deluge. Within a minute, they were all soaked to the skin and shivering.

As the leader raised his arm, the two footmen stepped back from Varden's restless pony. Varden lifted his face to the rain and closed his good eye.

With a watery smack, the Scot clapped the hell beast's rump and the horse lurched for freedom. The noose jerked Varden out of the saddle. He swung backwards into empty air. . .

With absolutely no memory of how she had gotten there, Mallory stared at the ceiling. The tip of her freckled nose was a scant two inches from the fluorescent light fixture, which buzzed and rattled in time with the air conditioner somewhere below. She had to be drunk. It was all she could think of. Either drunk or hung over, in which case this was not unlike waking up after an all night Jack Daniels spree with a wedding ring and a new tattoo. Except that to find oneself suddenly immune to gravity was slightly more unnerving than the words ‘I love Doug' in a heart on your arm, regardless of whether or not you knew anyone named Doug.

Yes, she must be suffering from the effects of a nasty hangover. That really was the best of all possible explanations.

It was also too bad that--next to vomiting, a headache, and discovering that you've married a total stranger--as far as Mallory knew, involuntary flight was not a known side affect of drinking.

She had to get down from here. What if someone walked in and found her like this? How could she possibly explain without ending up a freak in a circus sideshow?

"How typical," Mallory muttered as she pushed back against the light. "Can't get tattooed like everyone else. No, you up and learn how to fly."

She rolled off the light fixture, onto her back, and looked down. Good Heavens, she was in a morgue!

The fluorescent lights emphasized the stark white walls and white tiled floors. Even the plastic wall clock was framed in white. Cold, slate-gray steel doors and equipment provided the only splash of color, and galvanized refrigeration units lined the north wall at her feet and the south wall a good ten feet from her head. Directly below her, parked in front of unit number twenty-three, refrigeration door ‘B', was a single, stainless steel cadaver transport. Somehow Mallory knew the body beneath that white morgue sheet was her own.

This was not right. This had gone beyond not right. Not only was she in a morgue, but she was dead!

Mallory covered her mouth with one hand and her stomach with the other. If only it were a physical one, she'd be sick to it right now.

The heavy steel doors swooped inward as the pathologist in a full-length, blue smock and cap, and a balding, plainclothes detective in a gray suit led Mallory's boss, Jeremy Flynn, into the room. Flynn's eyes darted uncomfortably to the transport and then away. He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth and cleared his throat as the pathologist took his position opposite of Flynn at the head of the cadaver transport.

Flynn cleared his throat again and then nodded. But when the sheet was lifted, he turned away with a grimace of revulsion. "Oh my God!"

Mercifully, the sheet was not peeled back far enough for Mallory to see her own corpse.

The pathologist immediately let the sheet drop back into place while the detective took Flynn a short distance away.

"Why do I have to do this?" Flynn asked. He bent over, his hands braced against his knees as he took several deep breaths.

"Her wallet was stolen before police arrived at the scene. The only thing on her was a book stamped with your bookstore's name and address." The detective opened his notebook, flipped a few pages, and then took a pen from his shirt pocket. "Again, Mister Flynn, I apologize, but any information you can give us would be greatly appreciated."

"Uh, no. Nobody. Her father died about a year ago, I think. She lives by herself. I've got her address back at the store, if you want it."

Mallory didn't hear the detective's reply. Suddenly, she was remembering walking to the bus stop. Two days of drizzle had left the roads wet and slick in places. If not for the screech of tires sliding on blacktop as the taxicab slid sideways up onto the curb, Mallory might never have known what hit her at all. The force of the impact had thrown her against the side of the brick Savings and Loan building. She gently touched the back of her head, beginning to shake.

"Is that it?" Flynn asked as the detective led him from the room. "Do I need to sign anything, or can I go now?"

Their voices trailed away to nothing as the giant swinging doors swooped shut after the pathologist. Mallory stared at her covered corpse. What was she supposed to do now? Where could she go? Back to her crummy two-room apartment down on Riverside? She didn't want to live there when she was alive; she sure wasn't going to haunt the place now!

Two fingers lightly tapped Mallory's shoulder. When she turned her head, a pretty blonde woman was lying next to her on the ceiling. She looked to be somewhere in her thirties. Laugh lines crinkled at the corners of her sparkling blue eyes when she smiled, and dimples dented each side of her mouth. Apparently gravity didn't affect her either since the full-length white dress she wore hung straight down her body, as if she were standing upright instead of lying upside-down against the ceiling.

Barbie, she thought. The woman looked exactly like Barbie might have if she were a real woman instead of a ten-inch tall plastic doll. Mallory would have given her eye teeth to look like that. Instead, she had been cursed with straight black hair, cow-brown eyes and a half a million ugly brown freckles.

And to add insult to injury, Mallory didn't even get to wear a cool, white dress. She was still in the same blue jeans, black and white Woodland Park Zoo T-shirt and black, holey sneakers she had died in.

"Are you an angel?" Mallory asked. Realizing how ridiculous the question was, she added, "I'm sorry. That was a stupid thing to say."

"It's all right," Barbie said, her smile widening. "It's surprising how often I get asked that. My name is Monica. I'm like you."

"Oh." Now that she thought about it, Monica's white dress did look like an antique nightgown. "Are you. . .haunting the hospital? I didn't think it was that old."

"Home." Monica gave her hand a reassuring pat, then took Mallory's arm and pulled her up through the perfectly solid light fixture, through eight inches of buffer space filled with electrical wires, water pipes, and fiberglass insulation before floating up through the floor of a very busy admitting room.

A television hung from one wall whispering the six o'clock news to a man sitting in a wheelchair. His foot was wrapped in ace bandages and propped out in front of him. Three empty chairs separated him from a woman holding a fussy baby in her arms and a sleeping four-year-old against her left shoulder.

At the reception desk, an oriental woman stood cradling her right arm, while her husband argued in Chinese with the haggard-looking nurse. As he paused to catch his breath, the nurse pointed at the clipboard on the counter between them. "But I need you to fill out these forms," she said, and he started up again.

To the left of the desk, a teenage boy with a black eye and a cut on his forehead was holding a cold pack to his split lip and dropping quarters into a soda machine.

As Monica pulled Mallory up toward the ceiling, a couple came through the automatic sliding glass doors. The ashen-faced man had his right hand wrapped in a blood-soaked cloth. Behind him, his wife carried a plastic sandwich bag filled with ice and two fingertips.

"I told you not to hold it that way," she said, her voice high-pitched and near to panic. "I told you. I told you."

The man stopped just short of the reception desk and turned on her. Very softly and very dangerously he said, "You say that one more time, and not only am going to dust your seat, I'm going make you eat those fingers."

The woman shut her mouth, and Monica pulled Mallory up through the next floor into an empty hospital room with two neatly-made beds. The next floor was also a hospital room, with the second bed occupied by an elderly woman on a heart monitor and respirator. She was watching Wheel of Fortune.

"Man of La Mancha," she said in a brittle voice, talking to the television. "‘N,' you idiot!"

The buzzer signaled no, the audience dutifully oh-ed its disappointment, and the old woman smacked the blankets that covered her with both hands. "Is there an ‘R' in Man of La Mancha, you brainless ninny?" As Monica and Mallory floated up to the ceiling, she took two shallow, wheezing breathes. "Man, I need a cigarette!"

From there Mallory found herself on the roof. The sun was preparing to set. The sky was bright blue with clouds like tufts of white cotton, gathering and swelling directly overhead. A gentle tornado funnel formed, extending down from the sky until it touched the rooftop near their feet.

That was when it hit Mallory. Really hit her. She was dead, and she was leaving. No more two-room apartment in a building that should have been condemned forty years ago. No more struggling from month to month to pay bills that just kept growing. No more bus stops spray-painted with street gang graffiti, or running to catch a cab in the rain, or dodging the prostitutes and drug dealers that hung out on the streets in front of the building she called home. No more bookstore either. Or old Star Trek re-runs. Or hot mocha lattes on cold winter mornings. Or escaping real life, however briefly, between the covers of a good Tom Clancy novel.

Mallory began to panic. What was going to happen to her cat, Charley, who slept with her at night and kept her feet warm in the winter when her dinosaur of a radiator invariably quit working? And who would see to her funeral? With both parents dead and no siblings, would anyone even attend, or visit her grave in the years to come? She was friendly enough with most of the regular clients at the book store, but she doubted many would do more than inquire when a new counter clerk suddenly appeared to take Mallory's place. Mallory didn't even have a will ready. The idea of her landlord going through her belongings made her shudder. And then she remembered what she had hidden between her mattress and bedsprings, and she blushed.

"This is not happening," she groaned. "I am not dead and this is not happening."

"Don't be afraid." Monica hooked arms with Mallory as they started toward the funnel. "It's a short trip, relatively speaking."

"Wait!" Mallory dug her incorporeal heels into the hospital's roof. It surprised her when they actually stopped. "I don't want to go!"

"There's nothing to worry about. Think of this as. . .well, as a well deserved retirement. Your labors are done. Now you get to relax. Go fishing. And travel. Extensive travel."

It was a ridiculous statement, and Mallory knew it. How much more ‘ready' than stone-cold dead did one have to be?

"But you don't understand," Mallory said. "There's so much I haven't done. Isn't there a rule someplace? How can I die when I haven't accomplished anything important in life. Like–" Her mind went blank; she floundered. "Like buying kitty litter. Nuts! I knew I was forgetting something."

"But what about Charley? I can't leave my cat. I'm all he has!" It was really the other way around, but Mallory couldn't bring herself to tell this beautiful woman (who'd likely had dozens of family and friends to mourn her) that Mallory's own social life revolved solely around the long-haired, black and grey feline that kept her apartment rodent-free.

"He'll be fine," Monica said. "Your next door neighbor loves the cat. She'll take good care of him."

"No, wait!" Again Mallory dug in her heels. "What about all the things I haven't done? Like--I--I haven't raced across Saudi Arabia on a camel. Or climbed the Alps. Or protected the rain forest. I haven't even saved a whale! Can you get into Heaven without saving a whale?"

Monica's grip on her arm only tightened. "Earth is for the living and Heaven the dead. Rules are rules. There simply is no place for you down here."

Mallory pulled at her imprisoned hand. She hated whining. She refused to whine. She failed miserably.

"You had your chance," Monica said gently. "Now it's up to the Powers That Be to decide what's to be done with you. Plead your case eloquently enough, and they may find a way to let you come back. We've got plenty of employment opportunities open right now--everything from guides to Harbingers of Doom. We've even got an opening for a guardian angel if you're interested in that field of work."

"You're a good person." Monica squeezed her hand. "I think your chances are also good. Trust me, Mallory. There's nothing to be afraid of."

Still Mallory hesitated, but Monica would not be denied. The guide stepped into the mouth of the funnel and pulled Mallory in behind her. With a sensation not unlike riding an elevator, the funnel drew them upward.

The funnel itself was quite lovely. The setting sun painted the clouds in hues of orange and pink. Were there sunsets where she was going, or would this be the last one Mallory ever witnessed? She watched the play of colors changing as the sun moved across the sky, not wanting even to blink lest she miss one nuance of nature's magnificent display.

They had not journeyed far when the funnel ended and the clouds parted to reveal a second, larger tunnel. Rather than trail upward, it ran horizontally left to right like an extra long hallway as far as Mallory could see in either direction.

Stretching up her hand, Mallory strained on tiptoes to touch the cloud ceiling above her. She tried not to sound disappointed. "Gee, I always thought Heaven would be--I don't know--bigger, maybe wider than this."

"This is only the Crossroads," Monica explained. "Everyone comes through here at some point in their journey."

"Oh, I see. The right takes you to Heaven. Left and you're Purgatory bound. You'd think there'd be a sign or something."

Just then another hole opened in the sun-colored wall before them. A teenaged boy in a leather jacket and spiked, green hair appeared through the clouds. He had a silver ring in his right nostril and two more through his eyebrow. His guide, a petite brunette with large brown eyes, giggled into her hand as she lead him onto the Crossroads. Unlike Mallory, the boy did not appear the slightest bit confused or apprehensive.

"So." He kissed the brunette's hand as she guided him to the right. "Do you, like, have a phone number or something? I don't suppose you want to go out this Friday, huh?"

The brunette giggled again and Mallory watched the duo stroll off together. With a stab of regret, she suddenly realized she had never fallen in love, either. She drew a line in the tunnel floor with the tip of her sneaker. A section of cloud swirled up to twine in ethereal wisps round her ankle and calf, but no hole magically appeared to take her back down to Earth. Her shoulders drooped a little.

"Do I get to go home, if I say no?" Mallory shook her leg until the wisps dissipated.

As they journeyed, periodically the cloud wall parted to allow the passage of other guides and their frightened or confused, joyful or relieved human counterparts onto the Crossroads. Old and young, male and female, people of all sizes, shapes, ethnic origins, and backgrounds began to pass Mallory by. Like lemmings headed for the sea, they all turned to the right and started walking. At one point, she was even passed by four NASA astronauts in spacesuits and helmets. The words ‘Huguenot 2013' were stitched in black letters an inch tall on their sleeves.

When they had walked perhaps half a mile, Mallory began to notice that new arrivals on the Crossroads now were dressed more like an old photograph Mallory had once seen of her Depression-era grandparents. The changes in dress were minute at first but, after a mile or so, quickly became more obvious.

And it wasn't merely the change in dress that caught her attention. Mallory started when she heard a woman suddenly cry out behind her. She turned in time to see a young man drop down onto one knee and tug a not-so-willing young lady face down across that make-shift lap. As Mallory watched in shock, the man yanked up her skirts, jerked her panties down to her knees, and raised his hand ominously high above the poor girl's wiggling rump.

When their guide, a pretty young blonde, tapped him hesitantly on the shoulder, he turned his angry glare on her and growled, "Don't try to stop me unless you want to be next, young lady."

The little blonde immediately backed up a step, worrying her bottom lip. Then, from the folds of her gown, she pulled out a long wooden hairbrush and held it out to him.

The man hesitated only a moment before he took it. And as Mallory watched in open-mouthed shock, he lay a barrage of hearty smacks all across the poor girl's bare bottom. She screamed at the very first crack of wood against bare skin, and then began to cry. The entire Crossroads echoed with the steady crack! crack! smack! of the hairbrush, as well as the wails of the girl being so soundly punished.

"Do something!" Mallory cried. Except for a precursory glance here and there, the people around her had already dismissed the scene and started walking again. Not one person seemed inclined to help the woman, whose once pale bottom was now a blazing, sizzling shade of red.

"I have absolutely no desire to be next," Monica said as she took Mallory's arm and led her away. "I doubt you do either."

"Well, she did get them both slaughtered, you know." Monica didn't seem the slightest bit sympathetic.

Monica dragged Mallory along behind her, quickly putting distance between them and the spanking taking place. With every step, the hardy smacking sounds grew a little fainter and yet, somehow, seemed to intensify. The girl's wails quickly turned to heart-rending sobs, and finally the spanking stopped all together. Mallory turned around again, but there were too many people for her to see the couple so far behind them. She swallowed hard, a little surprised that she could still walk on legs as shaky as her own had become. Maybe she was headed for Hell after all.

"Don't worry," Monica said. "She'll have to stand with her nose to the wall for a while, but Doug's a good man and he loves her dearly. I'm sure he'll comfort her, too."

The further they went, the stranger the people became. It was like watching a play in which costumes of the ages was the only theme. And Mallory wasn't the only one to give her guide trouble, either. An aged miner stubbornly clung to the reins of a mangy brown mule and refused to move.

Half-buried beneath mounds of animal furs and dirty buckskins, he tugged at the snow-white bush of a beard that all but obscured his weather-wrinkled face. "I ain't budging! If Whiskey cain't come with me, than I ain't a-gonna go! I done told that ornery critter we was gonna strike it rich together and that's just what we're a-gonna do! Ya ain't about to make a liar outta me, are ya, gal?"

Whiskey turned soulful brown eyes to Mallory, as she drew abreast of them. She knew exactly how the miner felt. She patted the mule's flank as she passed, already missing Charley. They continued on in silence for another half mile. Cowboys and Indians gave way to samurai, musketeers and women in wide pannier skirts. One in particular had a hairstyle a good two feet in height, decorated with a bird's nest halfway up and topped with a small, wooden boat.

Mallory had not given it much thought. Outer space, she supposed, since people generally aimed their prayers to the sky. Though perhaps outer space was too crowded for God, what with all the UFOs, space aliens, and such.

Booming thunder rolled through the tunnel, and the clouds surrounding them turned midnight black. For one horrible second Mallory was certain her blasphemous thought had just earned her a one way ticket to the far left of the tunnel. But then a hole opened in the floor near her feet and a red-haired woman clawed her way onto the Crossroads.

"Free!" she cried, her green eyes wide, though not as much in panic as it seemed in victory. She shoved past Mallory and Monica, hugging her own shoulders as she twirled around in circles, the cloud floor darkening under her feet. "Finally, I am free!"

Her laughter bordered upon hysteria as she ran toward that destination Mallory had yet to reach.

When no guide immediately followed, Monica cautiously peered down into the hole. Her face was grim when she looked up again. She shouted, "Somebody grab her! She's not ready yet!"

"Her body hasn't died," Monica said. "She will have to go back. Wait for me here."

Monica ran after the red-haired woman. For the first time since her own arrival on the Crossroads, Mallory found herself alone. She looked down at her feet, bare inches from the gaping hole. She could see the funnel extending far below her, with a picture of life too distant to clearly make out at the other end.

Mallory squinted. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw people moving way down there at the end. Not that it mattered. At least it was a life.

But the red-head obviously didn't want it, and Mallory really did. At her feet lay the perfect opportunity, a second chance to have all those things she'd missed the first time around. Mallory had always taken for granted that she would live to a ripe old age. But now, as she thought back on her mere twenty-two years, it all seemed. . .well, wasted. How could she go to Heaven, look into her father's eyes, and tell him that she'd wasted her life. Especially when cancer had robbed him of his. She wouldn't be at all surprised if her father borrowed the hairbrush from that man several miles back, and then the Crossroads would echo with the sound of her sobs as a measure of regret was paddled into her behind. That he had never spanked her before didn't matter. For something like this, there was always a first time.

Mallory stared down the length of the dark funnel. It was wrong to consider this, and she knew it. But what guarantee did she have that the Powers That Be would send her back? What if they made her stay here? Forever.

Mallory glanced over her shoulder. Monica and the other guides had already caught up with the red-head and, though she struggled fiercely and it took three to hold her, they were slowly dragging her back.

The urge to shake some sense into the woman was almost as strong as Mallory's urge to fall to her knees and beg to be allowed to take her place.

Mallory did neither, however. She bit her bottom lip instead and looked back down at the hole. Perhaps the Powers That Be had arranged for this to happen. The excuse was nothing more than a convenient conscience salve. In all likelihood, this blackened hole at her feet was Mallory's last chance to live. And this time, to live the way she should have done the first time. No missed opportunities, and no regrets.

As if sensing something amiss, Monica looked up and her gaze locked with Mallory's. Monica's eyes widened. She knew. Her face creased with disappointment. "Oh no, Mallory. Don't!"

Mallory dove head first into the hole. Thunder exploded through the clouds. The funnel that had been so gentle before was now an angry tornado, spinning, churning, battering her with its fury and pulling her rapidly back to Earth. Down to that new life that waited so far below.

The last thing Mallory heard was the red-haired woman's triumphant laughter as flame-hot agony tore her body in two.

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