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The wheels spun in a constant rhythmic motion, producing a harsh, ratcheting sound and a low whir. The air was heavy with dust. It glided from the ceiling to the floor, accumulating as a dark pigment underneath my fingernails and becoming a permanent coating of grime on my apron. My nimble little colleagues and I, some of us as young as seven, were as workers in a beehive--forever occupied and slaving day and night for our “hive”--the Lowell Textile Co. of Lowell, Massachusetts. Weaving in between machines, grabbing spools that rolled underneath, and standing for hours on end, we ran the mill with a mixture of sweat and desperation. It was boring work, repetitive and tedious. Both back breaking and senselessly dull. We were not children anymore, we were well regulated machines.
I coughed and it hurt my throat. It felt so dry. I had been standing there since six in the morning. It was nine now. About the time the wealthy city children would be going to school. I shook my head, if only I could be so lucky. At school at least I would have more to observe than the inside of a factory. I craved stimulation even more than I craved food. I coughed again, this time I couldn’t stop. I buckled to my knees, clutching my stomach and gasping for air. A girl left her post to steady me, and I heard another shout for the supervisor.
“He’s so white! He can’t breathe!” someone shouted.
“Call Mr. Bates!”
My chest heaved. It was so hard. Air. Just a little air. I grabbed hold of the machine to keep from falling over and gasped as it pricked me. Three red drops of blood welled from my finger and I collapsed on the floor. Coughing and coughing and coughing. An adult voice said something I could not discern, and I fainted.
When I awoke I was thrilled that I could breathe. I opened my eyes slowly and was pushed back down as I tried to sit up.
“You need to rest,” an elderly man said, scribbling on a notepad as he surveyed me, “You’re very sick.”
“I am? I was not aware this degree of exhaustion qualified as a disease?” I asked, relishing the warmth of the blankets around me, and sipping the water a nurse brought up to my lips.
“Well it does you little varmint,” a sterner voice said.
I gulped, Bates. Just what I needed. If I knew Bates, and I did, he would send me back to the mill even if I was dying.
“You never told me you had relations in the city,” he said, “Your uncle is here to take you home.”
“Uncle?” the question was answered as soon as it came to my lips.
A third man, as thin and wan as I was standing to the side of the bed. His suit was finely tailored and I eyed an expensive silver pocket watch in his coat pocket. He had a thin mustache, just as my late father, and the same thin grey eyes. His expression wasn’t discernible, but his facial features were sharp.
“My name is Peter Holmes. I am your father’s younger brother,” he said simply, “I will come for you tomorrow morning.”
With that he left, putting on his long black coat with European elegance and nodding curtly to the other men around my sickbed. I couldn’t believe my good fortune.
I turned smugly to Bates, “I trust I don’t have to show up to work tomorrow.”
He huffed approval then turned tail and left, “I don’t have time for this.”
I laughed and the doctor smiled a little, “It’s good to see some more color in your cheeks. Now while you’re at your uncle’s I want you to get good and well. Understand?”
“Of course sir,” I nodded, “It’s elementary.”
Like he had said the day before, Uncle Peter was prompt in picking me up from the hospital. Completely silent on the drive there, he spoke not a word even when helping me alight from the carriage.
I simply watched the coat swish in the wind and the sharpness with which he addressed the help to learn what kind of man I was dealing with. He was keen, surveying anything and everything deeply. He was annoyingly quiet at all times, European in manner, dress and speech. The physical resemblance between him and my father was very strong, but he lacked any of Papa’s geniality. By the time I entered the house I had decided that more likely than not he was going to be a very cold companion. But I was in no position to gripe. I was lucky to have a home at all.
He snapped his fingers a few times, and a woman entered. She was to be in charge of my needs and would be instructed to provide my every wish. He spoke to me briefly to explain his rules.
“Remember,” he paced back and forth, “You are not to go outside. It is injurious to your health. You are to stay indoors and better yourself. You are to learn to read and write, begin french and literature studies. I shall have no ward of mine being an illiterate. At no point are you to bother me, or interfere with my studies.”
He paused for a moment, biting his lip, “Don’t call me uncle, I’m too young for uncle and I hardly know you anyway. You may call me Mr. Holmes. Any questions?”
I wasn’t too shocked at his dismissal of me, “Not at all, sir.”
“Good.” he sauntered off, placing his coat on the mantelpiece, “Excellent.”
It was the last thing he ever said to me. For the next year and a half he was never at home, or if he was he scarcely left his study. Besides curt nods, and the briefest of half-smiles he turned out to be exactly the recluse I expected.
In the beginning I scarcely cared. I was free from the mill. Free from the dust and the wheel and the dirt and the long hours. Free from the boredom. It was a thrill. Pure thrill. I was taught to read and to write. I got to spend hours at a time in Mr. Holmes’s grand library. Getting to research everything and anything I wanted. Yet even now, after I had supposedly found a home, I was still suffocating. At the mill it had been the dust but here it was the silence. I had gone from being starved for sustenance to being starved for affection. It was a ridiculous sentiment to have. Not one I was used to. But I craved some contact, some interaction.
Forbidden from going outside, I could only stare at the passerby and observe their happy chatter. The help at the house, including Ms. Emma--the woman assigned to look after me--would scarcely speak to me. They had been taught it was not their place.
My first solace was the books. I read voraciously, consuming volumes upon volumes of stories and histories and whatever else struck my fantasy. I progressed rapidly in French, reading the work of Voltaire and Montesquieu in their original form, drinking in every word. In truth as I read Voltaire I imagined him conversing with me, speaking animatedly about his views on human nature, on government. In reading every book I formed a personal relationship with every character. I made drawings of them, spoke to them in my mind. Without them I would have died. I had no friends in the world besides these books, and for a time I was happy living with the creations of the page and of my imagination.
It was only in the third year, after I had finished a particular moving volume about a father’s love for his daughter, that something inside me broke. I needed contact. Human contact. I needed to feel what the girl had felt. Something inside was about to burst. Over dinner I exploded.
It was like many other dinners. The two of us sitting opposite each other on the long table. Many extra places were set, the glassware accentuating the void of life. The lights were dim and the only sound was of Mr. Holmes cutting his vegetables and my own breathing.
As I heard him push back his chair and get up to leave I couldn’t take it anymore, “LOOK at me! I’m here, remember!”
He looked startled, “Finish your dinner. I will not have shouting in this house. It disturbs concentration.”
I sat down dejectedly. To my surprise, he left, unmoved by my show of emotion. Cold to my sorrow.
I was lost after that. To cope with my feelings I wrote letters. Pages and pages to Voltaire and to Rousseau and to Descartes. About their theories and my predicament. About my views of science. They piled up on my desk. Letters no one would ever read. The pointless relics of my existence.
At least at the mill I had a purpose. Here I was simply existing. All the knowledge I had gained of no use to anyone whatsoever. It was almost too much to bear.
Weeks after the day of the dinner incident I found myself staring at the passing traffic, a habit I had developed, and spotted a caravan of gypsies. Their eyes were lined with kohl. They wore light fabrics of orange and purple and spoke exotic languages. I envied them. They fluttered so gaily, like butterflies. Never truly at rest.
As I stared at them the leader of the troupe caught my eye. We looked directly at each other, and she beckoned me with her finger. I found myself walking to the door, as if she had caught me in a trance. I opened the door and went out, for the first time in months, and was soon face to face with the woman.
She was a foot taller than me. Elegant, with ornate bangles and a tattooed forearm.
She smiled at me, “Is the master at home?”
“Sir Peter Holmes? But he is away on business.” I replied.
“Away on business. Of course, of course. Due back soon?”
“Not that I know,” I answered honestly.
“Very well,” she seemed disappointed.
Having nothing more to say I disappeared back into the house. For the next few days I observed the gypsies and their goings about in front of the house. A few of them trespassed on the grounds, probably mistaking it for public land, and laid out their campsite. No one in the house cared enough to stop them. According to Ms. Emma, Mr. Holmes had always been very ‘friendly’ with the gypsies, and wouldn’t like it we disturbed them. I wasn’t too worried either. They seemed harmless enough. After a fortnight, they left town.
The morning afterward I left the house for the second time, and walked across what was left of their camp. I picked up a thin scarf that had been left behind, and under it discovered a book. I took them in with me.
Once inside I proceeded to my room, where I opened it to the first page. It was a rather dry story. Page after page of a farm-boy cutting wood. I was quickly bored and like I often did with boring books, I flipped to the last chapter. It was blank.
I turned back to the front. It no longer told the story of a boy chopping wood. Now he walked back to a farmhouse. That was odd. I skipped two pages. This too was blank. How could this be? I started reading again. From the beginning. The boy’s father collected the wood from him. The boy’s name was John.
I kept reading. Soon it was dark out. It began to grow dark in the book as well and John went to bed. I turned the page and saw repeated but a single phrase referring to John being in bed. I slammed the book shut.
What was going on here? There was no beginning and no end. Half the book was blank. The story kept changing and progressing but it wasn’t really a story at all. There was no narration, just a sequence of facts. It was as if the book was being written as I read it.
The next morning I read it again. About John getting up and discovering the sickness of his brother James. About his entire day. From what I heard of the family I also discovered the year and the place it was all occurring. Braintree, Massachusetts in 1897, seven years ago.
As I went about my life that week I checked back in on John from time to time. Every day seeing James get worse. Soon it came to the point that he was about to die. But, for some reason, I couldn’t permit myself to let him die. Entranced by the mystery of the book, I decided to put one of my theories to the test. Dipping my best pen in ink, I wrote below the last written line, “James woke up with all his ills cured. A miracle had occurred.”
To my shock, the story continued from what I had written. John and his mother were overjoyed. But I was not. I was suddenly horrified. Proving my theory had confirmed my unspoken fear. There was some witchcraft at work here.
The book not only took place in real time. In some way, the events might be real.
For days I looked not at the book. Afraid of it. Afraid of what I could do. From John’s perspective I would be a god, changing the fate of his life, if he was real. I didn’t want to play god. But who would stop me?
Mr. Holmes hadn’t returned. I was alone that winter. More alone than I had ever been. But not matter what happened, I told myself I would not read the book. It seemed dangerous, somehow. Like violating a law of nature.
Yet when Spring came I was braver, or perhaps more foolish, and opened the book again.
This time I swore not to interfere. I would simply read. Nothing more. And reading was exactly what I did. The story had grown on me. John was such a nice boy. The perfect son. The perfect brother. He never spoke ill to anyone. Never harmed anyone without due cause. He worked with his hands, but didn't cave under the pressure of manual labor. Instead he thrived in it. Spending the days in his company brought a new regularity to my life. In the mornings I would wake early to read about him waking. I would work throughout the day and read him some more. When my studies bored me I would read about his escapades in the nearby town. In the evenings I read about his family, a truly pleasant sort of people, the kind of family I would have loved to have.
When summer came the gypsies passed through Braintree. John was as fascinated with them as I was. He chanced a meeting with one I thought familiar. The one that had met me last fall. I laughed at the coincidence. It could not possibly be her.
Yet with summer came long toil on the field. It was almost too much for them. I was tempted to use my power once again and bring rain, but I refrained.
It was only after the harvest that I felt compelled to act. A blight had spread across all the crops. There was no food to be had. So I wrote in small things. A show of generosity from the parish church. Better weather. It didn’t feel wrong. I was helping a friend. The only friend I had.
When winter came again I felt more alone than ever. I watched John’s every move. I knew his friends and family better than I knew the people in my own life. Yet he would never know me. I cried myself to sleep every night. It was so unfair. Why had god given me this magical book if all I could do was watch. Watch and never be in the story myself. Alone forever.
Perhaps he heard my cries. The next day Mr. Holmes returned. He was married now. To a woman named Jane. A well-bred city specimen, she took well to the manor and made clear to me my place. Under her guidance the dwelling was transformed. We entertained for the first time in years. She filled the empty chairs at our long table with men and women from town. Bought rich table fabrics and hired an all new staff. Mr. Holmes’s European collectibles were organized, polished and put up in a showcase. Many of his books on the other hand were boxed up and relegated to the attic. It was a great pity. I soon found that she had the irritating tendency to sniff every so often and coordinate her hair ribbons with her dress. Yet despite all of this I did not take an instant dislike to her, I who had been starved of company so long. No, it was she who took an instant dislike to me. A week after her arrival, while I was still in the room, she remarked to Mr. Holmes on the disgrace he incurred upon himself by taking in a factory boy. Not bothering to hide her disdain from me she told him any family with common propriety would send me away.
And for the only time in my life I saw something of Papa in him as he said, “He is my late brother’s son. He stays.”
But Jane seemed unperturbed, “We’ll never find a job for Sherlock. No matter how well read he is. I would swear on it.”
I had always wanted a mother, given that I never really knew my own, and in the next year Jane became one. But not to me. My cousins Hilda and Veronique Holmes were born just as I turned seventeen. Only Hilda had her father’s--and my father’s-- grey-blue eyes, so I selfishly liked her best.
Jane was cross with Mr. Holmes for a few days when she discovered Veronique was also the name of a former french paramour of his. I almost laughed out loud, for it was she who chose that name, and he who insisted on ‘Hilda’ after his mother, who was, come to think of it, my grandmother. That week I kept house for Mr. Holmes. Yet when Jane returned from her mother’s house in Concord the quarrel was forgotten and I was thankfully restored to my reading.
John was doing well for himself in Braintree. He was now working two jobs, one at the railroad and the other at the mill, having quit his own education to fund that of his brothers. I thought it was a noble thing, and as a reward of sorts I wrote him finding a ten dollar bill in the sand. Any wariness I had to use my power had gone away. After all, I had convinced myself, it was only repaying him for unknowingly sharing his life with me. No matter how happy I could ever make him, he had made me happier.
In February Hilda fell ill with fever. A doctor was brought in from town and she soon got well but Jane was convinced it was my presence in the house that had made her darling sick. That somehow I carried in my body the dirty factory air and Massachusetts chill of my childhood.
After one particularly humiliating evening, in which Jane had taken to making comments about my mother, I went up the stairs to get away. As usual, my uncle either did not notice or did not care. And as usual, upon reaching my bedroom I reached for the book, for John and his perfectly ordinary life.
He was helping to renovate the town church, if I remember correctly. And along with a few Bibles, a farmer’s almanac and a dead rat he picked up a book rather like mine in size and thickness, with the same black, crow-shaped seal embossed on the cover. Dismissing it as a coincidence then, I realized its significance two days later.
I had once again incurred Jane’s temper by requesting more books on chemistry. Apparently it was not for street children to seek education, and I should cease any further attempts to pretend as if I had status.
“The greats believed status is conferred by dignity not birth,” I muttered.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Right, nothing,” she smiled wickedly, “And you will amount to nothing. Not as if it’ll be any surprise. Emily was no better than a common harlot, even when she was alive. Like mother like son.”
“I suppose Veronique and Hilda can look forward to being empty-headed snobs who marry rich,” I said matter-of-factly, anger rising in me like a poisonous fume.
Slap!
I was taken aback. She had never struck me. I looked to my uncle, but he was absorbed in his newspaper. I fled outside into the gardens, when a sparrow carrying a yellow lily placed it gently in my tearstained palm. It was too uncommon of an occurrence. Something out of a fairytale. Something that would never just happen on its own. Something that someone simply had to have been written. My mind began to piece together the other happenings of that day. It began to work a hundred miles a minute.
Jane had been called out of town on the same weekend as my birthday. Hilda had lost the last of her cough. I had been allowed a visit to the main square. I found a ribbon that matched my favorite dress on the windowsill. And now this.
I gasped. My hopeful mind pushed forward an idea as crazy as the magic of my book. John’s book was magic too. He was helping me as I had helped him. Oh my god, the thought scared me. He must have the same control over my life as I had over his. All that time I had thought I was in power over the boy in the book. Now he could do as he liked with me. But as scared as I was, I discovered that I was more excited. Any good form of communication works both ways. And now that I knew of the connection, I could share it with him too.
Like any good scientist testing out their methods, I started first by plotting the limits of my power. Writing in the book had rules too, it seemed. I tried to kill some poultry on his rival’s farm, discovering that every time I tried to make the death happen the handwriting would disappear of the surface of the paper—as if it had been smudged out. I could not cause death. Nor did it appear that I could change John directly. I could alter the actions of anyone around, but was unable to make even the slightest pivot in his choices. At this I was somewhat relieved, for it meant that as long as the assumption stood that the books were the same, I too had a degree of power over my own life.
After a day or two testing the boundaries, I decided the time was ripe for action.
By descriptions in his book, he presumable knew what I looked like. I would write in him glimpsing my face in the mirror, with my own description of my looks, and hopefully he would make the connection. I borrowed Jane’s hand mirror while she was bathing, carefully noting my black curls, fair skin, and high cheekbones. I wrote and re-wrote the paragraph, practicing first to perfect the description, and then to make sure I had the timing correctly. John only ever looked in a mirror once in the days, while washing the basin in the ladies room of the railroad station. I only had a split second.
Of course, in my haste I forgot that any normal person would not respond to the realization of a connection the way that I had.
John did go to the railroad station in the morning as I had expected. He did wash the ladies room basin. He did look in the mirror. And he did see me. He did not however, fall head over heels in love with me like I was partially expecting. Or signal the beginning of a lasting friendship. Like any normal person might be expected to act, he threw his book away, hiding it in the attic of his house, under piles of junk. He was visibly scared. Shivering to himself. I was devastated.
My only friend in the world had rejected me. If I hadn’t been so lonely I would have thrown my book away too. Torn myself from him as he had so cruelly torn himself from me. If only I had that kind of willpower.
I cursed myself for days. Why did you have to let him see you? He’s never coming back.
When summer came that year Jane and Mr. Holmes left home to vacation in the country. I was left in town to take care of the house. It had been months since John threw away his book yet I still read him every day. To occupy myself otherwise I had unboxed some of Mr. Holmes’s books on Latin and was teaching myself the language. For the first time I found myself drawn to astronomy. I read On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres with more interest than I had for my favorite French authors, writing equations and drawing diagrams on spare papers in Mr. Holmes’s study. I was trying to use it to forget John. Forget him and his kindness. The jokes he made with his parents and the townspeople. His genuinely American belief that his hard work and enterprise would reap rewards. The fact that he was always a gentleman, no matter what kind of girl he was dealing with—factory or high society, he treated them the same.
He only broke my heart once that summer. When I read that he was going to be engaged. It took all my self-control and more not to break off his relations with Mary Morstan, the mayor’s daughter. Some nights I felt the evil temptation to send her off to Timbuktu, away some place where she could never come back, never marry my John. But it was foolish of me. Of course he would get married someday. If not to Mary then to someone else. Certainly I would never have him. I shuddered, it might all be some gypsy trick. He might not even exist.
It was around that time that the gypsies came again. Once again, the tall one of the group, I recognized her from that meeting years before, came to the door and inquired for the master.
This time I told her I had some questions first.
“Have you heard of people existing in books?” I felt foolish saying it aloud.
“Why yes,” she batted her dazzling eyes at me, “Have you found such a book?”
“If I had,” I began cautiously, “Would the person in it be real?”
She suddenly became very serious, “It is not that simple. He is real. The boy in your book. And I know it is a boy or you would not make eyes like that. But it is a universe parallel to this one. Perhaps in another dimension.”
“A dimension?” I was confused, “What does that mean? If I went to where I’ve read that he is, would I find him?”
“Whether you will or not is not in my sight,” she said simply, “Nor in my hands. It is a delicate magic. Push it not to limits it should not go.”
“Is it dangerous?” I asked suddenly.
“No,” she laughed, “The magic is not dangerous. It is your love for him that is.”
Just like that she walked away. And as I locked up the house once again I knew she was right. I could not force a meeting like I had tried to force a connection through my image. I would play by the rules of the book, or not at all. I ran back upstairs. I had to write.
Dearest John,
It is I, Sherlock Holmes. A long time friend. Many years I have watched you as you once watched me. I am the boy in the book…
I wrote it in as a letter that would arrive at John’s house. Just a few days before the engagement was made public. I had no idea what John would do. My last attempt at communication had been rebuffed. But this time I had come forward in writing, so the magic of the book was on my side.
I waited in earnest as the letter arrived. As I watched him read it. Then I despaired as he tossed it into the fire. Cried out as he ran upstairs, so quickly that I thought he was angry at me, a boy he had never met. It was only then that I realized where he was going, upstairs to the attic, under that pile of junk. He was smiling as he opened the book.
The engagement was abruptly cancelled. All was quite suddenly well.
It was only when my aunt and uncle came back that I got my first real word from him. And it was startling short compared to what my letter had been.
Sherlock-
This is the strangest thing I have ever done!
Yours,
John
But the next one was better. Soon it was a letter a week. At least a small note ever day. And then we grew bolder. Requesting each other to use the tremendous power of the book. Asking if the other could make something go right, change someone’s mind, engineer little miracles. John never asked for anything ridiculous, though he very well could have. I was content with new books and new freedoms—the one thing I really wanted, to be able to meet him, was the one thing I could never ask him for. But in this way we became the best of friends. Sherlock and John. The people of the book, as we called ourselves.
Aunt Jane began to suspect that I was courting someone. What with all the mail coming in to our mailbox all the time. Mr. Holmes didn’t seem to notice one way or another, but I suspected she had asked him.
“Who could it possibly be, Peter?” Jane asked, “After all, he never gets out of the house.”
He turned to the sports section, “Hmmm,”
“Who is it boy?” she asked me directly.
“John Watson of Braintree,” I laughed.
“I see,” she replied, “I’ll make sure this John Watson ceases to bother us from now on.”
And she would have too. Only every time she tried to leave Lowell for Braintree something would keep her away. It seemed that the magic of the book would do anything to prevent her errand. Finally she sighed and said the whole affair was too much work. John would forget about me himself eventually. It wasn’t as if I was handsome or interesting enough to marry. Once he got himself settled he would forget any silly infatuation with a factory boy. I only smiled at her remarks, if she really knew John she never would have made them. As long as the magic of the book protected me I was free to continue as I wished.
I just never dreamed that she would find it. When I walk in the room she is reading it, an expression of horror on her face.
“It is heresy! Black magic!” she shrieks.
“You don’t understand—“ I try to explain.
“No, you horrid boy!” she takes me by the wrist, “Where did you get it?”
She is squeezing so tight she might cut off circulation, “The gypsies…”
“Those good for nothings!” she snarls, “Of course, it was from them, trying to infiltrate our good house with their tricks!”
“John’s not like that, he’s a good person…” I plead with her.
“Destroy it,” she orders, her eyes livid, ”Immediately.”
With that she storms off. I have no idea where she might possibly be going. My heart is going on overdrive. I have no idea what to tell her. In my desperation I burn a random book in the fire, intending to show her the ashes as proof that I burned the gypsy book. In my heart I know she isn’t right. Whatever magic it is, it’s good magic, the kind I’ve seen the gypsies use to cure sick children. The kind they use in all their merriment. But Jane is a small-minded woman, she will never understand.
When she returns, and it turns out she had gone to Church to cleanse herself, she is pacified with my showing the remains of the book. Yet she has also found that there is no John Watson living in Braintree at all, and immediately spreads the rumor among her friends that Sherlock her former factory-boy nephew is in love with a figment of his own imagination. She explains to my uncle that its better to have a crazy in the family as opposed to a heretic. As is the habit of middle income wives, they speak of it to all of their friends. By December I am the laughingstock of Lowell.
By now though, I am in too deep to care.
John, always the slower of us two, for I am something of a genius, has finally dared to ask the question I thought he never would.
Sherlock, are you real? If you are, send me a lock of your hair.
I do.
In March he tells me that he loves me.
In May he turns twenty-one.
In July he asks me to marry him.
I have never been so happy in my life. Then she and a haggle of her friends walk in. In the town I’ve become something of a freak show. What with the astronomical charts everywhere in my room, the writings of Newton and Euclid in neat piles next to theorems I’ve worked out on my own. But now is a bad time. A very bad time to goggle at the beast.
“There he is, the heretic!” Jane calls out.
“By god, he still has it!” Another woman gasps, her hands clutched to her chest for drama as she eyes the book in my arms.
“I thought you did away with this,” Jane says angrily, ripping it out of my hands, then eyes the most recent letter, “Would you look at this? He even writes letters to herself, the delirious madman!”
“No Jane, the book is being written as I read it,” a second woman suddenly faints.
Others begin murmuring, “Heretic! Gypsy! He’ll curse us all!”
“We’ll throw him out,” Jane decides, “But first I’ll see this burn with my own eyes!”
And so saying she throws my book into the fire, a wall of townswomen barring me from taking it back. I am pushed, kicking and screaming, to the floor as I watch the flames wrap around the pages, watch as it goes from blood red to ashen black.
I cry and cry. They are killing John. My John. My only road to him is gone. In desperation I call for Mr. Holmes. He doesn’t seem to hear. I scarcely notice it when Jane throws me out of the house alongside the jeers of her friends. I notice even less when Mr. Holmes brings me back inside when it gets dark. As far as I know life has ended. John is dead.
Once inside, alone in the foyer with Mr. Holmes, just as I was the day I first came to live with him I scream at him for only the second time, “HOW could you let them do it?”
To this he only says, “I loved Cecilia Watson, but that too was not meant to be.”
Cecilia. John’s mother. So Mr. Holmes had the book before me. But there is so much I don’t understand. Perhaps he knows how I can get John back. Get another book. But he leaves me in the dark room, this is all I will know from him.
I keep thinking something will happen in the days that follow. My depression is only dimmed by new reading in math. The blank solidarity of the numbers against the stark days ahead. Days now lacking John’s warmth. Lacking in his will. I keep hoping for some miracle of the book. After all, his might still work. But I doubt it. His gifts always tend to the everlasting. The lily from so long ago, still in my room, had not wilted till the day of the burning, the day I recognize as the day of his death. Same too with the red rose that had been mine mere seconds before it happened. One second blooming and the next rotten in my hands. I am sure he has gone.
I receive no mail. No unexpected good news. At first I keep expecting miracles. But there are none. No miracles. No signs. Each hour is painful at first. But hours become days. Days become weeks. Weeks become months. Months become years. And years become the decades of my lifetime.
At twenty five I leave Lowell to study science, my reputation is brushed aside by the breadth of my reading.
At thirty I travel to London to present my findings at Cambridge.
As I grow old I am thankful for the time I had with my friend. Thankful, always to the gypsies that still come every year and make camp on our grounds. Thankful for my sustenance to Mr. Holmes, who makes a young widow when Jane is taken by the consumption. I am thankful to Veronique and Hilda, who are far kinder than their mother, and I favor them with the attentions of the type of parental figure I never had.
I never marry. Now I am forty, having finally published my papers to great acclaim I have returned to Lowell. Hoping to rekindle some of the magic of my youth I have sat down to write. As writing was that which brought John to life and brought him to me, I have endeavored to write the story of my life, and his life which meant so much to me. I plan to begin with the ratcheting sounds of the textile mill, and my rescue by Mr. Holmes. I relive every experience as I put it on paper. I fall in love with John once more. Is there a word that can mean sadness and happiness at once?
As I have been without the magic of the book for many years now I do not expect anything to happen. But it is hard not to hope. Hard not to wish for just one more miracle.
Hilda says there is a man at the door. So I go down.
In his hands there is a jar with a lock of black hair and a dirty, dog eared book.
“Sherlock?” he asks.
“John.”