Allowed.To step back.Allowed. To choose himself.
The idea was so foreign it rattled him then, and it still rattled him now.
For a century and a half—and more—he’d believed duty was the only way to outrun the guilt. If he kept serving, kept saving, kept fixing, then maybe he’d be able to stop thinking about the men who never came home, then maybe the guilt would fade and the ache would dull. He never believed he’d earned the right to rest.
He’d kept that belief as he transitioned from life into—he looked around—this. Not life, not death, suspended. But Dr. Trafford, cut from the same cloth, carrying the same impossible expectations despite them living centuries apart, had, in life, chosen to set his down.
“It’s your duty, the way you serve.” Silas said those words out of habit, out of fear, but despite hearing them, Dane didn’t bend under them. He simply, almost gently, rejected them. And Silas realized that Dane was choosing to live, really live. Despite the fear and the difficulty, and not knowing whether he’d succeed or not, he was choosing something different.
And a thought settled, took root…If he can do it, why can’t I?
He understood that remaining with Lila, The Reverend, and his new companions—Ruby and Naomi—would be the easier road. It was the life he knew. He had long been acquainted with pain and guilt and knew how to deal with them. Yet he found himself contemplating departing this place, and the notion both scared and excited him.
Still, before he took such a step, he had to repay his debt to the doctor for the part he’d played in getting him to this point. Without him, Silas might’ve stayed another century or two in this place of in-between. He’d shown him how to leave the battlefield of his own mind. And the only way to aid the good physician was to help him in matters of the heart.
But how?
Of one thing he was certain: the doctor had to know what the dancer had written, as he told his companions …no, his friends. For once, they did not quarrel or argue but quickly nodded. Keeping his gaze on the paper in the dancer’s clenched hand, he spoke again.
“That paper cannot land in the fire.”
His words were barely out of his mouth when Wren lifted her hand, scrunched the note into a ball, and hurled it toward the fire. Naomi yelped, tried to bat it away, and her hand passed straight through the ball and into the flames.
For a moment, the fire took it, and the ghosts gasped as flames curled around the edges, greedy and bright. Knowing he needed to do something, anything, Silas stepped into the raging fire, placed his face close to the paper, and blew. For a second, he didn’t think anything would happen, but the paper moved.
“Help me,” Silas snapped, and his friends willingly stepped into the flames. The wish hovered, and Ruby was the first to react, but she blew too hard and sent it veering off, too close to another flame. They were running out of time…
Lila darted in and blew hard, and the fire seemed to bend, arching away from them. “Blow again, Ruby, but change the angle. Try to keep the same rhythm.”
Ruby sent him a mischievous smile. “No problem, baby, my blowing skills are first rate.”
Lila laughed, and Silas shook his head, not understanding their mirth. Sometimes, most times,allthe time, he didn’t understand women. And he never would.
“Angle,” Silas ordered, bending down to blow. “Mind the angle.”
Together, they used all their energy to move the paper, and it shot out of the flames, the edges smoking, to land on the doctor’s boot. Dane picked it up, squinted at it, and looked over to where Wren stood.
The surgeon stared at the paper for a long time before folding it carefully and pushing it into the front pocket of his pants. Dr. Trafford and Silas looked around, but the dancer had disappeared again. Really, she was making this more difficult than it needed to be!
Silas looked at the surgeon, saw the determination on his face, and knew that his intervention was no longer required.
Which meant that Silas could carry on.
“I’m going to head toward the light,” he told his friends. He was battle-worn and scarred, sometimes thought of as a brave man, but he was tired.
He felt their eyes on him, shock and seriousness rolling off them. Whatever it was they expected, it hadn’t been this. “But…why?” Lila wailed.
He thought about explaining, about telling the truth, but a part of him wanted to keep it between him and the doctor, between two people who served. “It’s time,” he said, keeping it simple. They’d been his friends, his companions, a way to pass time in this place between places, but he needed to leave.
“Be good to each other,” he said, resting his hands on theirs, just briefly, because affection was still a foreign concept. And improper. “But more than that, be good to yourselves.”
Sensing Dr. Trafford behind him, he turned, looked his way, and for a moment, just a moment, Silas thought that Dane could see him. In case he could, Captain Blackwood, of the 10th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, faced him, clicked his heels together, and raised his hand to his head in a sharp salute.
You’ve done enough, son. And so have I.Captain Blackwood felt the weight he’d carried—those endless centuries of unfinished duty—finally slip from his shoulders.
And for the first time since his heart had last beaten, he felt… free.
So he let go.
