And if ghosts were real, what else could be?
Layla walked until she found herself down by the edge of the pond. It had rained on and off the previous day, and the cold ground was still soggy as a result. Slowly, she sunk down onto the ground, heedless of the stains that would inevitably soak into her dress.
She stared at the dark water, watching it ripple in the mild wind. As she stared, the surface of the water ebbed into a peculiar pattern, until she found herself peering not at the water, but at a mouth.
It was thin lipped but smiling kindly at her. The lips were smooth and of a healthy pink colored hue. The skin around it was void of wrinkles, indicating someone who was young.
Layla leaned as far as she dared over the water’s edge, staring at the mouth. The moment it appeared she knew two very important things: one, that she had seen that mouth smile just like that on the day she died, and two, that smile meant a great deal to her at the time.
The young dead woman shivered at the thought, and the darkened water slowly took over once more, erasing all evidence of what she had seen. Hadn’t she been down near the pond the first time she was able to retrieve her last recollections of being alive?
Did water somehow have the properties necessary to channel and reveal these memories?
Years ago, away from the disapproving eyes of her father, Layla encountered a most peculiar term in a book she had been reading. Scry. She remembered laying on the floor of her father’s study, staring at that word, a frown etched on her face. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but she liked the way the word looked on the page. She liked the way the word sounded as it rolled off her tongue.
Carefully, she had flipped to the back of the book, hoping the author provided some kind of index, or glossary of terms. Her green eyes raked the pages until at last she found a definition:
Scry — verb; The practice of looking into a suitable medium in the hope of detecting significant messages or visions.
The young girl blinked and re-read the definition twice more. She pictured a woman, shrouded in scarves and medallions who claimed she could see anybody’s future in the facets of a crystal ball… for a small fee.
With a noise of displeasure, Layla had placed the book back onto the mahogany bookcase, as far back as she could reach on her tiptoes. It was nothing short of the “new age mumbo jumbo” her father frequently raved about over the dinner table. It held no weight.
Layla found herself laughing despite herself as she dipped a wayward finger into the icy surface of the pond water, remembering that moment so clearly.
Ghosts were real. And she had just successfully scryed.
For five days, Layla took to sitting by the water’s edge, staring into the ripples. Had she been alive, her eyes would have stung and her head would have ached with the effort.
She powered every ounce of her desire, every ounce of her willpower into the cool, crisp water. She needed to know. She had a right to know.
Layla gasped in pleasure as the water changed color on the sixth day, growing as light as the sky above her had been.
In the water she saw a house—a house not a mile from her own. On the porch stood a young man. He shook his wavy brown hair out of his eyes and smiled at his surroundings. He bore the same lips; the same delicious smile she had seen before in the water’s depths.
The vision shifted, and suddenly she saw herself, clad in a lilac colored dress standing not ten feet from the handsome young man. Judging by the angle of the dirt road, Layla realized they stood about halfway between their houses. She could easily connect the pieces—running into each other as each wandered the surrounding fields and forest, doing their best to keep boredom at bay. Their meeting had been by chance, and yet she knew it had been destiny. With a smile, the boy bowed before her, and she found herself smiling coyly at him in response.
Layla’s eyes grew wet once more as she saw herself and the boy together in a series of quick, successive flashes. They climbed trees together once. They played in a creek until both of them were covered in a thick brown mud. She saw them eating sandwiches by the very pond she sat at now, throwing bits of bread to a trio of baby ducks, paddling within the water.
“Jack,” Layla whispered. His name had been Jack.
The vision evolved until she saw herself sitting at the dinner table, watching her father with an anxious expression. He was gesturing wildly in the air, and fervently shaking his head. She sensed the anger that sat within the ventricles of his heart.
His daughter had no business hanging around with local farm boys.
His daughter had no business compromising the values he spent his life trying to instill within her.
She saw herself open her arms wide, palms up in supplication. She didn’t need to hear the words to know she defended her honor, her innocence to her father that night. She was not the type of daughter who would readily forget her morals in a moment of temporary lust. She saw her relationship with Jack as a means of cultivating a proper marriage, when both became of age.
She had loved him. She had loved him with every fiber of her being. And for someone like Layla that meant she would wait until the end of the world before she did something that would somehow sully the beautiful simplicity and thoroughness of her affection.
The scene changed, and she saw her father, standing alone in their kitchen. He leaned over the kitchen sink, watching her as she twirled by herself between the growing leeks. Layla watched her father’s eyes narrow in anger and suspicion when Jack appeared beside her in the vision. With a grin, he held his hand out to her, keeping her steady as she laughed and twirled in circles around him.
With a sickening lurch, the scene changed once more. Layla saw herself sitting Indian style on the grass. The cotton skirt of her dark blue dress was draped over her knees, so Jack would not see her legs.
She could tell by the strangely bent branches of the oak tree behind him that they were on her father’s property, where the grassy field met small but dense woodlands. They were nearly a mile from the farmhouse. Layla looked through blurred eyes at herself and knew the spot had been selected because it was very unlikely her father would find her there.
With a smile that was equal parts anxious and excited, Jack reached out to take Layla’s hand in his. She flinched, feeling the soft heat of his skin emanating from the surface of the pond. She had never wanted anything so badly in her life than to reach out and feel that heat upon her cold dead skin. She marveled at the way her mind could have forgotten what had once been the most precious thing in the entire world to her while she had been alive.
Layla, in the vision, clutched at Jack’s hand in return, and smiled. His dark brown eyes gleamed with happiness as he shook his hair out of his eyes and grinned back. She could have written a thousand poems about that single moment in time.
Jack took a deep breath and brought his free hand up to stroke Layla’s peach colored cheek. She tilted into that touch, closing her eyes with pleasure. When she opened her eyes again, Jack was leaning towards her. His tongue darted out to lick his lips before he slowly brought them down upon her own.
“Oh,” Layla murmured, watching herself lean into that kiss with an intensity that felt foreign in a way. She watched the way Jack’s lips seemed to fit hers as if they were puzzle pieces. It had been those lips that she should have been kissing for the rest of her life.
Slowly, Jack pulled away, but Layla’s arms snaked out of their own volition, drawing him back again. He grinned into her mouth and returned her kiss.
It had, naturally, been at that very moment when Layla’s father crested a hill and saw his daughter giving into the lust he so greatly feared—the thing he had been so certain would happen the moment he laid eyes on the young farm boy.