A Conjuror In Action
Mira sensed the grief before she saw the old man.
It struck her like a physical blow as she walked the clifftop path above Gull's Rest — raw anguish so profound it surely pulled at every spirit for miles around. She paused, opening her Third Eye with practiced ease, and immediately understood why the dead wife had been trying so desperately to reach her all morning.
Below, an elderly man trudged down the coast road with grim purpose, clutching a crumpled letter. The locals watched nervously from their windows as he approached the blue cottage where Rob Henley lived alone since his stroke three years back. The man's spiritual aura blazed with grief and loss, the kind of emotional intensity that could wake sleeping ghosts and draw hungry shadows.
He's going to kill him, whispered one observer. Look at that face. She could read their expectations from here, but she didn't think they were right. His march was full of intent, but not betrayal and anger. Mira could see the wife's spirit nearby knew better. It hovered anxiously beside the widower, translucent hands reaching futilely toward his shoulders as he stopped by the cottage and peered at the address, then looked at the paper in his hand — an envelope? He turned and looked toward the sea, and walked away from the cottage without a second glance, stumbling down the sandy path to the beach where he fell heavily to his knees in the wet sand.
He began to weep. His aura crumpled into forlorn desperation, so much that Mira feared his heart might stop.
She descended the path quietly. The wife's ghost turned to her with desperate gratitude — forty years of trying to comfort her husband, and finally someone who could serve as bridge between them.
"She wants you to know," Mira said gently, settling beside him in the sand, "that she's sorry."
The old man looked up, startled by this stranger who spoke as if she'd heard his private grief. "What?"
Mediating for spirits was often hard — some drifted so far from the daily details of bodily existence that their needs hardly translated into words anymore. "My name is Mira, and I know that you lost your wife. She —"
But Mira realized the woman's fear and remorse was distracting her. She took another look at this man's aura, and saw that there was no anger in it. He was bitter, yes, and hurt, but not even surprised.
"You knew," she said. His lopsided smile bore no mirth as he nodded.
"Found the letter years ago. 'Twas me own fault for bein' to sea fer so long. What d'ye expect?" He turned his face back to the sea, and didn't bother to wipe his tears. She waited, and let him come to the telling in his own time. Eventually he pointed back over his shoulder with a careless thumb.
"'At's his house. Heard he took ill a few years back." He wiped his nose. "I should pro'ly look in on 'im, make sure he's ok."
This surprised Mira, but she held her silence. He eventually waved the letter in his hand her direction. "She kep' this love letter. Bastard was a poet compared t'me, I di'n blame 'er." He sighed hard, and tried to continue. "Said the sea offshore of his house looked like her eyes—"
She didn't know if he meant to say more; he fell to weeping and could say no more. She waited, and then took his hand away from his face and held it. "Then why are you here?"
It took a long time. When he could speak again — it took a few tries — he haltingly got out "I jes' wanted to see 'em again, but it's jes' the sea." He shook his head. "'Tain't nearly as…as…"
But he couldn't continue. Mira looked up at the spirit beside him, and could see the shock and relief and disbelief in it.
Spirit, she whispered, take my hand.
The ghost was weak, held to the earth by no more than her love and the fear that he would find this very letter and know of her betrayal, decades past. As she gave herself to the spirit, she lent it the strength it never had, it let its need shape what he saw with a simple glamour.
She saw her reflection in his eyes, a vivacious young beauty overcome with concern, before the ghost kissed him with her lips and closed her eyes. Oh, Bailey, she heard it whisper with her lips, you darling sweet man. I love you so.
He could only weep, because he could not deny the lips of his dead wife, whether it made sense or not. She felt his rough hand touch her cheek, so softly. "I missed you." He leaned his brow onto her shoulder, and sighed, this time a sound of contentment, fading as all the breath left his body a final time.
Mira held him as the spirit released her to go with her husband into the beyond.