Attention! Concrit Welcome!

(I attempted to do this as a Note on Facebook, however Facebook's paragraph formatting leaves a lot to be desired. Actually, there is a distinct lack of paragraph formatting (at least a lack of paragraph formatting that I can make work ... I try Shift+Enter and I get a line break, not a paragraph break), leading to a giant block of text that makes my eyes swim. So I'm doing it here because Blogger will allow formatting like a normal website. *pets Blogger*)

Anywho, I am about to do something I hardly ever do: offer up my prologue for concrit. Basically, I've been having issues with tone and voice for a long while now, so long that I feel like I can't properly judge the quality of my own writing anymore. (I am indeed my harshest critic ... I tend to think it all sucks. ;)) So! If anyone could read this and offer some concrit, you will get virtual cookies and my undying gratitude.

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January 30, 1877

The settee and arm chairs, typically arranged in a cozy semi-circle, now lined the walls at opposite ends of the room. The side tables were shoved haphazardly against the bookcase, and the bench normally tucked underneath the keys of the small upright piano sat in the hallway.


Lillian Blackstone scarcely recognized her own parlor.

Josiah’s old card table, which Lillian had rescued from storage just that morning, now took up residence in the center of the room. Mildred Albertson had draped the table with a heavy cloth made of plush velvet in purple so dark that it was almost black. Now she was in the process of arranging white pillar candles on the table, five of them equidistant from each other and encircling the sixth.

Millie struck a match and gave Lillian a slight nod. “You may draw the curtains now.”

Lillian did as Millie asked. Dancing candlelight filled the darkened room with an eerie glow, and a shiver ran down Lillian’s spine.

“The first time I did anything like this, I was just as uneasy as you are now,” Millie said, her dark brown eyes filled with equal parts sympathy and understanding.

The polite thing to do would have been to deny that any of this made her uneasy. However, since telling even that small white lie to her neighbor and confidante seemed like a greater violation of propriety, Lillian allowed, “Perhaps this isn’t as good an idea as we’d originally thought.”

The other woman’s lack of resolve would have annoyed most people, but not Millie. She knew how big of an undertaking this was, knew the thoughts and fears that had to have been tumbling through Lillian’s mind at the moment. After all, the same thoughts and fears had tumbled through her own mind not so long ago. “Nothing’s been done yet, Lillian,” she assured her friend. “We can stop right now if you’d like. I’ll just pack up my supplies and help you move the furniture back where it belongs.”

By all rights, they should stop. They had no business doing what they were about to do, no business dabbling in these kinds of things. Certain things in this world should be left alone, Josiah would have said, and Lillian had to agree. Besides, no matter the outcome, Lillian’s world would never be the same. If it didn’t work, the one little strand of hope she’d been clinging to would break, but if they did succeed, everything she thought she knew about this world would be called into question.

After this afternoon, she could either hold onto her hope or her faith but not both.

Lillian was keenly aware that she was at the start of a journey, but where it led, she had no idea. She wasn’t even one hundred percent certain she wanted to go on this journey. Her gaze darted around her transformed parlor. She listened to the utter silence in the house, broken only by the swinging of the grandfather clock’s pendulum. She thought of the bedroom that she used to share with her husband and now slept in alone.

And she came to the swift conclusion that she had nothing left to lose.

She squared her shoulders and looked Millie in the eye. “I’d like to continue, please.”

There again was that calm smile of Millie’s, the one Lillian had found herself relying on in recent weeks. The smile that told her that she was indeed doing the right thing, making the correct choice. No matter what happened now, Lillian had no doubt that Millie would be with her every step of the way. After a moment, she smiled back.

Millie reached for her satchel and withdrew a small glass vial filled with oil, another containing fresh sage, and a silver platter that reminded Lillian of a smaller version of the offering plate at church. With a twinge of good old Christian guilt, Lillian wondered if she’d ever be able to show her face at church again after today’s little experiment. Or, depending on the results of said experiment, whether she would even want to.

“First I must perform a cleansing,” Millie said, startling Lillian back to reality. She crisscrossed two sage leaves in the middle of the platter and poured the oil over them, just enough to coat the dish in a thin layer. Then she held the plate over the candle closest to her. “This will prepare this space for the ritual as well as ensure our safety during it.”

The woody, peppery scent of the warm sage filled the room. Inhaling deeply, Millie stood and blessed the north, south, east, and west corners of the Blackstone parlor. Once finished, she reclaimed her place at the makeshift altar and nodded to Lillian. “Now we my begin.”

Out of Millie’s satchel tumbled two mason jars, one containing fresh lavender and red sandalwood in the other, and a stone mortar and pestle. Millie reached inside the bag and pulled out a metal flask. “This is filled with water that has been blessed under a full moon,” she told Lillian, handing her the platter and the flask. “If you use it to rinse off the oil, it will save us a purification step.”

Swallowing her fear, Lillian accepted the offered items and headed to her kitchen. She rinsed the platter at the sink, taking care to use as little of the precious water as possible. By the time she returned to the parlor, Millie had ground the lavender, sandalwood, and a few other ingredients that Lillian couldn’t identify into a fine powder.

“Perfect timing.” Millie smiled at Lillian and took both the dish and the flask from her. As Lillian reclaimed her seat at the altar, Millie bent her head over the mortar, mumbled a blessing, and transferred the ground ingredients to the platter.

When she struck a match and set it to the powder, a sudden explosion of fragrance filled the room and completely overpowered the lingering aroma of the warmed sage. Her mouth open slightly in awe, Lillian realized that her friend had just whipped up a single-serving batch of homemade incense.

Another shiver ran down her spine. Not for the first time, it struck her that she and Millie were about to appeal to forces that neither of them properly understood and that she herself was diving headfirst into something possibly quite dangerous. “Forgive me,” she spoke up, nervously clearing her throat, “but aren’t we in need of an expert for something like this?”

Millie lifted her head from her task, her brown eyes sparkling with amusement. “I’m not an expert by now?”

“Oh, of course you are! I-I only meant that--”

A smile tugged at the corners of Millie’s mouth. “I’m just teasing you. The medium in Portland who first put me in touch with my dear Caleb designed this ritual herself. This is no need for an interpreter of any kind. We’ll be able to hear and understand the spirits on our own.”

“Hear and understand? We won’t be able to see them?”

Millie’s face lost a little bit of its color. “I-I’m sorry, I thought you knew. Though I have seen Caleb on occasion, more often than not, I only hear him.”

“ … I see.”

“Oh, Lillian, please don’t become discouraged before we even begin! I’m not telling you that we will never see Josiah. I’m only telling you that seeing the spirits, especially using this particular ritual, is a rarity.”

Though thoroughly disappointed, Lillian nodded. This little misunderstanding was, after all, her own fault. Millie had only said that she knew of a way for Lillian to speak with her husband; it was Lillian who’d assumed they would be speaking face to face. And after coming this far, she didn’t want to turn back now. If there truly was a way for her to speak to her husband, she was certainly not going to be particular as to the specifics.

After living her entire twenty-three years in a fishing town, Lillian knew the dangers inherent in accepting a fisherman’s hand in marriage. She’d seen firsthand through friends and acquaintances how the unforgiving ocean turned wives into widows and forced children to grow up without fathers. But she’d been so head over heels in love with Josiah that she’d managed to convince herself the two of them would somehow beat the odds, that they’d be one of the lucky couples.

They weren’t lucky. Not by a long shot.

A sudden storm this past November claimed the love of her life after just seven short months of marriage. In her newlywed bliss, Lillian had never seen it coming.

Two days after Josiah’s funeral, Millie Albertson stopped by to offer condolences. Due to Millie’s insistence that she regularly conducted séances in her parlor and spoke with her husband Caleb, who’d died at sea almost three years to the day before Josiah, the woman had earned herself a reputation as the town eccentric. Maybe it was the grief, but Lillian found herself wondering … what if Millie had been telling the truth all this time? If she really could reach Caleb from beyond the grave, it stood to reason that she could somehow reach Josiah as well. Didn’t it? And if she could teach Lillian how …

Millie promised to teach Lillian everything she knew, and the two woman had quickly struck up a friendship. The town rumor mill was already churning: Mad Millie Albertson had found herself a convert and pretty soon, poor Lillian Blackstone would be just as eccentric as Millie.

Lillian could not have cared less about what they all thought. Let them gossip! If Millie’s ritual didn’t work, then at most, she’d feel a little foolish. But if it did work? Well, that would change everything.
“Are you ready?” Millie asked.

Lillian inhaled deeply through her nose and nodded her assent. “What do we do?”

“We call to the spirits,” Millie replied, reaching across the table for Lillian’s hands, “and we wait for an answer.”