Eleanor Pratchett vanished on the peak of the Welsh mountain, Pen Y Fan. Authorities searched for weeks amongst the hills, forests, and rivers of the Brecon Beacons, but they never found a body–just a blue scarf trapped under the stones of the red cairn marking the top of the mountain.
Like all missing people, they let a few weeks pass before reporting that, sadly, Ms Pratchett could not be found. She didn’t have any family pressing the search and soon the story fell out of the news cycle. Who was she, anyway? Another corporate clone in a sea of black suits and pencil skirts, come to tell the Welsh how to live.
They would never find a body, because Eleanor was a reflection. Trapped by the ghosts who dragged her in, promising she would never leave until she understood.
She does not understand. She only hates and screams, and tears at insubstantial pieces of herself. Let me out! she screams through the fog. But the spirits do not listen.
Eleanor is alone. A pool gazing up at grey skies, the freezing wind buffeting her rippling waters where she lays a prisoner at the peak of the bare mountain.
Eleanor’s heels clacked on the shiny floor, the politician’s flat shoes pattering behind her as he half-jogged to keep up.
“But if you would look at the report–” Mr Lewis began, his protests paling his gaunt cheeks as he ran a nervous hand through his thinning, mousy hair.
“I’ve written my own report,” Eleanor cut in sharply, throwing up a hand to stop him in the atrium. “Your budget is too soft. You need to cut more funding from these programmes or you’ll ruin your country.”
“The people are what makes the country,” Mr Lewis insisted, his thin lips drawn tight. “You don’t see what I see. You couldn’t possibly know how important–”
“I’m the most important goddamned person in Wales right now,” Eleanor interrupted, drawing in a long breath to keep from massaging the burgeoning headache spidering across her forehead.
Mr Lewis glanced around the near-empty office atrium and lowered his voice. “But you are not Welsh.”
“Why, because I wasn’t born here?” Eleanor raised a finger to point at his narrow chest. “Careful, Brian, you’re teetering mightly close to bigotry.”
Brian shook his head again, his lips pressed in a line. “You are not Welsh because you don’t try to understand Wales. You can be born anywhere and love this place. But you cannot love what you don’t know.”
“Poetic,” she said, her smile bordering on both amusement and annoyance. She settled on amusement for the sake of professionalism. “I’m here to save your government, Mr Lewis. Let’s not forget where you’d be without me.” She drew her blue scarf around her neck. “Good day to you.”
The man’s shoulders slumped as he led her out of the glass doors and onto the busy Cardiff street. The clouds were their usual low, heavy grey, seconds from flooding the city.
Eleanor turned over her shoulder. “I’ll be back on Monday morning to assess your priorities. I suggest you use these two days to measure your responsibilities.”
Mr Lewis pulled at his tie as if to loosen it, then thought better of it. His eyes darted to the sky, then back to her. “I suggest you take these two days to learn about the country you so desperately want to run.”
Eleanor arched a brow. “Oh, and how would I do that?”
“You’ve talked to the people. You’ve heard their complaints.” Mr Lewis nodded to himself as if making some decision. He cleared his throat. “Go into nature. See what we see in the trees and rocks. In the water.”
“In the water,” Eleanor repeated dryly. As if on cue, a splatter of rain hit the pavement at her feet. “I’ll see you Monday, Mr Lewis,” she said, then turned away and clacked down the street toward her hotel.
“Understand,” Eleanor repeated to herself, her lips tugging into a smile as she rode the lift up to her floor. “These poor people are clueless.”
Still, by the time Saturday morning rolled around and she had been sat up since six a.m. with her laptop perched on her knees, Eleanor typed in a search for short hikes near Cardiff and found Pen Y Fan.
Eleanor stood at the peak of the mountain with a few stray hikers, catching her breath and staring over the hills tumbling out of sight below. The wind whipped her scarf over her face, shading her vision in blue wool. The air was cool, bordering on unpleasant, its gusts twisting wisps of white cloud over the pale blue sky. Sunlight sparkled across the hilltops, lending shades of purple to the green and yellows, but it did little to warm the fingers she’d stuffed into her coat pockets. Her chest and calves burned from the exertion of the climb and her head felt clearer, like it always did after a good run.
It was beautiful. It wasn’t life-changingly beautiful.
Was this foray into nature meant to convince her to strip less of the budget from Welsh social programmes? To dump more non-existing funds into environmental protection? Eleanor snorted to herself. It was so easy to be an advocate for social justice when you didn’t have a budget to balance.
Then, she heard it. The whispers. No more than a breath against her ears, making her spine prickle. Come. Stray and quiet, but insistent. Come. Come and see. Trickling into her mind like a dripping tap that couldn’t be ignored.
Eleanor snapped her head around. The other hikers had gone. She was alone on the mountain. Even the wind fell away, lending more weight to the whispers. Come.
She couldn’t move except to follow the voices, her feet heavy as they plodded forward, one step after another, toward the base of the manmade cairn. Her toes stopped just before she stepped into the puddle circling the cairn. Eleanor’s warped reflection stared back at her from the water, her eyes hard, her face set.
Come and understand, said the whispers. The water rippled.
Eleanor tried to take a step back but she’d frozen in place. “I don’t–”
Glittering hands shot out of the surface and wrapped around her ankles. Before she could scream–before she could so much as take a breath–the watery tendrils dragged her into the void.
Eleanor Pratchett was gone. Only her scarf remained, trapped beneath a stone, flapping in the breeze.
Eleanor existed for a long while. Days, weeks, months? It was impossible to know. The voices sometimes whispered, asking her to look. To listen. To learn.
For a long while, she could do none of that. But eventually, as she peered out of her reflective surface, she had no choice but to see the world apart from herself. And eventually, she saw more than she’d ever seen.
The wind that was once biting and harsh spoke to her. The rain, once chill and heartless, rang with ancient songs of a land she was starting to see beyond the crumbling brick buildings and seagull-swept refuse. The potholes parted to reveal whispers, generations of tribes. Leather-bound feet squelching in warm mud. Bent backs stacking large grey stones. The shush of branches carrying myths of dragons and spells, and great men and women. The water Eleanor had become was the depths of a land she began to know, and yet had always known, like seeing the face of an old friend after decades apart. But it wasn’t just ancient. It was alive today.
Footsteps approached. This wasn’t unique on the peak of the mountain. Many hikers passed Eleanor’s reflection to snack on sandwiches or huddle against the wind and snap pictures of the view or, on foggy days, the cairn.
But this was a voice she knew.
“What’s that say, Daddy?”
“That sign tells us we’ve made it to the top of Pen Y Fan,” Mr Lewis explained in a soft voice.
Eleanor’s waters rippled as she pressed closer to the glassy surface to hear. The rare sun sparkled over her, dancing in little rainbows above her eyes.
“What’s that mean?” the girl asked.
“It is the name of this place. It means Summit.” Mr Lewis–Brian–said patiently.
“But why?” insisted the child.
Mr Lewis smiled. “Because we’re at the top of the world, my darling.”
Before, Eleanor had seen Brian as weak and blustery. Thinning and patchy. But the smile he wore for his daughter was warm and beckoning.
Mr Lewis lifted his daughter so she could scramble up the cairn. Pink polka dots and bouncing blonde curls greeted Eleanor’s vision.
I understand! Eleanor wanted to shout to him. You said I didn’t know this place, but I do now. And I understand.
Mr Lewis lifted his head as if he’d heard something on the breeze. He stared for a long while over the expansive rolling hills below. But then he shook his head. “Come, Rhiannon. Let’s have our lunch by the ridge.”
The duo trooped away, but finally, Eleanor did not feel alone. She felt free.
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