Sky Lanterns

Alice readjusted her laptop bag over her shoulder and pulled her battered suitcase behind her on the frigid Via Rail platform, wishing she had worn warmer gloves. Winnipeg in December was not for sissies, as the arthritis in her hands kept reminding her.

You’re not getting any younger, her twin had reminded her the last time they spoke. Time to stop running.

She hadn’t been running, she had reminded Elsbeth. She’d been working.

With a sigh, she looked around at the crowded platform. It teemed with people bundled to their eyebrows, all of whom seemed to be calling to other people, wishing them a Merry Christmas, promising to call when they arrived, waving madly.

Lord love a duck — she was too tired for all this bon-homie.

It would have been so much easier to catch a flight to Calgary from Montreal, but this close to Christmas the best she could do was a flight to Winnipeg. From there, it was the train or a bus. She chose the train.

As it was, it had taken her three days to make her way out of Kyiv and two to get to London.

Too late. Much too late.

She glanced up at the night sky. Too much light pollution to see the stars. Tomorrow was Solstice. There would be bonfires and candles.

And lanterns to float up to heaven.

The cold didn’t matter. The exhaustion didn’t matter. All that mattered was making it home for Solstice.

She finally found the right train car and headed for the steps, trying to avoid the kissing and the hugging and the little kids wailing. Poor things should be in bed at this hour.

She slid the pull handle of the suitcase into its slot and heaved the suitcase onto the first step. A big hand reached down and picked it up, setting it on the floor. Alice looked up into the smiling eyes of the porter.

“Thank you,” she said, though she wanted to add, I could have done it myself.

She climbed on board, pulled the handle out and towed the suitcase into the car proper. The suitcase rack was on the left, with two shelves and space beneath the lower one. The top one was too high and the floor beneath the second shelf was reserved for the oversized bags. She would have to use the second shelf and navigate around the webbing that kept the suitcases from flying out if the train had to decelerate quickly.

With another sigh, she removed the laptop bag from her shoulder and set it on the nearest empty seat. Then she tucked the handle of the suitcase in. Before she could lift it, another hand snaked around her and settled on the handle.

“Allow me,” said a male voice, practically in her ear.

She turned around to see a tall young man, no older than 20, surely, with a scruff of blond beard to match his tousled blond hair. Blue eyes, bloodshot, good teeth, coffee breath.

“Thank you,” she said. “But I can manage.”

Color rose in his cheeks.

“Ma’am,” he said in a low voice, “my mama will slap me upside the head if I allow you to haul that suitcase up.”

She felt the smile twitch at her lips but squelched it.

“And just how would she know?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know how she does it, ma’am,” he said seriously, “but she always knows.”

“Come on, lady,” said a plaintive voice behind them. “Don’t get him into trouble with his mom.”

An older man stood waiting to get past, and behind him, three more people waited, more or less patiently. One of the women had blinking Christmas lights for earrings.

The smile broke through and she gave up the suitcase. While the young man lifted it effortlessly into place, she grabbed her computer and found her seat, sitting down by the window overlooking the dark tracks. She was still cold. There would be time enough to remove her coat later. It was almost 23 hours to Calgary, and then another hour by car to the small town where she and Elsbeth had grown up.

People filled the aisle, finding their seats, removing their outerwear. Suddenly someone plunked themself down in the seat next to hers, startling her. She looked around to see the young man grinning at her.

“My name is Sam,” he said cheerfully, holding his hand out.

She had so dearly hoped to be left alone on this last leg of her long journey home, but Fate conspired against her.

“Nice to meet you, Sam,” she said, giving his hand a perfunctory shake. “Mine is Alice. Is that your seat?”

“No,” he admitted, and his eyes practically twinkled. “But I figured I’d chat with you until its owner shows up.” He studied her face. “You look very familiar to me. Have we met?”

Were she 50 years younger, she might have thought it was a line, but he sounded genuine.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Maybe it’s because you look like my grandmother,” he said, oblivious. “She’s pretty fierce, too.”

Well, lord love a duck, wasn’t he the cheeky one.

“Going home for Christmas?” he continued, undaunted by her determination to be bad-mannered.

Maybe the truth would send him away.

“I’m going to pay my last respects to my sister.”

The smile left his face and compassion filled his eyes.

“I’m so sorry.”

His sympathy nearly undid her. She felt the prick of tears and took a deep breath.

She was sorry, too. Elsbeth hadn’t deserved the life she got. They’d had such plans, the two of them. They would travel the world and write books about their adventures. They would settle in Paris and have croissants and café au lait every morning. They would date handsome, sophisticated men and leave them weeping.

In the end, Elsbeth stayed home, scarred and damaged, and Alice traveled the world.

A young woman suddenly appeared at Sam’s side, looking up in confusion at the seat number on the bin above. She was a little out of breath, as if she had run to catch the train.

Sam jumped up to stand looking down at the woman, a pretty little thing with black hair and eyes so blue they looked navy.

“Is this your seat?” he asked. When she nodded, he took her by the elbow and began guiding her back the way she had come. “Would you like to trade for a window seat?”

Moments later, he was back, having accomplished his objective. Alice hid a smile.

He sat back down, almost falling into the seat as the train started moving. They left the station behind, moving down the dark track and into the dark night.

“Did she leave behind children? A husband?” asked Sam.

Alice studied his face for a moment. He really was interested. She rarely spoke of Elsbeth to anyone, not since Mother and Father died almost 30 years ago.

“No husband, no children,” she said finally. “Neither one of us. But she was a school teacher and always said her students were her children.”

In the beginning, it amazed Alice how the students were never repulsed by Elsbeth’s horrible scars. The surgeons had tried their best, but 60 years ago, there was only so much they could do. And by the time techniques and technologies improved, Elsbeth had made her peace with how she looked.

It was Alice who had never made her peace with what had happened to her twin.

“How did she die?” asked Sam.

“Good grief,” blurted Alice. “Are you always so shy?”

At once he blushed.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m very nosy. Apparently it’s a prerequisite when you’re studying journalism.”

Alice’s eyebrows rose. “Journalism? Where?”

“Ryerson,” said Sam. “In Toronto.”

“Why journalism?” asked Alice, interested in spite of herself. “Isn’t it a dying profession?”

“No, ma’am,” he said promptly. “It’s evolving. Expanding. We’re not limited to newspapers, radio and television anymore. You’ve heard of podcasts? Well, that’s just the beginning. You can have a news website and monetize it. And there are still very good traditional venues, like the CBC — ” He stopped suddenly and stared at her. “Holy …”

Alice held her breath but there was no going back.

“You’re Alice Traynor,” he breathed. His eyes were round with astonishment and his mouth remained parted.

She waited a moment, then nodded in acknowledgement.

“Alice Traynor,” he repeated. “I’ve studied your book, read your reporting. Your picture is in the faculty office.”

The faculty office? Good lord.

“Ms. Traynor,” said Sam, shifting in his seat so he could face her. “Were you really in Rwanda during the genocide?”

She nodded. In Rwanda and Afghanistan and Iran and Syria and the Congo — wherever conflict erupted, there she’d go. It wasn’t Paris and there were no croissants on offer, but she thought she’d done good work.

After all, she’d had to live life for the two of them.

She and Sam talked for a couple of hours, about the ethics of journalism, the countries she had seen, the wars she had covered. She asked about his family — all in Calgary, waiting for him to come home for Christmas — his professors (she knew two of them, from the old days), his field assignments …

After a while, the yawning got the better of her and she stuck her soft-sided purse between the window and her head and promptly fell asleep. After so many years in the field, she had learned to sleep anywhere. Unfortunately, she didn’t sleep well anymore. The old nightmares had come back, of that Solstice night almost 60 years ago when the lantern had set Elsbeth’s hair and clothes on fire and left her disfigured, her hands so damaged the surgeons had amputated three of her fingers.

Alice didn’t need the damned dreams to remember. She would never forget Elsbeth’s screams as the flames tried to consume her. She would never forget barreling into her twin, knocking her to the snowy ground and rolling her back and forth until the flames died; never forget wrapping Elsbeth in her own jacket and running like a crazed thing through the dark woods, having forgotten her flashlight, until she burst into the house screaming for Mom and Dad.

 

When she woke up, the car was quiet except for the rumbling of the wheels on the tracks. The car’s lights were dimmed for the night, but one passenger had a reading light on, farther up the car. A faint smell of wet wool permeated the car, though she could smell fresh air, too. The sliver of moon provided enough light to see the snowy fields stretching on to infinity.

“Can’t sleep?” asked Sam softly. He might as well have been a shadow to her left.

“At my age,” she said in a low voice, wincing when she recognized her mother’s words, “you don’t need as much sleep. What’s your excuse?”

He shrugged, a movement sensed rather than seen.

“I’ve been thinking over everything you said. When did your sister die?”

Alice breathed quietly for a few moments.

“Three days ago,” she finally said. “They had told me she was on her way out. I tried to get there as fast as I could, but I was in the Ukraine. It took a while to get out.”

Time to stop running, Elsbeth had said when last they spoke, days before she died. Alice knew Elsbeth had longed to see her more often, but it was so hard to sit there and watch that face that had once been identical to hers, now ruined. So she had run, first to university, then to every out-of-country assignment she could find. Meanwhile, Elsbeth had created a solid life for herself. She had gone to university, too, made good friends, become a teacher and gone back home to teach and be near to Mom and Dad.

But it wasn’t the life she had wanted.

“Did you know she was dying?” asked Sam.

It was easier, somehow, to talk in the dark, when she couldn’t see those bright, curious eyes and realize that he had his entire life ahead of him, while she would be joining Elsbeth one of these years.

“We’d known for a while,” she said. “Cancer. She fought very hard these past two years, but in the end …”

“In the end, it got her,” said Sam’s disembodied voice. “Do you feel guilty that you weren’t there?”

Yes. Yes, of course she felt guilty, but not for the reasons Sam thought. Part of her had feared that Elsbeth’s true feelings would surface as she lay dying, and Alice hadn’t thought she could handle that. She had tried very hard to get home on time, but was relieved when the call came to tell her she would be too late.

The tears she wept then were of shame as much as they were of grief.

“She was my twin,” said Alice impulsively. “Identical twin.”

She heard Sam’s sharp intake of breath.

“That must make it even more difficult,” he said.

“In a way,” she agreed. No matter how much she had tried to avoid Elsbeth over the years, they were still tethered to each other. Alice still felt tethered to her, death be damned.

“Go to sleep,” she told him. “You’ll need to look your best if you’re going to impress the girls.”

“Yes, mom,” said Sam with a smile in his voice.

 

She spent the next day reading and writing her Ukraine article for the Globe and Mail. She’d have to send it soon, even though it was a feature and not intended to be breaking news. The train had Wi-fi. She just didn’t know if it could handle all the pictures that would accompany the article.

Sam occasionally checked in with Alice but spent much of the day with Gisele, the young woman whose seat he had taken. Alice surprised herself when she realized that she missed his cheerful presence.

The short day passed, and so did dinner, which she bought for the kids. She remembered being a poor student. At last, they were only an hour from Calgary.

By the time the train pulled into the station, it was dark again. Sam and his new friend Gisele carried Alice’s suitcase and laptop inside the station. Between the arriving passengers and the waiting friends and family, the station was full. And noisy. Not as noisy as Hong Kong’s Night Market, but noisy.

“Gisele!” A voice cut across the hubbub and Gisele looked up at Sam with a promise in her smile. She nodded at Alice and handed over the laptop. Then she was gone, swallowed up by the throng.

“I hope you got her phone number,” said Alice dryly as they surveilled the scene.

He looked down at her, affronted. “Who do you think I am?” Then he grinned. “Of course I got her number.”

“Sam!” It was his turn to look around. His face broke into a smile as he caught sight of someone. “Come on,” he said, “let me introduce you to my folks!”

Alice put a hand on his before he could abscond with her suitcase.

“I need to get going.” She really didn’t feel like a happy family reunion right now.

Sam seemed to sense her mood. He raised a finger at an older man, indicating he should wait, then he turned back to Alice.

“Do you need a ride?”

He really was a lovely young man.

“No,” she said. “There is supposed to be a car waiting for me outside.”

Sheila, Elsbeth’s best friend, had promised to leave Elsbeth’s car outside the station for Alice. As she studied the crowd, Alice finally saw what she was looking for.

“That’s me,” she said, nodding at the man who was holding up a sign with her name on it.

“All right,” said Sam a little reluctantly. He hesitated a moment, looking down at her. “You must love her very much.”

That caught her by surprise. Not that he assumed she had loved her sister, but that he assumed she still loved her, even after her death.

“I did,” she said firmly. “I do.”

“I don’t know you very well, Alice Traynor,” he said seriously, “but I do know this. She loved you very much, too.”

Alice smiled crookedly. “I wasn’t a very good sister to her.”

He studied her seriously and finally leaned down to kiss her cheek.

“I wonder if that’s true,” he said. “Goodbye, Alice. I hope we meet again one day.”

And with that, he disappeared into the crowd.

Alice stood there for a moment, trying to control her chaotic emotions. Finally she turned and, pulling her suitcase behind her, made her way to the man with the sign. After showing him her identification, he handed her a set of car keys.

An hour later, she was just outside Langdon. The farming town pulled in its sidewalks at six at night and she drove down the deserted, familiar roads with a lump in her throat. Past Chester’s Diner, where she and Elsbeth spent nearly every penny of their allowance. Past Stonehouse Theatre which showed all the latest movies — a year later. Past the park where all the kids played while waiting for their parents to finish grocery shopping.

She hadn’t been back in a couple of years, but nothing seemed to have changed.

Finally she was past Langdon and turning up the long driveway to Mom and Dad’s farmhouse. Elsbeth’s farmhouse. Well, technically, Elsbeth and Alice’s farmhouse. They still owned the land, though it was rented out to Burt Gillespie and had been for 30 years. Elsbeth never wanted to sell and Burt was happy with the rental fee.

The house’s outside lights were on, as was a light deep in the kitchen. This, too, she would have to thank Sheila for.

She pulled up to the door and got out. The cold attacked her nose and she hurried to pull her suitcase and laptop out of the back seat. When she opened the front door and trudged inside, warmth enveloped her like a hug, and she stood in the foyer, breathing deeply of the familiar smells of the house. It still smelled like Mom and Dad.

She removed her boots and coat and dragged the suitcase past the sitting room into the big kitchen. Everything sparkled. There was even a faint smell of cleaning product. Was that Sheila, too?

The kitchen was pretty much unchanged from her last visit. The last time she had seen Elsbeth, her sister had been sitting at the big, scarred table in the middle of the room.

“When are you coming home for good?” Elsbeth had asked, her pretty brown eyes the only feature on her face not scarred by the flames. “Don’t you want to rest now?”

Alice — and Elsbeth — had been 68, but the thought of abandoning her career to return to small-town Langdon had held no appeal. It still didn’t. It hadn’t occurred to her then to wonder if Elsbeth had been lonely for her. But it did now.

She glanced at the ceiling. Up there, in the room they had shared growing up, Elsbeth had died. Tears pricked her eyes but she swallowed them back. There would be time enough for that later.

With more effort that it should have required, she heaved the suitcase onto the wooden table and opened it. She had brought what she would need with her, even the pliers. She pulled everything out and pushed the suitcase off to the side.

The white utility candles she placed in a saucepan that she found under the counter and set onto one of the burners. While the candles slowly began to melt, she cut out two lengths of wax paper and glued the long sides together. Then she glued the short sides together so that she ended up with a cylinder.

Half an hour later, she had a rough sky lantern made, with a metal wire frame to hold the wick.

She cut a foot-long, two-inch-wide strip of the thick muslin cloth she had brought and dropped it in the melted wax. Then she spent a couple of fruitless minutes looking for tongs but had to settle for a fork. Once the cloth was completely covered in wax, she removed it to a plate to let it cool down.

Finally, she knotted the strip onto the cross bars of the metal wire, knotting it over and over until she couldn’t anymore.

She was ready. The process hadn’t changed much since that night when she and Elsbeth had made a dozen sky lanterns over two days, eager to launch them into the Solstice night, to chase away the dark and welcome back the light.

It was only when she turned back to the table that she noticed the envelope stuck to the fridge with a magnet. She had to come closer to see her name on the outside. In Elsbeth’s handwriting. She stared at it for a long time before taking it down and opening it.

 

Hi Alice.

I guess if you’re reading this, I’m dead and we didn’t get a chance to talk. So now, you silly goose, I have to do it in writing and you know I hate that.

My darling sister (I know you hate the gushy stuff but put up with it), you’ve wasted so much of your life feeling guilty about what happened that night. I tried to tell you in so many ways (including telling you outright) that I never once blamed you, that I knew you never intended to hurt me.

I’ve had a good life, Alice. I’ve loved good people and been loved by them. And I’ve been so very proud of you and what you’ve accomplished.

I wish we could have had more time together, but I understand how painful it was for you.

So, I want you to know that I forgive you. You don’t need forgiving, but I suspect you want it.

My dying wish (you have to honor a person’s dying wish, you know) is that you quit beating yourself up. I want you to be happy.

Move to Paris, if you don’t want to come back home. Drink café au lait and eat croissants. Go break some hearts.

Elsbeth

 

The cemetery was half a mile away. Granny and Gramps, and Mom and Dad, and now Elsbeth.

Alice parked the car by the gates and slipped past the posts, the way they used to when they were kids and wanted to spook themselves. She knew exactly where Elsbeth would be buried — next to Mom and Dad in the family plot.

She had brought the flashlight with her, the one that lived in the utility drawer in the kitchen, and now she turned it on to find her way on the paths. It was peaceful here, with only the wind soughing through the pine trees and the smell of snow on the air. Stars peered through the rents in the clouds and the moon hid fitfully.

When she reached Elsbeth’s grave, she set the lantern down on it and stood staring down at the mound of fresh earth. The gravestone hadn’t been placed yet — that would take a while — but the funeral home had planted a small sign with Elsbeth’s name on it.

How many people had come to Elsbeth’s funeral? Had they commented on her steadfastness? Her patience? Her love for her students? Or had they spoken mostly about what a shame it was that she had been disfigured before she’d had a chance to really live her life?

Fatigue settled around Alice’s shoulders like a mantle. Despite Elsbeth’s letter, Alice knew she’d cheated her sister out of a real life.

Sam’s words echoed back to her: I wonder if that’s true.

Was it true?

That darkest night, so many years ago, they had waited until Mom and Dad were busy before trudging through the snow to Paddy’s Woods. There in the clearing, they had lit one sky lantern after another, shrieking with delight at their brazen defiance of the night. They watched as lantern after lantern filled with hot air from the wicks and rose through the night, promising a return of the light.

It was on the last one that they argued over whose turn it was to launch the lantern. Alice had grabbed it and lit the wick even as Elsbeth protested that it was her turn.

It was Elsbeth’s turn. Alice knew it, but she still didn’t let go of the lantern. In the tussle, Elsbeth’s long dark braid caught on fire. The flame ran up her braid and set fire to her hat.

Alice flung the flaming lantern into the snow but by then, Elsbeth’s nylon jacket had caught fire, too, melting into her skin. Elsbeth had screamed in pain, patting at her head, her arms.

Alice had screamed, too, for help before finally shoving her sister to the snowy ground, forcing her to roll, putting great handfuls of snow on her face, her head, her hands… And then running, running, running to fetch Mom and Dad.

Elsbeth had never told on Alice. All she had said was that it was an accident.

Her note said she’d led a good life. Alice had always believed she had cheated her sister out of the life she was meant to live. Was that true? Or was that something Alice had projected onto Elsbeth?

Had her own guilt kept her from being a good sister? A good friend?

She looked down at the temporary grave marker.

She didn’t know anymore.

But right now, there was one last thing she could do for her sister.

Sticking the flashlight in her pocket, she took her gloves off and reached for the matches. Her hands still bore the faint scars from that long-ago night. She lit a match and carefully lifted the lantern so she could see the makeshift wick. It took some time for the wick to catch and she almost burned her fingers before dropping the match onto the ground.

She held the lantern by its wire frame, waiting for the hot air to build up. When she felt the lantern nudge in her hands, she opened them flat and held the lantern out at arms length above her sister’s grave.

Slowly, magically, the lantern lifted away from her, rising on a waft of warm air, up, up past the tree tops, a beacon of light in an ocean of dark.

Alice watched the lantern rise in the sky, defiant, and murmured to her sister.

“There you go, Elsbeth. Now the days can start getting longer again.”

 

Marcelle Dubé has published 15 mystery and fantasy novels, including two series. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine, and On Spec Magazine. Her work has been short-listed for the Derringer Award and the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for Best Crime Short Story, which she won in 2021 and 2024. She is best known for her Mendenhall Mystery series. Find out more at marcellemdube.com.

 

This article is featured in the November/December 2024 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.