How I edit my own work - Plus a story to read too - 13

Edited text

“My sister’s followers believed I had been part of a plot to oppose her. A rebellion that included plans for my marriage has been discovered and prevented. Although he who raised the rebellion has been sent to his death, he declared most emphatically - so I am told - that I am innocent and a loyal subject of the Queen.”

The girl looked up from her diligent carving in the wood of the windowsill she leaned on and leaned back to show Katherine her work.

Deep in the wood, in exquisite, delicate writing, Katherine saw words that made no sense to her.

Elizabeth spoke again. “That, with the obvious lack of evidence against me has saved me from execution; I am nevertheless, imprisoned here, in this dire place, surrounded by a hundred guards. I carve, therefore,”

‘Much suspected by me,
Nothing proved can be.’

Elizabeth put down the knife with which she used to carve her melancholic prose.

“Katherine, talk to me. Kat is not here, she is not allowed to visit me. There is no room hardly at all for my servants; even my accountant has to take rooms in the town. I am not permitted any visitor unsupervised, which is why your presence here was so alarming. And why, at first, I believed that you had come to murder me.”

Katherine put her hand to her throat as she realised how terrified the girl must have been and yet she had not shown her terror.

“Explain to me what you are about and why I remember my childhood friend exactly as you stand here, having grown no older, and dressing no differently. I remember too, that you only ever spoke to me, and only when we were alone. It is puzzling to me.”

And so, Katherine took Elizabeth by the hand and led her to a seat where she explained how she had been murdered and that she was not a person of this world, but a spirit.

“I had not wanted to tell you this, Elizabeth; I did not wish to frighten you.”

“You do not frighten me, Katherine, but I am filled with wonderment. I had often suspected there are more than us mere mortals in this vale of tears. I am grateful to you for showing me I was right and for your friendship when I was a lonely child.”

“But I come to ask of you a favour, Elizabeth. I must find my husband and I must have him killed.”

“And it is I that must kill him?” Elizabeth asked, with a sigh.

Katherine nodded.

Elizabeth stood and turned her back on Katherine. “Leave me, spirit, I have much to contemplate. Find your betrayer and return to me when you are able. I shall decide when I have thought more about this.”

Katherine wanted to say more, but Elizabeth shook her head as though she realised, but refused to allow it.

Katherine returned once more to comfort her friend. She stood at Elizabeth’s side as a silent observer at her sister’s funeral. She watched the ceremony and smiled with sympathy at the freedom Elizabeth would forego in sacrifice for her country.

Elizabeth saw the smile and returned it with a wry smile of her own and Katherine knew that Elizabeth had agreed to help her. Katharine waved a farewell to her young friend and disappeared to find the man she must have Elizabeth kill.

Chapter 3

Forests passed beneath her as she made her way over the spirit world that was still very new and overwhelming to her.

She could not help but become distracted and take time to look at all the glorious, yet strangely hazy and sometimes near-transparent scenery below her. Katherine dropped to the forest floor and took in the splendour of the roof made of leaves spreading above, sunlight dappled in patches on the floor and around her.

She became part of the forest and often didn’t realise how very long she stood gazing at the wonders around her.

Then she would remember why she was in the spirit world and would try desperately to pluck up courage to make contact with other spirits – for she realised that she could communicate with them and needed information from them if she were to find the spirits that protected the incarnation of her murderer husband.

Yet she was still wary and unsure of herself. Spirits unsympathetic to her plight could betray her to Dominic’s guardians; those who thought to make a profit from the situation would betray her without a second thought, and she drifted through the spirit state in constant unease.

Katherine began to learn which objects were solid and which were insubstantial. It did not always follow that the less transparent an object, the more solid it was. Katherine had to feel with her mind rather than her hands.

It was an excellent way of enhancing her skills; she learned to hone her spiritual abilities without realising. As she got more proficient, she tested herself by closing her eyes and wandering around in the forest.

More than once, she bumped her nose on the bark of a tree, and when opening her eyes found it to be transparent, and so she taught herself to recognise other attributes of those types of tree.

As she grew more able to bend her mind into the shapes of trees and plants, she also had a notion of how she could make something for herself which would be familiar and comforting when she had to return. She passed her time producing the meadow and woodland and a stream in which to dip her toes as she sat upon the bank.

It didn’t escape her notice that she first created the little clearing where she had once given herself to Dominic.

Katherine shook her head in anger and the clearing wiped from the surface of the world. Katherine gaped at the destruction she had wrought.