A Promise Beyond the Threshold (extract)
Marion gazes at Dorothy’s pale face, her throat tightening as she takes the frail hand extended toward her. Dorothy’s voice is faint, but her request is clear. Marion steadies her own voice and promises, as asked, to watch over Jennie after Dorothy is gone.
“But it mightn’t be for years yet,” Marion adds, her tone encouraging.
Dorothy smiles wanly, then closes her eyes. Unexpectedly, she murmurs: “Mother is here,” so quietly that Marion thinks she’s imagined it. There’s a slight movement of air in the room, warm and soft, and then it passes. As once before in her life, Marion glances over her shoulder to find there is nothing there, yet the merest hint of her mother’s perfume hangs in the air, like an almost forgotten memory.
For a moment, Marion stays still, her hand still clasping Dorothy’s, her thoughts drifting back to another promise, made long ago.
It is winter 1912, and she and Dorothy are still girls, cocooned in the imaginative worlds of their favourite books. Dorothy devours Anne of Green Gables seven times, utterly captivated by Anne Shirley’s tender, spirited nature. Marion, meanwhile, is immersed in Little Women. She has lost her heart to the passionate and fiercely independent Jo March, who strides through the book with a true and creative heart while honouring family loyalty above all.
“I want to be like her,” Marion confides to Dorothy one evening. “Except I’d have to stop short of selling my hair to support Mother.” The two of them burst into giggles, their breath fogging the frosty glass of the window beside them.
Suddenly, Dorothy’s eyes light up with a romantic idea. “Marion,” she says, leaning closer, “let’s swear an oath of love and devotion to each other, like Anne and Diana in my book. It would be so special.”
Marion catches the spark in her sister’s notion and feels a kindling in her own heart. “It’s like the promise the March sisters make to one another,” she says, eagerly. “A vow to always stand by each other, no matter what.”
The idea takes hold; they cannot resist. Throwing coats over their dresses, they run out into the crunching snow of the garden, to the back of the lawn where stands the spare, ancient oak tree. Its bare limbs twist into the sky, its presence lending solemnity to their actions.
Standing beneath its boughs, they clasp hands as their breath rises in clouds around them. Together they recite the vow: “I will never leave you alone. I solemnly vow to love and support you for my whole life, so help me God.”
It is momentous. For a minute, they stand in silence, the weight of their words sinking into the stillness. Marion feels the promise settle within her, and Dorothy, too, seems struck by the magnitude of what they have said. But as they began to shiver in the biting wind, the solemnity gives way to laughter, and they run back inside to the cosy warmth of the living room. The oath is done. It cannot be undone. They are bound together forever.
Over time, though, the memory slides away from Dorothy as she is swept forwards into the whirlwind of growing up. For Marion, however, the promise sinks deep into her soul, and takes up residence there in a little promise-shaped space that it finds. “You have promised never to leave Dorothy alone,” it whispers. And Marion hears it—clearly, unmistakably—as if the vow lives in the very air around her.
© 2025 Phebee Tallis