"Hey, I wonder if old Araldina will show up in this photo?" joked Jason, as he aimed the camera at our new home.

"I don't think so, Bozo. From what I gathered from Mum, she only shows up at momentous events in our family's lives. And stop trying to scare me."

"Aw come on Callie, if this isn't a momentous occasion, I don't know what is. Our first home on a new planet. What could be more momentous?"

"I don't know, maybe one of us should be in the picture for that to happen."

"OK. Callie, move over there beside the doorway."

"Jason! Don't tempt fate. I don't ever want to see a ghost in a photo again."

I'd used his real name, so he knew he was on shaky ground, and shut up. We stood together and just stared at our home. It wasn't much more than a shack compared to the beautiful old rose covered cottage that we'd left behind on earth. Sadly for our plans to start a family, the Kandaskans had declared war on Earth, and he'd had to leave me and go to fight in the space navy, trying to defend our world. He'd only been away three months, two weeks and four days when defeat came, and we were ordered to leave our homes and depart. Sure, we could go anywhere we liked, as long as it was off the Earth.

Jason had been stranded on Novo Terra, circling the star Betelgeuse, so it was four long years before I caught up with him, when the Orion dropped Mum and Dad off at that planet, taking me on to Tertius. Because we had already been partners on Earth, Jason easily got permission to marry me and come to Tertius too.

That night, under the glow of two moons, we sat outside on what would one day be our front porch, and made our plans. Jason would find work at the farm collective just down the valley, while I would carry on my profession as a teacher at the local school.

In the midst of our planning, a visitor showed up, looking very strange with the moonlight showing two shadows of his nose.

"Hello there," he said in a dialect that I didn't recognise at first. "My name's Ricardo Montagne, but the people here have already Anglicised it to Rich Mountain after this here valley we're all living in. Just call me Rich."

"Jason and Callie Cheng. Pleased to meet you. Where are you from?"

"Just down the street. Oh, you mean originally! I'm from Northern Italy, how about you?"

"Almost neighbours. I'm from London via Hong Kong and Callie here's from Yorkshire."

"Delightful place, Yorkshire. Whereabouts exactly?"

"Just outside Esholt," I replied. "Right out in the country."

We invited him to sit and Jason poured him a cup of coffee, letting me do the walking to the kitchen for some of my homemade scones.

It turned out that Rich had been one of the first colonists to arrive on Tertius, and had helped put the colony known as New Paris together.

"You should be glad you weren't here in the early days," he said. "No electricity, no flushing toilets, no computers. Just hard work and the faint promise of better days to come. I must warn you though, there's something in the atmosphere here that startled us at first, an almost spiritual quality."

"Don't tell me you've all become mind readers!" Jason joked.

"Not all of us," and Rick's face took on a sombre aspect. "But strange things have been happening. Oh nothing too outlandish, nothing that hasn't happened many times on Earth, but we seem to get them more often, if you see what I mean." He broke off for another bite of his scone, and said appreciatively, "Mmm, these are good."

"Don't stop there," I begged. "You have to tell us the worst now you've started. We need to know what we're up against."

"Well, first of all, we started seeing ghosts." He glanced over as I gasped in surprise. I kept my mouth shut and he continued. "It wasn't just the odd person here and there who saw them, they'd appear at a council meeting, then somebody would recognise old Uncle Derek, or Grandfather Stubbs. We'd see him chat with the ghost, and the ghost would speak back, but nobody else could hear the answers. Some families got really spooked by this, and moved away, but in the end they came back and told us it was the same wherever they went on Tertius."

Jason nudged me. "Go on, tell him about Araldina." I refused, saying I didn't want to talk about it, but Jason told him anyway, with what I considered to be unholy relish.

"Seems like we brought the whole of Earth's ghost population with us," said Rick. "I guess we'll make the old dear welcome. You can introduce us to her when the time comes."

I was getting quite upset by this time, so I excused myself and said it had been a long day, and I was going to leave the two men to get to know each other, and take myself off to bed.

This talk, coming on top of all the trauma of the last few years was too much for me to take, and I cried myself to sleep, hardly stirring when Jason climbed in beside me.

"Callie. Callie!"

I awoke with a start as I heard what sounded like my Mum's voice calling me. Tertius's two moons were bright that night, so there was plenty of light in the bedroom. Jason was sleeping on his stomach beside me with his face turned toward the window, the blanket kicked off so that I had an unimpeded view of the sweep of his lithe body from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. I reached out my hand to stoke his smooth back, when the reality of my waking hit me.

Sitting bolt upright, my eyes swept the bedroom. Who had called my name? Was it a dream? Or was it this planet?

"Callie, over here child!" My head swivelled back to the door, then I saw her, the pale figure of an old lady, standing there dressed all in black, in the manner of Victorian England.

Her mouth opened again and she spoke words that made me doubt my sanity. "What are you doing sleeping with a Chinaman? You must get out of here quickly before you are found, and the family ruined forever."

"What?"

"Get out, my dear, before he wakes and drags you into his opium den."

I found my voice. In outrage, I yelled, "This is my husband. I'll thank you not to malign him. I love him, and my parents approve. Who the hell do you think you are?"

"I'm your great great great great great grandmother, Araldina Shefford, and don't you scream at me like a low-born fishwife!", she retorted with much more dignity than I could have mustered in the middle of the night.

"But you're not real. You're only a face in a photograph."

"I have been real for more years than you. You say your parents approve of you actually marrying a Chinaman? What has the world come to? The dear Queen will be turning in her grave."

I grimly thought that if the dear Queen could see the dark velvety skin of the girl my older brother had married, she'd be spinning like a top in there. I hoped she had her tightest corset on, as tombs don't come too large.

"People have become more tolerant since your day. We are free to marry whoever we want now." I felt an attack of spite coming on, and added, "And some girls even have lots of babies, and don't bother marrying. And what are you doing here anyway? Shouldn't you still be back on earth, haunting some old mansion?"

Araldina shuddered. "And stay there with no decent people to talk to? Live with those barbarous aliens from Mars? Oh no, my dear. We spirits talked it over, and decided to follow our families out here into the unknown. The poor dears who had no living descendants voted to adopt a family, and came along with them. Better than staying with those uncouth green-skinned Candalariums!"

"Kandaskans," I corrected her.

"Whatever."

"But why didn't you stay with Mum? Why come all the way out here with me? And you knew Jason was oriental anyway. You were at our wedding."

"But I do not intrude, my dear. I was at the back of the gathering, so I never saw his face. I cannot believe that your mother not only allowed you to marry a Chinaman, she actually kissed him! Oh dear, where are my smelling salts?"

"Grandmother...!"

"Oh, do call me Araldina."

"You stop insulting my husband. He's from Hong Kong, his name is Jason, and he fought most bravely in the war against the aliens. And now he's done with fighting, and he's putting his agriculture degree to good use by helping to farm this planet and make it a good home for our children. I'm very proud of him." I glanced down at him, and was startled to realise that he had slept right through our confrontation.

"Oh, don't worry, my dear child. We won't wake him. You see, you're still asleep, but this isn't a dream, so you'll remember it properly in the morning. Oh what fun we're going to have now that I can live among you instead of just being allowed to appear in photographs from time to time. And I can meet all your friends on this wonderful new planet, so much more hospitable to us than poor old Earth."

What was I getting myself into now? I asked myself, and a resounding "Holy shit!" echoed through my mind.

"Don't use such language," she sounded shocked. "It's not ladylike, and you have to be so careful on a new world to give a good first impression. I can see I shall have my work cut out to teach you how to compose yourself in a proper and fitting manner as my distant granddaughter."

Why couldn't the old bat have stayed with my mother on Novo Terra? Mum would have been pleased to parade a family ghost around, and she was much more ladylike than I, so wouldn't have had an ancient nursemaid continually on her back.

The old bat proved she could read minds as well as expressions, and chuckled gently. "New horizons, my dear. I tell you what. If I agree to stop mentioning that China – your husband, you can agree to be guided by me in matters of deportment. What do you say? And now dear, I'll leave you to your sleep. You must be exhausted. We shall talk more, later. Goodnight." And with a wave of her gloved hand, she faded from the room, and I fell back onto the pillow, and the room went dark.

Old Araldina was right about one thing, Come morning, I did remember with stark clarity every word hurled between us in the night.

Jason received the news of my midnight visitor with great enthusiasm. "She'll be able to help you teach the children at school proper manners and etiquette. Oh, won't your class be the envy of the other mothers in Rich Mountain valley? Oh come on dear, you wouldn't hit your little Chinaman, would you? Callie, put down that frying pan. Callie!"

© Sandy Parkinson Feb 2006. Word count 1924