Kingfisher (20 page)

Val and Leith stood below. Val was pulling on his jacket and sliding weapons into its hidden pockets. Leith, holding Pierce's clothes and boots and the kitchen knife, was scanning the lower windows and shouting his name.

Pierce called back, then found his way down swiftly and joined them. Leith, looking pale and harried, reached out, hugged him tightly with one arm, then handed him his pants.

“Hurry,” he begged, “before she comes back. I'd rather face the kraken at the bottom of the sea than that again.”

Val was looking askew at Pierce, astonished. “How on earth did you break that spell?”

“I didn't. Our mother found us.”

Leith stared at him. “That was Heloise?”

Pierce nodded, pulling on his shirt. “The sorceress made a mistake and let a living animal into her spell. I told you,” he added to Val, “that you couldn't lie.”

“You were right.”

“What animal?” Leith asked.

“A rat. My mother has a habit of watching out for me.
She uses just about anything with eyes.” He paused, added with wonder, “I can't believe she came all the way down from Cape Mistbegotten for this.”

“She was the dragon,” Val reminded him.

“No. That was only her making. She probably borrowed some other local creature for that illusion.”

“But she wasn't the basilisk.”

“No. I was wrong about that.”

“We were all wrong,” Leith murmured. He gave Pierce his jacket and the knife. “Where is she? Where did they both go?”

“Last I saw, they went flying down the beach. And I think you're right,” Pierce added uneasily. “We should get out of here before the sorceress comes back.”

Val produced his cell. “I'll call our driver.”

Leith, still looking unsettled, incredulous, said, “I can't believe . . . I had no idea she could— Did you have any idea she was that— Do you think she knew that Val and I were in trouble? Or did she only do this for you?”

Pierce sighed. “Honestly? I don't know. You should ask her that. You should find her. You should talk.”

Leith, his gaze shifting toward the sea, said nothing; after a moment, he gave a short nod.

They had walked halfway down the long drive from the sorceress's house when they saw the limo pull up at the end of it.

T
here were knights everywhere, suddenly, in Chimera Bay. Carrie, shopping for Stillwater's, saw them strolling down streets, eating lunch in the brew-pub, getting their bikes and cars looked at in the local garages, roaming through antique stores and the flea market, even appearing at weekend garage sales. They were hunting, Carrie learned from Jayne and Bek, who paid attention to lunchtime gossip. The knights were in pursuit of something inexplicable, indescribable, that might resemble a mixing bowl, or a wine goblet, or a flowerpot made of gold. They would know it when they saw it.

They didn't stay long, overnight at the most, though it was hard to tell when they all dressed alike. Chimera Bay, a serviceable wayside along the highway between greater, more complex cities, presented a friendly and ingenuous face to strangers passing through. No one would stay long
to look for wonders there. A few found Stillwater's restaurant, though, busy as she was in the kitchen, Carrie rarely knew until after who had eaten her cooking.

Some workdays were longer than others: when she cooked for lunch at Stillwater's, then dinner at the Kingfisher. She scarcely saw Zed on those days, much less her father, who, after his amazing shape-changing dance in the moonlight, had vanished again. She thought, after that vision, nothing else could surprise her. But, on one of the long days, which started early when she bought groceries for Stillwater's before lunch, she walked in hauling bags and found Sage Stillwater on a stool at the bar eating a sandwich.

Carrie nearly dropped the groceries.

“Is that tuna?” she asked incredulously, catching a whiff of it.

Sage nodded, making a little face. “Out of a can, even. Todd's funny that way. He gives me such ordinary food now and then. I have no idea why. Maybe he just gets tired and runs out of ideas. And he is so hurt if I don't eat it.” She lifted the thick, graceless slabs of bread with the grayish ooze of tuna salad between them, gazed at the concoction reluctantly, and forced herself to take another bite. “Pickles,” she said, grimacing again after she swallowed. “Mayonnaise from a jar. Celery. Onions.”

“Sounds like something on the Kingfisher menu,” Carrie said with disbelief.

“Capers.”

“Well, maybe not.” She noted the salad beside the sandwich plate: tomatoes that looked exactly like themselves,
undisguised red onion and pepper, a mass of greens for all the world to see. “Does he eat that, too?”

“No,” Sage said, laughing. “Never. He wouldn't be caught dead eating anything less than beautiful.” She had another face-off with the unlovely sandwich. “It hasn't killed me yet, and it makes him happy.” She sighed, and bit into it again.

Carrie, mystified, took the groceries into the kitchen and began to prep for lunch.

When Stillwater came in later, she was turning truffle oil into a mist to give a delicate, subtle flavor to thin diamonds of raw beef for the bottom layer of a lunch bite. He tasted one, grunted something approving, and passed on before she remembered the tuna sandwich. She went on to the Kingfisher Grill with the scent of truffles in her hair. By the time she helped Ella replenish the dessert tray and started cooking suppers, the homey smells of banana cream pie and frying fish overpowered any lingering mementos from Stillwater's kitchen.

But Ella kept giving her little fretful glances whenever she was between whirlwinds of this or that.

“You're getting too thin,” she commented as she finished making up half a dozen salads and put them on a tray for Marjorie.

“Am I?” Carrie said, surprised.

“Have you been eating?”

“Of course. All the time.”

Ella gave her one of those narrow-eyed looks of pure perception, the last thing Carrie wanted to inspire. “Are you working another job?”

“No,” Carrie said, shoveling halibut over to sizzle on its other side. She felt cold, hollow with the lie; she peppered the fish, not meeting Ella's eyes. “I have been looking,” she temporized. “Just for a part-time, something mindless and easy, to make a little more money. But I don't want to change my hours here. I'm fine with here.” She paused to test the silence, the weight of Ella's regard. “I'm worried about my father. We seem to be at odds, these days. We can't agree on things, and most of the time I never know where he is. When I do see him, he doesn't talk to me.”

“Ah.” Ella went back to bustling, spooning green beans, garlic mash on a plate for Carrie's halibut, then filling bowls, two chowders and a split pea ham for one of Bek's tables. “You want to leave him. Like your mother did. No wonder he's balking.”

Carrie laughed a little, inhaled a pepper flake, and turned away quickly to cough. “Can you blame us? He doesn't exactly make things easy.”

Bek backed into the door, arms lined with salad plates; he slid them into the sink, picked up the two chowders, and vanished again.

“Busy tonight,” Ella commented. “Strangers all over town, I hear.” She grated some carrot curls on top of the split pea bowl, and handed it to Bek as he reappeared. Then she stopped moving again, standing in the middle of the floor, staring down at the ancient linoleum as though it were expressing something profound, or just revealing old memories.

“Nobody, living or dead, makes things easy even when you love them. Especially then.”

Jayne whirled through the double doors like a dancer,
her purple hair swirling, her tray full of dirty dishes. “There's a pair of black-haired, blue-eyed twin knights out there I think we need to keep. I'll take one and you take the other, Carrie. They need a blue cheese dressing and a chowder.”

Ella reached for dishes; Jayne popped some corn muffins and butter into a basket and danced out again.

Carrie checked the bar when she finished work but found no Merle there. She went home and crept gratefully into bed. Sometime in the night, she woke up feeling odd, somehow amiss, then realized it was nothing, only hunger. Zed came in then from working the late shows at the theater, and she took in a long breath of the smell of hot buttered popcorn on his skin as he rolled in beside her. She went back to sleep and dreamed of Merle, or maybe she heard him in her dreams, singing his song of love or loss or dire warning to the night.

“You're working too hard,” Zed told her sleepily the next morning, as they drank coffee together in the farmhouse kitchen.

“I'm not the one who has to get up at the crack of dawn and walk Harlan Jameson's puppy.”

“That's only for a week, while he's out of town. I think you should quit working for Stillwater. He hasn't told you anything. All he's done is make you feel guilty about working for him. Your tightest pair of jeans is starting to sag on you. You're getting some killer cheekbones, but I don't think all this is good for you.”

“I'm fine,” Carrie said without really listening. “You should eat something. I could scramble some eggs.”

“There are no eggs. I looked. There's no bread for toast.”

“Milk and cereal?”

“There's a wilted stalk of celery and a jar of mustard.”

“Seriously?” Carrie put her cup down, went to stick her head in the fridge. “Well, where did— Who's been eating—” She opened the freezer. “There's ice cream. No. Frozen yogurt.” She stared at it, and felt something dark, constricting, ease around her thoughts, her heart. “He hates frozen yogurt. He says it's unnatural.”

“Who?”

She looked at him, smiling. “My father. He's been here laying waste to the kitchen.”

Zed didn't smile back. “And this took you how long to notice? How many sandwiches ago did he finish your bread? How many bowls of cereal?”

“I don't know. What does it matter? I miss him, Zed. I want so much to be able to talk to him again. I'm just happy he's been here at all.”

“It matters because you've stopped bothering to feed yourself.” He got up abruptly, pulled the yogurt out of the freezer, and handed her a spoon. “Yogurt. It's good for you. People eat it for breakfast. Eat some human food for once instead of those airy nothings you eat at Stillwater's. I'm not moving until—”

“Oh, all right,” Carrie said. She prodded a spoonful out of the box, sucked on it until it melted. “Here. Your turn.”

“Finish it.”

“I will, I will, I promise. You'd better go before the puppy chews its way out of the house.”

He lingered, his forehead creased, his eyes dark, watching her excavate another bite, until the thought of the ravaging, whimpering beast tugged him away. “I'm bringing
groceries tonight.” It sounded like a threat. “Somebody around here needs to exercise some common sense.”

She tossed the carton and the spoon into the freezer when she heard his engine start, and went outside to see if she could spot the errant wolf.

She found him by his singing.

Crooning, more like, she thought. If a wolf could. It was a gentle sort of whine, hitting notes of love, lullaby, and play, the sound a creature might make that had spent an entirely satisfying night, and looked forward to another just like it. She could not see the wolf though it sounded close, just behind a tree, or around the great fallen snag of a root-ball lying partly in the grasses, partly in mud the ebbing tide had uncovered. She followed the wolf song through the trees behind the house, the hemlock and cedar, the occasional apple tree orphaned by a long-forgotten farm, scattering the last of its blossoms among its roots. She saw the deer the wolf ignored, nibbling on a shrub. The song, a tangible thing now, like a beckoning finger, or the wolf's shadow sliding out of eyesight every time she saw it, led her deeper into the forest, but never far from the tranquil shallows reflecting the flush of light in the wake of the rising sun.

The wolf sang. The song flowed into her ears, into her head and heart, then, like sunrise, it illuminated her eyes. She heard herself humming with it, now, seeing what the wolf saw, what it sang to, what it sang about. The daily ebb of water, the blue heron in the tree, the sleeping owl, the patient, peaceful trees, season after season of leaves falling, petals falling, needles flying, cones budding, petals forming again, opening again. The rich, tangled wealth of smells
from the water, the living treasure buried in the mud, clinging to the long grasses, waiting for the tide to turn, return.

At last she saw the wolf, sitting on its haunches, waiting for her.

She walked up to it. It had stopped singing, just sat there, silent, motionless, its eyes the color of the drifts of morning mist above the waters.

Its eyes closed. When they opened again, her father stood there, gazing at her out of weary human eyes. He was mud-stained, disheveled; there was dried eelgrass in his hair. He didn't speak; neither did she. She just put her arms around him tightly, clinging to him thoughtlessly as she had when she was a child and believed he could protect her from anything.

Then she dropped her arms, stepped back to see his face. He lifted his hands, gripped her arms, staring into her eyes. She saw crow wings in his, the full moon, lightning flashing in the dark, turning every hidden thread of slough water into molten silver. The sudden light ignited, turned to amber and fire; she stood reflected in the wyvern's eye.

She drew a deep breath, seeing herself finally, answering the one question that she hadn't even known to ask.

Daughter of the wolf. Daughter of the magus.

“Yes,” she said tightly. “I want this. I need this. Whatever you can give me.”

“You need to see this world before you can recognize the other.”

She nodded, not entirely understanding but trusting him to arm her.

“I have been calling for help,” he added. “I think I have
finally been heard. I had to find someone who would remember me. Not many left who remember back that far.”

Her eyes stung suddenly because he was finally talking to her, telling her, and because she could finally hear him. She did not have to ask how far back. He had seen the living wyvern, that was how far. He stood with his old, gawping boots rooted so far into the deep they probably reached bottom, down where the new things had started to crawl out of the sea onto the first of the drying mud.

She saw the glimmer of a smile:
Not quite that far.
He went back as far as that, at least: to the beginning of laughter.

She said, “Tell me what to do.”

“I'm going to give you something. Give it to Lilith when you take her Hal's note this morning.”

“All right.”

He leaned forward; she felt his lips brush her cheek, before they paused over her ear.

He left a word there.

Then he said, “Sorry about the empty cupboards. I didn't have time—”

“That's okay. Zed is going grocery shopping.”

“Good. He's a good man. I hope he stays around.”

He lingered, filling his eyes with her, even while a pointed ear nudged through his hair, one hand wavered into claw and back. “Be careful,” he said, his voice sliding between human and howl, between now and then, so ancient and unwieldy it might have been a slab of granite trying out a human word.

Her eyes burned again. “Okay.”

Then she was watching the wolf slip shadowlike through
the trees, giving away nothing of itself, not even a scent to startle the grazing deer.

—

L
ilith barely gave her a chance to speak when Carrie brought Hal's note to the tower suite and knocked on her door later that morning. She opened the door and whirled away, phone to her ear, papers taking flight off her desk as she passed.

“No,” she was saying. “We haven't caught sight of them yet. I've never heard of a sorceress on that part of the coast. I'll keep some eyes on her down there. I'm glad to hear you trimmed a few feathers out of her wings. It was astonishing to see their faces on the news—” She came to the edge of the carpet and turned again, a tide in full flood, until she saw Carrie and stopped so abruptly the breeze in her wake seemed to flow past her and out the door.