Kingfisher (5 page)

“Well, now is not the time. And never mind who that was. It's my business.”

“I know,” he said grimly.

“You know what? Who that was, or that it's my business?” She threw up both hands, scattering questions everywhere into the night. “You want me to make decisions without giving me anything! I might as well go work for him—it's got to be less mysterious than this falling-down place. Rituals with letters, rituals with cauldrons, a bloody gaff, a missing knife, everyone in a time warp, looking back at the past, wishing for the good old days, hinting of portents, speaking in riddles, knowing things but never saying, never explaining—and you're mad at me for just thinking of going to work for Stillwater. How did you even know he was out here?”

He was silent, looking at her, and still, so still that for a moment he seemed to fade into the night, become one of those half-invisible things, both seen and unseen, so familiar that no one ever bothers to look, to recognize, until it's too late.

Then he did vanish. A wolf sat in the place where he had stood, its muzzle lifted and open in a long wild cry. Carrie, stunned motionless, heard in its fierce energy, its plaintiveness, the only answer that Merle could find to give her before the wolf ran off into the dark.

She was still trembling, her hands still icy, when she
stopped the truck beside Zed's cabin. She couldn't move except to wipe away the stray tears that told her she wasn't entirely a solid lump of ice. A solitary thought surfaced now and then from what seemed the completely functionless tangle of her brain. Why am I surprised? was one of them. Another came eventually, when she saw Zed's car lights turn onto the slough road: How long ago were there wolves around Chimera Bay?

After another silence, she heard her door open, felt Zed's hands tug at her.

“Hey. It's me. Carrie. What's wrong? Why didn't you wait inside? You're so cold . . .”

He took her inside, wrapped her in a blanket, and gave her something hot in a cup to thaw her fingers. She couldn't seem to stop shaking. Finally, he took her shoes off and pulled her into bed under the covers, where he could wrap himself around her.

“What happened? Carrie? Do you want me to call 911? Is it your dad? Did something happen to him?”

She drew a long breath, finally feeling bits of her—a lung, a nostril, an earlobe—begin to come back to life.

“No,” she whispered. “And yes. Either I'm going crazy, or my father turned into a wolf in front of me.”

She felt his chest rise as he sucked breath. “No. Merle's a werewolf?”

That had not occurred to her; she thought about it.

“No. I don't think so. It wasn't like that. It was more like— We were arguing in the Kingfisher parking lot—and he needed—he needed a different way to get me to understand what he was saying. Or not saying.”

“Wow.” He pulled up, leaning on an elbow, gazing down at her. “That is so cool.”

She felt her face melt, remember how to smile. “So. No 911.”

“Where'd he learn to do that? What is he?”

“I don't know.” Both eyes heated at once; the candles he had lit blurred and swam. “Another unanswered question.” The tears broke; she wiped at them, smiling again. “I hope he doesn't run around Chimera Bay like that and get himself shot. I should have known. I should have known by now not to be surprised at anything he would do. He talks to crows. He talks to the moon. Sometimes he makes me wonder exactly how long he's lived in this world. He says things—things that seem to go so far back that I don't understand how he can know them.”

“It's so amazingly bizarre. Like the life cycle of a salmon.”

“What?”

“That old, that strange. Or like sharks that never seem to sleep. Orcas. The leviathans of the deep that take your hook and don't let go until you're the one struggling on the end of the line, and they've changed the way you look at the world.”

A shiver ran over her, gossamer and cold as a ghostly finger.

“I wonder,” she whispered, “what leviathan is making my father afraid.”

O
n a stretch of coast road between towns, where traffic was light and the wind from the sea soughed through thick stands of hemlock and spruce, the Metro blew a tire. The small car shivered under Pierce's grip and tried to crawl up a tree trunk. Pierce turned the wheel wildly, got it stopped before they met, but not before something groaned under the car and he heard a crack like a bone breaking. He sat a moment, breathing raggedly. Nothing passed him on the road, which, he realized belatedly, was fortunate since the rear bumper was angled out into the lane. He moved finally, opened his door, and got out to survey the damage.

The right front tire was in a ditch and pretty much flattened. The right back tire seemed to have run over a milepost, which had not gone down without a fight; the metal had taken a bite out of the tire as it warped. The broken
bone had been a sapling caught under the car as it slewed off the road. The slender trunk had splintered above the root; the rest of it was wedged under the car.

Pierce swallowed dryly. He stood for a moment, listening, and heard only wind, no traffic. He reached inside the car, loosed the handbrake, then got behind the car and pushed. It rocked a moment wearily, then moved abruptly, mowing down whatever it had left standing, and rolling the front tire deeper into the ditch. At least the rear end was out of the road. He stood another moment, looking helplessly at the car, then pulled out his cell phone to call a tow truck. The phone rang in his hand, and he started. He should, he realized, have expected the call.

“Hi.”

“Pierce! Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I'm fine. You must know that already.”

“Where are you?” Heloise asked. “I don't recognize anything.”

He glanced around, looking for her borrowed eyes. A jay squawked at him suddenly, harshly, as if he had trashed the neighborhood on purpose.

Mom? he thought, then saw the hawk circling high above the trees, silent, dark-winged against the blue.

“I'm fine,” he said again. “I just had a blowout. I'll call a tow truck to take me to the nearest town, stay there until the car is fixed.”

She was silent a breath, circling with the hawk. “Wait. I think I know—”

“Mom—”

“That little town. Biddie Cove. I stayed a night there a long time ago, when I ran away from Severluna. It has the highest sea stack on the Wyvernhold coast, and a wonderful old diner that served the best chowder—”

“Mom. I have to call a tow truck.”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, you don't. I'll call Lilith Fisher. She can get Tye to send someone to help you.”

He caught his breath, startled and suddenly panicking. “No—I've come all this way—I don't want to go backward. Anyway, who is Lilith Fisher?”

“She's Hal Fisher's wife.”

“How—how did you—”

“We've known each other for years. Of course I told her that you were driving down this way. She called me yesterday when you pulled into the old Kingfisher Inn. She said that Tye offered you a room.”

“You never told me we had family in Chimera Bay.”

“Of course I didn't. Why would I want to give you any reason to find your way there?”

He gripped the phone, his fingers chilled. “Well, I'm not there now, and there's no reason why I should go all the way back. I'll get a tow to whatever garage is around here.”

“But they'd be happy to help you, and put you up as long as you need.”

“I know.” He swallowed, his eyes riveted on the pack in the car as though he could see the ritual blade and his guilt jumbled in there along with his shirts and underwear. “It's just that I need to solve my own problems. You need to let me. How will I make it in Severluna if I run to you for help
anytime something goes wrong? Mom?” He listened to the sea wind, the silence in his ear like a breath held. “Mom. Let the hawk get on with its life.”

Finally, he heard her sigh. “I know you're right. It's just hard for me not to want—”

“I know.”

“Will you call me later and let me know where you are?”

“I will. I promise.”

—

C
himera Bay, the tow-truck driver told him an hour later. They had the best parts and service department within a hundred miles any direction. And if it couldn't be fixed, the town had more car dealerships. Pierce climbed glumly into the truck, watched his past reel backward along the road until it came to a halt again at the place he had just left.

He spent a couple more hours waiting to hear the verdict, then walked up the highway to the nearest motel. He was closer to the busy south end of town than to the Kingfisher Inn; with luck he could skulk around unnoticed until the car was fixed. He saw several bars, a fish market, a wine market, a supermarket, a bookstore, a shoe store, one each of every kind of fast-food restaurant. He wandered among the streets as evening fell, looking into windows, reading menus, hoping nobody he had met the previous night would chance along and remember him. He glimpsed, inside the lobby of an old theater, the huge, golden body, the kohl-rimmed eyes of an ancient ruler upon his throne, welcoming moviegoers with a placid, perpetual smile. On a side street, he came across an elegant little restaurant tucked
into what had been a bank building. The round tables wore black cloths; red cut-crystal vases on them held a single small white calla lily. Stillwater's, the restaurant door said in simple lettering. No menu was posted.

“Excuse me,” someone said behind him as he looked curiously through the door's tinted window.

He turned. A woman stood on the sidewalk, smiling at him. He knew her. He did not. He lingered on the top of the steps in front of the door, trying to place her in his past, those eyes, that smile. He recognized her face finally from one of the few ungloomy things in the house on Cape Mistbegotten: a lovely painting from some romantic era of a medieval maiden welcoming her knight home from his travels. She had that same generous mouth, the same abundantly flowing champagne hair, those same widely spaced, heavy-lidded gray-green eyes that seemed to carry light from a sun already gone for the day.

“Oh,” he said, feeling his transfixed bones galvanized into motion. “Sorry. I'm in your way. Sorry.”

She laughed a little, a lovely sound that he imagined a rill would make, or a warbler. “That's okay.” She opened the door, then paused, looking down at him now. “Do you want to come in? We start serving a little later than most, but the bar is open.”

I just wrecked my car, he told her silently. I left my credit card smoldering in last night's bar. I'll probably have to ask my mother to sell the painting of you so I can pay my motel bill. No way should I follow you into this place.

“Sure,” he said dazedly, and followed her in.

“I'm Sage Stillwater,” she said, as she seated him on one of the four leather-cushioned stools at the tiny bar.

“Pierce Oliver,” he said, taking the piece of paper she
handed him without seeing it, still caught in the wonder of watching a painting move, change expression, talk. He made an effort. “Do you own the place?”

“My husband does. I do some cooking. I also serve food, clear the tables, mop the floors, and tend bar. If you'd like a drink.”

He shook his head, changed his mind, changed it again. “I don't know,” he said finally as she smiled. “Will you have one with me?”

She considered that, her head bent slightly, long, rippling hair falling like a veil behind her lovely profile. “Let me just see what Todd needs.”

She moved among the tables toward curtains hanging over what might have been the bank-vault doorway, doorless now, but still heavily framed with steel set into the gray and white marble walls. He watched her mindlessly, her long limbs in black skirt and gray silk shirt moving quietly, gracefully. She disappeared. He straightened, feeling as though he had been for a few timeless moments utterly bewitched. He noticed the paper in his hand, laid it on the bar. No one came in while he waited. He felt oddly alone though he thought he heard the rise and fall of voices from far away, maybe from the street. Or maybe it was only the incoherent sound of distant traffic. The café curtains, black like the tablecloths and shadowing the lower half of the broad windows, gave him a view of the bay at the end of the street, the water gull-gray with the coming twilight and absolutely still.

He heard footsteps. But they were outside, he realized, on the sidewalk. He looked around, wanting a drink now. His eyes fell on the paper lying on the marble bar. It wasn't
so much a menu, he saw as he scanned it, as a manifesto. Something that seemed utterly pretentious, absurd, amid the prosaic diners, car lots, chain motels of Chimera Bay.

Eat, it pretty much commanded, what I give you. I'll tell you what it will cost you when I decide the meal is over.

His cell phone rang.

He jumped wildly. “Mom,” he breathed, hunched over the phone as though he were in church. “I can't talk now.”

“What in the world were you thinking?”

“What?”

“When you stole that knife?”

Her voice sounded strange, amazed and completely bewildered. But he was the stranger, he realized, unrecognizable, unpredictable. “I wasn't,” he said tightly. “Thinking. I just wanted. I'll let you know why when I know.”

“But, Pierce, you don't— You've never done— This is so unlike you. Where are you? You promised to let me know. I can't find you anywhere, and I've been so worried, especially after Lilith told me. She said that things of such ancient power find their own paths; they take what they need. That is hardly comforting. Sweetheart, be careful.”

“Mom—”

“Better yet, just come home. Return the knife and come home.”

He opened his mouth to answer, found no argument, no answer, nothing at all that either one of them would understand, except that he could undo nothing.

He gave up, turned the phone off, and dropped it into his pocket. Sage pushed aside the dark, heavy curtains, came toward him carrying something. Again he was drawn into
the timeless vortex that seemed to flow around her, a spell she cast without awareness, with every movement, every shift of expression. As she drew closer, he sensed the disturbance behind the calm, saw the faint flush of red in her eyelids. He swallowed, stunned at himself, at what he felt and saw, at her for making him see.

“I'm sorry.” Her voice seemed unchanged, but her smile was less luminous, more controlled. “Todd says he won't cook tonight. We are now closed.”

“Oh.”

“It happens, sometimes.”

“Was it—” He stopped, cleared his throat. “Something I did? Or didn't? Do?”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head but without letting him see her eyes. “No. Maybe he just knows that no one else will come in tonight. Sometimes he knows things like that. Sometimes they matter, sometimes not. He made this for you.”

She put a small, covered plate down on the bar, and let him see her eyes now, direct, unsmiling.

“A consolation?” he asked, gazing back at her. “Or to make me regret what he won't give me?”

“Maybe,” she answered simply, “so that you will come back.”

His hand hovered over the black cloth covering the little plate. Then he dropped his hand, stood up, still holding her eyes. “Then I'll come back,” he said, and turned away from her. As he closed the door behind him, he looked back at her, saw her staring down at the plate, still covered on the bar.

He wandered the streets a while, aimlessly, while the sky over Chimera Bay grew black. Traffic thinned, shops
closed, a couple of restaurants turned out their lights before he finally bought some take-out sushi and a six-pack to carry back to the motel. When he was nearly there, something furry and four-legged darted in front of him and hissed furiously, every hair on its body standing on end.

He blinked down at it, then rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I'm sorry. Just let me get in out of the dark.”

The cat wailed at him, stalked away, hair still erect. After a few feet, it shook itself, then sat down in the middle of the sidewalk and looked around a moment. It gave up trying to figure out what it was doing there, and began to lick a paw.

I know just how you feel, Pierce told it as he passed.

He ate sushi and drank beer on his bed in the quiet motel, staring mindlessly at the news. Sometime in the middle of the night, he remembered his mother and the phone he had never turned back on. He pulled the pillow over his head and went back to sleep, dreamed of cooking strange and wonderful dishes, none of which seemed to be made of anything he would have recognized as food.

The Metro was fixed by noon the next day, but Pierce couldn't persuade himself to get into it and go. That day passed. Another. A third. He watched TV; he wandered out for food when he had to, trying to look inconspicuous and dodging growling dogs, spitting cats, a crow that fluttered into his face and yelled at him. He picked up his drained phone at one point, hunted around for the charger, then stood looking blankly at it, unable to find the energy or the interest in connecting one to the other. At noon and again at twilight, he wove a labyrinthine path through the streets that led him surreptitiously closer and closer to the heart of the matter: Stillwater's.

No matter what time he reached it, no matter how elaborately he stalked it, winding his way through side streets and alleyways, trying deliberately not to think about it until he finally permitted himself to pass it, the restaurant was always closed. He would wait, skulking across the street. It would stay closed. Finally, he would walk down to the waterfront to gaze at the quiet bay, where a neatly painted tugboat or a sailboat or a barge full of logs might be following the shipping channel out to sea. If he was lucky, and wasn't accosted by his mother's familiar of the day, he would turn finally and walk the complex labyrinth again.