Oddest of All (11 page)

But this—this is strong. When was it last this strong?

Shall I prepare to fly?
she wonders.
After all these years must I take wing once more?

No. It is not time for that. And she does not want to leave her grotto, this sacred pool that is her shelter and her temple. Not yet. There is still time.

There is always time.

Much too much of it.

The moon rises.

Melusine slides into her pool to swim.

Farther away still, on the hidden island of Avalon, another presence stirs, feeling hope for the first time in thousands of years. . . .

 

· · ·

 

As I left
La Grenouille Grise
with my prize, I thought of my father. How could I not, considering what I carried?

He had been a good man when I knew him. But in his youth he had been a beast. Oh, not in the literal sense; I am not half bear, or boar, or anything like that. In fact, were my father's blood to be truly accounted he would be found one-quarter angel.
Fallen
angel, it is true, though he did have his moments of grace. But it was the fallen part that marked and marred his life, finally driving him to the violent act that had the side effect of toppling the delicately balanced marriage of my grandparents into the realm of tragedy.

That was hundreds of years before I was born. But given the longevity I inherited from him, I have had time enough to piece the story together. Not that it hadn't been told in a thousand forms already. I've read the ones that were written down, and even the most corrupt have at least a grain of the truth at their core. For that matter, I suppose there is no way to know if I have all the truth, either. I say this despite my discovery of my grandfather's testimony, which I alone have read in the last two hundred years. And I say it despite the things my grandmother told me at the end. I have
their
truth, I think. Perhaps that is as close as any of us can hope to get.

Carrying my purchase, I left Paris for the west of France, for the soil in which my family's strengths and sorrows are rooted. It would be my first return in over two hundred years to the cottage where my father died, where I had sat beside him that long, long night.

As I traveled, I read again from the crumbling pages that held my grandfather's story.

 

Extract from the Testimony of
Raymond de Lusignan
(as offered to the abbot of the Monastery
of Saint-Denis in the year of the Lord 953)

______________________________________________________

 

You have asked how I first met my wife. It happened because of what was, to that point, the worst day of my life. I had gone to the forest to hunt with my friend and protector, Count Aimeri of Poitiers. We became separated. While we were apart my friend stumbled across an enormous boar. The beast attacked, and managed to gore the count in the leg.

When I heard Aimeri's scream I raced toward it. Entering a clearing I saw what was happening and dashed forward, sword raised. But as I stood above them and slashed downward, the boar and my dear friend twisted beneath me. I cried out in horror. My blade had struck deep into he who had been like a father to me.

Rage drove my sword again, and I dispatched the boar in a matter of seconds. At once I dropped to my knees beside the count and tried to stanch the horrible wound I had inflicted on him. It was too deep; no matter how I pressed and held, I could not stop the flow of crimson life.

Within moments, my friend was dead.

Dropping my face into my bloodstained hands, I wept until I was senseless.

I do not know how much time passed before I was able to stand again. When I could, I stumbled back into the forest, stunned and sickened by what I had done. I was also afraid for my own life if the accident should be thought murder when it was discovered.

In this sorry state I wandered aimlessly for several days. Then one night, hungry, thirsty, and half mad, I heard a beautiful voice raised in song. Following it, I came to a wall of mist. The voice lured me on. Staggering through the mist, I found myself in a moonlit clearing where three maidens danced at the edge of a light-silvered pool. The fairest of them came to ask what troubled me. Though I was afraid to confess what I had done, she somehow eased my fear and the words poured from me like water from a jug.

When I had finished my story the maiden took my hands, which were still brown with the long-dried blood of my friend. They looked strange lying in hers, which were white as milk. She led me into the pool. There she undressed me and bathed me. As she did, the blood and the sorrow and the fear all seemed to wash away together. I felt as if under an enchantment. I suppose it is possible that she was indeed working some spell on me. But I do not think that was the case. I think the only magic was the moonlight, and her tenderness. Or perhaps the only magic was love, for I loved her then as I love her now, all so many years and so many tears later, when I would do anything to take back what happened.

 

Several miles separated the train station from the cottage. Even so, I made the journey on foot.

I prefer walking when I have a great deal on my mind.

It felt strange to see the old place again. I had kept it all these years with the vague thought that I would someday return to occupy it. Whether I had not yet done so was because I still wasn't ready to settle down, or because I secretly feared it was haunted, I could not say.

The couple I had hired to care for the place—the current couple, for of course I had gone through many caretakers over the previous two centuries—had done their work tolerably well. The dust was not too thick, nor the windows too grimy.

Though the journey had been tiring, I slept fitfully that night. I tossed and turned, tormented by memories and half expecting to hear a wailing at the windows.

When morning finally came I walked to the remains of my grandparents' castle—nothing now but some broken, moss-covered walls that bore mute testimony to the place's former grandeur.

The forest was not far beyond. It was old and dark and all too clearly haunted—by spirits, I suppose, though I didn't see any of them, but even more by memory and sorrow.

Tomorrow
, I told myself.
I'll enter the wood tomorrow.

In the end it was two days before I found the courage to start this last leg of my journey. When I did, I carried a pack with enough food and water for several days, for I suspected that the way would be long. I also suspected that if I ate or drank anything in the place I was seeking I would never be allowed to leave.

Underneath those supplies, carefully wrapped for its protection, was the glass cube I had purchased at
La Grenouille Grise
.

The trees were ancient, thick, gnarled. Their roots, which rumpled the leaf-covered ground, seemed to reach up to grab my feet as I passed, resulting in more falls than I care to remember.

Unseen creatures moved and muttered in the branches above me and the undergrowth beside me. Mushrooms of an unnatural size, some a sickly blue gray color, others a violent red, grew in clusters beneath the trees.

I could not bring myself, in this forest, to use a hatchet and blaze a trail. I had considered bringing ribbons to tie around branches as markers, but I was fairly certain that when it was time to return I would have found the ribbons missing. Either that, or there would have been a hundred times more than I had originally brought, fluttering in bright profusion for the sake of my bafflement. So I carried a pad and made careful notes and sketches to help me remember my path.

 

· · ·

 

It comes closer. Melusine's heart stirs, fluttering like a caged thing trying to escape. Sorrow and memory—which are really the same things for her—rise like a flood, threatening to drown her.

What can it be?
she wonders, raising her head to the sky.
Do you know, Mother? Are you watching?

I know you're still alive, somewhere.

Can't you ever relent?

 

· · ·

 

As I made my way through the haunted forest my thoughts turned, naturally, to my father and his great crime.

Like everything in our family, it had to do with family. His brother, in this case.

Father had had nine brothers in all—nine uncles that I never knew, for all were dead before I entered this world. What I do know, both from Father and from the tales, is that each was stranger than the one who came before, each born with his own curse and his own special gift.

Father was the seventh. He was named Geoffroi, but everyone called him Geoffroi the Tooth, or Geoffroi Big Tooth, or simply The Tooth. This was because of the boarlike fang, bigger than a thumb, that jutted up from the side of his mouth. That was his curse, of course—that, and his ferocious temper.

The gift was his enormous strength. But that combination of strength and temper was a curse in itself. As might be expected, he was both respected and deeply feared in the lands surrounding my grandparents' castle.

Mostly feared.

One day my father and his younger brother, Froimond, got into a fight. No one knew, later, what it was about; some small thing that grew out of all proportion, probably. Terrified of his brother's temper, Froimond took refuge in a monastery.

Driven into a frenzy at not being able to reach Froimond, Father started a fire at the monastery gate. It quickly spread out of control. In the end it burned the place to the ground, killing the abbot and all the monks. A hundred God-fearing men perished in that blaze—a hundred and one, if you count my uncle.

When word of this atrocity reached the castle, it drove my grandfather to speak the words that changed everything.

 

· · ·

 

Memories crowd Melusine's mind more than usual tonight. As she gazes into the pool it seems she can see once more the face of her beloved Raymond.

How long has it been since his death, how many centuries?

How long has she lingered on in this loathsome shape?

How gladly would she lie in the earth at his side if only she could!

She sighs, remembering how she had loved him from the moment of their meeting, first for his tender sorrow, his boylike confusion over the accidental killing of his friend. Then, and more deeply, for the way he looked at her. Last, and most of all, for the unquestioning way he accepted her condition that if they married she must be left to herself on Saturdays, and he must never question why.

No
, she thinks now.
Not my condition. The condition set by my vengeful mother
.

She closes her eyes, admitting ruefully that it was her own impulsive act of vengeance that had driven her mother to curse her thus.

Is it in our blood
, she wonders,
this thirst for vengeance? Is that what drove my poor son to commit his horrible crime
—
the blood Geoffroi inherited from me, and I from Mother, fallen angel that she was?

She corrects herself.
Not was. Is. Eternal and undying
.

She wonders if this fault in the blood is why her mother was one of the Fallen.

But what failed creator is this, who could not make his angels better beings?

 

Extract from the Testimony of
Raymond de Lusignan
(as offered to the abbot of the Monastery
of Saint-Denis in the year of the Lord 953)

______________________________________________________

 

The abbot asks if I didn't realize there was something strange about Melusine. Of course I knew she was different. How could I not? But I was so dazzled with love for her that I willingly accepted her single condition for our marriage: that I must not seek to know what she did on Saturdays. Did this trouble me? How could it not? But her love was so pure and strong that I set my concerns aside. When did mortal man ever have so beautiful a bride—or a better helpmate? I would have been lost without her, for she brought to our marriage both wealth and cleverness, first guiding me as I made my peace with Count Aimeri's family for his accidental death, then as we built our home.

And then she gave me my sons.

Guy was the first, Guy with his startling eyes, one green as the forest, one red as blood. Then his nine brothers, each with his own deformity and his own gift.

At first, love blinded me to their oddities—love for the boys and, even more, my love for their mother. So when the whispers began, the dark mutterings that Melusine had a secret lover and our children carried demon blood, I ignored them. You know how the peasants will talk. Besides, in the six days we had together every week, Melusine was so tender and so true, so attentive to me and to the boys, that I could not doubt her love.

She used to sing to me at night, you know. Her voice was like the sound of a mountain stream. I think that's what I miss most of all. Her singing.

Excuse me. I know, I know, it seems strange for me to weep, even now, even after all this. But it was a happy time.

The last happy time.

My brother was jealous of that happiness. He had found little enough in his own life, despite his wealth, which was far greater than mine, and despite his favored position as firstborn. Perhaps that is why he could not simply be glad for me. Perhaps that is why he worked so hard to poison my mind against Melusine.

No. I must not blame my brother for my fault. Love should have been enough to shield my heart from his poisonous tongue. But his constant whispers, his sneers, his insinuating questions—these things wore away at me as water wears on a rock.