The Firebird's Vengeance (61 page)

When Grace straightened back and shoulders. “What would happen if I did?”

“Well, you would stay at my house, at least at first. Then we’ll see about finding you a place, or you can just keep house with me, with us. Whatever you’d like.”

“You have a house there?”

Bridget colored a little. “As it turns out, I’m quite rich. My father, Avanasy, was elevated to the nobility by Medeoan’s father and he got some … appertanences to go with his title. Medeoan held on to the estate … she had planned to give it to me, but things got complicated. Anyway, the current emperor declared Avanasy’s property and fortune to be my rightful inheritance, and there turned out to be rather a lot of it.”

Bridget stood, her hand still outstretched, and crossed the room to where Grace sat. “Come with me, Aunt Grace. You’ll have a home and we can finally be family.”

But we are, Bridget. We are
.

Grace looked at her niece, and took her hand. The weight of years of anger slipped from her back, and Grace knew she was truly free at last. Now she could make her choice, without a score to settle, without an imagined slight to redress, without fear of what her mind held or her eyes saw.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think I will.”

“You’d be welcome.” Bridget squeezed her hand. “I promise. By the others, and by me.”

“I believe you.” Grace felt herself smile. “But I’ve spent almost fifty years in this world hiding from what I am, and what I have been. I think it’s high time I found out just what I’ve been hiding from.”

Bridget expelled a sigh that did not not sound either relieved or melancholy. She sounded … satisfied.

“Then, will you come with me as far as the lakeside?”

Grace’s eyes narrowed. “To say good-bye?”

Bridget’s smile grew wistful. “Among other things. Please walk with me, Aunt Grace.”

Grace peered searchingly at the younger woman for a moment, but her niece’s face gave nothing away, not even to Grace’s experienced eye.
Well, if you’re going to learn to trust, you’d best make up your mind to do it. hadn’t you?

“Let me get my shawl,” she said.

Wrapped lightly in the warm summer night, the two women walked down the empty streets under the light of the full moon. Bridget steered them away from the wharf that was crowded with the noise of men’s voices even at this hour. Instead, they walked down beneath the shelter of the bluff to where the grass turned to sand. Grace found herself remembering her girlhood, so long ago, standing on the island sands, telling Ingrid all the fine things she planned to do with her life. She was going to Madison. She’d go to teacher’s college. She was going to Chicago. She’d become a nurse. She’d marry a millionaire who would take her to New York City and maybe all the way to Europe. There was more than one young man in Bayfield, she’d boasted, who would take her as far as Madison, and then she’d be on her way.

But the ghosts and the voices had been too many, and the young men had been as false as she, and she had shut herself away from them all.

Ahead of them spread the great black and silver lake. Above stretched the sky with the moon and the millions of silver stars. This had been the edge of the world for as long as she could remember. She was not surprised to hear Bridget say this other place, this Isavalta, lay beyond it.

Bridget put a hand on Grace’s shoulder, silently urging her to stay where she was. Bridget herself walked forward, right to the restless edge of the water. Careless of her boots and hems, she took one more step so that she stood with one foot in the water and one on dry land. She pulled what looked like a small ball of yarn or twine from her apron pocket. Looping one end around her wrist, she drew back her arm and hurled the ball out toward the center of the lake. The slender line payed out, shining silver in the moonlight, and finally drifted down to the water, and promptly sank into the darkness.

“I have come to the edge of the world,” she said in the strange, singsong voice she had used to work the charm that had taken her away that last time. “I stand with one foot in the world of my birth and one foot in the world of my blood. I weave the line of silver, of moonlight, and of blood and I make the great cry. Let the wall be breached by this my command. Let the breach be healed by my further word. Let my mother pass the breach and let her stand forth. This is my word, and my word is strong.”

Grace felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. At the words “my mother,” her tongue froze to the roof of her mouth. Something was happening, she had no doubt of it. She felt it in the fiber of her soul, but what that was she could not have said, and she was afraid to guess.

Around them, the moonlight seemed to blur, as if her eyes had suddenly filled with tears. She wiped at them, and when she lowered her hand, Ingrid stood on the waters before her.

Not Ingrid aged as she should have been, but Ingrid as she remained in Grace’s memory. Tall and straight, with their mother’s auburn hair, and her working dress and apron tidy. It was impossible that she should be there, but she was real just the same. Grace had no room for doubt in her.

With a cry, she ran forward, splashing into water up to her knees, both hands flung out to embrace her sister standing so calm and smiling in front of her. It had been so many years, she had lost count. It had been the measure of Bridget’s life and longer, and …

And Ingrid was long, long dead.

Grace pulled up short, up to her knees in the lake that was still icy cold despite the summer’s warmth. Still, she did not shiver.

“You’re a ghost,” she said to Ingrid.

Ingrid nodded once.

“But you’re true. Bridget brought you here.”

Again, Ingrid nodded. A wind blew, and it did not stir a hair on her head or ruffle her apron hem.

“Can you speak?”

Ingrid smiled.
A very little. The gift of our family has always been sight
.

For a moment, she stood and did nothing but stare. Here it was, the moment she’d wished for. Ingrid was back. She could say anything, ask anything. A thousand imagined conversations poured out of her memory, but none of them moved her voice.

Instead, she said, “I’m sorry, Ingrid.”

Forgive me, Grace. I wanted to come for you
.

Grace embraced her sister. It should not have been possible, but it was. From deep memory she knew the warmth of Ingrid’s arms in the featherlight touch of her ghost. The bitter years washed away in the waters of the lake, and she was seventeen again, and she cared for nothing, and she loved her sister.

After a time, Ingrid pulled away, a warm breath of spring passing Grace’s cheek.

Bridget is growing tired
.

“Yes, of course.” Grace wiped her cheeks. This time the tears were real, and they must have flowed freely for some time. Her face was as damp as if she’d dipped it in the lake. “This can be no small thing she’s doing.”

No, but she is very strong, my Bridget
.

“I would expect that of any daughter of yours.”

Pride rolled in waves from Ingrid’s shade.
Be happy, Grace
.

“I will,” she said, and she knew it to be true. “Good-bye, Ingrid.”

The ghost’s attention turned briefly from Grace, and back on the shore, she saw Bridget nod.

“This is my word,” said Bridget. “And my word is firm. I draw back the silver line, and I heal the breach. This is my word.”

Slowly, as if it were a heavy towline instead of a slender thread, Bridget drew the string from the water, inch by inch. The lake’s cold finally soaked into Grace, and she realized that if she did not move now, her feet would be completely numbed and she would not be able to move at all. She cast a last glance toward Ingrid, but the ghost had already faded into moonlight. It was all right. They had said all that had needed saying, and no parting look was truly required.

Clumsy, cold, and wet through, Grace hiked up her hems and waded to shore. She minded none of it. She felt seventeen again. No. At seventeen her heart had been callow and careless. Now it was full to the brim with a strength and security she had never thought to claim as her own.

On the shore, Bridget drew back from the water, and stowed her reel of thread in her pocket. Even in the moonlight, Grace could see how she shivered.

“Let’s get you home,” she said at once, as if Bridget had been the one in lake water up to her knees while Grace had just wet one boot.

Bridget shook her head. “I need to get back to Isavalta. If I don’t go tonight, it will be months before I can try again.”

“But you’re exhausted. How can you manage …?”

“Sakra is …” Bridget broke off with a wave. “Suffice it to say someone is holding the door for me. I will be fine, Aunt Grace. You must trust me in this.”

“I do, but …” She reached out, letting the gesture finish the sentence for her.

Bridget understood. “I will be back, Aunt Grace, and don’t worry. I will be able to find you wherever you’ve gone.”

“Good.”

There did not seem to be any need for another word. Grace embraced her niece, a true, warm, strong living embrace. Then Bridget turned away and cast out her line again. This time it did not fall into the water. It stayed straight and taut as if it had been caught by someone in the darkness Grace could not see. Bridget walked out across the waters, and she was gone.

Grace took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The night was warm, but she was cold, and her whole future waited with the dawn. She would go see Frank as soon as it was light enough. This time, she would tell him the whole long, complex truth that had held her apart from him for all these years. He would believe her. She knew that now. He would believe her and he would understand and then … well, then they would see what would come of that understanding.

Grace turned her back on the lake and began walking home.

About the Author

Sarah Zettel, author of numerous fantasy and science fiction novels, has won the Locus Award for the Best First Novel, for
Reclamation
(1996), and was runner-up for the Philip K. Dick Award for the best paperback original SF novel, for
Fool’s War
(1997).
The Firebird’s Vengeance
is the third fantasy novel in her Isavalta series. She lives outside Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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Copyright © 2004 by Sarah Zettel
Cover images
123rf.com
/©Sattapapan Tratong, ©jcsmilly
All rights reserved.

Published in association with Athans & Associates Creative Consulting

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 10: 1-4405-4855-2
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4855-0
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4376-3
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4376-0