Kingfisher(69)

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.

—

Lilith 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.

The blood ran completely out of her face. It crumpled, shadows and lines appearing, underscoring the terror in her eyes, the sudden, overwhelming grief over something invisible between them, roused from memory by whatever she saw in Carrie’s face. She dropped the phone from her ear to her shoulder, held it there like a lifeline.

As abruptly, the tide of color washed back into her face; the terror vanished under an upwelling of rage.

“No,” she said to Carrie, chopping words like vegetables. “Tell me. You are not. Working for Todd Stillwater.”

The voice on the phone rose in volume and jumped an octave, repeating the same word over and over, like an angry songbird. Lilith didn’t seem to hear; Carrie held all her attention.

Carrie said, “My father told me to give you something. A word. I don’t know what it means. Miranda.”

For a moment, Lilith only stared at her as though she had no idea either. Her face seemed frozen, unable to shape a thought. Slowly, her eyes changed, grew large, flushed, glittering with what Carrie realized were unshed tears. She dropped the phone on the floor, beginning to tremble. Carrie, suddenly terrified, took a step toward her. But Lilith caught her balance and finally found her voice.

“Miranda,” she said, and again, “Miranda.” The name seemed to comfort her. The frozen, stricken face eased a little, expression melting through it. She seemed to look through Carrie, past her into an immeasurable distance.

Then her eyes quickened, saw Carrie again.

“He said her name.”

“Yes,” Carrie whispered.

“I haven’t. Said her name. None of us has, not even Merle. Said her name. In all these years.”

“Who—who is she?”

“Was. She was our daughter. Hal’s and mine. She fell in love with Todd Stillwater, when he cooked for the Kingfisher Inn, so long ago. His cooking—it made the inn famous. It was wonderful. Spellbinding. His spell bound my daughter. His spell bound us all. Me. He fed us all so well that we were always hungry, always happy, always wanting more. People came from all over Wyvernhold to tie up at our dock, stay at the inn, eat Stillwater’s magic in that magnificent old dining room that has never been used since—” She stopped, absolutely still again, looking inward, lost to the world.