Kingfisher(70)
“Since?”
“Miranda.” Her eyes filled again; she turned her head, looked out over the water. Like Carrie’s voice, her own dwindled, burrowed. “Only Merle saw. Only Merle saw clearly. What we had all become. What Stillwater was. Is.
“He destroyed this place. Merle and Hal fought him, finally drove him out. But the terrible battle left Hal crippled, Merle lost in his own mind half the time. Stillwater sucked the magic out of this place, left it shattered, and us still spellbound. We couldn’t—we couldn’t speak. That’s why he’s still here in Chimera Bay. We could not speak. He’s safe here.”
“From what?”
“From those who drove him out of his world into this one.” She raised her hand, brushed her eyes with her wrist. “They couldn’t stand him, either.”
“You’re speaking now.”
“You said her name. We could never—we could never say her name. After she died. She died wanting more, always wanting more of Stillwater. He left her here, went his way. He took her name away with him. I could never forgive myself.” She looked at Carrie again, her eyes dry now, the unnatural green of sky and sea mirroring dangerous weather. “I encouraged her. Even I was a little in love. I thought our love, our fortune, our beautiful, enchanted life would last forever.”
“That’s why you always stay up here. Why you never come down.”
“There was no point. I couldn’t forgive myself for not—for not seeing my own daughter in such horrible danger, not helping her— How could I expect Hal to forgive me?”
“What’s changed? Now?”
“Merle said her name. He sent you up here, looking like you do, feeding on emptiness, wasting away without even noticing, even your hair thin and hungry for what’s real, what’s true. But somehow you learned to see like Merle sees. You are his daughter, and what he sees in you is hope.”
—
When she left the Kingfisher Grill after lunch and went to Stillwater’s to prep for dinner, she was not entirely surprised by the cracked and rain-darkened oak in the old bank door. She walked inside, saw the splintered, warped floorboards, the tattered tablecloths, the long-dead flowers in the vases. Sage Stillwater sat at the bar, taking notes. She turned her head, smiled at Carrie. Her hair was limp, her face wan, hollowed, fretted with tiny, worried lines, and so pale it might have been the color of her bones seeping too near the surface of her face. Her eyes seemed huge, hungry for something she no longer remembered. Stillwater, his back to Carrie, read labels of nearly empty bottles, some of them so dusty the writing was hardly visible. Sage jotted down what he needed: limes, olives, brandy, new glasses to replace the cracked. He glanced toward Carrie and smiled absently as she greeted him. He looked, she thought, like a sort of shriveled, pallid mushroom, his skin damp, grayish white, not enough hair on his head to bother leaving it there. One eyebrow had vanished completely. His eyes had sunk so deeply into his furrowed face that he looked like something furtive peering out of a fallen tree trunk.
After seeing Merle shaping everything under the moon, she wasn’t afraid of the magic, just suddenly, profoundly curious about this ancient, nameless power who, in trapping those Carrie loved within all their memories, seemed to have trapped himself as well.
She passed them, headed into the kitchen, and saw something she hadn’t noticed before. Or maybe her attention had just skittered over it before, since it was nothing much to look at, just a dented old pot gathering cobwebs on the floor in a corner. As she wondered idly what it was doing there, a lovely bronze light glided over it, barely visible beneath the dust and old grease clinging to it.
Something of Stillwater’s, she guessed. Maybe one of his early, experimental machines. Being Stillwater’s, it would most likely still contain a surprise or two.
She lifted it out of the shadows to see what it could do.
21
Perdita and the queen received the news of Daimon’s quest from the king himself, who summoned them out of a ritual midseason salute to the goddess by appearing at the top of the sanctum stairs and startling the guardian on duty to the point of incoherence.
“Your Majesty,” she whispered to the queen within the sanctum, as Mystes Halliwell led the acolytes in their chant. “His Majesty—he’s—just outside. Inside the antechamber. He wants you and Princess Perdita.”
Perdita, watching the queen grow pale, thought instantly: Daimon. She turned, followed the queen easing through the crowd around the central pool with its feathery wisp of a fountain murmuring a musical counterpoint to the chant. For no reason, Perdita glanced back as they left the sanctum. She saw her aunt Morrig’s face turned to watch them, her gray eyes looking oddly dark and birdlike.
Observing the sanctum’s rules, the king waited courteously on the top of the antechamber stairs. The rare uncertainty on his face made Perdita swallow dryly. The queen quickened her pace.
“Please,” he said softly, as they reached him. “Can we talk?”
The queen’s mouth tightened. As she had done many times through the years for her lover, she opened the chamber door for her husband.
“Arden, what is it?” She closed the door behind him, leaned against it. The king glanced around the small, cluttered room strewn with clothes, shoes, jewels, the open wardrobe door whose mirror reflected his presence. He picked up a sweater Perdita had tossed on the little couch, then stood holding it, hesitating. “Sit down,” Genevra said, and he did.