Kingfisher(88)

Mist filled the pool, as though it had drawn cloud down into it. It flowed upward, a column as high as the trees, then higher, and higher than that, sculpting itself out of blur and drift, a ghostly shape that formed and firmed, became enormous, forcing the eye to constantly reenvision it, until, piece by piece, it became impossibly familiar.

A woman made of mist, clothed in cloud, her hair a pale, drifting wreath around her face, looked down at them from such distance she might have been the moon, regarding them. Daimon, recognizing her, felt his own skin turn cold, colorless. One bare foot, longer than he was tall, stepped from the water to earth; the other followed. She stooped then, her body folding with enormous grace, her face, constantly flowing, shaping itself at every movement, even managed a discernible expression. She reached down with one immense hand, snapped the raven chain.

A man appeared, lying where the earthy pile had been. He was dirty, half-naked, clothed here and there in bracken; one foot, bloody and badly chewed by something, was turning black. His eyes, swollen and raw with tears, opened painfully to the mist. Daimon caught his breath, glimpsing the treasure in them, the fay, familiar colors. Three dark figures, motionless as standing stones, watched the woman cup one hand, dip it into the pool, and raise it, dripping, over the soiled, damaged, pain-ravaged face.

Slowly, gently, she let the water flow over his eyes, into his open mouth.

He drank eagerly for a long time; her hand never emptied. He drank until he began to fray, to dissolve back into the earth, and even then the water flowed, and he drank.

He grew across the ground, bones and sinews sliding into vines, lashes and fingernails into grass. The earth turned green; the vines wrapped themselves around and up the stones of the broken ruins, winding everywhere, and opening, one by one along the way, lovely trumpets of gold, ivory, blue, red. The arching tendrils flowed to encircle the pool with a wall of leaves and bright flowers, until nothing was left of the dying man but life.

The goddess let the last drop fall from her fingers. She rose to her full height, gazed silently down at the three, whose faces, turned upward, were as white as her own.

“This is what you are looking for,” she said on a sigh of wind.

And then she was gone.

The still, gray pool watched them like an eye.





26


Pierce returned the knife to the Kingfisher Inn not long after what came to be known as the communal hallucination due to food poisoning at Stillwater’s restaurant.

In the chaotic aftermath of the chef’s disappearance, his fall into shadow, Sage had also vanished into one world or another, leaving Pierce with only the memory of her driving the kitchen knife through Stillwater’s foot and into the table. She left it there. For some reason, so did the Knights of the Rising God. They collected Stillwater’s crazed, dangerous machines eagerly enough but ignored the one thing actually used as a weapon. They wanted nothing to do with the knife. Maybe, Pierce thought as he wrestled, coaxed, pleaded it loose, the color of Stillwater’s blood had deterred them. It had turned from human red to the amber brown of sap, glittering on the blade like slow, viscous tears. It even smelled like trees.

When the kitchen knife finally let go of the table, the strange tears melted down the blade into the wood. Pierce stared at it, musing over its unexpected destiny, the powers it possessed along with what seemed to be a will of its own.

What else could it do? he wondered.

The blade glinted at him, a metallic glance, as though reminding Pierce where it belonged, where he needed to take it next.

“Oh, all right,” he breathed. He slid it back into the sheath in his jacket and realized then how quiet the restaurant was.

He was alone in the kitchen. He wandered through the vault; its bottles were mostly intact though those precipitously fleeing through it had left some shard-laced puddles on the floor. The restaurant itself was a bigger disaster: tables knocked askew, chairs overturned, tablecloths and broken plates and little edible jewels scattered across the floor. The diners had long gone; Pierce had heard the knights’ bikes begin to roar, along with some sirens, during his struggle with the knife. Sage was nowhere Pierce could see, which, he realized, was pretty much the place she inhabited whenever he looked for her. The screen door sagged on its hinges, swaying back and forth in the breeze. The entire place looked as though it had dropped its own mask, exposed its warped floors, chipped paint, the bare, flickering bulbs, all its warts and wrinkles, for everyone to see.

It was completely empty. Not even his father or his brother had waited for him. He stood aimlessly in the wreck, perplexed, and felt the phone in his jacket vibrate.

He pulled it out, found a message from his brother: At police station. Starving. Will call when they let us out. Cheers!

He walked along the bay to the Kingfisher Inn and was greatly relieved to find one familiar face at the bar.

He slid onto the stool next to Merle, pulled the knife out of his sleeve, and laid it in front of them. “I don’t think it needs me anymore,” he said to Merle, and to Tye, who reached for a glass and began filling it.

Merle smiled. “You did well with it. The knife fit the hand that wielded it. In this case, both the hands.”

“Where is Carrie?” Pierce asked. “The restaurant was completely empty when I finally got the knife out of the table. Did everyone but me get arrested?”

Tye was smiling, too, as he set the frosty glass down in front of Pierce. “Maybe that’s why they didn’t find you. The knife was guarding you.” He picked it up with both hands, reverently. “I’ll just put this back where it belongs. We’ll need it tomorrow.”