“But I can’t seem to come to terms with it and that makes me feel like a failure.”
“You’re not a failure—you’re just redefining yourself. We all do it from time to time. We have to, or we stagnate.”
“But—”
“It was a mistake for me to push at you the way I did,” Esmeralda said.
Emma shook her head. “You were just doing what you thought was right.”
“But I was acting as though I had nothing left to learn about the world myself,” Esmeralda said. “I have to keep in mind that the real world’s more important than the secret one of my studies—or rather that it’s the way they interrelate that makes them important. I have to get out with people more, just to relate to them instead of trying to make sure that they fulfill what I perceive as their potential.”
She smiled and laid her hand on Emma’s. “No matter what you decide to do,” she said, “I won’t stop loving you.”
Which was what Blue had said when she’d brought it up with him later that same night.
“It’s you I love, Emma, not some gift.”
Things were a lot better between Blue and her now. With Sara coming back more often—twice this month already, the second time for a whole week—he was more relaxed and giving her space in a way that wasn’t so obvious anymore. Emma supposed she should be jealous of the relationship he had with Sara, but she liked Sara too much herself to be anything but happy when Sara and Tal came by. Sara, like Judy and Julianne, were friends, and as such, related to parts of him that she couldn’t, which didn’t lessen their own relationship. If anything, those friendships enriched it, just as her own friendships with others did.
As Ohn put it, “Our affection for others is the one thing that is an infinite resource. We can never care too much, or for too many.”
He hadn’t seen Fatal Attraction, Emma remembered thinking when he said that, but she got the point.
The twilight had eased into night. She couldn’t hear Ohn’s zither anymore. An owl hooted once, waking a little shiver in her, but when she looked around to find it watching her from the branch of a nearby tree, she saw that it was here on its own. It was just an owl, not an omen. But the thought of omens got her feet moving once more.
She left the network of the garden’s paths when she reached the orchard and walked slowly across the dewy grass to the tree that Sara called the Apple Tree Man.
He was waiting for her there. Whiskey Jack. Jack Wolfe. Whatever his name was. He had a man’s head on his shoulders tonight, but it was too dark for her to be able to make out his features.
“You knew I was coming, didn’t you?” she said.
She’d come out into the garden tonight for the express reason of calling him to her, but she hadn’t been able to figure out just how to do that. It was something she didn’t feel right about asking Esmeralda, considering how Esmeralda’s feelings toward him ran. Now Emma realized she needn’t have worried.
His teeth flashed in a quick grin, but his only response was to ask her if she had a cigarette. She took the pack she’d bought earlier in the week for this express purpose and started to hand it to him, but he shook his head.
“You light it,” he said.
“But I don’t smoke.”
He made no reply, so she removed the cellophane and put it in her pocket, then took a cigarette from the pack. She was awkward about lighting it—it took three matches—and when she finally did, the smoke made her cough. A hand tapped her comfortingly on the back and then took the cigarette from her fingers. He stuck it between his lips and took a long drag. With smoke wreathing from his nostrils, he relieved her of the cigarette package and matches. Both disappeared into his own pocket.
“So you’ve decided,” he said.
She wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement, but she had something else she wanted to ask him first.
“Did you really love Esmeralda?”
She wished it weren’t so dark so that she could read his expression.
“I did,” he said, his voice soft.
Something in his voice woke a sudden insight in Emma.
“You still do, don’t you?” she said.
Again he made no reply.
Emma plunged on. “So why don’t you do something about it?”
He laughed softly, but the sound held no humor. It rang in Emma’s ears like a coyote’s bark.
“It doesn’t matter whether I do or I don’t,” he said. “We’re too different.”
“You mean because you’re not... human?”
She caught his quick nod.
“But she’s—she’s got her own magic,” she said. “Her winds.”
“And perhaps we’re too much the same as well,” he told her a little sharply. “Don’t meddle in what doesn’t concern you.”
“You’re one to talk.”
He shook his head. His quiet laugh returned, but this time it wasn’t self-deprecating.
“You’ve been listening too much to Esmeralda,” he said. “Did she put you up to this?”
“What do you think?”
Again silence. Then he sighed. “There are times we do things that we can only regret later,” he said finally. “Sometimes it’s best to leave them as past history. That way we can learn from our mistakes, rather than repeat them.”
He took a last drag from the cigarette, ground the butt under his heel and bent down to retrieve it. Straightening up, he put the butt in his pocket and lit up another cigarette.
“But we’re not here to talk about what Esmeralda or I might want or will do,” he said. He blew out a stream of smoke. “We’re here because of you.”
Emma nodded. She’d made the decision, but it was hard to voice it. What if she was making a terrible, terrible mistake? She knew that if she changed her mind later, there would be no going back.
She took a deep breath, slowly let it out.
“I want to give it back,” she said finally.
He nodded gravely. “I thought you would.”
He stepped closer to her and put his free hand against her chest, just between her breasts. Emma flinched, but forced herself not to move. He kept his hand there for a moment, then slowly turned it around. What looked like a small dead bird lay in his palm.
Emma gave a tiny gasp. Deep inside her, she felt as though something had died, as though the source of all her life’s possible joys had just winked out.
“It... is it dead?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Such a thing can never die.”
“But...”
It lay so still on his palm and there was such an ache inside her, such an emptiness.
“Everything is on a wheel,” he told her. “You, I, this wood, your gift. The Great Mystery is that we can step from one to the other. We can be all things.”
“Then... what’s going to happen to it?”
“It will find a new home.”
As he spoke the last word, he seemed to drift apart as though he had no more substance than the smoke that had been trailing from between his lips. One moment there was a hazy outline of a man standing with her in the orchard, the next she was alone.
Alone with that awful emptiness inside her.
She stood for a long time under the Apple Tree Man, trying to tell herself that she’d done what she had to do. She’d done the right thing.
Then why did it hurt so much?
Because the gift had been part of her for so long. It was like losing a part of her childhood, like a precious bit of memory being erased.
She looked up, past the fruit-laden boughs of the Apple Tree Man, up to the sky. A thousand stars looked back at her from its dark vault.
The emptiness remained, but she realized that a great weight had been taken from her shoulders. In its own way, her decision tonight was the first responsible thing she’d done since she acquired the gift, all unknowingly, so many years ago.
Yes, the emptiness remained, but she would fill it. With her art. With Blue. With he
r friends.
As she walked back to the House, her steps were lighter than they had been for a very long time.
2
Julianne Trelawny stood in another part of the House’s garden that same night. She could feel the ghost of the first forest all around her. There seemed to be faces in the bark of the trees, watching her, smiling at her. Their branches rustled, not with wind, but with whispers.
She was tired. They’d worked hard today, as they had every day since the House’s return, and things were finally getting back into some semblance of order. With everybody pitching in, the work went faster than she would ever have thought possible. Teamwork was the rule of the day—all except for in the Penwith Kitchen. Anton Brach refused to let anybody else set a foot in it until he had it spotless once more—to his criteria, thank you very much, and please don’t come by to interrupt him again or he’d never get anything done.
She smiled, thinking of Cal’s perfect mimicry of Brach’s reaction on his return to the House. She’d told him then, as she’d told him before, that he really should consider a career as a stand-up comic.
“What?” he would protest. “And give up my promising career as the office’s resident software expert?”
He was off with his girlfriend to see a band at Barrymore’s tonight. Lisa wasn’t a pagan—but then Cal wasn’t much of one either, when it came right down to it. But all that was irrelevant. They were both good people and she was happy to see them together. Lisa had come by with Cal to help out almost every night since they’d gotten together. Julianne had quit working earlier than she normally would tonight just to get the two of them off doing something for themselves for a change.
It was cooler in the garden than she’d expected. She wrapped her shawl a little closer around her and considered going back into the House, but the peacefulness she’d found out here tonight seemed too precious to desert so early.
She looked up and saw a shooting star cut a sharp bright line across the sky. It reminded her of her childhood, when she would stand outside her parents’ house waiting for a star to fall so that she could make a wish.
She thought of the ghost of the first forest, felt its spark glow warm inside her, and made a wish now. As though in response, she heard a footstep along the path she’d taken earlier to reach this spot. Turning, she saw someone stepping closer. As he drew nearer, she wasn’t surprised to see that the man had a coyote’s head on his shoulders.
In this place, at this time, with memories of the first forest ghosting through her, it seemed entirely appropriate.
He stopped beside her. The smell of cigarette smoke and forest loam rose from his clothing. Shaking a cigarette from a package he took from his pocket, he lit it and after taking a long drag, offered it to her. She didn’t smoke, but she took the cigarette from him all the same and brought it up to her lips.
“I have a gift for you,” he said as she took a drag.
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