Jo stopped him before he kissed her again. “You know you are going to have to tell me your real name for me to open your door.”
“We will get to that in good time.” He covered her mouth with his before she could say anything else. He walked her backwards toward the bed.
Jo sat on the edge and pushed herself back. He followed her until they were stretched out beside each other.
Henry put his hand on the side of her face and ran his thumb over her cheekbone. “Where does a Valkyrie find her peace?”
“I don’t think she gets peace until the end.” A man with inhuman eyes comes for her. Henry’s eyes were dark brown and thoughtful.
“I am sorry I cannot offer you some measure of what you have given me.”
“You have.”
Jo stretched her arm out expecting to make contact with Henry’s chilly form, but she was alone in bed. After a rummage through her bag for a robe and socks, she padded into the main room. Henry sat perched on the edge of the couch.
Jo yawned. “You look like a man who is ready to go somewhere. I’ll get dressed and we can go outside. The setting is nicer than a musty house.”
“The door is there.” He nodded toward the front door. “It’s been there since we came in last night.”
“Why didn’t you say?” She hadn’t sensed a door open, but then again she hadn’t opened Henry’s door.
“I wasn’t ready to leave.” He stood up.
“But you are now?”
“Yes. It’s time.”
She hugged him, and he put his arms around her. Shades usually carried no scent, but with her face buried in Henry’s sweater, Jo could smell the sea.
“I think I know your name.” She leaned back from him, still circled in his arms.
“Does it matter who I was?” There were too many emotions registered in his expression to pick one out, but he did look amused.
“Not really. If Achelous is right, it doesn’t matter who I am, either. We were supposed to be here, for whatever reasons the Fates devised.” The Fates could be kind then, as well as cruel. Henry had accomplished two things she couldn’t have done alone.
He laughed. “Do you believe that?”
“I’m not sure what I believe right now. I have a lot of new information to sift through. But whatever the reason, I’m glad things worked out like they did.”
He nodded. “Thank you, Jolene Wiley.”
She smiled and sighed.
“Will you walk out with me?”
“I’ll walk you to the front door. It’s bad form for me to see another’s door, and I seem to have a penchant for going through ones that don’t belong to me.” She pulled her robe around her more tightly and pulled at the loops on the bow at her waist.
“You have a purpose to live for. Don’t wish your life ended.” His expression darkened. She had forgotten he had taken his own life.
“I think it’s a hazard of the trade, but you are right, I have a reason for all this now. Despite the grimness, it makes more sense to me. I have you to thank for that.”
“You would have gotten there on your own.”
“Maybe. Let’s say your timing was good.” She opened the door for him. She could sense it, but it didn’t pull at her center like the others had.
Henry kissed her for the last time and walked out into the bright morning. Jo closed the door behind him, expecting tears, but there were none. She was sad to let him go but happier that he had found the peace he had waited so long for.
She went back to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, staring out of the window. Her sketchbooks had been neatly stacked on the bedside table. The top one had two sketches of Henry in it. On top of that, Henry had left a book from the collection in the main room.
Jo picked up the battered Slovenian translation of A Farewell to Arms and thumbed through to the page he’d marked.
“Za vse ni razlag – There isn’t an explanation for everything.”
Her bag was packed, and the house was aired and cleaned before Jo heard the car on the gravel drive. Leo was early. He’d probably given himself an extra hour after the last trip up in the snow.
She met him at the door and welcomed him in. She’d seen him in street clothes before but it was still jarring. The Leo in her mind’s photo album was a man in black, cassock and all. He ducked under the lintel and pulled her into a Leo-sized hug.
“Did you think I wasn’t going to be here or something?” It was nice though, and he was warm. She probably felt like a shade to him.
He started to say something, then stopped. “Let’s just say it’s always a good surprise to see you.”
She smiled. An awkwardness had developed between them since the river and Avgusta’s attempt at burning her at the stake. There was a tacit commitment on both their parts to see where this led, but they were taking it very slowly. Vesna had made an offhand comment about neither her nor Leo having any clue what a healthy relationship looked like. Jo couldn’t argue with her, but it still stung.
“Is this all?” He picked up her bag.
“I’m traveling light these days.” She shooed him back outside, locking the door behind them. She wouldn’t come back until the renovations were finished and Gregor was ready to open the gostilna and inn. It would be different enough then. Even with cosmetic changes, she knew it would still remind her of the ghosts she’d put to rest and always of Henry.
The drive down the mountain back into town was much less fraught than their previous trip, though they were both almost as quiet. Jo had watched for her Mary of the Crossroads on the bus trip up, but she hadn’t seen her. It was hard to remember where it was, as all the landmarks had been hidden under the snow when they saw her the first time.
“Stop!” She was there, at the corner of the crossroads where she had been last time. There had been nothing there when Jo had looked from the bus. She was positive.
Leo pulled the car half off the road into the grass.
“I’ll be right back.” Jo opened the door and started to get out.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Leo unbuckled his seat belt.
She shook her head.
“I feel like we have traded places.” He smiled but buckled himself back in.
Jo closed the door and made her way through the sprays of early spring flowers surrounding the shrine. It was the Mary of the Flames. She was smiling, eyes downcast, looking at the crowned heart she held in her painted hands.
“Hi. I still kind of suck at this praying thing, but I wanted to say thank you.” Jo placed a stone from Achelous’ river on the shrine among the melted candles and wilted flowers. Something about serving two masters floated up from her deep memory of attending church with her grandmother. She would add that to the list of shit she needed to sort out.
As Jo started back toward the car, a flash caught her eye. She turned to watch as the used-up candles caught and came to life. Little yellow flames barely visible in the bright sunlight flickered in between piles of fresh carnations the color of blood.
Mary’s eyes were open now and looking out, past Jo, down the road, back toward the mountains. Jo could hear a voice like her grandmother’s in her head.
“You are not obligated to me, Jolene. That is not the nature of faith.”
Jo nodded.
“Leo is a good man.”
He was. Better than she deserved.
“That is not the nature of love.”
She had a lot more to figure out.
“You will go to Mary. She will need you at the end.”
Her mother Mary. The other Mary. There was an obligation there.
“Yes.”
When Jo looked up at the shrine, the statue was looking at its hands and the pile of dirty candle wax and browned flowers again. Jo’s stone was gone.
Jo got back i
nto the car.
“You okay? You look a little pale.” Leo put his hand over Jo’s hands folded together in her lap.
“I don’t think you need to worry about your god punishing you for leaving the church. I think Mary’s got you covered.”
Leo pulled back onto the road and headed through town to the highway back to Ljubljana. Watching him drive with his legs folded up like a praying mantis made her wonder if she should get her license.
Her phone rang in her bag. She dug through the dirty clothes and sketchbooks, answering it just before it went to voicemail.
Her aunt didn’t even say hello first. “You need to come home, Jo.”
“I know. I already got the message.”
About the author
When Victoria Raschke isn’t roaming the backroads of Tennessee promoting farmers’ markets, she is writing at her home in Knoxville, or figuring out how to scrape together another trip to Slovenia. Who by Water, the first book in the contemporary fantasy Voices of the Dead series, was published by Griffyn Ink in May 2017.
Looking for more from Victoria? Sign up for the Notes from the Dead Letter Office at victoriaraschke.com for information about upcoming book releases and author events.
The Trans-Universal Zombie Church of the Blissful Ringing is a real organization and registered religious group in Slovenia. The church supports the rights of refugees and regularly works to combat the rising tide of white supremacist nationalism in Europe. They also run a pro bono clinic in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, that mostly serves patients with chronic illnesses like diabetes and high blood pressure who can’t afford ongoing treatment but aren’t deemed ill enough to receive free emergency services.
You can support their work at the clinic by sending donations by mail to:
Hiša dobrot
Vipavska cesta 104
5000 Nova Gorica
Slovenia
Or by international transfer to:
SWIFT: BAKOSI2X
SI56101000053803567
Refrerence: CHAR
Banka Intesa Sanpaolo d. d.
Pristaniška ulica 14
6502 Koper
Slovenia
To learn more about the church go to their public, English language group page on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/705947819468540/
Our Lady of the Various Sorrows (Voices of the Dead Book 2) Page 24
