by David Walton
"It's not your fault," he said again.
She took a deep, shaky breath and let it out. "It doesn't matter whose fault it is. The damage is done." Her voice sounded like it was coming from far away. "She's gone."
But Parris's mind was already racing ahead. His heart beat faster. "Maybe not."
PARRIS pounded relentlessly on the door of the barracks in the Spanish quarter where Sinclair was now forced to lodge. He was numb, running on a desperate need to keep moving. He pushed hope and emotion out of his mind, focusing only on what must be done. Get Sinclair. Get his equipment. One step at a time.
He thought of Catherine's body, lying ruined at his doorstep. He wondered what her last thought had been.
No. He thrust it out of his mind. He knew if he thought about her, if he admitted she was truly gone, he would go mad, just like he had with Peter. But this was why they had come to Horizon in the first place. This time, just maybe, there was something he could do about it.
Sinclair came to the door, two days' growth of beard on his face.
"They shot my daughter," Parris said.
Sinclair showed no reaction. "I'm sorry," he said. He walked back inside.
Parris followed him. "What do you mean, 'I'm sorry'? That's all you have to say?"
"It's all coming apart. All our plans, destroyed. God is winning," Sinclair said.
"God didn't kill Catherine. Tavera did. And you can bring her back again."
Sinclair's eyes were hollow. "It can't be done."
"You were close! You said you were."
"Maybe Bishop Marcheford is right. We can't win. Maybe it's better to die now than to scrabble and grasp at life and fall short."
Parris seized his shoulders, shook him, and pushed him against the wall. "This is my only child. Kill yourself if you like, but not until you bring her back."
Sinclair's eyes seemed to clear. "You're serious."
"Of course I am! Please!"
"If you haven't noticed, I'm not the governor anymore. Tavera and Vaughan have me on a leash."
"And if you sneaked out to night?"
His eyes focused a little. "You can't go partway on this. If we try it, there's no stopping."
"I understand."
"We can't do it alone, either. We'll need your Society friends."
"I want to help, too," said a voice.
The men whirled. It was Joan, standing tall and determined, with her eyes blazing. "I'll do anything," she said. "Let me help, or I'll take a sword and start killing every Spaniard I can find until they cut me down."
"You can't help; it's too dangerous," Parris said.
She slapped him hard across the face. "It was dangerous for me to give birth to her. It was dangerous to follow her here across thousands of miles. Don't tell me I can't risk my life as well as any man."
Sinclair, now released from Parris's grip, gave her a short bow. "You are welcome to join us, madam. But there's a problem. The things we need are in my house, and I don't live there anymore."
JOAN sobbed uncontrollably on the doorstep of the governor's mansion. Parris, watching from the darkness, was amazed. She could maintain an iron exterior on learning of her daughter's death, and then fake hysteria a moment later. She was a remarkable woman.
When Vaughan came to the door, she started screaming barely intelligible accusations at him. She advanced, pointing her finger like a sword. The two Spaniards standing guard advanced to hold her back, but Vaughan waved them away.
"It wasn't me," Vaughan said. "Joanie, I didn't do it. I would never . . ."
She collapsed in his arms, sobbing harder, and he led her inside, saying, "There, there, my dear." The door closed.
Parris and Sinclair waited a few moments, then made their way up to the front of the house, Parris holding a length of rope over his shoulder and several empty burlap sacks. The soldiers barred their way. "What is your business here?" said one in heavily accented English.
"The governor expects us," Parris said. "Ask him."
But Vaughan was already at the door. "Let them in."
They walked past the guards and into the house, where Parris quickly shut the door behind them. Vaughan was calm, though his face was flushed. Joan stood just behind him with a dagger to the side of his neck, where a thin trickle of blood already stained his skin. Parris had no doubt that she would kill him if she had to. Vaughan apparently agreed.
Parris bound his hands with the rope. "Bring him with us."
"We should kill him," Joan said.
"Not until we find everything. If he's moved things, we need to know where they are."
They passed first into the bestiary. Catherine had described it to him, but Parris was still amazed at the variety of animals, most of which he recognized, but some of which he didn't. A bird with a silver beak lay dead on the floor, its cage door swinging open. Sinclair glared at Vaughan.
"I couldn't stand that noise," Vaughan said.
The next cage stood empty, too. "Tried to touch my sooty toad?" Sinclair said.
"It burst into flame," Vaughan said. "Burned itself and one of my men to death."
"Oh, the toad didn't die," Sinclair said. "Perhaps you should keep your hands away from things you don't understand."
"I . . . I've kept the door closed since then," Vaughan said.
"Just as well. The animals in the next room would do more than just kill you."
They opened the next door and passed into near- darkness. Parris could hear the movements of large animals in the cages around him, but he could see nothing of them. Sinclair led the way past them into his laboratory.
Parris passed the burlap sacks around. At Sinclair's direction, they filled them with beaks, horns, and bones; jars of insects; dozens of vials of liquids and powders; and tinctures of all colors, though there was much they left behind. Sinclair lifted a wooden box down from a shelf and held it reverently.
A knock on the front door startled them. "Someone's here," Parris said.
Vaughan suddenly pulled away from Joan. "Help!" he shouted. "Thieves!"
Joan was on him in two steps. She didn't give him a second chance. She plunged the knife into his side, and he screamed and fell, his doublet immediately stained red.
"Time to go," Sinclair said. "Follow me." He hurried to a side door and flung it open.
Joan kicked Vaughan in the face. "You promised," she shouted. "You promised you'd keep her safe!"
Boots pounded through the house. "Come on," Parris said. He pulled her after Sinclair through the side door. The door they had originally come through flew open, and Parris caught a glimpse of Tavera and several Spanish soldiers before Sinclair slammed the side door and locked it behind them. In moments they were out of the house and running through the gate.
Gibbs and Kecilpenny met them in the forest with Catherine's corpse. They walked farther on, following routes they'd explored many times, heading toward a complex of caves that the Spanish would be hard- pressed to find.
Parris doubted that Vaughan was dead. In England, perhaps, that knife wound would have killed, but with quintessence water in his veins, it would already be healed.
"He promised me he would keep us safe," Joan said. "I would retrieve my daughter and bring her back with me to England, where Mary's reign would mean peace and a return to the Church. Is this what they meant by peace? Threats and murder? I'm sorry I ever helped them."
She still clutched the bloody knife in her hand. Gently, Parris pulled her fingers away from it. As she loosened her grip, she began to moan, almost inaudibly at first. She stared at Catherine's corpse, and her moan grew in volume and turned to crying— not the hysteria she had pretended at the mansion, but real, wracking, heart-wrenching sobs like Parris had never heard from her before. He tossed the knife aside and put his arms around her. She clutched at him and cried into his shoulder until his doublet was wet.
After a few moments she regained control and, after a deep, fluttering breath, said, "Let's go. We should catch up with the
others."
"Are you all right?"
"Of course I'm not all right."
"I meant—"
"I know what you meant. I can walk. Let's go."
They pushed through the undergrowth. "Next time, I'm going to kill him," Joan said.
SINCLAIR lifted his hands with the boarcat paws and raised them over the body. They stood in the largest of the caves, and Catherine's motionless form lay stretched out on the rock floor. A jar of Shekinah flatworms made the cave as bright as day.
They began. This time it was Parris who was the surrogate. He lay down next to the body with his arms folded across his chest. Sinclair connected him to his daughter with the glowing strands, chest to chest, heart to heart, head to head. Catherine's corpse breathed and moved in tandem with Parris's chest and limbs, and the others gasped in astonishment.
Gibbs and Kecilpenny were both charged with controlling the void, and Sinclair began to wrap the glowing strand that connected Catherine's body with her spirit, coaxing it back out of the darkness, attaching it to the anchor that tied Parris's spirit to his body. The void grew faster, but Gibbs and Kecilpenny kept it under control.
"Almost there," Sinclair said.
The oscillating began. The strand vibrated back and forth between Catherine and the void.
This time, things would be different. Sinclair knew the kind of power he was dealing with now. The strand became harder and harder to pull, but instead of forcing it, he drew out just a little at a time. He couldn't pull too fast or too hard, or the void would become unmanageable again. There was no hurry.
The fact that human life was bound up in strands of quintessence, too, implied that quintessence existed all over the world, not just on Horizon. Perhaps it was too dim to notice in England, or they had just never learned how to use it. How many stories of women knowing the exact moment when their husbands or children were killed, or twins knowing what the other was thinking or experiencing from far away, were really instances of quintessential mind connection? It was a promising thought, since it implied the powers of the tamarins and other Horizon animals might be learned by humans as well.
Growing in confidence, Sinclair twisted and knotted the glowing strands, just as he had seen the female boarcat do. Catherine's soul had departed her body, but the connection was still in place. Her body no longer had an anchor to hold a soul: that was lost, perhaps to the void, and he knew no way to retrieve it or make a new one. Instead, he would tie her soul through her body to her father's: two souls attached to one anchor. It wasn't a perfect solution, since it meant that when Parris died, Catherine would die with him. But first he had to make it work.
Soon the strands nearly encased her, a mummification by light. Parris gasped and reached up, and Catherine's body mimicked the action. Remembering the visions Maasha Kaatra had seen at the end, Sinclair hadn't given Parris any skink tears, but apparently it didn't matter. Parris's eyes were wide. "Mother," he said in a tone of wonder.
Joan crouched at his side, and her eyes, too, grew wide with astonishment. "It's her," she said. "She's here." Then she turned toward more empty air. "Grandmother!"
Sinclair didn't know what this was about— only Maasha Kaatra had seen spirits last time, and he hadn't survived to tell about it. He understood even less how Joan could see them, since she wasn't involved in the process at all. The two of them turned back and forth, apparently seeing presences all around them. Then they both turned toward the same place and cried, "Peter!" together in voices of longing and deep anguish. Parris struggled to his feet, dragging Catherine's body with him, tangling the strands.
"Stop!" Sinclair said. "Hold still."
The void surged, and Kecilpenny cried out. Gibbs lunged with his beetlewood plank and only just managed to contain it.
"Hold still!" Sinclair shouted.
He pulled the strands harder, stretching the weave. To his horror, the void surged toward him, as if moved by his pull.
"We're losing it!" Gibbs shouted.
Sinclair watched, frozen, as the void swelled toward him. He could see Catherine's strand stretching far, far away into its endless blackness, and then, in the distance, a bright light approaching very fast. As it grew closer, he could see something bright and living writhing inside it, like a moth in its cocoon. The bright thing shot past him on its strand and straight into Catherine's body.
A roar came from the earth below them. The whole cave shook, and then the floor lurched, knocking them all off their feet. In a gout of purple flame, the jar of Shekinah flatworms immolated. The flames became thousands of purple moths that filled the room, fluttering against each other and into the walls and shelves, dashing themselves into bits of wing and violet powder. There was an immense ringing silence. Catherine's body had been replaced with a black silhouette, a void with her shape, flecked with distant stars. Sinclair saw a flash behind his eyes and the cave disappeared around him.
When he came to himself again, the glowing strands and void had both vanished. Parris and Joan sat on the cave floor clutched in each other's arms, trembling. Gibbs and Kecilpenny were farther away, dazed, just picking themselves up off the ground.
In the middle of them all, Catherine sat up, fresh and beautiful, a beatific smile on her face. She yawned dramatically. "Father, Mother," she said in a clear voice. She beamed at them, but her smile faltered when she saw their astonished faces. "What happened?"
TWO hundred cliff dippers skimmed their hunting grounds at the Edge, plunging their sideways beaks into solid rock. This time it wasn't just a section of rock that fell. All along the cliff edge where the island stopped, a deafening crack echoed. Lightning gaps streaked across hard- packed dirt, grass, forest, and scrub. Animals leaped away, most instinctively jumping toward the mainland instead of toward the void.
The crack widened. Puff lizards rose on inflated bodies and wafted across to safety. Tiny marmosets leaped from tree to tree, some missing their mark and plummeting into the gap. Samson mice screeched as their rock piles tumbled. Golden oxen bellowed as acres of ground tilted toward the Edge, knocking them off their feet.
As the surviving dippers pumped their wings to propel them higher, hundreds of miles of coastline sheared away from the mainland like a great ship sliding away from the harbor, its movement almost imperceptible at first, but gaining a horrible momentum, its mass beyond contemplation. With a roar like thunder, trees and animals spinning off its surface, the great mass of land tumbled away and dropped into the endless void.
Chapter Twenty-nine
IT felt like waking up from a long sleep. They told her she had been dead, but it was hard for Catherine to grasp. She couldn't remember anything. The last thing she recalled was being caught trying to rescue Matthew, but she had no memory between then and waking up on the cave floor.
It had all been for nothing. Matthew and Blanca were still prisoners, and she, though grateful to be alive, was no farther along than she'd been two days before. She had to find a way to rescue her friends before Tavera killed them.
Father and Mother barely let her out of their sight. They hugged her and touched her cheek and stroked her hair and told her how much they loved her so often she wanted to scream. What was there to be so happy about? The colony was in the grip of vicious men, and Matthew and Blanca . . . she didn't want to think about what might be happening to them.
It was late. Her parents insisted she lie down. They sat on either side of her, watching her, unwilling to leave. The moment she stretched out on the bed of moss and leaves, however, she realized how exhausted she was. She could barely keep her eyes open. In moments she was asleep.
PARRIS sat with his hand tightly gripped in Joan's, watching Catherine sleep. He watched her chest rise and fall with life- giving breath, afraid to look away lest it stop. She was real. She was still here, tangible and alive.
Parris moistened his dry lips and swallowed. "It really was Peter," he said, not looking at Joan.
She didn't answer, but her fingers strengthene
d their grip.
"Not just a vision. Somehow, it was him. He saw us. He smiled." It was tangible proof. Not enough to convince anyone else, perhaps, but enough to convince him. He had seen his son. The souls of the dead really did live on. Although he knew no more about heaven than he had ever known, a great feeling of peace settled on him. His daughter was alive in front of him, and his son, though gone, still lived. Despite his weak faith, he had been given a sign, which was more than he deserved. He would trust God for the rest.
