The Firebird's Vengeance

by Sarah Zettel

  Grace set her jaw. Aside from her carefully decorated room, the one place she could reliably call upon genuine ghosts was the cemetery. Given the gossip that Hilda was surely spreading all across town about poor Ingrid’s wayward daughter, no one would wonder at Grace going there. They would assume she had gone to visit her sister’s grave. This once, they’d be right.

  Grace buttoned up her stoutest boots, stuffed her hands into her knitted mittens, wrapped a shawl around her head and two more over her shoulders, and headed down into the street, directing her steps up Rittenhouse Avenue toward the cemetery.

  There was no color in the graveyard during winter; only black, white, and grey. Snow lay smooth and crisp on the ground, climbing up the sides of the grey stones and capping off the monuments with white. Bare, black trees stood sentinel over them all.

  Grace had not gone to Ingrid’s funeral. She had, however, gone once the few mourners had left. Grace had stood at graveside and waited to see her sister, to find out after all what had really happened to her.

  But Ingrid had not appeared. Even dead, her sister would not come to her.

  Grace had been back to the grave only once since then, to intercept Bridget and try to convince her not to go off with the man she’d pulled out of the lake.

  Grace hiked up her hems and waded through the burgeoning drifts toward the back of the cemetery. The black trees scratched at the clouds with their branches, as if to tear them open and spill out the snow. In the faint shadows of those trees waited three headstones. One for a young woman, one for an old man, and one for an infant.

  Grace stood squarely before her sister’s grave. Ingrid Loftfield Lederle, read the stone. Beloved Wife and Mother, March 12, 1848–October 15, 1872. Not one word about how she was also a sister, or a daughter. Grace fixed her eyes on the snow that blanketed the grave and did as she seldom did—reached into her mind and tried to open her inner eye.

  Let me see you, she thought fiercely. I’m here. Let me see you.

  In the corners of her eyes, the ghosts began to take shape. Men and women both, mostly in old-fashioned, formal clothes. Shades of who they had been, lingering above their graves, because they remained bound to the bones that lay within.

  But all three graves before her remained unpopulated. Neither woman nor man came back to the place of their bones. Not even Bridget’s poor little baby appeared.

  Where were her dead? Grace shivered. This was wrong.

  Then, Grace did see someone. Between one blink and the next, a fat, naked Indian appeared on Ingrid Loftfield’s grave, whittling. He sat in the snow wearing nothing but a loincloth working steadily at a stick with his stone knife. Then, she noticed his ears. His lobes stretched out so long that they dangled across his naked chest.

  “Finally,” he grumbled. “Damn white women. Always making you wait.”

  Grace’s chest seized up. Her first thought was to turn and run, but she held her ground. “Who are you?”

  “Rude too.” The red man inspected his work and shaved another sliver of wood from the stick.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  The red man squinted at his whittling. “Better,” he said. “But still too damn rude. I’m waiting.” He blew on the stick to clear away the chips.

  It was then Grace realized what else was wrong. She could not see his breath. It was so cold that her own breath steamed up in white clouds in front of her eyes, but the fat red man in front of her breathed invisibly, as if it were the warmest summer day.

  He cocked one round, black eye at her and grinned.

  Grace opened her mouth and shut it tight again. Anger at his impudence burned even stronger than the fear and drew her spine up straight. “Why are you waiting here?”

  “I was asked to.”

  This was becoming ridiculous, but Grace couldn’t stop. This … person was not right. He was not a ghost, but he was not a living being either. She needed to know what such a creature was doing on Ingrid’s grave. “Asked by whom?”

  “A vixen.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You sure don’t.”

  Grace resisted the urge to shout in her frustration. “All right,” she said exasperatedly. “Why did this … vixen ask you to wait for me?”

  “Closer.” The Red ran his fat fingers over his work. “She wanted me to bring you a message. She says the cage won’t hold a second time. Think you can remember that?” He blinked his beady, black eyes at her.

  “I still don’t see …”

  “No you don’t.” He tucked knife and whistle into his loincloth’s thong. “ ’Cause you’re too scared to go where you need to.”

  Oddly, Grace felt those words stab straight at her pride. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  The red man spat. “Here? What’s here but the dead? It’s what the living’s been up to you don’t want to face.” He picked himself up off the snow. “Don’t know what the fox’s game is, but I’m done with it. You remember, you forget. You find out what’s left at that lighthouse, you stay here and freeze yourself the rest of the way, it’s all the same to Nanabush.”

  Then the pudgy red man was gone, and there was only a winter-white rabbit dashing away, kicking up glittering sprays of snow behind itself until the trees hid it from view.

  Grace blinked hard and pressed her hand against her forehead. What had just happened here? Why was she standing about in the cold? There had been a rabbit on Ingrid’s grave … No. She squeezed her eyes shut. There had been a Red. He’d had a message …

  The cage will not hold a second time.

  What cage? What was he talking about? Grace swayed on her feet. Why had she stood here having a conversation with a rabbit?

  No. No. Not a rabbit. Keep your mind on what happened. Her memories were trickling away so fast she could feel them like a stream running through her mind. There was a Red. He told me the cage wouldn’t hold a second time. He said I was afraid to go where I needed to. That I needed to know what the living were up to.

  She shook her head. What did the living have to do with her? The living had left her flat, requiring that she make her own way in the world and they never once looked back to see how she was doing.

  But now there was this voice, and it was asking for help, and it might be Bridget, calling on Grace in her trouble, as her mother had never done. Grace clenched her teeth. If these things were to do with Bridget, living or dead, there was only one other place Grace could possibly go to find out what was happening—the Sand Island lighthouse. Bridget’s home. If her shade or her body was anywhere, it was there.

  She’d have to go out on the lake to the island.

  Memory rolled over her as it always did. That the terror was thirty years old did nothing to lessen it. She remembered the water pressing relentlessly against her filling eyes and ears. She remembered the taste of it in her mouth, the pain in her lungs, how her fingers stretched up to the light, how her own skirts entangled her like a net and dragged her down. She remembered the silence, and her heart hammering against her ribs.

  Fear tightened her throat, turning her breath into gasps. Fear shifted the ground under her feet, and Grace caught herself against Everett’s stone. The icy edge of it bit into her palm even through her mitten, reminding her where she was and in a moment she was able to stand again.

  Grace pulled her shawls more tightly around her. I could turn away. I should turn away. It would serve her right. She turned away from me.

  This time, though, the anger was a lie, and Grace knew it. It was because she was afraid. Afraid of the deep water, afraid of what lay asleep beneath it waiting for life and warmth. That was why she hadn’t gone to see Ingrid while she waited in Everett’s house to give birth to Bridget. She couldn’t make herself cross the lake again. She had thought there would be time. She had believed Ingrid must come to Bayfield at some time, and then they’d meet and then …

  And then Ingrid died.

  Deep inside herself, Grace felt her heart s
tir. If this was a genuine plea for help from the only one of her family who had ever reached out for her, her heart would break again, and this time it would not heal.

  Wrapping herself as well as she could against the strengthening wind, Grace took herself down the sloping road to the lakeside and the port.

  Normally, Bayfield’s port was a busy place, but winter’s cold had brought it to a standstill. The big steamers had all left for open water and big cities to the south. The fishing boats wintering at the quayside all rested in cradles on the shore to keep them from being broken by the ice that would soon form. A few men braved the cold, but they did not linger about as they would have in spring or summer. They strode purposefully between the grounded boats, chins tucked in their high coat collars and hands thrust deep into their pockets.

  Grace made her way between the curving sides of the boats, trying not to look at the dull silver expanse of water that waited beyond them. She pushed open the door to the long, grey shack that was the harbormaster’s quarters, letting in a swirl of snow and cold to announce her entrance. Men huddled by the stove cursed in rough voices, looked up, saw a female form, and shut their mouths. It took them a minute longer to see which female it happened to be. Eyebrows lifted. Pipes were pulled from mouths.

  Grace did not give any of the weather-roughened men a chance to make their comments. “I’m looking for Mr. Bluchard.” She lifted her shawl from around her head and shook off the blown snow that clung to it, casually, as if being stared at by eight or so fishermen was a matter of no moment to her.

  Francis Bluchard must have gotten down here early, because he had a spot right next to the potbellied stove. He stood up, straightening out his whole, lean length. He’d never been a handsome man, but standing against the hard work of years had given his horsey face and brown eyes a comfortable solidity and assurance.

  And he remembered to call her “Miss” in public, something not many did. This raised Grace’s estimation of him.

  He took his long-stemmed pipe from his mouth and tapped it against his palm. “What can I do for you, Miss Loftfield?” he asked.

  “I’d like a word with you, if I may.” She left the “in private” implied. More than one of the men caught that implication, however, and knowing glances were exchanged. Someone sniggered. Grace held her ground. She was old enough that she was no longer an object of attraction to these ruffians. Her past, however, was well known and still good for a ripe joke.

  Frank glanced left and right at his compatriots, laid his pipe on the stove, and made his way through their ranks to her. No one said a word. Frank gestured toward the office, and Grace walked ahead of him until they were both inside. He did not close the door.

  For a moment they faced each other against a background of battered wood furniture and stacks of bills, notices, and receipts. Grace had known Frank all her life. He’d taken over the tug from his father. He’d been the one who took her from Sand Island to Bayfield after Father had forbidden her entry to his house.

  “This about Bridget, then, Grace?” he asked, awkwardness making his voice gruff.

  Grace nodded. “I’d like … I need …” Her tongue faltered. Say it. You must. “I need … you to take me out to the lighthouse.”

  Frank stared. He was also the one who sat by her on that last passage, as she huddled in on herself, quaking in her terror as if she’d shake herself to bits. That was something else she’d never forgotten.

  Now, he shook his head heavily. “She’s not there anymore.”

  “Yes, I know.” Grace searched for an acceptable lie. “I’ve had a telegram from her. She left some things behind and asked me to collect them for her.” If Frank thought to check at the office, he’d catch her out, of course, but somehow she did not think he’d do it.

  But he did cast an eye out the office window that looked over the port, watching the pale grey water under the steely sky. Ice soon, said the water. Snow sooner, said the clouds. Even Grace could tell that much. “Well, it’ll have to wait ‘til spring.”

  But my nerve may not hold ‘til spring. Grace’s hands tightened around the ends of her shawl. “Frank, please. She’s made another foolish decision. I have to let her know I’m her friend, so I can get her out of this before she strays beyond all salvation.”

  Frank looked down at her. He knew her history, and he’d never said a thing about it. Until now. “Funny words coming out of you, Grace.”

  Grace shrugged, but she found she could no longer meet his gaze. “Who would know better what she’s letting herself in for?” Which was true, as far as it went.

  Frank looked out the window again, his jaw working back and forth as if he were trying to shift the pipe he’d left on the stove. “I’m sorry, Grace. It ain’t safe anymore.”

  For a moment Grace thought to make some tart remark. For another, she thought to offer to pay for her passage. But she was not sure which would insult Frank more deeply. He was only doing what he thought best. Not because he didn’t think much of her, or because he did not approve, but for the simple, honest reason that Lake Superior was dangerous and she had told him nothing to make the risk worth it.

  What would he do if she did tell him? What would he say? Grace realized she wanted to know. Would he think she was insane? What if he didn’t? Frank had sailed the lake for a long time and seen any number of strange things. What if he believed her?

  But the habits of thirty years were too strong to be overcome by the wonderings of a single moment, so Grace only lifted her chin. “Very well. Thank you for hearing me out, Frank.”

  Frank stuffed both hands in his pockets and looked toward the partially open door. “Grace, what have you heard about this thing?”

  Odd choice of words. “Only what I’ve been told by Hilda, and Bridget,” she remembered to add.

  He scuffed the floor with the worn heel of one boot. “Well, when I was out there picking up the ones who want to winter on the mainland, they were telling me they saw fire up at the light.”

  “Fire?” Grace’s hand went automatically to her throat.

  Frank nodded. “Huge gout of flames shooting up into the sky folks said. Lit up the whole night. They thought the lighthouse had caught fire. Soon as it was day, they got out the boats and went round to Lighthouse Point, and there was the house, everything fine. ‘Cept it was empty, and dark, and Bridget wasn’t nowhere.”

  Trust Hilda to leave this out. Bridget vanished is the news of the day but a tiny detail like a fire … Grace swallowed anger and fear both. “She wasn’t there when you went to pick her up?”

  “Nor any sign of fire neither, except by the stove where the wall’d been charred a bit. Nothing like people said they saw.”

  Grace shrugged and her gaze slid sideways. “People say they see all sorts of things.”

  “That they do, Grace.” Especially in your family, Grace added in her own mind, but a glance at Frank told her that if he had thought such a thing, he wasn’t going to say it, for which she was grateful. “But they don’t always say they’ve seen the same thing, nor yet do they get out the boats to go have a look at it.”

  “No,” agreed Grace.

  Frank cocked his head. “Don’t suppose Bridget said anything about what that might have been in that telegram she sent you? Nor how she got off the island? Because I didn’t take her, and the lighthouse’s dory is still in the boathouse.”

  In those words, Frank told her that he knew she had lied, but he was going to leave her some dignity nonetheless.

  “No,” said Grace again, her determination deflating. “Bridget did not tell me any of these things.”

  Frank drew his hands out of his pockets, flexing them awkwardly as if looking for something to grab, or maybe to hand over. “I’m sorry, Grace. Truly.”

  Grace’s hands tightened around the ends of her shawl. “Yes, I know. Thank you.”

  “I’d take you if I could, but the ice is on the way, and it’s just too damn dangerous. I can’t take you out when I’m not
sure I can get you back.” A plea for understanding crept into his gruff voice. “Soon as the way’s open in spring, we’ll go, if you still want to.”

  Grace did not reach out to touch his hand. Someone might be watching. She did manage a weak smile. “Thank you, Frank.” She turned to go.

  “Take care, Grace,” said Frank behind her. “And if you hear from Bridget …”

  “I’ll tell her you said hello,” Grace said, not letting him finish. “Thank you.” That much, at least, she meant.

  Cold wrapped around her and the stiff wind cut against her cheeks as Grace turned toward the grey expanse of the lake. The water was sluggish, weighted down with snow and cold. The reflection of the cloudy sky turned the water the color of tarnished steel. She stared across the bay, letting the wind raise the tears in her eyes.

  They saw afire up at the light.

  It’s what the living have been up to that you don’t want to face.

  Bridget Lederle’s gone.

  Help me.

  “Where are you?” she murmured. “Where’s your baby who should be in her grave?”

  Grace clutched her shawls, trying to warm herself against a cold that came from inside her.

  “What’s happening, Bridget?” she asked the wind. “Where in God’s name are you?”

  Chapter One

  Vyshtavos, Year 1

  Bridget Lederle stood under a canopy in the icy spring rain waiting for a fox.

  Bridget had grown up on an island in Lake Superior. She was used to cold, or so she had thought. The Isavaltan winter had taught her a few things, however, as had the frigid flood that was spring. Her mouth quirked up into a tiny smile. Actually, it wasn’t spring yet. It was rasputitsa, “the time of the road’s undoing.” She had to agree with Sakra about this. Any land, he said, that had a separate word for the time when the roads turned from ice to mud was to be regarded with caution, and to be avoided if possible.