by Sarah Zettel
Well, Frank. She sighed. I suppose I could ask why you couldn’t have come to me.
But she let the silence carry that question away too. Frank went about his work, stoking the boiler, correcting the boat’s course, keeping his eye on the water. Grace waited for him to speak again, but he did not.
At last, Sand Island rose from the horizon, snow-white and ice-grey. Frank idled back on the motor and eased the wheel around, putting the shore on the port side. Ice still made a ragged white skirt for the shore and bobbled in big chunks on the waves. Careful as ever, Frank kept the tug well out in open water. The shoreline grew craggier, rising up into jagged walls of red stone. Water dripped from the long, toothy icicles hanging from the cliff. Grace kept her gaze on the far end of the island, and gradually, the lighthouse came into view.
The Sand Island light wasn’t one of the tall white towers they had down south and out east. It was an octagon of brown stone from the local quarry standing a bare two stories over the white-trimmed house that was the keeper’s quarters. The light was dark now. The new keeper wasn’t due for another week yet.
They rounded the point of land and Grace saw the boathouse and the long flight of weathered, wooden stairs that led up the cliff to the light. Frank’s attention had gone entirely to the management of the tug — slowing and reversing the engines, steering carefully between the rocks hidden by the grey water and the ice that floated on its surface. Despite his care, ice still grated against the hull and Frank’s jaw tightened. Slowly, patiently, he eased the tug up to the tiny jetty beside the boathouse. At the sound of the dock thumping gently against the tug’s side, Grace felt ready to cry out in relief. As quickly as she could, she hurried to the rail and let Frank help her disembark.
“I’ll be back for you this afternoon,” he said. “I want y … to be safe in Bayfield before full dark.”
“I’ll be here,” Grace promised.
Frank looked like he wanted to say something else, maybe to offer some help or comfort, but years of silence still held his tongue. He closed up the boat, returned to the wheelhouse, and fired the engines once more. The tug pulled away from the jetty.
Grace faced inland. She did not want to see Frank leave her.
Fortunately, the snow and ice on the stairs was mostly melted. Still, Grace mounted the steep flight carefully. At the top waited a sea of mud and last year’s grass with a few brave, green shoots peeking up to look for the sun. The forest loomed at the lighthouse’s back, still winter dark and forbidding. Grace lowered her eyes. On the other side of that forest her older brother Leo raised his family and lived his life, and never spoke her name. It would serve him right if after this she turned up on his doorstep and told him point-blank all that had happened. Let his wife and children know what sort of madness they inherited.
Madness. The idea sent an unexpected chill through her. Was that what brought her here after all? The mad heard voices, had nightmares. She had told herself repeatedly through all the long months of winter that she was not, could not be insane. But then, that was what all the mad told themselves.
Grace clutched her shawl and looked back down the muddy path marked by her own boot prints. She could go back down the stairs. She didn’t have to do this. The boathouse would shelter her until Frank came back again. This was nothing to do with her. It might not even be real.
Why did I even come?
Because someone told me I was afraid to. Because someone else told me I was uncaring. If I leave now, which of them will I prove right?
Grace squared her shoulders and mounted the three snow-speckled steps to the front door. She put a hand on the knob. Part of her hoped to find it locked, but no, it turned easily under her touch.
The door swung open silently on well-tended hinges. As she stepped inside, Grace noted that whoever was the last here they had not bothered to sweep up. Several pairs of boots had tracked in mud and left it to dry where it fell.
No sound issued from within. Whoever had left these traces was no longer here.
She repeated that fact to herself firmly, several times, but Grace still hesitated. It was wrong for her to be here, she felt that keenly. This was no business of hers.
It’s what the living are up to you need to find out. Who had told her that? Why had she believed them?
The front room was sparsely furnished. She could gain no appreciation of the quality of those furnishings, because they were all hidden by the pale drapes of dust cloths. Incongruously, pieces of hemp rope lay beside the sofa. The wall beside the square, iron stove was stained with black, as if it had been scorched. It even seemed to Grace the scent of smoke still lingered in the air.
She drifted to the heap of rope and picked up one of the fragments. The hemp pricked at her fingers. A red ribbon had been twisted into it. Apart from that, it looked like any other length of rope, but it felt wrong, not to her skin, but to her mind. Grace let it fall.
What happened here? Bridget, what have you done?
She thought again about retreating to the boathouse, to wait for Frank. Why should she care what anyone thought of her? She had her life and it kept her warm and fed, and safe from such strange things. That was surely all she required.
No. It’s already gone too far for that. I must at least try to see. If I do not, it will start gnawing at me, and who knows when that voice will come back. I cannot live with that voice in my head.
Grace turned to face the room and drew herself up to her full height. Mrs. Hausman and her other clients would all be stunned if they could see what was coming next. There was no chanting, no pleading, no dim light or gazing crystal.
“All right,” said Grace flatly. “I’m here. Show yourself.”
The air around Grace curdled. The room grew colder. A female figure took shape in front of her, but Grace could not see her clearly. She was an old woman and she was a young girl. She was a proud queen and a frightened child wringing her hands. She was certain and she was confused. She was brave, and she was cringing back, terrified.
You came.
Grace’s mouth had gone dry. “You’re not Ingrid,” she said stupidly. “Or Bridget.”
No. I am sorry. Regret wrapped around Grace like a cool wind.
Grace felt panic rise inside her. “Who are you?”
Memories that were not her own flooded Grace’s mind; visions of a man in white and gold holding a golden crown over her head, of sitting in a high throne, looking down on a host of fantastically dressed people who all bowed to her, of running across a broad stretch of grass at the edge of a canal, of watching a young man she knew was her son and thinking desperately that she must save him from his wife.
With the strange visions came a strange name. Medeoan. The ghost who haunted this place was Medeoan.
This was wrong, wrong. Grace felt it in her bones and in her blood. This strange, shifting ghost should not be here. Something bad had happened. “Where is my niece? What happened to her?”
She was tricked and she was tried, but she overcame, and in so doing put herself in even greater danger, although she doesn’t know it yet.
“What do you mean?” demanded Grace, even as she took a step away. So much was wrong here, she couldn’t begin to comprehend it. She saw bright flickers out of the corners of her eyes, as if the flames that had scorched the wall and heated the stove still burned. She raised her hand to her temple to try to block out the bright illusions. “I don’t understand you.”
I asked her to take up my shame, and have placed her and my land in danger.
More flames flickered at the corners of Grace’s vision. She saw strange glowing shadows about the room — a golden cage, a bird of flame, a dark-haired man with cruel, cruel eyes. Bridget. In the middle of it all stood the ghost, little girl, young bride, old crone, beautiful, mad, regal, pathetic, still in the present and in frantic motion in the glimmering past.
Grace could make no sense of these bizarre bits and pieces. “What have you done to Bridget?” she screamed at the
ghost. “What are you?”
One who needs. She will come back, but not to me. Not without your help. I must undo what I have done, or I will have no rest.
“Why should I?” Grace backed toward the door. “Why should I care?”
Do not leave me alone in the cold. I must atone. I cannot do that here.
Grace felt regret roll in slow waves from the shifting ghost and shuddered under the onslaught. “Leave me alone.”
I cannot.
More images crowded in on the edge of Grace’s mind. Shrouded figures laid out in a gilded church. A young woman sitting alone before a blazing fire and wishing desperately for help, for release.
“If Bridget’s coming back, you must wait for her,” muttered Grace. “She has the sight and the power, as she’d be quick to remind me. I’m just a bitter old woman.”
As was I. Bitter. Wronged and wronging. Frightened and terrifying.
“And so?” Grace tried to keep her voice hard and her mind closed, but she was tired after the long trip across the barely-thawed lake. She wanted to be gone, despite her previous determination to solve this mystery. She did not want to face this haunting, this sorrowful voice and the fleeting visions it brought.
The ghost drifted nearer, settling for a moment into its visage as an old woman, straight and proud but with a face heavily lined from anger and the passage of years. We are alike, you and I. We have blamed but do not take blame. We have acted but say that it is only because we were forced. We abandoned those who trusted us.
“How dare you!”
The words burst from her, loud and forcefully. But the ghost was undeterred. The shade spoke again, coming nearer yet.
Like and like, you and I. That is why I may speak to you. That is why only you can help me. I have no other bond to this mortal world, and I am fading.
“Fading?” Nothing had prepared her for this. Certainly not her “training” as a medium, nor the dozens of books on spiritualism she read so she could expand her repertoire of patter.
My body is gone, Medeoan told her. My bones are ash and the ash is scattered. I cannot hold onto myself. Spring wakes the world and the rush of life will overwhelm me. Even in the Land of Death and Spirit I will be diffuse, an aimless ghost without bones or heart to bind. I will only be mourned for some self I was in the distant past. It will not be enough.
Grace knew she should have felt relief at this, but an unaccountable sadness bloomed inside her. The ghost flickered into her shape as a young woman, at once facing Grace, and turning toward Bridget, her arms outstretched and pleading.
I want to help. What comes is my doing, and my wish to undo came too late. I can neither hold nor help if you will not help me.
“I want to be left alone.”
You do not want to be left alone. You want not to have turned away at the wrong time, from your sister, from her daughter. So I from my son, and from the true burdens of my birth. But I was old and bitter, older than you and far more crabbed in my heart. My ghosts came to me too late and I turned even from them. That last turning trapped me here to beg and to cry.
“Stop it.” Grace pressed her hands against her temples. “You don’t need me.”
Medeoan was an old woman again, and her regret filled the room. She is strong, your niece, but what is to come will terrify her. She may regain all she has lost, or she may through turning away lose all there is to gain. She will be terrible in her anger, and it will take more than one love to turn her back. I am weak. I cannot see so far. If she cannot be turned, the child will remain alone. Do not leave her. Do not give her more reason for sorrow.
“The child?” Grace asked weakly.
Help me. Medeoan’s need drowned her. Help me save the child, and my own son and the realm. Help me do what I could not in life.
Grace pressed her hand to her mouth. She did not want this. She felt the ghost’s sorrow, her desperation. The dead woman’s memories washed over her yet again. A boy, straight and handsome in fine clothes. A black-eyed man whispering poison in her ears. Another man with dark gold hair dying beside a golden cage. With a shock, Grace realized she knew him. That man was Avan, Ingrid’s lover.
Grace swallowed. She had not known that Avan had died.
“Grace? What the hell’s going on?”
Frank. When had Frank come in? He stood in the doorway, the spring winds blowing in behind him. It seemed the Medeoan wavered for a moment, like a reflection rippling in disturbed water.
“I’ve been waiting for you.” Frank stepped forward, letting the door swing shut behind him. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I blew the fog horn twice. Didn’t you hear?”
“I … Frank … no … I’m sorry,” stammered Grace. Somehow he was harder to see than Medeoan. After all that had passed, he seemed not to belong in her world anymore.
You can choose now. Turn away again, and you will only be as you are. Turn forward, and you can shed the past, shed the sight you do not want, and in the end you will have my silence. I will be gone, expelled when all is over, but I will also be forgiven. Please. Please. I am dead and I am lost, and I need the help only you can give. Please.
To be needed, to be forgiven. Grace bowed her head. Oh, she understood this woman’s yearning well. To forgive, to act instead of being acted on.
“Grace, what’s the matter? Did you get what you wanted?”
What did Grace want? Only silence? Only her rooms and her trickeries? She had wanted to help Bridget. She had tried, but it was not enough. Here was her chance, to try again, to show Ingrid that she was good for more than smiles and flirtations, to show Bridget that they were truly family, to show herself that she was not what she feared.
Grace shook. All this lay at the heart of the ghost’s offer, but ghosts lied. She’d been touched before, possessed by the need of another. She knew that cold and ice, that unyielding dread and hunger that could never be sated. It had drained her hollow once before. What if this ghost came only to do the same?
Frank touched her shoulder. She looked up at his worried, kind face, but saw it only with difficulty. He didn’t know what was happening, had no eyes to see or ears to hear, and she had no voice left to explain.
“Come away, Grace. This is no good for you.”
But at the same time, inside her mind she heard Medeoan’s fading voice. Please. Please.
She wouldn’t survive it again. Ingrid would not come running down the sands to save her with a Finnish sorcerer in tow as she had before. This time she’d shrivel and die.
But she’d die trying. That was the coldest comfort, but not so cold as the years that stretched ahead without it.
Grace covered Frank’s hand where he held her shoulder. “You’re a good man, Frank Bluchard. You deserve far better than I’ve given you.”
“Grace …” he began, but she did not let him finish. She turned away from him yet again.
“Very well,” she said to the ghost.
For one heartbeat, Grace saw the woman’s face clearly. She knew the lines and the eyes that had seen far too much. For one heartbeat, she felt the absolute cold of the ghost’s touch. In the next, cold dissolved in the warmth of her flesh and blood, it spread through her, and took unshakable hold. And she saw …
She saw the greenish brown waters of a canal slip by the gilded gunwale of her barge.
She saw her hand grip Frank’s hard and felt her knees tremble.
She saw her daughter-in-law kneel before her and hated her for it.
She saw the whitewashed fire door that led to the light through a haze of tears.
She saw the Firebird in all its glory soaring through the blue sky and knew it came at her call.
The visions overwhelmed her, robbing her of sense and will. Distantly, Grace felt herself fall. She felt Frank catch her in his strong arms and cradle her close.
“Oh, Grace,” she heard him say. “What’ve you done to yourself?”
It’s only for a little while, she tried to tell him. Only until Bridget com
es home.
Bridget, said the voice of the ghost she carried. Come home.
Chapter Six
Lord Daren watched the Firebird through the eye of his mind. A glorious blaze of fire, it streaked through the pale sky of the Land of Death and Spirit, its tail streaming out behind it to light all the Shifting Lands.
It was coming for Isavalta. Daren could feel that. The Firebird screamed its intent before it. Its anger welled out like blood from an open wound.
He should have run. He knew that. He was but the sliver of a spirit here in the shape of a red-tailed hawk, but he had to make a stand. If the Firebird could be turned, or dissuaded before it reached Isavalta, then all would be safe. If there was a way to touch, a way to try …
But before Daren even moved his will beyond that thought, the bird twisted its long neck, and regarded his hawk’s shape with one burning blue eye.
It did not speak. It did not bother to challenge or warn. It flicked its great wing, and the curtain of flame fell over Daren, all light and color, and bright, blazing pain. Daren screamed with all the strength of his soul, screamed as if he would never stop, and the spell broke, but the pain did not, and he fell, shuddering, onto the stone floor of his chamber.
Chapter Seven
The door to Bridget’s room banged open. She shot up in bed, her heart pounding.
“Mistress …” came Richikha’s startled voice.
“Is she here?” demanded a woman shrilly.
Bridget tossed aside the heavy bedclothes and scrambled from the bed. The stones were cold under her stockinged feet as she hurried around the bed screens.
The room’s single window showed that dawn had just begun to light the sky. Richikha and Prathad, both of them up and dressed, blocked the path of a tall woman whose white hair was piled high on her head. Anger tightened her face, making her cheekbones stand out sharply and darkening her blue eyes.
“Good morning, Mistress Urshila,” said Bridget, coming forward to join her determined, but outmatched maids. “I did not think …”
