The Firebird's Vengeance

by Sarah Zettel

  The Vixen stalked up to the Old Witch. “You have stolen what is mine, and then you have the gall to cross my lands.”

  Baba Yaga planted her pestle firmly on the green grass. Her leer became a death’s-head grin. “Stole? I would say you lost him.”

  The Vixen took one step nearer, now close enough to touch the other, if she chose. The Old Witch did not flinch or pull back.

  “The man Valin Kalami is my lawful prey. I will have him back.”

  “Will you?” Baba Yaga clacked her teeth. They too were stained and battered, like the pestle that she leaned on. “You make a great noise over a trifle for one whose mortal lands are about to fall to me.”

  The Vixen snorted and waved the words away. “The place men call Isavalta? What do I care for the shape of Isavalta? The empire falls and you have it, but the new lands are still my place to play and all my children’s. The man Valin Kalami is another matter. He is mine, and I will have him back.”

  The Old Witch shrugged her bony shoulders. “I stole nothing. Your sons lost their quarry. Perhaps they grew bored, as they are known to do, and found other game. The man eluded them, and came to me.”

  “It was you who allowed Bridget Lederle to cross his path.” The Vixen’s hands curled into claws. “It was you who prevented her from using the sight I gave her.”

  At these words, the foxes appeared. They rose from the tops of the hills. They emerged from behind the thorn trees, and from out of the meadow grass. They were red, brown, grey, and white. They were tiny kits and the size of cart horses, and every one of them had the Vixen’s green eyes, and sharp, yellow teeth, and every one of them stared at the Old Witch, ears alert, tails twitching, bodies tensed and ready.

  The witch surveyed the Vixen’s children, with eyes as calm and expressionless as a bird’s.

  “You will not send your sons for me,” she said, but the Vixen noted how her hands clenched more tightly around her filthy pestle. “You will not start open war over this thing. It is not your way.”

  The Vixen’s own eyes gleamed. “Are you so sure you know all my ways, Baba Yaga? Are you so very sure?”

  “I know enough.” The Old Witch grinned. “I know your game was interrupted, and I know you cannot prove I played any part in it, or you would not have bothered with this show. The man came to me freely, and I will keep what is mine.”

  “You will try,” said the Vixen, her voice soft as summer mist and sharp as a sword’s edge.

  Baba Yaga only grinned. She snapped her teeth once at the mass of the lokai, and one of the kits yipped in fear. The witch grinned more fiercely. She thumped her pestle once on the green grass, and was gone, leaving behind nothing but a smear of blood on the crushed greenery and the thunder of her passage.

  The Vixen, whose eyes saw far in her own country, watched Baba Yaga receding into the distance.

  “Very good,” she said to herself. “Yes. That was very good indeed.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was night in Bayfield when Bridget and Sakra emerged. A full moon turned the cobbled streets to silver. It had only been a matter of months since she had last walked here, but already the place seemed strange to Bridget. The wood and stone houses were too square and plain, but the sparkle of moonlight on so many glazed windows was like a second field of stars. The black lake behind them stretched out flat as a pond until it merged with the night sky.

  They had reentered the living world halfway up Bayfield’s long bluff. The air smelled green despite the cold, and the lake appeared free of ice as far as she could tell, so it must be spring. The moon was well up, which made her think it was about midnight, or a bit after. Surely, a propitious time to be walking between worlds.

  Sakra also gazed at the town spilling down the bluff.

  “And this was your home?” he asked.

  “No. I lived out on an island.” Bridget nodded toward the darkly shining lake. “You can’t see it from here.”

  “A shame. I would have liked to have known that place.”

  Bridget tried to picture Sakra in the lighthouse, perhaps sitting in the winter kitchen, stretching out his long legs under the table while she served coffee. It was not an image that came easily.

  But that house was not hers anymore. The lake had thawed. Boats waited in the harbor, not just the fishing boats, but the big steamers come across from Buffalo for timber, or up from Chicago to deliver finished goods. The lighthouse would be lit, and someone else was the keeper now. Perhaps some man with a family of his own, husband and wife sleeping together in the room that had once been Bridget’s. She shivered. It felt strange. She had walked out of that house and closed the door behind her, but she had not felt how finally she had given away her place in this world, until now.

  “Perhaps another day. We shouldn’t linger about.” Bridget turned away from the lake and the hollow feeling inside her. “If I’m recognized, there will be … questions.” Especially in these clothes. She looked down at her dress of Isavaltan velvet trimmed with fur and sashed with silk and lace.

  “Especially if you are seen in the company of a strange man,” added Sakra, matter-of-factly.

  “I’m afraid so, yes.”

  “Well then, for the sake of your reputation, let us hurry.”

  She could not help but smile at his dry tone, even as she turned up the street toward the cemetery. She felt strangely glad Sakra could make jokes. He was worried about what had happened in the Shifting Lands. She was also worried, despite her confident words. She had acted on instinct, but now she heard Mistress Urshila’s warning in the back of her mind. The woman was right, in so many ways. Bridget didn’t know what she was doing. What if she had jeopardized their chances of returning to Isavalta? What if it turned out Anna were a prisoner there? What if Kalami had taken her, not just … killed her.

  Bridget lengthened her stride.

  The full silver moon lit their way. The clear sky meant it was cold, almost as cold as it had been in Isavalta, and her breath steamed white as she led Sakra from the street to the gravel path that ran between Bayfield’s two cemeteries.

  Nothing in the graveyard had changed. Bridget wasn’t sure why she felt it should have. All the monuments stood just as they always had, pale grey above the darker silver of the frosted grass. The tree line was nothing but a series of shadows, some still and some in motion from the stiff breeze that blew off the lake and rattled the branches. The great oak, black and solid, stood sentry over the three stones; one for Mama, one for Papa, and the last one, the smallest one.

  Bridget’s heart constricted as she laid her hand on that stone.

  I’m here, dearest. She remembered how she had said that, waking exhausted in the middle of the night to reach into Anna’s cradle. Mama’s here.

  Conflicting emotions twisted inside her heart. She wanted the truth, she needed it as she needed air in her lungs, but at the same time she wanted nothing so much as to hike up her skirts and run away.

  “I don’t … I should …” Bridget bit her lip, and tried again. “What do we …”

  Before she could complete the question, a long beam of pale light touched the grave. Bridget turned, startled, and saw a silhouette in fluttering skirts.

  “She’s not there.”

  Sakra stepped forward, ready to get between Bridget and the silhouette, but Bridget laid a hand on his arm.

  “Aunt Grace?”

  Grace moved out of the shadow of a granite obelisk. Bridget stared at her aunt for a long moment. She had lost weight since Bridget had last seen her. Her face had gone from round to gaunt. Instead of her usual carefully calculated collection of gaudy gypsy garments, she looked like a ragamuffin. A torn skirt of pale silk covered a dark work skirt. Tattered lace shawls that could have done nothing to keep out the spring chill had been tossed carelessly over her shoulders. One already lay puddled at her feet. A bangle dangled from her right ear but had no mate on her left. Her frizzled hair was a cloud around her head, unrestrained by shawl, hat, or pin.<
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  “Not there. She’s not there,” and then, incredibly, she added in Isavaltan. “But you’ve come. I’ve been waiting so long. The cage won’t hold a second time. She said that. He told me that.”

  Bridget could only stare open-mouthed at her aunt. “What …” she stammered.

  Grace drew herself up, tall and imperious and suddenly familiar, but not as herself. “This isn’t the one I expected,” she said, still in Isavaltan. “Who is this?”

  “This is Sakra,” said Bridget, unsure what to add. My beau? My suitor? Her head was spinning so fast the idea of making polite introductions seemed quite ludicrous. “My friend.”

  “Bridget …?” said Sakra softly.

  “I don’t know. This is my Aunt Grace, but …”

  “Aunt Grace,” Aunt Grace cut her off in English, dwindling back to her dowdy self and clutching at her lacy shawls. “Yes. I am Aunt Grace.”

  “I am honored to meet Bridget’s aunt.” Sakra gave the salute of trust.

  Grace looked him up and down, although dark as it was she could not have seen very much. “He seems more polite than the one you ran off with,” she remarked.

  Bridget let that pass, and hoped Sakra would be able to as well. At the moment it was hardly anything. “Aunt Grace, what’s happened to you? How …?”

  Grace sighed. “You came back to find out if she was in her grave. Well, she’s not.” Grace swayed on her feet, her head whipping left to right, as if she were hearing something she couldn’t see. “No, no.” The words were again Isavaltan. “Not yet, I told you, the time is not yet.”

  “Is it possible your aunt followed you through the Shifting Lands?” asked Sakra. “That she has been affected by your family’s magic?”

  “I swear I don’t know.” Of all the things that might have come upon their return, Aunt Grace speaking Isavaltan had not even entered her imagination.

  “I hear it,” Grace said sadly. “I hear it all the time. It is trapped but it never leaves me alone.” With those mournful words, Grace crumpled slowly to her knees.

  Bridget and Sakra lunged forward to catch her before she toppled onto the grass. At the same time, another voice cried, “Grace!”

  A new figure raced out of the darkness, a burly man in a peacoat who knelt at once beside Bridget’s aunt.

  “Grace, my God, I’ve been looking all over for you.” He squinted up at Bridget and Sakra. “Who the hell …” he began, and then he drew back. “Miss Bridget?”

  Now Bridget recognized him. This was Francis Bluchard, who ran the tug from Eastbay to Bayfield.

  Frank Bluchard looking all over for Aunt Grace? Bridget was momentarily and ludicrously scandalized, but something akin to reason rapidly reasserted itself.

  “Frank, what’s been going on?” Bridget tried to keep the growing hysteria she was feeling out of her voice. Here was Aunt Grace collapsed at the edge of Anna’s grave, saying she was not at rest in it … what on earth had she been doing?

  “I should be askin’ you,” Frank shot back and for a moment Bridget wasn’t sure whether he was answering the question she’d spoken aloud or the one she’d only thought. “Who’s that?” His eyes narrowed suspiciously at Sakra.

  “His name is Sakra. Frank …”

  “This the one you ran off with?”

  Bridget ignored that. Between them, Aunt Grace was staring at the ground, apparently oblivious to any of them, muttering in Isavaltan, “I tried, I tried, I tried, but they used, they used, they used …”

  “Is there someplace we can take her?” asked Bridget.

  Frank frowned stubbornly, but soon relented. “Back to her place. Come on now, Grace.” With surprising gentleness, Frank raised Grace to her feet.

  “Used, used, used,” Grace muttered angrily, but then she looked up at Frank’s eyes, and seemed to snap back to herself. “I can manage this much, thank you,” she said, drawing herself up. Gathering her useless shawls about her shoulders she started toward the road. “Come with me if you want to find your answers,” she said over her shoulder to Bridget and Sakra.

  Bridget in turn looked at Frank. “What’s happened to her?” she whispered. She did not know what Aunt Grace would do if she heard them talking about her.

  “I don’t know. She’s been this way for about a week, since we went back to the lighthouse to clear out some of your things, like she said you asked her to.” The accusation in Frank’s voice was clear. “Sometimes she’s gabbling away in her own language, and then all of a sudden she knows more about what’s what than I do.”

  Bridget swallowed to keep from stuttering out the first six thoughts that jumped into her mind. “I didn’t ask her to do any such thing.”

  “Yeah, I thought the story was pretty thin.” Frank didn’t look toward Bridget as he spoke, but kept his attention firmly on Grace’s rigid back. “But she’d heard you’d gone, and about the fire, and she asked me to take her out there. I left her there, didn’t see no harm, and went round to Eastbay. When I came back for her, she was like … this.”

  “No,” said Grace firmly, without turning around. “No more talk out here!”

  “Why …” began Bridget.

  “Because I say so!” Grace answered furiously. “And for once, one of you is going to do what I say!”

  Bridget shut her mouth, and somewhat to her embarrassment, shrank back nearer to Sakra. What had happened here? What was going on? Had she left something undone at the light? It seemed Aunt Grace must have been touched by Isavalta and what had happened there, but how?

  Fortunately, Aunt Grace also decided to hold her tongue. They headed down into Bayfield with its straight, quiet streets. A few stray sounds floated up from the bars by the port, or down from the woods atop the bluff. All the houses were dark. There was no one to see, but Bridget still felt furtive. She had said good-bye to this place, to these people. She did not want to be here again.

  In front of the apothecary window, Grace stopped in her tracks. She stared at the bottles of medicines and notions in the glittering in the window.

  “It’s not the right time,” she said in Isavaltan. “These should have all been put away.”

  “Now, Grace.” Frank stepped up quickly to take her elbow, as he obviously had many times before. “We talked about this. This way, girl.”

  “But these should all have been put away,” Grace said, on the verge of tears. “That night is over with. It didn’t happen. It didn’t have to happen.”

  “Nice and easy now.” Frank pushed open the narrow door that led to an equally narrow set of stairs to Grace’s apartment over the apothecary. Grace let herself be led docilely, until they entered the flat. The sight of her own rooms seemed to shake off her melancholy. Without even a glance at Frank, she busied herself with lighting the lamps and poking up the fire in the stove. The windows, Bridget noted, were tightly shuttered. No light would show through to the street.

  While Frank watched Grace, ready to intercede in case she was careless with the fire, Sakra looked about him with interest. He took in the lamps with their fringed shades, the wood-framed photographs covering the flocked wallpaper, the shelves crammed with china knickknacks, the hard, slick horsehair furniture and the worn rug. Bridget felt the sudden urge to assure him that she had kept a very different sort of house. She herself saw the dust, the pictures hanging askew, the shawl dropped carelessly by the beaded curtain that led to Aunt Grace’s bedroom. The black stocking draped over the back of the sofa. She smelled the faint odor of refuse left indoors too long.

  “Has she been … able …”

  Frank seemed to know what she was driving at. “Her rent’s paid to the end of the month.” By you, I’m sure, thought Bridget as she watched his jaw grind back and forth. “But I don’t know what I’m going to do. The harbor’s all clear now, and I’ve got a living to earn.”

  Which would keep him out on the lake two or three days at a time, depending on where he was running out to.

  At last Grace seemed satisfied with th
e level of light in the room. Indeed, Bridget thought it was overly bright. On one previous visit here, Aunt Grace kept the parlor dim so as not to “interfere with the vibrations.” The faded, ill-cared-for furnishings looked even more battered in full light. Grace turned to the row of pegs by the door and began unwrapping her shawls, hanging the worn lace up fussily. “Thank you, Frank. You can go now.”

  “All right, Grace, if you say so.” Frank glanced sideways at Bridget, a look that clearly said, I will be back to talk to you.

  Bridget nodded, trying to convey, we will take care of her, in return. She hoped she was not telling a silent lie. “Thank you.”

  “Yep.” Frank nodded, gave Sakra another disapproving glower, and left them there, although Bridget suspected he had second thoughts about doing so. Bridget found she didn’t blame him in the least.

  As the door shut, Grace gripped a coat peg as if that were all that was keeping her from falling over. Now Bridget saw the shadows under her eyes, deep black smudges that could only have come from whole nights without sleep. In the next heartbeat, Grace had pulled herself upright, and assumed the haughty stance that reminded Bridget of someone, but for the life of her she could not tell who.

  But Sakra, it seemed, could. “Grand Majesty,” he whispered.

  His words staggered Bridget. “Medeoan?”

  Grace turned to them, looking down her bulbous nose, and Bridget saw it. In the bright light, without the tricks of shadow and moonlight, she saw the faint reflection of the dowager empress laid over her aunt’s pale, tired visage. But in the space of a breath, that reflection was gone, and Grace was simply Grace again.

  “Medeoan is here,” she whispered, as if afraid someone else might hear. The sound of that name coming from her aunt’s mouth spun Bridget’s world around yet again.

  “Of your courtesy, mistress,” said Sakra. “Will you tell us how this came to be, since the one who wore that name is dead.”

  “I know.” Grace crossed the room to the wing-backed chair and dropped into it. It seemed to be a reflexive motion. “Her ghost was trapped at the lighthouse.”