The Firebird's Vengeance

by Sarah Zettel

  It was not until Bridget woke to the full light of morning that she had a chance to be surprised at how easily she had fallen into unconsciousness after limping back to Grace’s sofa with a spare quilt and pillow.

  Her hair was a rat’s nest. She was abominably hungry and thirsty as well.

  Sakra was still asleep in front of the cold stove.

  Matches, food, something to drink, return at once to Isavalta to tell them what we’ve learned, and set off again as soon as can be to find Anna. Bridget shook her head at the absurdity of her list of tasks. She wondered how things were in Isavalta, if Prathad and Richikha were managing all right, and how Ananda was coping. It was odd to feel a yearning for the place that had only been her home for a few brief months, but there was a comfort and welcome there she would not quickly find again.

  And yet, she was not there. She was here in Bayfield again, calling back ghosts of the dead, and the living.

  God Almighty, she tried unsuccessfully to smooth her hair back. It was supposed to be over and done. It’s time for the happily ever after, for new life and beginnings. Why are all the dead coming back to us now?

  Oh, Anna, I didn’t meant that. I didn’t.

  To get away from uncomfortable thoughts, Bridget got up and began rummaging through the drawers of one of Aunt Grace’s little curio tables, looking for matches. It was early enough in the spring that the chill was uncomfortable.

  Although she tried to be quiet, the noise of her movement woke Sakra. He pushed himself up into a sitting position.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked by way of morning greeting.

  “Better.” She held up the box of matches. “I thought I’d light the stove. We may not have such a luxury when we return to Isavalta.”

  “A good thought,” he said, but his gaze strayed toward the window, as if looking for something.

  “What is it?” asked Bridget, although she found she was afraid to know the answer. She did not want there to be any more of this. She did not want to be tired again, frightened again, planning and scheming again. She wanted to rest.

  “I was thinking of Medeoan,” said Sakra gravely. “I was thinking how it is that she is really gone.” He paused. “After you returned last night, did you look at your aunt closely, with both eyes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see the ghost? Did you see any reflection of Medeoan at all?”

  “No.” Sakra’s eyes were strange and distant, almost frightened. “Surely she’s at rest now. Even she deserves that much.” But he looked away again. “Sakra, what is it? Tell me.”

  His face tightened, as if in pain. “The promise of the Seven Mothers is that there is no true ending. Life and death, the mortal and the immortal, are wheels within wheels, always turning, coming together and separating again. Your death leads to your birth which leads again to your death, and again to your birth. The dance is forever, the pattern changes but is not broken. But … there have been … rarely, but there have been those who chose to step outside the pattern, who gave up the dance to leave all to someone who could continue within it, to win a great battle or heal a great wound. There is only oblivion then. No eternity, no rest, no rebirth or Heaven. It is the greatest sacrifice. I think that is what Medeoan has done when she held on long enough to pass on what was needed to you and Grace.” His brow furrowed in distress. “I have hated this woman since I laid eyes on her, hated her for all the long, cold years I have been in Isavalta even as I pitied her, even as I tried to forgive when she lay so broken at the end. But … the things she did to Ananda, to her own son. You know only some of it, Bridget. But now she has done this. I don’t know what to think.” He stared past her, seeing only his own confusion. “Part of me wants to believe this is a trick, a perversion, one more evil to add to Medeoan’s name. But if you cannot see her shade within your aunt …” He shook his head. “May the Mothers help me, I don’t know how to forgive so much.”

  The pain in his face was real. That fact reached her, even though what he was saying had yet to really sink in.

  “We know my eyes are not infallible.” She offered the words tentatively. Sakra only shook his head again.

  “It took the Shifting Lands to deceive them. I do not think a single ghost here could manage so much.”

  Bridget looked down at her hands. She had tightened her fist around the matchbox, crumpling its paper. “We need to get back. I can’t think about any of this here. There isn’t room for this sort of miracle in Bayfield.”

  Sakra’s mouth quirked up in the suggestion of a smile. “I think this miracle began in Bayfield.”

  “Perhaps.” Bridget pushed her snarled hair back again. “But I’ve never known how.” She shook herself. “I do, however, know how to light that stove, and I’m getting cold.”

  “If my lady would do the honors.” Sakra bowed gracefully and stood aside for her. In spite of the uncertainty of his feeling of what had happened to Medeoan, he too seemed healed even after so short a rest. His bruises had faded at least a little, and his placid demeanor had reasserted itself. “I fear I am not familiar with this particular variety of luxury.” He frowned at the stove as if it were a strange dog in the yard.

  Bridget found herself smiling as she brushed past him, giving the cold stove a small pat to show him it really was a well-behaved creature. Sakra laughed a little and Bridget grinned. Despite all, they could find a moment for each other, just as they had from the very beginning. They were at ease together again, and she was grateful for it.

  She knelt in front of the stove, layering tinder and kindling on top of the ashes. After a moment, she became acutely aware he was watching her, taking in each movement of her hands, each turn of her head. She found herself wishing she’d gone through the bother of braiding her hair last night so it was not such a mass of snarls, and then laughed at herself for her vanity.

  The match struck against the hearthstones. The tinder took on the first try, and the fire blossomed readily, so Bridget was able to lay on the larger sticks of fuel and close the slatted door.

  “And there you have it.” She stood, wiping her hands on her stained and rumpled skirt.

  Sakra was only a few inches away from her. She felt the heat from his skin more acutely than she did the heat from the stove. Seeing her discomfort, he made to move away.

  “Wait,” said Bridget, coming to one more decision.

  Sakra stayed where he was, so close she could reach out to touch him without any effort at all. “Yes?”

  She kissed him, slowly and cautiously, as uncertain as any half-grown girl who was afraid of being too bold. He stiffened in surprise at the first brush of her lips, but softened in the space of one short breath, leaning toward her, helping her, wrapping his strong arms around her. He tasted of cinnamon and cloves. He smelled like life itself.

  The doorknob rattled. Bridget started like a guilty child, but Sakra only smiled and stepped back a respectful distance. By the time the door opened to reveal Aunt Grace, shawl over her head and market basket slung on her arm, there was no hint of impropriety anywhere but Bridget’s blush.

  Grace, thankfully, busied herself with hanging up her shawl, which gave Bridget time to compose herself and pick the basket up from the floor where Grace had set it. A dozen fresh eggs waited underneath a blue-checked cloth.

  “I thought we could all use some breakfast,” announced Grace, as if she expected a challenge. “Good, you have the stove going. There’s a frying pan hanging by the basin in the other room. Fetch it out, Bridget, would you? You’ll find the drippings can as well.”

  Bridget shared a glance with Sakra, who gestured with open palms, saying silently they must obey. Bridget agreed.

  By the time she returned, she saw Aunt Grace had set Sakra to work cracking eggs into an ancient earthenware bowl she had brought out from somewhere, while Grace added milk from a bottle that must have been delivered on the doorstep.

  Bridget had never pictured any such scene taking place in the over-fr
inged and perfumed parlor, but she realized Aunt Grace had no stove in her living quarters, and she had to do her cooking somewhere.

  “While we’re at this, Bridget, you can make use of the time, I’m sure,” Grace said. “The lavatory’s down the hall.” Sakra cracked the last egg into the bowl, and Aunt Grace commenced whisking them with a battered fork. She pushed her hair back from her face, and Bridget saw the thin scab on the wound she had caused.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Grace,” she blurted out. “About, before. I didn’t mean … I lost control. I don’t know what I’m doing very well yet.”

  Grace sighed, but did not look up. “I think that’s a hazard of our family. Always rushing into things when we don’t know what we’re really doing.” Our family. Not “my sister,” not “you.” Us.

  “Aunt Grace — ” Bridget began again.

  “No,” Grace interrupted. “I’m not ready yet.”

  So, Bridget held her peace. The lavatory was cramped and none too clean, but it had water that ran clear after a minute of rust-red, and Bridget made a brief wash with the cold water and harsh soap. As Sakra left to do the same, Bridget sat on the sofa and put her hair into some semblance of order with a comb and pins borrowed from Aunt Grace. Other than that, Grace did not pause in her shuttling between the stove and the sideboard that, it turned out, contained her mismatched china and aging silverware.

  Bridget let her aunt have her silence and as much space as she could. There was so much to readjust to, she was not sorry for a little time to herself.

  Breakfast was the eggs cooked in bacon fat eaten with thick slices of toasted bread spread with new butter and last summer’s blueberry preserves, and a most unladylike brew of coffee so thick and black it satisfied even Sakra’s taste.

  When the last crust had been consumed, Aunt Grace pulled her coffee mug toward her and clutched it with both hands. She stared into the depths of her cup, as if she meant to work one of her divinations from what she saw there. Her whole frame slumped forward, seeking to curl in on her heart, to protect herself. Bridget felt Grace’s weariness and worries dragging her down toward the comfortable place in her where nothing had changed, where the old excuses and old refusals were still valid and necessary. Part of her longed to sink back to that place inside herself.

  Desiring change, but not to be changed.

  When Grace straightened back and shoulders, her carriage became completely that of the woman Bridget had always known, and her heart constricted.

  “You’ll be leaving now, I suppose,” Grace said in her familiar, acerbic tone.

  “I’ve got to finish this thing,” said Bridget. “I’ve got to find Anna.”

  “Of course.” Aunt Grace’s gaze returned to her cup. She was struggling with something inside her, something old and strong, Bridget was sure.

  “Did … that man … the one who took your mother away …”

  “Avanasy,” whispered Bridget.

  “Yes. Did he love her? Did he truly?”

  Which was not at all the question Bridget had been expecting. “Yes,” she answered. “Truly, and deeply, beyond the time of his death even.”

  “You don’t know this?” Sakra asked Aunt Grace.

  Grace sipped her coffee before she answered. “I know Medeoan loved him,” said Grace. “And that he couldn’t return that love, and it broke her heart.” Memory, so old and yet so new, dimmed her eyes. “Part of her understood he loved Ingrid, part of her could never accept it,” she murmured, closing her eyes. “I’m too old for this.”

  “Aunt Grace, I think I’m too old for this.” Humor and determination reestablished themselves and Bridget found it easier to breathe. “But we haven’t been given the luxury of choice.”

  “Nor of time,” said Sakra, lifting his head as if he had just caught an unfamiliar and unpleasant scent.

  “What is it?” asked Grace, before Bridget could.

  “I don’t know.” Sakra glanced about him, looking for the source of whatever it was he sensed. When he did not find it, he frowned. “Nothing, perhaps, but it is a feeling, an intuition. I do not think we should linger here.” He looked down at Bridget. “Do you think you are strong enough to make the crossing now?”

  “If I must be.”

  “I think that you must.”

  Bridget nodded once, accepting his word. She turned to her aunt. “I’m sorry, Aunt Grace. I’d stay longer if I could.”

  Grace wrapped her arms around herself as if warding off the cold. “Yes, I know.”

  “All right.” Bridget reached out and touched her hand so Aunt Grace would look at her. “When this is over, I’ll come back. I swear it.”

  Grace nodded, but Bridget knew she did not believe. Bridget wanted to speak some words of reassurance, but before she could find any strong enough, Sakra pushed back his chair. Seemingly unable to sit still a moment longer, he got to his feet and began to pace, peering out between the shutter slats, looking for the reason for his sudden restlessness. “No time left,” he murmured. “Why? What’s coming?” He shivered. “And we still must create a spell for our return.”

  At that, Aunt Grace drew herself up. “I think I can help.”

  Bridget stared. She could not stop herself.

  “There were advantages to having Medeoan in my head. She really did live her life over again for me, and I managed to retain a few things. Roll back the carpet so we can get ready. Excuse me.”

  Grace vanished behind her curtain. Bridget looked from the curtain to Sakra and back again.

  “I don’t know,” he said in answer to her unspoken question. “But we can hope.”

  Grace watched them through the space between the curtain and the threshold. As soon as she was gone, they moved close together, heads bowed, talking in confidence. Anger she did not want stirred inside her. She knew now Sakra was from a place called Hastinapura, and that Medeoan’s treacherous husband had been from the same place. As a result she had for years nurtured a hatred of all such people, even though she had married her son to a woman of the same realm, even though she passed on the regret of that blinding hatred with all the other things she had given to Grace.

  It was so strange. It was as if she were seeing double. Thinking double. She stood both inside and outside every action. She knelt and pried up one of the floorboards by the bed and pulled her money box out from under it. She unlocked the box with the key she kept in her pocket and dumped the money back into the empty hole. The box was all she needed for now.

  Grace’s hands opened her jewelry box and set aside the paste and gilt and plucked out the two necklaces that were genuine silver. The first held a locket that Ingrid had given her when she turned sixteen. She had not looked at it in years, and yet she had never given it away. Not even when the wolf was at the door and she could have pawned it for a meal and a down payment on the back rent. She slipped the locket off the chain and pocketed it.

  The other was a slim chain hung with garnets given to her by some admirer professing his love. Had he purchased some of her rapidly diminishing virtue with this gift? She stared at it, and could not remember. All at once, Frank’s face appeared before her mind’s eye. She found herself wishing she could explain things to him, but that wish dissolved in an unexpected eagerness as she planned what was needed, a feeling of finally doing right, of being of good use. She checked the jug on the stand and found it full of water, so there would be no need to go down to the lavatory. She tucked the open money box under her arm, picked up the water jug, and returned to the parlor.

  Bridget and Sakra had finished their private conference and begun moving the furniture and rolling up the rugs to expose the scuffed and warped floorboards underneath. Her newly critical eye noted this last with approval. The pattern of the carpet would only confuse the pattern of the spell.

  Bridget straightened, dusting off her hands. “Well, Aunt Grace, what next?”

  Grace set down the jug on her worktable that had been pushed back against the wall. She handed Bridget the
silver chain, and told her, pulling the instructions out of the depths of her new knowledge, not knowing what she was going to say until the words tumbled from her lips. Bridget took it all in, uncertainty bordering on disbelief plain on her face. When Grace finished, Bridget turned to Sakra, her brows arched.

  “It could well work,” he said. “With sufficient power behind it.”

  “All right, then.” Bridget tucked her skirts up into her waistband and set to work.

  Bridget set the open money box in the center of the room, with the key in the lock. She pulled the chimney off one of the lit lamps and trimmed the wick low so it began to smoke and the scent of mineral oil grew sharp. This she set beside the money box. Then she picked up the jug and took a deep breath.

  “At the end of the world there burns a lamp. Beneath the light there is a door that is locked with a silver key. Beyond the door there is the river whose name is birth, whose name is death, whose name is life. Beyond the river is Eternal Isavalta.” Bridget dipped her fingers into the jug and sprinkled the water onto the floor, walking in a tight spiral working outward from the box and the lamp. “I, Bridget Loftfield Lederle, daughter of Ingrid, daughter of Bridget, have lit the lantern. I have opened the lock with the key of silver, I have opened the door. I have marked the way with water from the river whose name is birth, whose name is death, whose name is life. I will walk the path that is the riverbed and I will set my feet on the ground that is Eternal Isavalta. This is my word and my word is firm.”

  The room grew cold and the air turned prickly, as if a thunderstorm drew close overhead. The hairs on Grace’s arms and the back of her neck rose slowly and her skin shivered with goose pimples. It was getting hard to breathe. The air felt thin.

  Bridget began the chant again. She did not look in the least cold. Instead her cheeks were flushed with warmth and her eyes shone brightly. She began the spell again, her voice trembling from effort or from eagerness, it was hard to tell. Grace swayed, pulled by some force she could not name. She wanted to walk, to run, to dance to the rhythm of Bridget’s words and the patter of water drops she scattered from her fingertips. The two sounds, the only sounds, and yet somehow they filled the whole world and wove themselves together becoming one indivisible thing, a single command that reached inside to Grace’s heart and sinews and would not let her be still.