I let my upper body fall back onto the drafting table behind me. I was too drained to partake of their game. He took to me next, biting into my neck with abandon. I gripped the edge of my table, my buttocks pressed hard to the stool with his energy. He straddled me, as she hung off my side, the two of them taking what’s theirs. They’d never behave in such a manner with my daughters, but I was special. I was reserved for them. I belonged to Evelina and Peter. And they belonged to me.
* * *
Finn took in the spoonfuls Saba fed him. He didn’t like the mush, but he loved having her at his side. When he first woke, she was still asleep and he studied her before discovering she was real. He watched her hair dance back and forth, as her soft snore pushed it up and away from her mouth before it fell across her lips again. He studied her shoulders, collapsed on the cot, an inch from his arm. They heaved up and down, as her lungs pumped air in and out of her body. Yes, he thought, she’s very much real.
He wouldn’t close his eyes again, too frightened she’d disappear. He held his gaze steady, locked on her figure until another sailed into the room.
“You’re up,” Netta said, her voice a singsong like his mother’s. “Let me get Dagur, my darling boy. I won’t be a moment.” She sailed out of the room as smoothly as she’d sailed in, her smile imprinted on his mind for all time.
This is good, he thought, I’m safe here.
Saba woke next, her mother’s voice leaving the trace of an echo in her ear. She pulled her head up and smacked her lips, bringing her hand across her mouth to wipe away the sleep. She didn’t notice his eyes were open until it was too late. Her cheeks reddened at his grin, as she pulled her body upright and smiled.
“You’re alive,” she said. “Netta,” she called, her head turned toward the door. “He’s alive.”
Finn was mesmerized, her looks giving no hint of her brash behavior. She was rowdy, and raucous, a rebel like him.
“Hone veit,” Finn muttered.
Saba spun back around and faced him with a curiosity he’d once seen on the face of a cat. “Did you speak?”
He couldn’t understand a word she said, but he didn’t care. She was enchanting in her animation, her face lighting up when she looked at him. She had seemed so different when he first laid eyes on her, like a star in the sky, a vision of light far off. Now she was a raging ball of fire.
“Say it again,” she said.
Finn smiled, and her eyes grew wide. “Say something,” she tapped his arm, and he melted at her touch. “Say it again.” He stared back at her in mute admiration.
Netta entered the room, and I followed on her heels. This time she had the wee one in her arms, and Finn smiled wider.
“En familiye,” he mumbled.
Saba leaned forward, then turned back to me. “Did you hear that?” She couldn’t tame her excitement. “I think he said family.”
Finn repeated the phrase, recognizing his word in hers.
I stepped forward, admiring the young man. He’d seemed a boy when he first arrived, but I could see he was older than Saba. His bare chest had stretched overnight. He leaned on an elbow, sitting up part way as though he were in perfect health.
“He doesn’t speak our language,” I said.
“How strange.” Saba’s eyes grew wide. “What does he speak?”
Before long I discovered his mother tongue was similar to Veor’s, so both he and Peter translated until I’d shaken off the rust.
“Food,” I said to my wife. “Let’s feed him, shall we?”
“I’ve got some meal ready,” she said with a smile.
Saba volunteered to feed him, when I suggested he remain in bed. I’d called for Freyit, his patient’s second check-up due.
I watched Saba with him for a time, thinking of what Peter said. I wish I knew what he’d learned when he read my daughter’s mind, what he knew of her future. His discovery, her reincarnation, all of it seemed less important than my newfound reality. There were others like me. I wasn’t the last as Vincent had said.
“Of course you’re not the last,” Evelina told me when I met her to say the newcomer was awake. We conspired along the river, squatting beside one another on a bank far from the colony, our voices a whisper among the eaves. “Where did you think Netta came from?”
“She doesn’t recall her past.”
She smiled. “Of course not.”
“It hardly seems fair.”
“What?”
“Stealing her memories—”
“Don’t lecture me, boy.”
I shrugged. “I just assumed she was without a past, like me.”
Evelina ran her tongue over her teeth, our earlier dalliance still heavy on her lips. I rolled up my sleeve and stretched out my arm.
“I’m for you, mormor. Take it.”
She touched my skin with her hard fingers, running her talons along my vein, tickling me. “Not now,” she said. “You need your strength. If he’s returned, it’s you he’ll want.”
“Do you think it possible?”
“Who else but him.” She wasn’t posing a question but making a statement of fact.
“Will the boy remember any of it?”
“I can’t say, but he’s certainly been touched. I’ll make an appearance soon. Then we’ll see.”
She gazed at the water, carried along by the current. I wondered if she thought of my blood gushing in my veins, which was all I saw when I watched the river do what is most natural for it to do.
“Why not ask his permission?”
She looked at me, and nearly rocked me off my heels. I steadied myself again, then gave in and dropped my backside onto the wet ground.
“I don’t think I can bear it,” she said.
“Wouldn’t you be elated at his confirmation?”
“I can’t bear to know it’s not him.”
“I see,” I mumbled.
“Who is it if not him?”
She shrugged. “We must find out, mustn’t we?”
“He’s still got no name.”
“Peter will speak to him. I’d send Veor but he’s off with Lucia, conducting some Viking ritual.”
I smiled at her. “Those two make quite the pair, don’t they?”
She shook her head. I didn’t think it really nettled her, but sometimes she seemed to regret her daughter’s choice to attach herself to him. Wrath and jealousy owned Evelina, two faces on the same coin.
“You think little of me, my boy.”
I blushed. “I didn’t … I mean, I was simply thinking—”
She quieted me with a single finger to my lips, but not to block the confession I made as much as to listen to the forest.
I watched her, holding my breath, as she stood, combing the landscape with an eagle’s eye. She dipped her head to the side, cocking it just right to pick up the sound. I wanted to ask what she heard, but she took off like a spear through the trees, sailing off between the birches. She left me standing on the riverbank alone with my thoughts, not the first time she’d abandoned me with questions unanswered.
* * *
When I returned from my meeting with Evelina, Peter was sitting at the boy’s side.
“Dagur, this is Finn.” He looked up at me with his winsome smile, and I returned his warmth with a grin of my own.
I reached out for Finn and took his hand. He didn’t smile, but gave me a nod. He looked at Peter and said something, to which Peter nodded then translated for me. “He asked if you’re Saba’s father.”
“Have you learned anything about him yet?” I didn’t mean in conversation, but by using his other gifts of reconnaissance.
“Blank,” he said. “I can’t explain it but I think it’s got something to do with, you know.”
“His captor?”
“It’s possible he erased the events, which leads me to think it may be him.”
“Don’t others have that gift?”
Peter shrugged and looked at Finn once again. The young man sat in silence,
watching the two of us, unable to understand a word.
“Evelina will be here soon,” he said.
“She heard something in the forest, and took off.”
Peter waved a hand. “It’s nothing. She was mistaken.”
I hid my disappointment.
“Tell me what to do with Finn,” I said. “Should I let him roam around freely?”
“I’ve already spoken with Saba.”
“She’s comfortable with your arrangement, then?”
Peter sighed. “Ah, I see you don’t understand completely.”
“I don’t.”
He turned to Finn and told him something I can only assume was that we’d return. Peter stood up and walked me to the door, then ushered me out. “Let’s go to the garden.”
I followed him up the path, and into the shed Gerenios had erected for me. I’d yet to do anything with it but store grain for the frost.
“I can’t say Evelina would approve of my telling you this,” he began, “but I think you should know.”
“Know what?”
“There’s more to Saba’s reincarnation.” His eyes reached for me, and I could see him deciding whether he wanted to bring me into his mind.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Show me.”
The headaches such tricks induced were mind bending, but I needed to see for myself. He couldn’t know the mystery had been gnawing at me since I’d eavesdropped on the enclave.
Peter raised his hands to my temples, his face steady, his eyes locked on mine. “Ready?” His voice was a whisper.
I nodded, and closed my eyes. When our foreheads touched, my eyes tightened, the initial jolt more than a bit painful. I’d read about the probing Vincent had done in Muriel’s mind, and I’d written about my own experience climbing into his body, but the page can’t pay witness to the physical, despite the skill of the writer.
I took in a breath, and held it as Peter implanted me with his coldness. My brain froze, the pain like a searing light. I squeezed my eyes more tightly before peace descended, and I was elsewhere.
My view was Peter’s, the two of us looking upon a stream much like my own. For a moment, I thought we were in Hannah’s yard, but soon I realized we were on another coast, a world far from this one, a time different in all manner of ways. Peter showed me the olive trees, the blue water, as clear as glass, the sun vibrant in the sky. He let me smell the briny air, the hint of evergreen in the cypress, the redolent perfume of an unknown flower. He played with the sounds of my surroundings, harmonizing with the pan flute, the bells, the pluck of strings over my head. The landscape was one I hadn’t seen before but once my senses returned I’d never forget it.
The woman he awaited came into the scene. She looked nothing like my Saba but was the one who’d returned through my daughter.
Galla? I asked without asking, and nodded with Peter’s nod, knowing with Peter’s knowledge. This was his maker’s original self, long before she’d crossed paths with Vincent Du Maurier.
The goddess moved through the forest, a longbow strapped to her back like my Saba. But she carried a shield, a rounded hunk of metal hanging from her forearm. Her legs were laced with sandals that rose up past her knee. Her mini skirt flitted in the wind, baring golden limbs, as she skipped on rocks and hurdled over roots. She wore a laurel crown, a fitting diadem for the locks that hung past her waist. She was on the chase, looking side to side, as she floated over the forest floor.
The voices of men rose up, and soon Peter and I ran alongside her. Closer now I could see the make of her, the limbs unlike my own, the flesh that was more than human. She wasn’t of my line. She was brushed with gold, her skin a shimmering hue of gilt and ivory.
She’s a goddess, Peter said as instantly as I’d thought the question.
We followed her for a time, as she gave chase. Her pursuers weren’t my ancestors, either. They were greater than men, stronger than beasts. The enemy she’d easily outrun.
Arrows flew through the trees, the wind they stirred flying past my ear, too. She ran like nothing I’d seen before, hovering on the air like a kite. We seemed to fly with her forever, until she reached the high rise of a cliff at the edge of a sea, where she looked back, smiling at the arrow that swooshed past her nose. She tossed off her weapon, and threw down her shield, launching herself into the air. She soared like a bird of prey, swooping down and plunging into the water.
Our eyes lost her for a moment. But soon she broke the surface, her body no longer the same. Her face remained as lovely as ever, but a tail had replaced her shapely legs. Her fin shot up, its gills catching the light, making a rainbow of coral dance across the water. She went under the sea, and crossed in no time, Peter and I standing on the shoal, awaiting her on the other side. She pulled herself up onto the rock, revealing her shapely legs anew. She stood naked and taut, her beauty beyond skin deep. She came forward then, toward us, her face no less than an inch from Peter’s.
“Adelfós,” she said, her voice a lick of honey. Her words were translated instantly, and I understood.
“Brother,” she said once more, looking me in the eye. “This is what must be done.”
Peter did not voice a reply but I heard another speak from deep inside me.
“The sea will not keep you forever,” he said. “Your remains will wash ashore and I will be there to collect them.”
“Do not tell mother. She cannot be trusted.”
“Sister, you have my word.”
“The gilded sword is yours, the dory too. Do with them as you will. But find me, my brother, come for me when this is over.”
“I swear it, my goddess.”
Suddenly we were looking up at her, Peter having bent his knee as had the body he was in.
She reached down and touched her brother’s face, her eyes speaking for her. Their connection was inviolable. “Do not fear the darkness when it comes, for I shall meet you in it when you make me yours for all time.”
“I will not fear it. But go now, sister. I cannot hold them off forever.”
The voices of the men rose up again, and they sounded closer than they were in the forest. I couldn’t understand their shouts, their words lost to Peter, too. But together we turned to the raging sea to catch a glimpse of the warriors as they roared, their ships rolling over the waves.
“Heart thread through heart, brother, we are bound.” She bent down, her lips touching his forehead, her chin in front of my eyes. Peter took in her scent, a redolence I’d seek out for a lifetime.
“Soul thread through soul, sister, we are one.”
I’d been too caught up to recognize the voice, to hear the words spoken in his native tongue.
The goddess stood upright, her brother meeting her eyes before she fell back into the sea, her arms spread wide, her face a mask of stone, as she plunged into the depths of her darkness, a darkness into which I followed.
When I came to, my head pounded, the little bit of sunlight too much for me. Peter and I were no longer in my shed, but he’d whisked me away to my studio, in the tower’s top, to speak in private once again.
“Drink,” he said, shoving a cup at me. “It’s laced with something to help your ailing head.”
“From Freyit?”
He nodded.
“How long was I out?”
“Barely a moment.”
“How’d we—”
He touched my arm. “That’s not the question you should be asking.”
I closed my eyes, letting it all come back before I plunged in again.
“Galla is Vincent’s sister?”
Peter dropped his head to the side. “Sort of.”
I raised an eyebrow, then squinched up my eye.
“It’ll pass,” he said.
He got up and flew to the other side of the room, placing himself on the sacred windowsill. Vincent’s sill.
“Galla is the woman into whom his sister was reborn.”
“Another reincarnation?”
I hadn’t
given it much thought before, now returning from the dead was all I could contemplate.
“Don’t be so melodramatic,” he said, reading my thoughts.
“Out.” I spoke in jest, but he knew better than to admit when he was poking about.
“Mea culpa.” He turned away again, caught up in the view from the window.
“So Galla is the reincarnation of his sister.”
“Galla is the reincarnation of Diomedea, Achilles’s twin sister.”
I couldn’t hide my exclamation, the gasp betraying my excitement at the prospect.
“Why does this please you?”
“If Saba is … well, my daughter, my line is truly his.”
“It seems so. But you knew that before.”
“Before?”
“Before all of this.” He threw his hands in the air, and waved them about.
“I’m not following.” I shook my head, then grabbed hold of it, the room spinning.
“Never mind.” His winsome smile was more conspiratorial than winning.
He got up and paced in front of the window, his eyes tracking something outside.
“That woman was Diomedea, then?”
“That goddess, yes.” He grew distracted at the view.
“She was reborn as Galla, and Vincent found her once he was reborn, too?”
Peter turned to look at me, a funny look on his face. “Vincent Du Maurier has always been, and will forever be Achilles. But you mean reborn to blood. Ah, yes, that’s correct.”
I don’t know why I asked. It was silly to think otherwise. I had read the poetry, the songs written about him. I saw him full-blown on the page, just as I did in my very own space overlooking the colony.
“Will he know his sister again?”
“Ah, are you asking if Saba will draw him here?”
I nodded.
“Of that we’re unsure.”
“If she’s changed, will he know her still?”
Peter raised an eyebrow. “Your questions can only be answered by mystics. This is beyond the things we know.”
He looked out the window again, his expression more relaxed than before. “But Finn’s—ah, his attachment to Saba speaks to something we’ve yet to comprehend.”
Grief For Heart: The Vincent Du Maurier Series, Book 4 Page 8
