She gave the lantern a spin so that light became stars became red became darkness; and in that precise instant of darkness, she switched the suitor with the sharp-featured wizard.
“Helpless, the wizard watched himself transform, and in terror he ran to escape the deadly influence of the egg, ran blindly for the door—his only thought to get away from that hellish glow. But the guards reacted as guards should and lowered their pikes. They impaled the evil man.”
The pikes slid behind the wizard’s torso. She brought her middle finger to her thumb, and the figure doubled over. The pikes lifted him into the air.
“The thief knelt beside his beloved. The Druid’s Egg shone upon her. She stirred, awakened, to find herself clothed in light. A total stranger was at her side, and her wicked seducer was dead upon the pikes of her guards.”
The princess got to her feet, her body trembling. The young thief rose also.
“‘Who are you?’ she asked.”
The thief lowered his head.
“‘I’m no one. Just a common thief.’
“‘How can you say that when you have saved me?’ she replied.
“‘I saved one for whom I would willingly perish.’
“‘Don’t say such things. How could you feel that way for me when we have never met?’
“‘I could. I do. I can’t help it. But I must go now before your father finds me here. I don’t belong here.’
“‘Then take me with you.’
“‘How can I?’
“‘If you go, then I no longer belong here, either.’
“‘Oh,’ said he. ‘In that case, how can I not?’”
The princess reached to him, and he took her hand. The two shadow figures embraced in a long, lingering kiss. The egg slipped from the thief’s other hand and cracked open at his feet. The screen turned red with its light, and then, as Leodora unlooped and let slide the lanyard, the red light sank like an evening sun, taking all shadows with it. When it was below the silk screen, she blew out the light.
Outside the booth the room might have been empty, it was so quiet. She set down the figures, stood and stretched, then stepped through the curtain.
Soter seemed to gape at her, as if she were something he had never seen before. She swelled with triumph before he regained himself: His look clouded, became critical, and he said, “That’s not the way the tale ends. The emperor arrives, discovers what has happened, and gives the boy everything—the keys to his kingdom, his daughter, wealth.”
Leodora smarted at the criticism. She would not be robbed of her glory. “Improvise, someone said to me. Tales get rewritten—who told me that not an hour past? Who stole the figure of the king?”
Soter waved his hand, dismissing each point, but finding no way to contradict her. He gave a nervous laugh and tried to shift the discussion away from her objections. “Now, no matter, you did a truly fine job. A most worthy attempt in fact—”
“Attempt! Confess it, I took your breath away!”
“No, no, I’m sorry, never happened. You’re certainly getting there, but you are still a little clumsy with one thing or another—not very much, you understand, but there is always room for improvement. Those vines, not smooth enough. You are…coming along quite nicely, Leodora.”
“I’m ready,” she said with iron.
“Well, my girl, of course you want to be ready. You entertain me well enough, and the native islanders. But who are they? A far distant and less discerning cousin to the audiences on the spans. You cannot trust their simple approbation. No, no. Not reliable.”
She glared at him.
“Oh, I think, another year, perhaps. Possibly two?” He smiled like an uncle full of deep concern for her well-being—it was exactly the smile her own uncle had been giving her the past few days. It was not a look she trusted. It masked something else, something that did not have her well-being at heart.
Enraged by his false kindness, she kicked aside a stool and stormed across the hut.
“Now, Leodora,” Soter called. The voice of appeasement, another mask. She would have exited without a word if he hadn’t spoken.
She whirled about. “You pull off the role of the forgetful fool much better when you’re in your cups, old man. In fact, if you’re so stupid as to say, Oh, just two more years, my girl, you’d best be drunk. At least you’ll have an excuse for lying. Go ahead, pretend you can’t see! But I know. Understand? I know. I’m better than you say. I’m better than you can do yourself. I’m better than Bardsham!”
She flung his door out of her way.
. . . . .
Soter sagged in the chair where he had watched her performance. He sighed once, long and deep, as if he might expel all the air in his lungs. He hunched forward and picked up the puppet king. After staring it in the face for a long still moment, he began to roll the main rod loosely between his thumb and fingers. The puppet gyred to and fro, unable to settle on a direction. Its clattering arms swung loosely, embracing nothing.
“Back then she was only a child,” he said, as if responding to someone else in the empty room. “Of course I didn’t worry where it would lead. Why should I? Who knew what skills she had—or that she would even care.” He glanced up with a sickly grin, eyes focused on a point in front of him. “That’s right. Berate me for it now. You didn’t step in then, did you? You could have manifested, objected. Don’t set her on this path, Soter, you could have said. Did you? No.”
He dropped the puppet and picked up a clay jug from the floor beside the overturned stool. He took a long anxious drink, but even before he’d finished, his worried eyes opened, focused again upon something before him, and began tracking it. Whatever he followed, it was invisible to Leodora from her position outside his window. She’d come back with the intention of apologizing, provided that she could make him confess the truth about her abilities. She’d only meant to watch for the most propitious moment to make an entrance, and instead here he was engaged in a conversation.
Except no one else was there.
Soter’s hands trembled as he put down the jug. “Look,” he said, wiping his palm across his mouth, “I saved the child, didn’t I? Brought her back here. That ought to have been enough for you. After all, you owned my life, didn’t you? Had me in thrall, didn’t you? Used me any way that suited the moment. You think just because I was in the thick of it that I didn’t know the situation? Think I would have left her to the mercies of the spans if I’d known? You don’t understand devotion and never did—and you all moon-eyed and weepy with it yourself. For all that you could bedazzle your innumerable lovers, you never expected that hollow heart of yours might fill up, did you?”
He paused, head tilted, as if listening, then abruptly shook his head. “Ridden by your own demons? Oh, and so many of them, too, love. You could wrap anyone around your nimble fingers. And still you don’t ken how you can be enslaved and not be able to do anything but submit. Can’t imagine being on that end of it, even now and it’s over and you’re dead. But you were. You were. Don’t try to deny it to me. I was there!”
He flashed his teeth, shook his head, then seemed to perceive something else.
“Oh, I meant nothing. I was convenient. Just part of the troupe, easy to replace. Get rid of Soter, he’s becoming a nuisance, I don’t like the way he looks at me. Think I didn’t overhear that speech? Oh, the calumny I bore. Don’t you come floating in here this late with your demands, either. You’ve no claims on me. I protected your daughter from the darkness, you poxy…” He swung up the jug, swiped at the air. The jug, encountering nothing, spun him about. “Away! Away all dead plagues. You unrepentant ghosts—go back to the dark spans and the seabeds where you belong! I banish you! Begone!” As though sensing someone now at his back, he swung around, wielding the jug like a club. “I rescued her!” It was a broken cry, terrifying to hear.
He turned again, shoulders hunched, his head twisting with a canny look. Instinctively Leodora drew back into the shadows. When she peered at hi
m again he had righted the overturned stool and sat down. The jug dangled from his hand. “No,” he said, “you’re wrong. That’s all I’m doing, it is. I’m keeping her from that danger. She’s safe down here on Bouyan. We’re all safe down here. No one comes looking nor ever will. A little lie keeps her safe, and when did the truth ever help us, heh? We were liars for a living. No. Better to be safe…down here on Bouyan.”
His head sank on his chest. He wasn’t asleep, nor could he be this easily drunk. It was more the position of someone dreading to see anything other than the floor before him. The boasting, besotted Soter had withered before her eyes into a spindly, tremulous thing. Rickety with age. An old man.
Leodora squatted awhile longer beside the window, her brain full of portentous imaginings. Had he been railing at her mother? He had been in love with her mother, and her mother, jealous of his influence over Bardsham, had tried to get rid of him—that was how it sounded. She couldn’t accept that there were real ghosts here. If her mother’s spirit truly roamed abroad on this isle, she would know it, wouldn’t she? She would have encountered it herself in all the places she shared with her mother’s past. Her mother could not come back without appearing to her. But then, could guilt and shame become so manifest as this—that Soter would punish himself with terrible visions and memories? Could guilt take such form?
He had rescued her, he said, but from what? Why were they—all of them, he’d said—in hiding?
She thought that he was spent, and she started to slide carefully away through the tangle of branches, when suddenly he spoke one last time, in a tone of abject defeat: “All right, all right. If the time comes, I swear. I promise. Yes. But not now. Please, not yet. Ask me later, can’t you? Let me get used to the idea awhile.”
She waited, crouching, holding her breath, straining as if she might hear the phantom answer. There was nothing but a final sobbing breath from Soter.
He sat on the floor, head bowed, his arms wrapped around the jug protectively. When he said nothing further, she withdrew.
SIX
Most days, by the time Leodora had finished her session with Soter, Tastion had returned and was waiting for her.
He and his father usually had good luck in their fishing. Sometimes she even passed them on the path to Fishkill as she was returning to the boathouse—either hauling their catch or returning with the net rolled up between them. Tastion would pretend to disregard her, as his father did. Later he would sneak into the boathouse to meet her. Where his family thought he had gone, she didn’t know. His work was done for the day, so perhaps no one was watching, no one noticing his absence. He risked a great deal to meet her, but not as much as he pretended. The risks had limits. Any punishment meted out would affect her more than him.
His marriage had been arranged years earlier, to a girl named Vosilana. If he’d been found alone in the boathouse with Leodora, the marriage arrangement might have been nullified, and his family would be humiliated by the revelation. He would certainly be whipped, most likely banished from his home for a time. But he was strong and handsome, his family one of the most powerful on the island. Punishments would be temporary, and if reparations could not be made with the bride’s family some other girl would be happy to take Vosilana’s place. Leodora could not replace her even had she wanted to. Tenikemac’s response to her in that event would, by comparison, make their bare tolerance of her now seem tender and loving. It would be she who had led him astray, she who had corrupted him. Gousier would have a new witch in his household. And her uncle…well, the whipping Tastion got would be far preferable to anything Gousier would do.
Given all that, she could not quite explain even to herself why she continued to see Tastion, except that she had done so for so long.
There was kissing, of course—she could hardly have denied her own lips their sweet fulfillment. Kissing scorched them both, but when the heat of passion consumed him, and although she had loved Tastion forever, a small whisper of reason stopped her from relinquishing control. In his importuning she thought she heard a tone that said once satisfied, he would go off in search of other fruit. Because she loved him she did not deny him some familiarity, and sometimes she became dizzy with him. Because she knew her place in his world, she stopped short of drowning in pleasure—which served only to frustrate and further incite her would-be lover. To his credit, he had never sworn falsely to marry her—that is, if one discounted that the two of them had been promising to run off together since they were children. Tastion never claimed that he could defy his parents, his village, or the assignment of his bride. He never pledged to give it all up, only to find ways around the rules. She wouldn’t have believed him if he had.
Today, angry and frustrated, she entered the boathouse with an urgent need for Tastion that had nothing to do with passion. She needed to ask questions if only to hear herself ask them so that she would know what her questions were. She needed him, but Tastion wasn’t there, and her spirits plunged further. She sat on her bed, took off her boot, and rubbed her toes that she’d bruised when she kicked the stool.
The force of her rage caught up with her, exhausted her. The warmth of the room added to her torpor. She leaned back on her elbows, and finally lay back to stare at the beam over her head. She saw in the grain of the wood weird faces and creatures she’d identified years before, when she was tiny; once recognized, they could never be random patterns again. One of them she’d decided was her father’s face. Another was the torso of her mother, twisting out of strings of seaweed like a mermaid. A weight like that of gathering tears filled her head with a kind of forlorn pressure but without enough weight for the drops to fall. The thick air hung about her, pressing down upon her, and she drifted to sleep.
When she awoke it was dark in the room. The sky outside was purple, streaked with the last glory of sunset at the very edge of the sea. Her head ached when she sat up. She knew that she was hungry, and that the evening meal must be ready soon. Hunger at least was easy to think about.
She got up and drew on her boots. She left the trapdoor to her room open in case Tastion turned up.
. . . . .
The sea rice in its broth was salty. Leodora chewed and tried not to make eye contact with Dymphana, which was facilitated by Dymphana’s preoccupation with the empty stool where Gousier usually sat. While Leodora wondered about Soter’s ghosts, so her aunt appeared preoccupied with where her uncle might be. Their unease they shared as if it were a condiment; but neither could speak of it.
Finally, when they were halfway through their portions, Gousier arrived. The smell of sweat fermented in fish and liquor accompanied him like a homunculus. Had they missed the liquor’s stink, neither of them missed the looseness in his stride and the flush to his face as if he’d run home from Ningle. Gousier drunk was too familiar a sight—it was the timing of it that was peculiar.
Dymphana stopped eating to watch him. She was watching, Leodora knew, to see how he reacted to their having begun without him. If his day had gone poorly he could explode without warning, angered by meaningless things. More than one dinner had been brought to a halt by his unprompted anger, and drunkenness did not necessarily augur well.
This night he fairly beamed at them, however. In particular, when he looked Leodora’s way, his eyes grew sly. It was clear he would not lose his temper, but the cagey, slow smile with which he considered her twisted knots in her stomach.
He took his place at the head of the table, and Dymphana spooned a serving into his bowl. While he waited for her to finish, he remarked, “What a grand day I’ve had. Just grand.”
“The fish sold well?”
“Yes, yes they did. We hardly had to throw any away.”
“But you had to stay late up there?”
“Late? Ah, no.” Another darting glance at his niece. “No, we come down about sunset as usual. I don’t like to navigate those steps in the dark, you know that. No, I been back awhile.” He considered Leodora again with hooded eyes. “I went
over to settle up first.”
In a voice from which she couldn’t mask suspicion, Dymphana said, “They invited you to drink with them?”
He smiled. “They did that, yes. One of them in particular wanted to toast with me. A widow, she is.”
This last piece of information seemed so entirely superfluous that the two women exchanged glances to see if either of them understood the reference.
Obviously enjoying their perplexity, Gousier offered up another clue. “The poor creature has a terrible burden to bear. Her husband is dead.”
“Is there a different kind of widow than that?” Dymphana asked in a distinctly icy tone.
“I didn’t finish. Dear.” A hint of his true nature punctuated the syllable. “Alone, she’s burdened with a son. Her only child. A man must fish to provide for his family here. This one, though, can’t fish. Can’t be trusted with a net. Why, he’d be pulled right off any dragon and drowned.”
“You’re speaking of that poor imbecile, Koombrun.”
“Right you are.”
“And why should his circumstance matter to us now? Are you going to put him to work? Is he going to haul your fish?”
Gousier chose that moment to begin eating. He chewed the rice as if he had years to finish. Then he drank some water, cleared his throat. “Tenikemac would never allow such a thing. Why, that would only alienate the poor woman further. She’d be a pariah if anyone in her family went onto the spans.”
“So, he’s to help me in the cavern, then, Uncle,” Leodora guessed.
“Oh, I do hope so, after his fashion. As best he can, being what he is. You’ll have to teach him. Once you’re married, of course, I expect you’ll have to teach him everything from gutting fish to where to stick his—”
“Once I’m married? To Koombrun? To an idiot?”
Shadowbridge Page 10
