Kingfisher

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “The entire town vanished,” she breathed. “It’s like a dream. A spell cast over us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Has this happened to you before?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, memories flooding into his head, a colorful wave of scraps, moments, brief and timeless.

  “Well, how— What do you do to find your way out of it?”

  He looked at her from within the tide, no longer seeing her. “What makes you think I have ever wanted to find my way out? Have you ever been spellbound?”

  “Not until now.”

  “This is where I found everything I thought I wanted. I left the world behind to come to this place. I left my heart here, always, so that I could find my way back. Now I can’t even find that.”

  “What?”

  “The face I loved. My heart.” He paused, searching for one face in memory, and finding someone else entirely. “You should not be here.”

  “No,” she said softly, somberly. “But I am. Lord Skelton warned us about quests. How they reveal even when they seem to conceal, or confuse, or make no sense whatsoever. Maybe this is not the spell that binds your heart; maybe it is part of the quest you are on.”

  “This has nothing to do with Lord Skelton’s quest—”

  “You are searching for the same thing,” she said inarguably. “What would you have done with that extraordinary vessel if you had walked into the Kingfisher Bar and Grill and found it there? You recognize this marvel, you take it—and you do what with it? Use it to threaten your own father with war if he doesn’t return a long-forgotten land to its rightful ruler? Would you really do that?”

  He was seeing her clearly, then, and wondering at the question, which took on dimensions he hadn’t noticed before, or had so completely forgotten why he should care about them. “Yes,” he said finally. “Yes. I would have. If I had walked into the Kingfisher Inn instead of into this mystifying, exasperating no-place. This mist would still have been in my head instead of all around us. Now, my head is appallingly clear. And when we are finally allowed to leave this place, I will be of no use any longer to the one who enchanted me. Or to myself,” he added with wry sorrow. “I will be disenchanted.”

  He was astonished at the sudden sheen in her eyes, the well of tears from some source hidden within her prowess, her composure.

  “I am so sorry,” she whispered. “I should never have followed you so far.”

  “I didn’t think anyone could.” He was silent again, thinking clearly for once, and finding it disconcerting. “If this isn’t within the definition of Lord Skelton’s idea of a quest, and it isn’t the enchanting place I had begun to know so well—if some power is guarding that vessel from both the wyvern and the raven, then where are we? Who brought us here?”

  “Good question,” his mother said, and he saw the three familiar faces behind Dame Scotia.

  She whirled, as though she felt the intent gazes homing in between her shoulder blades.

  “Who is this,” Vivien wondered, “standing between you and me, my love?”

  Scotia moved again, quickly, stepping to one side of Daimon. “Lady Seabrook,” she exclaimed, and Morrig smiled suddenly with delight.

  “Dame Scotia Malory. I met your ancestor Tavis once, you know. Well, of course you don’t, but I did. You’d think, writing all those tales of valor and romance, he would have led a more respectable life. But then, how would he have recognized me?”

  “You knew Tavis?” Scotia said faintly.

  “Of course. I have been at the Wyvernhold Court since the first King Arden overran Ravenhold. I thought it would be the best place to hide.”

  “But how,” Vivien asked, her wide, lovely eyes never moving from Daimon’s, “did this knight find her way here?”

  “Well,” Morrig mused, considering the question, “that might be Tavis’s fault, too. We might as well blame him. Everyone else did. He was always finding himself where he didn’t belong, and with those who might have given him a glimpse into overlapping realms. Dame Scotia could have inherited some of his sight. Fore and hind, over and in, as well as second—who knows exactly which sight drew her here?”

  “She serves the wyvern,” Daimon’s mother said abruptly. She was veiled in black from hair to shoe, as they all were, shadow black, raven black, and she held what looked like a chain made of raven feathers that linked her to an odd, blurred bundle containing broken branches or bones, all of them constantly shifting, testing the strength of what held them imprisoned.

  “Yet she sees us,” Vivien said, her voice curling to a question, a caress, in Daimon’s ear.

  “He brought her here,” Ana said simply, and Daimon, startled, shook his head.

  “Of course she serves my father,” he said, glimpsing undercurrents, and choosing words very carefully around them. “So do I, for that matter, though it hardly matters to you. She was following me only because she was asked to. She has no idea how she got here, and I’m sure, if you show her a way out, she’ll take it with great relief.”

  “She has a voice,” Vivien commented, and gave Scotia a glimpse of her charming smile. “She could ask.”

  “I could,” Dame Scotia agreed. “Ask.”

  But she did not, just waited silently, while they gazed at her, waiting as well, then consulted one another.

  “Generally speaking,” Morrig said to her, “you must be wanted.”

  “Wanted?”

  “Invited. To come here. As we asked Daimon. We permitted him to see our realm. Sometimes we allure, beguile, bewitch—we do whatever catches the attention of the one we wish to bring into our world. All that is a form of invitation. We did not invite you.”

  “Yet here you are.” Under the changeless gray of water and sky, Vivien’s eyes found nothing to kindle the fire in them. “Who invited you?”

  The controlled expression that had settled over Scotia’s face melted suddenly. She stared at the three, looking wide-eyed and tense, and answered incredulously, “Nobody invited me! I exceeded the speed limit on my bike and rode out of the world, maybe that’s how I got here. What can one knight pledged to serve the wyvern king matter to you? You’re already battling King Arden for his son, so that you can fight him for his realm. There’s nothing I can do except stay and bear witness, to do what I was asked to do: to stand with the king’s son until he casts me out. What else can I tell you?”

  “You took something I want,” Vivien said simply.

  “I didn’t—I have nothing—”

  “You took Daimon’s attention. He brought you here.”

  Daimon, astonished, gazed at the fay, enthralling face that had again and again drawn him across the threshold between worlds. Vivien smiled ruefully at him; he remembered the touch of her long, graceful fingers, the eerie, magical fires in her eyes. He had a sudden vision of her being crowned queen of her realm, while he stood beside her yet alone, watching without a word to say and with no one he knew at all standing with him in that strange land where he had lost himself.

  He drew breath slowly, deeply, wondering what peculiar dream they had inhabited together, until they woke and neither knew where they were now.

  “It’s called glamour,” Vivien said softly. “What you saw in me. I enchanted you. Now the glamour, the magic, is gone. You are disenchanted.”

  “I didn’t intend to be,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I don’t— I can’t seem to find my way back to where we were. That place seems terrifying. If not impossible.”

  “It’s not the first time we have tried this,” his mother said reluctantly. “I was hoping— I wanted this so much. For us. And for you.”

  He gazed at her, the woman who had given him her face, and half his heart. “Maybe you could change the story? Talk to my father. Without the threats.”

  “Oh, piffle,” his great-aunt declared to that. “Without the cauldron, what do we hav
e to—”

  “You have no cauldron. But still you have such power.”

  “What power?”

  He felt it again, the lingering touch of pain and desire, the dream of what had ensorcelled him. “All that power,” he said huskily, “you had over me. That still exists. Ravenhold exists. You showed it to me in so many ways. Open your boundaries. Invite others in. Show them what you showed me. The magic. The poetry. Invite my father.”

  “I did, once,” his mother reminded him.

  “And he never forgot you. Ever. You could show the human world what Wyvernhold is lacking. You don’t have to fight my father’s realm to get back your own. They can exist together. I know that. You revealed that in so many ways. Open your doors; let the magic flow into Wyvernhold. The more humans know of the lost Ravenhold, the more they will want it back. It is beautiful, dangerous, magical, frightening, ancient, and forever. I know that. You took me there.”

  “Piffle,” Morrig murmured again, dourly. But he saw in her eyes the faint, unexpected gleam of possibilities. “I still want that cauldron,” she added. “If only because it’s ours, and I don’t see why Wyvernhold should have it.”

  “No,” Daimon said fairly. “I don’t, either.”

  “This led us here.” Ana raised a darkly shod foot, nudged the odd, shifting cloudy bundle of bracken with it. “To Chimera Bay. We heard pleas for help that his evil caused, and finally understood them.”

  “What is it?” Daimon asked uneasily.

  “Our first and only king,” Morrig said, her voice so cold and thin that Daimon felt it chill his heart. “He and the cauldron vanished at the same time, during that battle with the wyvern king. He keeps telling us he has no idea where it is. But he is here in Chimera Bay, and so are you with your raven’s eyes. If it’s here, you’ll recognize it.”

  Daimon gazed with horror and fascination at the bundle. “What will you do with him?”

  “We’ll ask him one last time,” Morrig answered. “If he refuses to tell us, we’ll trap him somewhere, I suppose. I don’t know if such power truly can die, but he’s too dangerous to let loose.” Out of the corner of his eye, Daimon saw the wordless Scotia shift half a step closer to him. “Where in your world are we?”

  “We’re in the parking lot of the all-you-can-eat diner.”

  “Ah. Good. That’s what you came here to find. There are ways we can see without being seen. Can you take us where the inside of it might be?”

  Daimon, remembering vaguely, led them through the trees to where, if another world had shifted into view, the old hotel would have stood. Trees thinned into a clearing; forgotten ruins rose around them as they entered it. Within the slumping, crumbled stones, a little circular pool ringed with shells serenely reflected the sky above it.

  “Something of Calluna’s?” Vivien guessed. “They put their inn on top of this sacred shrine?”

  “Or they built the inn there because they felt the power in this place,” Ana suggested. “Perhaps a place worthy of some great vessel that fell into their possession.”

  “It certainly didn’t look worthy,” Daimon commented. “The roof is half–blown away, and most of the walls are held up by scaffolding. The inn itself looked closed.”

  “Sounds like the perfect place to keep a secret,” Morrig said with interest. “Water knows everything; it goes everywhere, and it never forgets. There’s an eye; let’s see what it sees.”

  She moved toward the little pool. Daimon heard an odd whimpering from the bundle as Ana tugged the raven chain. The whimpering subsided to whispering as it bumped along the ground. Daimon, following behind the three veiled figures, risked a glance at Scotia. Her face was as chalky pale as the shells scattered around the pool; she met his eyes clearly but without expression, recognizing, in that dark company, the dangers of coherent thinking.

  They stopped at the edge of the pool. It gazed limpidly back at the cloud, mirroring its grays. The odd clutter at Ana’s side was gabbling breathily in some demented language. She pulled on the feathery links, and it fell abruptly silent.

  Morrig bent over the pool, touched the water with one finger as though to wake it. It stirred faintly, forming a ripple, like a thought. Another followed it, and another, ripples growing stronger, faster, spreading in overlapping rings across the pool until its surface ruffled as under a private wind.

  It stilled. Colors streaked across it, formed shapes. Figures moved, spoke soundlessly, though Daimon suspected Morrig heard them. A burly bartender wearing glasses poured beer for an invisible customer. A cascade of painted Fools’ heads above his head turned, watching this way and that, all smiling the same knowing smile. The scene shifted: a glass cupboard holding such incongruous items as a fishing gaffe and an elaborate silver bowl appeared. Morrig studied it a moment, then waved it away, as well as the unlit chandelier, the old photos on a wall, the motley clutter of worn furniture. A door swung open; a girl with purple hair came out carrying a hamburger. The eye peered through the door, found a diner engulfed by the looming, shadowy bones of the old hotel. Plastic flowers, vinyl chairs, half-filled jars of condiments, and the diners themselves, working through plates and baskets of food, passed swiftly across the water.

  Another door opened to sinks full of dirty dishes, people busily cooking, filling plates, deep-frying, ladling soup from pots, boiling crabs in other pots. Pots of every shape flowed past, hanging on racks, stacked on shelves, one in the hands of an elfin old woman as she lifted it onto a burner, another, oddly battered and grimy, sitting on a chopping block while a dark-haired young woman chopped chives beside it. The lines of that pot paled, grew vague as though it sensed itself being looked at. It was not there, it told Daimon’s eye. It was nothing, not a worth a glance, let alone scrutiny.

  He blinked. Or maybe it was the pool blinking, as Morrig loosed it from its visions and her attention.

  “Odd,” she murmured. “I would have thought . . .” But she did not say. She stood silently, gazing puzzledly at the waters that had grown still again, reflecting only mist. She stirred at an eerily human noise from the cloudy collection of underbrush. “Well,” she said, distastefully, “let’s get this to the place where it can do no more harm. Say your farewells, Daimon and Vivien. Somewhere, in some world, you might meet again. There’s nothing for us here now.”

  She took the raven chain from Ana’s hand; the howl of despair that came out of the churning pile swept through the tree boughs like a breeze and sent a black cloud of birds swirling into the sky.

  Mist filled the pool, as though it had drawn cloud down into it. It flowed upward, a column as high as the trees, then higher, and higher than that, sculpting itself out of blur and drift, a ghostly shape that formed and firmed, became enormous, forcing the eye to constantly reenvision it, until, piece by piece, it became impossibly familiar.

  A woman made of mist, clothed in cloud, her hair a pale, drifting wreath around her face, looked down at them from such distance she might have been the moon, regarding them. Daimon, recognizing her, felt his own skin turn cold, colorless. One bare foot, longer than he was tall, stepped from the water to earth; the other followed. She stooped then, her body folding with enormous grace, her face, constantly flowing, shaping itself at every movement, even managed a discernible expression. She reached down with one immense hand, snapped the raven chain.

  A man appeared, lying where the earthy pile had been. He was dirty, half-naked, clothed here and there in bracken; one foot, bloody and badly chewed by something, was turning black. His eyes, swollen and raw with tears, opened painfully to the mist. Daimon caught his breath, glimpsing the treasure in them, the fay, familiar colors. Three dark figures, motionless as standing stones, watched the woman cup one hand, dip it into the pool, and raise it, dripping, over the soiled, damaged, pain-ravaged face.

  Slowly, gently, she let the water flow over his eyes, into his open mouth.

  He dran
k eagerly for a long time; her hand never emptied. He drank until he began to fray, to dissolve back into the earth, and even then the water flowed, and he drank.

  He grew across the ground, bones and sinews sliding into vines, lashes and fingernails into grass. The earth turned green; the vines wrapped themselves around and up the stones of the broken ruins, winding everywhere, and opening, one by one along the way, lovely trumpets of gold, ivory, blue, red. The arching tendrils flowed to encircle the pool with a wall of leaves and bright flowers, until nothing was left of the dying man but life.

  The goddess let the last drop fall from her fingers. She rose to her full height, gazed silently down at the three, whose faces, turned upward, were as white as her own.

  “This is what you are looking for,” she said on a sigh of wind.

  And then she was gone.

  The still, gray pool watched them like an eye.

  26

  Pierce returned the knife to the Kingfisher Inn not long after what came to be known as the communal hallucination due to food poisoning at Stillwater’s restaurant.

  In the chaotic aftermath of the chef’s disappearance, his fall into shadow, Sage had also vanished into one world or another, leaving Pierce with only the memory of her driving the kitchen knife through Stillwater’s foot and into the table. She left it there. For some reason, so did the Knights of the Rising God. They collected Stillwater’s crazed, dangerous machines eagerly enough but ignored the one thing actually used as a weapon. They wanted nothing to do with the knife. Maybe, Pierce thought as he wrestled, coaxed, pleaded it loose, the color of Stillwater’s blood had deterred them. It had turned from human red to the amber brown of sap, glittering on the blade like slow, viscous tears. It even smelled like trees.

  When the kitchen knife finally let go of the table, the strange tears melted down the blade into the wood. Pierce stared at it, musing over its unexpected destiny, the powers it possessed along with what seemed to be a will of its own.