A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  So sang the Family of Night. They danced, but she knew they also watched her. They watched to see the pain overcome her, to see her give up and flee this place. Because she could . . . she still could! The door was there, open and waiting. She could even now burst from the rhythm she followed and fly away from here. Back to her own world, back to her own kind. Back to a realm where nightmares did not manifest and dance with weapons upraised.

  “I’m stronger than I think!” she shouted, and this time she could almost hear herself above the wild melody.

  But the drums sounded again, and her strength could not match theirs. She screamed as the bones in her body broke, one by one. But the music held her in its thrall and forced her to continue the dance even as her limbs hung at weird angles of anguish.

  Suddenly Evette was there. She stood unmoving beyond the gyrating shadows of the dancers. Her gaze fixed upon Heloise, seeing her for the first time. Her eyes were wide, her hair loose and limp around her shoulders.

  As though unexpectedly possessed of power hitherto unknown, she broke from the circle of maidens and entered the central circle where Heloise swayed and stamped her mangled feet. Evette’s mouth moved, forming Heloise’s name, screaming it as she ran, but no sound came. She plunged through the whirling of bright blades and strong limbs, even as, in their own world, Heloise had darted through the dancing peasants with their canes on the first night of spring.

  Heloise watched Evette approach. She saw her sister draw near, saw her reach out both hands as though to catch her.

  DOOM! roared the drum.

  Heloise felt her own heart burst in her breast. She fell to the floor, broken and smashed beneath the weight of Le Sacre.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  I’m dead, Heloise thought. Then she thought, I’m conscious.

  The third thought came more slowly, though time didn’t seem to matter here. She could take an eternity to think up whatever she wanted to, and no one would complain. Nevertheless, as the idea tickled its way into her consciousness, she struggled to force it out, to understand it as quickly as possible. At last, there it was:

  I’ve always been dead.

  Why had it taken the whole of her life to realize this?

  She had no body, at least none that she could discern. But then, it was so dark here, it was impossible to discern anything much. But she was conscious, aware of herself, aware of her name, which meant she still had some form of existence.

  All right. Good. She was dead, but she wasn’t gone.

  So . . . what next?

  The Final Water, she thought. She didn’t bother to speak out loud since she wasn’t entirely certain she had a mouth anymore. Besides, there was no one to hear her. At least, she hoped not.

  Suddenly the darkness seemed much bigger, much closer, and much more . . . full. How could she know if anyone was out there or not? After all, if she was dead, was it not likely she had gone down to the realm of the afterlife? The Netherworld. Yes, that’s what it was called. The Netherworld, where the souls of the dead wander. Which meant there were probably quite a lot of souls around her, whether she could sense them or not. The souls of those who could not find . . .

  The Final Water. I need to look for the Final Water.

  That’s what the dead were supposed to do upon entering the Netherworld. At least, according to tradition. Who could say if that tradition was right or not? Heloise had never spoken to a dead person—save for Princess Alala, of course. But Princess Alala had never made it that far into her death and therefore could not vouch for tradition.

  What else had her traditions taught her? Very little, really. She knew only that she was supposed to search for the Final Water and, if she found it, must try to cross over. Some who sought to cross made it safely to the far side—Farthestshore, as it was so named. Some who set out for that shore ended up washed away forever, down to the Dark Water, which was below . . .

  Below what? What did that even mean? Seriously, now that she was dead, couldn’t some special illumination be provided so that these strange ideas would make better sense than they had during her life? It didn’t seem fair.

  Another thought pulled at her consciousness. But she couldn’t bear to think it, not yet. When that thought came in fullness of clarity she would step beyond the mere darkness of the Netherworld.

  She would step into hell. And that she could not face. Not yet.

  She wasn’t certain how to walk without a body, but she made an effort. After all, it wasn’t as though her body would be useful anymore. She considered what was left of it with a cold detachment that can only come after death. What a mangled, broken thing it had been when her spirit finally slipped free of it! Every bone crushed by the pounding of the Le Sacre drum. All her muscles twisted, all her joints swollen. There had been a lot of pain. She remembered the pain. Why would anyone want to remain in a body that could feel so much hurt? It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.

  I’ve always been dead, she thought. Trapped in a body of death.

  It was clear to her now. No wonder immortals hated mortals so much! No wonder Father had wanted to kill Daughter for making her evil choice. No wonder Mother wanted to protect her child’s soul in a pocket world of her own invention. No wonder they had cursed her family line.

  Mortals are meant to die.

  What a terrible truth it was.

  Her path was lonely. Though she suspected there were countless other souls all around her—perhaps even within touching distance had she known how to reach out to them—she walked alone. Wasn’t that the truth everyone spoke in hushed whispers around the sickbeds of the dying? “We all die alone in the end.”

  Like Hélène.

  But Hélène should not have been alone. Hélène should have died with her sister, and then the two of them should have entered this realm together, even as they had entered their life together. And Hélène had been so young! So young, so innocent to be sent down into this darkness alone to wander in search of the Final Water.

  Hell was near. Heloise couldn’t allow herself to think these thoughts, or she would be lost. She must simply search. She must not think that other thought; that thought whispering, nagging, calling to her from the darkness just two steps behind. She could not allow herself to think: What is the point of—

  “Dragon’s teeth!” Heloise spoke the curse aloud, surprised that she was able to. Immediately she wished she hadn’t, for, according to other, older traditions, the paths of the Netherworld belonged to the Dragon. Would speaking his name, even in a curse, wake him from his thousand-year sleep to fall raging and flaming upon her?

  A silly notion. If the Dragon did exist, as this world of his appeared to do, Heloise rather doubted he would wake from his ancient sleep just to persecute one dead peasant girl.

  Or maybe she wasn’t dead. Maybe she was still clinging to life, and all this experience was nothing more than a strange nightmare conjured up by her dying body?

  Maybe when she truly died, there would be nothing.

  “Heloise!”

  Now she knew that she could still feel emotion. Fear, in particular. Up until this moment, despite the frightening truth of the death around her, she hadn’t feared anything. There had been no reason to fear. The worst had already happened.

  But when she heard her own name called out from some distance she could not imagine, through some darkness she could not guess . . . then she knew that she could still fear. Then she knew what fear truly meant.

  “Heloise!” called the voice again. Her soul lurched with terror, and she would have fled had she only known which way to run. But running here in this dark world didn’t seem like a good idea. She might run straight into the mouth of the hell that pursued so close at her heels. Then she would never find the Final Water.

  So she remained where she was . . . standing, for want of a better word. She listened as the strange voice called out a third time then a fourth. “Heloise! Heloise!”

  Was it someone from the living worl
d? Now there was an idea, and one that calmed some of the raging fear. Did her physical body hang onto life by a thread? Did someone on the other side seek to summon her back?

  But, no. No, this wasn’t a voice she knew. It wasn’t Evette, wasn’t Alala, wasn’t Benedict. It certainly wasn’t her Meme.

  Not a living voice then. Who among the dead would call her by name?

  A light appeared, a distant, winking glimmer. Or perhaps only very, very small? It was impossible to say which, for it was the only thing visible in all this darkness, and Heloise had nothing with which to compare it, to gauge its size or distance. But it was definitely light and . . . and it was something. Something upon which she might fix her spirit, something toward which she might direct her wanderings. Like a guiding star in the winter sky it shimmered.

  With hell so close at her heels, what choice did she have, really?

  Heloise pursued the light. As she did so, the path beneath her feet seemed to straighten, to gain in substance. Soon she felt almost . . . solid. Though that wasn’t really the right word, for she didn’t have a body. She felt more real, however, as though her soul had increased its essence. With that increase came strength, and she was able to move more swiftly.

  A sense of landscape rose up around her—a landscape of vast, blank emptiness, to be sure, but still a landscape. Rolling gray hills. No growth or greenery, just grayness. A sort of wind touched her, though it may simply have been the motion of her own passing.

  The light continued to shine. It wasn’t a big light, Heloise realized as she came nearer to it. It was quite small, actually, little more than a candle’s glow. But unlike a candle, it burned with a steady beam that never wavered, casting an aura of whiteness that drew her like a moth.

  At last she saw a break in the empty landscape: a single stone jutting up from the ground. A gravestone, she thought, though she didn’t know why, for it was unlike the markers in the sad little plot above the Flaxman farm where Hélène’s remains rested. But she knew it was a gravestone without knowing why she knew, and she didn’t see much point in second-guessing herself. Not here.

  Besides, there was no thought left for the stone when one looked at that which sat atop it: a lantern of silver filigree, from the heart of which shone the light. A perfect white light, purer than starlight, purer than moonlight. Warmer, deeper. Like the light of nearly forgotten hope.

  “Heloise!”

  The voice had been silent for—well, not for some time. There was no time here. But there had been no sound since Heloise first glimpsed and pursued the light, and she had almost forgotten both her fear and her curiosity as to who might call her. Now the voice cried out again, and she remembered the fear.

  But as she stood in the glow of that lantern, she found that fear couldn’t affect her as it once had. She stared into the light, and she allowed herself to wonder.

  Then she put out a hand (surprised to discover that she had one; perhaps she hadn’t until this moment) and lifted the lantern by its handle. It swung from the end of her arm (she had one of those too) as she turned toward the voice.

  She saw the Final Water.

  Heloise had heard many people speak of the Final Water back in what she had once thought of as her life. When Hélène died, her Grandmem had whispered to her, saying, “Not to cry, child. Be thankful your sister is not trapped here, unable to move on. She has surely found her way to the Final Water and beyond . . .”

  The words had meant very little to Heloise, nothing more than a vague impression of what life after death would hold. She had never bothered to try to imagine it, for what was the use of that? Life was full, life was busy; life was consumed with the struggle for survival. There would be time enough after death to consider such odd, vague concepts.

  But this was after death. Now she not only considered, she saw.

  The Final Water stretched before her, more endless than endless, more boundless than boundless. She had thought she glimpsed forever when she first entered the Wood Between. But that small forever would be lost in but a drop of the hugeness upon which she now gazed.

  She had never seen an ocean during her lifetime, but she had heard tell of oceans. Once an old, weathered man with a strange, rolling gait had passed through Canneberges, begging bread at the doors of the peasant cottages. A sailor, he had claimed to be, and he told tales of the sea. None of these tales had fascinated Heloise so much as the very idea of the ocean itself. Water that went on beyond the horizon . . .

  This wasn’t an ocean, she knew at once, even though she had never seen one. But she had seen streams, and one time she had walked beside her older brothers, following a stream all the way to the river. She knew what a river was.

  And she knew, in that first, eternal instant of a glance, that the Final Water was a river. Greater than any ocean, but flowing forever from a source she could not name to a destination she could not guess.

  “I can’t cross that,” she said. She spoke the words like a confession of some dire sin. But there could be no denying the truth. Never, in all the millennia of all the ages of all the worlds stacked up on top of each other, could she ever swim that flowing torrent; not even if, while standing here upon the dark shore of the Netherworld, she could glimpse the hope of the Farthestshore beyond and, so inspired, strive after it. She was stronger than she thought—but she was not that strong.

  The lantern in her hand felt suddenly heavy. She wanted to set it down. She almost did. But she knew that once she let go of the handle, the darkness would return and she would wander lost again, lost from the Final Water. The heartbreak was agony beyond all the pain of her tortured death, but she knew she would rather stand there gazing out upon the impossible than never see it again.

  “Heloise!”

  The voice was much nearer now. So near, in fact, that Heloise almost thought she recognized it. “Who’s there?” she called back, and lifted the lantern higher.

  The light shone out across the Final Water and captured in its brilliant beams the form of a boat approaching. A tall boatman, cloaked in a long white robe with its hood pulled low so that his face could not be seen, stood in its stern with a long pole in his hands. This he used to push the boat along. The currents of the Final Water were terribly strong, yet he seemed to navigate them with ease, so he must be stronger still.

  In the prow of the boat sat a small figure. Or not so small, Heloise realized as the boat drew nearer. The figure was about her own height but seemed much smaller compared to the vastness of the boatman. The light was so bright as it fell upon the strange person’s face that Heloise could gain no solid impression of who or what it was.

  Soon the boat crunched against the pebbled shore. While the boatman remained where he stood, his long pole firmly fixed, the figure in the bow leaped out, splashed through the shallows, and waded up onto the gray, featureless landscape where Heloise stood.

  I should run, Heloise thought. I should run before I’m caught.

  But behind her waited only hell. So she stood her ground and clung to the lantern even as the stranger approached. The lantern’s light, which had at first been too bright, became gentler, clearer, illuminating the stranger’s face, and Heloise saw . . .

  She saw herself.

  It was her face, her own face, as clear as it had been when reflected in Benedict’s mirror. The same bright eyes, the same smattering of freckles. The same wild mane of curly hair, color indeterminate but possibly gold. The same protruding collarbones and soft, round cheeks as yet un-hardened with age. It was her own face, except . . . except for the nose. The nose was different. Yes, it boasted that same bump in the middle, but it listed, not to the left, but to the right.

  The stranger—her own living image—stopped but a few paces from Heloise. While Heloise’s brow was naturally stern, this one’s brow was smooth and clear, and her eyes were bright with a cheerful smile.

  “Hullo, Heloise,” she said.

  “Hullo, Hélène,” said Heloise.

  THIRTY-NI
NE

  “What do you have in your pocket?” Hélène asked.

  Heloise heard the words. But she couldn’t understand them. She stood with the lantern before her, its light forming a sort of barrier between herself and the image of her dead sister—the image that wasn’t even right! Not even close! This wasn’t Hélène, not really. How could it be? Hélène was only five years old when she died. When she was wrapped in that thin shroud. When she was laid to rest in the cold ground without even a pine box to cradle her.

  “Don’t throw away my sister!” Heloise had shouted. But they’d tossed the dirt in on top of her anyway, and Hélène was gone.

  She certainly wasn’t the young woman who stood in the white light of the lantern there on that dark shore, with all the looming blackness of the Netherworld on one side and all the looming hugeness of the Final Water on the other.

  So this must be a trick, Heloise decided. Some evil trick, some lure set to ensnare her, to prevent her from trying to cross the Water on her own. Perhaps a final spell from Mother, or even a poisonous illusion sent by the Dragon himself. It couldn’t be real.

  “You’re dead,” Heloise said. “I mean not you. You’re not her. And she’s dead. And I don’t know who you are.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Hélène. “I’m quite alive, as you see. But you’re dead, I’m sorry to say. What do you have in your pocket?”

  “If you’re not dead, then you can’t be her,” Heloise persisted. “I saw you die. Her die, I mean. I was there beside her. We shared the same bed. I got up, but she never did. And she’s gone, long gone. And it’s . . . it’s . . .”

  And it’s my fault.

  In that moment, hell caught up with Heloise. It closed in from behind her, and she realized, even as it overwhelmed her, that it had always been only a step or two in her wake. Throughout her life it had followed her, needing only death to claim her fully. It wrapped around her, a miasma of loathing, regret, and aching confusion.