A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  Hell asked her again and again: What is the point of you?

  She had lived when Hélène had died. She had been the strong one, the one who took all Hélène’s strength since before their birth. Yet what good had she accomplished? Had she rescued Evette? Had she liberated Alala or Ayodele or Cateline or any of the prisoners? Had she been strong enough to dance Le Sacre through the night? No. No, no, and no again. So what was the point of her, really? What was the use?

  The Chosen One. The gifted one. The strong one.

  She deserved hell, and it caught her even as she dropped the lantern, dropped the light—

  A hand caught hold of hers. And suddenly, hell could not be hell anymore, because she was not alone in it. Someone held onto her, someone knelt before her, grasping her hand. She had shut her eyes so that she would not see the blackness where the light of the lantern had been. But through her self-imposed blindness, she heard her sister speaking:

  “I’m not dead, Heloise. My mortal body died, and my mortal life came to an end. But I am not dead! I am alive. I am living even now. I was dead before I died. But when I died, I came alive.”

  “It’s my fault,” Heloise whispered. But her other hand sought in the darkness, and Hélène caught it in a tight grip as well.

  “It’s no one’s fault,” Hélène said. “It is the way of mortality. It is our burden and it is our gift. The Faerie folk don’t understand it. They can’t because their lives go on and on and on.” She squeezed Heloise’s fingers, urging her to an understanding she could not grasp. “Before there can be a Beginning, Heloise, there must first be an End. I’ve suffered my End. I’ve entered into my Beginning.”

  Slowly, afraid of what she might see, Heloise opened her eyes. Rather than the blackness of hell, she saw her sister’s face before her. A homely, comfortable peasant girl’s face. Nothing transformed or transfigured. Nothing radiant or angelic. Just a girl, a pleasant, plain girl with a crooked nose and tangled hair and a smile that would not surrender.

  “I was sent from beyond the Final Water,” Hélène said through that smile. “I was sent from the Farthestshore to meet you here, to show you the truth you have overlooked because you could not help but overlook it. And that’s all right, Heloise. You’re not expected to save the day. You’re only expected to try and try and, when all else fails, to try again.”

  “I did try,” Heloise said. “I . . . I tried to dance Le Sacre. I tried to save our sister. I wasn’t strong enough.”

  “Of course not. A branch alone will bend and break. It is the branch of three parts that you need. Now answer my question: What do you have in your pocket?”

  “I’m dead,” said Heloise. “I don’t have pockets anymore.”

  “Check it anyway,” said Hélène.

  Obediently, Heloise slipped one of her hands free of her sister’s grasp. She felt along her waist, surprised, somehow, to discover her own body and the fabric of her ugly, simple gown. And yes, a pocket. Of all things, here in the Netherworld she did indeed have a pocket.

  Her hand sought down inside and closed upon the three-part branch of silver, gold, and diamond. This she withdrew, and it gleamed in her fingers, reflected brilliantly in Hélène’s eyes. It wasn’t as bright as the lantern, but it was bright enough. At the sight of it, hell itself retreated, and Heloise found herself kneeling upon the shores of the Final Water, one hand still held in her sister’s firm grasp.

  “Here it is,” said Heloise, holding it up.

  “Do you see now?” asked Hélène.

  “I—I don’t know what I’m supposed to see.”

  “You’re still looking with your mortal eyes. You don’t have to do that here.” Hélène leaned in closer, her smile eager and urgent at once. “Look at it and see the truth. Remember what your sister has done for you.”

  Heloise obeyed, though she did not understand what was asked of her. She stared at the branch of silver, gold, and diamond entwined into a single shape. She recalled when she’d gathered each one—the silver branch in the crushing forest, the gold branch from the waterfall, the diamond branch during the Night Hunt. Each alone was complete.

  Yet when brought together, they were made whole.

  “Three together,” Hélène whispered. “Three branches. Three sisters. Three quests.”

  Remember what your sister has done for you.

  In her heart, Heloise recalled the voice of Princess Alala saying, “Look at what your sister has done.”

  A tapestry. An embroidered picture of memory, of pure mortal magic.

  A magic so strange and so strong, it can hold onto the spirit long after death.

  Heloise saw her sister’s tapestry, unique among the twelve. For while all of the other eleven maidens embroidered themselves in the center of Le Sacre, dancing with their true loves, Evette had instead depicted Heloise.

  “They put down in words or pictures all their memories so that when they die, the memories live on, passed down from generation to generation.”

  Heloise danced Le Sacre, there in the silken image. Surrounded with Evette’s red cranberry blossoms, her hands upraised, her feet moving forever in time to the music. Forever captured in memory, dancing Le Sacre all night through.

  There was more to the picture. Heloise saw it now, though she did not remember seeing it at the time. In Evette’s tapestry she saw all twelve maidens picked out in lifelike detail. She saw Ayodele and Cateline as well as Evette. And in that image . . . in Evette’s image . . .

  They did not dance. They ran away, each in her own direction, free of Le Sacre’s binding.

  “Imagine,” said the voice of Evette in her memory. “Imagine being part of a work that will last through the ages, letting people a hundred years from now know who we are and what we did, and what important events transpired in our time!”

  Heloise shook her head, and the image faded. She stared at the three-part branch then lifted her gaze to meet Hélène’s. “But it’s not true,” she said, her voice thick with mingled fear and hope. The Final Water lapped at her feet, and she felt the amazing wetness of it, felt it with more clarity of sensation than she could have known in her mortal body. “I didn’t succeed! I tried to dance Le Sacre, just as Evette’s picture told me. But I died!”

  “Not according to the mortal magic,” said Hélène. “The mortal magic, which the Queen of Night even now manipulates for her own purposes, keeps Alala alive. That which sustains Alala’s life in the tapestries of generations sustains your life as well.”

  She laughed then, and if Heloise had not been convinced before that it was her sister who held her hand, she would have known then for certain. For though the face before her was not that of five-year-old Hélène, her laugh was exactly the same.

  “What a clever sister we have, Heloise! She has saved you!”

  “But—but—” Heloise stammered around the words, afraid to speak them out loud. “You said I’m dead.”

  “You are,” said Hélène. “At least, you are compared to me. But your mortal life is not at an end. I was sent from beyond the Farthestshore to meet you here. My quest was to find you and to send you back to finish that which you have started.”

  Three branches. Three sisters. Three quests.

  They stood together, still holding hands, and the three-part branch gleamed in the light of the lantern sitting on the ground at their feet. The Final Water was vast before them, but not so vast as it had been. Heloise looked out beyond the white-robed boatman and thought she glimpsed a light and possibly a hint of mountains beyond the Boundless.

  “Will you return to the Farthestshore?” she asked, suddenly too shy to meet her sister’s eyes.

  “Yes,” said Hélène. “And I will see you again when you come there.”

  “Meme misses you,” said Heloise. “She misses you every day.”

  Hélène nodded once. There was an entire world of understanding in that one simple gesture. But when she answered, she said only, “When you meet the Mother of Night again, thin
k of Meme and understand.”

  She took Heloise in her two scrawny arms and embraced her. For a timeless moment they were two small children, just five years of age, holding each other as they faced the big world together. The childish, lisping voice of young Hélène whispered in Heloise’s ear, “Mortals were meant to die to themselves so that they might truly live. Don’t be afraid, valiant sister! Dance the sacrifice. Dance to the truth you know. Dance to the song of life, the gift of the Song Giver.”

  A branch of silver . . . a branch of gold . . .

  A branch of diamond adamant.

  “Now go,” said Hélène. “Go save our sister.”

  The Family of Night stood in the hall. They stood when they should have been dancing, and Le Sacre played on around them. They stood in ringing circles around the mangled form of the mortal girl lying in hopeless sacrifice.

  So, Son thought from his vantage on the dais beside Mother’s throne, another one gives her life. For nothing. How frail these mortals are!

  His heart sank in his breast even as he turned a grim smile down upon Mother’s face. She sat as she always did, still as a stone, her eyes closed.

  “It’s done, Mother,” he said. “The cursebreaker is dead. Our law remains unbroken, and—”

  Someone screamed. Son turned, his long braids flying, and sprang down from the dais. Even as the scream was taken up and spread in rippling waves through the crowd, he pushed through the thronging members of his family, making his way to that center circle.

  There he saw—even as the shawm sang in counterpoint to the ceterone—even as the drum roared its pronouncements of doom and death—the mortal girl lying prone and broken. Only . . . only . . .

  She wasn’t dead.

  The dark Faerie figures fled from the center and disappeared into the shadows along the edges of the hall, there to hide and stare out in wonder at that which transpired. But Son stood where he was, staring down at that little creature.

  She raised her head and shook it, her hair tossing like a lion’s mane. For a moment he thought she was a lion indeed.

  The twelve maidens stood around her now, around him, the captured mortal girls—the tithe that could never fully satisfy the demands of the curse set upon their family. They alone remained on the dance floor, and though Le Sacre bade them obey, they did not dance. They stood as still as Mother herself, watching with the Lion-Prince.

  The mortal girl sat upright, the bones of her body re-knit as though they had never been shattered. She held something in her fist, something Son could not see, and she glanced down at it, her face full of wonder.

  The shawm shrieked, singing the pain of blood loss and grief. The ceterone bellowed the fear of coming death. The bandora cried out in the agony of sickness, of age. Beneath their voices, the drums roared, Doom! Doom-doom!

  But the mortal girl stood up. She looked at her limbs as though uncertain they were hers. She frowned as she turned them over, looking for breaks and bruises that should be but weren’t. Then she tilted her head as though catching a strain of music. She did not hear the music of the Night that played, more feral, more frantic than ever. Le Sacre and its bidding did not touch her ear.

  She raised her hands. She lifted her foot. Then with a leap, she began to dance in a pace and rhythm counter to all the voices of Le Sacre. The drum beat its doom, and it did not move her, did not affect her. She danced hesitantly at first, uncertain of the steps, but with every turn, every footfall, her confidence grew.

  Suddenly she was smiling.

  “What is this?” Son cried, and almost backed into one of the twelve maidens. But she sidestepped, moved around him, and approached the mortal girl, the cursebreaker. She seemed at first to study her sister’s movements and then to hear the song for herself. Even as Le Sacre urged her to follow its bidding, she began to move in time to the cursebreaker’s dance. One by one, the other eleven maidens joined her.

  Le Sacre sang in desperation:

  “Shadows of the Night,

  Dance with me,

  Dance with your arms entwined.

  Shadows of the Night,

  Sing with me,

  Sing with yours voices combined.”

  But as one voice, the twelve maidens and the cursebreaker sang in response:

  “Beyond the Final Water falling,

  The Songs of Spheres recalling,

  When all around you is the emptiness of Night,

  Won’t you dance with me?”

  Heloise felt them surrounding her. She couldn’t see them just then, for her eyes were still full of the brilliant glow of the lantern she’d gazed upon in the Netherworld. But she felt them, felt Evette’s hand touching hers, felt Ayodele’s hair whirling to brush her face. All her sisters of generations past were caught up together in the new dance, in the new song. Hélène was there too, for Hélène was as much a part of this as any of them. The branch of three . . . the branch of three parts will be the key . . .

  An inspiration took hold of her, an inspiration so strong, she wondered that she had not felt it before. Heloise, following the new song in her head, raised her unlovely voice and sang as loudly as she could:

  “Different as they’ll ever be

  Yet springing from a single tree.

  ’Tis more than thee, ’tis more than me.

  Now set the captives flying FREE!”

  As the last word left her mouth, something broke. For a moment Heloise could not guess what it was. Then it came to her—Le Sacre! Le Sacre itself broke and dissolved, all the dissonant parts of its creation unwinding, undoing, splintering off into Night and nothingness. The drum uttered a last forlorn doooooooom . . . Then it was gone.

  The maidens uttered a simultaneous gasp. Then each one shouted in a loud voice without words. They turned and they ran from the circle as fast as their feet could carry them. They ran into the shadows where the Family of Night hid, and the Family itself fled before them. But the maidens cared nothing for this. They ran as fast as they could, each for a separate gate which opened up and beckoned to her. Perhaps a gate leading back to her own time, her own place of belonging. Perhaps a gate leading to the Netherworld and the Final Water.

  But not all of them ran. Even as the echo of Heloise’s voice died away, even as she twirled about on the tips of her bare, dirty feet, she felt her right hand caught and clasped tight. Evette stood beside her, her face alight with her most enormous, most beautiful smile. And just behind Evette was—

  “What have you done?”

  Mother appeared before Heloise and clutched her arm in a grip of bedrock stone. The white fire covering her intensified, darkening to an ugly red, and it ran along Heloise’s arm as well, taking her into its blazing depths. Heloise stared up into eyes of black lava, full of heat and passion and . . . and . . .

  She knew that emotion.

  “Heloise, no!” Evette cried. But it didn’t matter.

  Before Evette could protest further, Heloise shook free of her sister’s grip and reached out to take hold of Mother’s hand. They stood together in the blazing red inferno of Mother’s fire, there in the center of the Hall of Night. But though the fire raged over the surface of Heloise’s skin, it did not touch her. It was as though they existed in two separate realms, Heloise and the Queen of Night, even when they stood hand-in-hand.

  “What have you done?” Mother cried again. The sound of her voice broke a piece of the distant, sky-like ceiling above and sent it crumbling and falling in great chunks of heavy darkness that smote the dance floor and broke it in long cracks. “You’ve turned my own power against me! You have killed her! You have killed my Alala!”

  The words sprang to Heloise’s mouth without thought. She knew what she must say, though she could never guess how she knew. Perhaps it had to do with the song she had just sung, the song which played on in her head.

  “Dance with me, Mother,” Heloise said.

  Mother towered over her, as tall as an oak and far more ancient. Her eyes were huge and black, but
Heloise could catch not even a glimpse of her reflection in them—Mother had taken that away forever. Instead she saw a reflection of something else. Something she knew well.

  “Dance with me,” Heloise said again. She moved to the song, the gentle song which slowly swelled up in her heart, gaining power as it grew. The song which Mother could not hear.

  “You’ve killed my Alala,” the Queen of Night said. “You are a monster! A destroyer! A murderer!”

  It’s your fault! You took all her strength! She had nothing left! It’s your fault!

  “Dance with me, Meme,” Heloise said. Tears ran freely down her cheeks. She added, “I’m stronger than you think.”

  With those words, she pulled Mother into the dance with her. The dance which was not Le Sacre. For where Le Sacre took life, this dance gave life. Though her voice was ugly with mortality, Heloise sang to the new rhythm in which she moved:

  “Beyond the Final Water falling,

  The Songs of Spheres recalling,

  When the sun descends behind the twilit sky,

  Think again of me.”

  Mother tried to resist but couldn’t. She hadn’t the will to oppose the cursebreaker, not anymore. She fell into step with the mortal girl, and together they spun around the broken dance floor of her hall. As they danced, the hands Heloise held began to fade away, to disintegrate into nothing

  “Beyond the Final Water falling,” Heloise sang.

  Mother responded in a voice of liquid darkness and despair, “The Songs of Spheres recalling.”

  Then Alala was there. Heloise felt the Princess of Night alive and vivid inside her head as she hadn’t been since they met face to face in the Tower. She was present again, and Heloise felt suddenly that it was Alala’s hands and not her own holding Mother’s. It was Alala’s feet moving with far more grace than Heloise’s ever could.

  Mother knew. The look in her eye would have broken the heart of any mortal not blessed with Faerie blood. “Daughter,” she sighed. “I’ve lost you.”