by Jean Lee
Liam coughs. “Where is she now?”
“Don’t know. We haven’t spoken since the flight. But she’s alive. I feel it.” He taps his chest. “In my embers. Alive and free. As Charlotte should be.”
Small glittering spheres begin their descent out of darkness. Liam watches the slow arrival, wondering which are planets and suns, and which are Celestine. “She made her decision when River Vine tried to claim her sister.”
“Pfft. That doesn’t count. I’d have done the same for my sister as you would your brother.” A pause. “Or not.”
Liam won’t look at him. “One Celestine is watching us.”
While all other stars hang back content to merely twinkle, one has continued its descent. Though as large as a noonday sun, its glow remains pale and subdued. Rather like the light of the Stellaqui, Liam thinks.
“Liam.” For once, Dorjan’s voice is soft. “Just...I want Charlotte to have a chance to be happy. All right? I figure she deserves it.”
Liam’s inner wings slow, if only slightly. There is a calm urgency in Dorjan’s voice, and the way his shoulders bend forward like the wolf he is…not in some stance to attack, but to defend. Protect. “We’ve all of us endured our shadowed valleys.” Though Liam cannot restrain the skepticism in his voice for the wolf who can roam beyond the Wall.
But Dorjan nods, sighs, and ignores the orb only a few leagues above them, eyes fixed upon the revolving treeline etched against the nightfall.
24
Woman of Ice
Charlotte dreams of a concert hall built upon an ocean, walled with hurricanes, ceilinged by stars.
She is not upon the stage. She’s leashed by a vine to the back door, a vine that wraps up around her arm and into a bowtie on her neck. The vine winds down her other arm in weird shapes Charlotte soon realizes are letters:
Usher.
On stage, Anna sparkles in a glittering tuxedo, hat, and cane, dancing and singing with Jenny Blair. The song is called “Sisters.”
Charlotte storms down the aisle with her usher’s flashlight to find Aunt Gail in the front row, tears just beginning to streak thinly down the laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. Charlotte demands the show halt. Aunt Gail slaps the flashlight out of Charlotte’s hand and demands to know who she thinks she is.
Fur. Lake. Firewood. Cut leaves. Roses. Meadows. Summer storms. Happiness. Hope.
A slight breeze tickles her left earlobe.
Charlotte’s eyes flutter.
Dorjan lies out on his side with his hands and legs stretched out from him. She could probably poke his boots if she wanted to.
Exhausted by memory’s pain, Charlotte hadn’t allowed herself to feel when Liam held her the night before. This time, she lets her nerves tingle as Liam’s comforting heat ebbs along her calves, thighs, and back. She listens to his heartbeat drum a slow rhythm against her spine. She dares not touch his arms, one across her shoulders and the other across her stomach. His ten fingers are all spread upon her skin with a quiet pressure to keep her close. To press back might wake him, and the last thing she wants is to break this moment.
Is this what It’s like? THE it? Even in her mind, Charlotte doesn’t touch the L-word. The last time the L-word flew out of her mouth was not a good moment for either her or Liam.
Feign sleep. The Voice in Charlotte’s heart whispers to her.
Since when are you worried about eavesdropping?
But then Charlotte’s eyes wander toward Cairine.
She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming. Carefully she twines her legs with Liam’s to keep herself still.
Through slitted eyelids Charlotte sees Cairine sitting and Arlen standing on opposite sides of the barge while Aine climbs up and slides down Cairine’s sloping back. They speak in hushed voices to a woman as tall as the bear Cairine when she stands on two legs. The woman’s body glows with light from a million fragments of ice, pieced together to shape arms, legs, body, head. When she lifts a hand to point towards shore, the air fills with the sounds of glass breaking over and over.
I have to be dreaming, I have to be dreaming.
The Voice in Charlotte’s heart does its best to ease her frantic heart. No, you’re not. So calm yourself. If you wake Liam and he panics, she will kill him no matter her friendliness with Arlen.
So Charlotte counts her breaths, from short to long. On the twelfth breath a tri-colored fire erupts far beyond the Wall. The ice-woman shatters.
Cairine weeps.
25
Giving Bone and Skin
Charlotte wakes to curious conversation.
“I can dog-paddle to shore, sure, but that will reduce the power of Aunt’s scent.”
Her nose puckers at the fear and anger stinking up the air. It hangs over everything like humidity heralding a storm. She can’t even smell the lake itself, and they’re still on top of it.
She lays alone on one end of the barge, tipped slightly up and out of the water, while the others crowd the other side.
“It’s still a terrific distance to run,” says Liam, worried.
“We have no choice.” Arlen, firm. “Cairine and Aine cannot be found. We must hope Orna’s new powers have been as taxing for them as they have been for us.”
Aine rolls out from between Dorjan and Cairine just as Charlotte hunts through the sack and pulls out one last wrapped sandwich. Charlotte splits it with her. “I’m amazed you still like peanut butter, kid,” Charlotte forces some lightness into her voice. New scents touch her nose as they breeze by. Very new.
Not-ever-smelled new.
An old, musty something. A sharp, sanitary something. The last…not really sweet, but food-ish. Tomatoes? But not like in the grocery store. Farm, maybe. What the hell is she smelling tomatoes for?
Gah, Charlie, your nose is on the fritz.
Still, she risks asking the others, “Who’s here?”
Liam spins first. The clouds inside him look weighted and dark against the orange, pink, and blue ribbons of dawn. “What do you mean?”
Dorjan’s blue eye glares daggers at Liam’s back. “She smells them as well as we can.”
Liam whips Dorjan’s coat at him but says nothing.
Charlotte sticks the last bite of sandwich into her mouth, scritches Aine’s head as the little cub buries her muzzle in the now-empty provision sack. She hears the clicking of sea-speak out of sight, and Captain’s voice, ordering, “Sergeant, request a few more guards and mounts. The journey must be smooth and quick lest the child’s shriek attracts attention. Velidevour or a whale shark, whichever comes first.”
“Journey?” Charlotte tries to meet Liam’s eyes, but he’s bent low, curls curtaining his face as he picks up any good scrap of velifol or herb.
At last, Arlen turns around. The salt of his salt and pepper hair shimmers with a pinkish hue. “Charlotte, do you think you can break the barge?”
“What, like shred it?”
“In half. Workable halves.” He strides past her to pull the sack off Aine’s head and carry her back to her mother. “Cairine and Aine won’t be coming to shore.” Aine’s head whips about and knocks Arlen on the jaw, but his hand clamps down upon hers before she can yowl in protest. “No no, no yelling. You get to go on your own adventure with Mother and see all sorts of amazing things and meet all sorts of amazing creatures. And a queen!”
Oh… Charlotte’s hand cups her mouth.
Liam’s hunched-ness. Arlen’s haste. Cairine’s tears. The new smells.
Dorjan’s hand squeezes Charlotte’s shoulder. “It was all right down there, in the Library. Wasn’t it?” His question is quiet and clipped.
Breathe, Charlie. “It’s them, isn’t it?” Them, like some alien invaders, because fuck, they are invaders.
Dorjan bites his lip. Arlen’s just…just holding his family like he’ll never hold them again. Liam can’t even talk—if the very memory of them makes him shrivel in pain and tears, what hell could they put him in with their presence?
Get moving, Charlie, get focused before someone sees the bears. “Yeah. Yeah, so long as they don’t try to read anything. Are you going, too?”
A curt shake of the head. “I’m going to drag Cairine’s scent across River Vine. Poor guise, I know, but it’ll drive the bastards starkers. And that suits me fine.” He throws his coat on the barge by Cairine’s backside.
Cairine has yet to speak. She only shakes her head, growling.
Arlen, arms tight around Aine, kneels at his wife’s side. He rests his head against her neck, and breathes her in. Then: “Do it. Please.”
Cairine urinates on Dorjan’s coat.
Dorjan turns away. Not a wince, not a snark from his lips. Only another clipped line to Charlotte. “Break the barge here, maybe.” He taps the boards between them with his boot. “After we separate.”
A few pairs of stone-like eyes breach the surface as net-ropes are removed from two corners of the barge. Only Captain rides her nautilus so she can be visible above the surface, clicking, pointing with her bone spear at various spots along the barge’s edge. A curious strip of red now hangs loosely about her waist. “We’ve not made a bubble this large in some time, but with enough nets it should keep on its journey through the portal.”
Arlen nods. He kisses his daughter, gives her a throat growl choked in tears, pleads with her to stop yelping. “Please, little one, you must be brave for all of us.”
Liam nearly rips Arlen’s satchel in two. “She wouldn’t cry if you went with them. As you should.” His voice shudders with the rest of his body.
Even Dorjan’s voice wavers. “Please, Uncle.”
YES, Sir, go with them! A kid shouldn’t grow up without a dad when he’s like you! But even Charlotte can see by Arlen’s stiff spine and the way he hunches on his legs that he’s not lingering by his family. Aine finally breaks into small, quiet sobs, allowing her father to lay her in her mother’s paws. A tear slides down Cairine’s fur onto Arlen’s lips when he kisses the side of her muzzle. Then he stands, helps Dorjan into the Cairine-soaked coat, and joins Charlotte on her half of the barge. Dorjan follows. The scent of bear urine stings Charlotte’s eyes and sends that pbj sandwich right back up her esophagus, but she manages to keep it back by stuffing her face into her arm. She’s the newbie, the one who barely knows these people, yet all she wants to do is sob.
Families shouldn’t have to break up like this.
No one should have to return to the hell-house built by the people who are supposed to love you.
Really, she’s scared to blazes.
“Are you ready?” Captain calls.
Arlen holds up one hand to Captain, the other to Liam, still sitting on the wrong half.
Liam closes Arlen’s satchel, but doesn’t budge. “You over here first. And Charlotte, too.”
The lilt of Ireland flows beneath Arlen’s words more than before. “I promised, Liam. No more hiding.”
Aine’s whines begin to swell. Cairine cries, too choked up to quiet her daughter.
Charlotte slides over and uses both of her hands to part the curtain of curls. Don’t let your fear into your voice, Charlie, you’ve GOT to be stronger than that, now. “We face them together. Okay?”
“B-but you’ll be safe—”
“And driven insane by that sea turtle staring at me.” Her thumbs stroke his cheekbones, tanned and gritty. “I’ll take my chances up here.” The heels of her hands tilt up just enough to touch the corners of his mouth. “You can do this. We can do this.”
She feels Liam’s neck muscles move as he swallows., His smell, at least, improves from the stench of fear to that…other something he often has with her.
Aine’s whines grow louder.
“Liam.” Arlen, firm.
Liam’s fingers slide from Charlotte’s elbows up to her wrists. He nods, and together they situate themselves by Arlen’s feet. Aine reaches out with little claws and barks to her father. Charlotte can feel Arlen’s feet twitch under her backside to return to his daughter.
It is Cairine who says, “Quickly now.”
Charlotte holds her hand out as far as she can and spreads her fingers on the barge. Okay, Rose House. We gotta break this thing in two without sinking either half. Split the barge, split it safe and quick…
Crrrrrrrrrack.
Like a cheese stick pulled apart by a child, the barge’s boards splinter and fray, but do not snap to sink. The crack is clean end to end, the larger half for the bears. Nautili surround the barge.
The mounted guards begin to sing.
For all the power music’s held in Charlotte’s life, she is not prepared for the harmony of the Stellaqui’s sea-song. She stands without thinking, ears filling with invisible rainbows that weave color after color into a rope she’d climb to the heavens. Charlotte’s hand tightens around Liam’s while Dorjan touches his uncle’s shoulder. As their barge moves silently toward shore, they witness the rainbow luminescence within every green rope begin to glow like the film of bubbles Charlotte popped so often as a child. The ropes float up and over the barge until they all meet in a central point above Cairine and Aine. The harmony guides the ropes around the craft, building a web as a million spiders weaving light.
Cairine holds back her tears and stares through the colored net. Aine crawls up onto her mother’s neck, leans over to poke the growing bubble.
“N-no no, little one,” Arlen’s chide comes between a choke and a laugh. “No no,” he whispers, shaking.
Sergeant raises Captain’s spear, and the sea-song ceases. With a click, the guard descends. The barge follows.
Aine whimpers and waves towards her father as the netted bubble disappears beneath a ripple of orange and blue.
Silence.
A soft Drip drip drip: Cairine’s urine as it dribbles from Dorjan’s coat onto the barge’s boards.
“They will be well looked after.”
All four turn.
Captain pulls the barge with one hand as the other paddles in a slow, quiet motion.
Arlen’s sigh answers for everyone.
They spy the shore where Orna chased after Charlotte and Liam. Branches hang broken from the trees, the sand pounded and littered with specks of oil. Scraps of log from Orna’s attempted raft lie about like a ship wrecked too soon.
Captain continues to follow the shoreline.
Nothing moves among the trees. No Hissers, no Incomplete in the trees. No broken Ornas. Nothing but sunlight chasing shadows among the leaves. Even the air smells…vacant, like a room cleaned out for the next tenant.
The Voice in Charlotte’s heart whispers nervously, Keep all your wits. Trust nothing new.
Charlotte nods to herself and tightens her hold on Liam’s hand. A muscle twitches near his nose bridge as his other hand feels for the hilt of the blood dagger, sheathed and ready on his back.
Captain guides the barge into the inlet where Aine was held. No wonder we’re landing here, Charlotte thinks. Cairine’s smell should be all over this place, and her trail needs be tied to here.
Dorjan begins to breathe quietly in and out of his mouth. He rolls his shoulders, shakes out his hands, readying for the marathon.
Charlotte looks at Arlen, catches his eye. For a split second, the mischievous sparkle flutters across his face and vanishes behind the upturned corner of his mouth. He rests a hand on Liam’s shoulder, and squeezes.
One last push from Captain, and she exchanges her tailfin for legs, her arms for fins.
Dorjan dances on the balls of his feet.
“Please be safe,” Charlotte whispers to Dorjan, to D, to her first Velidevour friend.
Dorjan’s green eye glows like the summer leaves. “Only because you asked nicely.”
The barge jolts, slows. They’ve run aground.
Dorjan leaps from the barge a person and lands upon the sand a wolf. He does not look back. He runs, careful to drag his tail on sand and brush, and to rub his fur against several tree trunks as he goes.
Arlen s
teps off the boat first, eyes and fingers studying the sand. “They’ve not been here yet.” His voice is distant, searching reason. “Orna must have occupied them longer than I thought. We’re fortunate, Liam.”
Charlotte remains at the water’s edge when Arlen motions Liam to kneel next to him in the middle of the sand. “Why?” Liam whispers. “Why has my family come?”
Arlen lets out a long exhale through his nose. “There is only one reason—your awakening,” he says as his eyes skim the trees. “The sticky question is, how did they know? Dorjan told no one.”
Liam’s inner clouds churn. “A scout.” His fingers claw the sand. “Yes, that is, as you say, a sticky, question.”
While Liam and Arlen huddle and talk, Charlotte steps into the water to approach Captain. She holds out her hand to Captain…only Captain’s got a fin. Darnit, I can’t even shake a thank-you. Do we high-five now? I’d like to do something. “Thank you, honestly, just, for everything. But you better go before nasty pieces of princeborn work show up.”
Captain laughs, whipping her kelp-hair over one shoulder. “I am not afraid. You are right, though. I need to join the guard beneath the surface. But before I leave…” Captain unties the red strip Charlotte had noticed earlier. A thin white something is attached. “An offering by the High Sage’s request. And mine.” Her fin unfurls to reveal a braided red belt and the top half of the bone spear Charlotte had broken earlier. The broken end has been smoothed and wrapped with some sort of red leather— “Eel skin,” Captain says as she hands over belt and blade both. “Tradition dictates the loser of a duel must relinquish her weapon.” She double-blinks. Smirks. “And a broken spear is useless to me anyway.”
Charlotte holds out both hands, her mouth stuck partly open. “Woah.” When the cool bone rests upon her skin she’s lost to the smells of sea and bravery. The glittering water droplets against the eel skin cast her imagination into a place of moonlit waters, barked commands, secret paths charted only by stars and guts. Oh, Dad, you would have killed to find something like this on a mission.