by E. E. Holmes
“Mind they’re closing those rings properly!” Fiona snapped at me, pointing up to the top edge of the tapestry. “They’ve got to twist them tightly down against the grommets or the warp can snag. Here,” she added, thrusting her hand out toward me. “I’ve had this made to hang beside it.”
I took what she was holding out to me: an object wrapped in a paint-splattered handkerchief. I unwound the fabric and a shiny gold placard fell into my palm. I read the words engraved upon it.
Agnes Isherwood of the Clan Sassanaigh
Tapestry, circa 1045
Restored by Jessica Ballard, Assistant Curator, Fairhaven Hall
I looked up at Fiona, who was picking at some plaster under her fingernails and determinedly avoiding my gaze. “Assistant Curator?”
She shrugged. “Had to call you something. Couldn’t rightly print ‘Pain-in-the-Arse Lass Who Blunders Around My Studio Cocking Things Up,’ now could I?”
“Well, you could have, but I’m not sure it would have fit,” I said. I looked down at the words again, and felt a lump rising in my throat. “Thank you, Fiona.”
Fiona snorted and opened her mouth, probably to tell me to shove my thanks where the sun didn’t shine, but I didn’t give her a chance. I closed the distance between us and folded her into a fierce hug. I heard her gasp in surprise, stiffen, and then, at last, relax enough to reach around and pat me sharply on the back.
“That will do to be going along with,” she said gruffly after a few seconds, and I released her.
The Caomhnóir fastened the last of the hooks and stepped down off their ladders, waiting to be berated, no doubt. Instead, I thanked them and sent them on their way. They had just rounded the corner with their ladders, and I had just managed to affix the little plaque to the wall beside the tapestry, when Finn, Milo, Hannah, Savvy, and Kiernan appeared at the end of the hall. I gave a pointed look at Hannah and Kiernan’s linked hands and then caught Hannah’s eye. Hannah gave me a look that clearly told me to mind my own business. Milo then gave me a look that clearly said we would absolutely not be minding our own business under any circumstances.
“This everyone?” Fiona barked when she heard everyone’s feet come to a stop.
I looked down at my watch again. “Well, I was really hoping Karen might make it back in time to—”
“Wait for us!” a voice called from the end of the hall, and I turned to see Karen rushing down the hall and, to my shock, Tia hurrying along behind her.
“Tia!” I cried, running halfway down the hall to meet them and practically tackling her in a hug. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought your best friend should be at this unveiling after all the hard work you’ve put in,” Karen said, “so I gave her a lift on my way in from the city.”
Tia laughed. “Karen called and asked if I wanted a ride out to Fairhaven to see what you’d been up to for the last few months.” She looked over at the tapestry with a suspicious look. “But I assume that tapestry is barely the tip of the iceberg.”
“You assume correctly,” I said as Fiona cleared her throat pointedly. “I have a lot to tell you. But we’ll get to all that. Come on, before Fiona gives herself an aneurysm.”
“Right, then,” Fiona said, and cleared her throat again to address the group as we all gathered around her. “Well, it’s my duty to present the newly restored tapestry of Agnes Isherwood of the Clan Sassanaigh to her living descendants, with the compliments of the Office of the Curator.”
Everyone stared up at the tapestry.
“So that’s her, then, eh?” Savvy said at last to break the silence. “The troublemaker.”
“It runs in the family,” Karen said, casting her eyes at me and smirking.
“It’s hard to believe that someone who lived so long ago could feel so present, isn’t it?” Hannah said with a little shiver.
“You did a beautiful job on it,” Karen said, leaning forward to examine the fibers. “Both of you.”
“Jessica did most of the work,” Fiona said stiffly. “I merely oversaw the process.”
Finn reached over to squeeze my hand. “It looks magnificent. Truly. Well done, love.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling a slight flush creep into my cheeks.
“It’s uncanny,” Tia said, leaning forward. “She really does look like you. All three of you.”
“Durupinen genes are clearly dominant,” Karen announced.
“Hey, you think they’ll ever do one of these tapestries of the pair of you?” Savvy asked suddenly, waggling her eyebrows playfully at Hannah and me.
“Of us?” Hannah asked, laughing. “Definitely not.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Karen said, tapping her chin in mock thoughtfulness. “The long-awaited twins of the Prophecy? That might warrant a tapestry. Or at least a nice oil painting.”
Milo soared around in front of the tapestry, assuming Agnes’ regal pose. “Oh, come on. I can see it now! Jessica Ballard, clad in tragic black-on-black attire, a sketchbook in one hand and a large hot coffee in the other. It will be iconic, sweetness.”
“But if I’m holding the coffee and the sketchbook, how will I flip you off?” I asked, batting my eyelashes at him.
Savvy roared with laughter, and slapped me on the back. “Come on, then. We’re going to miss dinner. Tia, you can sit next to me, mate. Boy, have I got a hell of a story for you.”
I lingered behind the others as they made their way back down the hallway, still gazing up at Agnes.
“Love? Are you all right?” Finn asked, tugging lightly at my hand.
“Yeah. I’m just wondering about Agnes.”
“What about her?”
“She went to such great lengths to find me—to deliver those words to me. I just hope that, somehow, she knows that I did what she asked—that everything is as it should be again.”
“I do not doubt for a moment that she knows,” Finn said. “What was it she said to you? That the tapestries of your lives are intertwined?” He threaded our fingers together and gave my hand a squeeze. “She knows.”
As I turned away from the tapestry, I imagined that I could feel Agnes’ eyes on me as I walked away. Her legacy was set in stone now, hung upon a wall for posterity. In this new Durupinen world we had created, I was less sure than ever what my legacy would be. Everything was uncertain, rife with possibilities.
And that, I realized, was exactly what life was supposed to be.
If you are reading this page, you’ve reached both the end of one adventure and the beginning of another. Please consider this your personal invitation to accompany me on a new journey into a world full of intrigue, suspense, and magic!
What the Lady’s Maid Knew, the first book in my new series “The Riftmagic Saga” is available for pre-order now. Many more sleepless nights of delicious page-turning await you. Won’t you join me?
Acknowledgments
Ten books later, I still feel like I can never find the right words to properly acknowledge the people who need acknowledgment in this wild and crazy journey of the past seven years. But while I will have lots of opportunities to speak with and thank (with varying degrees of eloquence) the people I’m close to, I will likely not have another opportunity to thank those I’ve never even met. So, I’ve decided to take this opportunity to thank the people who really, in the end, make all of this a reality: the readers.
If you’ve reached this acknowledgments page, that means you’ve likely read over a million words that I’ve written. (Yes, a million. Yes, I did actual math to figure this out. Yes, I’m still freaking out about it a little.)
How can I possibly thank you for spending that much time on the work and passion of a person you’ve never even met? You have taken my pipe dream of becoming an author and turned it into a reality just by taking a chance on my books. You have SO many choices out there—if you are a book worm like I am, you sometimes have an existential crisis over the sheer number of books you will never be able to read. But you took the time t
o read not just one, but all ten installments of this adventure, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
The characters in these pages are so very dear to me, and it has been the privilege of a lifetime to share them with you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for taking this journey with me. I invite you to join me on the next, and I hope you will choose to do so, because I’ve only just begun to tell stories.
All my love and gratitude,
Emily
E.E. Holmes is a writer, teacher, and actor living in central Massachusetts with her husband, two children, and a small, but surprisingly loud dog. When not writing, she enjoys performing, watching unhealthy amounts of British television, and reading with her children.
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