City of Miracles
Page 51
“All right. I’ll be back soon! I promise!” She lightly steps down the stones to the shore. He watches as she races along the waves to be met by three children he doesn’t recognize. By their gestures and demeanors, though, they seem to be very familiar with one another.
“A social butterfly, then,” he says, sniffing. Good. She needs more people in her life.
Sigrud leans against the tree. The forest rings with the distant sound of birdsong and the echo of the waves. It’s late morning now, the sun reaching the spot in the sky where its beams no longer pierce the pines at that striking angle, but it is still a gorgeous day.
A peaceful day. One bereft of threat or danger.
I did it, Shara, he thinks, gazing out to sea. We did it.
He looks up at the tree above him. A piece of time itself, calcified and slowly accrued, stretching toward the bright blue skies on this beautiful day.
He reaches to the side and feels its rough bark, its roots digging down deep into the soil.
And what have you seen, I wonder? What have you seen? And what will you see yet?
He tries to imagine it. Tries to imagine the world that’s passed, and the world yet to come. The one he had some small hand in making.
He looks down. A girl is walking up the shore to him. The sun is bright, reflecting off the waves behind her, and it’s hard for him to see, but he thinks her hair is blond. And is she wearing glasses?
A woman’s voice in his ear, perhaps Shara’s, whispering, “Can you believe it?”
Sigrud closes his eye.
Tatyana Komayd dances up the hill, shimmering with delight. “Seal babies!” she cries. “There are seal babies up the coast, Sigrud! I saw them!”
She climbs up to the top of the hill and looks around, trying to remember where she left him. Then she sees him, his broad form leaning against the biggest tree, one hand on his cane and the other touching the trunk, a curiously wistful touch, as if touching an old lover.
“They were tiny!” she says, running through the trees to him. “They were tiny and perfect and they were playing and I just couldn’t believe it! Are seals common here, Sigrud?”
He does not answer.
She walks over to stand before him. “Sigrud?”
Silence.
She peers closer at him, then her eyes widen.
She covers her mouth.
“Oh,” she says, in a soft, crushed voice.
The waves crash and crackle on the shores below.
She stares at him for a long time, hands on her mouth, tears silently running down her cheeks, the sound of birdsong in her ears. Then she sniffs and nods.
“All right,” she says. “All right.”
She sits beside him. Then she takes his hand in her own, fingers woven tight in his, and she watches the waves in the evening light.
Many thanks to my agent, Cameron McClure, and my editor, Julian Pavia, who both helped me keep the ship aright during this (somewhat accidental) journey.
Many thanks as well to my parents, my family, and to Ashlee, who helps me work every day as if we live in the early times of a great nation. The future is indeed a bloom worth tending to.
ROBERT JACKSON BENNETT is the author of American Elsewhere, The Troupe, The Company Man, and Mr. Shivers, as well as the first two books in The Divine Cities trilogy: City of Stairs and City of Blades. His work has received the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Phillip K. Dick Citation of Excellence, and he has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Locus Awards. He lives in Austin with his family.
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