“You too,” Emma said. She was so pale and thin now that the dawn light streaming through her glossy red hair shone rainbows briefly against the floor before clouding…and vanishing.
Heavy-hearted, Wendy left her best friend's stirring body behind and caught up with Piotr at the stairs. Behind her the machines in Eddie's room began beeping wildly as Wendy slid through the door.
“Where is Eddie? Did you say goodbye?” Piotr asked, glancing over her shoulder at the doctors rushing toward Eddie's room.
“Yeah,” Wendy whispered, scrubbing a hand across her face. “I did. Come on.”
“Russian Hill?” Wendy held up the key that Clyde had given her. An address had been finely etched into the bow of the key. Wendy scowled. It was almost too easy, it felt like a trap.
“Russian Hill,” Piotr agreed. He surreptitiously pressed a hand against his side, but Wendy noticed. It pained her, but she said nothing, asked nothing. After their long and turbulent day, Wendy had learned the value of silence.
The earthquakes were playing havoc with the highways so traveling to Russian Hill took longer than Wendy expected. She breathed a sigh of relief when they finally stepped off the bus. It had that wound its way drunkenly through the massive spirit web forest up Hyde Street and left them near the Norwegian Seamans Church, only a block away from the Francisco Street town home address listed on the key. Wendy was sore from head to toe from dodging the dangling webs and her essence felt weak, drained from just the proximity of the rent in the sky. She was definitely growing thinner.
The house was tan and set on the hill, the garage huddled below. During the ride over had Wendy thought that they would just pass through the garage but on reaching the house was surprised to find that it was solid in the Never.
Very, very solid.
“There's nothing important here,” Wendy said to Piotr, both of them gazing up at the town home. “This isn't like Alcatraz or the Winchester house, it can't be a node of power or whatever, it's not special. It's just a home, right? So why is it so solid? It's like the Palace Hotel. I could kick that wall down before I'd go through it.”
Piotr shrugged. “This is a mystery. Is it important?”
“Who knows? I'm just trying to figure out the right questions to ask these days.” Wendy turned and began mounting the stairs. “Well, here's hoping someone left the door open, otherwise we're not getting in.”
The owners of the home had locked the door behind them but luck was smiling on Wendy for once. She and Piotr stood on the stoop debating how to find a way inside when a white van pulled into the driveway below. A skinny white girl with dreads and an intricate cross scarred into her collarbone mounted the stairs to the front door; she was carrying a bucket jammed with cleaning supplies and a mop and humming a jaunty tune under her breath.
On the front stoop, she pulled out a ring of keys and, pausing to yawn, picked one.
“Hello?” the maid called, sliding the key into the lock and tapping the door as she slowly entered. “Laurie? Kara? It's Seri! I know you two are probably sleeping off New Years so I'll just…oh my…oh shit…shitshitshit!”
Seri dropped her cleaning supplies and fled, leaving the door open just enough for Wendy and Piotr to squeeze inside. Once in the house, Wendy realized exactly why Seri had run. In addition to several long, brown hand-shaped splotches on the walls, there were large muddy footprints in the foyer, and several puddles of dried blood on the floor. The entire foyer stank of death and decay; exactly like the hospital room they'd just left.
Wincing and holding her breath, Wendy followed the filthy trail deeper into the house. It led past several mirrors, all busted into a spider web of cracks. Shards littered the floor. “Piotr,” Wendy whispered, “I've got a really bad feeling about this.”
The door to the basement was open.
“I believe that woman—Kara was her name?—lived here,” Piotr said. “I think that she and the bunny-slipper woman lived here together.”
“Yeah, I'm starting to get that vibe as well,” Wendy said. “Should we…should we go down there?”
“We have come this far,” Piotr said. “I have lost Elle and Lily and Dora and Tubs and Specs and James. All this…no, Wendy, we cannot hesitate.”
“Right,” Wendy said. She took a deep breath. “Okay. Let's…let's go.”
Together, holding hands, they followed the horrible splotches down two levels to the basement. The lights were still on, dim and flickering and still in the clammy chill. The hearth across the room was in pieces; there were shattered remains of a mirror jumbled against the far wall.
“Piotr,” Wendy said. “Is that my imagination or is there a door back there?”
“I see it, too,” he said and drifted forward as if entranced. Wendy felt the chilly tug of the air moving around them as she squeezed Piotr's hand.
“It's a door only in the Never,” Piotr said, bending down and examining the destroyed ruins of the fireplace. They were a frame for the heavy, solid wooden door set in the middle of the stone in the Never alone.
Dazed, Piotr reached for the handle. The door didn't budge. Wendy's hand dipped into her pocket; she pulled out the key Clyde had given her. The one Tracey had given him.
Wendy swallowed, turning the key over in her hand. Was she ready for whatever was behind that door? She had no clue but sensed that the answers were there, waiting.
“I think this is what we need,” she suggested at last and handed the key to Piotr. He slid the key into the lock and turned.
Click. Click. Click.
THUD.
The door opened when he pulled the handle this time.
“Oh,” Wendy sighed. The light that lit this tiny room was nothing more than reflected sunlight. There was a hole in the ceiling, cunningly cut and covered with thin mesh and thinner panes of glass, that allowed the natural dawn light to filter down, illuminating the great mounds of dust that had accumulated over everything. Shelves lined the narrow room and the items on them were neatly stacked and sorted: books, piles of linen, rolls of parchment, and small statues, totems, and intricate, delicate woodcarvings.
Wendy, holding her elbow over her nose to protect her face, blew on the closest pile of filthy items. The dust rose up in a huge puff and Wendy coughed despite herself, inhaling great quantities of the filthy air.
“I know these things,” Piotr murmured as the dust settled and Wendy's mighty blow had cleared the first tangled bundle. They were base tan tunics, embroidered with fine black and golden red thread. Piotr ran a hand over the fabric and smiled.
“I cannot believe these are here,” he said quietly. “I cannot believe they have traveled so far. I'd forgotten…so much. I didn't know that they brought these, too. I would have thought that they'd have mildewed to dust by now. I suppose in the living lands that they must have.” He squinted around in that strange way Wendy recognized as Piotr looking into the living world. “I cannot tell,” he said at last. “The Never is simultaneously too thin and too strong here.”
“Piotr?” Wendy asked, recalling something from the last memory he'd shown her, the girls playing by the river. “This stuff. This is the stuff made by your mother?”
He nodded absently. “Yes. I think…I think these are the treasures of the Reapers. I think…” he reached into the next pile and then froze.
“Oh, Wendy,” Piotr whispered.
“What is it?” she asked. “What did you find?”
Slowly Piotr took the length of fabric in both hands and pulled it from the shelf. It flapped out, longer than he was, and puddled on the ground.
“My mother's cloak,” he whispered, aghast.
“Shut up!” Wendy gasped, startled. “How'd that get here? Why doesn't your mom have it?”
“You don't know? No, no, of course not. We've been so, so very busy, running like rabbits through the night. Now it is dawn and we are here, together. Come close, Wendy,” Piotr said, setting aside the cloak and taking her hand, “and I will show you.”
Wendy licked her lips. “You mean like another memory? Like before?”
“Da,” he said. “The last one, I think. We have had no time for me to finish the tale, but now…” His hand surreptitiously grazed his side. “Now I think I must.”
That decided it. “I'm in,” Wendy said. “Shove me down the rabbit hole, Alice.”
Piotr smiled and drew her close amid the filth and dust, wrapping his arms around her waist and leaning Wendy backward. Wendy wrapped her arms around his neck and let him support the bulk of her weight as Piotr pulled her closer.
He kissed her.
The memory fell around them like gentle rain, a halo of muffled mist pouring along the ground as Piotr's recollections rose from the mist.
“My mother,” Piotr said, pulling back from their kiss and frowning at the web now entirely encasing his chest, “knew that the Reapers would never give up. She'd offended them. They would return.”
“How long did the Reapers leave her alone before they came again?” Wendy asked. It killed her to know that this was what Piotr had been carrying for centuries, locked in the back of his skull but unable to access the knowledge. Piotr had sworn he'd protect the cloak and the necklace—and she knew Piotr was not one to give his word lightly—to him, knowing that he'd sworn to uphold some duty but had shirked it…it must be so maddening.
“To Sanngriðr, it was as if she'd stepped out of the room a moment, as if she'd given my mother just enough time to think things over and come to the most obvious solution. For the rest of us, the Reapers…the three Riders on shining horses…came once more as the year died.”
“That's enough time…you all could have bailed. Why were you still there?”
“Death cannot be outrun, Wendy. Sanngriðr had my mother's scent—she could have found her anywhere in the world. Furthermore, where were we to go? This was our home. Though, granted, the villagers would no longer do business with us. My mother's wares went unsold for the first time ever. We spent the entire autumn putting away my father's extra harvest, for no one would dare trade with the tainted children of the red-witch.”
“Your mother?”
“Da. And no one cursed more loudly than Uncle Kirill, who now knew that my father had lied to him all those years before. Kirill wanted nothing to do with my mother after that—he'd spent two decades believing that it was not his failing that allowed his brothers to die, but simple bad luck. Now he was faced with the truth—he had not been good enough a swordsman to save them and the only reason he was alive was due to a woman.”
Piotr spat. “It infuriated him; she infuriated him. Kirill was wrongheaded in many ways. His wife had died birthing his son Yuri, and Kirill never remarried. When he found out what she was, he blamed her loss on Mother. Kirill thought Mother ought to have stepped in and saved her despite the fact that Mother never even learned of my aunt's bleeding before my aunt was a day dead.”
“Ouch. That's…that's just rough,” Wendy said. She couldn't imagine the grief Kirill must have carried around with him every day, the anger that must have blazed into being on learning that one of Death's handmaidens had been so close at hand all along. “I kinda get that. So was Kirill around when Sanngriðr and the others showed up again?”
“In the dead of winter, as the dawn broke the horizon, I sat with my father and Uncle Kirill in the trees of the forest as, far below us, a large boar foraged. It had found good pickings over the autumn, the swine was still fat and jolly, snuffling beneath the snow for lunch.”
Piotr grimaced as, around them, the memory unfolded, growing brighter and firmer as he relived it. Past-Piotr was on the highest branch, arrow notched as Kirill, on an opposing branch, silently lifted one hand. Wendy spied Borys in the bushes, a large spear at hand, a notched sword by his feet.
Kirill dropped his arm and the arrows flew, one after another, embedding themselves in the boar's neck.
Jerk or not, Wendy thought, the man was talented with a bow; Kirill's first arrow speared through the boar's eye, the second impaled the other, and the third embedded itself in the neck so that a large spurt of blood gushed across the thick snow.
Grinning, Borys jumped from the bushes, spear and hand, and approached the boar. “Tonight, my family, we feast well! Kirill, I give you my thanks. We have not had meat in weeks. My girls are getting scrawny!”
“You needn't thank me but be careful,” Kirill ordered Borys, unstringing his bow. “She is not yet dead. Let her bleed a bit before you get within biting range.”
“Which is why I lead with the spear,” Borys replied cheerfully, stepping past the bushes. He had hardly gotten a foot closer when, from the trail, they heard a sharp, furious squeal. A second boar charged forward, her head up, mouth open, and bit Borys sharply on the leg.
“Papa!” Piotr cried from his vantage point in the tree as his father toppled to the snow. The second boar, scenting his blood, bit again and again, her sharp tusks and teeth rending the flesh of his leg apart in seconds.
“Piotr!” his uncle ordered, rapidly restringing his bow. “I'll stay with your father. Run and get Yuri! Be quick! Watch for boars!”
Past-Piotr scrambled down the tree.
“Piotr!” His father cried. “Forget Yuri! Get your mother!”
“No!” demanded Kirill. “Borys, be still you stubborn fool and let me help you for just once! Eir cannot help here—you are only wounded, not dying. Get Yuri, Piotr. Hurry!”
Past-Piotr sprinted off, leaving his uncle and father behind.
“I took the fastest route to find him, but my cousin was not in the fields or the village,” Piotr said as the world pulsed around them, short snippets of Piotr stopping to check each location flashing around them and fading rapidly. “He was not even at the cabin at the edge of the woods. So I headed for home. If I could not find Yuri, then my mother would have to do.”
Wendy shook her head. She knew how this had to go. “The Valkyrie were there, waiting.”
“Correct. My mother had taught my sisters all she knew about the Reapers—how to fight them long enough to escape, how to run to earth and hide in flowing water to disperse their scent—but Eir didn't expect Sanngriðr to return so quickly. She thought that Sanngriðr's Riders would wait at least until the spring to come again.”
Wendy felt her stomach sink as the large center room of Piotr's home coalesced into being around them—his sisters were all there, some spinning and weaving together a safe distance from the fire, the elder girls rubbing salt into flats of fresh-caught fish as Þrima and Róta, sitting together on the hearth, taught the tiny, red-haired toddler how to sort hewn wooden blocks into a basket. Eir alone was missing from the scene though Wendy could hear light, pleasant humming from a back room.
“They're all here,” Wendy whispered as Piotr's deaf sister passed through her on her way toward the back of the hearth room. Wendy closed her eyes, expecting that the touch of the girl would burn the same way the touch of the living did, but there was nothing, not even the faintest pressure.
“Save for my father, my uncle, and my cousin Yuri, yes, my entire family was in this house,” Piotr said. “They were taken by surprise.”
The drama had built so that Wendy expected Sanngriðr to fling open the door to the cottage. The polite knock and sudden silence that followed were startling. Wendy jumped in surprise.
In the stillness Róta rose and, carrying her toddler on her hip, opened the door.
Sanngriðr attacked.
Only Piotr's arm wrapped around Wendy's waist kept Wendy from trying to uselessly thrust herself between Róta and Sanngriðr.
Róta did her best to dodge the spear of Light that flicked forward and stabbed her through the gut—she was still holding her daughter, after all—but Sanngriðr had the element of surprise and, unlike Róta, Sanngriðr had no one to protect.
The sound came rushing back and with it the sharp, sudden scream as Róta hit the ground.
As one the sisters leapt up, some going for Sanngriðr and others fleeing
toward the room in the back where the humming originated, shouting, “Momma! Momma!”
Sanngriðr's Light caught the runners first—a series of stabs and they lay twitching on the ground, blocking the doorway. Summoned by the noise, Eir came running from the back room but by time she reached the hearth room all her daughters were dying, bleeding sluggishly across the previously clean floors.
“Sanngriðr!” Eir spit, dropping to her knees beside her closest daughter and glaring at the Reaper. “What have you done?!”
Sanngriðr raised one eyebrow. “I should think it would be obvious, Eir. You were given three chances to bring your husband to Freyja's door. Instead you spread your legs and bore him children. Thankfully none were boys or you'd be in a true mess.”
“Freyja sent you? Freyja wanted you to do this?”
Sighing, Sanngriðr rolled her eyes. “No, sister. This was my doing alone. Now will you come? Your children are dead, and the wind whispers to me that your beloved farmer is dying in the woods. All that you love is on Death's door. Come with me now and guide them into the Light.”
Tears sliding down her cheeks, Eir licked her lips. “Borys is…no. NO! He's fine. He is far away from here. You're lying!”
“I don't need to,” Sanngriðr said simply, examining a spot of blood on her hand and wiping it off with a thumb. Frowning, she checked the hem of her cloak, relaxing visibly when it proved fresh and clean of blood. “One of his companions comes here now, running at top speed to fetch you.”
“No,” Róta said, pulling herself to a standing position using the doorway. “You will not—”
“You are wasting your last minutes alive rebuking me,” Sanngriðr said, “when you could be using them to try and soothe your dying daughter.”
Immediately Róta paled and dropped to her knees, crawling quickly toward the red-haired child, leaving a long, dripping trail on the floor behind her. Wendy ached for her—it was obvious that her little girl was probably not going to make it.
“I will destroy you,” Eir said, rising to her feet, the hem of her skirt dripping the blood of her daughters.
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