by S. M. Beiko
Seneca blinked, not expecting that. He shook his head. “I’m afraid we can’t allow that. You’d be upsetting a balance that goes beyond this little speck in the universe, and we won’t be a part of our undoing.” He started gathering up the photos, shuffling them carefully. “If you don’t give yourself up, you will be tried by human law for the murders of the Red River girls. And by our law, we’ll see to it that you’re executed in a manner befitting a murderer. Which, through your continued inaction, is what you are.”
He was right. They were dying because of me. But I held onto my resolve.
“Every year that you help this monster more people will die,” I murmured. “Even members your own Family. And when there are no Denizens left here, Zabor will swallow you, too. You’re just as culpable as I am, preventing me from stopping this.”
For a moment he stopped shuffling. Had the inanity of what they were trying to uphold ever really struck them? That eventually, all that would be left of the Denizens of Ancient would be crumbling bones and forgotten lore locked away in basements until the stewards of their world dissolved into obscurity?
Or was it simply about power?
Seneca got to his feet and the moment passed. “Your mother. She suffered when she attempted to change what we were charged to do.” I clenched my fists and jaw and levelled him with a glare. “See how her quest ended. See how you have to pay for her sins. Don’t make any others pay for yours. Especially your friends.”
I went numb at that, their faces flashing in my mind. The envelope of photos was just within my reach, but he snapped them up and tucked them under his wing — under his jacket — and began to leave.
“Think about what I’ve said. Reconsider. Do what’s right.” For a second, Officer Seneca sounded as beaten as the stones of his words, but he believed he was doing what was best for me, for us all. And I couldn’t turn him away from the certainty of his conviction.
“You think about what I’ve said, too,” I shot back. He paused in the doorway, composed himself, and kept walking.
The principal jerked forward, looking around the room as though she’d just been scared awake. She put an unsure hand to her face and jolted again when her eyes fell onto me.
“Oh! I’m sorry. Did we, um . . . did we have a meeting?”
I stood and put a heavy hand on her shoulder. “It’s all good,” I lied. “Don’t worry about it.”
The Ember Dance
Deer. Rabbit. Fox. Seal. Owl.
I traced my fingers over the totems of the five Families, laid out in hundreds-of-years-old ink in another book I’d found in the summoning chamber. United, the Families could defeat Zabor. What that meant, I still didn’t know. Too many questions, and this book lacked an answer key.
In any case, we were still shy of a Seal (and I’d barely seen any in weeks, or ever had a Barton-esque vision about them) and an Owl. But after the interrogation at school, it seemed more and more hopeless that the birdbrains would fight on my side. And if they did, how long would it take them to betray me?
I closed the book. I’d been reading it carefully, but it was more a primer on the Families, their characteristics, histories, and global distribution. When it mentioned unity, it was only about protecting the realm, maintaining the Great Narrative, and the Denizen connection to humans. Darklings were a big part of the history, too, but the Families were meant to co-exist with these manifestations of nature’s destructive tendencies. Because they were as much a part of the world as the rest of us. Only if they got out of hand were they to be dealt with — but that was for Ancient to decide. And Ancient had been dormant, Sil told me, for nearly a thousand years.
I’d read the book over and over until I felt like the pen marks were scratched into my eyes. This book wouldn’t help me get Barton his legs back, let alone restore his connection to the one power we all drew ours from. It wouldn’t make Phae an instant-expert, even though she worked hard at it. It wouldn’t help me find a Seal, wherever they were, or to become the Great and Powerful Leader that everyone expected me to be. I wasn’t going to get answers here.
But . . . from behind the book, I pulled the letters. Letters penned over decades and never sent, envelopes sealed and left to pile up with their secrets. I shut my eyes and went back to the night I’d found them.
It was the night after Phae and Barton and I had made our pact, and Sil had disappeared somewhere in the house. She was still sick, and acting strange.
“Sil? Sil!” I kept my voice down as I crept into my grandmother’s dark bedroom, nostrils assaulted by the room’s antiseptic sterility. I shut the door behind me and turned on the overhead light.
I stood at the foot of Cecelia’s bed, feeling like she’d shrunk since I last saw her. Deedee had warned me that she probably didn’t have much time left in this world. The day of the dead girl, and the attack on Barton, her contingent of remaining nurses had been on vigilant watch, as her heart rate dipped lower and lower and seemed to hover over death with reluctance. What was she waiting for? What was she holding on to? I leaned in and waved a hand in front of her face. Just get it over with, already. She was such a stranger, and I wished it could just be finished. You can’t mourn someone’s passing — or the passing of your entire family — if they’re still there. Not really.
I heard a very low whine come from under the bed, and I immediately knelt. “Sil?”
She lay with her head tucked between her paws, brow furrowed. She had been alert enough on the ride home, but as soon as we arrived, I had carried her to my bed to let her rest. When I returned to check on her, she had vanished, but now . . .
“What are you doing in here? Can you hear me?” I put a hand on her head, and it was warm, which must have been a good sign. The light creeping under the bed showed that her fur had brightened back to its proper copper hues; she looked better, but she only opened one eye. It passed over me like a shade, then closed again.
“If I can help you, you have to let me,” I said. “Can’t you let me in on what’s going on? You can’t have forgotten how to talk. You’d miss badgering me too much.”
I couldn’t tell if that had elicited a fox-smile, but if it had, it was already gone.
Unwilling to be defeated, I pulled myself fully under the bed and nestled beside her, one arm tucked under my head. My free hand stroked her fur. She didn’t move and didn’t seem to mind; her breathing was regular. It was strange, though, being with her in this way. She was supposed to be my teacher, the only thing keeping me tethered to the world she was offering. But seeing her like this made her seem fallible, which is not what I needed. I was fallible enough for the both of us.
“What are you?” I whispered, letting the bristles of her winter coat prickle my palm as I swept my hand down her back.
“Just a shadow,” she replied, her voice low, but her words coming with less effort than they had that afternoon.
“Was it something to do with the river hunters? Did they poison you?” It couldn’t have been because of the attack, though; she’d already started looking spent as soon as we’d reached Barton’s place. But I saw no other explanation.
I didn’t expect her to answer. When I thought she’d gone back to sleep, she mumbled, “Yes . . . and also no. It’s not an easy thing, being me.”
I frowned. “Is that all I’m gonna get?” The fox-grin came back, and it stayed there a little longer. I sighed. “Ah, well. Guess that means you’re on the mend.” It seemed that being in this room was improving her spirits. “Are you getting better because of your connection with Cecelia?”
Both of her eyes opened and seemed to swallow me. Beautiful, bright eyes, old and full of memories both primordial and immediate. She was about to reveal something really meaningful. “Yes . . . and also no,” she said again and closed her eyes.
I rolled onto my back, arms out, studying the underside of Cecelia’s mattress. Deedee had pulled me a
side earlier, telling me to prepare myself for the end. Maybe my grandmother’s life was tied to Sil. And maybe I should stop letting my resentment of being ignored by her all these years control how I felt. If she lingered on and kept Sil alive by doing so, then I’d pray with every fibre of my being that she held on. Until the end.
“Can you tell me about her?” I asked, picking at the bed frame with a fingernail. “What she was like, what she enjoyed . . . or do you bother with character sketches when you’re training would-be warrior queens?”
For the first time since I’d come in, Sil raised her head stiffly, stretching until all of her foreclaws poked out, a long-tongued yawn showing all her sharp, yellow teeth. She stared forward. “She was pigheaded and stubborn and always thought she was right,” Sil snuffed. “Seems genetic.”
I ignored the jab. “You knew my mom, too?”
Sil shivered, fur prickling, even though it was warm under the bed. “Yes. I spent time with her as well. But she did not have Cecelia’s penchant for power. She was more connected to the earth than to the flame; to the fire of life, you could say.”
“Explains the vet thing,” I mused. Everyone told me Ravenna could calm any animal that went through her clinic, rabid or hysterical. “So there’s a spectrum of Family powers, then?”
Sil ducked her head in a lazy nod, but didn’t answer me directly. “And dancing. Cecelia liked to dance. She liked to be the centre of attention, in general. Did you know she used to be on the stage?”
“What?” I squawked, maybe a little too loudly. “No, but what I don’t know about either of them could fill an arena . . .” On the stage? I thought I’d come from a long line of brooders and introverts. I really had no grounds to blame my retraction from a social life on genetics, then.
Sil finally turned her head in my direction. She wasn’t looking at me, but through me, to somewhere else in the room. “Have you ever looked through her things?”
I cocked an eyebrow and turned over, looking in the same direction, at the vanity table. “Why would I do that?”
“Because her history, your history, is in this house of hers. And it’s yours for the taking. You were her only grandchild, after all. It’s all yours.”
Sil put her head back down and settled in. She was through reminiscing.
“Wait, no! Don’t go back to sleep! Aren’t you going to tell me where to look?”
“I need to rest,” she exhaled in reply, as much of a bark as anything. “Consider this part of your training.”
The house was filled with relics and antiques, and the basement was piled to the ceiling beams with what could be meaningful memories or just garbage. Needle in the haystack times infinity.
“You know where to start,” she assured me, before her breathing became low and calm, and I knew she was asleep.
I groaned and crawled out from under the bed. I got to my feet and crossed my arms, almost unwilling to start the hunt out of spite. But really, what else was I doing? Staying out of Arnas’s way was one thing, but it was boring. And I was hungry for answers. Sil was right — there were parts of this I’d have to do on my own. At least I didn’t have to kill anything. For now.
I caught my reflection in Cecelia’s beautiful vanity mirror. It was ivory with gold trim and seemed to glow. The vanity was strewn with jewellery, old photos, and dazzling things from an era of glamour and beauty. I pulled out the prim, plush stool and thumped inelegantly onto it. It was the perfect height for me, and I had a good view of myself from the ribs up. It really did feel like something a stage actress would go for, and that’s what she’d been.
What did Cecelia think about, sitting at this mirror, primping and pulling the gilt silver brush through her hair for a hundred strokes? Officially, everyone told me she was an anthropologist or archaeologist, someone who was always on her knees in the dirt, digging up history, or presenting it to classrooms of intellectuals. Not exactly a glamorous career choice. But that’s not what she turned out to be; it’d just been a cover for her Denizen tendencies. I could see her as a Relic Hunter or Buffy type — fighting baddies with her wicked firepower, solving ancient mysteries, sending evil back where it came from. There was so much I’d never know about her, and fiction only bred more fiction.
I looked back at the real Cecelia on the bed. Her hair lay wilted on her pillow; I couldn’t picture it red, like mine and my mom’s. There were a few pictures of her, though. I put the brush down and looked at the photos tucked in the corner of the mirror. I plucked one out that was flaked at the corners: Within its white Polaroid borders was a woman with long waved hair, black in the sepia picture. She was tall, with slender legs, embarrassingly big boobs, and a smile that promised what you desired but didn’t guarantee delivery. She was a stunner. A real star. She shone with it, shone with the knowledge that she had a conflagration at her fingertips and wasn’t afraid to use it.
I looked at myself guiltily in the mirror, like I’d failed to live up to her — my chop-shop hair, flat chest, somewhat thick, soft body. No. Looks were definitely not genetic. Maybe I’d gotten my father’s body, instead.
I tucked the picture back. She had it all. Beauty, charm, outgoing personality. I’m sure she was horribly intelligent, too, what with being the great leader of her tribe, everyone coming to her for advice and help . . . and the power. The power that maybe I had inherited, but couldn’t pull out of my back pocket without struggle. I felt more robbed than usual. From what pictures I’d seen, my mother had been shorter than Cecelia, and wasn’t as “out there,” but she was beguiling, lovely, plump like a Botticelli painting, with the reticent eyes of a witch. And she could touch any creature and hear its heart sing. Was I destined to come from so much fire, only for it to fizzle out?
When I looked in the mirror, I tried to subtract the things that I knew were mine, tried to compare my features to my mother’s, my grandmother’s, to grainy photos. The women in them were strangers.
I looked away. I needed to put a hold on the pity-partying. I’d indulged in it too much lately and now wasn’t the time. I started shuffling through the papers on the vanity. There was a pile of letters there, one I had knocked over a couple of days ago in frustration, so I figured I’d start there.
The letters were yellowed by time and looked sealed, never opened or sent. I picked one up and read the address.
Roan Harken
39287 Lipton St.
Winnipeg, MB
R3G 2H1
When I was little, Ravenna used to make me repeat that address over and over, like a song, so if I ever got lost, I could tell it to a grown-up who could safely deliver me home. Home. It was the address of our house in Wolseley, with the vines and the greenhouse and the fading memories. The return address was in Beijing.
I tore into the envelope, rabid, like it had been a hard winter and all the elk were dead, but here in my hands was sweet, restoring manna. I ended up ripping part of the letter, but I smoothed it out with shaking hands and started reading.
December 9, 1994
Dear Roan,
Whatever your name ends up being, I will fill it in later. Hopefully I hear word soon, as I won’t be in contact with anyone from Canada for several months after I leave Beijing. I am writing this from a hothouse in the city centre — a greenhouse, where plants and flowers are grown to sell — and will be consigning myself to the country for a long time in a few days. I am sorry that I am not there to see you in your newness. Hopefully you’ll forgive me later down the line.
You’re just a baby now. Maybe your mother will read you this letter someday. Maybe you’ll come upon it on your own. Or maybe she will burn it before it gets to you. Either way, I think I’m writing this more for myself than for you.
I frowned at the letter, not sure if I’d maybe read it out of order. But it was the first letter on the pile, which had been neatly stacked and tied with twine. Cecelia had taken great pains to get them in
order and keep them that way. And the date was the day I was born.
My frown fell away as I cast a glance at the prostrate letter-writer herself. Icy fingers penetrated my guts. She was talking to me now, from the depths of her coma, and she was three feet away. It was too surreal to think about, so I dove back into reading.
I’m not even sure if your mother talks about me will talk about me. I know you probably haven’t even opened your eyes yet, but I should let you know that your mother and I are not on the best terms. You could say that it’s just a difference of opinion, or you could say she has made the wrong choice for herself, and you, by bringing you into the world at all.
Wow, ouch.
But that would be petty. You’re just a baby a kit a leveret a baby. You are innocent. It isn’t you. It isn’t Ravenna, either. Maybe it’s me. It probably is. I don’t like to think that it could be me. I’ve been told that too many times by too many people. It also pains me to admit that they’re right. I don’t know why I’m telling you these things. I thought it would make me feel better to write, because what I do is lonely work. Ravenna hates resents me for it now, but what she doesn’t know is that I would rather be there with her than here on the other side of the world. I don’t think I’m ready to admit that, just yet. What she can’t understand is that we are appointed certain duties, and I learned a long time ago to face mine head-on, rather than turn from them. Even though it cuts me off from everyone.
I could see her sitting at a small table in a Chinese greenhouse, barely dewed with sweat, great black mane kept up from her neck as she sipped green tea and grimaced at her clumsy attempt at saying hey, you were born today, welcome to the world. It filled me with a bit of familial pride, knowing that I edited myself in the same way, always wanting to do and say everything just so (and usually failing). The paper was even slightly crumpled, as though she’d consigned it to the trash before reclaiming it and smoothing it out.