Kingfisher

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “I wonder,” she whispered, “what leviathan is making my father afraid.”

  5

  On a stretch of coast road between towns, where traffic was light and the wind from the sea soughed through thick stands of hemlock and spruce, the Metro blew a tire. The small car shivered under Pierce’s grip and tried to crawl up a tree trunk. Pierce turned the wheel wildly, got it stopped before they met, but not before something groaned under the car and he heard a crack like a bone breaking. He sat a moment, breathing raggedly. Nothing passed him on the road, which, he realized belatedly, was fortunate since the rear bumper was angled out into the lane. He moved finally, opened his door, and got out to survey the damage.

  The right front tire was in a ditch and pretty much flattened. The right back tire seemed to have run over a milepost, which had not gone down without a fight; the metal had taken a bite out of the tire as it warped. The broken bone had been a sapling caught under the car as it slewed off the road. The slender trunk had splintered above the root; the rest of it was wedged under the car.

  Pierce swallowed dryly. He stood for a moment, listening, and heard only wind, no traffic. He reached inside the car, loosed the handbrake, then got behind the car and pushed. It rocked a moment wearily, then moved abruptly, mowing down whatever it had left standing, and rolling the front tire deeper into the ditch. At least the rear end was out of the road. He stood another moment, looking helplessly at the car, then pulled out his cell phone to call a tow truck. The phone rang in his hand, and he started. He should, he realized, have expected the call.

  “Hi.”

  “Pierce! Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “I’m fine. You must know that already.”

  “Where are you?” Heloise asked. “I don’t recognize anything.”

  He glanced around, looking for her borrowed eyes. A jay squawked at him suddenly, harshly, as if he had trashed the neighborhood on purpose.

  Mom? he thought, then saw the hawk circling high above the trees, silent, dark-winged against the blue.

  “I’m fine,” he said again. “I just had a blowout. I’ll call a tow truck to take me to the nearest town, stay there until the car is fixed.”

  She was silent a breath, circling with the hawk. “Wait. I think I know—”

  “Mom—”

  “That little town. Biddie Cove. I stayed a night there a long time ago, when I ran away from Severluna. It has the highest sea stack on the Wyvernhold coast, and a wonderful old diner that served the best chowder—”

  “Mom. I have to call a tow truck.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “No, you don’t. I’ll call Lilith Fisher. She can get Tye to send someone to help you.”

  He caught his breath, startled and suddenly panicking. “No—I’ve come all this way—I don’t want to go backward. Anyway, who is Lilith Fisher?”

  “She’s Hal Fisher’s wife.”

  “How—how did you—”

  “We’ve known each other for years. Of course I told her that you were driving down this way. She called me yesterday when you pulled into the old Kingfisher Inn. She said that Tye offered you a room.”

  “You never told me we had family in Chimera Bay.”

  “Of course I didn’t. Why would I want to give you any reason to find your way there?”

  He gripped the phone, his fingers chilled. “Well, I’m not there now, and there’s no reason why I should go all the way back. I’ll get a tow to whatever garage is around here.”

  “But they’d be happy to help you, and put you up as long as you need.”

  “I know.” He swallowed, his eyes riveted on the pack in the car as though he could see the ritual blade and his guilt jumbled in there along with his shirts and underwear. “It’s just that I need to solve my own problems. You need to let me. How will I make it in Severluna if I run to you for help anytime something goes wrong? Mom?” He listened to the sea wind, the silence in his ear like a breath held. “Mom. Let the hawk get on with its life.”

  Finally, he heard her sigh. “I know you’re right. It’s just hard for me not to want—”

  “I know.”

  “Will you call me later and let me know where you are?”

  “I will. I promise.”

  —

  Chimera Bay, the tow-truck driver told him an hour later. They had the best parts and service department within a hundred miles any direction. And if it couldn’t be fixed, the town had more car dealerships. Pierce climbed glumly into the truck, watched his past reel backward along the road until it came to a halt again at the place he had just left.

  He spent a couple more hours waiting to hear the verdict, then walked up the highway to the nearest motel. He was closer to the busy south end of town than to the Kingfisher Inn; with luck he could skulk around unnoticed until the car was fixed. He saw several bars, a fish market, a wine market, a supermarket, a bookstore, a shoe store, one each of every kind of fast-food restaurant. He wandered among the streets as evening fell, looking into windows, reading menus, hoping nobody he had met the previous night would chance along and remember him. He glimpsed, inside the lobby of an old theater, the huge, golden body, the kohl-rimmed eyes of an ancient ruler upon his throne, welcoming moviegoers with a placid, perpetual smile. On a side street, he came across an elegant little restaurant tucked into what had been a bank building. The round tables wore black cloths; red cut-crystal vases on them held a single small white calla lily. Stillwater’s, the restaurant door said in simple lettering. No menu was posted.

  “Excuse me,” someone said behind him as he looked curiously through the door’s tinted window.

  He turned. A woman stood on the sidewalk, smiling at him. He knew her. He did not. He lingered on the top of the steps in front of the door, trying to place her in his past, those eyes, that smile. He recognized her face finally from one of the few ungloomy things in the house on Cape Mistbegotten: a lovely painting from some romantic era of a medieval maiden welcoming her knight home from his travels. She had that same generous mouth, the same abundantly flowing champagne hair, those same widely spaced, heavy-lidded gray-green eyes that seemed to carry light from a sun already gone for the day.

  “Oh,” he said, feeling his transfixed bones galvanized into motion. “Sorry. I’m in your way. Sorry.”

  She laughed a little, a lovely sound that he imagined a rill would make, or a warbler. “That’s okay.” She opened the door, then paused, looking down at him now. “Do you want to come in? We start serving a little later than most, but the bar is open.”

  I just wrecked my car, he told her silently. I left my credit card smoldering in last night’s bar. I’ll probably have to ask my mother to sell the painting of you so I can pay my motel bill. No way should I follow you into this place.

  “Sure,” he said dazedly, and followed her in.

  “I’m Sage Stillwater,” she said, as she seated him on one of the four leather-cushioned stools at the tiny bar.

  “Pierce Oliver,” he said, taking the piece of paper she handed him without seeing it, still caught in the wonder of watching a painting move, change expression, talk. He made an effort. “Do you own the place?”

  “My husband does. I do some cooking. I also serve food, clear the tables, mop the floors, and tend bar. If you’d like a drink.”

  He shook his head, changed his mind, changed it again. “I don’t know,” he said finally as she smiled. “Will you have one with me?”

  She considered that, her head bent slightly, long, rippling hair falling like a veil behind her lovely profile. “Let me just see what Todd needs.”

  She moved among the tables toward curtains hanging over what might have been the bank-vault doorway, doorless now, but still heavily framed with steel set into the gray and white marble walls. He watched her mindlessly, her long limbs in black skirt and gray silk shirt moving quietly, gr
acefully. She disappeared. He straightened, feeling as though he had been for a few timeless moments utterly bewitched. He noticed the paper in his hand, laid it on the bar. No one came in while he waited. He felt oddly alone though he thought he heard the rise and fall of voices from far away, maybe from the street. Or maybe it was only the incoherent sound of distant traffic. The café curtains, black like the tablecloths and shadowing the lower half of the broad windows, gave him a view of the bay at the end of the street, the water gull-gray with the coming twilight and absolutely still.

  He heard footsteps. But they were outside, he realized, on the sidewalk. He looked around, wanting a drink now. His eyes fell on the paper lying on the marble bar. It wasn’t so much a menu, he saw as he scanned it, as a manifesto. Something that seemed utterly pretentious, absurd, amid the prosaic diners, car lots, chain motels of Chimera Bay.

  Eat, it pretty much commanded, what I give you. I’ll tell you what it will cost you when I decide the meal is over.

  His cell phone rang.

  He jumped wildly. “Mom,” he breathed, hunched over the phone as though he were in church. “I can’t talk now.”

  “What in the world were you thinking?”

  “What?”

  “When you stole that knife?”

  Her voice sounded strange, amazed and completely bewildered. But he was the stranger, he realized, unrecognizable, unpredictable. “I wasn’t,” he said tightly. “Thinking. I just wanted. I’ll let you know why when I know.”

  “But, Pierce, you don’t— You’ve never done— This is so unlike you. Where are you? You promised to let me know. I can’t find you anywhere, and I’ve been so worried, especially after Lilith told me. She said that things of such ancient power find their own paths; they take what they need. That is hardly comforting. Sweetheart, be careful.”

  “Mom—”

  “Better yet, just come home. Return the knife and come home.”

  He opened his mouth to answer, found no argument, no answer, nothing at all that either one of them would understand, except that he could undo nothing.

  He gave up, turned the phone off, and dropped it into his pocket. Sage pushed aside the dark, heavy curtains, came toward him carrying something. Again he was drawn into the timeless vortex that seemed to flow around her, a spell she cast without awareness, with every movement, every shift of expression. As she drew closer, he sensed the disturbance behind the calm, saw the faint flush of red in her eyelids. He swallowed, stunned at himself, at what he felt and saw, at her for making him see.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice seemed unchanged, but her smile was less luminous, more controlled. “Todd says he won’t cook tonight. We are now closed.”

  “Oh.”

  “It happens, sometimes.”

  “Was it—” He stopped, cleared his throat. “Something I did? Or didn’t? Do?”

  “Oh, no.” She shook her head but without letting him see her eyes. “No. Maybe he just knows that no one else will come in tonight. Sometimes he knows things like that. Sometimes they matter, sometimes not. He made this for you.”

  She put a small, covered plate down on the bar, and let him see her eyes now, direct, unsmiling.

  “A consolation?” he asked, gazing back at her. “Or to make me regret what he won’t give me?”

  “Maybe,” she answered simply, “so that you will come back.”

  His hand hovered over the black cloth covering the little plate. Then he dropped his hand, stood up, still holding her eyes. “Then I’ll come back,” he said, and turned away from her. As he closed the door behind him, he looked back at her, saw her staring down at the plate, still covered on the bar.

  He wandered the streets a while, aimlessly, while the sky over Chimera Bay grew black. Traffic thinned, shops closed, a couple of restaurants turned out their lights before he finally bought some take-out sushi and a six-pack to carry back to the motel. When he was nearly there, something furry and four-legged darted in front of him and hissed furiously, every hair on its body standing on end.

  He blinked down at it, then rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I’m sorry. Just let me get in out of the dark.”

  The cat wailed at him, stalked away, hair still erect. After a few feet, it shook itself, then sat down in the middle of the sidewalk and looked around a moment. It gave up trying to figure out what it was doing there, and began to lick a paw.

  I know just how you feel, Pierce told it as he passed.

  He ate sushi and drank beer on his bed in the quiet motel, staring mindlessly at the news. Sometime in the middle of the night, he remembered his mother and the phone he had never turned back on. He pulled the pillow over his head and went back to sleep, dreamed of cooking strange and wonderful dishes, none of which seemed to be made of anything he would have recognized as food.

  The Metro was fixed by noon the next day, but Pierce couldn’t persuade himself to get into it and go. That day passed. Another. A third. He watched TV; he wandered out for food when he had to, trying to look inconspicuous and dodging growling dogs, spitting cats, a crow that fluttered into his face and yelled at him. He picked up his drained phone at one point, hunted around for the charger, then stood looking blankly at it, unable to find the energy or the interest in connecting one to the other. At noon and again at twilight, he wove a labyrinthine path through the streets that led him surreptitiously closer and closer to the heart of the matter: Stillwater’s.

  No matter what time he reached it, no matter how elaborately he stalked it, winding his way through side streets and alleyways, trying deliberately not to think about it until he finally permitted himself to pass it, the restaurant was always closed. He would wait, skulking across the street. It would stay closed. Finally, he would walk down to the waterfront to gaze at the quiet bay, where a neatly painted tugboat or a sailboat or a barge full of logs might be following the shipping channel out to sea. If he was lucky, and wasn’t accosted by his mother’s familiar of the day, he would turn finally and walk the complex labyrinth again.

  The restaurant would be closed.

  Incredulous, he wondered if the restaurant was closed only to him. Other people entered when his back was turned, ate and drank, were spoken to and served by the long-limbed, rippling-haired beauty with her eyes full of secrets, her air of one moving imperturbably through her tasks while listening for a distant voice. Somehow the chef had seen Pierce’s heart among her possessions; somehow, through the power of his arts, he denied only Pierce entry to his enchantments.

  Or maybe, Pierce thought in saner moments, they were just taking a vacation.

  He could wait.

  He wandered into a scruffy bar along the waterfront one twilight, a place where faces grew blurred on entry since nobody came there to be seen. He would sit and have one beer, he decided, then take the shortest route to the restaurant, just like any other diner expecting to be fed, expecting Stillwater’s to behave like any other restaurant. Maybe if he changed his attitude, stopped slinking through the streets, sending an aura of guilt and confusion ahead of him, the sadistic chef wouldn’t recognize him. He would just step in, sit down as easily as he had taken a stool in this shabby cave where nobody expected him and nobody cared. He—

  “It’s not you he wants,” the man beside him said. “That’s why he won’t let you in.”

  Pierce froze. The voice seemed something out of a vague, half-forgotten past, which, he realized as his head turned stiffly, reluctantly to face it, had been only a scant few days ago.

  “Merle.”

  The man’s eyes held only a faint, friendly smile. “Thought you left town.”

  “I had car trouble.”

  Merle nodded, took a sip from his bottle. The stolen knife hung between them, an unspoken word haunting the air. I wanted it, Pierce explained as silently, so I took it. Now I want a man’s wife. So.

  “Is it fixed?”

>   “Yes.”

  “Then you might as well get back on the road. Nothing for you here. Oh.” He reached into a pocket, pulled out a credit card. “You left this behind. You’re family; Tye wouldn’t charge you for anything. You might need this, south. I hear cities can be expensive.”

  “How did you know?” Pierce asked helplessly. “Why I’m still here? How could you know something like that?”

  Merle shrugged, beads in his hair speaking softly together. “I know Stillwater.” His eyes slid away from Pierce’s face, gazed over his shoulder at the night gathering across the water. “What he wants has nothing to do with you.”

  “But Sage—I can’t just walk away from her—”

  “He doesn’t think you will. That’s why he bothers tormenting you. It’s just a game.”

  Pierce swallowed. “Is it a game to her?” he asked painfully.

  “Oh, no.” He gave Pierce’s shoulder a reassuring pat. “No. But you can’t do anything for her. He knows that. He just likes having you around, wanting what he has. Think about this: Maybe you’ll learn something in Severluna that will help you here. But you need to go.” He grimaced slightly, touched his temples, rattling beads again. “And call your mother. She’s been on my mind.”

  “Who are you?” Pierce whispered, trying to see into the pale eyes, fathom the mists there. “Who are you?”

  Merle lifted his beer. “I go back,” he said simply. “Find your way to Severluna. See what you can do with that knife.”

  6

  Carrie was ruthlessly and shamelessly ransacking her father’s possessions.

  She had seen very little of Merle since he had turned into a wolf. She pursued his human voice through the trees in the bright dawn, in the twilight mists; he lured her but refused to let her find him. She glimpsed him a couple of times through the swinging doors between the bar and the grill, leaning against the mahogany and looking at her, his eyes unreadable. When she hastily dumped the tray of silverware and napkin holders she carried, and went out to find him, he would be gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Wherever he slept, it wasn’t at home.