Revenant Eve

  Elisheva had been resting her head against the back of the chair while this conversation was going on.

  Jaska said to her, “Forgive me, Elisheva. I know you need rest, and I believe a room is in preparation for you right now. But I must understand: Can we wait until September? Must we wait until September? Will the Blessing protect the kingdom from these demons? It troubles me, when you mention the Esplumoir.”

  Elisheva opened her eyes again, and once again struggled to sit up. “We know that the demons feed upon the violence and desolation of war. It will strengthen them. I fear that, because they know we are now in our world, they will use whatever influence they can to bring the war to us the sooner, because their goal is to take control of the Esplumoir.”

  “Why?” Aurélie asked. “It sounds like it’s another portal.”

  Jaska shook his head, and Margit said, “The Salfmattas guard the Esplumoir, so that balance is maintained between all the spheres. The worlds. It is better to close it to all than surrender it to those with evil intent. If the demons do not take control of it, the Esplumoir will eventually restore itself.”

  “Then we must close it,” Jaska said.

  I thought Elisheva had looked bad before. She blanched as if the vamps had teleported all her blood. Her lips moved. Mord and Aurélie both bent to hear her, then Aurélie looked up, her eyes huge.

  “Human sacrifice?” she whispered.

  FIFTY

  “RUMOR.” Elisheva’s voice was a thread. “The demons declared that it will only close if someone living walks into it, and we know they never return. I don’t know if it’s true. Or half-true. I don’t know enough. We must talk to the Elders!”

  Mord knelt down at her side, sending a quick, unhappy frown up at the others, but before he could speak, Margit stepped between Elisheva’s chair and everybody else. “But you won’t. If the world is to end tonight, then so be it. We’ve lived with the threat of Napoleon’s demonic intent these ten years and more. Another night won’t make a difference, but I’m afraid any more talk, and it’ll be the end for Elisheva.” When the others made murmurs of agreement, she said, “Everyone is to rest, and no more speech.”

  Jaska began to protest.

  Margit took his hands. “Just this once, let me be queen. You can barely stand. Go and rest, Jaska. I shall send an equerry to the Clares. Before this night is done, I intend to consult with Sister Mathilde. If she knows nothing, then we’ll make a journey to the Eldest. Nothing will be decided before morning.”

  They began to disperse, Aurélie walking between Margit and Jaska toward her old room—away from me.

  Away from me.

  I was not bound to her.

  And so, because I didn’t need to bother with eating, drinking, or catching my breath, I thought, why don’t I go to the Esplumoir on my own? Who was to stop me? Yeah, going by foot to Dsaret mountain seemed a long trek, but it wasn’t like my feet could hurt. I just needed someone to open the door.

  I followed the equerry who carried the message to the nun Margit wished to consult. As soon as he got the door open, I started to run.

  I don’t know how long it took me. Time was so strange, so untrustworthy. It might have been that night, or a couple of days later. The last time I’d come that way was on a sleigh in winter, two centuries forward, but enough of the biggest landmarks tugged at memory to guide me, and so I arrived at last, late at night, on the cliff that I remembered so well.

  It was different. Wider. A standing stone had been erected directly below the cliff. It was a shrine to St. Xanpia, with religious symbols belonging to the three main faiths of Dobrenica, side by side, carved into the stone in medieval lettering. The shrine glowed in moonlight.

  I looked around the peaceful valley, feeling disconnected, unreal. Ghostly.

  That thought was sufficiently disturbing to send me the last few steps toward the cave. As I passed through the mossy crevasse, I wondered what I was doing there. What could I possibly learn?

  I had no idea, except for the fact that the Blessing, if it even worked, was not going to be enough. There was something else needed, something to close the Esplumoir…and I knew who had closed the Esplumoir a century and a half later: Grandfather Armandros.

  I also knew how.

  That was the memory driving me across the kingdom.

  I walked into the cave, feeling for Vrajhus—for any sign of strangeness, or rather, extra strangeness, as my existence at that moment was (I’d thought) at maximum weird.

  I’d gone maybe ten paces into the cave when I was startled by a jolt like a three-point quake on the Richter scale, followed by a flash of light. Then the beating red of fire.

  I whirled around, ran to the entrance, then skidded back instinctively, though I had no body to catch fire. The peaceful forested hillside and shrine I’d just seen had transformed to an inferno. I watched debris rain down around the ruined shape of a crashed plane as fireballs roiled upward. The air shivered with heat waves.

  “Damn.”

  I jumped. Next to me stood a man in a shabby German general issue field uniform, with Lancer’s tabs on the shoulders, a cigarette hanging from his lips. “My wits seemed to have been blasted to bits with the hillside”

  “Armandros?” I yelped. My grandfather was the one who had closed the Esplumoir in the last days of World War II. He’d sacrificed his own life by crashing a plane directly into this mountain, obliterating the cave entrance.

  Where we stood now.

  He saluted with two fingers, a casual, mocking gesture. “In the flesh. Am I in the flesh? I sighted on the damn shrine. They said it glowed in the dark. Didn’t believe a word of it. Until I saw the winged devils.” He took a drag on the cigarette, pointed downward at what was probably supposed to be the cockpit floor, and went on conversationally, “Cut the dive brakes before I took ’er up. Rammed the dive stick back. Shut the flaps. And when she rolled, I lit this fag so I wouldn’t see the shrine heading for my head. Then all I saw were stars.” He grinned. “And now you.”

  “You closed the Esplumoir,” I said.

  His smile vanished. “Couldn’t undo what I’d done to the country by taking Lily away and setting everyone at one another’s throats. But by all the devils in hell I could stop Maritza from letting ’em in through here.” He jerked his chin over his shoulder at the dark interior of the cave, the flames reflecting in his eyes.

  “Maritza?”

  “Stone mason’s girl. Rescued me after I blew up a Boche ammo dump, and the patrol shot out the tires on my motorcycle. I went over a cliff. She picked up the pieces. Sewed me back together.” His grin was slanting and wicked. “Had a hankering to be a duchess. Or better.”

  Maritza was the mother of that psychopath Jerzy, I thought, shivering.

  “She thought I was too drunk to see ’em but I saw. I could stomach her consorting with the vampires. Our family has a pact with ’em. Did you know that? Of course you do, you’re one of us, I can see it in your crooked mouth.” He shook his head as he looked at the inferno blazing a few steps beyond us, the burning bits of foliage and wood and metal raining all around us. “I couldn’t let her hand over the damn gate to those winged devils—either them or the Russians.” His expression changed to question. “I’ve seen you before. Which one are you?”

  I looked out at that inferno, trying to frame an answer, but when I decided on the truth—why not? It wasn’t like talking to a ghost would change the timeline—I looked back, and he was gone.

  “Kim.”

  I turned, and there was the inferno again.

  No, it wasn’t an inferno, it was the steady light of morning, revealing the peaceful valley. The shrine was silhouetted in the cave mouth. Slanting beams of light revealed several figures, Aurélie in the lead, looking solemn and determined. Behind her came a group of people, still in shadow.

  “Elisheva said you would come here,” Aurélie addressed me. “Sister Mathilde has been explaining things to me.”

  “The gate ha
s to close against the demons,” I said. “They’re going to try to take it. Somebody has to close it. And if a life has to be given up, it had better be mine. You have a life here.” You have a place in history, and I don’t. If I’d had a body, I would have had clammy hands and a dry mouth. The physical sensations were not there, only the sorrow, as I said, “This is why I’m here. Was all along. Apparently it’s my task.”

  “No, it is mine,” she said, but on a note of question, and I suspected she’d been arguing with the others.

  “It’s not,” I said. “I saw your happy ending. You can’t change the future, or it will ruin how many lives?”

  She was fingering the necklace. “It’s this,” she said. “It’s not the spending of a life, it’s the necklace that has the power to close the Esplumoir.”

  “What?”

  Her smile was sad. “The Salfmattas say only that whoever bears it into the Esplumoir will not return. It was given to me, and so mine is the responsibility.”

  She lifted her graceful hand toward the others. “They’ve tried to argue, but I know what’s right, and mine is the honor, and the task. Faith and good will and Vrajhus, those three will shut out the demons.” She jerked around, her shoulders tight, as tears slipped down her cheeks. “Elisheva, you said there is a song that must be sung?”

  “Wait,” I said, my nerves flashing hot and then cold as the last puzzle piece fell into place. “It all might be true, except for one thing. You would never sell the necklace, or let evil beings take it, but you can give it to someone, just like Nanny Hiasinte did. Aurélie, give the necklace to me. And I will walk into the Esplumoir and close it off. Then your duty is to marry and make the Blessing happen, to keep out Napoleon’s soldiers.”

  She paused, head to one side, and again I saw the tears she had been trying to hide. At her shoulder stood Jaska. He drew in a sharp breath, his pained expression turning to hope. Holding his hand was Margit, looking sorrowful.

  Aurélie waited, her pulse beating in her throat.

  “Nanny Hiasinte did say I would bear it. Maybe that’s now. We both have our duties,” I said. “And you and I know we can touch, even if no one else can touch me.”

  She said, “You would do this for me?”

  “For you, for Jaska. For Dobrenica.” For our future, though I don’t know if I’m in it. “Hey, what’s the worst that can happen?” I tried for a joking tone. “Go and be happy.”

  She drew her sleeve across her eyes then slowly held out the necklace. For the last time my fingers touched hers, and the golden chain transferred to my hands and dangled there.

  Quickly Elisheva began to sing “Xanpia’s Wreath.” She didn’t have her sister’s beautiful voice, but joy infused the words anyway, because Aurélie was not walking into the unknown in order to shut the Esplumoir.

  Margit, Mord, Jaska, and several people I didn’t know joined hands one by one and began to sing.

  I stepped deeper into the cave, which glimmered with a tracery of glowing light. With Alec’s image in my mind, I said softly, “This is for Dobrenica, Alec. If anyone will understand, it would be you.”

  I took a giant step.

  FIFTY-ONE

  AND I CAME OUT ON A HILLSIDE that overlooked the entire valley of Dobrenica, my hands empty. The necklace had vanished. Immediately below me lay the city of Riev.

  The modern city of Riev. There were all the buildings Alec had showed me on my first visit.

  And I was still a ghost.

  I whirled around, and there behind me was the ancient mosaic dating back to Roman times. Behind it, the Romanesque church.

  “Is it not beautiful?”

  I turned. Xanpia perched on a rock overlooking the city in the early light, her light brown braids untidy. She still wore her bulky knit top and a skirt embroidered with flowers and leaves. “Well done,” she said, smiling. “Well done!”

  “But I’m not me,” I said. “Was that it, then? I’m a ghost?”

  “You walked in the spirit realm.” She smiled. “It was the only way that wouldn’t cost someone dear. You are free, now. You’ll find yourself as soon as you walk again through the painted door.”

  “I’ll be in my body again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aging and everything?” I had a horrid thought. “Am I ten years older?”

  “No. Because you were only in spirit form, your body was beyond reach of the demons.”

  Up I jumped. “Then I am outta here.” Running so lightly that I did not disturb any of the summer grasses, I skimmed down the pathway that the young girls would walk, or had walked, on August 15th, for centuries, and I skirted the back of the palace.

  There was the gazebo, surrounded by a wild, high hedge of rambling roses. Beyond that, past the Vigilzhi annex, to the main gates, standing open.

  The square. There was the fading hammer and sickle.

  The triumphal arch of 1813—whose purpose I now knew: It was built by Jaska, and I knew why.

  The Renaissance buildings…

  The painted door.

  I reached with trembling hands for that painted latch. Music beckoned, a familiar melody that I loved. I plunged into the glare-bright doorway.

  My chest felt as if an elephant had stepped on it. I gave a gasp, sucking in air. I coughed and opened sticky eyes, and the first thing I saw was Alec’s beloved face, so worn, so tired, but as our eyes met, his lips parted, and he gave a wordless cry and crushed me in his arms.

  FIFTY-TWO

  GRADUALLY I BECAME AWARE that there were people in the room. A kid with a shock of messy dark hair put his flute down and beamed at me.

  “Misha?” I said from Alec’s arms.

  I discovered I was not strong enough to sit up on my own. But that was okay. Alec could hold me, oh yes.

  Alec wiped his eyes with his free hand. “Misha offered to come play for you. He picked all your favorites. In fact, several of the students from the temple school have been coming in rotation to play for you, all sworn to secrecy. But it was ‘Aurelia’s Air’ that just now did the trick. I didn’t know you knew that piece.”

  “I didn’t,” I said, “until recently. Aurélie wrote that when she was about thirteen, and they played it—Mom?”

  My mother dropped down on her knees beside my bed. “Kimli, darling,” she said. “They wouldn’t let me up here. They didn’t want me seeing you stretched out like a stoned vamp. What the hell happened?”

  “Water first. Please? How long has it been?”

  Alec peered into my face. “It was a month ago. Natalie and Beka found you lying on the ground near those old buildings off Roskvit Square, near the painted door. When you didn’t show up for lunch they came to me, then went out to reconstruct your path. By the time we got you back here, you’d nearly turned to stone, and Beka said there was Vrajhus involved. Nat agreed. Said that your state was a medical impossibility, therefore we should back off from medically invasive cures. Kim, you breathed maybe once an hour.” He said in a low voice, “Three nights ago that slowed to once a day.” He thumbed a strand of hair off my cheek. “We kept it a secret, but we’ve traded off watching over you.”

  “I saw you,” I said. “And I called to you.” It took all my strength to say that much, especially since he crushed me in another hug. It felt wonderful.

  “I heard you,” he murmured into my hair. “I thought I was going mad.”

  Everyone gave way before my grandmother, who leaned down to kiss my forehead. “Aurelia Kim. It is good to see you awake.” To the others. “Perhaps, in addition to the water she asked for, a meal?”

  A couple hours later, after I’d got some bread and soup into me, and about a gallon of water, we began the catch-up process. Alec told me that they’d gone right ahead with the wedding plans, as a way to fend off curiosity. “We told them you had caught a violent cold.”

  “What is the date, anyway?” I asked.

  “August 13th,” he said.

  “Then I’m in time for the March of the I
nnocents. Good.”

  He said with concern, “Don’t you think you’d better take it easy?”

  “I’ve been taking it easy. Too easy. I want to be there, Alec. I know we’re not worrying about the Blessing anymore. It’s important for other reasons. I can’t even explain them to myself yet. It just is.”

  “Then you’ll be there,” he said, “if I have to carry you myself.”

  But I rapidly regained strength. I hadn’t been in a coma, in which muscles waste and organs shut down.

  I hadn’t aged, either. My physical self could not be harmed by those demons, even if they’d tried to lure my spirit to stay and dance forever. I had been enchanted into a state not unlike stone. When I found that out, I ventured a joke about how they could have set me up in a garden with the vamps, but nobody found it funny.

  It’s eerie, how mutable time can seem. Here I’d been away for nearly twenty years, sort of—about ten years of Aurélie’s life and then ten years in the Nasdrafus, and it felt like a weekend marathon of movie watching. But for the people who loved me, in my time, it had seemed an eternity, even though only a month had passed. They’d had the tough time, not me. I dropped the feeble attempts at humor.

  That first night, Alec and I sat up until dawn, mostly me talking. He didn’t want to leave. I think he was afraid I’d wink out a second time.

  The next day, Beka Ridotski showed up, and I had to go through it all again. But this time it was easier. I didn’t go into the personal side the way I had with Alec. I kept it to the magical, with side-trips into history.

  She liked hearing about her greats-grandfather Shmuel, and she leaned forward with interest when I told her I’d met Elisheva. It turns out that she’s famous among the Salfmattas—she and Mordechai both. He’s known for having established the temple music school the way it is now, making it top notch in spite of Dobrenica being so small. And what few know is that magical charms are taught along with the music.