And from the water’s depths came a call that she could no longer resist.
Slowly, Margaret walked down the hill, back to the edge of the water.
“The only way out is in,” whispered Auntie Alma, her words clear and distinct across the dark water.
Margaret stepped into the pond.
The water was shockingly cold. The bottom was slick and silty, just as she remembered from times her mother had walked her in when she was little, before she was strong enough to refuse. She could almost feel it through her shoes, feel the sliding, sucking mud that squeezed between her toes and tried to hold her down.
She took another step, and then another. She was close to the worst part, the drop-off where the pond plunged to unsuspected depths.
Three more steps and Margaret went over the edge. Down she sank through the cold black water. The moon’s pale light could not pierce this darkness. And yet somehow she could see. Or perhaps she was guided by the voice, which was calling her more intensely than ever. Not Auntie Alma’s voice. The other. She knew who it was, now. But she would not give it a name.
Not yet.
At the bottom of the pond, in darkness black and absolute, she found it. A low mound, features obscured by the silt that had drifted over it in the few days it had been here. She longed to flee. Terror throbbed within her, beating at the walls of her heart, screaming, “Get out, get out, get out!” But the call was too strong, the need of the voice too aching and desperate. Trapped between need and fear, Margaret hung in the freezing water, not certain how much longer she could last here.
The only way out is in.
The words tickled at the back of her mind. She knew they were true, knew they were the only answer.
Moving forward, Margaret reached out to brush the silt from the poor, cold thing at the bottom of the pond. A lock of hair floated free, and she saw it at last, the face she knew so well, the face she had looked at every morning in the mirror.
Her own face, pale and still in death.
Her wail of despair was lost in the dark water as memory flooded over her, pushing away the lies.
Her parents had not gone off and left her here with Auntie Alma. She had come here herself, running away, hoping to find . . . what? A place to escape, for a time, from the fights—and, even more, from the unbearable hope that they might end, that things might get better, that her mother and father might stop the endless war so they could be a family again.
She had taken the little boat out onto the water, thinking she would be safe, held above the pond, separate from it. Positioning herself in the center of the pond, she had tossed the anchor over the side of the boat. But in her anger and despair she had carelessly managed to tangle her foot in the rope.
The anchor had pulled her under and held her down. She had struggled frantically to free herself, but finally the water had filled her lungs and she had drowned here in the pond’s cold, dark embrace.
Calmer now, Margaret studied the pale thing that had once been her, the body that was hers no longer, and realized that she must have gone backward at the moment of death, reaching desperately for the world of the living and refusing to acknowledge the truth of what had happened.
She had been lying to herself ever since, blocking out the memory of her death by trying to pretend that her parents had brought her here, even though she knew in her heart that the house was empty and that Auntie Alma had died earlier that year.
No wonder her parents hadn’t come for her. How could they, not having any idea where she had gone?
And now Auntie Alma was waiting on the far shore . . . one ghost calling to another.
But why am I still trapped here in the water?
Auntie Alma’s words sounded again in her head, and finally Margaret understood. “The only way out is in,” she whispered.
Beating back her fear, she reached down to embrace the cold, dead flesh of her body. Wrapping her ghostly arms around her own corpse, she pressed herself to herself, accepting the reality of her death, rejecting the lie she had fashioned in her attempt to cling to the world of the living.
This cold thing was her reality, who she was and where she was, and until she accepted that, she could never get through to the other side.
Hard—harder than the night she had tried to press herself into the mattress—she pressed herself back into herself . . .
. . . and burst through the other side.
Suddenly the cold was gone. She felt warm and safe, and light seemed to surround her as she shot to the top of the pond.
Auntie Alma, still waiting on the far side, laughed and applauded when she saw Margaret emerge from the water and climb onto the bank.
Margaret laughed, too—and laughed even harder to find herself warm and dry.
Auntie Alma held out her arms.
Margaret ran to them.
Together, the old woman and the girl walked out of the willows, up the hill, and into the deeper woods, ready to explore the undiscovered country that lay waiting for them on the other side.
The Hardest, Kindest Gift
THREE HUNDRED years ago, when I was only twelve, I sat beside my father’s deathbed in a stone cottage near the west coast of France.
I knew that he was absurdly old. Even so, I could not believe he would really die. That childish certainty was shattered when I heard the uncanny wailing outside the window, a heart-piercing keen of despair that seemed to twist and twine around the house, seeping under the doors, through the shutters, down the chimney, and into my very soul.
I burst into sobs and covered my ears. At the same time, my father started up in his bed, his face wild with fear and longing. “That’s my mother!” he whispered, stretching out his arms as if to be embraced. A moment later he collapsed against the pillow. I grabbed his hand. He clenched mine back so tightly that I feared he might break my fingers.
The eerie wailing continued until I thought it would drive me mad. Mercifully, it ceased just before the first rays of the sun crept into the sky. For a time there was a blissful silence, not broken until the full gold of dawn slid across the stone sill and my father whispered, “I will be dead before nightfall, Geoffroi.”
I flung myself across his chest, begging him to stay, sobbing out my fear of being left alone in the world. But I could not hold him. By nightfall he was gone, just as he had predicted.
He left me three things: a modest fortune, a life that would be unnaturally long, and a story without an ending.
Of these three things, it was the story, which he told me during his last hour of life, that has most shaped me. In fact it laid hold of my imagination until it became the driving force in my own life for the next two hundred years. For with it came a sense of obligation, and an awareness of a task that I knew I alone was meant to perform.
The idea merely simmered inside me at first. Even when I began to see what I should do I felt helpless, because I had no idea where to start.
It took me longer than it should have to realize that an education would help—as would having enough years added to my face that people would take me seriously. Neither of these things was as simple as it might seem: The knowledge I sought was hidden, and my face did not age at a natural pace. Still, the time came at last when I felt I could begin. In the years that followed, my search led me to stranger places than I had ever thought existed—including, eventually, a small, dusty shop called La Grenouille Grise, which was nestled at the end of a narrow street in Paris.
Finding the shop was no accident. Fifteen years of dangerous questions and unlikely contacts had led me to a midnight-dark alley where a cold presence, standing beside me like a shadow, whispered a hint and then disappeared.
That hint was what led me to the shop, though it took another two years to find it.
The proprietress of La Grenouille Grise was a gray-haired, gray-eyed, gray-skinned woman who looked as if she, like the items on her shelves, had not been dusted in many years.
“I’m looking for something,” I said.
r /> She gestured toward the displays with that attitude peculiar to Parisian shopkeepers, who seem to feel offended by your very presence. Without a word, she was clearly telling me, “Look if you must. But don’t expect my help!”
Alas, her help was exactly what I needed, as I was fairly certain that the thing I sought was not on display. Risking a bolt of Parisian contempt, I refined my request. “It’s something with wings.”
I braced myself for her sneer. But the veiled hint had worked. I had at least caught her interest, and she bestirred herself enough to actually point toward one of the shelves.
Turning, I saw a stuffed owl that looked as if it had once been left out in the rain. It was not what I wanted, and she almost certainly knew it.
I shook my head. “What I want would be smaller.”
Her expression didn’t change.
“And older.”
Still no change.
I took my last, best shot. “And still alive.”
Her eyes widened by the tiniest degree. In a voice that sounded like the rustle of dry grass in the autumn wind, she spoke the first words she had uttered since I entered: “What is your name?”
“Geoffroi LeGrandent,” I said. Then, as if to defy the shame that even after all those years I was not able to entirely hide, I added boldly, “The same as my father.”
I caught the slightest flicker of surprise in those ancient gray eyes. She nodded and stood, so rickety and frail looking that I feared she might collapse before she could sell me what I wanted.
“Follow me,” she wheezed, and shuffled off in a cloud of dust.
I made my way around the counter—not an easy passage, given the store’s clutter. By the time I had picked a path between the bronze elephant and the display of cracked pottery, trying to ignore the more grisly relics (there was something I would have sworn was a shriveled human hand) she had vanished behind a tattered gray curtain.
I hurried to catch up with her.
The room we entered was small, dingy, and even more cluttered than the store. A narrow bed—little more than a pallet covered by a thin blanket—stood tight against the far wall. Pointing to it, she said, “Under there.”
I knelt. Beneath the bed was a wooden box—oak, I guessed—held shut with a padlock. I pulled it out, then followed her back into the store. I placed the box on the counter.
The proprietress fumbled in her pocket, finally drawing forth a ring of keys. The smallest, needle thin and no longer than my thumbnail, opened the lock.
I was scarcely able to contain my impatience at her slow, deliberate movements. When she finally lifted the lid of the box I leaned forward eagerly.
Inside was a small glass cube, about four inches to a side. And within that vitrine prison, its ebony wings delicate as lace, fluttered the thing I had sought for so many years.
It was heavier than I had expected.
· · ·
Far away, at rest in her grotto, Melusine senses that something is happening. She doesn’t know what it is, but she can feel it in her veins, the same way she always used to feel it when death was on the prowl for one of her family. She shakes her head, causing her golden tresses to slide over her bare shoulders. That was long ago. These days the bloodline is so thinned she rarely feels that acid premonition, and even then only as a faint, cold tingle.
But this—this is strong. When was it last this strong?
Shall I prepare to fly? she wonders. After all these years must I take wing once more?
No. It is not time for that. And she does not want to leave her grotto, this sacred pool that is her shelter and her temple. Not yet. There is still time.
There is always time.
Much too much of it.
The moon rises.
Melusine slides into her pool to swim.
Farther away still, on the hidden island of Avalon, another presence stirs, feeling hope for the first time in thousands of years. . . .
· · ·
As I left La Grenouille Grise with my prize, I thought of my father. How could I not, considering what I carried?
He had been a good man when I knew him. But in his youth he had been a beast. Oh, not in the literal sense; I am not half bear, or boar, or anything like that. In fact, were my father’s blood to be truly accounted he would be found one-quarter angel. Fallen angel, it is true, though he did have his moments of grace. But it was the fallen part that marked and marred his life, finally driving him to the violent act that had the side effect of toppling the delicately balanced marriage of my grandparents into the realm of tragedy.
That was hundreds of years before I was born. But given the longevity I inherited from him, I have had time enough to piece the story together. Not that it hadn’t been told in a thousand forms already. I’ve read the ones that were written down, and even the most corrupt have at least a grain of the truth at their core. For that matter, I suppose there is no way to know if I have all the truth, either. I say this despite my discovery of my grandfather’s testimony, which I alone have read in the last two hundred years. And I say it despite the things my grandmother told me at the end. I have their truth, I think. Perhaps that is as close as any of us can hope to get.
Carrying my purchase, I left Paris for the west of France, for the soil in which my family’s strengths and sorrows are rooted. It would be my first return in over two hundred years to the cottage where my father died, where I had sat beside him that long, long night.
As I traveled, I read again from the crumbling pages that held my grandfather’s story.
Extract from the Testimony of
Raymond de Lusignan
(as offered to the abbot of the Monastery
of Saint-Denis in the year of the Lord 953)
______________________________________________________
You have asked how I first met my wife. It happened because of what was, to that point, the worst day of my life. I had gone to the forest to hunt with my friend and protector, Count Aimeri of Poitiers. We became separated. While we were apart my friend stumbled across an enormous boar. The beast attacked, and managed to gore the count in the leg.
When I heard Aimeri’s scream I raced toward it. Entering a clearing I saw what was happening and dashed forward, sword raised. But as I stood above them and slashed downward, the boar and my dear friend twisted beneath me. I cried out in horror. My blade had struck deep into he who had been like a father to me.
Rage drove my sword again, and I dispatched the boar in a matter of seconds. At once I dropped to my knees beside the count and tried to stanch the horrible wound I had inflicted on him. It was too deep; no matter how I pressed and held, I could not stop the flow of crimson life.
Within moments, my friend was dead.
Dropping my face into my bloodstained hands, I wept until I was senseless.
I do not know how much time passed before I was able to stand again. When I could, I stumbled back into the forest, stunned and sickened by what I had done. I was also afraid for my own life if the accident should be thought murder when it was discovered.
In this sorry state I wandered aimlessly for several days. Then one night, hungry, thirsty, and half mad, I heard a beautiful voice raised in song. Following it, I came to a wall of mist. The voice lured me on. Staggering through the mist, I found myself in a moonlit clearing where three maidens danced at the edge of a light-silvered pool. The fairest of them came to ask what troubled me. Though I was afraid to confess what I had done, she somehow eased my fear and the words poured from me like water from a jug.
When I had finished my story the maiden took my hands, which were still brown with the long-dried blood of my friend. They looked strange lying in hers, which were white as milk. She led me into the pool. There she undressed me and bathed me. As she did, the blood and the sorrow and the fear all seemed to wash away together. I felt as if under an enchantment. I suppose it is possible that she was indeed working some spell on me. But I do not think that was the case. I think the only
magic was the moonlight, and her tenderness. Or perhaps the only magic was love, for I loved her then as I love her now, all so many years and so many tears later, when I would do anything to take back what happened.
Several miles separated the train station from the cottage. Even so, I made the journey on foot.
I prefer walking when I have a great deal on my mind.
It felt strange to see the old place again. I had kept it all these years with the vague thought that I would someday return to occupy it. Whether I had not yet done so was because I still wasn’t ready to settle down, or because I secretly feared it was haunted, I could not say.
The couple I had hired to care for the place—the current couple, for of course I had gone through many caretakers over the previous two centuries—had done their work tolerably well. The dust was not too thick, nor the windows too grimy.
Though the journey had been tiring, I slept fitfully that night. I tossed and turned, tormented by memories and half expecting to hear a wailing at the windows.
When morning finally came I walked to the remains of my grandparents’ castle—nothing now but some broken, moss-covered walls that bore mute testimony to the place’s former grandeur.
The forest was not far beyond. It was old and dark and all too clearly haunted—by spirits, I suppose, though I didn’t see any of them, but even more by memory and sorrow.
Tomorrow, I told myself. I'll enter the wood tomorrow.
In the end it was two days before I found the courage to start this last leg of my journey. When I did, I carried a pack with enough food and water for several days, for I suspected that the way would be long. I also suspected that if I ate or drank anything in the place I was seeking I would never be allowed to leave.
Underneath those supplies, carefully wrapped for its protection, was the glass cube I had purchased at La Grenouille Grise.