Clouds End

  A tangle of twigs slid toward, by, behind her, wet-brown and slowly spinning, out of sight, gone. They had broken from their roots to go on a great journey that would carry them beyond all trees, beyond all grass and stone and sand, into the endless sea.

  And Brook thought about desire, and anger, and fear, and joy—sliding by her one after the other, ripples in the river of her life. Downstream, her parents drifted in the ocean. Far upstream, grandchildren, or perhaps new friends, were already floating inexorably down on her. And it seemed her whole story was like this: a ceaseless shifting, a stream woven of uncountable waves.

  Her backside ached from being in one position too long, and she stirred, smiling at herself. Well then, if life was a stream, there were good sturdy rocks in it too. Rope. Her children. Shale. Clouds End itself! Wind. The sea. These were her safe places, her stepping stones across the stream of life.

  Stones in the stream. “Islands,” she whispered. She remembered Boots, his tireless dam-building. What were islands but rocks in the water? The world was a great stream, a play of uncertain waves studded with these stones. And her people stepped from one rock to the next, walking their mighty journey upstream to the source, the last mystery. Into the Mist.

  “Stepping Stone,” she announced to the trees and the rock and the bubbling water. “Your name is Stepping Stone. Do not forget!”

  * * *

  The gull found Brook as midwinter night was falling. It drifted like a snowflake from the darkening sky to land beside her little campfire. Jo stretched; blurred; shook her head until her face widened and her feathers gave way to silky hair. Fingers wriggled from an outstretched wing.

  Across the campfire, Brook sat with her brazier on one side and her little ceremonial knife on the other. Weakness shivered through her, bringing back the memory of the long-ago morning Jo had first landed on the shore of Clouds End and changed her life forever. She remembered how hurt she had been to understand for the first time that she might not want to see the story waiting for her in the Mist.

  It occurred to Brook that she was very much alone.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Sister.” Jo cocked her head to the side. “Have you named the island?”

  “Stepping Stone.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Not part of the Sere and Warrior story, but—”

  Jo snapped with laughter. “It is our story. We can name it what we want.”

  Night sounds were building: the roar of the cold surf, always more solemn after the sun went down; the tiny campfire, hiss, crackle. A coal popped open and a shower of sparks burst from its heart.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Are you so busy you have no time for talk?”

  “No, I—”

  “Just talk.” The haunt seemed tired and frail, as frail as one of the paper screens from a woodlander puppet show—so dreadfully thin, Brook felt she could tear at any moment and reveal the fire behind.

  “Do you love me?” Jo said.

  Fifteen heartbeats. Twenty.

  “You do. You do love me.”

  “Sometimes, it’s as if we are lovers,” Brook whispered. “And sometimes it’s as if we are fighting to the death.”

  The fire had left Jo’s eyes for the first time since she took the Spark. In the moonlight they gleamed silver again. “I am in you,” Jo said. “No one will ever know you as I do, Brook. Not Shandy, not Rope, not your kinsmen nor your children. I am closer to you than you are to yourself. I can see what you never dare to look at. And I love you.”

  Brook reached up and brushed Jo’s white cheek with her hand. “I know.”

  “Do not become Witness, Brook. It is all I can do now to hold on. You have a family and a life and a village around you and I have nothing. But at least we share the magic. Even if I am the ugly sister, the one nobody wants, I know we are still somehow the same. But if you chain even your magic, sinking it down into the rocks of Clouds End, then you take away the last thing that keeps us together.” Beneath Brook’s hand Jo’s skin was cool and soft as blossoms; so precious. So precious. “I love you, Brook. At least let me do that.”

  And Brook ached to go with Jo, to stop fighting her and walk a path of moonlight over the black sea. But her hand fell as she remembered the sad sound of rain, Rope confessing, the world dropping out from under her. Remembered how it felt to learn she was as worthless as she had always feared. “Rope loves me too. But you both betrayed me.”

  “Why can you forgive him but not me?”

  “I forgive him because I have to,” Brook said. “You are right. You are like me.” The moment when she and Jo could have been friends was passing, passing. Gone. She hated herself for destroying it. “I guess I expected better from myself.”

  The campfire’s flickering red light held the two women close together, surrounded by a vast sighing darkness.

  Jo turned away. She took one of the sticks Brook had gathered and tossed it on the fire. When she looked back, a gold flush had crept over her eyes. “Cold out tonight, isn’t it? Remember Ash?”

  Brook watched fire crawl up the new log, licking black blisters onto its skin.

  “The world is not always kind,” Jo said. She pulled out one of her bootlaces. “What is this one?” she said, tying a knot around the end of a stick.

  “A round turn and two half-hitches.”

  “It has been too long since I practiced.”

  Jo undid the knot. Brook hunched closer to the fire. “Shale taught me that one. Actually she taught me all of them.”

  “The night is cold,” Jo said.

  “We always stopped everything and played outside when it snowed,” Brook said. “Once it started early in the morning and Shale hid on my roof until I came out to play and then dumped a huge pile on me as I stepped out the door.”

  Jo laughed. She twisted her bootlace round, down, up through the hole . . .

  “Around the tree,” Brook prompted.

  “And down the hole again. And that is a . . . bowline?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  The fire cracked and a dance of sparks flew out. Red light played over Jo’s face. “I am burning.”

  Brook shifted in the darkness. “Are you sure you want to share your secrets with me?”

  “Who else is there? You at least can understand.”

  Jo’s hair drifted around her shoulders like smoke. Red-gold light flickered in her eyes. “When I twinned you I took on so much of the sea. Then I took the Emperor’s shape, and took the Spark that was burning him up inside. And now . . .” Shocked, Brook saw that Jo was crying. Crying! Gold tears gathered in her eyes and rolled one by one down her face, falling into shadow. “Air, sea, and fire struggle within me. They are tearing me apart, Brook. They are tearing me apart.”

  Jo waited until her voice stopped shaking. “Have you ever seen a spark fall on a piece of paper, Brook? It makes a little hole, a little black hole with a faint red rim. And every time the wind blows through the hole, it eats away its edges. It makes this hollow space. And the larger the space gets, the colder and emptier it is, and the more air comes through, and the more the fire burns. The more you want it to burn.” She picked apart the bowline, head bowed as if she were speaking to the knot. “So there is this hollow place, you see, where the wind blows through. And it is always growing bigger.”

  Jo took the two ends of her bootlace and laid them side by side.

  “Is your story finished?”

  Desperately Jo began to plait the two strands together. “This is . . . ?”

  “A reef knot.”

  “What is it for?”

  “To join . . .” Brook stopped, looking into the fire. “To join two ropes of equal strength.”

  Jo said, “Did I do it right?”

  “Yes.” Brook turned away from Jo and looked into the darkness. “But it’s only string.”

  A long heartbeat later Jo said, “You are hard, Brook.” Her eyes were drying, drying. Dry. Dry as cracked eart
h. Dry as dead grass.

  Brook’s eyes were caught by the fire’s ceaseless weaving. “I am not a very strong person.” She felt contemptible; she hated herself for her weakness, her envy. Her fear. “You have beauty. Knowledge. Magic. You can see where I am blind. You have everything I ever wanted.”

  “Except roots.”

  “You are tired.” Brook searched through her pack and dug out a strip of smoked bass. “Have this. I took plenty. There is water in the cup there; I got it from the stream.”

  “Thank you,” Jo said. The fish she did not touch, but she gulped the water gratefully. Her hand when Brook touched it, taking back the cup, was as dry as paper and fiercely hot.

  “When Ash killed himself, I could feel why he did it, feel the hunger. The release. But the pain!” Jo drank a second cup of water more slowly. “But at least he wanted to burn. Brook, I have been fighting it for eight years now. Eight years while the Spark ate me hollow.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “You should be! You and all the sea people. I leeched fire from the Emperor, and the forest troops pulled back. But I got nothing for it.”

  Brook said, “We are grateful.”

  “No, you are not.” Jo drained the cup. “You are happy it was done, but you do not care about me.”

  Brook said, “Sometimes great things can be asked only of the great.”

  The haunt laughed. “Yes! Yes, that is me: a grand character in the story of the islands. A Hero of Legend.” Night had come, and the little campfire hid Jo’s face in shaking shadows. “Ask Seven how nice a thing that is to be. Do you think it matters more to him that Delta honors his name or that Pond is dead?”

  “More water?”

  “Please.”

  Brook poured out the last of the water and passed it back over the little fire.

  “It is your anniversary tonight. Eight years now you have been married to Rope. Did you like the feather I left for you to find on your wedding day?”

  “You left that?”

  The haunt’s hand was a dim blur as she took the cup. “I did not stop the Emperor for the islands, Brook. I did not do it for the Warrior, not in the end. I did it for the people I loved.”

  “Rope, for instance.”

  “Of course I loved him! I had to, Brook. I had no choice. As long as you loved him, then I must as well.” Jo looked away into the darkness, blinking back tears. When she faced Brook again the gold in her eyes had faded. It was only the fire, reflected in brown eyes.

  Only the fire. “Did you never understand? I told you from the beginning. Haunts never die. Sooner or later we all get caught, knotted in a sheet bend with something stronger than ourselves. You were that thing, Brook. You are the candle and I am the shadow you cast.”

  “Me? You were the one with the magic! With the beauty and the power. And you made sure I knew it, every chance you could.”

  “Of course I fought you! The fish fights the hook, too. I was fighting for my life, Brook. Fighting to be something more than your shadow.”

  Down the beach behind them the surf hissed and mumbled. The sea’s breath was salt and seaweed and cold sand. Darkness lapped around their little circle of firelight.

  “That night last spring,” Brook said. “You called me out to see the moon.”

  Jo nodded. “I heard Shandy talking—Oh yes, I never left Clouds End, not all the times you thought I was gone. I was a mouse under your floor, an owl in the woods. You were my family, you villagers. And though you did not want me—none of the villagers and you least of all—I could never leave you. You were all the very little I had.

  “I heard Shandy talking. I knew she was planning to make you her apprentice. I knew you would become even stronger then. And all this time the Spark was eating me away, and the hole in my heart was getting bigger, and the wind blew through. And you, you were like Ivy,” Jo said. “You would never help me. You were content to see me drift into the Mist. You were not too proud to drink the rain.”

  “I am sorry,” Brook said, and she meant it. Jo, poor Jo, was a broken thing, an empty sorrow that could not be filled. She alone could have been the haunt’s friend. And she had walked away.

  Jo’s face had lost its edges: the great hooked nose, the bony eyebrows, the narrow eyes, all blurred, softened, settled into features much less harsh. An islander face. “I did not want you to be her apprentice. Shandy! She could give you one island; I could give you wind-rhymes and starsong, the dolphin’s chat and the owl’s cry, the stones and the sea! I was jealous, I suppose.”

  “There is more to it than that,” Brook said. “You did not sleep with Rope for my good. I nearly drowned when you took me on that path of moonlight.”

  Jo nodded. “I wanted you to come with me into the Mist. The Spark has almost hollowed me out; unless I pass it on, I will be consumed, and lose myself for good.” She drank the last of the water. Set the cup down. “It is lonely in the Mist, Brook. So lonely.

  “I was lost there for a long time before I met you. I had a friend there once. She still speaks to me sometimes. But I am too old to play with anymore even when the moon is young. When she is full, she blinds me. When she is old, she laughs at me.”

  Jo’s voice was softer now, full of longing. “We could have had great fun, on the other side! The things I would have shown you!”

  “Once I might have come. But not now. There are too many things to hold me to the world.”

  Jo said, “I have been thinking about that.”

  And she turned a shell bracelet around her wrist. Click. Crack.

  Brown. Her hair is brown now, Brook thought, feeling her heart jump unsteadily. And her eyes are dark brown, too. And her face is my face.

  No one will ever know.

  And Jo, looking into the fire, said, “You know what happens in twin stories, Brook. There are terrible truths in stories.” Reflected flames danced in her eyes. “Give her to me, Brook.”

  “Give who?”

  “I left the feather for you to find.”

  “No!” Not Feather, not her little girl. Hunched over a spider web, blond braid carelessly thrown behind, all grass and mud and laughter. “Please, Jo, not this. You cannot ask this of me.”

  “Give me the child and I will leave Clouds End forever, I swear it. What is not offered will be taken,” Jo whispered. “Do not make me ask for more, Brook.”

  “No.” Brook’s mouth was dry. Slowly, slowly, her hand slid through the shadows at her side, reaching for her little copper knife. “I could have killed you,” she said. “I could have left you here for Sere eight years ago, as Shale wanted me to. I could have killed you after we left the Arbor, but I chose to let you live.”

  “You would not kill me, but you were willing to let me burn. You with your husband and your family and your home, you were great enough to let me come and beg for scraps.” Jo stopped. “I sound angry. I would have done the same. Oh, Brook, I would never kill you,” Jo said softly. “I could never do that. Never do that. A sting is all, a little sting. You’ll barely feel it.” And now the nails on Jo’s hands were long and golden, as if made of beaten bronze. When she shook her head, her brown hair began to spark and glow.

  The Emperor had stabbed her, Brook remembered. And she had lived. She had plucked the Spark from him and now she meant to give it to Brook.

  And Jo said, “You always knew a story waited for you, Brook. You always knew you were meant to take a great journey in the Mist. You knew that the day I met you. Last spring you felt it call you from behind the moon.”

  “They will know.”

  Jo shook her head. “The real things do not care: the sea and the stone. They do not care if either of us lives or dies.”

  Panic was rising, filling Brook up like water, drowning her. “They do on Clouds End! The rocks know my footprints and the trees know the touch of my hand and Sage Creek has whispered my name as it ran out of Teardrop, not yours. They will know! You think they won’t tell the difference? Rope will know. Net! Net is of the M
ist. Net will know.”

  Hanging in four braids behind her neck, Jo’s brown hair swung softly as she shook her head. “Do you really not understand? Brook’s story will go on. Brook’s story will go on and Jo’s will end. One twin always goes into the Mist. Jo swallowed fire and Brook was the lucky one.” As she spoke, a bee tumbled from behind her ear and hung around her shoulder, buzzing. Another one followed, then another.

  “Feather and Boots! My babies will know it isn’t me! Shandy will make you give it back, give everything back . . .” Brook’s voice broke.

  “You have always known, Brook.” Jo looked at her with soft brown eyes that were terribly her own. “I am your seventh wave.”

  “It isn’t fair!” Brook cried. She was sick with fear. Her insides had been turned to Mist; she was fog swirling in a shell of skin. “You didn’t carry those babies. You didn’t scream to give them birth. You never woke up in the middle of the night and stumbled through the darkness to feed them.”

  “Don’t cry, Brook! Don’t cry.” There were tears in Jo’s eyes. “I would die before I let anything happen to them, I swear it. No one can love them as much as their mother, don’t you see?”

  Little Feather with her blond hair flying. Boots, hunched over a puzzle, frowning his serious frown.

  With a cry, Brook grabbed her copper brazier and hurled it at Jo, scattering the campfire embers and throwing a gout of sparks into the air. Then she was running for her life.

  She staggered wildly down the sloping dune toward the beach, boots crunching through pebbles, driftwood, crab shells. There were no footsteps behind her, no human sound but her ragged breathing.

  Onto the beach. Sand sucked at her feet and she ran as if in a nightmare, so slowly, every step a torture, angling for the boat she had sailed here from Clouds End. The little ceremonial knife was slick in her sweaty hand.

  Where was Jo? Had she stunned her twin? Clipped her with a lucky hit when she threw the brazier? She risked a glance backwards but saw nothing.

  The cold night sky glittered with a million stars. Her heart was racing and her gasps were huge in her ears. Crashing and hissing, waves broke in the darkness. Creeping froth glimmered in the starshine just ahead. She was almost at the waterline.