Daimon, remembering vaguely, led them through the trees to where, if
another world had shifted into view, the old hotel would have stood. Trees
thinned into a clearing; forgotten ruins rose around them as they entered it.
Within the slumping, crumbled stones, a little circular pool ringed with
shells serenely reflected the sky above it.
“Something of Calluna’s?” Vivien guessed. “They put their inn on top of
this sacred shrine?”
“Or they built the inn there because they felt the power in this place,” Ana
suggested. “Perhaps a place worthy of some great vessel that fell into their
possession.”
“It certainly didn’t look worthy,” Daimon commented. “The roof is half–
blown away, and most of the walls are held up by scaffolding. The inn itself
looked closed.”
“Sounds like the perfect place to keep a secret,” Morrig said with interest.
“Water knows everything; it goes everywhere, and it never forgets. There’s
an eye; let’s see what it sees.”
She moved toward the little pool. Daimon heard an odd whimpering from the
bundle as Ana tugged the raven chain. The whimpering subsided to whispering as
it bumped along the ground. Daimon, following behind the three veiled figures,
risked a glance at Scotia. Her face was as chalky pale as the shells scattered
around the pool; she met his eyes clearly but without expression, recognizing,
in that dark company, the dangers of coherent thinking.
They stopped at the edge of the pool. It gazed limpidly back at the cloud,
mirroring its grays. The odd clutter at Ana’s side was gabbling breathily in
some demented language. She pulled on the feathery links, and it fell abruptly
silent.
Morrig bent over the pool, touched the water with one finger as though to wake
it. It stirred faintly, forming a ripple, like a thought. Another followed it,
and another, ripples growing stronger, faster, spreading in overlapping rings
across the pool until its surface ruffled as under a private wind.
It stilled. Colors streaked across it, formed shapes. Figures moved, spoke
soundlessly, though Daimon suspected Morrig heard them. A burly bartender
wearing glasses poured beer for an invisible customer. A cascade of painted
Fools’ heads above his head turned, watching this way and that, all smiling
the same knowing smile. The scene shifted: a glass cupboard holding such
incongruous items as a fishing gaffe and an elaborate silver bowl appeared.
Morrig studied it a moment, then waved it away, as well as the unlit
chandelier, the old photos on a wall, the motley clutter of worn furniture. A
door swung open; a girl with purple hair came out carrying a hamburger. The
eye peered through the door, found a diner engulfed by the looming, shadowy
bones of the old hotel. Plastic flowers, vinyl chairs, half-filled jars of
condiments, and the diners themselves, working through plates and baskets of
food, passed swiftly across the water.
Another door opened to sinks full of dirty dishes, people busily cooking,
filling plates, deep-frying, ladling soup from pots, boiling crabs in other
pots. Pots of every shape flowed past, hanging on racks, stacked on shelves,
one in the hands of an elfin old woman as she lifted it onto a burner,
another, oddly battered and grimy, sitting on a chopping block while a dark-
haired young woman chopped chives beside it. The lines of that pot paled, grew
vague as though it sensed itself being looked at. It was not there, it told
Daimon’s eye. It was nothing, not a worth a glance, let alone scrutiny.
He blinked. Or maybe it was the pool blinking, as Morrig loosed it from its
visions and her attention.
“Odd,” she murmured. “I would have thought . . .” But she did not say. She
stood silently, gazing puzzledly at the waters that had grown still again,
reflecting only mist. She stirred at an eerily human noise from the cloudy
collection of underbrush. “Well,” she said, distastefully, “let’s get this
to the place where it can do no more harm. Say your farewells, Daimon and
Vivien. Somewhere, in some world, you might meet again. There’s nothing for
us here now.”
She took the raven chain from Ana’s hand; the howl of despair that came out
of the churning pile swept through the tree boughs like a breeze and sent a
black cloud of birds swirling into the sky.
Mist filled the pool, as though it had drawn cloud down into it. It flowed
upward, a column as high as the trees, then higher, and higher than that,
sculpting itself out of blur and drift, a ghostly shape that formed and
firmed, became enormous, forcing the eye to constantly reenvision it, until,
piece by piece, it became impossibly familiar.