“You said her name. We could never—we could never say her name. After
she died. She died wanting more, always wanting more of Stillwater. He left
her here, went his way. He took her name away with him. I could never forgive
myself.” She looked at Carrie again, her eyes dry now, the unnatural green of
sky and sea mirroring dangerous weather. “I encouraged her. Even I was a
little in love. I thought our love, our fortune, our beautiful, enchanted life
would last forever.”
“That’s why you always stay up here. Why you never come down.”
“There was no point. I couldn’t forgive myself for not—for not seeing my
own daughter in such horrible danger, not helping her— How could I expect Hal
to forgive me?”
“What’s changed? Now?”
“Merle said her name. He sent you up here, looking like you do, feeding on
emptiness, wasting away without even noticing, even your hair thin and hungry
for what’s real, what’s true. But somehow you learned to see like Merle
sees. You are his daughter, and what he sees in you is hope.”
—
When she left the Kingfisher Grill after lunch and went to Stillwater’s to
prep for dinner, she was not entirely surprised by the cracked and rain-
darkened oak in the old bank door. She walked inside, saw the splintered,
warped floorboards, the tattered tablecloths, the long-dead flowers in the
vases. Sage Stillwater sat at the bar, taking notes. She turned her head,
smiled at Carrie. Her hair was limp, her face wan, hollowed, fretted with
tiny, worried lines, and so pale it might have been the color of her bones
seeping too near the surface of her face. Her eyes seemed huge, hungry for
something she no longer remembered. Stillwater, his back to Carrie, read
labels of nearly empty bottles, some of them so dusty the writing was hardly
visible. Sage jotted down what he needed: limes, olives, brandy, new glasses
to replace the cracked. He glanced toward Carrie and smiled absently as she
greeted him. He looked, she thought, like a sort of shriveled, pallid
mushroom, his skin damp, grayish white, not enough hair on his head to bother
leaving it there. One eyebrow had vanished completely. His eyes had sunk so
deeply into his furrowed face that he looked like something furtive peering
out of a fallen tree trunk.
After seeing Merle shaping everything under the moon, she wasn’t afraid of
the magic, just suddenly, profoundly curious about this ancient, nameless
power who, in trapping those Carrie loved within all their memories, seemed to
have trapped himself as well.
She passed them, headed into the kitchen, and saw something she hadn’t
noticed before. Or maybe her attention had just skittered over it before,
since it was nothing much to look at, just a dented old pot gathering cobwebs
on the floor in a corner. As she wondered idly what it was doing there, a
lovely bronze light glided over it, barely visible beneath the dust and old
grease clinging to it.
Something of Stillwater’s, she guessed. Maybe one of his early, experimental
machines. Being Stillwater’s, it would most likely still contain a surprise
or two.
She lifted it out of the shadows to see what it could do.
21
Perdita and the queen received the news of Daimon’s quest from the king
himself, who summoned them out of a ritual midseason salute to the goddess by
appearing at the top of the sanctum stairs and startling the guardian on duty
to the point of incoherence.
“Your Majesty,” she whispered to the queen within the sanctum, as Mystes
Halliwell led the acolytes in their chant. “His Majesty—he’s—just outside.
Inside the antechamber. He wants you and Princess Perdita.”
Perdita, watching the queen grow pale, thought instantly: Daimon. She turned,
followed the queen easing through the crowd around the central pool with its
feathery wisp of a fountain murmuring a musical counterpoint to the chant. For
no reason, Perdita glanced back as they left the sanctum. She saw her aunt
Morrig’s face turned to watch them, her gray eyes looking oddly dark and
birdlike.
Observing the sanctum’s rules, the king waited courteously on the top of the
antechamber stairs. The rare uncertainty on his face made Perdita swallow
dryly. The queen quickened her pace.
“Please,” he said softly, as they reached him. “Can we talk?”
The queen’s mouth tightened. As she had done many times through the years for
her lover, she opened the chamber door for her husband.
“Arden, what is it?” She closed the door behind him, leaned against it. The
king glanced around the small, cluttered room strewn with clothes, shoes,
jewels, the open wardrobe door whose mirror reflected his presence. He picked
up a sweater Perdita had tossed on the little couch, then stood holding it,
hesitating. “Sit down,” Genevra said, and he did.
Perdita took the sweater from him and sat on the arm of the couch, gripping
the soft wool tightly. “It’s Daimon,” she said with that strange certainty,
and the king nodded.
“What is it?” the queen said again, sharply. “What happened? Where is he?”
“He has gone questing, like half my other knights.” He paused, his eyes on
his wife, narrowed slightly as against a dark and imminent tempest. “You
asked me to tell him about his mother. I did. And now I think I should tell
you.”