Wings of Fire, page 9
“Archangel,” said Paul suddenly.
Uncle Bob’s head snapped around. “What?”
“Archangel,” Paul repeated. “It sounds exactly like this story… Mike might have told it to me, I don’t remember. But you suggested there was a cult raised over this, didn’t you? They built a monastery there, dedicated to the Archangel Michael who was supposed to have manifested himself at that place... it was also in the sixteenth century sometime...”
“1584, to be precise,” said Uncle Bob, looking at Paul through narrowed eyes. “Who is Mike?”
“He’s the guy I hunt with—he was the senior engineer on this station before he retired...” Paul suddenly slipped off his perch on the arm of Sabrina’s chair and looked towards the door, and his rifle leaning at a crooked angle beside it. “Come to think of it, I completely forgot about him in all the excitement. We were supposed to have met at camp—probably hours ago. He’s probably out looking for me by now.”
Jack straightened, an expression of dawning understanding on his face.
“How would he know about Archangel?” Bob asked, still focused on that single piece of information.
“He has friends in Russia, I think, or was it family? I know he’s very interested in all that Slavic stuff. I’m a sceptic, see—and he told me all about that monastery, just to prove that the real thing happens out there. He was very vivid with his descriptions.” Paul hovered, frustrated. “Maybe I’d better...”
“What does he look like?” Uncle Bob’s voice was low and intense, and everyone’s attention snapped back to him. He had scrambled to his feet, and was standing with his hands balled up into fists at his side.
“He’s got your build, actually,” said Paul, “and he...”
There was an awful silence for a moment, and then Sabrina laughed quietly.
“Oy vey,” she said.
Paul turned sharply. “What did you say that for?”
Sabrina looked startled. “I... it... somebody I know used to say it a lot. It sort of stuck,” she said. “Why?”
“It’s Mike’s catchphrase, too,” Paul said. “Maybe he had Jewish Russian ancestry or something.”
“Well,” Uncle Bob said after another heavy pause, “my considered opinion, for what it is worth to you, is that you probably wouldn’t find him at camp... how long have you been hunting with him here?”
“Years, on and off—not much in the last ten or so, but we were regulars when we were both still working on this place, the power station, that is, not this…cottage.”
“That would fit,” Uncle Bob said.
“Fit what?”
“Your Mike is very probably my brother. And if I am right, then he is already deep inside this mountain. What he knows... it isn’t common knowledge. And then there’s the rusalka.” He turned to Jack. “I did not know about the rusalka, I swear it. If I had, I would probably have done things very differently. How long has she been here?”
Jack shot him a dangerous glance but then relaxed. “Years. She came with the power station. I think someone brought her.”
Uncle Bob nodded. “I thought as much. She is Russian. And out there, in the clearing, the first person she attacked was myself. Igor’s twin. How much do you know about them?”
“More than I want to,” Paul muttered. “But just for the record, can you explain? Like, for example, why was it that she died when I cut the tree?”
“I told you, she is not dead, she is in the water,” Uncle Bob said. “They make their homes, as spirits, near some sort of running water which they take for their own. There was a particular aspect of their legend that said only young girls who actually died by drowning were candidates for becoming a rusalka. I’m not so sure about that—but either way, water is what a rusalka is attached to. But the spirit has a home, and it isn’t the water itself. It’s usually a tree right next to the watercourse. A living thing. A rusalka has need of life at all times, to deny her own death, in a way. The more lives she takes, the stronger she becomes. And their primary motivation…”
“Revenge,” said Sabrina faintly.
“Yes, revenge. Somewhere along the line she was a casualty, too.”
“Of what? You still haven’t told us what all this is really about,” said Paul, stung into loyalty. “Mike is my friend. Why do you want to kill him—and what in God’s name has any of this to with any of us?”
“This power station,” said Uncle Bob after a pause showing every sign of reluctance, “was not built to produce electricity alone.”
“What are you talking about?” Paul snapped impatiently. He had worked on the project; he himself had put together the magnificent and unique Manapouri Power Station. He knew differently.
“Not entirely. Mike… Igor… has another purpose for it.”
“Mike wasn’t the only person in charge of that thing!” Paul said.
“He didn’t need to be—he made what changes he required, no more, no less,” said Uncle Bob. “What do you think it would have achieved, if he had made it blatant, if he had shown his hand openly here? No, he took just as much as he needed. And, because of what this place is, that was enough…”
“So what, then,” Sabrina asked, after a silence which nobody seemed too keen to break, “is he doing, this... Igor?”
“I’m… not quite certain,” said Uncle Bob slowly. “All I know is, he is of Chaos, and always he seeks to return to it. Any way he knows how. Always he has been just a step ahead of me. Now—at last—at last—I may have a chance to stop him...” He looked at Jack, an open, pleading look. “Now do you see? I had to get here. I had found a place where I could get at him. There is no road to this place.”
“There are bush trails,” said Paul.
“That would have taken too long. And he would know.”
“How?” Paul asked, spreading his hands. “He would know if you just slipped into the woods and walked up to the dam? And there is a road. They built one when they built the dam. It wasn’t magicked up out of nothing…”
“Yes, but that was watched. And warded. There was no way I could get anywhere near the place without setting off alarms and he’d be ready for me if I came. The only way he left open and unguarded, the only way in for me, was left as a taunt, a challenge, an open provocation – it led across the only thing that Igor knew would hold me – the lake, the sweet water I could not cross which stood squarely in my path. The lake that held you, the taniwha, the guardian. And all you would know about me was the curse—that hangs around me like a shroud. You would not have let me pass.”
“So you picked Sabrina.” Jack was scowling again.
“Sabrina was my bridge—my connection—she is the only thing that could have got me here. I’m sorry. That pendant binds her to me now, until this is done. One way or another. I had no choice—she was my passage, and I had to make her mine.”
Jack’s eyebrow lifted, a little smugly, and he smiled. “Well... not quite,” he said.
Uncle Bob frowned. “What?”
“That stone—is no longer only yours.”
Sabrina was the first to nod. “I knew you were in trouble.”
“What did you do?” said Uncle Bob sharply.
“It’s mine, now, as well. It’s mine to claim—you sent it on my lake. And the price of its passage was high.” He got up, standing over Sabrina as Uncle Bob took a step towards them; the two of them dwarfed the slight woman in the armchair, and Paul suddenly moved, instinctively, to cut across Uncle Bob’s path and stare with something almost like belligerence into Jack’s eyes.
“Enough,” he snapped. “She’s her own. Neither of you owns her.”
“Hey,” said Sabrina, from out of her chair, “I’ll fight my own battles.”
But her voice was suddenly very faint, and when they all looked down at her they saw that her eyes were huge and bright. And afraid.
Uncle Bob suddenly laughed.
“I think,” he said, “and don’t think I’m offering it as a distraction, that it would probably be good if we took a moment to eat something. And I dare say… we could all benefit from a cup of tea.”
“You got something stronger?” Paul muttered.
“Aspirin?” said Sabrina, only half facetiously.
“What do you think this is, a headache?” said Uncle Bob, his voice sharp. “We’re talking the end of all things, here, if Mike is allowed to do what he wants.”
“The end of all things meaning what, precisely?” Paul would not let go of that. Mike was Paul’s long-time buddy and colleague, someone he was sure he knew pretty well. On this one subject, at least, he knew as much as this preposterous Russian did, or claimed to do. The things Mike usually wanted to do tended to involve building up, not tearing down. “What’s going to happen, then? Is everything going to go up in one giant mushroom cloud, or something?”
Uncle Bob made an impatient gesture. “You’re thinking local,” he said. “What I am talking about could mean earthquakes, floods… remember, this land is still volcanic not too much further up north… All Mike has to do is trigger…”
“Mike is plotting the end of New Zealand, the world…?” Paul said, fighting the urge to either laugh out loud or run into the night babbling and convinced that he was quite, quite mad. “And we’re supposed to take your word for it?”
“What would you have me offer as proof?” Uncle Bob rounded on him, and then seemed to take a moment to control himself, took a deep ragged breath, and turned on his heel, striding off towards the room’s other door, the one that did not lead into the bedroom.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Paul called, addressing Uncle Bob’s retreating back.
“Don’t worry, I have no intention of disappearing into that mushroom cloud of yours. Not even in a puff of smoke,” said Uncle Bob silkily, turning to throw the words over his shoulder. “I’ll be back momentarily. In the meantime, now you can all talk about me.”
He didn’t slam the door behind him—quite. Nonetheless its closing was emphatic enough to make a point
Jack, rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers as though he was suffering from the very headache whose spectre Uncle Bob had invoked, glanced towards the door to the bedroom.
“Is Fiana all right?” he asked, once again.
“She’s sleeping,” Sabrina said. “She’s taken a beating, but I think she will be okay.” She got to her feet. “In fact, I think I’ll just go look in on her. Come on, Jack, you can see for yourself.”
She turned the full glow of her smile on Jack, and Paul, who hadn’t been invited to tag along, suddenly turned away and crossed the room to stand staring out of the window into the darkness. This proved to be less than a wise move, because he could clearly see Jack and Sabrina reflected in the window pane as they slipped into the bedroom where Fiana was. Jack swung the door almost closed behind him. For some reason the sight made Paul grind his teeth.
Fiana was asleep, but she was not sleeping quietly. She appeared to be in the grip of a nightmare, her head tossing back and forth on the pillow, her eyes squeezed tight-shut in an expression that was half pain and half terror. Sabrina sat down on the edge of the bed and laid a cool palm on Fiana’s forehead. In a moment or two Fiana sighed; her face cleared, and her mouth almost curved up into a smile. She turned under Sabrina’s hand, like a child, and tucked her knees into her chin. Sabrina smoothed wayward tendrils of hair from Fiana’s eyes.
“You have a healer’s touch,” Jack said, watching.
Sabrina looked up and smiled. “Always did. I was forever healing sparrows’ broken wings.”
“I meant more than children’s games,” Jack said.
“Don’t,” said Sabrina faintly. “When it mattered… I could not…”
<<>>
Sabrina was seven years old that summer. “She’s just a child,” everyone said, meaning well, and kept her mother’s door closed to her except for brief, very brief, visits. Often it was just after her mother had been given her medication, something that made her drowsy and frequently too vague to talk to. Sometimes Sabrina stayed only for minutes, listening to her mother whisper things that made no sense, occasionally slipping into her own native Scots Gaelic which sounded like incantations to her daughter.
“She does sleep better after the child’s been in there,” someone noted, but it was lost in the desperation of those days, with everyone watching Sabrina’s mother slip away a little more every day.
Sabrina’s father was rarely there. When he was at home he did spend hours sitting by his dying wife’s bedside, doing God knew what behind that closed door; but he was not there all the time. The officious, practical nurses, dressed in crisp white uniforms and soft shoes so as not to disturb their patient, often shooed Sabrina away from her mother’s door.
“She needs to rest.” That was a classic, the most frequent ban—as if Sabrina wanted her mother to play with her. She would have been content to sit and read; if her father could spend hours sitting with her mother and it didn’t matter then why would they not let her…? But when she came back to the door with a piece of driftwood she thought her mother would like, or a handkerchief wrapped around sprigs of lavender from the garden, or a broken shell where the mysterious inner spirals were broken open and naked to the world, or a quiescent small bird whose broken leg she had healed and who sat, tame and trusting, between her hands – she and the treasures she would have laid at her mother’s feet were turned away every time. “She needs to rest.”
There was always someone on guard duty, the door always closed, except on those carefully sanctioned and supervised short visits that Sabrina was allowed. She missed her mother, ferociously, the gentle sweet woman who had told her stories of faerie and of changelings, of the myths and magic of her native Scotland, who had listened to Sabrina’s own childish made-up tales with every appearance of seriousness, her small hands clasped tranquilly on her lap and then reaching to smooth her daughter’s hair back with a gentle, tender motion. There was something wistful in her smile, always, but she had smiled a lot—and there had always been a smile for Sabrina. And now she was taken away, beyond barricades, and Sabrina fretted and pined for what had been taken.
One day in late summer, with the weather unseasonably hot and oppressive and the sky bleached white with the heat, the duty nurse must have left her post to wash her face in cool water or get a drink down in the kitchen. For the first time in months the door to the bedroom where the sick woman lay was unguarded, even invitingly ajar. Sabrina, who had been skulking past in the corridor, stopped and stared at her mother’s bedroom door for a moment.
It had been instilled in her that this was wrong, that her wanting to “tire her mother out” was wrong, that her presence in the sick-room was not wanted, was actively discouraged. But this—this was a gift, and there was nobody to tell Sabrina to go away. The house was still around her. All the windows were open, hoping for some stray breeze to come and stir the curtains, but there was no movement in the air, nothing except a promise of something that was coming, dark and dreadful, still waiting beyond the horizon. The day tasted coppery, electric, full of unreleased power.
And the door was open.
Sabrina pushed it wider with her foot, almost slyly. It was entirely possible that the nurse was inside and that the small movement would alert her to this unsanctioned visit, and it would all be over once again. But nothing moved inside the room. Emboldened, Sabrina stepped inside.
The windows were open here, too, but the curtains were half drawn in order to limit the light in the room to a violet twilight. Her mother’s bed brooded in shadows, but Sabrina could see her mother’s thin, pale face on the pillow, her eyes closed. There were dark circles under her eyes. Her bedside table was a jumble of medicine bottles, a glass half-full of water that looked yellow in the half-light, a small clock ticking softly to itself in the shadowed silence. She looked asleep, and Sabrina was about to obey the instinct drilled into her—“she should rest”—when her mother’s eyes suddenly flickered open.
“Nurse…? Is that you?”
“No, Mam, it’s me,” Sabrina said in a low voice, startled into the reply, suddenly frightened. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you…”
“Sabrina?…” Anna Warne whispered, trying to focus on her daughter’s face. “You didn’t wake me. I was just resting my eyes. Come inside.”
Turning guiltily to see where the guardian nurse was—for surely she would be evicted as soon as the nurse returned—Sabrina walked over to her mother’s bed. Anna patted the coverlet beside her.
“Sit,” she said softly. “Come sit with me. Tell me something nice. What did you do today?”
“I found a white feather on the beach,” Sabrina said. “I saw porpoises playing out in the bay, or at least I think they were porpoises. There were seals, too, I could see at least one of them sunning out on the rocks there.”
“I know where they sun themselves,” Anna whispered. “And the porpoises. I’ve seen them out there… talk to me…”
“They say there will be a storm later,” Sabrina said. “It’s been very hot and stuffy. Mrs Curnow has made lemonade.” She reached out almost diffidently, as though Anna would break at the touch, and stroked her mother’s hand. “I miss you so much…”
“I know, my darling. I miss you too.”
“They won’t let me come and see you,” Sabrina said.”
“I know…”
Anna’s eyelids fluttered closed again, her hand closed around her daughter’s. Her forehead was sheened in a light sweat, and her fair hair plastered to her temples with it. Her breathing was uneven.
“When you see your father,” she said unexpectedly, “tell him I love him very much… and tell him to take care of you…”
