“Come on, then, Bear,” Grog said with a sigh, sprinkling a bit of brine over her chest. “Seems you and I are going home lonesome. Snow, get on the boat, child. I’ve no taste for blubbering send-offs.”
But Snow, her pale hair catching the last light of the sun, stepped backwards into Sigrid’s arms. “I’m staying,” she said uncertainly. “Muireann is not my home. There is nothing for me there. If the captain will take me, I will call this ship mother and father. Perhaps some morning I will wake up and my body will have flushed dark and rose again.” She smiled, and the smile warmed her face like a swinging lantern.
“Of course we’ll take you,” the Saint said. “Tommy bade us never turn away a recruit—we are a family of monsters, and the birth of new beasts is a cause for joy. There is so much for us to do—the sea and the tide are ours again.”
The planks were unlashed and the ships separated like twins within their mother’s womb. The Maidenhead sailed west, her sails blazing with light. Grog and Eyvind remained on the dilapidated Witch’s Kiss, turning east, away from the sun and into the gloomy twilight. The Magyr looked after the bear, who stood on the foredeck, staring after the red smear of the receding ship, his great shoulders slumped in grief.
“Come on, love,” she said, feeling strangely tender suddenly, “I’ll take you home.”
“Muireann is not my home, either. But I am not monster enough, it seems, to be offered a place at sea.” Grog searched for a grain in the boards, uncomfortable with his mourning.
“Then I’ll take you north, Evvy,” she said brightly, her voice like buttered rum. “To your real home. You can go back now, right, and rest with your own people? That’s something, don’t you think? Don’t you miss the Stars a-shining on the glaciers, like a thousand candles?”
Eyvind turned his ursine head towards her. “I do,” he admitted.
“Then I steer north, old bear. And when you’ve felt the snow beneath your paws again, the world won’t seem so black. At least, that’s my guess. Who can tell with your lot?” Grog ran a hand through her green hair.
The white bear walked gingerly over the decks to her tub and settled his bulk down next to it. He laid his head on the wooden rim, and, as the last ribbons of day unwound from the sky, slept.
In the Garden
DAWN STOLE THROUGH THE VIOLET CURTAINS, STAINING THEM RED AS calf’s blood. The girl sat on the damp grass, her face ringed in orange and gold, smiling up at the boy as he sat in his window, shaded from the warm day which still grew, like a fat child.
“That was a wonderful story!” he cried, a little too loudly. The girl hushed him, leaping up and laying her finger over his lips. He thrilled at her touch, like dry wood touched by a spark. They looked at each other for a moment, her dark-rimmed eyes seeming to swallow him until he saw the sun no more, only those twin moons, shadowed and secret.
She took her hand from his face and stretched her limbs like a young lion. “Yes, and I shall tell you another even more strange and wonderful tomorrow, if you will return to the Garden, to the night, and to me…”
She turned and ran back up the cypress path, past the stable, and into the rows of dew-strung apple trees, her gray skirts trailing behind her.
The boy shivered with delight, his skin full of gooseflesh in the chill morning, and climbed back beneath his furs to dream of a red ship sailing into the sun.
Dinarzad lay awake, still as death in her bed, and her eyes were full of tears.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A few brief thanks:
To Sean Wallace, Nick Mamatas, and Jeff VanderMeer for their early faith in me and generous advice.
To Deborah Schwartz and Sonya Taaffe for their inspiration and patient ears.
To Juliet Ulman for her unerring instinct and guidance, and Michele Rubin for her kind shepherding.
Finally, to Sam Barris and Dmitri and Melissa Zagidulin, without whose unflagging support, love, and thoughtful criticism this book would have been impossible.
THE ORPHAN’S TALES: IN THE NIGHT GARDEN
A Bantam Spectra Book / November 2006
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
All rights reserved