The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [50]
Appetite gone, she folded up the paper and tossed it in the recycle bin, then took the leftovers and dishes to the kitchen. Finished, she went back to the sofa and sat. The box from the Seekers lurked in the corner, sinister in its blankness.
Deliberately, she pulled her gaze from the box and reached for the wooden case that held her mandolin. It was too quiet in this place; every thought was like a shout in her head. Maybe a little music would help. She strummed the mandolin and winced. The poor thing could never seem to hold a tune in the damp London air. She tightened the strings, then strummed again. This time she smiled at the warm tone that rose from the instrument, a sound as welcome and familiar as the greeting of an old friend.
She plucked out a lilting Irish air. It was the first tune she had learned to play as a girl at her grandmother's house. She supposed she had been no more than eight or nine, and small for her age, so that she had barely been able to finger chords and strum at the same time. Now the mandolin nestled perfectly against the curve of her body, as if it had been fashioned just for her.
More songs came to her fingertips, bright and thrumming, or slow and deep as a dreaming ocean. Her mind drifted as she played, back to the days when she had been a bard, wandering to a new place, earning a little money with her music, then moving on. That was before she had ever heard of Jack Graystone or Grace Beckett. Before Travis Wilder was anything other than a gentle saloonkeeper in a small Colorado town with whom she had almost had an affair. Before she met Hadrian Farr in that smoky pub in Edinburgh, fell like countless other foolish women for the mystery in his dark eyes, and found her way into the Seekers.
It was only as she thought how strange and unexpected were the journeys on which life could lead one that she realized it was a song about journeys she was playing. In a low voice, she sang along with the final notes.
We live our lives a circle,
And wander where we can.
Then after fire and wonder,
We end where we began.
Her fingers slipped from the strings, and the music faded away. A chill stole over her, and she shivered. What had made her choose that song?
She had found the music and lyrics two years ago in the Seekers' file on James Sarsin. Sarsin had been the focus of one of the Seekers' most famous cases. He had lived in and around London for several centuries before abruptly disappearing in the 1880s after his bookshop burned. After that, the Seekers lost track of him. It was only recently, through Deirdre's work, that they discovered James Sarsin was in fact one and the same with Travis Wilder's antique dealer friend Jack Graystone.
Among the few papers recovered from Sarsin's burnt bookshop were several sheaves of music. One of them was “Fire and Wonder.” The music had been transcribed in a manner Deirdre had never seen before, but at last she had managed to decipher the code and learn the song. She had played it in Travis Wilder's saloon, curious to see if it would get a reaction from him.
And it did, Deirdre, though not for the reason you thought. He didn't hear it from Jack Graystone. He heard it from a bard on another world.
She hadn't played the song since that day. It was a simple tune, pretty, yet there was a sadness to it that made her heart ache. Again she strummed the last few chords. The words reminded her of something. Something that had happened in Castle City, something she had forgotten.
She set down the mandolin and moved over to the trunk where she had stowed her few belongings. After a bit of rummaging, she pulled out a leather-bound