Thief Eyes - Janni Lee Simner [65]
It was because of Mom that I knew what it was like to have someone disappear and never return.
I wiped the sweat from my neck. My skin was fever-hot. “You swear you’ll come back?” I asked Freki. “Eventually?”
“You have my word.” The little fox glanced toward Muninn. “So long as you remember me in this world, I will return to it.”
My throat hurt. “Of course I’ll remember you.”
Ari gave my hand a quick squeeze. I swallowed hard and reached for the knife.
Muninn gave an angry krawk and launched himself from the ground, flying up to the church. He perched beside the little birds. “Have a care, Haley.”
I can’t do this. I stroked Freki’s head with my free hand. So soft—softer than bear fur, softer than anything I knew. He sat back and gazed at me through brown fox eyes, waiting. I moved my hand to his back and gently took hold of the scruff of his neck. Around my wrist, the handkerchief began to smolder. I brought the blade toward Freki’s throat. My hand shook.
“Quickly, Haley, please.”
I drew the knife across his fur, gasping as it bit the skin beneath. Yet that was only his skin—I pushed harder and felt a sickening pop as the blade severed the vessels beneath. Freki twitched, once, and was still. Muninn let out a piercing cry. And then hot blood spurted from the wound, onto my hand and sleeve. Its coppery scent was everywhere.
Ari shoved the bowl under the little fox to catch the blood, even as Freki’s open eyes went dull. I dropped the knife and grabbed Freki’s legs to hold him over the bowl. So much blood—it stopped spurting and began to pour from the wound, filling the bowl. Too soon it was done. The flow of blood slowed, then stopped. Freki hung limp in my hold, his white chest drenched with red. Hot tears burned down my face. What kind of monster was I?
“Don’t you dare waste this gift!” Muninn’s wings beat furiously at the air. Wind picked up around us, and the rain began falling again—had it ever stopped? I scratched Freki behind the ears one more time. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and laid him gently on the grass.
Ari’s eyes were damp, too, but he just pointed to the stone and the coin. I dropped them both into the bowl and repeated the spell. This time the liquid began to boil.
I shoved my hand into it. The blood didn’t seem so hot now—or maybe my skin burned just as hot. I shut my eyes and saw flames once more. A fiery hand reached into the liquid. I heard a deep, satisfied sound.
“Ah. Better,” the rough fire-voice said. “Much better. We accept your gift. Cast your spell. We’ll be ready for you and for your world, should you fail.” A hot shudder ran through me at the words.
The flames rose higher. Through them I saw a clear sky with a broad path beneath it. I saw back, past the years of my own life, to a time before cars and airplanes, when homes were made of wood and grass, when dragon ships sailed the seas and cloth was woven on weighted looms. I saw stories released from their pages, not bound in books but free to be spoken and remembered. I saw—
My mother standing on the path, almost close enough to touch, her face streaked with angry tears. She looked up at me, and for a moment our eyes met. “Mom,” I said, stunned, the heat that burned in me forgotten. Was it really her? The path pulled me toward her, and I reached out my hands.
My hands and gaze were wrenched away. “Mom!” I fought to look back, but the path pulled me on, past other women: the grandmother I barely knew, because she lived in Canada; the great-grandmother I’d met only in old photos; her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother in turn. The heat came with me. I feared if I looked at my hands I’d see not skin, but flame.
I saw beyond the oldest, crumbliest pictures to other women with fair hair and fair eyes. Each of them looked at me in turn, and then my gaze was pulled farther back, and farther still, for countless generations