As we were getting ready, Kid 2 complained that she had no socks.

Gordon: Your mom bought a ton of socks.  They’re in the bag in our bedroom.

Kid 2, putting on socks in slow motion: Hum, hum, hum…

Gordon and I standing around, waiting to get ready.

Kid 2: Hum-hum-hum

Gordon: Is there any chance you can walk out of here so Mom and I can get dressed?

Kid 2, squinting her eyes, in a serious voice: One does not simply walk out of Mordor…

Right now thinking seems too overwhelming.  I think I’m just too tired.  Technically, I know that being under stress results in physical fatigue, but I forget and sit there, wondering why is it I am so tired.  Oh, yes, that’s right.  That.  This weekend we just crashed, pretty much all of us, and I’m looking forward to a dinner with friends later.

We have a very important meeting on Tuesday.  After the meeting, we’ll know more about our situation. Trying not to dread, but it’s creeping up on me anyway.

In other fun news, watched the Devil Inside Me.  Stupidest ending ever.

Also watched the Chernobyl Diaries.  Scary zombie-type movie.  The city where I grew up wasn’t that far from Chernobyl.   We were warned about strange vegetables on the market (apple-sized oddly shaped strawberries) and told to carry umbrellas, because people were afraid of toxic rains for a while.  I told the kids an old joke we used to say about having to carry an umbrella to school so the rain doesn’t make you go bald, and they were horrified.  I guess black humor doesn’t work for teenagers when vital things like hair is on the line.

 Chapter One

I spun the spear.  “One more argument and I’ll ground you.”

Julie rolled her eyes with all of the scorn a fourteen year old could muster.  “Kate, like when will I ever use this in real life?”

“You’ll use it in the next five seconds to keep me from impaling you.”

I struck at her midsection, slowly.  Julie rotated her spear like an oar and slapped mine, knocking it down.

“And?”

She gave me a completely blank look. Most of the time she took practice seriously, but on days like this some switch malfunctioned in her head, disconnecting her brain from her body.

Around us the Pack woods teemed with life.  The sun shone bright.  Leaves rustled in the breeze.  Squirrels dashed to and fro on the branches, completely undeterred by several hundreds were-carnivores living next door.  In the distance a faint sound of chain saws rumbled – the narrow road leading to the Keep was in danger of becoming impassable and a team of shapeshifters had been dispatched this morning to cut down some of the trees.

A yellow butterfly floated up.  Julie watched it.

I pulled my spear back, reversed it, and stabbed her in the left shoulder with the butt.

“Ow!”

“Pay attention.”

“My arm hurts.”

“Then you better block me, so I don’t make something else hurt.”

“This is child abuse.”

“Stop whining. Oar block.”

I spun the spear business end forward and stabbed at her again, in slow motion.  Julie pinned my spear with hers and stayed there.

“Don’t just sit there with your spear.  You have an opening, do something about it.”

She raised her spear and made a half-hearted attempt to stab me in the chest.  I gave her a second to recover, but she didn’t move. That’s it.  I’ve had it.

I turned the spear and swept her legs from under her.  She fell on her back and I drove the spear in the ground a couple of inches from her neck.  She blinked, pale blond hair fanned out wide from her head.

“What is your deal today?”

“Kevin asked Maddie to the Moon Dance.”

Maddie, a werebear, was Julie’s best friend and the Moon Dance was the Pack’s way of letting the teenagers blow off steam – every other Friday evening, provided magic was down, the shapeshifters hauled the speakers out and blasted dance music from the Keep’s battlements.  Being invited to the Moon Dance was understandably a big deal.  It still didn’t explain why two months of lessons and spear practice vanished from my ward’s head.

“So?”

“I’m supposed to help pick the outfit,” Julie said, laying there like a slug.

“And this is more important than practice?”

“Yes!”

I pulled my spear out.  “Fine.  Go do your thing. You’ll owe me an hour on Saturday.”  No force on the planet could make her concentrate when she got like this, so making her practice was a waste of time anyway.

The slug-child turned into a nimble gazelle and sprung to her feet.  “Thank you!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

We headed out of the woods.  The world blinked for a second and a tide of magic splashed us, drowning the woods.  The chain saws sputtered and died, followed by loud cursing.

The official name for a phenomenon was Post-Shift resonance, but everyone referred to it as magic waves.  They’d come out of nowhere and roll across the world, snuffing out electricity, killing internal combustion engines, strangling guns, and spitting monsters.  Nobody could predict how long they would last and then they’d vanish without a warning.

The trees parted, revealing a vast grassy field.  In the middle of it the Keep rose like a grey man-made mountain, an example of what happened if several hundred deeply paranoid and superhumanly strong people got together and decided they needed a safe place to crash.  From one angle, the Keep resembled a modern fortress, from another, a medieval castle.  We approached from the north, which gave us a view of the main tower, and from this point, the place looked like a grim, foreboding high rise, complete with a penthouse, where Curran and I made our lair.

It wasn’t always this way.  We didn’t start out by looking at each other and instantly deciding we were soul mates.  When we met, I thought his attitude needed a serious adjustment, preferably by means of a boot to the head, and he entertained ideas of throwing me out of the nearest window to relieve his frustration. But now we were together.  He was a Beast Lord and I was his Consort, which out me in position of authority over fifteen hundred people.  I didn’t want it and given the choice, I would walk away from it, but it was the price I had to pay to stay with Curran.  I loved him and he was worth it.

We circled the Keep and passed through the wide open gates into the inner courtyard.  A group of shapeshifters worked on one of Pack’s vehicles, a modified Jeep, its hood bloated and misshapen by the need to contain two engines, one for gasoline, another for enchanted water.  They waved at us as we walked by.  We waved back.  The shapeshifters accepted me, partially because I fought for my position and gave them no choice, partially because while Curran was fair, he also had a low tolerance for bullshit.  We didn’t always agree on things but if the appeal had been made to me directly, he wouldn’t overrule me, and the Pack liked having an option of a second opinion.

The reinforced steel door stood wide open.  Late May in Georgia was hot and the summer would get hotter.  Trying to air-condition the Keep was a losing proposition, so every door and window was open in an effort to create a breeze.  We went through into a narrow hallway and started up the enormous staircase that was the bane of my existence.

Second floor.

Third floor. Stupid stairs.

“Consort!”

The urgency in the female voice made me spin around.  An older woman ran toward me through the third floor hallway, her eyes opened wide, her mouth slack.  Meredith.  Maddie’s mother.

“They’re killing them!”  She grabbed onto me.  “They’re going to kill my girls!”

Every shapeshifter in the hallway froze.  Putting hands on an alpha counted as assault. Ahead Tony, one of Doolittle’s assistants, rounded the corner, running.  “Meredith!  Wait!”

Dolittle was the Pack’s medmage. Dread washed over me. There was only one reason the Pack’s medic would ever kill a child.

“Kate?  What’s happening?  Where is Maddie?”  Julie’s voice spiked into high pitch.

“Help me!”  Meredith clenched my arm.  My bones groaned.  “Don’t let them kill my babies.”

Tony halted, not sure what to do next.

I kept my voice calm.  “Take me to your children.”

“This way.  Doolittle has them.”  Meredith let go of me and pointed down the hallway.

“What’s going on?” Julie squeaked.

I marched down the hall.  “We’ll find out in a minute.”

Tony caught on and fell in behind us after we passed.  The hallway brought us to the medical ward.

“He’s in the back,” Tony said.  “I’ll show you.”

He took the lead and we followed him through the hospital wing to a round room.  Six long narrow hallways led from the room, concrete grey tunnels.  Tony picked the one straight ahead.  A steel door with tell-tale silver sheen waited at the end.  We walked to it, the sound of our steps bouncing off the walls.  Three bars, each as thick as my wrist, guarded the door, for now unlocked.  My heart sank.  I didn’t want to see what was behind it.

Tony grabbed the thick metal bracket that served as the door’s handle, strained, and pulled it open, revealing a gloom-shrouded room.  I stepped through.  To my right, Doolittle stood next to some chairs, a black man in his early fifties, with a dark skin and silver-salted hair..  He turned to look at me, and his usually kind eyes told me everything I needed to know: my worst fear was true and there was no hope.

To my left were two plexiglass prison cells, drenched in feylantern light.   Steel and silver bars wrapped around each cell.  I could see no doors.  The only access to the cells was through a vending-machine style drop in the front.

Inside the cells two monsters waited.  Misshapen, grotesque, their bodies twisted into a horrible nightmare of semi-human parts, oversized claws, and patches of dense fur, they cowered in the corner, separated by the plexiglass and bars, but huddling together all the same. Their faces, with oversized jaws and oddly distorted teeth, wouldn’t just stop you in your tracks, they’d give you a lifetime of flashbacks.

The monster on the left raised its head.  Two human blue eyes looked at us, brimming with terror and pain.

“Maddie!” Julie dropped by the bars.  “Maddie!”

The other monster stirred.  I recognized the shock of brown hair.  Maddie and Margo.  Julie’s best friend and her twin sister were going loup.

Every shapeshifter had to face a choice: to keep his humanity by imposing order and strict discipline and practicing constant restraint or to surrender to the violent cravings generated by presence of Lyc-V, the shapeshifter virus,  and become an insane loup.  Loups murdered, tortured, and reveled in pain of others.  They could no longer maintain a pure human or animal form. Once a shapeshifter went loup, there was no turning back.  The Pack put them down.

During the times of extreme stress the Lyc-V bloomed, exploding in huge numbers within the shapeshifter’s body.  Adolescence, with its hormone fluctuation and emotional roller coasters,   was the most stressful time a shapeshifter faced.  A quarter of the children didn’t survive it.

“Tell him,” Meredith pleaded.  “Tell him not to kill my children.”

Doolittle looked at me.  The girls were his grandnieces.

The Pack had a complicated way of figuring out the probability of loupism based on the amount of virus in the blood.  “What’s the Lycos number?”

“Two thousand six hundred for Maddie and two thousand four  hundred for Margo,” he said.

Over a thousand was pretty much a guarantee of loupism.

“How long have they been like this?” I asked.

“Since two o’clock last night,” Doolittle said.

I felt cold all over.  It was over.  It was over hours ago.

Julie held on to the bars.  My heart constricted into a painful hard ball.  A few months ago, she looked just like that, a mess of human and animal, her body ravaged by the virus.  I still had nightmares where I stood over her, while she growled at me, strapped into a hospital bed, and when I woke up, I’d walk down to her room in the middle of the night just to reassure myself she was alive and well.

“Please, Consort.  Please.”  Meredith whispered.  “You made Julie recover.”

She had no idea what she was asking.  The price was too high.  Even if I would agree to it – which I wouldn’t – purging the virus from Julie required magic of a full coven, power of several priests, and my near death.  It was a one time thing, and I couldn’t replicate it.

“Julie recovered because of her magic,” I lied, keeping my voice gentle.

“Please!”

“I’m so sorry.”  The words tasted like crushed glass in my mouth.  There was nothing I could do.

“You can’t!”  Julie turned to me.  “You can’t kill Maddie.   You don’t know.  She might still come out of it.”

No, they wouldn’t.  I knew it but I glanced at Doolittle anyway.  He shook his head.  If there was a chance of recovery, the girls would’ve shown the signs by now.  Looking at them hurt.

“They just need more time.” Meredith grasped onto Julie’s words like a drowning man grabbed at a straw.  “Just more time.”

“We will wait,” I said.

“We would be only prolonging it,” Doolittle said quietly.

“We will wait,” I repeated. It was the least we could do for her. “Sit with me, Meredith.”

We sat together in the neighboring chairs.

“How long?” Doolittle asked quietly.

I looked at Meredith.  She was staring at her daughters.  Tears ran down her face.

“As long as it takes.”

 ***

I checked the clock on the wall.  We had been in the room for over three hours.  The girls showed no change.  Occasionally one, then the other, would rage, pounding on plexiglass, snarling in mindless rage, then they would drop to the floor, exhausted.

Doolittle had left for the a couple of hours, but now he was back, sitting off by himself near the other wall.  He hadn’t said a word.

Meredith slipped off her chair.  She sat on the floor by the plexiglass and began to sing.  Her voice shook.

“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word…”

Oh God.

Margo stirred and crawled to her mother, dragging one twisted leg behind her. Maddie followed.  They huddled together, the three of them, pressed against the plexiglass.  There was so much desperation in Meredith’s song.  It was woven from years of love and hope.

Julie rose and slipped out of the room.

I listened to Meredith sing and wished I had more magic.  Different magic.  I wished I could make this go away, just wave my arms, pay whatever price I had to pay, and make everything be okay.  I wanted so desperately to make everything okay.  But all I could do was kill.

Meredith had fallen silent.

Julie returned, carrying a snicker bar.  She unwrapped it, broke the candy in a half, and dropped each piece through the slits.

Maddie reached out.  Her hand with four stubby nubs of fingers and a single four inch claw speared the candy.  She pulled it to her.  Her jaws unhinged and she took one tiny bite of chocolate with crooked teeth.

Margo lunged at the glass, snarling and crying.  The half a foot thick plexiglass didn’t even shudder.  She hurled herself against it again, and again, wailing.  Each time her body hit the wall, Meredith’s shoulders jerked.

The door opened and Curran walked in.  His face was grim.  He walked past me to Doolittle and handed him a small plastic bag filled with olive paste.

Doolittle opened the bag and sniffed the contents.  His eyes widened.  “Where…”

Curran shook his head.

“Is that the salve?”  Meredith stared at the bag.

The salve was produced by European shapeshifters and guarded like gold.  The Pack had been trying to reverse-engineer it for years and got nowhere.  The herbal mixture reduced chances of loupism at birth by seventy five percent and reversed mid-transformation in one third of teenagers.  There used to be a man in Atlanta who somehow managed to smuggle it in small batches and sold it to the Pack at exorbitant prices, but a few weeks ago the shapeshifters had found him floating in a pond with his throat cut.  Jim’s security crew tracked the killers to coast.  They had sailed out of our jurisdiction.  Where did he get it?

“There is only enough for a single dose,” Doolittle said, his voice hollow.

Damn it.

“You must choose,” Doolittle said.

“I can’t.”  Meredith shrunk back.

How the hell could you choose one child over the other?

“Split it,” Curran said.

“My lord, we have a chance to save one of them…”

“I said split it.” Curran growled. His eyes flashed gold. Something was seriously wrong and it wasn’t just Maddie and Margo.

Doolittle clamped his mouth shut.

Curran moved back and leaned against the wall, his arms crossed.

The paste was split in two equal portions.  Tony mixed each into a pound of ground beef and dropped it into the cells.  Seconds crawled by, towing minutes in their wake.

Margo jerked.  The fur on her body melted.  Her bones folded on themselves, shrank, realigned… She cried out and a human girl, naked and bloody, fell to the floor.

“Margo!” Meredith called.  “Margo, honey, answer me.  Answer me, baby.”

“Mom?” Margo whispered.

Maddie’s body shuddered.  Her limbs twisted.  The distortion in her body shrunk, but the signs of animal remained.

“She’s down to two,” Doolittle said.

The shift coefficient, the measure of how much a body had shifted from one form to the other.  “What does that mean?”

“It’s progress,” he said.  “If we had more of the salve.”

But we didn’t.  Tony hadn’t just emptied the bag, he had cut it and rubbed the inside of the plastic on the meat and then scraped it clean with the back of the knife.

“How long can you keep her under?” Curran asked.

“How long is necessary?”  Doolittle asked.

“Three months,” Curran said.

“You’re asking me to induce a coma.”

“Can you do it?”

“Yes,” Doolittle said.  “The alternative is termination.”

Curran’s voice was clipped.  “Effective immediately, all loupism-related terminations of children are suspended.  Sedate them instead.”

He turned and walked out.

I paused for half a second to tell Julie that it will be okay and chased after him.

The hallway was empty.  The Beast Lord was gone.

We are deeply grateful.

Some announcements

• Blog comments.  We are aware that the blog comments went haywire.  Something broke.  I don’t know what broke.  I don’t have the endurance and stamina to fix it, so we have a new theme.  This was NOT in the plan, but it’s easier for me to just load a brand new thing and not worry about it.  Sorry – I know it’s annoying, but right now I honestly don’t have the brain power to sift through dozens of php files.  This theme fits with the whole orange Andrea cover, so we’re going with that. (Yes, it is Atlanta in the image.  I was feeling sorry for myself and so I wrecked it in Photoshop as destructive therapy.)
• Emails.  If you emailed me and I didn’t reply, your email is probably in the queue to be replied to and we’ll get to it eventually.
• B, H, and Y, thank you so much for the beta feedback.  It helped tremendously.
• Omnibus: there is talk of Beginning of Kate omnibus, which will be released in trade paperback form and will contain first two books in the series.  We are not sure if any new material will be included in it.  I will let you know as soon as we know.
• Thanks to you Kate won this round of Alpha’s showdown.  I had offered a bribe for it yesterday on Twitter, which is the beginning of Kate 6.  So I’m going to go and write that beginning and post what I have by afternoon.

Thank you once again.

Yes, he is still alive. Why do you ask?

Not having the pressure of an “official” book for a little while is nice.  It leaves me able to do other things.  List of things I have cooked today (all for dinner, since everyone wanted different goodies):

• pork fried rice
• light curry soup
• shrimp stir-fry
• loads of rice (Gordon bought me a new huge rice cooker)
• strawberry shortcake

Oliver is providing me with the pleasure of his company

Kid 2 was in a play. She was the thug leader. She was awesome.

This is Paul. He was adopted during a Petsmart fair, because Moom! and It's Not Fair! and I just want a kitten! So far Paul made friends with Oliver and destroyed half of my plants.

Both girls had a birthday, although I can’t post pictures because both parties were at the pool.  Both got Hunger Games cake and additional cakes to have food fights with.  I had a nice Mother’s day and got Sony noise cancelling headphones – I’ve been making shark circles around them in Best Buy, but didn’t buy them because they were expensive -  and Big Trouble in Little China on Blue-Ray.

And that about wraps it up for now. Still here, still carrying on.

A small sample:

Charlotte stepped inside.  Lark sat on the couch, her legs tucked under her, a book spread in front of her.

“I need your help,” Charlotte said.  “We’re going to visit a dangerous part of town.

Lark uncoiled from the couch.  “I’ll get my sword.”

Half an hour later, wrapped in a hooded cloak, Charlotte dropped two gold doubloons on the counter of Palace of Delights.  “Miranda.”

The proprietor, an older woman in a crushed silk gown didn’t even blink.  “Second floor, blue door.”

The blue door opened into a comfortable room with a canopy bed, all in various shades of red.  The sheets were black silk.  A thick red rug hid the floor.  The furnishings were rich but slightly vulgar.

A moment and a woman walked through the door.  She was slender, blond, and doe-eyed.  She saw Lark.

“I don’t do kids.”

Charlotte dropped a stack of coins on the table.  “Let’s talk.”

“Who about?”

“Brennan.”

Miranda shrugged.  “He comes, he fucks, he leaves.  If you’re looking for state secrets, he doesn’t share.”

“Tell me about his kinks.  What does he like?”

Miranda sat on the bed.  “Nothing too twisted.  He likes to feel he owns you.  Sometimes he makes me crawl to him and beg him to fuck me.  I don’t care – as long as he’s paying.  He’s got this thing about all women being secretly whores.  Sometimes he makes me dress up into a nice prim outfit, formal gown, flowers in the hair, the whole thing, and blow him.  He gets off on the perversity of it, I guess.”

“Thank you.  Are you aware that you’re infected witH Dock Rot?”

Miranda grimaced.  “I know.  Damn soldiers.  I already used my poultice.”

After the perfumed air of the Palace of Delights, the cold night breeze felt refreshing.  Charlotte and Lark walked down the street.  Charlotte walked fast.  Regrettably the closest parking lot was a brisk five minute walk away and the neighborhood wasn’t exactly safe.

“Making her crawl to him is sick,” Lark said.

“Brennan likes to debase women.  He also likes to feel powerful.”

“Why did we need to know that?”

“Because he didn’t buy Richard’s story and now it’s my turn.  I need to capture his attention.”

Lark mulled it over.  “Just like that?”

“Brennan is power-hungry and I’m his type: tall and blond.”

They turned into the parking lot.  Two men blocked their way. The taller of the two flashed a knife.  “Money.  Now.”

Nice tactic.  The Palace had to have maintained security, because mugged patrons were bad for business.  Someone either noticed that they left early and surmised they were looking for information rather than pleasure or Miranda had raised an alarm.  Likely the first option – the proprietor had given them a sharp look when they left, and Miranda was paid too well to blab.  Now they were being scared off, just in case they had any thoughts of coming back.

“Money, you cow!” The man raised his knife.

“May I?” Lark asked.  “Please?”

“Leave or she will kill you,” Charlotte said.

“Suit yourself, whore.”  The man lunged and gasped as his arm slid off his body and fell to the pavement.  His mouth gaped open in a horrified beginning of the scream.  He never got to make one.  Lark swept past him and he crumpled to the floor.   The other thug backed away, his hands in the air, and fled into the night.

Lark pulled a cloth from her tunic and cleaned the blood off her blade.

Charlotte looked at the body on the ground. He was beyond her skill.  A child just ended the man’s life and seemed completely untroubled by it.

“Come.”  Charlotte headed toward their vehicle.  “Do you enjoy killing, Sophie?”

“I enjoy the shadows,” Lark said.

“The shadows?”

They got into the vehicle. Lark started the phaeton and they rolled off into the night.

“I am a warrior poised between light and darkness.  It’s difficult to explain.”

“I would appreciate if you tried anyway.”

Lark frowned, her profile, lit by the golden glow of the instruments panel, etched against the night outside.  “The death isn’t important. The only thing that matters is the moment of decision.  My path is a line.  My opponent’s path is another line.  In the instant we meet, we’re forever altered.  We may walk away or my line or his line may end, but for a brief time we exist in the same space on the verge of action and that space is full of possibilities.  It’s the moment in which I truly live.  It’s short.  It’s always so very short.”

Oh Sweet Mother of Kindness.  An old memory flashed before Charlotte.  She was sixteen, attending a dance during a summit with another College, and as she stood there, chatting with her friends, she saw an older boy looking at her from across the floor.  She saw admiration in his eyes.  In that brief instant, when their gazes met, an array of possibilities flashed before her: he could come over, he could talk to her, there could be a start of something…  It was a sweet kind of thrill, slightly frightening, but exciting.  But Lark found it in battle and she was addicted to it.  How could you even begin to fix something like that?

“Damn!”

The everything drawer jammed, one-third open.  Marina rattled it, trying to shake loose whatever kept it from sliding out.  In less than thirty six hours the entire family would converge on the house.  The kitchen looked like a war zone, the living room was a mess, and she still hadn’t purchased the Zinfandel to marinate the leg of lamb.  The garlic cloves had sprouted too, so she would have to pick up some.

The drawer resisted shaking.  Exasperated, she stepped back, crossed her arms on her chest, and glared at it.

“Open!”

Something snapped with a sharp wooden crack and the drawer flew open, its rollers slamming against the wooden frame with a shudder.  A small object shot out and hit her between the eyes.  “Ow!”

“What did you break?” Gregory asked from the living room.

“Nothing!”

She tossed the splintered wooden spoon into the garbage can and  bent to pick up the thing that hit her off the floor.  A key.  A small blue key, warm to the touch.  She couldn’t recall seeing it before.  How odd…

Her brother’s voice tugged on her attention.  “What are you looking for?”

“A can opener.”

“Just open it the other way.”

No time to investigate it now.  Marina tossed the key back into the drawer and rummaged through its contents.  Screwdriver, Scotch tape…  In her present state of mind, opening the can “the other way” wasn’t a good idea, not unless she planned on cooking the pumpkin pie straight in the can.  A bamboo skewer, a small blue key again…  Her fingertips brushed the key and tingled slightly as spark of power shot into her skin.

The phone rang.  She picked it up.  “Yes?”

“And how’s my favorite niece?”  The sheen of warmth in Lilian’s voice was too thin to fool her.  She had bought into it when she was a little girl.  She used to love to visit Lilian, until she figured out that all her aunt wished to do was to show off her pretty bright niece to her friends.  Like a cute dog that does charming tricks.

“Busy!”  Marina said.  “How are you?”

In the living room Gregory raised his head from a page of nuclear physics equations long enough to roll his eyes.

“I’d like you to know that I’m putting fifty dollars into the birthday account,” Lilian announced.

“Thank you very much.”

“Well, we can’t do it very often, but then grandmother has a birthday only once a year and she doesn’t have that many of them left.”

And you can’t wait.  Words hovered on Marina’s lips and she bit them back.  “We all appreciate your help very much.”

“Yes, well, I meant to tell you that Roger would like Walnut Chicken.  He’s been on about it for a week.”

Marina grimaced.  “I’m making lamb this year…”

“I already promised him you’d make the chicken.  You know how he loves his cousin’s cooking.”

A beep announced an incoming call.  “Would you excuse me for a moment, I have another call…”

A push of a button and grandmother’s shrill voice flooded the phone.  “Marina?  Are you there?”

“Yes, grandmother.”

“Do you want me to come over?”

Lord, no.  “No, I think we’re doing pretty well here.  But I’ll call you if I need help.”

“You don’t have to worry about desert.  I’m making chocolate cake,” grandmother announced.

The memory of last year’s grandma-made Napoleon thrust herself before Marina and she nearly gagged.

“Cake?” she croaked.  “That’s so nice.  But it’s your birthday.  Why don’t you take it easy and I’ll make the cake.”

“No, you don’t know how to make it right.”

“Yeah, grandma, she doesn’t put rancid sour cream into hers!” Gregory yelled.

She hated when he amplified the sound to eavesdrop.  She slapped her hand over the receiver and hissed in sharp whisper, “Stop it!”

“Marina?” grandmother’s voice came alarmed.  “Marina?”

“I wish you’d rest, grandma,” she said.  I have Lilian on the other line…”

“How is she?”

“I’m sure she’s well.  Why don’t you call her in a minute?  I really have to go now, grandma.”

She pushed the button and was greeted by the disconnect signal.  Once again, Lilian had outmaneuvered her.  Now she would have to make the chicken.   And she still hadn’t found the can opener.

Gregory wandered into the kitchen and picked up the can of pumpkin mix.  She felt him concentrate on the seal.  A thin invisible tendril of force stretched between her brother’s eyes and the can like a taut fishing line.  The can turned slowly on the tip of his finger and the seal peeled itself from its top.

“She hung up on you, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Now you’ll have to make the chicken.”

“Yes.”

She took the can from him and dumped its contents into a metal bowl.  Something clanked.

“Why do you do this every year?”  Gregory leaned against the cabinet.  “They’ll come and expect to be fed and want their asses kissed for contributing a measly fifty bucks so we can buy grandma a present she’ll complain about.  Nobody ever helps you.”

“You do.”  She thrust the can of evaporated milk at him.  He peeled off the lid and she dumped it into the pumpkin mix.

“You know what I mean.  When was the last time Lilian or Svetlana offered to wash the dishes after?  Or come early to help set the table.  We have four cousins and how many of them went to help grandma with the apples?  None.  But they all got some of the jam you made.  They come, they eat, they posture, and they leave.  Like Mongols.”

“I don’t do it for them.  I do it for grandmother,” she said.

“Why?  It’s not like she cares for us all that much.”

“She loves us in her own way.”

“If she loved us all that much, she’d leave us Granddad’s house.”

The mention of the house never failed to irritate her.  She put the key on the counter and got a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator.  “It’s not about that house.  I don’t do it for a handout.  I do it because she is our grandmother.”

“She’s shrewish and manipulative.”

“She’s old and insecure, Gregory.”  Marina snapped the carton’s lid open.

“Age isn’t an excuse for being an asshole.”

“That was disrespectful to your grandma and to me.”

He crossed his arms.  “Respect has to be earned.  You let everyone walk over you.  They did it to Mom and now they do it to you.”

She glared at him.  Hairline cracks crisscrossed the egg tops.

“Don’t you have an exam to get ready for?”

He went into the living room.  She picked two eggs from the carton and cracked them into a large bowl.  The worst part was that Gregory was right.  It was about the house.  She loved that house.  Grandad built it from the ground up.  They played in it as children.  From spring to mid-fall, she spent most of her weekends out there maintaining the garden and the two dozen fruit trees.  And now Lilian, who couldn’t tell an apple tree from a walnut, was going to get it all.

She had seen it coming and could do nothing about it.  It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.  First, grandma let everyone know she was making her will.  Then every time she’d visited to pick strawberries, to plant tomatoes, to snip extra shoots from the grape wines, grandmother would be on the phone with Lilian.  In the end, she heard the announcement from Aunt Ashley.  “Oh, by the way, have you heard?  Mom’s leaving her house to my sister.”

Then grandmother called, her voice tinny over the phone, “You’re not mad at me, are you?  I take care of you kids for all the time.”  Marina barked a short laugh, added evaporated milk to the eggs, and scraped the pumpkin mix into the bowl.  Take care of us.  Since when? The most she’d ever do was sweep the porch once in a while and she wanted a celebration to commemorate it.  When Granddad was alive, he was the one…

Marina took a deep breath.  It wasn’t any use to get herself worked up.  Yes, she could’ve sucked up to Grandma and gotten the house, but in the end, it wouldn’t be worth it.  She plugged the mixer in and turned it on.

Metal rang as the blades caught something.  She shut the mixer off and fished in the pie mix with a spoon.  The blue key.

Marina plucked it from the mix and rinsed it under the water.  She could’ve sworn she had put it back in the drawer.  “Now how did you get in there?” The key glistened with indigo highlights.  When she was a little girl, she used to watch the stars, wishing for one to fall into her bedroom.   That’s what it would feel like – warm and comforting, kind of lit from within.

Later, with the pie in the oven and the sweet scent of pumpkin spice permeating the house, she went to see her brother.  He made a show of not noticing her standing next to him.

“You’re right,” she said.  “I did want the house.  And you’re right about the family – they’ll come, they’ll eat, and they’ll leave.  But if I don’t do it for her, nobody will.  And she’ll be left all alone on her birthday.”

He shrugged.  “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have said… stuff.”

She dismissed his apology with a wave of her hand.  “Tell me about this key and we’ll call it even.”

He balanced the key on his index finger.  “Odd.”

“That’s what I thought too.”

He licked the edge of the key blade.  “Attic,” he said.

“Are you sure?  Because the last time you said basement, and it turned out to be the attic.  I spent two hours looking in the basement.”

“That was a legitimate mistake,” he said.  “That hook was kept in a box full of dirt.  It had soil signature all over it.”

“Okay.”  She took the key from his finger.  “I’ve set the timer for the pie.  If it buzzes, turn the oven off and get me.  I still have a load of stuff to make, but I can’t finish until the pie is cooked.”

“You don’t want me to take the pie out?” Little devilish sparks danced in his eyes.

“No, because you’ll eat it.  Promise to not touch the pie, Gregory.”

He held up his hand.  “I promise.”

“There is a chocolate one in the refrigerator.  Promise not to touch that one also.”

“I will touch, eat, or approach no pies while you’re treasure hunting.”

“Good.”

She took herself to the narrow staircase and climbed it to the attic.

#

Marina pushed the trapdoor open and hoisted herself onto the dusty boards.  An odd mishmash of items surrounded her.  A triangular window spilled sunlight on the narrow strip of the floor, the only space that had been spared from being filled.

She sat on the floor, not caring about dust clinging to her jeans, and watched the dust bunnies dance in the light.  She had once asked Mom about the attic.  “It’s a place where you put non-essential things,” she had said.  Now their entire history sat crammed into this attic.  The first year after Mom died, she used to come and cry here, where Gregory couldn’t hear her.  The ache came to her now, familiar and merciless, like an old vicious enemy.  She pushed herself from the floor, in a hurry to get busy before the pain could sink her teeth into her and rip open a healed-over wound.

The key was too small for the dozen trunks in plain view.  It had to go to something small.  Like a jewelry box.

She crawled over a large box and stumbled onto the wooden trunk which she knew held her college papers.  She flipped open the lid and ruffled through the stack of printed paper.  “The Role of Retrosynthetic Analysis in the Design of Heterocyclic Synthesis.”  “The Role of Women in Early Plantagenet Dynasty.”  Why do I keep those, she wondered, touching the red mark of 96% in corner.  The answer came to her from the faded ink of half-forgotten formulas.  As long as I have them, I might go back.

But that would be later.  After Gregory graduates.

Marina opened her hand and looked at the key.  It lay in her palm like a ray of blue light.  She touched it with the tip of her left index finger and felt the force pulse from her.  A dozen white pinpoints of light appeared and danced in the metal, illuminating the key from the inside out.  They shimmered and shifted, and finally aggregated in the tip of the blade.

“Let’s play the game.” Marina smiled and leaned forward.  The lights shifted to the left.  She turned until they were again in the tip.  Forward, right, lean over, a little more to the left…  There it was, under a box, a thick volume bound in leather.  She pulled it free and blew the dust from the cover.  A small lock held the book closed.

No title.  How odd.  Oh, well, there’s one way to find out what it is.

She eased the key into the lock and it turned on its own.  The flap of leather holding the volume closed fell aside; the pages rustled like birds locked in a cage, fighting to get out.  Gently she opened the cover and gasped as familiar warmth cloaked her.  Old power swirled from the pages, comforting and overwhelming her, and breathless, she sat in its whirlpool.   A photograph graced the first page – a man larger than life, grey hair stark in contrast to black bushy eyebrows, shoulders spread wide.  So much looked at her from that photograph – strength, and pride, and kindness. Her eyes filled with tears.  “Grandpa,” she whispered softly.

The image smiled back at her.  “Hi, sweetheart.  I miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

“Don’t cry, sweetie.  There is no need.”

“How are you?” she asked, trying to hold back the tears, but they streamed, hot against her cheek.  “How is it wherever you are?”

“No place is good without the two of you,” he said.  “But don’t be in a hurry to join me.”

“It’s grandma’s birthday,” she murmured, not sure what to say.

“Are you making lamb for her?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” he said.  “How is she holding up?

She tried to lie through the tears and couldn’t.  “Not so well.  She is forgetful and…”

“Difficult?” he guessed.

She nodded wordlessly.

“She always was,” Grandfather said.  “She’s very proud.  It hurts her to admit she needed anybody.”

The pages turned.  “Look here,” he said.

A large photograph occupied the page.  Two people laughing.  A woman with hair like honey streaming down her back.  Hot eyes on a lovely face.  A man next to her, skin tanned to bronze, arm wrapped around her shoulders, not possessive but guarding gently.  And above them a griffin diving off a head-dizzying cliff, a streak of gold against the red mountain.  It drew her like a magnet – so much might focused into a single plunge.  Marina touched the golden feathers  and felt the speed, the wind tearing at the wings, the ground rushing at her with terrifying velocity.  And her heart sang with an unbelievable thrill.

“Burgundy Cliffs,” she guessed.

“She loved the griffins,” he said.  “Just like you.”

She sat back stunned.

“Do you remember when I used to take you there?” he said.  “You were so little.”

“Yes, I remember.”  How could she forget?  The power her family had welded was a part of their life, as routine as driving a car or baking a pie.  But the griffins falling from the mountain like a golden waterfall, falling so fast, committed so totally to their plunge only to sweep along the ground and soar above it all – that was magic.

He sighed.  “She always wanted to go, but there was never enough money for the three of us.  There wasn’t even enough for the two of us without my railroad dispatcher discount and that covered only me.”

“She stayed behind so I could go. I never knew…” she whispered.

“She didn’t want you to know.  She always thought that doing favors bred contempt and she didn’t want you feel indebted and learn to resent her.  She loves you so much.”

She bit her lip.

“You don’t resent her, do you, sweetheart?” he asked.

“No, grandfather.  Not at all.”

“Marina!” Gregory’s voice came from the kitchen.  “The pie is done!”

She looked one more time at the couple in the photograph.  “You were so young,” she whispered.

“One can’t stay young forever.  But my namesake is calling you.”

“I better go,” she said, wondering if her heart would break.

“Come see me any time,” he said.  “I will be waiting.”

She closed the book gently.

#

She told Gregory that night over the evening coffee and salami sandwiches.

“There is just enough money in the birthday account.”

“They’ll skin you alive,” he said.

“That’s all right,” she said.  “It will be worth it.  I must do this.”

“Why?”

She shook her head, thinking of the young woman with honey hair and of the griffins perched upon the jagged cliffs.  “For both of us, for me and her.  It’s not something I can explain.  You have to find out for yourself.”

#

In the morning she met them on the porch.  They came at the same time, as if afraid to arrive too early.  She watched as they parked their cars and approached the porch, her aunts, uncles, cousins.  It struck her how put out they looked, as if distressed to be here.

“Are we early?” Lilian asked.

“No.  There will be no party today, but you’re welcome to the dinner.  It’s a modest one.”

“Where is mother?” Ashley asked, her eyes searching the yard.

“She is enjoying her birthday present,” Marina said, crossed her arms on her chest, and smiled.

They declined to stay for dinner.

Marina saw them go and sat down on the porch with a cup of hot cider in her hand.  Above her the sky was gold with sunlight.  She looked at it and thought of golden griffins.  No wonder Gregory didn’t understand.  He never saw them.  He never felt the freedom they brought, but she had, and the memory lived in her, its beauty so sharp it hurt.  It sliced through the fog of time, clear as a crystal shard, and no matter what life brought, that memory was hers to cherish.  A gift beyond measure.  Marina smiled and sipped the cider.  Funny how people you think you know can surprise you.

#

Miles away, Gregory helped his grandmother step off the train.

“We will miss the party,” she said.  “Why did you drag me here?  Where are we anyhow?”

“Just come with me, Grandma.”

“I think we should go back.”

“All right, we’ll go.  In just a minute.  First I want to show you something.”

He led her past the station house to the stone trail.  They walked along the curving path, guarded by a metal rail.

“You made me come all the way out here just to show me something?  The tickets must’ve cost a fortune.  All that money wast…”

The path turned and she fell silent.  A great gorge lay before them, a crack in Earth’s armor.  A silver river wound its way along the bottom like a glittering serpent.  Red cliffs cradled the water, scraping the sky with their edges.

Gently he led her onto the tall bridge that sliced across the gorge and found a good spot at the rail.  Wind rushed through the chasm and fanned their faces, and they breathed in the moisture of the river and the heady honey scent of melaleuca that sheathed the valley lapping at the cliffs’ feet.   So ethereal and insignificant was the bridge compared to the colossal vista before them, that it was as if it didn’t even exist and they stood suspended in mid-air.

High atop a red cliff, a golden griffin spread its wings and cried out a hoarse greeting.  Gregory heard her gasp and gently put his arm around his grandmother.  The majestic beast teetered on the edge and took the plunge like a living flame.  It dived and turned at the last moment, defying gravity with its mighty wings, sliding along the ground and then surging up and up to soar, free and unbound.

Art by Jesper Ejsing

Grandma gasped.  Gregory hugged her tighter.

Others followed the first, wings spread wide, amber eyes hot with magic.  The old woman leaned against her grandson and watched as the mountains wept golden tears matching her own.