Chapter 50 Loch Bairn #2
The next morning, Georgiana and I stood arm-in-arm on the shore of Pemberley lake.
The rain had turned to snow in the night, and the hill’s oaks and ash were black-limbed skeletons dusted with white.
But that was a morbid illusion. Their dark meditation held dormant life and the promise of flowering growth.
Two weeks after the funeral, nine sculptors had queued at Pemberley’s door. Mr. Darcy handed them a pose study of Lizzy sketched by Georgiana last summer. Then the Darcy gallery became a studio ringing with hammer on chisel while Mr. Darcy prowled, scowling and critiquing every stroke.
A month later, I went down one morning and found the sculptors gone.
A likeness had been chosen, and the artists dismissed.
I discovered the rejected statues hidden in an overgrown corner of the garden, a verdant gallery filled with obscured aspects of Lizzy.
Doubtless Mr. Darcy could not bring himself to dispose of them.
The chosen statue was moved by Mr. Darcy and two footmen to this place at the lakeshore.
The stone was silvery and copper-infused: granite of the local cliffs.
Lizzy’s head and shoulders were fully formed, though unpolished—granite was a hard stone.
Her torso and legs were a mere suggestion of rushing motion.
On a buried plinth, she faced the shore, the lake lapping at a trailing heel as if she were stepping from the waves.
Facing this memorial, I wiped a wet eye, then bent to straighten a bouquet of crocuses, purple and white. “The Britons brought these. Spring has come early to the hills.”
Georgiana caressed Lizzy’s stone hair. “Pemberley cares for her wyves.” She sniffed, then scanned the sky. “I thought Lord Wellington would stay for this.”
“He would have, but I told him that Fènnù does not come here.”
Her sapphire eyes widened. “You lied to him!”
“A wound heals best undisturbed. His war does not belong with us.”
Georgiana slipped her arm back through mine. “Emma sent Mr. Knightley away.” I made an uncaring noise, and Georgiana arched an eyebrow. “Mary! Is it the clothes? Has she surpassed your wardrobe of black?”
“Hers are bought by your brother,” I muttered.
“You do understand that her selfish brother keeps all her money?”
I had not known that.
Georgiana hugged my arm tight. “Emma has helped Fitz. And you must see that she and Mr. Knightley care for each other.”
I would not surrender that easily. “I see that he falls at her feet.”
Georgiana answered in the cadence of a song. “He loves her, and she loves him. Now they are parting, which makes me sad, though I know they will meet again. But you will not lose Mr. Knightley. He admires you. The world sees you, Mary. And I see you and am yours forever.”
A lifetime of sisterly teasing left me suspicious of effervescence. “Is this a campaign so I fall at her feet as well?”
“Of course not. Only… we are the great wyves. We should be united.” She lifted my wrist to her lips for a fleeting kiss.
Impulsively, I leaned and kissed her lips. I intended a chaste touch in this place of remembrance, but she pressed back, and my breath caught. Her lip balm, beeswax and peppermint, tingled.
Lizzy would not mind. She would just smile and study the sky.
“Do you trust Pemberley at last?” Georgiana whispered.
“I should not.”
“Will you be civil to Emma, at least?” I gave a grudging nod, and she smiled. “Good, because here she is.”
“I fear I have intruded,” Emma’s voice called behind me.
Georgiana’s eyes had lit with amusement. Outmaneuvered, I answered, “You are welcome.”
Emma came up, dressed in surprisingly sensible walking clothes.
She made a respectful curtsy to Lizzy’s sculpture.
“I sometimes visit to talk with her. To imagine her advice. I am worried about a choice I made.” She folded her hands, freed of the fixations I had noticed yesterday. “But I know I am right.”
I tugged my arm free of Georgiana and found that was solely so I could cross my arms and scowl. Be civil. I tapped my fingers on my sleeve, seeking a topic. “Do you still sense Yuánchi?”
“In a way,” she said vaguely.
She and Yuánchi had been destined to bind. But fate decreed this harsher path.
I gestured to the three of us. “Georgiana said we are the great wyves. But not truly.” I met Georgiana’s questioning gaze. “You are the wyfe of song. I am redundant.”
“No,” Emma said. “You are joined. Can you not tell?” She took off her gloves and offered her palms. Georgiana took one. Uneasy, I took the other, then held Georgiana’s hand so we formed a triangle.
I expected a show of effort—Lizzy had always concentrated to invoke her powers—but Emma smiled sunnily.
“There is the most beautiful blue glow of binding between you. When I first saw it, I fancied that you had bound each other. But that was silly. You cannot bind without a draca. It is… a shared promise of binding. But even as a promise, it is bright. When you bind, it will be a marvel.”
Georgiana gave me an enchanted grin. I sensed something too, but what it was, other than love, I could not say.
With a quick-drawn breath, Emma turned to the western hills.
One rounded crest seemed to rise and darken, then Fènnù’s silhouette soared over the summit.
She sped downslope, too distant to hear, but the treetops in her wake shook like grass in a squall.
An airy rumble reached us as she skimmed the waves, so low that her claws cut the water and tossed spray twenty feet high.
Then her wings stroked, lifting her like a wild swan.
“She will pass twice more,” I said, for that pattern had never altered.
She banked and crossed again, then flapped a long, curved path around the valley’s periphery to begin her third pass from the far shore.
Precisely from the far shore. Her shape hung pendulous above the water, swelling.
“She is coming here,” Georgiana observed, her voice a little high. “Is that usual?”
“No,” I admitted.
The rumble became thunder, and her monstrous bulk filled our eyes before she veered, wings flaring. A torrent of wind and spray pummeled the shore forty yards beside us, but my skirts only fluttered as I brushed blown locks from my eyes.
Fènnù settled, broad chest toward us, gravel creaking beneath her claws, her wings held half-spread and her shoulders hunched, a posture ungainly and uneasy like a wounded bird.
Her head tilted one way and another, studying us.
Her slit nostrils gaped like chimneys for each bellowing breath.
Venomous drops leaked from the sores on her jaw and wings, and an astringent scent prickled.
“Goodness, she is very big,” Georgiana said tensely. “Why did she land? I thought she sought Yuánchi. Or the dagger.”
“Do not worry,” I said, summoning courage. “I have spoken with her before. Spoken to her, at least.”
“When?”
“When Lizzy and I flew to London.”
“Were you going to tell me?”
“A great deal happened after.”
Emma’s face was uplifted and raptured. “She hurts. She fears us, or… no, she remembers fear. Her mind skitters like breaking glass.”
“Lizzy wanted me to understand her,” I said. “To help her. I should approach.”
“No!” Georgiana locked my wrist in both hands. “Mary, she is not a book to puzzle through.”
With a feathery flutter, a shining blue song draca landed by my foot.
Another plopped down a yard in front. A third, the bold one that had followed from London, found my shoulder, his ebony claws pricking through layers of cloth.
These arrivals no longer surprised me, although I did not know why they came.
They all watched Fènnù, curious but no worse than that.
“They would not come if there were danger,” I said, not sure that was true, and eased Georgiana’s fingers loose. Encouraged by woodwind cheeps, I took a step, then another, but, heart pounding, my knees balked at a third. Awe had overpowered my resolve.
Perhaps a respectful distance was wise.
“Do you recall our meeting?” I called out. “You sought my sister. But she is lost.”
Fènnù stepped forward. The impact of her foot rattled pebbles under my toes and sent ripples across the lake. She towered, a behemoth that exceeded the sky.
Georgiana’s fingers, slim and strong, meshed with my hand. Emma’s grip, gentle but certain, took my other. Georgiana hummed a melody, and in my mind’s eye, the musical counterpoint to her song assembled—
I saw three great wyves crowned in shining auras of gold. Their clothes were ancient styles that celebrated wisdom and rank. They stood on a lakeshore—not Pemberley lake, but like enough to dredge this memory from the sea of past lives.
The first wyfe’s outstretched arm held a gleaming black dagger. The second’s raised hand held an amulet that shimmered scarlet. The third stood simply, her empty hands spread and welcoming.
They brought glorious song, then drowned in black and death.
Reality returned in juddering steps. I had fallen hard to my knees; my shins were bruised from the rocks. The oily dampness of half-dried tears clung to my jaw.
The three tiny song draca were poking in crevices and puddles. Bored. Fènnù was gone.
Georgiana’s palms cradled my cheeks. “Mary?”
“I am myself,” I said. “Did you see?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Three wyves.”
“It was their attempt to heal the song. Their failure.” I committed the vision to memory—the wyves’ clothes, their hair and complexion, the shape of the lake and color of the foliage, my glimpse of the amulet, and…
that song. “They had only two items. That is why they failed. The wyfe of war held the dagger, and the wyfe of healing held the amulet. But the wyfe of song had nothing. They had not found the claw.”
“I saw their bindings,” Emma said in a wondering voice.
“One shone with the scarlet of Yuánchi. One held the beautiful blue you two share, radiant as a sun. But the third, the wyfe who held the dagger, was unbound. That is why they failed. The wyverns told me over and over that a wyfe must bind for strength.”
The three of us traded uncertain looks. Whatever inadequacy doomed those wyves, our preparation was worse. The bravest of us was lost, and the dagger with her. And, despite the glimmer that joined Georgiana and me, none of us were bound.
But Emma’s words filled my mind’s eye with swirling pages. Passages coalesced, and I realized my error.
I pushed to my feet and grasped Emma’s shoulders. “You feel the scarlet of Yuánchi’s binding. That strength is why you are healthy at Pemberley.”
“This is no secret,” she said, but her hazel eyes were wary.
“That is why you touch Mr. Darcy! To harvest that strength.”
Trapped in my grip, she had to fumble blindly to tug her gloves from her reticule. “I am… Mary, I know it is improper… I mean no harm. I hide it so he is not shamed.”
I hugged her, which earned an astonished yelp, then I splashed into the shallows of the lake, the chill ferocious around my ankles.
“When Jane had binding sickness, we pored through old lore. There have always been widowed wyves who hold their bound draca—a few, at least. But only wyves. Draca bind through the wyfe. No widowed husband can hold a binding.”
Motion on the path to Pemberley house caught my gaze. A tall rider on a gray horse was exiting the switchbacks to the lake. Mr. Darcy had seen Fènnù and ridden to us.
The sanctum of Pemberley lake stretched before me, and I knew why Fènnù came. She waited for her sleeping wyfe to wake. Whether her vigil would last days or centuries I could not say, but today I shouted, “Lizzy is alive!”