Part Nine

Maple had given herself up to die the day before. There had been a comfort in that promise; everything she did was either moot or suicide heroism. But knowing that Amber was alive and breathing, barely hanging on and waiting for Maple to heal her restored every responsibility she had escaped.

Amber had smiled when she saw Maple stirring to consciousness beside her. "Hi," she’d whispered, and reached out with a shaking hand to brush Maple’s hair behind her ear.

Maple had only been able to stare at her. Amber must have lost forty pounds since they last saw each other, she was no longer pudgy like a Care Bear, and her ruler-straight orange hair had been unevenly cut around her chin. Her eyes like sap were still bright, and her smile was still hopeful, and for a moment Maple was so stunned by Amber’s unbroken hope that she was speechless.

"I’m really glad to see you," Amber whispered. Maple caught her hand and Amber gripped her fingers tightly.

"Are you okay?" Maple asked. It seemed like the only question she could ask.

Amber shrugged. "I’m in an interesting place. Sort of hot and dark, but interesting. What about you?"

She was eleven but she had the joy of a child and the wisdom of a saint and just the sound of her heart beating was an oath from a goddess that the world wasn’t truly evil.

"I’m having a bad day," Maple told her honestly. "Why are you so flushed?"

"Galdwyn gave me something from your apothecary box. I don’t know what, but I think I have a fever."

Maple pressed her palm against Amber’s forehead. It came away soaked with sweat and the scent of deep jungle water. "Oh, Epona help us."

From the top of the stairs came Galdwyn’s voice. "Is that praying I hear?"

He stepped into the doorway, his face shadowed like the model for a Rembrandt portrait. "I never pegged you as the religious kind, Maple."

"She’s devoutly religious," Amber told him as he began walking down the steps.

"Shh," Maple told her quickly.

"What?" Amber asked. "You are."

Galdwyn laughed. "Aren’t children delightful? My daughter was a little like you when she was a baby, Amber. Talkative, blunt. Sweet and annoying at the same time."

"How old is she?" Amber asked.

"Nearly twenty now. But she doesn’t resemble you. If anything, I’d sat she resembles Maple more closely."

The words sounded light, but Amber tilted her head at him as if she heard something else. Maple climbed to her knees and wrapped one arm protectively around her sister’s shoulder.

"What did you give her?"

Galdwyn stopped at the bottom of the stairs and put his hands on his hips. He smiled. "Something."

"Which something?"

"My, my, it seems I’ve forgotten. It isn’t serious, is it?"

Maple had three hundred different potions and powders in her box. Any number of them could have produced a fever if Amber had been given enough.

"What do you want from me?" Maple said flatly.

Galdwyn smiled again. "My plans have been shot to hell by the village kids. It’s going to be too suspicious if everybody conveniently vanishes at this point, what with Thursy being a boogeyman and Yared walking in last night to vote against me. You probably don’t remember that, since I wiped your memory."

"What does he mean?" Amber began to ask, but Maple shushed her.

"You did that?"

He nodded. "But before that, I had you write a little note to yourself. I figured that if you brought at least Scotch back to the village to tell the real story of what happened, then I could point out how preposterous the whole thing is. A ‘truth-is-stranger-than-fiction’ line of deception. And off you went like a good little girl and brought Yared back to voice everyone’s secret suspicions, which you will now lay to rest when you assure them that you were only here to help Tish."

He stepped closer to them, the full light falling on his wide forehead and receding hairline. "Because if you don’t, I’m simply going to leave Amber down here to die."

Maple closed her eyes.

"And if I lie for you?"

"Then I’ll show you which potion I gave your sister and you’ll be free to counteract it. If that’s even possible, I have no idea."

She couldn’t look at him. She knew she would have to hit him and then he would kill her. So she sat with her eyes closed and the sound of Amber’s ragged breathing filling her ears.

"Think about it for a minute and then come upstairs," Galdwyn said. "We have a story to agree upon."

Maple waited until she heard his footsteps in the kitchen before she opened her eyes again. Amber was leaning against the wall, wiping her sweaty face with a piece of fabric softener.

Her eyes were the exact same color as her hair, perfectly amber. In the sunlight, the shade was playful. In this dark, dingy basement, she looked like an autumn scarecrow.

"What will happen if you lie?" she asked.

"Bad things."

"Maple, tell me."

Maple shook her head. "People are going to get hurt."

"Good people?"

"Yes."

"Diana will watch over them."

She almost laughed and then stopped herself. She wouldn’t let her little sister know how frail her faith had become in the last month.

And it was frail. As frail as icicles hanging from tree branches. As frail as her own body felt.

"Do you have to go?"

"I think so."

"Okay."

Maple stood up and tried to lift Amber, but pain ripped through her chest and shoulder so fiercely that she cried out. "I can get up," Amber told her quickly. She was dizzy and had to hold onto the wall, but she found her feet without help.

"I want you to stay here while I’m gone," Maple said as she led Amber to the other end of the basement. She opened the washing machine lid and reset the machine so that water began pouring into the chamber. "Drink from here as much as you can and restart the machine when the water stops running."

"How will I get water?"

"Um..." Maple’s eyes searched the shelves until she found a measuring cup for the detergent. "Use this."

Amber looked at it skeptically. "There’s soap in it."

Maple grabbed the cup and tapped it upside down a few times. "It’s clean now. Climb up on top of the dryer so you can reach."

She got down on one knee and Amber used the other as a step to get onto the dryer. She was still looking into the cup when Maple grabbed a clean towel from a nearby hamper and wrapped it around her sister’s shoulders.

"Won’t drinking soapy water make me worse?" Amber asked.

"Not if you only drink a little. Here." She took the cup again and filled it with the cold water rushing into the washing machine. After she had rinsed it out, and handed it back to Amber.

Amber sniffed it and nodded. "Drink as much as you can," Maple told her again.

"When are you coming back?"

"Soon."

Amber caught her hand. "When are you really coming back?"

Maple swallowed. "If I’m not back by dawn, run."

"Where?"

She was pressing her lips together and her eyes were growing wet. Maple hugged her carefully, trying to keep her own tears at bay.

"Go to the highway south of here, find some humans, and lie to them. Tell them your mother abandoned you there. They’ll take care of you."

Amber crammed her forehead into Maple’s good shoulder and said in a muffled voice, "Are you going to be okay?"

Lie to her, Maple. Don’t make her memories worse than they have to be.

"Yeah, but I might have to stay here a long time."

Amber sat back. Her face was beat red and dripping with sweaty tears, but she smiled knowingly. "You don’t know anything," she said. "You’re pulling all that out of your ass on a string of pearls." She hugged Maple again and said with strange confidence, "We’ll be okay because we take care of each other, Mapey."

Maple didn’t know what she meant – she had failed to protect Amber in the worst possible way – but she didn’t argue. "Remember to say your prayers in the morning," she said instead. "I’ve got to go now."

Amber took one of her hands and pushed the fingers back. With a licked fingertip, she drew Minerva’s symbol on her sister’s palm. Then she smiled one more sunny, knowing smile. "Minerva guides heroes."

A teaspoon of tears leaked out of Maple’s eyes and she brushed them away. "Thanks."

Amber nodded. "Bye."

"Bye."

Maple didn’t look back as she walked upstairs.

Galdwyn was in the kitchen, looking out the window at the courtyard. His expression was pensive, with none of his usual aloof glee.

"Did you say goodbye?" he asked, motioning her over.

"Yes." She stepped next to him at the window and looked out. The sun was just beginning to set and the valley was green and copper.

"I’m sorry," Galdwyn whispered.

The words were so soft she almost didn’t hear them. She turned her face to his and suddenly he was kissing her, his arms were wrapping her with every comfort and tenderness his brutal cruelty had promised he was hiding.

Maple froze. "I’m so sorry," he whispered against her mouth. He trailed kisses across her cheeks and then down her neck. "This isn’t how I wanted it to be."

She was too exhausted to push him away and too exhausted to respond. She was too tired to even be truly surprised.

"How did you want it to be?"

He lifted his head. She thought for a moment that she had never seen his face before, it was so honest and exposed.

"I just wanted them to make the right decision," he said. "I love them so much I was willing to kill them for their own protection. And you..." He swallowed and pressed his cheek to hers. "I thought I was too old to feel this way again."

"I don’t understand-"

"Maple, I love you. I am deeply, hopelessly in love with you."

He pulled away and she saw his heart laid out for her like a sheet of music. Only once in his lifetime, she knew, would he be able to open up like this and it was to her that he offered himself.

"How can you do this to me?" she asked. "If you love me so much, how can you keep me here in fear and hurt the only family I have left?"

"I didn’t want to. I didn’t. But I have to keep my pack from making a disastrous decision. I am a leader and my love is a sacrifice I have to make for them."

My life is going to end as a sacrifice to Amber and other lost causes, she thought, but the idea that their motives were the same filled her with disgust and she pushed him away until she could walk to the other side of the room. She pressed her back against the wall and gathered herself in tight.

"Please don’t hate me," Galdwyn said. The setting sunlight fell on his bowed shoulders as they shook with what could only be sobs.

"I can’t hate you," she admitted. "Because I know you truly believe that what you’re doing is right. But you’re so far gone...even if I could find a way to love you, Galdwyn, it would never reach that far into the darkness. Even love would fade away like weak light before it could reach you. So there’s one more thing you have to sacrifice."

He slid down until he was sitting on the floor, and he sobbed until they ran out of time.

Minerva was no where to be seen while Maple gasped for air in Thursy’s arms. The stump beneath her was damp and all around people were shouting and cheering and growling. She couldn’t see Yared or Galdwyn, almost couldn’t see Scotch and Osprey huddled around her, but the sky loomed like certain death above her.

"Hold still," Osprey told her as she struggled against him. "Maple, you can’t get up."

"I have to help him," she gasped.

Yared had hit her in the stomach harder than she had ever been hit. She had felt things break inside of her, bones crack and organs tear. Her heart had begun to strain for blood to circulate and she knew that she must be bleeding internally.

Osprey pressed her onto the stump, rock solid. "You’re not getting up."

She let her head fall back against the stump. "Can one of you help Yared fight him?"

"It’s a fight for leadership of the pack," Scotch said. "It’s just between the two of them."

"This has nothing to do with the pack!" Maple shouted, raising her voice for the first time in weeks. The pain that riccocheted around her chest felt like early waking. "After everything Galdwyn has stolen, how can this be about the pack any more?!"

"Calm down," Thursy said through the tight lines of worry on her face. "Scotch, can you go see what’s happening?"

He dashed into the crowd. Osprey tore Maple’s sweater open right down the front and probed her flesh with his cold fingers.

"Oh christ do not push there!"

He sat back on his heels to avoid her flying hand. "Maple, you have to calm down," he told her. "Being hysterical is not going to help. You have to slow your heartbeat down or else you’re going to bleed out."

"Thursy!" Scotch shouted over a renewal of screaming.

"Have you got her?"

"Go," Osprey said, and Thursy darted off the stump.

"My little sister is going to die," Maple blurted out. "Do you understand? She’s going to die if I can’t get to her, and if Galdwyn wins he’ll kill me because I’m not in love with him and if Yared wins he’ll kill me because I am in love with him and she’s all I have left, Osprey. She’s the only family I have left."

"Shut up," Osprey sighed, "that’s not true at all and you’re making this worse."

"How would you know if it’s true?" she began to ask, but his eyes caught sight of something beyond her and suddenly he bolted.

Pain spiraled down her neck when she twisted her head to follow him. Tish was running across the courtyard toward her home, blond hair flying out behind her, long legs leaping. Osprey was rushing after her.

Maple rolled off the stump and landed on her knees. Every breath hurt and her shoulders were shaky on her back when she stood up, but she forced herself to run toward the spot where Osprey was gaining on Tish.

He tackled her in a tumbleweed of arms and legs. "No!" Maple screamed. "No! No! No!"

Osprey stopped. He had Tish beneath him forty feet away from where Maple’s knees collapsed and she fell down on the ground. "Don’t do it," she heard herself beg. She knew she was incoherent now, that if he asked she would tell him anything and that if Galdwyn had still been holding her she might have turned against herself.

"Don’t do it." She could see Tish’s blank face and her chest popping up and down as she breathed. "Please, Osprey. She didn’t mean to do anything, he hurt her, too. Please don’t kill her."

His black eyes scraped hers like sandpaper but she forced herself to keep looking. With one hand drawn against her chest she began crawling across the cobblestones.

"Lay still," Osprey told her.

"She’s just a child," Maple begged, and she was crying, crying so hard she couldn’t breathe or see or feel anything but horror that one more undeserving person was going to die tonight.

She reached the end of the cobblestones and stumbled as she crawled across the grass. Osprey stared at her as if uncertain what to do and she said again, "Don’t hurt her."

Maybe he had been listening all along and those pitch black eyes meant nothing. He said with a softness she hadn’t heard before, "Okay, Maple, I won’t hurt her. Lay down now."

"You promise?" she asked, even as her knee slipped on the wet grass and she landed on her stomach.

"I promise. See, I’m going to let her get up. Just as long as she holds onto my hand."

Her face fell down in the dirt and she could see nothing, but she heard Osprey sit down beside her and could smell Tish standing beside him.

"Can you roll over?" Osprey asked.

Maple moved slowly until she was lying on her side. "The fight’s over, Galdwyn’s dead," Osprey told her. "Yared survived. But you’re going to die if I don’t help you."

"Yared’s going to kill me."

"No, I won’t let him."

"Why do you even care?"

Osprey hesitantly picked a piece of grass out of her hair. "Because you’re kin, Maple. You’re my kin, and I’ve been looking for you forever."

The idea was almost incomprehensible to her. "How?"

"It doesn’t matter now. What matters is that you drink before you lose consciousness."

He bit his wrist open and pressed it against her mouth before she had a chance to argue. Maple tasted something familiar in the blood that rushed over her tongue, a flavor of déja vu.

She closed her eyes and let the feeding take her over. She felt her back straighten with a satisfying pop and her stomach settle as the organs mended themselves. Her heartbeat slowed and her mind stilled and her hand crept out to take hold of Osprey’s wrist.

The sky was dark blue when she saw it again. Tish was sitting next to her hips and Osprey was beside her head, and she was full of a tranquility that she had never before in her life experienced.

"Did I hurt you?" she asked Osprey groggily.

"I’m hard to hurt. Do you need more?"

She shook her head and felt no pain. "Are you really my kin?"

"Yes."

"If I die tonight, will you take care of my sister?"

"You aren’t going to die."

"Just say you will."

"I will."

She didn’t tell him that Amber was going to die, that Galdwyn had poisoned her and carried the secret of the poison to his death at Yared’s hands. She wouldn’t leave him that burden.

She felt a tap on her leg and realized that – for the first time – Tish was touching her.

The strange girl’s blue eyes remained blank even when Maple sat up and looked her in the eye. "What is it?"

Osprey still had one of Tish’s wrists in his hand. He kept hold of it as Tish leaned close to Maple and waited.

"What’s wrong?" Maple asked again, but Tish only continued to wait with her head thrust forward.

"I think she wants to whisper something to you," Osprey said.

Maple turned her face so that her ear was close to Tish’s mouth.

Two words dropped against her cheek.

"Green powder."

Tish had never spoken to her before. Her expression afterward was as vapid as it had ever been, but Maple knew that she was listening and watching, that she had always been listening and watching, and that she had been more a victim of Galdwyn than anyone.

Maple wrapped the girl in a hug she probably hadn’t felt since her mother left seventeen years before. "Thank you, Patricia."

Tish’s head moved. Maybe she was tensing up. Maybe she was nodding.

Maple let her go and looked around. Yared was laying on the stump with Thursy and Scotch. Gedmark was washing him with a bottle of spring water. Behind them, half a dozen pumas were knocking the shit out of each other and two men were wailing over Galdwyn’s body, which was being carried toward Mount Aurora.

No one was even noticing Maple. She could get up, grab Amber and her box of magicks, and run. She could even take Tish with her, if she wanted.

On the stump, Yared rolled his head and met her eyes. She quickly looked down.

She knew she didn’t deserve to get off Scott-free.

"Osprey," she said. "Take Tish to Galdwyn’s house. My sister’s in the basement and my apothecary box is in the spare bedroom. There’s a bottle of holly brine capsules in the box, Amber will know which they are. Give her two now and another each hour until her fever breaks."

"Why can’t you do it?"

"I need to talk to Yared." She looked at him. "Please? Tell her Mapey sent you."

He sighed and stood up. "All right, but be careful. I don’t think the pack has any love for you."

"I know."

She didn’t get up after he and Tish had gone. Dew was rising on the ground beneath her and the cicadas were signing the evening hymns, oblivious to the death and destruction all around them. In the growing moonlight she thought she could see Minerva’s sign glittering on her palm.

Slow footsteps approached her and she began humming under her breath. She didn’t remember the words but the tune was sweet.

She could see the shadow of the puma a few feet away. She didn’t lift her head to look because she didn’t want to see the damage that had been done.

"Not here," she said softly. "Let’s go out to the woods."

She stood up and walked toward the trees. Yared followed.

Take good care of her, Osprey. I don’t think I’ll be back.