The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told (54 page)

“Good girl!”

Gran can be embarrassing at times.

“Who was the mother before me?”

The old woman's eyes darkened. “You're the first one in a long time.”

“Why?”

She spit to the side. “If I had to guess,” she said, with just a trace of fury, “I'd say those damn Unicorns have been up to no good. Again.”

“You mean there were other mothers?”

“Like you, but not as strong. I should have known,” she added. There is
nothing
worse than Gran when she's feeling guilty.

“What happened to the last one?”

“She failed.”

“How?”

“Her son died.”

Maggie closed her eyes.

“Wasn't her fault,” Gran added. “But it doesn't matter. Her son died, and she died as well. Left a daughter. It should have passed on, then.”

“It's like a public office?”

Gran shrugged. “Sort of. It should have passed on. Maybe it did. I'm not as sharp as I used to be.”

“But you're older. Isn't wisdom—”

“Shut up.” She lifted her cup, drained it, and thunked it back down on the table top. “Even the old get tired. Especially the old.” She hesitated for just a moment.

I didn't like the sound of the silence.

“I'm better at hiding than I used to be,” she finally said. “And I never answered your question.”

“Hiding? From what?”

“You'll find out, girl. And that's a different question. You're the mother until your children are old enough to have children of their own.”

“And then . . . my daughter?”

“Probably not. It doesn't pass down blood-lines. But when they are, you'll be free.”

Maggie said, “You've never had children, have you?”

And Gran's voice was surprisingly bitter. “Oh, I've had 'em,” she answered. “Outlived them all.”

Maggie reached out and placed a hand over Gran's in something that was too visceral to be called sympathy. “When is it over, for you?”

“I get to choose,” the old woman replied.

“And I don't.”

“No. I often thought the mother got the rawest deal. No choice at all about having the children, only a choice about how they're raised. Raise 'em well,” she added, “and the world changes.”

Maggie looked openly sceptical. “The world?”

“There's a lot of difference between 1946 and 1966,” the old woman replied softly. “And trust me, you wouldn't have liked living in either year.”

“You're going to be with me for a while?”

“While you learn the ropes,” Gran replied. “But don't be an idiot. Learn quickly.” She got up and headed toward the front door.

Maggie's voice followed her. “If there's a mother, and a crone,” she said, the growing distance forcing her to speak loudly and quickly, “what about a maiden?”

Gran's snort carried all the way back to the kitchen.

“She's a strange woman,” Maggie said at last. “How old is she?”

I shrugged. “I asked her once.”

“What'd she say?”

“She almost made me wash my mouth out with soap. It wasn't considered a
polite
question.”

Mags laughed. I love it when she laughs.

“She'll probably answer that one later. She likes to parcel out information.”

“Why?”

“Because she's sadistic.”

Winter passed. Darkness made way for longer days and the snow melted.

Maggie started to garden, which scared me. Not only did she start, but she took to it with a passion that was only slightly scarier than the ferocity with which she watched out for her children.

Things
grew
when she touched them. Me? I'm no black thumb, but green isn't my colour either; it takes work. I envied Maggie, the way I envy someone with a natural singing voice. I would have put my foot down when she started collecting stray cats, but hey, it wasn't my house. And the kids seemed to like the cats—Connell even managed to survive pulling out a whisker or two from one of them.

But it wasn't until the height of Summer that Gran chose to answer the question about the maiden. She invited herself over to Maggie's. Apparently, all conversations of import were to be held at Maggie's. I think this is because Gran didn't particularly care to have children destroying the knick knacks in her house. Either that or because Gran's cats weren't as tolerant as Maggie's.

Tea was like ritual, although without the fuss. The pot sat in the centre of the table; Connell toddled his way around the chair, and Shanna drew pictures while laying flat out against ceramic tile. Unfortunately, some of those pictures tended to bleed off the page, so the floor was a bit more colourful than it had been when the previous owner had laid down said ceramic tiles.

“So,” Gran said quietly. “You've started gardening.”

Maggie's smile was calm and warm.

“And cat collecting. I'd advise you to take up a fondness for rabbits instead.”

“Why?”

“Less of 'em. They're still work,” she added. But she shrugged. “The kids are growing.”

Maggie smiled fondly. She still looked like the same woman I'd first met—but not when she smiled. “I wanted to thank you both. But I also wanted to ask a question.”

Gran snorted. She had her pipe in her hand, but she didn't light it. Mags would have thrown her out of the front door and watched to see how many times she bounced; she respected age and wisdom, but smoking around her children was a definite no-go. Gran seemed to expect this, and as she was in Mags' house, she obeyed the unspoken rules.

“You're the crone. I understand what you do.”

“What?”

“You preserve wisdom,” Maggie replied. “Collective wisdom. Maybe bitter wisdom.”

“It's all bitter.”

“Maybe. But necessary.”

That got a ‘good girl' out of the old lady.

“I'm the mother, and I understand—I think—what that means.”

“Better harvests,” Gran said.

Maggie raised a brow.

“It's true.”

“Well,” she said, looking doubtfully out at her garden, “we'll see.” She picked up her cup, staring at the cooling tea. “What does the maiden do? Preserve our innocence?”

Gran snorted. “You've been reading those trashy novels again.” It was a bit of a bone of contention between them.

Maggie chose to let the matter drop; she really
was
curious.

“Look,” Gran said, with open disgust, “just how
innocent
do you think you were when you were a maiden?”

“Well,” Maggie said, defensive in spite of her best intentions, “I wasn't
the
maiden now, was I?”

Gran laughed. “Good answer! No, you weren't. But I'm going to tell you that you're confusing innocence with inexperience.”

“That's her way of saying stupidity,” I added.

“Got that.” She looked over at her daughter, who had finished her odd drawing and had started in on another piece of paper. Shanna was humming a song I tried very hard not to recognize. Because Gran didn't hold with television much, either.

“You think that the maiden is supposed to preserve stupidity?”

“
I
didn't use the word.”

Gran snorted again. “Innocence implies guilt.”

“Stupidity implies—”

“Not guilt,” Gran snapped, before Maggie could get started. Watching the two of them, I could almost see a familial connection between them, and you know what? I almost got up and slunk out of the room. “Innocence is a Unicorn word. It's a defacement. It's a linguistic injustice, an act of defilement.”

“Unicorns speak?”

Gran's laugh was dark and ugly. And unsettling. “You wore that ring for how many years, and you have to ask?”

Maggie's turn to get dark. “It didn't exactly whisper into my ear.”

I
really
wanted to be anywhere else.

“It
did
. You just weren't listening. You want it back? I'll give it to you. You'll probably hear a lot more now.”

Maggie's brows rose. “You didn't destroy it?”

Gran hesitated for just a second, and a shudder seemed to pass through her. “No.”

“Why?”

“I'm no warrior,” she replied.

“The maiden is a warrior?”

Gran was quiet for a long time. “At her best,” she said at last, “she can be.”

“And at her worst?”

“Lost.”

“Was there a maiden, back when there was a mother?”

Gran said nothing at all for a long time. Silent Gran? Always made me nervous.

“Look, what
is
the maiden about?”

“Sex,” Gran replied primly.

Maggie stared at her as if she'd started speaking in tongues.

One week later, round two.

“So, the maiden is about
sex
?”

“That's what I said.”

“If she's about sex, she can hardly
be
a maiden.”

Gran shook her head. “That's Unicorn talk,” she said firmly.

“Will you
quit
that?”

“I could call it something else, but you probably don't want Shanna to repeat it at school.”

Maggie hadn't asked for the ring back, and failed to mention it. Gran failed to offer. This was an armistice.

“The maiden has always been the most vulnerable of the three,” Gran continued. “The hardest to find. The hardest to keep.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“It's the sex.”

“Something like that.”

Maggie turned to me. “Your grandmother is driving me crazy.” Unfair, trying to drag me into the discussion. “It's because of the sex, right? There aren't a lot of young women who don't. Have sex.”

“It's because of the sex, but not in the way you think. You're thinking like a Unicorn,” she added. So much for armistice.

“Look, what
are
Unicorns? I've seen a lot of pretty pictures, and I've read a lot of pretty books. I've done more internet research on that than I have on almost anything, and my saccharine levels are
never
going to be the same. For something malign, they seem to occupy a lot of young girls' minds.”

“Not the practical ones,” Gran snapped.

“Fine. Not the practical ones. Are we looking for a practical girl?”

Gran seemed to wither. “No,” she said at last. “We're not. That's why it's so hard. To find her. To save her.”