The Golden Thread (23 page)

I really wasn't up to explaining why I was in a rowboat with Joel in the middle of the night. Or whatever else the lifting of my silver wish had let her understand.

“That's okay,” Joel said remotely. “You go ahead with your mom.”

He meant that he wanted to sit there alone until he froze to death or until someone came for
him.
I knew who he was waiting for, and I didn't think the chances were very good.

“Joel,” I said, “come with me to see my Gran. Please.”

After a minute he came, trudging along behind us through the nighttime park until we reached the cab Mom had left waiting outside on Central Park West. We all piled in. I was too tired to talk any more. Nobody else said anything either, thank goodness. At the hospital we went to Gran's room, and Mom sat down with a sigh beside the bed.

“She was awake for a few minutes this morning,” Mom said, “and then her vital signs started dropping. So they called me.”

Gran was not awake now. She barely looked like a living person, she was so still and sort of yellowish in the face, which scared me. I needed to get out of there for a minute and catch my breath.

“I'm starved, Mom,” I said, keeping my voice down. “I've got to go find something to eat.”

“Bring me something, too, will you,” she said. She handed me some money from her coat pocket.

Joel put the violin case across the arms of the other chair in the room, and he and I walked down the hallway. The nurse at the station told us there was a candy machine near the water fountain. We went around the corner she had pointed out.

Someone was there.

I stopped Joel and stared.

“Joel,” I whispered. “That's my Gran. Do you see her?”

“By the fountain?” he said. “Checking out the candy machine?” He saw her.

She looked small and shapeless in a blouse and skirt, summer clothes, with clunky beige sandals. She looked up with a wry half-smile.

“It's all stale,” she said loudly. “And no shortcake, of course. I'd skip it if I were you, lovie.”

Then she sat down on the beat-up brown couch between the candy and the soda machines and patted the cushion next to her. “We need to talk, Val. Don't be alarmed, it's nothing terrible! On the contrary, congratulations are due—you've done very well indeed, you and your friends. It could have gone so badly that I hate to think of it. But your instincts are good. You'll do.”

“Joel,” I croaked. “Come on!”

He shook his head violently and stood rooted like a tree, so I walked over alone to sit with my Gran. She radiated a faint warmth, but I noticed that where she sat, the grubby seat cushion didn't sink and crease as if under a solid weight.

I was afraid she would vanish before I could get to ask her all the things I wanted to ask, so I started right in. “Gran, is Bosanka really gone?”

Gran nodded. “Gone to her own, with your good help.”

“Well, I hope her people have a better time with their highborn princess than we did,” I said. “She was a royal pain, if you ask me.”

“She got left behind, remember,” Gran said, “and all that the rest of her folk learned from the terrible dying of their world, she missed out on. She's got a lot of catching up, a lot of maturing, now that she's found her own again. They'll help her. They love her, the more so because of what they put her through—for the good of all of them and all of us, mind, but still, there's a great deal owed!

“Of course, that's what a highborn was born high
for
, among them as they used to be—and from her earliest years, she consented to be tested. And what a test! Hers was to be not just any spirit journey, but a special one, a great one, as indeed it was.”

I could still hear the echoes of the sea-creatures' voices clicking and whooping in my thoughts, and the mimicry of Joel's violin. Light dawned.

“She heard the fiddle, that first time Joel played it in Boston, because it sounded like whales' voices, right?”

“Oh yes, it played their calls,” Gran said. “Not that you or Joel or even Lennie would have recognized them. You're used to those sounds as they come out on recording equipment designed for human ears, or wind instruments imitating the sea speech.

“The cetaceans don't actually sing, though, not with their breath. It's something to do with vibrating the bones and oils in their bodies; more like the purring of a cat, really. At any rate, the violin played her people's calls to her because those calls were stored in it.”

“Oh,” I said, looking over at Joel. “Then Paavo knew about Bosanka?”

Gran sighed. “We've all known for ages, lovie. The question was what, if anything, to do about her. Paavo was thinking of playing those calls for her when he got finished with your kraken, if he could get the agreement of the sea-people first, of course. It's all been an epic of theirs, remember. But it was so very hard on her! And he never had the opportunity to try to help.”

“You hear that, Joel?” I called.

Gran said, “You don't have to shout, lovie. He's listening.”

“But how come Bosanka saw our comet on New Year's Eve?” I said. “That was ours, not Paavo's or anybody else's. I was thinking about you, not some royal savage from space! The other people there had stuff of their own in mind. Nobody was trying to get Bosanka's attention.”

Gran folded her arthritic fingers in her lap. “Were you happy at the time?”

“With you in here, so sick? Of course not!”

She nodded gravely. “Your own feelings weren't the only ones wrapped up in that spirit light you made, Valentine. There was a
committee
. The quality of what you made that night was shaped by the mood of each of you, and in every case the mood was one of anxiety or loss. Well, Bosanka, rattling around a strange world and scared to death that she'd never find her people, was perfectly attuned to all that. It drew her.”

I said, “She may have been lost and everything, but boy, was she
mean
.”

Gran patted absently at her hair. “She was scared. That's when people are most inclined to do others damage.”

In view of recent experience—just a little while ago I had been ready to try to zap Bosanka into outer space because I was so scared of her—I could hardly disagree.

“Besides,” Gran added, “she was so disoriented, Val, that she had very uncertain control of her own powers. Which added to her fear, of course, and that made her meaner. She was as used to having magical control as you kids are to turning on light with an electric switch.”

“She did deer pretty well,” I said.

“Deer was all she could manage, here. Also, the reality of her home in its current destroyed state kept breaking through into her hunting spell. Dreadful for you, but not reassuring for her, either, believe me.

“And then of course your committee hadn't much understanding or control of their own powers, either. It's all been a bit chaotic. Rather touch-and-go, in fact. The sea-folk were very worried. But I never despaired of you.”

Through the faded blue of her eyes I could see light shining, light from behind Gran. Through her whole face, actually, and through her hand when she lifted it to dab at her hair again. I tore my thoughts away from this translucence because it scared me, and I didn't want to be distracted right now from what I knew was a pretty important conversation because . . .

But that wasn't a thought I wanted to follow far, either.

No point in asking whether Gran or anybody from Sorcery Hall would have helped out if we hadn't been able to handle Bosanka ourselves. In magic, as I had reason to know, you play for keeps and you don't count on a rescue by the cavalry.

It looked as if there were a lot of things I just didn't have to ask about any more. I knew enough to figure out the answers myself.

Which left me with the main question, the one I didn't want to deal with, after all.

I gritted my teeth and I said, “The hospital people think you're dying Gran.”

“Oh, I am,” she said.

I couldn't accept this, I wouldn't! Quickly I changed the subject, before I burst into tears. I said angrily, “How come everybody else got met when we came back except Joel? Why didn't anybody come for him?”

“Someone is coming,” Gran said. “Don't you see him?”

Then I did see him, strolling toward us from the dead end of the short corridor and dressed in the soft, faded corduroy that I remembered: Paavo Latvela, wizard, musician, warrior, friend.

“Oh my God,” I breathed; my eyes were stinging. “But why is he last, Gran? He should have come first!”

“He had the longest way to come, lovie,” Gran said, leaning out from the couch to wave at him.

As Paavo passed him, Joel stood with his mouth open like a boy struck by lightning.

Gran suddenly had her old embroidered handbag in her lap and was looking through it for something, which had the same effect as if she had walked away and left Paavo and me alone by the candy machine to talk in private.

I couldn't seem to focus on the details of Paavo's appearance. He was caught in some kind of glare in the lighting, so that he shimmered and shifted as I looked at him. The voice, though, was unmistakable, smoky-rough and warm.

“Good going, Valentine. I won a couple of bets on you.”

“Oh, any old time, think nothing of it!” I caroled. I was filled with drunken joy. “But, Paavo, what did I do, exactly?”

“What you think?” Paavo said. He leaned, approximately, on the side of the candy machine and waited for me to reply, as if he was perfectly ready to change his own opinion to match my answer. He wasn't holding a cigarette, but smoke curled out of his mouth when he spoke—the memory of that old habit.

“Well,” I said, “I guess I helped the Comet Committee to work some good magic.”

“Yah, for a start,” he said.

“Oh, no,” I said, feeling a jab of dismay as whole horizons of frustration and annoyance opened ahead of me. “ ‘For a start?' That doesn't mean I'm stuck with them forever, does it? The whole committee? Even Mimi and Peter, for God's sake?”

“Ah, Val,” he said, blowing more smoke, more like a modest-sized dragon than a smoker. “Everybody needs company, a little, anyway. How do you want it, this business of talent? Only for you, only your family? Sha. You want to be lonesome like that? Believe me, it's bad for you.”

“Well, now that you mention it,” I admitted reluctantly, “it sure wasn't good for Bosanka, was it?”

Paavo shook his head. “That poor kid,” he said. “I meant to try something to help her along little bit, but—” He shrugged. “You don't want to let people fall by the wayside. Thanks for taking care of this, Valentine. I don't think I could have done as good myself.”

It made me cry a little when he said this to me, the way the winner cries when the Olympic medal is hung around her neck and the band plays her national anthem.

Paavo murmured something else that I couldn't catch, something that I felt like a warm touch on my cheek.

“What?” I whispered, leaning forward to try to hear better, see better.

He rippled and almost turned into something else right there in front of me. My throat closed up. I was afraid to try to touch him back.

I said, “Paavo, are you really here?”

“Here, but not so much Paavo anymore,” he said, smoothing both big hands down to his waist as if literally pressing his body back into its Paavo shape. Sorcery Hall games are played for real, and this wasn't Paavo as he had been because that man had died and was gone for good. I knew that. Even this shadow of Paavo wasn't someone I could keep around for long, either.

He didn't give me time to get hysterical over having to let him go a second time.

“Still looks okay, though, right? It's not so easy to stay in shape these days.” He chuckled. “I better go talk with that boy a little, while I can. Sarah Elizabeth, I'll wait for you after, long as I can, yah?”

Gran, going at her hair with a little pink plastic comb now, nodded. “I'll try to be quick,” she said, and my heart gave a little hop of alarm. Things were moving much too fast as it was, without any more quickness.

Paavo turned toward Joel, who backed up a step and then stood there, rocking slightly, with this expression of hopeless longing that made me want to cry.

Paavo walked over and reached out to put his hand on the back of Joel's neck, shaking him a little while he talked to him. Joel lowered his head, listening to whatever Paavo was saying to him. Then the two of them walked up and down the hall.

“He's not staying around, is he, Gran,” I said. “So where's he going?”

“Oh, moving on, lovie,” Gran said. “And so must I. You'll let us go lightly, won't you? Clinging on can detain us a long time, you know. But we have our own travels to take up, while you and Joel and the others take up the next stage in your own studies.”

I made a grab for her arm, but my hand passed through something like warm sunlight. She was up and wavering slightly in front of me, the way Paavo had wavered.

You lose
, I thought;
you lose them both.

“Gran, what happened?” I begged. “What did I do wrong?”

“Why, nothing,” she said. “You did most of it right. I'm so pleased; we put an application through Admissions for you. Your work with Bosanka has been found acceptable as an entrance examination.”

“Entrance to what?” I said, getting up to follow her where she drifted, shining faintly, ahead of me.

“To Sorcery Hall, of course,” she said. “Bosanka passed her great test, and you and your friends have passed yours. You've all passed with flying colors. The Comet Committee makes a fine entering class.”

I couldn't see her anymore, only a line of light swooping down the middle of the hallway, back toward her hospital room. That light filled my whole sight, dazzling me so that I couldn't see Joel or Paavo or the nursing station or anything.