"I missed you - I have a few minutes before my connection to Oslo so I thought I'd call," he said. "I'm sorry to wake you."
"I'm so glad you did," Freya said, shaking. What just happened? What had she done? She had almost gone and married Killian for god's sake. If she had been able to say the words, it was over - what the gods have wrought no one could tear asunder - that was the rule, that was how it worked, how it always had been. . . . She would have been his and only his always and forever. It would have been the end of everything.
She clung to the phone and Bran's voice, willing the last vestiges of the dream away, until her heart stopped pounding and she fell asleep once again to the sound of the ocean waves lapping against the shore.
Chapter eighteen
The Patron Saint of Lost Causes
Why her daughter had promised this miracle Joanna did not know. She knew, of course, that Ingrid had set up something of a clinic in the library, doling out her brand of practical charms and domestic talismans while Freya was now offering her custom concoctions in a brand-new cocktail menu at the North Inn Bar. Both endeavors were clearly against the restriction, and yet Joanna could not find it in her heart to scold her daughters for their actions or demand that they stop. As she had overheard the girls say to each other the other day, it wasn't as if she were completely innocent of the matter either. Already someone had reported a UFO sighting in the area after she had taken off to the skies the other day - Joanna hadn't been as careful with the cloud cover as she had thought. UFOs indeed! She had not gained that much weight, had she?
At first she had told Ingrid there was no way she was going to do it; it was simply out of the question. She was still unnerved by her experience after the benefit; at night she could feel the vines begin to slide around her legs and suffocate her mouth. Joanna had performed a check of the seam, which she discovered had frayed in certain places. She refrained from mentioning anything to her daughters, since she did not want to worry them until she knew what it was.
Also, it was one thing to make toy soldiers run around and fix a burned pie; it was quite another to perform the Lazarus-like undertaking her eldest was asking her to do. This was resurrection they were talking about here, and yes, she had been put on Earth precisely for this task. But those days were over: the restriction had seen to that - and there was also the Covenant of the Dead to consider. One did not tiptoe around Helda's territory lightly. Render to Caesar what was Caesar's and all that. Okay, so maybe Lionel was technically still alive, but according to the doctors he was a vegetable. Joanna shuddered at the term and wished people would stop using it. To think of a man as nothing more than a plant was too . . . demeaning somehow. Of course, that was the point - to ease the sorrow so that the family could let go, since their loved one wasn't truly there anymore.
But Ingrid had asked, and it really was an awful story: Emily, who painted those gorgeous seascapes and brought them beautiful brown eggs from her chickens and fresh milk from her cows, was getting booted out of her home just because of some nasty in-laws. Joanna definitely knew all about that. No one was ever good enough for anybody's precious sons. No one ever called daughters precious, and why was that? Things had not changed very much. In the end women like Emily and Ingrid and Freya and Joanna only had one another to lean on. The men were wonderful when they were around, but their fires burned too bright, they lived too close to the sun - look what happened to her boy, and to her man. Gone. Women only had one another in the end. So she agreed to do what she could for Lionel, for Emily's sake.
Privately, Joanna had started to wonder if provoking the Council might be a good idea, anyway. Freya's upcoming nuptials had put her in an optimistic mood. If the fickle goddess of Love was tying the knot on the night of the harvest moon (the Labor Day weekend fell right on their traditional holiday - not that they were allowed to celebrate it anymore, of course), perhaps there was still hope that things would finally change around here.
But if she was actually going to do this she was going to need the right ammunition. It might be a good idea to have it anyway, after what happened the other night. They would need protection from whatever was out there. Joanna climbed up the attic steps and rooted around the cramped space until she found the false wall where she had hidden their greatest treasures. She had been very careful to make sure the Council did not take everything back then. Ah. There was the black steamer trunk, right where she had left it hidden under a piano sheet so many years ago. She pulled off the dusty sheet, unlocked the lid, and looked inside. The box was empty save for a simple wooden case, and from inside the wooden case Joanna removed three ivory wands, as pristine and beautiful as the day they were made.
"Mother? What are you doing up there?" she heard Ingrid call from below. "We need to leave for the hospital now, before visiting hours are over."
"Coming, dear," she replied. When she climbed back down she was holding the three wands tightly in her left hand. She handed two of them to Ingrid. "Make sure you give Freya hers when she gets home. But remember to be careful with them. Only use when absolutely necessary."
"Are you sure about this, Mother?" Ingrid asked, holding the wands reverently. They were made from dragon bone, from the skeleton of the old gods, older than the universe itself, the very bones that created the earth, the same ones that once supported the bridge. Translucent, white to the eye, they shone with an iridescent light.
"Not really. But something tells me it's time we took them out of storage," Joanna said. She stuck her wand in her coat pocket. "Now, come on, let's go see if we can wake up Lionel."
They arrived at the hospital in the late afternoon, managing to make it right before the patients' rooms were closed to visitors. "So how long has he been out?" Joanna asked, rolling up her sleeves as they made their way to the correct floor.
"About a week or so."
"And there's no brain activity at all?"
"Some, but not enough to guarantee he would ever recover consciousness."
Joanna nodded. "Good. This shouldn't be too hard, then." If there was still some brain activity it meant Lionel was only barely submerged in the first level of the underlayer, and it would be easy enough to pull him to the surface.
"That's what I thought." They arrived at the right room, but before Ingrid opened the door, she turned to Joanna. "Thanks, Mother."