Patricia McKillip - The Bell at Sealey Head

Ysabo touched a bird the color of dawn, perched among the golden leaves of an immense tree.

“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered. “All this time I never saw it. I turned empty page after empty page, never knowing... Why, Ridley?” She stared at him, her eyes wide, burning again, as though he might have an answer to her life. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” he answered softly. He turned a page, looking for answers there, maybe, then another. And then she stopped him, touching something familiar: a feast in a great hall, tables filled with knights and ladies, bright banners hanging above their heads. “Is that us?” she wondered. But no: the hall doors were open to reveal a meadow full of wildflowers, birds flying across a cloudless sky. And a crowned figure sat at the center of the table, an old man with hair like gray tree moss beside her. She turned another page, lingered there again, gazing at the dark water, sky the color of silver, trees loosing their last leaves. Upon a tiny island in the middle of the water, a silver shield lay like something lost, a torn pennant beside it.

“I know this,” she whispered. “Why do I know it?”

“How could you?” Ridley asked with wonder. She lifted her eyes, looked at him, but saw Maeve and Aveline instead, embroidering the air with memories as they sewed.

“It’s a place they described, Maeve and Aveline. As though they’d been there.”

“How could they have?”

“I don’t know.” She turned another page, her fingers trembling. “I don’t know. Here.” She stopped at another image, of huge, worn stones in a wild wood, ancient trees around them tangled together like brambles. Queen Hydria was there, too, with an entourage of knights and nobles, and the strange old man in his long robe. “It was a place full of magic, Maeve said.” Her voice shook. “She said she could feel it.”

“But how?” Ridley’s own voice vanished for a moment. “How could they have left this house?”

“I don’t know, Ridley. When we sew together in the mornings, they talk about other times, other places, as though they remember them. As though they had other lives beyond Aislinn House. Or in this book, somehow ... But if they are part of the ritual, they must have been born here, like I was.”

Ridley’s voice returned abruptly. “Can you ask them?”

“They wouldn’t answer anything. They would only be furious with me for taking the book out of the tower, disrupting the ritual. That’s all they would see. Not the strangeness of their lives, their memories, but the ritual.”

“They may know who made the book.”

“Never ask. That’s what they have told me all my life. They don’t answer even if they know.”

Ridley was silent, his eyes on the painted stones, his mind elsewhere, Ysabo guessed. He said finally, “Princess Ysabo, is there a place you can stay safe and out of sight in this house while I work?”

“I don’t know where to go to be safe,” she answered, taking a bleak look at her life. “Can you raise the grate in the river at the wall, so that I could leave Aislinn House in this boat? I could wait for you beside the sea. The knights and the crows might not find me there.”

“I doubt that you would find the sea through those woods,” Ridley said grimly. “They’re part of the magic. When the knights leave the house at midday, where do they really go? I’ve watched them. Wherever they go, it’s into a different wood. Or a different time. They vanish the moment they ride away from the house.”

She stared at him, chilled. “Then there truly is no way out of this house?”

“Unless you go through the stillroom pantry door into Emma’s world. But I have no idea what would happen to you, even if you could. From this side, that door might just as easily open to nowhere as well.”

She was silent, her thoughts threading their way through the maze of her life, coming up again and again against solid walls, locked doors, passages that spiraled endlessly and went nowhere. “Well, then,” she whispered. “Well, then, Ridley Dow, we must find our own way out. You must undo what Nemos Moore did. You must unbind the spell.”

“Yes.”

“But what—Where do we begin?”

He was gazing at her, his lips parted, his eyes invisible behind reflections of light in his lenses. “You’re sure,” he said finally. “I could unlock the tower door, you could feed the crows, you could wait for me safely within your life.”

She shook her head wearily, looking down at the shadowy stream flowing silently out, away, into. “I don’t want to pretend anymore. Not even to the crows. Where should we go from here?”

“That bell,” he said slowly, “has enough power in it to disturb perfectly comfortable lives as far away as Landringham. It is the single strangest, oldest, and most consistent link between two worlds. I want to find it. Do you have any idea where it is?”

“No.”

“Who rings it?”

“No,” she said again. “I never wondered about it. It’s part of the ritual, part of our lives, a piece of the pattern of someone’s day. Light this candle, lock that door, ring this bell.”

He nodded. “I watched many pieces of the ritual. Most of them, like yours, were either absurd or hauntingly evocative, like the midday ceremony of the knights. I followed everyone I could, including Maeve and Aveline. No one led me to the bell. I spent much of yesterday trying to find that bell in books. Nemos Moore heard it; it’s what drew him here. But if he saw it, he kept it hidden between the lines.”

“How can we find between the lines?” she asked, her red brows crooked. “It isn’t part of the ritual.”

“No. It’s not. That’s the point...” His voice faded; he stared at her with absolute intensity, and without seeing her at all. When he spoke again, his voice had no sound. “That’s where you are now. Between the lines.”

“What?”

He saw her again, but slowly, as though he were struggling to waken from a powerful dream. “And that’s where the bell is. Between the lines. It isn’t part of the ritual at all. That’s why I didn’t see anyone ring it.”

“But, Ridley, it is,” she protested. “The bell calls me to the great hall to arrange the chairs, fill the cups. It summons others to the table. It is what we listen for, at the end of every day. It rings the sun down.”

“It is hidden, disguised within the ritual. But it is not part of the ritual. It’s like the book. When you see it as part of your ritual, it is blank. But if you look at it as it truly is—”

“It is full of treasures,” she breathed. “Outside of the ritual, it is itself.”

“And that’s where the bell is. Outside of the ritual.”

“Nobody in this house is outside of the ritual but you, Ridley Dow. And even if we could look for it, how would we find such a place?”

“You found it,” he told her, “when you turned your back on the crows and came down here instead. It’s the place where you are Ysabo. Where you live your life as you choose, where you ask questions and search for answers. Right now, you are outside. Between the lines of your daily patterns.”

“Yes,” she said, glancing again at the silken flow of water in the light, the stone arching above them. “I shouldn’t be here at this time. But I still don’t see a bell, inside or outside of the ritual, and if it truly is outside, then who outside is ringing it?”

He was silent again, staring at her again, as though if he looked hard enough, waited long enough, she might come up with an answer for him. But it was himself he searched.

“Oh,” he whispered; she watched his eyes filling with wordless answers. “Oh, Ysabo, I think I know where it might be. What we might be looking for, trapped within the lines ... Those were never blank pages you saw in this book. They were closed doors. And now, look: every one of them is open.”