Guy Kay - Ysabel

“Aunt Kim?” Edward Marriner repeated blankly. “Kimberly?”

Ned nodded. “Did Mom tell you anything about it?”

“Ned, Jesus, what does—”

“Please, Dad. Did she?”

He was pretty sure it was because Kate Wenger was beside him, worried and serious and biting her lip, that his father answered.

“She told me very little,” Edward Marriner said, finally. “It happened before we met. She’s almost never talked about it, or her sister.”

“I know that,” Ned said quietly. “I asked you once or twice, remember?”

His father nodded. “It was some supernatural story, I know that. Mystical. Very…” He clasped his hands together on the table. “Very New Age, I guess. Things from Celtic roots your mother never liked, never believed in.”

“And then Aunt Kim went away?”

“Uh-huh. Your grandmother used to keep in touch with her. Your mother wouldn’t even let her talk about Kimberly. She was angry, hurt. I still don’t understand all of it, but I learned not to ask.” His gaze held Ned’s. “Is your aunt involved in this, Ned? Whatever this is?”

“Sort of. Can I…may I ask one more question, first?”

His father’s mouth moved sideways. “You’re going to, aren’t you?”

“Are you…do you…hate that New Age stuff as much as Mom does?”

Edward Marriner was silent a moment, then he sighed. “I don’t believe any of us knows everything about how the world works. Go ahead and tell me.”

Ned found that there were tears in his eyes again. He wiped them away. He said, “That’s good, Dad. Thanks. I didn’t expect…”

His father waited. Steve was still swimming, out of earshot. Ned said, “For the past three days, Kate and I have sort of stumbled into something off-the-wall weird.”

“Where?” his father asked.

“It started in the cathedral. The baptistry and the cloister.”

The blue eyes were direct now. “Where you sent me?”

“Yes.” Ned took a chance. “Did you feel anything there?”

Another silence. “Leave that for the moment. Go on.” His father was used to giving commands, Ned thought, but he didn’t do it in a bad way. It was almost reassuring.

He looked at Kate. “We met, I guess that’s the word, we met a man in there, and then later some other people who…who don’t seem to belong in our time. Like, they’re from the past? And it…it is a Celtic kind of story, I think.”

“You think?”

“It is,” said Kate. “We know it is. We’re just really hesitant because it’s scary and totally weird and people won’t believe us. But today is, well it’s May Day eve.” She stopped.

“I knew that, as it happens,” Edward Marriner said, after a pause. He looked at his son. “We used to go on picnics, when your grandmother was alive.”

“I remember. And tonight was…is a really powerful night. For the Celts.”

“Jesus, Ned.” His father shook his head. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Kate and I went up to a ruined site near here, called Entremont, this afternoon.”

“It was my fault,” Kate interrupted. “Ned didn’t want to go.”

“I did want to. But Aunt Kim said I—”

“You tried to stop us.”

“But I went.”

“Hold it,” said Edward Marriner. “Aunt Kim said…?”

Ned closed his eyes. He hadn’t meant to do it that way. But if there was a good way to do this, he sure hadn’t thought of it.

“I know. Mom will kill all of us. Or she’ll get spitting mad. Aunt Kim says she used to get spitting mad.”

“Ned. Please. Be extremely clear. Right now.”

Ned nodded. “Aunt Kim called me when we were leaving that restaurant two nights ago. After I had that headache thing by the mountain? She realized somehow that I had connected to something she knows about.”

“She called you? Your aunt telephoned you?”

That same look of disbelief, the one that should have been funny.

“Yeah. Remember, in the restaurant driveway? She was already here. She flew down because she realized something had happened to me. She knew, Dad.”

“Flew down?”

“From England. She lives there. With Uncle Dave.”

His father sighed. “I actually knew that. And she…?”

“She met me that night. When I said I wanted to go for a walk?”

“Jesus, Ned.” Third time he’d said that.

Ned still thought he might cry. It was embarrassing. “Dad, she’s really great. And she was trying to help. To explain what had happened to me. That it was in her family, and Mom’s. And she told me not to go anywhere that might involve…those guys. But I did.”

“I made him go,” Kate said again. “And we got trapped, and had to call for help.”

“But it was supposed to be Greg.”

“And if Melanie hadn’t come when she did it would have been me who became…someone else.”

Kate was the one who was crying, Ned saw. He watched his father register that.

“Why you?” Edward Marriner said quietly.

“There…needed to be a woman. Both men were there, they were calling her. They needed Ysabel. And I was supposed to become her…it was already happening. Then Melanie came, because we’d phoned.”

Wordlessly, Edward Marriner picked up a serviette from the table and handed it to her. Kate wiped her eyes, and then blew her nose.

Ysabel. The name, spoken on a villa terrace, a bell-sound in the word. He could still see her. He could see Melanie, changing, between flames.

They heard a car changing gears on the steep slope of the road.

His father turned quickly, and Ned could see hope flare in his face: the heart-deep wish that this was Melanie in the van, that it had all been an elaborate practical joke, to be dealt with by a thunderous grounding of his only child.

Ned looked. He saw the red Peugeot.

“That’s Aunt Kim,” he said. “I asked her to come. We’re going to need her, Dad.”

His father stood quickly, scraping his chair, staring at the car as it came through the open gates. They watched it pull into the first gravel parking space. The engine was turned off.

A woman got out and looked across the grass at them.

Medium height, slender. White-haired. She wore a long blue-and-white flower-print skirt and a blue blouse over it, held a pale-coloured straw hat in one hand. She closed the car door. It made a chunking sound in the stillness.

Ned lifted a hand to her. She took off her sunglasses and began crossing towards them, walking briskly. His mother’s walk, Ned thought.

Edward Marriner watched her come up the stone steps. He cleared his throat.

With real composure, given the circumstances, he said, “Kimberly Ford? Hello. Ned and his friend have…have been trying to explain what this is about. Thank you for coming. You do know what your sister will do to all of us?”

He extended a hand. Aunt Kim ignored it. She dropped her hat on the table and, stepping forward, gave him a long, fierce hug.

She stepped back, looking at him. “Edward Marriner, I have no idea why my sister lets you keep that silly moustache. I am so glad to meet you, and so sorry it is this way.”

She stepped back, a brightness in her eyes. She was crying now. There seemed to be an epidemic of it.

Ned’s father cleared his throat again. He handed Kim another of the serviettes from the table. She took it and wiped her eyes. She looked over. “Kate?”

Kate nodded. “Hi,” she said in a small voice.

“Hi to you, dear. Are you all right?”

“Sort of, I guess. Not really. We were saying…trying to say…it was going to be me up there it happened to, if Melanie hadn’t come.”

Kimberly held up a hand.

“Stop, please. I don’t know enough. And I’m sure Ned’s father knows less. Back up, start with the cathedral, take us to what just happened.” This crispness was his mother’s, too, Ned thought. She took a chair.