Guy Kay - Ysabel

He had stopped crying. He was drained of tears. He wiped at his cheeks, felt the bite of wind swirling. Two more birds, or the same ones, wheeled down and east and out of sight again. Phelan’s jacket lay across his shoulders. He looked over at the chasm, half hidden by bushes. He wished he knew a prayer to speak, or even think.

He heard a sound behind him, but didn’t turn.

He was afraid, too achingly aware of what role he’d played here. He didn’t think he could look at what would be in her face. His mother, Cadell had said, had her hair. Her great-grandmother was said to have had the second sight. There were family stories further back.

And his aunt…

Ned sighed, it seemed to come from so deep inside it felt bottomless. He had been in this, after all. It was his family, and Phelan seemed to have been aware of something—without knowing what— from that beginning in the cathedral, first day.

Ysabel stepped nearer. More a presence than a sound. He was painfully conscious of her. The two of them alone now. She would be looking down and remembering two thousand six hundred years. How did you come to terms with something ending after so long? Who had ever had to deal with that?

Because it was over. Ned knew it as keenly as the three of them had. They had collided with a wall—with him—and the intricate spinning had come to a close on this mountain.

He shook his head. So many ways it might have been otherwise. Brys had tried to kill him in the cemetery. He could have been too sick to climb when he got here. Either of the two men might have been quicker than Ned. Both had said these things. It was not preordained, what had just happened, not compelled.

Did that mean he had killed them? Or set them free?

Did the choice of words make a difference? Did words matter at all here?

“Oh, God. Ned, you did it,” were the words he heard.

They mattered. They mattered so much they powered him to his feet, whirling around.

Melanie stood in front of him. With her black hair and the green streak in it, and a smile so wide, through tears, it seemed it could light the shadows of that cave.

“I don’t believe it!” he said. “It…she…you’re back!”

And Ysabel was gone.

He had been right, then, to see her as going away even as she stood there. Joy now, fierce and searingly bright, mixed with something that might never leave him. Someone returned, was rescued, someone was gone. Was this the way it always was?

She said, “You brought me back.”

“I’ve never been so glad to see someone in my life.”

“Is that so?” she said, and he heard a note, of irony, that echoed someone else, not Melanie.

He couldn’t speak. He was stunned, buffeted. She stepped close and put her hands behind his head, lacing her fingers there, and she kissed him, standing on the edge of the plateau in the wind. She didn’t actually rush it. There was a scent to her he couldn’t remember from before. It was dizzying.

She stepped back. Looked at him. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, maybe with the tears. “I probably shouldn’t be doing that.”

He was still having some trouble breathing. “Only reason I came to France,” he managed.

She laughed. Kissed him again, lightly this time. It felt, impossibly, as if it was Melanie doing that, but also not quite Melanie. Or maybe it wasn’t impossible. Not after what had happened here. He suddenly remembered Kate, walking up to Entremont, the change in her, with Beltaine coming on.

“Thank you,” Melanie said, still very close.

“Well, yeah,” he said, light-headed from the feel of her and her scent, and the strangeness of his thoughts. Then something else registered, really belatedly. He stepped to one side, looking more closely at her.

He felt himself beginning to grin, despite everything. “Oh, Lord!” he said.

Melanie looked suddenly awkward, uncertain, more like herself. “What is it?”

He started to laugh, couldn’t help himself. “Melanie, jeez, you are at least three inches taller. Look at yourself!”

“What? That can’t be…and I can’t look at myself!”

“Then trust me. Come back, stand close.”

She did. It was as he’d said. At least three inches. She came up to his nose now, and no way she’d been even close to that before.

“Holy-moly, Ned! I grew?”

“Sure looks like it.” No one else he’d ever known said “holy-moly.”

“Can that happen?”

He was thinking about his aunt. Her hair turning white all at once. What his mother had refused to believe, for twenty-five years.

“I guess it can,” was all he said. “We don’t know a whole lot about any of this.”

“I grew?” she said again, in wonder.

“You’re going to be dangerous,” he said.

She flashed a smile that evoked someone else who was gone. “You have no idea, Ned Marriner.”

Someone returned, someone went away forever. He hesitated. “Melanie, were you aware of anything, when you were…?”

The smile faded. She looked through the opening to the south, plateau and plain, river, more mountains, the sea.

“Just at the beginning,” she said quietly. “And even then it was difficult. When…when I started changing, I could feel it happening, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t stop walking. I could see out through her eyes at first, and hear things, but it got hard. Like pushing a weight up, a big boulder, with my head, my shoulders, trying to look out from beneath? And then it started to be too heavy. And after a while I couldn’t.”

She was still gazing out.

“So you don’t know what happened here? Just now?”

“You’ll tell me?”

“What I know. But…did you make her change things, have them look for her. And pick this place?”

She had started to cry again. She nodded. “I did do that. I could do…I knew from inside her what was supposed to happen, and that I was gone if one of them killed the other and claimed her. So I pushed the only idea I had, which was trying to get her to come here instead, and hope someone would remember it.” She looked at him. “You, actually, Ned. I didn’t think anyone else could.”

“You understood what might happen, if they all came here?”

“I knew what she knew.” She wiped at her cheeks. “Ned, I was her, and still me, a little. Then it got too hard and I could only wait, underneath.”

“You knew I was there? At Entremont?”

A flash of the old Melanie in her eyes. “Well, that’s a dumb question. What was I doing there in the first place?”

He felt stupid. He’d called her. “Right. Sorry.”

Her expression changed. “Don’t ever say sorry to me, Ned. Not after this.”

He tried to make it a joke. “That’s a risky thing to tell a guy.”

She shook her head. “Not this time, it isn’t.”

His turn to look away, out over so much darkening beauty. “We should get down. This isn’t a normal place.”

“Neither are we,” said Melanie. “Normal. Are we?”

He hesitated. “I think we mostly are,” he said. “We will be. Can you walk, like that?”

She looked at her bare feet. “Not down a mountain, Ned. And it’ll be dark.”

He thought. “There’s a chapel I saw. Just below the peak. Not far. We may not be able to get inside, but there’s a courtyard, some shelter. I can call down from there.”

“Auto-dial Greg?”

It was Melanie again. Taller, but this was her. He smiled. Happiness was possible, it was almost here. “Very funny,” he said. Another thought. “Greg was pretty amazing, you know.”

“You’ll have to tell me. You’re right, though, we should go. I’m cold. Ysabel was…pretty tough, I guess.”

Ysabel had been many things, he thought.