Unmade (The Lynburn Legacy Book 3) (26 page)

Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am the sunlight on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there; I did not die.

—Mary Elizabeth Frye

K
ami woke on the dawn of their last day with Elinor's bells ringing in her head, a chorus and a warning. The sky outside was cloudy, as it had been for both the days and nights since Rusty died. Through the windows, the sky shone like a gray pearl.

She had not been expecting to, but she had slept a little.

Kami, Jared, and Ash had to do the ceremony on the very day of the equinox. It would kill two of them. Elinor Lynburn had said it would.

Now the day of the equinox had come. It was as simple as that.

Kami remembered how clear Rusty's eyes had been, how calm his voice, how steady and sure his hands. She wanted to say her goodbyes as well as he had.

Angela would not let her say a word. Angela just hugged her, her grip fiercely tight, and Kami closed her mouth and dipped her face down into Angela's shoulder, and wished Angela would not let go. But they had to let go of each other eventually.

Holly hugged her next, her arms warm and enveloping.

“Look after Angela,” Kami said in her ear. “And—thank you.”

Holly smiled. Her eyes were bright with tears, but her smile was always brighter. “For what?”

“For being my friend,” said Kami. “Just that. You were fantastic at that.”

She pulled away from Holly, and saw Holly turn to Jared and give him a big hug and heard Angela drawl, “I'm just going with a friendly nod for both of you” to Ash.

Dad stood with Ten and Tomo on either side of him. She stooped and hugged Tomo, who looked bewildered but hugged her readily back.

“Good luck,” he said, blinking up at her. She thought he was still waiting for Rusty to come back. She swallowed a lump in her throat at the thought of him waiting for her.

“Thanks, kiddo,” she said.

Her dad leaned down and wiped away a tear from her cheek that she did not know had fallen. She saw it all in his face, that he wanted to tell her not to do it, that he wanted to lie and promise there was another way.

“I love you so much,” he said. “I could never let you go if it wasn't that I trust you just as much.”

“I couldn't go now if you hadn't always trusted me,” Kami said.

When she tried to hug Ten, he moved away. She wanted to say,
I'll come back,
but she did not want him to remember her last words as lies. She kissed his cheek, though his face was turned away, then straightened up and turned away. There was so very little time.

Kami began to walk through the fields and down toward the woods, her Lynburn boys on either side of her. She heard the drumming of small feet behind her, running desperately fast as if he thought she would not stop for him.

She did stop for him. She turned and went onto her knees in the long meadow grass and Ten came crashing into her arms. He buried his face against her neck and she felt the press of his glasses under her chin.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Kami whispered back. “Nothing in the world.”

It was a little thing, a sweet small benediction before what was to come, before she did what she had to do.

Kami could not think of death as all there was to be done. She could not die until she had saved the town.

Holly knew that Kami and the boys had one part to play, and they had another. They had dropped Kami's brothers off at the Water Rising, and now all that Jon and Angela needed was a ride. Holly knew exactly what had to be done.

The sorcerers might come out, on this last day. Rob might want to see his triumph, and Rob triumphing meant other people being hurt. They had to stop that, as far as they could, but the sorcerers were not only stronger but faster than they were.

Holly understood all that. She still felt the paddock had far too many horses in it.

“That's sort of the idea,” Angie said.

Jon Glass had vaulted over the fence and was now approaching a horse chosen by some sort of weird horse-knowledge method, or possibly because it was shiny. Angie had noticed the way Holly was standing a careful distance away from the animals, though, and had stopped with her feet on the first plank that made up the fence to look at her quizzically.

“I thought you were a farm girl.”

Her dad did not have any horses on his farm. Holly had heard people talking about horses, of course, and how such and such a horse was a good goer, or had a temper, or was a spirited beast, but that was only talk. Holly had fed chickens, milked cows, and gathered wool. No cow or sheep was a spirited beast. You were not supposed to ride them. Holly had not realized until this moment what a deep and profound affection she had for cows and sheep.

“I
am
a farm girl,” said Holly. “Horses stopped being used on all farms about the time they replaced carts and horse-drawn plows with these newfangled things called cars and tractors. And I didn't get any fancy riding lessons.”

Holly saw the moment of awkwardness and unease flicker across Angie's face, the rare way that Angie sometimes looked when she'd been inconsiderate of someone's feelings and she hadn't meant to be. She had only seen Angie ever look that way about three people in the world, and one of the three was gone. She loved Angie so much, for still caring about Holly's feelings, in the midst of all this chaos and all that Angie had been through.

“Well,” Angie said after a pause. “If you want, I'll teach you, once all this is over. And you don't need to get on a horse today. So there's no reason to be afraid of anything. Don't be.”

Angela didn't smile at her. Angela's smiles had always come seldom, and now her face looked stern and somehow fixed—older and less open to happiness and hope, but no less beautiful. She had the air of a warrior, someone who had been through fire and would no longer be touched by fire. For Angie, maybe it was easy not to fear. With Angie, not being afraid seemed possible.

“Wait,” said Holly. “Wait, I'm sorry, there's something I want to say.”

Angie stilled.

Holly felt sick, in the same way she had when she was a kid so desperate to get out of school that she convinced herself she was terribly ill and then could not make the pain stop. She had to wrench the words out of herself, because she could not put it off any more, because this could be her very last chance.

“I know you think I was just feeling sorry for you, but that wasn't it at all,” Holly said. She saw Angela flinch but did not let herself stop. “When we were first getting to know each other, I thought you were so great, and I wanted to be with you all the time, and I didn't know what those feelings meant. It took me a long time to understand, and to catch up with you, and once I did, I still didn't know what to do. I know that the whole offering-you-a-massage thing was weird and borderline creepy. I didn't know how to do it, when it was with a girl, or when it felt important. I know I did it all wrong, and I'm sorry. If that's wrecked any chance for us, I understand. I wish I could make up for it all. Or if too much has happened for that to be possible, I want, just once, to tell you the whole truth about myself and about what you mean to me. I've made so many mistakes and I've said so many dumb hurtful things, but I want you to know what it all meant. I want you to know that everything I've done lately, I've done because I wanted to be with you.”

“You mean it?” Angela asked. “You r-really do?”

Her voice wobbled, and Holly stood stricken with a painful mingling of hope and fear.

“I mean it,” she said. “I don't always know what to say, like you and Kami. I don't know how else to tell you that I mean it, but if things work out and if you were willing—I could keep thinking of how to prove it to you. I could keep trying different ways to tell you, until you believe me. That is, if you want to hear it.”

“I do,” said Angie, and the words tumbled out eagerly, in a way Holly had never heard her speak. “I do, I do.”

“Yeah?” Holly asked. She heard her own voice come out shy, and thrilled. It was a little embarrassing, but it was how she felt. She wanted Angie to know.

She stepped up, one foot on the fence, so Angie was only a tiny bit taller than she was. She remembered how Angie had leaned in once before, and how Holly had shoved her back, how easy it had been to repel her in a moment of shock. Nothing was easy now, but it was so sweet.

It was strange, to taste someone else's lipstick. Angela's was slightly dry, with an edge of dark chocolate, mingled with the slick bubble-gum slide of Holly's own lip gloss. Angie had never been kissed before, which Holly had known but now really knew, because of the slight hesitation that Angie would never have betrayed if she could've hidden it, the hovering of Angie's hands like butterflies not daring to land on Holly's hair. Holly was surprised by the rush of protectiveness and satisfaction that washed over her: she had kissed and been kissed a lot, if never quite like this. She slid her hands from Angela's narrow back to Angela's small waist, drew her in so close against her body that their hips pressed together in a tiny jolt of contact, and deepened the kiss. Angie had always been one of the quickest studies in school. The kiss transformed into something world-changing, warming the air, slowing time. The sun shimmered behind Holly's closed eyelids, and above their heads the wind whispered promises to the leaves.

“Angela, are you ever going to pick a hor—Oh,” said Jon Glass.

Holly looked over at him, in sudden guilty terror. Her fingers closed on Angie's hand, clutching too tight. Her heart was pounding. She didn't want to be separated.

For a moment, she could not see him clearly through her blur of panic, and then she could.

“Well, I must say this is a great relief to me,” Jon said, with wicked eyes and infinite tenderness. “I was starting to think that nobody would ever be willing to take on Angela, homely as she is.”

Holly giggled, the sound surprised out of her, like a hiccup of happiness. “Mr. Glass!”

“Oh, I know other people say she's all right looking, but I just don't see it,” Jon continued. “Also, bad tempered as a camel in a shipwreck. You might have noticed that. But she has a good heart, and I think of her as a grouchy, overly tall daughter.”

He reached out and touched, with absent affection, the ends of Angela's long dark hair, streaming in the warm breeze. For a moment, the wind whipped a few locks around his wrist, curling around like a bracelet, like a caress. Holly would have thought it was magic if either of them had been a sorcerer. Instead it was a happy accident of nature, and the simple fact of love: love tucked in the small upward curve of Angela's mouth, love in the gleam in Jon Glass's eyes.

Jon wheeled his horse away, handling the reins with casual expertise.

“He's kind of hot, for a dad,” Holly said thoughtfully, and squeaked when Angela poked her in the ribs with her manicured fingernails.

“So it's like that, is it?”

“Yes,” said Holly, and glanced at Angie through her eyelashes. “But that doesn't mean—I don't want you to think … I can find a lot of people hot, and I know how it might seem, but I don't want to be with anybody but you.”

“I don't think anything,” Angela said. “It doesn't seem any way. Hot though I am, I'd be waiting a long time before I found someone who thought I was the only hot person in the universe. If I did find someone who thought that, it'd seem like a lot of pressure.” Her voice softened, brightened, like sun hitting water and turning it from something cold to something made of living, dancing brightness. “And I believe you. I believe everything you tell me.”

Holly leaned forward and stole one more kiss before Angela climbed over the fence and walked toward the horse that was glowing gold in the sunlight, which took a few nervous prancing steps back but calmed when Angie put a hand on its arched neck.

She swung herself onto the horse's bare back, light and easy as a dandelion seed caught in the breeze, and followed Jon's lead as he opened the gate and trotted his horse through. Soon the bright horse was chasing the dark horse, across the fields, over streams and hedges, so fast it looked as if they were flying, toward the town.

“Just you and me, girl,” Holly whispered to her bike, and kicked it into purring life. She was still scared, scared to die or to hurt anyone else, but the sun was shining and she had said all she had wanted to say. She had been as brave as she knew how, and was loved in return. She was as ready as she would ever be.

They went through the woods walking softly. Even the ringing of the bells seemed muffled by the leaves, becoming a steady sound as soft as their footsteps.

The Crying Pools were two silver coins laid out at their feet.

Ash was pale. Kami could feel his fear, so different from her own it was not like the same emotion. His was tangled with panic, with self-doubt, with desperate fear he would let them all down.

I'm not worried,
said Kami.

I've let you down before.

You've changed,
said Kami.
I know you better than anyone by now. I know you never will again.

She felt his love pouring through her. She felt his faith, as she had once felt Jared's belief in her, and it helped her believe in herself.

“I want to go in the sinister pool,” Jared said. Ash and he looked at each other.

Lillian had said the Crying Pool on the left was deeper and colder.

“Come on,” Ash said. “No. Kami and I are the ones who are linked—”

“I'm the one who went in the pools last time.”

“And that went so well,” Ash sneered.

“We don't have time to fight!” Kami cried.

She could imagine her brothers hidden away at the Water Rising, with the sound of the bells shaking the windows.

“Come on,” Jared said. “Let me do this. Am I your big brother or not?”