"Do you remember what you said to me when we were in Portland?" I asked Antoine as I set the Grail down. "We were standing beside the Willamette River, before I went back to face Bernard. You pointed out that I wasn't supposed to be there. I was-what did you say?" When he didn't leap to answer, I filled it in for him. "I was the 'dead man lost to us all.' Do you remember?"
His tongue wet his lips, and he nodded.
"It's true," I said. "And I should have listened to you then."
"Michael-" Marielle started, but I stopped her voice with a flick of the Chorus.
"There needs to be a Witness," I said. "And there is nothing you can say to me that can change my mind." I stood, and waved a hand toward the back of the church. "I could go out there and ask for a volunteer, but this choice, my choice-doesn't need to be that complicated."
I smiled at her. "It's pretty easy, actually. You two need to come to a consensus. One of you is going to be the Witness, and you have to decide who that person will be."
"Why?" Antoine found his voice. "Why should we choose which one of us dies?"
I shook my head. "I didn't say anything about killing one of you."
Uncertainty flickered across his face, and for a second, Antoine was naked before me, and I could see through his flesh. I looked on his soul, and there was no satisfaction in Knowing him because I realized, as I saw the light of his spirit, that he wasn't that much of a stranger in the end.
In the woods, lost, a small child, naked before the light and shadow, looking up. Why? had been his question too.
"My choice," I said with a little sadness, "is to reject both of you. I don't want the Crown. My choice is to be free of the responsibility of being a Watcher, and of being Watched. In a moment, you two will be all alone here, and then the only thread that you can twist will be the one next to you."
Marielle closed her eyes finally and lowered her head.
What is gone is gone.
EPILOGUE
The Chorus flew into the studio like an owl, darted around my head, and then left again, returning to their watch post on the roof of the barn. Visitors. A single car, coming slowly down the old road from the highway. Seeing the landscape around the farm through their psychic radar, I watched the sedan approach. Two souls: one in front, one in back; I recognized them both, though they had been changed by the coming of the spring.
I wandered over to the sink by the window to wash my brush, and looked out at the yard. The flowers were blooming in the old field; it was starting to look like I remembered it. Though there were no geese and no little girl to chase them.
The car rolled up to the main house, and Marielle got out of the back. Antoine stayed in the car. Driver's seat. The significance of their positions in the vehicle was not lost on me.
I had finished drying my hands by the time Marielle walked across the yard to the barn. It hadn't housed horses since she had gone off to school, and Philippe had turned it into a makeshift studio, complete with a small furnace for glass in one corner.
Someday I might try my hand at glass, to see how much of Cristobel I still had. Though judging by the way I was making a mess out of the watercolors, I was going to be a dismal glass blower. Probably just as well; the artist's life was a little too sedentary for me anyway.
When I had first arrived at the old farmhouse, I had spent a few days cleaning out the main house, getting it ready for habitation again. Philippe hadn't been here for a few years, and the whole place, while still sealed from the elements and curious locals with too much wine in their bloodstreams, had become filled with dead air and ghosts. It had needed a good cleansing.
I had then turned my attention to the barn and had discovered the canvases and the glass-blowing tools. A memory of Cristobel's initiation had given me an idea, and after a few days of poking through books in the extensive library, I had formulated a spell.
I hadn't taken the oath, in the end, and the Land had been generous enough to let me go with the healing magick of the Grail still upon me. My right hand was still gone, and the gauntlet was still attached to my wrist. I could have had Nuriye undo her magick and remove it, but I had wanted to get out of Paris. I had wanted to put all of my past behind me.
Besides, the daughters were undoubtedly busy. Vivienne had managed to breach the wards enough to allow access to the roof of Tour Montparnasse, but it was going to take a little longer, I suspected, to free them entirely from that building. They didn't need me underfoot.
The spell I had in mind required a lot of heat, and the glass-blowing furnace turned out to be perfectly suitable for my needs. After two nights of incantations and preparations, I had gone into Carcassone and stocked up on raw meat and fish. I was going to need a lot of protein afterward.
The glass-blowing furnace had come back to life with some reluctance, as if it was unwilling to serve a new master, but I stroked it in the right way and it slowly became a white-hot core. The Chorus had shielded my eyes and my flesh, and a heavy apron-inscribed with a number of seals and sigils-protected me from the brunt of the heat as the forge melted the gauntlet down. I shaped a new hand from the magick fire and bound it to the liquid smoke of Cristobel's rosary beads. I stole marrow and bone from my feet and made new fingers, I sloughed flesh off my thighs and ass to make new skin, and I kept John ab Indagine's chiromantic drawing as the foundation of my new palm.
The lifeline went all the way around the base of my palm, twice around my wrist, and ran up my forearm and bicep to my armpit. A tiny tattoo of black beads.
Afterward, for almost a week, all I had done was eat and sleep while the Chorus helped my body grow back the raw materials I had taken to make the hand. It was still a bit stiff, and the flesh was new and pink. There were no scars on the knuckles. I had wiped away my past.
Marielle knocked once before she entered the studio. She was wearing a green cashmere sweater and a pair of old jeans that were supple in their familiarity and comfort. She had dyed the color out of her hair; it was solid black again, as it had been when she was younger. Her father's signet ring glittered on her left thumb. It was clearly a man's ring, but she wore it well. It drew your attention, but not because it was an incongruity, but because it was an anchor. It grounded her, announcing how she was the rock upon which all the world turned.
"Salve, mi soror," I said, tipping my head forward a touch. My sister.
"Salve, mi frater," she replied. The slight of my honorific wasn't lost on her and her reply came somewhat awkwardly.
"I wondered when you might come," I said.
"We all needed some time to heal," she replied, wandering into the studio. She saw the canvas on the easel, and I wondered what she saw. I wanted to ask her; part of me still thrilled at the idea of hearing her interpretation, of being drawn in by her vision.
"It's going to take longer than a few weeks," I said, pushing that desire away.
Marielle nodded. "It's a new world, Michael. The old ways have been abandoned, but not forgotten. We needed a clean break, no matter how painful. We are not snakes; we don't slough off our old shells every year. It takes a little longer."
She caught a hint of the objection rising in my chest. "Regardless of how quickly our flesh regenerates. Broken hearts and spirits take a little longer." She shrugged. "But, children are resilient and eager to learn. They do heal, and they do learn to forgive."
"Is that what you're telling them? That they'll forgive you eventually?"
"Me?" Her eyebrows went up. "Why would they need to forgive me?"