Page 159 of Cast in Atonement

For some reason, this strand of Mrs. Erickson’s story seemed viscerally important; Kaylin couldn’t elide it, couldn’t set it aside. Nor, when it came to that, could she edit out Mrs. Erickson’s daily life: the baking for the Hawks, the telling of her life to the children who now had no life of their own. She was the window through which they might seem or feel alive, and she was grateful to them, loved them, wanted to give them at least that much for as long as she could.

She had always regretted that the food she baked couldn’t be eaten by the dead, but she understood that new stories, new adventures, came only in her contacts with the living. On good days and bad, she therefore made the trek to the Halls of Law. She might have chosen different venues, but she heard such interesting things while waiting for her turn to approach the public desk and make her report, and some of those things amused the children endlessly.

No, she continued, she hadn’t always been alone with the children. She’d been married, too. Kaylin almost stopped speaking at that point, because the word marriage didn’t come easily to the green. There were clearly similar concepts, but it wasn’t the concept that the green—through its harmoniste—had trouble conveying; it was the love that led to marriage. The green understood Mrs. Erickson’s sense of responsibility for those dead children. Marriage, not so much. But Kaylin chose to keep that thread, because it led to what followed.

Loneliness. Longing. Despair. Certainty that her life was over. Mrs. Erickson had been old enough that she felt she would never meet another partner. Who else would love a woman who could see and talk to invisible people? Who else would believe her and trust her? Who else would accept her care and concern for those invisible children, and help her fashion as much of a life for them as she possibly could?

Marriage to Mrs. Erickson, to Imelda, included those children and her sense of duty to them. She’d been lucky to find one person. She’d never been so lucky before, and she knew luck was something she couldn’t rely on. She had no idea how life could continue.

But the children, the weight of duty to them, forced her to find her footing. Helped her to continue to put one foot in front of the other. And time slowly did the rest of the work. Helped her to understand that love didn’t die. Love—the ability to love—had not abandoned her. Was it the same love? No. But in her grief, she had all but forgotten the strength of it.

And it returned. It returned first in unremarkable things—baking, needlework, interacting with the children. It returned as she realized she had to do something, had to have something that would take her out of her home. Happiness had dwelled there when her husband had lived; loss and despair, a reminder that he was dead, had been what remained.

The Hawks provided the external world. Their tolerance became a grudging acceptance, and the grudging acceptance became, over time, genuine affection. Genuine protectiveness.

This was the life Mrs. Erickson had built for herself after catastrophic loss.

But the children became her fear as she aged. Age was inevitable if one lived. Injuries became easier to inflict, took longer to heal. She would not live forever, and the children would be dead forever—dead, trapped, and isolated.

But ghosts had become her anchor, even then. The ghosts that she now had with her. And the Ancient himself, dead, bound, trapped in this space just as Jamal had been trapped in hers. Yes, he wasn’t mortal, hadn’t lived a mortal life—but perhaps he was the ghost that inhabited Azoria’s home, just as the children had inhabited Mrs. Erickson’s.

Kaylin felt the flow of words, the invocation of the green, die. Her mouth was open, but no further words came to occupy it. She turned to look at Mrs. Erickson then.

“I want for you what I wanted for the children. I want you to be free, to move on to a better place than this. I don’t really understand what your purpose was. I’m an old woman. I’m used to being mostly invisible—but maybe it was easier for me because even as a child, I had only the love of the dead and my parents. People outside of my home avoided me.

“Because I’m alive, I found purpose. I found a new home. I found new friends. And I found new ghosts, people my power might be able to help.” She stopped speaking, her gaze focused; clearly the Ancient was speaking to her now. Kaylin could no longer hear its voice at all.

“I’m mortal,” Mrs. Erickson replied. “I never had a grand purpose. I never had the powers you naturally have. For me, a small purpose was what I needed, and it’s all I could handle. But you’re not me. What you were and what I am are so completely different, you can’t live the life I built on the foundation of loss. I’m not sure you’d want to, either.

“But if death for you is an end to purpose, you can build a life around a new purpose. These,” she said, her hands moving, “are my friends. But they are, I believe, more like you than like me. And they will stay with you.” She lifted her hands, cupped around the ghosts of words; as Kaylin watched, the physicality of the green marks dwindled.

No, that was wrong. The gold edging grew, spreading across the surface of each different component until the ghosts looked like every other mark Kaylin had carried.

Kaylin understood then. The words approached the Ancient; the threads around them followed. They didn’t struggle, didn’t attempt to pull away, to draw back; they seemed to speed up until they touched the Ancient’s current body. Her hands were still pressed to the Ancient’s skin; she felt the moment they joined with him.

Had felt something on a much smaller level before, exactly once.

Bellusdeo.

Yes, Hope said.

Mrs. Erickson was not yet finished. Kaylin had finished with the duties given her as harmoniste, but she had only barely begun the duties of the Chosen. As the new words joined the complicated, messy symbols that comprised the Ancient, their gold coloration began to spread across what they touched. She could now see the pattern, the sense of the broken bits; could see how the new words must be placed, or how components of each ghost fit into the gaps that had existed.

“It’s very difficult for me to do this,” Mrs. Erickson said, continuing. “But you won’t have any peace unless I do. If I understand what you used to be, you helped to create the world. Helped to create all the people who populate it. Everything we are comes from your people. We are all, in some sense, your descendants, your children.

“Therefore I command you: protect your children, where it is possible. No, not every one of them; they are no longer small and in need of a parent’s guidance. I think you understand my intent, and it is intent that is important here. They cannot be worth more than your new life; Azoria was also a descendant of the Ancients. She attempted to harm you, attempted to control you—and you must not let that happen.

“But you might find, as I did, that there is purpose in such protection, and you might find an end to death, just as I did. That is what I command of you.” Her voice trembled at the very end, but Kaylin felt the steel in it, the command in it, even as she worked.

Severn slid an arm around not her shoulders, but her waist, as if to carry her weight for her. Oh. Her knees were sagging, her hands trembling. She lost Mrs. Erickson’s voice as she worked. Lost everything but the Ancient, the new formation of words, the rightness or harmony of their full joining.

And she understood, as she did, what had gone wrong with Bellusdeo’s sisters. Understood how she might give Bellusdeo the same unity, the same wholeness.

“Yes,” Mrs. Erickson said, surprising her, because she hadn’t thought she’d spoken the words out loud. “Yes, in this moment, I think you can do exactly that. I wish you could see what I see,” she added, voice continuing to tremble. “But it doesn’t matter. I know you’ll take my word for it.

“Severn, be a dear, and get Bellusdeo?”

She spoke as if Severn were Jamal. Then again, she talked to Kaylin as if she were Jamal as well.

---