Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (76 page)

 
          
"Nathaniel?
This is Colin. Give me work."

SAN FRANCISCO
, 
1990

 
          
IT
WAS ONLY IN LOOKING BACK ACROSS THE EIGHTIES THAT I REALIZE HOW complacent I
became. For a few terrible months after Simon's redemption, I thought I had
lost Colin
—
if not forever, then at least for the rest of this life.
But as he grew stronger, my fears eased. I realized that the dark shadow that
had haunted Colin's life during his Taghkanic years seemed to have lifted. For
^;
the first time since I had known him
—
and how many years that was,
now!
—
Colin seemed content to live in the moment, taking each day as it came.

 
          
It
was true that he had sold Cassie his interest in the bookstore and spent i more
and more time away from it, but I paid no attention to that. It was as if I
believed that all those things which had been so much a part of Colin's life
for so long had simply . . . stopped.

 
          
I
realize now that it was because I was the one who wished them to stop. Fortune
had brought me a full life, and I had no desire to "rock the boat."
Cassie Chandler's strength and energy took much of the burden of running the
bookstore from my shoulders
—
a good thing, since by then I'd taken the degree in
psychology that I'd worked toward for so long and was working as a counselor at
a local Planned Parenthood Clinic.

 
          
I
found great contentment in helping those whose lives I touched through the
bookstore and the clinic, and there was nothing more
—
so I thought
—
that I wanted out of life.
Shortly after Frodo married Emily
—
with Simon giving away the
bride, something I thought I'd never see
—
Frodo and Cassie began
running a coven together.

           
But it was Emily's wedding that was
the beginning of the end of my emotional hibernation, though its effect did
not bear fruit for months afterward. The wedding was a large
—
though not formal
—
affair, and so naturally her
mother was there.

 
          
It
was easy
—
with the 20/20 hindsight that characterizes our attention
to other people's problems
—
to see the tension there was between Leslie and her mother.
The elder Mrs. Barnes's approval of Leslie's marriage to a wealthy, important man
—
and Leslie's barely
controlled fury at it
—
could have been funny, if it had not struck so close to
home. Inevitably, seeing the Barneses together
—
so angry and so polite
—
made me think of my own
family. I had not spoken to any of them for over a quarter of a century.

 
          
I
think if Peter's mother had lived, I might have sought reconciliation with
them, for my estrangement had always troubled
Elizabeth
and I would have done
nearly anything to please her. As it was, I stayed away, refusing to return to
any part of the life I'd had before Peter's death, and the suspended
relationship was like an old wound that scars over but never really heals. I
did not know what happened to my mother and my sisters over the years and I
told myself I did not care, even though Colin had told me often enough that the
first duty of those who walk in the Light was to seek clarity within.

 
          
For
if we do not, that clarity will seek us out, with painful results.

 
          
To
this day I don't know how Gail found me. But my eldest sister had always
possessed a maddening persistence in going after what she wanted, especially
when she thought she might cause someone else pain through it, and I suppose
that honest, law-abiding citizens aren't particularly hard to find. So I picked
up the bookshop phone one day in 1987 with no sense of foreboding whatever.

 
          
"Ancient
Mysteries Bookshop," I said.

 
          
"Is
this Claire London?" an unfamiliar voice said.

 
          
If
the events of Emily's wedding had not been working their way through the back
of my mind, I would probably have simply hung up the phone. Instead, I
answered honestly.

 
          
"I
no longer use that name," I said carefully. "I am Claire Moffat
now."

 
          
"I
don't care what you call yourself," she said, and now, with an absolute
thrill of horror, I recognized Gail's voice. "Mother's dead. I thought
you'd like to know."

 
          
Why?
was the only thought in my mind. For a strange disjointed moment, the only
thing I could think of was that she'd told me so that I would no longer worry
that someday Mother might simply reappear in my life, but Gail had never been
that kind.

 
          
"When
is the service?" I found myself asking. Ah, the things that courtesy will
lead us to!

 
          
She
gave me a date and time and told me she would send directions, and then hung up
before I could collect my scattered wits enough to ask her how Mother had died.
When the directions came
—
to the bookstore, of course; I had enough instinct for
self-preservation not to give Gail my home address
—
I was certain I would not
go. It was Cassie who convinced me I must.

           
"Better go and make sure she's
dead," she said with gallows humor. I suppose I was not the only person
in
America
who had ever been estranged
from their family, but one's own problems always seem unique.

 
          
But
good things come at the most unexpected times. I met my cousin, Rowan Moorcock,
at my mother's funeral.

 
          
I
was a nervous wreck by the day of the funeral. Thank heavens Colin ha< kept
his driver's license
—
he had to drive me to
Petaluma
, and once we got there I
begged him not to come in with me. It seemed so important then that these two
streams of my life not cross. I suppose I must have seemed half-demented, but
he was very patient with me. To this day, I do not know how I found the
physical courage to mount the steps of the funeral parlor and walk inside.

 
          
Gail
pounced on me the moment I entered the room reserved for the
London
party and dragged me up to
the coffin to pay my "last respects." It was hard to reconcile the
thing
inside
—
wasted by age and alcohol, and, as Gail wasted no time in
telling me now that she could see my reaction, cancer
—
with the monster who had
stalked my childhood and adolescence.

 
          
I
turned away from the coffin, and would probably have run from the room if
someone else hadn't come up to me at that moment.

 
          
"Claire?"

 
          
The
speaker was a plump woman in her fifties, her hair a bright artificial gold.
With a certain amount of disbelief, I recognized my middle sister
Janet   j beneath the mask of adulthood.

 
          
"Hello,
Janet." I desperately wanted to flee this terrible place
—
I, who had faced demons and
Satanists and creatures beyond all human understanding.

 
          
She
hugged me. It was as if we had never met
—
two strangers playing the
part of fond siblings without acknowledgment of our past
—
and dragged me . away from
Gail and over to another knot of mourners.

 
          
"And
this is Uncle Clarence
—
you were named for him," Janet told me.

 
          
I
simply stared. It had never occurred to me
—
never!
—
that Mother had any
relatives, or would have wished to acknowledge them in any way. She had I
always cut herself and her children off from the world, a tiny, self-contained
I unit of torment.

 
          
Uncle
Clarence introduced me to his grandson
—
my cousin
—
Justin Moorcock, and to
Justin's daughter, Rowan.

 
          
She
must have been somewhere in her early teens, and had that glowing farmgirl
healthiness that is often more compelling than beauty. Her long hair I was a
lovely rich red-gold, braided and pinned up atop her head, giving her I
something of the look of a Saxon princess. She stared at everything around I
her with a sort of trapped terrorized look I knew from personal experience; I
the look of one trying to hold on to their concentration and their sanity in
the I midst of a raging tumult.

 
          
"Hello,
Rowan," I said, holding out my hand to her.

 
          
Her
fingers were icy cold, and I found myself drawing on strength I didn't know I
possessed, willing it into her. My heart lifted as I saw her face relax.

           
At that point we were all seated for
the service. I remember nothing of what happened then, only Rowan clinging to
me as if I could save her from drowning.

 
          
Afterward,
the mourners were ushered out to the waiting limousines, to accompany the
coffin to the cemetery. Of course there was no place for me
—
Gail had seen to that,
vindictive to the last
—
but with Rowan clinging to me like grim death, she couldn't
just tell me to leave.

 
          
It
was my newfound Uncle Clarence
—
in every way his sister's opposite
—
who suggested that Rowan
could ride with me to the cemetery. And so poor Colin found himself drafted
into the funeral procession, with Rowan leaning 'over the backseat, her head on
my shoulder, the whole way there.

 
          
At
the end, when Rowan was reluctantly separated from me by her father, she clung
to me as if I was an old friend. In one sense it was true; instinctively I knew
that we shared that Gift which makes strangers as close as sisters, bound
together by that cursed blessing of seeing what others cannot.

 
          
"You'll
come and visit us, won't you, Cousin Claire?" Rowan asked me, as 'if she
were far younger than her years. "Won't you?"

 
          
Of
course I said yes. And had I known then what would come of that promise, my
answer would have been just the same.