The Hidden Goddess (50 page)

He clasped her tightly, his arms strong and hot. But even they were not enough. Her eyelids fluttered. Again, she felt herself falling. Ososolyeh was all around her now, around her and in her and of her, and it sang of memories she could only now understand, only now comprehend. The memories were pulling her back, and she was spreading out to greet them.

“No, don’t go,” a voice far, far away was pleading. “Please don’t go. I’ll get you out of here. I’ll get you home …”

I am home
, Emily thought, Ososolyeh swallowing her up with all the blackness of the places in between the stars.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Lyakhov’s Anodyne

“Wake up, Miss Edwards. Don’t you know what day it is?”

Emily stirred groggily. Stanton was sitting by her bed, smiling down at her, holding her hand. As her eyes focused on his face, and she blinked at him, his smile became much wider.

“What day is it?” she asked, her voice a sleep-choked rasp.

“It’s the happiest day of my life,” Stanton said, thumb stroking her palm. “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Am I alive?”

“It would seem so,” he said. The feeling of his hand holding hers was wonderful. The skin of her hand was exquisitely sensitive, as if she’d never felt anything with it before. With her fingers, she could see Stanton—see him clearer than with her eyes. He was well. He was whole and strong, and the power of the Institute—the power of faith—sang in his blood. The joy she felt pulsing through her fingers, from his hand holding it, made her blush furiously.

Then she noticed something.

She noticed that he was holding her right hand. The hand that should have been ivory. But it was not ivory anymore.

“What the hell is this?” she demanded, snatching her hand out of his and looking at the smooth new flesh with astonishment. She wiggled her fingers. She looked up at Stanton. “If you tell me this was all a dream, I swear I’ll kill you.”

Stanton laughed.

“I don’t know how it happened either. I can only imagine it was Ososolyeh’s doing. It has an astonishing capacity for
healing.” His hand went to his throat, to the faint white scar seamed there. His voice became softer. “I wasn’t entirely sure you were coming back. You’ve been unconscious for days. The only hope I had was that little hand. It started growing back as soon as we got to the Institute. I watched it every day, and I thought that if it could come back, you could come back, too.” He puckered his brow, remembering. “It was quite a strange process, actually. At one point it looked just like a peeled turnip. Disgusting.”

“Well, I think it’s quite pretty now,” Emily said, turning it to and fro. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to have it back.”

“I’d say you’d earned it,” Stanton said. Emily lifted an eyebrow at him.

“Earned it?” she said. “Hell yes, I earned it! And you lying there dead during the best part. We beat her. We beat her with every kind of magic all at once. Animancy and credomancy and …” She paused.

“Sangrimancy?” Stanton looked at her.

“I don’t know sangrimancy,” Emily said. “But Ososolyeh knows everything. We muddled through.”

Stanton smiled. “You always do, Miss Edwards.”

“And why do you keep calling me that?” Emily said. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten my name already?”

“I’ll never forget your name,” Stanton said. “But I wasn’t sure you wanted me to call you that anymore. I wasn’t sure if we were still engaged.”

“After everything we’ve been through? After true love conquered all?” Emily shook her head. “Being dead has done nothing to alleviate your obtuseness, Mr. Stanton.”

“Being dead allowed me to learn the heart’s deepest secret,” he said. “That sometimes love—even true love—isn’t enough.”

“But it’s a start,” Emily said. And then she reached up and pulled him down to her, and began kissing him, and they might both have learned a great deal more had not a voice from the door startled them apart.

“Mr. Stanton!” Rose peeked in, and her cheeks flushed with excitement. She looked at Emily, and the meanness and
spite had gone from them, replaced with her customary brown-eyed eagerness.

“Oh, Miss Emily. Miss Emily’s awake! Dreadnought Stanton saves the day again! Oh, how wonderful!”

“What is it, Rose?” Stanton said with mild annoyance, quickly buttoning his shirt.

“Well, I’m so sorry to bother you, but the Sini Mira men have been here for hours waiting for you, and you really must speak to them …”

Stanton twisted in his chair and looked at the girl with astonishment.

“Rose, my fiancée has just stirred from what I feared was her deathbed. She’s just saved the world from the depravities of a Black Glass Goddess who wanted to transform it into a nightmare of filth and despair. And you want me to come talk to the Sini Mira?”

“Well, I know, it’s very inconvenient, but—”

“Go on.” Emily laid a hand on the jacket of his coat, gave him a little push. He turned his green eyes down to her.

“No,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “You’ve got an Institute to run.” She wiggled her new fingers with glee. “I can’t believe they’re back! I’ll never take them for granted again. I’ll sign up for piano lessons immediately!”

He bent down and kissed her new fingers softly, his love thrilling through their sensitive tips.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promised.

He didn’t come back at all that afternoon, which didn’t surprise Emily in the least. But she had another visitor to keep her company, who came in carrying a great bouquet of fragrant peonies and began to arrange these in a crystal vase by Emily’s bed without speaking a word.

“Miss Jesczenka,” Emily said. She looked at the wide white bandaging around the woman’s throat. She only half remembered the night in the conservatory, when Utisz had kidnapped her; she had seen Miss Jesczenka’s body lying motionless on the gravel pathway, the front of her dress soaked with blood. “Are you all right?”

“The Institute is running wonderfully,” Miss Jesczenka said. “Enrollments are up, and Mystic Truth sales have never been higher. Fortissimus is a broken man. He has retired from professional life and will be recuperating indefinitely in an asylum in the Adirondacks. We have completed negotiations for the purchase of the Fortissimus Agency. It will be renamed the Stanton Agency, and we will use it to branch out into the field of presentment arranging. It should be quite a profitable sideline, if what I’ve seen in Fortissimus’ accounting books is any indication.” She paused, arranging another bloom. “Mr. Stanton has asked me to run the Agency for him.”

Emily was silent for a while, looking at the woman. “That’s not what I meant,” she said.

Miss Jesczenka’s elegant hands stilled. She drew a deep breath. “Sophos Stanton has graciously forgiven my transgressions, involuntary as they were.” She was silent for a long time before adding, “And for some reason, my son did not cut my throat deeply enough to kill me. He spared my life.”

Emily said nothing as she watched the woman position a stalk in elegant counterpoint to its mates. She gave the flowers a freshening fluff and adjusted the vase slightly. Then she sat down by Emily’s bed, her brown eyes lowered.

“He began by sending me letters. He said that someone at the orphanage had told him about me. He said that he wanted to meet me, to learn about me. And then he just … showed up, the night before the Investment. He was falling-down drunk, loud, angry. He said he would wake the whole Institute and tell them what kind of a whore I was. I had to quiet him down. I brought him into my rooms. I allowed him into the Institute. All I could think of was my reputation, my position, all that I had made for myself. I was so ashamed. I was so ashamed of
him
.”

She paused, eyes turned inward with thought.

“Shame is such a powerful emotion,” she mused. “Almost as powerful as love. How clever of him to have used both against me.”

“I saw you with him,” Emily said softly. “The morning before
the Investment. I thought … I thought he was a student. And I thought he was your lover.”

Miss Jesczenka looked up at her in shock. Then her face softened into a small smile.

“I have always maintained a great deal of magic around myself to keep men from thinking of me in that way,” she said. “It is nice that there’s one person in the world who sees through it.”

Then Miss Jesczenka lowered her head. “They used my child, Emily. They used my
shame
. What kind of monster does that make me? Why didn’t I use the power of my faith to make a better life for him, instead of for myself?”

Once again, Miss Jesczenka’s eyes searched Emily’s face for an answer that wasn’t there. With a shaking finger, Miss Jesczenka dashed a tear from the corner of her eye.

Emily laid her hand across Miss Jesczenka’s. Through the exquisitely sensitive flesh of her new fingers, she could feel the weight of the woman’s terrible guilt. But more than feel these things, the hand Ososolyeh had given her could soothe them. It could not take them away, but it could blunt them, make them like a storm seen from a distant ridgeline. When Miss Jesczenka opened her eyes, they were clear and calm, and when she spoke again, it was as if she hadn’t spoken at all before then.

“By the way, Miss Edwards,” she said. “I have something for you. A letter from your friend Miss Pendennis.”

Emily’s eyes widened in surprise as Miss Jesczenka withdrew a fat envelope from her pocket. As she handed it to Emily, Emily noted the abundance of exotic stamps decorating its face.

“My goodness, she sent this from Portugal,” Emily said. She looked up at Miss Jesczenka. “She’s on a lecture tour, you see. Do you mind?”

Miss Jesczenka inclined her head obligingly.

Emily slid a finger behind the flap and opened the envelope, drawing out its contents. Inside the envelope was a fat folded letter, as well as another envelope. Emily looked at the second envelope; it seemed to contain some kind of congratulatory card. She laid it on the bedside table as she unfolded
Penelope’s letter. It started off with fond regards and her hope that Stanton’s Investment went off without a hitch. Emily chuckled. She continued to scan the letter, which detailed Penelope’s adventures at lecture stops from Senegal to Sumatra to …

San Francisco?

Stopped in San Francisco for a few days on the way back from Alaska, and took the opportunity to hop up to Lost Pine. Called on your pap. He’s in fine fettle, got that lovely old woman to look out for him, and all those cats! Oh, and I met that lumberman of yours. What a topping fellow. He’s everything that will ever make this country great. I told him I’d like to study him some more, if he’d let me. He said that any friend of yours was a friend of his
.

Emily let out a breath and smiled.

I’ve sent along a card he wanted me to give you, and a couple of wedding presents, too. I’ve sent all the paperwork along to the Institute. I’m sure they can see that the shipment arrives safely …

It went on from there, but Emily didn’t read more. She reached quickly for the second envelope and opened it.

It was a prettily printed card of congratulations with hearts and flowers on the front.

Best wishes from the Hansen Timber Company
, someone with fine penmanship had written inside. Beneath the fine writing was Dag’s friendly, blocky scribble:
Good luck to you both
.

She brushed her new fingers over the writing, feeling it sing up to her. He would have a daughter, Emily suddenly knew, and she would be very pretty. Emily knew that she would meet her someday, and would like her very much.

Emily pulled her hand away from the card, waved it as if burned.

“My goodness!” she said, blowing on her fingers. “This is quite a hand!”

Miss Jesczenka inclined her head. “You’ve bonded completely with the great consciousness of the earth—body, blood, and soul. I suppose that makes you kind of a goddess.”

“Oh, hogwash,” Emily snorted. “I’m just Emily Edwards
from Lost Pine, California. And what’s this Penelope writes about wedding presents?” she asked, snatching up the letter again to reread it more closely. Miss Jesczenka smiled, touched a finger to her nose.

“I’ve seen to it all,” she said.

After Miss Jesczenka left, Emily decided she’d had just about all she could stand of her near-deathbed, so she got up and tested her legs. They seemed to work just fine. Pulling on a dress, she buttoned it up with delightful alacrity, new fingers flying. She regarded her face in the mirror. Her own pert reflection stared back at her, same as it ever was.

Goddess
, she thought, wrinkling her nose at herself.
Hogwash
.

She went to the door and tested it. It was unlocked. How nice to be in a world with unlocked doors again.

She walked through the halls, noting with satisfaction the air of hope and excitement that filled the mansion’s white marble walls. Students chatted in eager clusters, stopping to watch as she passed. She waved cheerfully to them, but did not stop. She was going outside, to a place where things grew. She was going to the conservatory.