So I did not. I let the soldiers take her away. I did not fight and I did not follow. I sat on the floor of the tower and wept.
Gabrielle, still singing, walked without struggle in the company of soldiers, all of whom begged her for forgiveness. All of whom told her stories of how her mother had saved a member of their family or blessed their gardens with abundance. Whether she listened, I do not know. I remained in the tower. All I know are the stories people later told.
They say that she walked with her eyes on the ground, her mouth still moving in song. They say she stepped up onto the platform as the constable read the charges against her. He had several pages of them, and the people began to shift and fuss in their viewing area. As the constable read, Gabrielle’s song grew louder. No one noticed a boat approaching in the harbor. A boat made of flowers and moss and leaves. A boat with no sail, though it moved swift and sure with a woman standing tall at its center.
Gabrielle’s song grew louder, until with a sudden cry, she threw her chained hands into the air and tossed her red hair back. A mass of birds—gulls, martins, doves, owls, bullfinches—appeared as a great cloud overhead and descended over and around the girl, blocking her from view. The Governor ordered his men to shoot. They did, but the flock numbered in the thousands of thousands, so while the square was littered in dead birds, the cloud rose nonetheless, the girl suspended in its center, and moved to the small craft floating in the harbor.
The Governor, his rage clamping hard around his throat and heart, ordered his ships boarded, ordered his cannons loaded, ordered his archers to shoot at will, but the craft bearing the two women skimmed across the water and vanished from sight.
This I learned from the people in the square, and this I believe, though the Governor issued a proclamation that the execution was a success, that the pirate Gabrielle Belain was dead, and that anyone who claimed otherwise risked imprisonment. Everyone, of course, claimed otherwise. No one was imprisoned.
That night, I stole gold from the coffers of the Abbey and walked down the road to the harbor. My beloved Abbot knew, I’m certain. The stores where such treasures are kept are always locked, but the Abbot left them unlocked and did not send for me after my crime. I purchased a small skiff and set sail by midday.
I am, alas, no sailor. My map, one that I copied myself, paled, faded, and vanished to a pure white page on the third day of my voyage. I dropped my compass into the sea, where it was promptly devoured by a passing fish. I have searched for a boat made of leaf, but I have found only salt. I have searched for two faces that I have loved. Gabrielle. Marguerite. The things I have loved. The scratch of quill to paper. The Abbot. France. Martinique. Perhaps it is all one. One curve of a wanton hip of a guileless god. Or perhaps my believing it is one has made it one. Perhaps this is the nature of things.
I do not know—nor, indeed, does it matter that I know—whether these words shall ever be read. It is not, as our beloved Abbot told me again and again, the reading that saves, but the writing: it is in the writing that the Word is Flesh. In our Order, we have copied, transcribed, and preserved words—both God’s and Man’s—for the last thousand years. Now, as I expire here in this waste of water and wind and endless sky, I write of my own disappearing, and this, my last lettering, will likely fade, drift, and vanish into the open mouth of the ravenous sea.
I have dreamed of their hands. I dream of their hands. I dream of a garden overripe and wild. Of a woman gathering the sea into her hands and letting it fall in many colored petals to a green, green earth. I dream of words on a page transforming to birds, and birds transforming to children, and children transforming to stars.
1.
The last sound she heard was water. It bubbled and flowed from the masses of decaying snow piles, slicked the path, and fanned into the spongy turf and sleeping grass. Bits of puddle splashed up on her white socks and white-and-red legs—a spangle of gray salt drips curving up to the knee. She did not mind, but continued to run across the park, gaining speed as she went. She ran with ease, with a surety of motion and grace. She did not worry about growing tired or hurting herself. She ran without fear.
Both the path and the park were empty, which surprised her because the day was warm at last after an endless winter of endless cold. She wore shorts and a T-shirt that said “Big Mama’s Bar,” which she thought she had been to once. The westerly breeze nipped at her upper arms and thighs, and while it was warm enough to melt the snow, she probably should have worn leggings or a windbreaker.
Should have.
In truth, it didn’t really matter either way. In about ten minutes, Ronia Drake’s life will end. She will not see death coming, nor will she see it scuttling away—its large mouth damp, drooping, and satiated. She will only know a sharp knock, a flurry of feathers and fur, a whisper of her name, and a sharp, curved
