“Thank you,” I whispered, bringing the rim of the mug to my mouth and blowing for good measure. The warm fluid, laced with spices whose names broke apart in the fog hovering at the periphery of my awareness, soothed the inside of my battered throat.
Belle and Rowan began to shoo everyone out of the room. I’d never seen so many worried gazes directed at me. I tried to absorb what I’d done, but it was too soon and I was too tired for much of it to make sense. “I’d like to go to sleep now.”
I finished the cider and handed the mug to Rowan. She cradled it in her hand and spoke. “He wants to see you.”
“Tanner?” I asked. I was ready to see him, too, and ask him to rub my back, spoon me into sleep, and promise to make sure there were no more night walks in my immediate future.
“Your father. Benôit. He’s awake.”
Tears flooded my eyes and poured down my cheeks. “I’m not ready,” I said. “I’m not. I don’t even understand what just happened.”
“Belle added herbs to the elixir and to the cider that will help you get the sleep you need,” she said. “And now that Benôit is here, you have all the time you need to figure out when you want to see him and what you want to say.”
The healer released me into Tanner’s care. I knew it was him. I knew his skin and I knew his scent and I knew the emotion radiating from the center of his chest.
Belle sent me home on Saturday. Christoph, Harper, and Thatcher treated me like I was breakable. I tried to tell them I was already broken, split in two widthwise in some weird way that Tanner said he understood.
Airlie understood, too. The following Monday, when my sons were at school and Sallie and Azura were helping Christoph install the outdoor shower in the bunkhouse, Airlie offered to come over and treat the sadness turning my muscles to sponge. Tanner showed her in to my bedroom, brushed my hair at my request, and let me know he’d be in the kitchen baking sourdough bread in case I needed anything.
Airlie laid her hands on my forehead and my belly and sang me the songs of water, the same ones she’d sung to Benôit. When she finished, tears soaked my pillow. “It is time for you to remember,” she said. “Remember your mother, remember your first home in Maine. Swim in the Atlantic. Remember the waterways your mother and her sister swam in when they were girls, and their mother, too.”
My chin trembled. All I could do was nod and agree. “I’m so torn,” I said, unable to raise my voice above a ragged whisper.
“About the Melusine?” Airlie asked.
I couldn’t answer. Before leaving to spend a week with Wes at his latest assignment, Rowan and I had time for one short conversation about the ova. She recommended I take possession of the stasis tank and do nothing other than make sure the tank’s motor was never unplugged. For now. Until I was stronger in my body and surer of my commitment to the undertaking.
“Do you feel up to a walk?”
“Where to?”
Airlie slid her forearm under my shoulders. “Sit up,” she said. “If you can manage that, put your feet on the floor and stand. After that, try walking to your bedroom door. I’ll be right beside you.”
I managed two trips from my bed to the door and back. “I can do more. Are we going outside?”
“Yes. Let’s get some clothes on you.”
I waved to Tanner as we passed the kitchen island. He helped get my feet into a new pair of Blundstone boots and my arms into his zip-up sweater. I pulled a toque over my head.
Airlie held my hand, led me across the street and onto the deer path my sons were widening. We walked in silence until we stood at the edge of the marsh.
“Here’s where you walked in,” Airlie said. “And over there is where your wolf hauled you out.” She pointed to the left, still holding my hand. “This marsh almost took you, Calliope. These waters are in need of reclaiming. I believe you have it within you to make these waters yours.”
A swirling sensation from the depths of my belly agreed.
“Come. There is one more thing I have to show you.” Airlie tightened her grip on my hand and led me to the old house. The plywood had been removed and a new door put in. She slid her finger along her neck, lifted a silver chain, and showed me a hefty, enchanted key. “A trusted few of us were given copies. Yours is at your house, to use when you are ready.”
Airlie inserted the key and pressed her palm to a keypad. Something clicked inside the door. She pushed it open, closed it behind us, and led me into the room with the aquariums. Efforts had been made to lessen the creepiness factor. “Lastly, your father wants a chance to redeem himself.”
I wiggled my hand from Airlie’s hold and stepped to the closest tank. Pressing my palms and forehead to the glass, I tried to picture the tank filled with water.
“Benôit knows what the Melusine require, Calliope. He knows, and your aunt knew.”
Meeting with Noémi’s capable and perfunctory lawyer was anticlimactic. She reviewed the terms of the will, I signed a mountain of paperwork, and we were done. Afterward, I joined my cousin Clyde for lunch at his favorite noodle place. He gave me possession of the battered piece of carry-on luggage parked by his side and informed me it was filled with everything he could find that pertained to his mother, my mother, and their side of the family.
“Some of it is journals,” he said. “I didn’t read those because, you know—I don’t know, there’s something weird about reading your mother’s
