The quickness of her reply, and the simple fact that she’d remembered, no longer surprised Stephen. They still made him smile. “Hold on to it,” he said, “while I pour the wine.”
He turned toward one of the bookshelves, taking with him the sight of her: mortal hands clasped around the stem of the goblet, mortal eyes reflected in its polished surface.
Thingsstarttobepartofeachother, he heard her say again.
Nineteen
Wine came from the same drawer that had held the cup. The bottle was crystal, heavy-looking, and cut so that it threw off rainbows even in the dim light of the library. The wine was deep red, like the garnets in a bracelet Professor Carter kept in his study. From King Alfred’s time, a thousand years ago or more, he’d said when Mina had stared at it and forgotten to be professional.
The bottle was probably newer than that, at least, and no wine could have survived so long. And Stephen had said that the goblet was younger than he was—whatever that meant.
Marveling at the bracelet and Professor Carter’s other relics, reading his notes as she typed them, she’d sometimes almost felt time as a tangible thing, as if she could glimpse the past across a broad river. Now she felt that she stood on a shore and looked across the ocean, glimpsing, on some far island, the sun shining off a roof and knowing the breadth of the sea all the more intensely for that vision of the other side.
“How old was your father?” she asked.
Stephen paused, wine bottle in hand. “When he died?” His accent was thicker than normal. “Perhaps four hundred years. We stop keepin’ score after a while, ye ken.”
Four hundred years. Stephen was perhaps half that, if Culloden was when Mina thought it was. And she was somewhat shy of thirty.
“You’re middle-aged, then?” she asked and tried to smile with it.
He shrugged, and this time, there was a more-than-human grace to the movement, a suggestion of rippling muscles even through his clothes. His smile was broader than usual too, and his teeth looked sharper.
“I suppose you could be saying something of the kind. It’s no’ so direct a comparison, though. We dinna’ spend fifty years as spotty youths.”
“Fate worse than death, I’d think,” said Mina and laughed, which took the worst of the edge off. Not much more than that, though. The library was large, dark, and old. Even against the size of it, Stephen loomed above her.
She pressed her hands hard against the goblet and straightened her back, bringing herself to an almost military posture. “Right, then. What do I do?”
“Hold the cup out,” said Stephen.
His voice was deep in her ears, and his eyes, meeting hers, were bright gold again. Mina’s arms moved almost on their own, slowly and fluidly. She watched the wine flow from crystal to silver, bottle to chalice, and her mind went with it—flowing, rippling, then still.
Close at hand—how had he gotten so close without her noticing? And when had he put down the bottle?—Stephen took a sudden deep breath and looked down at her with lifted eyebrows and a startled quirk of his mouth.
“Is something wrong?”
It was her voice, only it came from far away and high up.
“No. No.” Stephen reached out, but stopped with his hand a few inches from Mina’s hair and smiled at her instead. His teeth still looked very sharp, but the smile was warm nonetheless. “Worry not, Cerberus. This comes easier to you than I’d thought it would. That’s all.”
“Oh,” she said. She’d have had a sharper answer if her mind had been where it normally was. Wit seemed distant now. So did worry: thank God, because she’d have been scared stiff otherwise. Runaway chariots of the sun came to mind, and hand mills that wouldn’t stop making salt. “You’ve done this a few times, then?”
“A few,” said Stephen.
For her own peace of mind, Mina decided not to press for more details. “What do I do?” she asked.
“Follow me. You’ll not have to say anything. Just hold the goblet and move as I do.” He did touch her cheek then. His fingers were almost hot enough to burn, but Mina turned her face toward them anyhow. The sensation was not quite painful. “Ready?”
“I’m ready.”
They went slowly in a circle that felt much larger than it really could have been.
In her mind, overlaid on the image of the wine-filled chalice, Mina saw the house as if from a great height. She saw the gardens leading up to the gate; she saw the small stable behind it; she saw the tradesmen’s entrance and the polished front steps. She saw the walls, sturdy and stone, and then, rising up within them, she saw another set of walls. This one was translucent and shone, patterned like stained glass with intertwining ladders of color: red and gold, brown and blue.
The first set of colors was Stephen; the second was her.
Joy followed the image, sudden and unbidden and inexplicable. What she looked on was beautiful in a way that she’d never imagined and couldn’t fully understand. The light that poured through those magical barriers, or out of them—the house itself, and the people who moved in and around it—the very pace of their walking and Stephen’s speech all took her breath away. Still from a great distance, Mina knew that her cheeks were wet with tears.
