Georgiana nodded toward the tyke, who had returned to stalk the hem of her robe with stiff-shouldered pounces. “Mary is shut away working all night, so I came to play. Our friend arrived outside to listen. I was not sure he was real, so I opened the door and sang of you, and he ran in.”
“He is certainly solid,” I said, quite familiar with wondering if things were real. “He thumped my door.”
The harmonies of Georgiana’s improvisation converged, narrowed, then ended on a single hanging note. She whispered, “I sang of you so you could see. Watch the window.”
She leaned into a deep, rippling chord—the start of a composition more involved than her improvisation. Slow chords riveted my attention, glimmering on the edge of dissonance, dancing toward unexpected resolutions, then breaking apart and hunting anew. The harmonies were complex, but the melody was songlike, resonating with romance and sadness, then searching and brightening. It was music of emergence. Music of dawn.
Remembering her request, I turned to the window. The trembling high harmonies seemed to have drawn shimmering, reddish beams among the plum-purple shadows behind the glass.
“This was written for me,” Georgiana said, then she began to sing. I did not recognize the language—it was not Italian or French or German—but her voice soared in a descant above a rumbling bass melody, each accented note struck so hard the strings pinged percussively.
Her voice woke the music, then the music woke the world. It was like the mountains stirred.
A silent wind plucked my robe. The glass wall and its dozen reflected candles erased as if it had never been. My slippers nestled in the grassy loam of a springtime forest. Vital pollen danced in the air. My startled intake of breath was sweet with sappy sprouts and blooms.
Freckled beams of sunlight dappled a wyvern, a male with deep brown scales that turned ivory on his chest and belly.
His thoughts filled my mind.after so long, you have come
Do you know me?I thought.
Lady Anne saw the rising storm. saw it would surpass her strength. she sent me away to wait for you
Why for me?
so the next healer could be stronger. look to the north. i keep her gift for you
The wyvern vanished as instantly and completely as the glass wall. Daylight darkened to stormy gray. The treetops whipped and shook in squally gusts. Spring-green leaves rained down, decaying in mid-air so they turned splotchy brown by the level of my eyes, then slimy black by my feet. They squelched to the earth in a soggy muck.
The stripped treetops revealed churning cloud. It was darkest toward the east, and my gaze followed.
Far away, across an endless expanse of blue water, an oily blackness spread. It writhed, serpent-like. It burrowed and feasted on corruption. My heart cried to flee, but terror rooted my feet in the rotted duff. The unholy malevolence spread, a vileness that thirsted for cities. For continents.
Even as the tree trunks themselves began to fall in fetid spoilage, Georgiana’s bright song penetrated the blackening skies. I clung to her voice, and the destruction faded. The ringing chords of her pianoforte emerged, buttressing her melody, and hope returned.
The glass wall reflected the music room, warm and well lit. Beyond, the old forest waited for dawn. Georgiana’s song had ended.
“Did you see anything?” she asked, folding her hands in her lap.
My mind was so overwhelmed that my answer was mechanical. “I saw a wyvern. Then blight. An oily blackness in the east.” Georgiana nodded, unsurprised, and my amazement broke loose. “Whatwasthat? A vision? Magic? I pray it was not prophecy.”
“I have no name for it. I see it, also. No one else does. Not even Lizzy. Lizzy has rules in her head, and her rules say windows do not vanish.” Georgiana played an idle passage with one hand. “The wyvern was Mamma’s. I remember him distinctly. I used to pet him. She said I was old enough. Eleven.”
I thought of his bronze and ivory vigil. “He said your mother sent him away.”
The bench legs rattled as Georgiana shot to her feet. “Hespoketo you?” Her hand clutched the pianoforte’s case. “I only see him. Again and again, and then the world dies.”
“I am sorry you did not hear.” There was hurt in Georgiana’s eyes, so I tried to share what I heard. “He said Lady Anne asked him to wait for me.”
Her hurt became shock, then softened to puzzlement. “Of course, I would not hear. I never hear draca’s voices. I hear their music, which is better. But… a message fromMamma….” She bit her lip, her shoulders rigid, her willowy frame gawky and thin. “This is why I do not sing while I play. Together, they are too much. Things change.”
“Do you know what that… oily blight is?” I asked. Unlike the illusions of the miasma, which seemed implausible as dreams when I remembered them later, that vileness still chilled me. It was real.
“I first glimpsed it in my bedroom window after Mamma’s death. I asked Fitz for a room with a bigger window—so I could see more—and he made me this.” Without irony, her fingers swept the perspective of the windowed wall,thrice my height. “When Fènnù rose, I wondered if she was the darkness, but when we met her at the museum, she was only broken, not evil. So, it is something else. It reminds me of how Lizzy describes a wyfe dosed with crawler venom, but the blight is not a person. It is a… force. It seeks to swallow the world.” Swiftly, she crossed from her instrument to the fireplace and rubbed her hands in the warmth. “The east is where Napoleon leads his armies. But this evil is greater than a man. I think Napoleon is its pawn.”
Despite the bleak topic, that amused me. “Do not tell Napoleon. He would be insulted.”
Georgiana smiled, too. “Lord Wellington would be as well. He steels himself for the ultimate battle with Monsieur Bonaparte. He prefers enemies of flesh and cannons of iron, not ladies’ visions.” Her cheeks puffed with a youthful sigh. “The war is part of the blight, but the blight is much bigger. Has Lord Wellington asked you about the dagger?”
