Cate Tiernan - A Chalice of Wind

When the shades were down, you had to open the train compartment door to see who was inside. The last four minutes had taught us this as my friends Alison and Lynne and I raced through the train cars, looking for our trip supervisor.

"Not this one!" Alison said, checking out one compartment.

"Do you think it was something she ate?" Alison asked."'I mean, poor Anne. Yuck"

We were only on day three of our junior-year trip to Europe-having done Belgium in a whirlwind, we were speeding through Germany and would end up in France in another four days. But if Anne was really sick, she would be flown home. Maybe it was just something she ate. Our supervisor, Ms, Polems, could decide.

"Thais, get that one!" Lynne called, pointing as she looked through a compartment window.

I cupped my hands around my eyes like a scuba mask and pressed them against the glass. Just as quickly I pulled away as four junior-class pinhead jocks Started catcalling and whistling.

"Oh, I'm so sure," I muttered in revulsion.

"Oops! Entschuld-entschuh-" Alison began, in another doorway.

"Entschuldigung!"

Lynne sang, pulling Alison back into the corridor.

I grinned at them. Despite Anne being sick, so far we were having a blast on this trip.

I seized the handle of the next compartment and yanked. Four tourists were inside-no Ms. Polems. "Oh, sorry" I said, pulling back. Two of the men stared at me, and I groaned inwardly. I'd already dealt with some over-friendly natives, and I didn't need more now.

"Clio?" one of the men said in a smooth, educated voice.

Yeah, right. Nice try "Nope, sorry" I said briskly, and slid the door shut. "Not here," I told Alison.

Three doors up ahead, Lynne swung out into the corridor. "Found her!" she called, and I relaxed against the swaying train window, miles of stunning mountainy German landscape flashing by. Ms. Polems and Lynne hurried by me, and I slowly followed them, hoping Pats and Jess had tried to clean up our compartment a little.

Jules gazed silently at the compartment door that had just clicked loudly into place. That face

He turned and looked at his companion, a friend he had known for more years than he cared to count. Daedalus looked as shocked as Jules felt.

"Surely that was Clio," Daedalus said, speaking softly so their seatmates wouldn't hear. He ran an elegant, long-fingered hand through hair graying at the temples, though still thick despite his age. "Wasn't Clio her name? Or was it Clemence?"

"Clemence was the mother," Jules murmured. "The one who died. When was the last time you saw the child?"

Daedalus held his chin, thinking. Both men looked up as a small knot of students, led by an official-looking older woman, bobbed down the rocking corridor. He saw her again-that face-and then she was gone. "Maybe four years ago?" he guessed. "She was thirteen, and Petra was initiating her. I saw her only from a distance."

"But of course, they're unmistakable, that line," Jules said in an undertone. "They always have been."

"Yes." Daedalus frowned: confronted with an impossibility, his brain spun with thoughts. "She had to be the child, yet she wasn't," he said at last. "She really wasn't- there was nothing about her-" "Nothing in her eyes," Jules broke in, agreeing.

"Unmistakably the child, yet not the child." Daedalus cataloged facts on his fingers. "Clearly not an older child, nor a younger."

"No," Jules said grimly.

The conclusion occurred to them at the same instant. Daedalus's mouth actually dropped open, and Jules put his hand over his heart." Oh my God" he whispered. 'Twins. Two of them! Two?

He hadn't see Daedalus smile like that in he didn't know how long.

This was so effingfrustrating. If I clenched my jaws any tighter, my face would snap.

My grandmother sat across from me, serenity emanating from her like perfume, a scent she dabbed behind her ears in the morning that carried her smoothly through her day.

Well, I had forgotten to dab on my freaking serenity this morning, and now I was holding this piece of copper in my left fist, my fingernails making angry half-moons in my palm. Another minute of this and I would throw the copper across the room, sweep the candle over with my hand, and just go.

But I wanted this so bad.

So bad I could taste it. And now, looking into my grandmothers eyes, calm and blue over the candles flame, I felt like she was reading every thought that flitted through my brain. And that she was amused.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, all the way down to my belly ring. Then I released it slowly, willing it to take tension, doubt, ignorance, impatience with it.

Cuivre, orientez ma force. Copper, direct my power, I thought. Actually, not even thought-lighter than that.

Expressing the idea so lightly that it wasn't even a thought or words. Just pure feeling, as slight as a ribbon of smoke, weaving into the power of Bonne Magie.

Montrez-moi, I breathed. Show me.

You have to walk before you can run. You have to crawl before you can walk,

Montrez-moi.

Quartz crystals and rough chunks of emerald surrounded me and my grandmother in twelve points, A white candle burned on the ground between us. My butt had gone numb, like, yesterday. Breathe,

Montrez-moi

It wasn't working, it wasn't working, je nai pas de la force, rim du tout. I opened my eyes, ready to scream.

And saw a huge cypress tree before me.

No grandmother. An enormous cypress tree almost blocked out the sky, the heavy gray clouds, I looked down: I still held the copper, hot now from my hand, I was in woods somewhere-I didn't recognize where. Une cypriere. A woodsy swamp-cypress knees pushing up through still, brown-green water. But I was standing on land, something solid, moss-covered.

The clouds grew darker, roiling with an internal storm. Leaves whipped past me, landed on the water, brushed my face. I heard thunder, a deep rumbling that fluttered in my chest and filled my ears. Fat raindrops spattered the ground, ran down my cheeks like tears. Then an enormous cracki shook me where I stood, and a simultaneous stroke of lightning blinded me. Almost instantly, I heard a shuddering, splintering sound, like a wooden boat grinding against rocks. I blinked, trying to look through brilliant red-and-orange afterimages in my eyes. Right in front of me, the huge cypress tree was split in two, its halves bending precariously outward, already cracking, pulled down by their weight.

At the base, between two thick roots that were slowly being tugged from the earth, I saw a sudden upsurging of-what? I squinted. Was it water? Oil? It was dark like oil, thick-but the next lightning flash revealed the opaque dark red of blood. The rivulet of blood also split into two and ran across the ground, seeping slowly into the sodden moss, the red startling against the greenish gray. I looked down and saw the blood swelling, running faster, gushing heavily from between the tree roots. My feetl My feet were being splashed with blood, my shins flecked with it. I lost it then, covered my mouth and screamed into my tight palm, trying to move but finding myself more firmly rooted than the tree itself.

"Clio! Clio!"

A cool hand took my chin in a no-nonsense grip. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear rain out of my eyes. My grandmother was holding my chin in one hand and had her other under my elbow.

"Stand up, child," Nan instructed calmly. The candle between us had been knocked over, its wax running on the wooden floor. My knees felt wobbly and I was gulp' ing air, looking around wildly, orienting myself.