russell montgomery iii

Warm summer sun shine kindly here

Warm south wind blow kindly here

Still and always burns your light

Good night, dear heart, good night, good night.

Kami had woken too often in the nights that followed and cried for missing him. She did not know how much more often Angela had woken and wept. She had to remember that there was power and magic in life: that when the sun laid a ray as warm as a hand on her head as they left the graveyard, it could be an unseen hand, reaching out to her with love. Only changed, and not strange forever.

Kami did not look to the churchyard as she rushed into the town square. She was looking to the living. She was late.

As she passed the great glass window of Claire’s, the reflection of her dress looked like a blur of gold and red. It was one of the new dresses that her dad had let her order online, with a pattern of golden pears and red cherries. Through the window, she saw her family, and waved to them through it, and waved again as she walked in.

“Ash!” she exclaimed, surprised. He was the one person she had not expected.

She had not seen him since the night last week when they had gone down to the woods, to the Crying Pools, with Ash and Jared, both bearing a golden burden. Jared had drawn his arm back and taken aim, and Ash had mirrored the action. With two silver splashes, the twin golden knives of the Lynburns were gone forever.

“How was the Royal College of Art?”

Ash was sitting on one of the high chairs at the counter, Tomo sitting at his feet. His hair was mussed and he had somehow acquired an air of glamorous travel, despite having only been a few hours away.

“Good,” he said. “I think I will like it there. Lots of girls offering themselves as excellent models for photography, which is very welcoming of them and I appreciate it.”

He smiled, and Kami knew it was meant to be reassuring. She smiled back. It wasn’t that she didn’t see romantic potential in Ash. She’d always been able to see that. Looking at him was like looking at a beautiful stretch of land and imagining the towers that could have been, if they had chosen to build them. The land was still beautiful without them.

Ash regarded her affectionately, and his eyes were free of the burning intensity and the unhappiness she had seen in them once. They had been clear as summer skies ever since the day the town was saved.

“I hear the London girls are terribly interesting models,” said Kami. “Also, if I may use an artistic term, babelicious.”

Ash shrugged. “Well, since Jared is going to help Mom handle things at Aurimere, this is my chance to live life with no responsibilities and lots of artistic models.”

Jared and Ash had agreed that they would not talk about, or listen to Lillian’s proclamations about, a single heir of Aurimere. The Lynburn legacy could be changed with the story of the town, could be whatever they decided they wanted it to be.

“We’re very happy for you and we very much don’t want to hear any of the details,” said Holly, laughing. She was sitting on one of the workbenches at the far wall.

Nobody looked like they were being much help with the painting, but Angela looked like she was being the least help of anybody. She was lying on the bench, her head in Holly’s lap and her eyes firmly closed. Kami could tell she wasn’t asleep, though. When Holly carelessly stroked the dark hair spread over her knees, Kami caught the fleeting curve of Angela’s smile.

“I thought we were going to help Dad painting,” she said. “Not lie around discussing nude models.”

“Nobody is helping me, because none of you have true artistic vision. And you’re the one who just brought up nudes,” said Jon Glass.

“I thought ‘artistic’ was cunning code for ‘nude,’ ” said Kami. “Is that not true? Have I been lied to? Do I have a tragically perverted mind? Oh well, I guess that’s a shame.”

Jon had decided that he wanted to paint a mural on the wall of Claire’s. Kami had thought Dad and Mum would be reunited, as simply and beautifully as the sun coming out, but her mother was living above Claire’s, and the rest of the family were living at the Water Rising while the house was rebuilt. Yet Jon was painting this, making something beautiful for his wife. Kami did not know what would happen with them next. It was their decision. She knew that much.

The mural unfolding on the wall was beautiful. Kami saw her mother peep out of the kitchen and admire it. Kami went over to kiss her cheek.

“Nice to have a piece of art here that won’t get eaten,” Claire said, pressing Kami’s hand. She still wore her wedding ring. Dad was still not wearing his, but Kami knew he carried it around in his pocket.

“Thank you for bringing up eating,” Kami said. “We were promised cookies if we came to help. I intended to come and help, and as it’s the thought that counts, I feel I’m still owed cookies.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Mum.

Kami was going to be milking this “changed you back from stone” business for baked goods for a solid decade. That was the kind of person she was. She accepted this truth about herself.

“Are you people still not done?” asked Lillian Lynburn from the door.

Ten looked warily up from his book, but when he saw her doing nothing more than pulling off her black leather gloves, he returned to the story. Jared had given him the book, and promised him there would be explosions. Kami was not sure how many explosions Edgar Allan Poe would really provide, but Ten seemed to be enjoying it.

In the meantime, Lillian was looking speculatively at the mural. Kami saw her lift her hand. With sorcery, the mural could be done in ten minutes.

“I see you, Linnaea,” Jon called over his shoulder. “Don’t even think it. I have eyes in the back of my head, and all my eyes have artistic vision.”

“ ‘Linnaea’ is not a name,” grumbled Lillian, but she lowered her hand.

“It is a name,” said Jon. “I looked it up.”

Linnaea was the name of a flower, also called the twinflower. Kami knew it because she had seen pictures of all the flowers Jon was painting: call-me-to-you, daisies, goldeneye, wild daffodils, Lazarus bells, honeysuckle, and burnt orchids in the deep woods and by the shining lakes, nestled into the hollows of tree roots and trim gardens alike. Twinflowers were pearl-pale bells with lilac hearts, two flowers growing from a single fragile stem.

The woods in the heart of town. Kami thought it was a lovely idea for a mural.

Lillian walked over the floor to Ash, who caught her hand as she went by. Lillian smiled and let him keep it, pulling herself up on a stool and regarding the mural with a critical eye. Kami was prepared to bet that either criticisms or more offers of magical help would be along in less than five minutes. She was prepared to bet a lot, if she could find any sucker who would take it.

She never found out.

There was another tap on the door.

“Oh, good,” said Mum, disappearing into the kitchen. “Another Lynburn.”

“Hi, Mrs. Glass,” Jared called after her.

“That is how I shall always greet you from now on,” Angela informed Jared, without opening her eyes.

Jared stayed standing in the doorway, hands on either side of the doorframe. It was almost summer, almost too warm for his battered leather jacket. There was something about the set of his shoulders that she thought looked tense.

“Kami,” he said. “I came to ask if I could talk to you outside.”

Kami looked around at her friends, at her family, for a hint as to what she should do. Her treacherous friends and family stared innocently and unhelpfully back. “Yes,” she said at last. “All right.”

They had not been alone in weeks. Kami had thought that it was because there was so much to be done, to be rebuilt, to be arranged, and then she had started to wonder if Jared had been avoiding being alone with her.

Now they were alone, and Jared did not seem to have much to say to her. There was no statue in the square any longer, her mother revived, Matthew Cooper and all his history gone. Jared paced silently in the sunlit square that was left.

Kami watched him. Jared looked up, and visibly nerved himself.

“Here’s the thing,” said Jared. “I thought it was obvious. I thought it was embarrassingly obvious, but—when we did the ceremony I saw your mind, and I saw the way you’ve seen the past few months. When you told me we were going out, I went along with it. You were calling me silly names, it was clear you weren’t as serious about it as I was. I figured you could see that I would have taken anything you would give me, and you thought I was kind of ridiculous and desperate. But you didn’t, did you?”

“No,” said Kami. “I felt like I had to bully you into going out with me. So no. I did not think you were the pathetic one in that scenario.”

Jared bit his lip. “Then I’ve been messing up everything, the whole time. Well. That shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is. I didn’t realize how I must have seemed, to you. I’m sure I’m going to mess this up too, but there is one thing I thought was more obvious than anything else. There is one thing I thought you knew, and if you don’t I have to tell you. I am utterly in love with you. I’ve been in love with you my whole life. I’ve been in love with you your whole life. I don’t know how to live without being in love with you, and I don’t want to know.”

He held her gaze for that long, then looked down at the cobblestones.

“I don’t want to sound like my father. Like either of my fathers. My feelings aren’t more important than yours. I don’t want to act as if they are.”

“You never thought they were, not really. You didn’t think anything about yourself was important at all.”

He had thought his life was worth so much less than hers, so much less than Ash’s. But he had decided to live without them if he had to. She was so glad they had all lived, but she was glad to think of his decision, even now. She was reassured and warmed by it, by how far he had come.

“It’s cool,” said Jared. “I think I’m awesome now. So awesome. You should definitely go out with me.”

Kami laughed and hesitated, leaning against the wall and watching him, his Lynburn profile outlined against gold stone and a summer sky. She was not sure if now was the time to act.

“I always thought that you could never love me,” said Jared, and his voice was stark, not self-pitying, just stating facts. “Not really. Nobody ever did but you, for so long, and you weren’t real. I thought nobody real could love me, and then you were real, and I still thought that. I resented you for not loving me, and I tried to accept you not loving me, and I am so sorry I hurt you. I hardly even believed I could. I don’t ever want to hurt you again. And I can accept you not loving me, but I had to tell you how I felt. I want to love you, and I want you to love me back. I came to find out if that could ever be possible.”

Jared hesitated, as if hoping for an answer, but when he did not get one he plunged desperately on.

“I said once that my idea of happiness is to always be with you, and it is. I’m always going to think of you as the source of everything. To me, the sun rises and sets on you. You make all things true. I am in love with you, and I cannot imagine being in love with anyone else. It would be like becoming someone else. Your name was the first word for love I ever knew.” He broke off, and set his jaw, looking frustrated. “I don’t want to talk like Rob, saying that you owe me something because I love you, or that other women are worthless because I’m not in love with them. Love isn’t some kind of debt. That’s not what I mean.”

“I know,” said Kami. “You always thought Holly was great.”

“She is great,” said Jared. “And beautiful. She’s like a star to me, something bright and lovely seen from another world. She’s someone else’s sun. That’s how all other girls are to me. You’re my sun.”