Rhoda stroked the small dark mask. "May you find mercy in the other world."
The plume tail flicked once against the rug. The breath went out of the silver-cream body under Rhoda's hand.
Rhoda did not lift her hand. She closed her eyes and whispered, in a voice the room could hear, "Not until the lie is found. Not until the bond that was spoiled is answered for." She opened her eyes. "The Telling has its answer."
The room held its breath. Then, somewhere under the floorboards of the world, the old magic settled.
Chapter 12
What Was Left
Rhoda did not lift her hand from the silver-cream coat that had stilled. Edgar had come to stand behind her with his hand on the back of her neck, and he did not move either. Roam stood at the parlor threshold where he had been standing since the front door had closed on The Pokey.
In the front hall behind them, Fat Bastard, Boba, and Jango had stepped back three feet from the rug and sat in a small uneven row.
Honey crossed the rug and knelt beside her mother. She did not speak either. She laid one hand on her mother's hand on the silver-cream coat, closed her eyes a moment, and opened her other hand on the rug beside her.
The pink glitter came up. It came up slow, and it came up pale. The pink that had bloomed for Soot before in the small storage room was not the pink that bloomed now. The blue that should have come next was a thin grey. The yellow was a yellow Honey had never seen before, watery and weak, the color of broth left too long on a stove. The colors held in their pale rough arc above the small silver-cream body, like a fading rainbow.
The arc held and waited as Duchess's body lifted slowly, going up the way a thing goes up that is heavier than it ought to be, the cloudy blue eye still closed, the plume tail dragging, and the pale arc took her, and held her a long quiet moment in its diluted center, and then it folded itself in on its bleached colors, and then it was gone.
The rug was empty.
Honey did not stand up. "It wasn't enough." Her voice cracked at the second word.
Rhoda lifted her hand off the rug and took her daughter's hand instead. "It was what she could take, sweetheart," she said. "Some passage gives back only what's offered."
"Mama," Honey said quietly.
"I know, my love."
"She killed Soot. But at the end…"
"I know."
Rhoda held her daughter's hand a while on the parlor rug where Duchess had been. "She was a creature who was never let to be what she was, sweetheart. We'll mourn her too. Not the same as Soot. But yes."
Honey wiped her face again. She did not stand. Her free hand had gone to the front pocket of her jeans, where it had been resting on top of the small thing she had carried in from the threshold, and the small thing was still there.
"Mama," she said again.
"Yes, my love."
"Lazlo dropped this thing from his pocket."
Rhoda's hand stilled on her daughter's hand. "What thing."
"This."
Honey drew it out and laid it on her open palm. The rabbit's foot lay in the parlor light, dark and old. The fur on it was a dark brown that was not quite the color of any rabbit Honey had ever seen.
Rhoda Hadwin looked at it. She did not reach for it. Then she took it carefully out of her daughter's palm and her face went pale.
"Oh my." Rhoda's voice was very quiet. "Goddess. He's had this the whole time." She turned it once in her palm. "There's no way he should have gotten his hands on this. This is from Rabbit Hash. Another lifetime." Her hand closed. "This is for another day, sweetheart. A day when you will meet your Mom's other oldest and closest friend, Vera."
She stood up off the rug on slow legs, crossed the parlor, and stopped beside her husband. She laid the rabbit's foot on his open palm without looking at it again.
"Edgar," she said.
