Firebird Page 7

  Okay, thought Alexandra, I just have to get through the long day ahead with Juliet. This time of year, the ferry didn’t leave the island until late afternoon.

  A heavy encyclopedia - and her reading glasses - lay beside her, where they had fallen on the bed.

  I promise you, Juliet, I’ll find the answers.

  That was the deal, sealed just after midnight. Juliet had to promise she wouldn’t run away again. And Alexandra had promised to help uncover Evangeline Marik Rhodes’ last secret.

  And that secret, she was sure, was connected to the three names in her sister’s message – Charles Fraser, Jon Garcia and Ivan. And to something called Operation Firebird. And a red feather.

  Suddenly apprehensive, she lifted the dusty book she’d found last night in the library downstairs and hooked the wire glasses on her ears. She thought briefly of her state-of-the-art laptop, forgotten on her bed in New York when she’d rushed off to Maine. Who needed the damned Internet? The answers could be right here in a decades old, out of print book. And searching through ancient archives was supposed to be one of a curator’s strengths.

  “Research is what you do best,” she murmured. “Just follow the paper trail. You can trust facts.” She looked down at the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Circa 1970, Volume IV, Excom to Hermosil. Could the book be any older? And what on earth was a Hermosil?

  Her fingers flipped the pages. Fireball, Fire-Baptized Holiness Church, Fire-bellied toad. Firebird.

  Firebird. A Pontiac car.

  “No way,” she muttered. Eve’s style ran to Jaguars - fast and sleek, gorgeous and as high profile as she was. Her finger moved on.

  The Firebird Brooch. Now here was something. A csar’s jewels designed for Csar Nikolas II’s wife, Alexandra. My namesake, she thought. And the next exhibit at the Baranski Gallery would feature the art of St. Petersburg and include Romanov jewels from the Hermitage. Not a believer in coincidence, she reached for a pen and scrap of paper to make a note to herself. Hadn’t there been a mention of a missing Firebird brooch in her research? She’d check her office as soon as she returned.

  Her excitement grew as she read the detailed description. “An ornamental jeweled brooch in the shape of a glorious bird with swirling feathers of fire, designed for Czarina Alexandra in 1910 by Court Jeweler Leonard Pfisterer. Attached to a heavy necklace of platinum flames, the brooch was comprised of 28 5-carat rubies and 35 flawless 1.5-carat diamonds. The original is thought to have disappeared in 1917 during the chaos of the Revolution. The only known copy, crafted in lesser diamonds and bloodstones, also disappeared.”

  Even in the black and white photograph, the jewels flashed with fire. A pin like that would be worth an original Monet. Lord, even the copy would be worth a small fortune. Eve adored expensive, flashy jewelry - and had the long, elegant neck to carry it off. Yes, jewels were a definite possibility. Especially a csar’s jewels.

  Once more, she felt a faint memory flit across her mind. A red feather… Why couldn’t she remember? Don’t push, she cautioned herself. It will come. She turned the page. The words jumped out at her.

  Firebird Missile. “After World War II, the first U.S. air-to-air guided missile...” Alexandra felt her throat close, and forced herself to swallow. Had Eve somehow come across information about missiles from 1947?

  It was possible. As an international free-lance photographer, Eve’s profiles had focused, Enquirer-like, on scandal and high drama, lies uncovered, secrets revealed.

  Too many possibilities. Her eyes moved down the page.

  The Firebird Suite.

  There was the music Juliet had described the night before. An orchestral suite composed by Igor Stravinsky. Commissioned by impresario Sergey Diaghilev for the Ballet Russes.

  Nothing threatening there. She read on.

  “The Firebird Ballet, choreographed by Michel Fokine, was first performed to this music in Paris, June, 1910. Based on a Russian fairytale...”

  A Russian fairytale.

  A Firebird, Zan, with feathers the color of blood... Her sister’s voice stirred in her head.

  And there it was. The Firebird was familiar to her because of a long-forgotten Russian legend told to her as a child - an ancient tale of a bird with mystical powers and wings of fire.

  She closed her eyes. Like a painting viewed under water, Alexandra saw herself. She was three, maybe four, years of age, curled on the window seat cushion. Eve, three years older, swirled before her, dramatic in a dark green cape.

  Once upon a time, Zan, a young Russian prince was hunting in a dark and silent forest.

  Alexandra’s eyes flashed to the window seat. Pushing the comforter aside, she leaped from the bed and began to search through the children’s books still scattered on the soft cushion.

  Little Women, The Secret Garden, Nancy Drew. But no Russian fairytales.

  Alexandra sank to the window seat with a sigh and gazed out at the new morning. The world was hushed with daybreak, the trees silvered by first light, the fog a thin, mysterious filter over the pewter water. In the half-light, the sky glowed like a newly finished painting. Dawn by Canaletto, she thought.

  She pushed open the window. The muffle of waves and the scent of pine and salt air blew into the room. Her eyes searched the gauzy sea haze, the veiled sliver of beach. But today there was no black dog, no dark-visaged stranger...

  The bedroom door swung open.

  “You’re still here?” said Juliet, disappointment ringing in her voice. “I thought you’d be long gone by now.”

  So much for a good morning. And a knock. “But here I am!” Alexandra said brightly. “Staying.”

  “But for how long?”

  Good grief. “I may surprise you,” she warned her niece. “As of today, we’re stuck with each other, kiddo. So get used to it.” She reached for jeans and her favorite sweatshirt. “Get your jacket. I have something to show you.”

  * * * *

  The Watcher had been waiting in the trees since dawn.

  He’d seen her briefly at an upstairs corner window, watched her slender figure pause, then move gracefully behind the sheer pink-tinged curtains.

  Just before nine, the front door opened. The woman and a thin kid wrapped in a huge hooded windbreaker climbed into the Jeep. Doors slammed, the engine caught.

  He watched until the taillights disappeared from sight. Then, keeping well within the stand of cedars, he moved around to the rear of the house.

  It only took a moment to force the lock.

  He had to find it.

  * * * *

  “I can’t believe you brought me here just to waste my time with some stupid fairytale!”

  “The ferry doesn’t leave for hours. And this book was your Grandmother Irina’s – it’s about a Firebird, Jules. Your mother loved this legend when we were young. There has to be a connection.”

  Alexandra sat with her bare feet covered in rocky sand. The narrow finger of land, thick with hemlock and pines, jutted into a small cove. It was unseasonably warm for late October, and this morning the cobalt water sparked with diamonds. Hard rock music, hostile and relentless as her niece, blasted around them as Juliet moved to the beat.

  Didn’t iPods have earphones? No way I’ll ask her to turn that music off, thought Alexandra with mounting frustration. “I thought you might like this beach,” she ventured, raising her voice. “It’s so secret. I used to come here when I was a girl and needed to think things through.”

  Juliet rolled her eyes. Again, she was dressed all in black. Bulky tops that smelled like cigarette smoke were layered over dancer’s tights, torn leg-warmers and red high-top sneakers with two inch soles. She looked like a homeless Broadway gypsy.

  “C’mon, Jules, if you’d just -” Alexandra leaned closer. “Is that my sweater you’re wearing?”

  “I found it,” said Juliet with cocky belligerence. Her body swayed with fluid grace to the pulsing music that throbbed across the sand.

  “The truth, please, Jules.”
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  Juliet glared at her aunt. “Whatever. It was just laying around!”

  “In my room? In my duffel bag?”

  “What’s the big deal, Aunt Zan?” Juliet pulled the delicate black cashmere over her head and tossed the sweater at Alexandra with contempt.

  Damn, what could she say to help this child?

  “Jules,” she tried again, “this morning you were expecting me to back out of my promise to help you. Why would you think such a thing?”

  The girl shrugged. “Everybody bails.”

  “Not everybody.”

  “Hey, no big, I don’t expect anything from you. I’m used to people not being there for me.”

  Ouch! “What about your stepfather?”

  “Anthony’s okay, but…” Juliet looked around with theatrical exaggeration. “Nope, don’t see him!” And then, “I just wonder how long it’s going to take you to disappear again, Auntie Dearest.”

  “Let up on the attitude, kiddo. Your mother didn’t bail on you.”

  “Don’t you get it? I’ve been parked in more places than a New York City taxi!”

  “Oh, I get it, all right. You’ve had a really mixed up childhood, you had to grow up much faster than most kids. Your father disappeared before you could say ‘daddy,’ your mother forgot most of your birthdays, and you spent too many Christmases alone in boarding schools while your mom was God knows where. Your only aunt has been invisible for years. So, yes, I get your antagonism, Juliet, loud and clear. Your family is like a pile of broken toys and you have every right to be angry with us. But Eve loved you, Jules.”

  “Whatever love is.” Juliet shook her head in denial.

  “Just because we’re angry at someone doesn’t mean we don’t love them, Jules. Maybe it’s a measure of how much we do love them.” She heard the echo of her words. Was she talking to her niece? Or herself?

  “My mom and dad were invisible,” whispered Juliet. “I couldn’t see them. And they never heard me, never saw me. Now, there’s no one left to see me. I’m like them, disappearing more and more every day...”

  Alexandra felt the girl’s pain like a punch. Stricken, not knowing what to say, she looked away, saw the thick round shell half-buried in the sand. Her fingers closed around it, held it out to her niece. “It’s a sand dollar. Your mother and I loved to gather shells when we were girls.” When we were innocent. Happy. “She would tell me their names.”

  She waited, and when there was no response, shook it gently. “Inside this shell are tiny white fragments, shaped like doves. The shell protects them. You’d have to break this beautiful shell to let them fly free.”

  Juliet took the offered shell and gazed down at it for a long moment. Suddenly her head came up, green eyes bright with memory. “It was you!”

  Alexandra held her breath and waited.

  “It was you, Aunt Zan. A long time ago. You held my hand, took me walking on a beach. We collected shells…”

  Oh, God. She remembered. “Yes! And you found a sand dollar. I told you it had doves inside. We put it in a music box that played Sleeping Beauty while a tiny ballerina spun round and round – just the way you danced on the beach.”

  The girl stared at her, then turned away with a shake of her head. “I don’t remember any tiny ballerina. Or any shell.”

  “You’d just turned four.” Alexandra’s voice sounded strange, shaky in her ears. “I was living in California, and your mom showed up on my doorstep. Asked me to take care of you while she went off to - somewhere. Hawaii, I think.”

  “And you took me to the beach.”

  “Yes, Jules. Every day.”

  “You painted my picture…” The girl’s voice was dreamlike, lost in memory.

  Juliet dancing by the edge of the water, so small and beautiful, her long hair spun-gold in the sun and her white dress lifting in the ocean breeze.

  Alexandra nodded.

  “I always wondered about that painting,” said Juliet slowly.

  “I saw it, in Georgetown, hanging over your mother’s bed. Do you still have the shell I gave you that day, Jules?” asked Alexandra suddenly.

  A shadow fell across Juliet’s upturned face, extinguishing the light. “Why would I? I told you, I don’t remember any shell.”

  “But you said –”

  “I’ll tell you what I do remember, Aunt Zan. I remember that you said you loved me, and then you were gone.”

  I’ve come back for Jules, Zan. Hope she wasn’t too much trouble.

  Trouble? Alexandra swallowed, blindsided by the memory.

  Let her stay with me, Eve. Let her –

  She’s my daughter, Zan. Not yours.

  But I could take care of her –

  Because I can’t? Just leave me and my daughter alone!

  Oh, God, Jules, I did love you, I wanted you to stay. She managed, “I had no choice, Juliet. She was your mother…”

  “I waited for you.” Soft, damning words. “I waited a long time.”

  Alexandra felt her heart squeeze in her chest. “When your mother came looking for you that day, you and I were walking on the beach. I wish, now, that we’d taken the long way home that morning. Then maybe -” She reached toward her niece.

  The girl’s face shuttered. “But we didn’t. And I don’t know you now.”

  Alexandra dropped her outstretched hand. What if she had fought to have Juliet stay with her, all those years ago? How different would all their lives have been? “Fair enough,” she said finally. “But maybe we can try to find – ”

  “I’m not going to spill my feelings all over the freakin’ beach, Aunt Zan!”

  “Okay, I get it, you’re tough. But will you just drop the attitude for one minute?”

  “I can’t do this.” Juliet grabbed her iPod, jammed headphones over her ears and marched down the beach. “At least my mother lived her life,” she shot over her shoulder. “You’re just hiding, like she said, a lonely Snow Queen locked in behind all those walls you’ve built! Enjoy your fairytale, Auntie. But I don’t believe in happy endings.”

  Did her niece murmur ‘sanctimonious witch’ as she stalked away?

  Lonely? Locked behind walls? Pot, meet Kettle… “I don’t like you any better than you like me,” muttered Alexandra.

  She kept her eyes on her niece. Moving with that peculiar dancer’s glide that points each toe at a 45 degree angle, Juliet’s walk was fluid, confident. But it’s all an act, thought Alexandra. She’s just a child, lost in a sea of anger and grief. A girl who can’t believe in happy endings.

  You need someone, Alexandra thought suddenly, who will abandon all common sense and reason on your behalf. Someone who thinks with her heart...

  But it won’t be me.

  She watched until Juliet put enough distance between them and dropped to the sand with a lithe, dancer’s grace. Then the girl hugged her knees and stared blindly out to sea. Fragile body bowed against the luminous sky, short spiked hair glowing orange-brown in the autumn light. So hurt. So alone. Still holding the sand dollar.

  Alexandra saw the scene as a painting, and caught her breath. What is going on in her mind? she asked herself. She’d never taken the time to get to know her sister’s daughter, and now - no longer a child, not yet a woman. A girl so terrified of rejection that she was always the one who walked away first. A girl so alone that she thought she was disappearing…

  She gazed at her niece, suddenly seeing herself at age fifteen, alone on the beach. Pretending not to care. “Damn, why did I lose my temper?” Alexandra murmured, feeling an inexplicable ache in her chest. “The sweater isn’t important.”

  She sighed as she tucked her hair up under an old baseball cap. Good grief, Eve, what do I do now? Should I be angry with her, worried, understanding? Or do I just let her be? I know how to run an art gallery and take care of a young child, but I have absolutely no clue how to handle a fifteen year old girl!

  The cold bright sky held no answers. Turning away, she reached into her backpack and withdre
w the narrow volume of Russian legends that she’d found, finally, wedged behind the bookcase in the nursery. Slipping on her glasses, she opened the book and caught her breath as the first drawing and magical words sent memory flooding back.

  “Once upon a time, a young Russian prince was hunting in a dark and silent forest. His name was Prince Ivan.”

  Ivan! One of the names in Eve’s message. She read on quickly.

  “When night fell, there were no stars or moon, and the Prince lost his way. Climbing a fir tree, he peered beyond a high wall and found a beautiful, magical garden inhabited by an evil sorcerer...”

  Slowly, the old legend unfolded.

  In the heart of a mystical garden, Prince Ivan captures a beautiful bird with feathers of fire - the Firebird. In exchange for her freedom, the Firebird gives him a magic feather that will protect him from danger. Eventually, as Ivan attempts to rescue his true love, he and the Firebird are threatened by the evil sorcerer. The Firebird is consumed by the sorcerer’s fire, but Prince Ivan’s magic feather vanquishes the sorcerer and saves the Firebird.

  Alexandra read the last words out loud. “And the Firebird rose from the flames to fly, free at last, into the sky.”

  As she closed the book, the tangled wall of firs and plum leaves rustled behind her. The music of a wind chime, close by, floated on the breeze. Over the pure, light music of the chimes, she heard the faint, unsettling notes of a cello.

  Alexandra froze, listening to the deep, resonant tones. She twisted around to check on Juliet. Her niece was wandering slowly back toward her.

  But the notes of the cello had sounded like an alarm in Alexandra’s head. Once, she’d loved those pure, rich sounds. But that was before she’d met the musician who would become her husband, before he’d begun to play the Bach Cello Suites just before he’d climb the stairs to their bedroom. Now, she heard the cello in her nightmares.