Page 2 of Heartsong
Carrie hummed again. “They almost look as though they…” She smiled sadly, her gaze searching Anna’s for a moment that stretched into awkward. “Were alive.”
Anna swallowed hard. She liked Carrie, the woman was a great boss, all the other docents and staff loved her, but there were times like these when she made a shiver run up Anna’s back.
“They’re beautiful statues,” Anna croaked.
“Yes. I’m pleased we found you, Anna. It means so much to Gavin and me, to have the statues surrounded by people who admire them as much as we do.”
Anna bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from saying something inane. She’d had more than one long conversation with her boss about her appreciation of them, what she liked and admired about the pieces, her interest in their history. Carrie or her husband Gavin always had some new, interesting tidbit to tell her, where they had acquired a piece, the lengths they went to gather them. But there was always something, just out of Anna’s understanding; Carrie would look at her much as she was now, still serene but inexplicably sad, a look of longing carving deep shadows under her golden eyes. It made her seem older.
When Anna said nothing, Carrie cleared her throat. “I hate to ask, but would you be available to stay late tonight? The specialist we’ve been waiting on will be flying into San Francisco tonight and wanted to pop in around seven for an initial look.”
“Oh, June Parkhurst?”
“Yes, we’ve been anxious to get Miss Parkhurst in and see what she thinks of the clan.” Another of her oddities—Carrie had a way of sayingthe claninstead ofthe collection. As if they were more than statues and codices and art.
“Then yeah, I can stay to meet her.”
“Wonderful!” Carrie smiled warmly. “She just wants to poke about and see what she’s in for—shouldn’t take more than an hour. To make up for it, take a long lunch and dinner is on the museum.”
“Oh, you don’t have—”
Carrie waved her hand in a sort of flourish, nixing Anna’s polite refusal. She always did when Anna tried to decline their kindness. It wasn’t that she was ungrateful, far from it, but she worried too much kindness and she’d come to rely on them. Anna hadn’t relied on anyone in a very long time. She wasn’t used to it, had spent her first few weeks wondering what Carrie and Gavin wouldreallyexpect of her. Finally, after a month, Anna had started to realize that’s just who Carrie was, always generous, always apologetic if she needed something extra from Anna.
“We take care of our people,”she vividly remembered Gavin Gwyneth telling her on her second day, after she’d double and triple checked that the health plan was as robust as it looked. Specialistsanddentalandvision?Swoon.
At eight o’clock, the security doors unlocked themselves and a few patrons came in, shaking dew and clinging mist off their overcoats. Some were regulars, like the art grad student, loaded down with sketchbook and easel, who swore the statues were going to be her thesis; the older man, perpetually hefting around some Dostoevsky tragedy, who liked to sit and read under the obsidian behemoth because the creature “kept things quiet,” as he liked to say; and the slick businessman who looked straight out of the 80s with his nice suits and silk scarves and coiffed hair.
Carrie gave her another smile and rapped her knuckles on Anna’s desk before going to collect the new guests and give them a personal tour.
Anna grinned, getting comfortable in her big chair. She was happy for the day to start, and even though she had to stay late, she knew how to make the day better. She knew just where she’d take her long lunch.
Madness felt like a skipping record, crackling from one track to the next, never to hear the end or beginning of a song.
At least, that’s what it’d felt like to Frey since records were invented.
Before then, it’d been swirling gray fog that sometimes revealed a face, a memory, a sound. If he focused, he could see through it, could peer past the madness with unseeing stone eyes into a world that thought him myth.
But now, everything was silent. Clear. The fog lifted, the song of his mind played in full.
And it was because his mate was near.
My heartsong.
A phantom growl, the memory of the sound, reverberated through Frey’s mind, and he could almost feel it strumming in his throat. His body hadn’t moved in almost fifteen-hundred years, and it hadn’t been long after being turned to stone that he’d forgotten the sensation of movement. But now, now his mate was near, and he could remember growling; he could remember roaring and shouting and purring and speaking. He wanted to do all these things, especially forher.
He knew she was near because his senses had come more alive than they’d been in centuries. It was a maddening pattern with her, she would come and go, giving him precious hours of phantom sensation. Then she would leave again, taking his sanity with her.
He didn’t even know what she looked like, not really. True, he shared a sort of consciousness with his fellow guardians. Since succumbing to the curse, Frey had felt his people in their stone prisons, had heard their whispers and whimpers. Sometimes he’d spoken with them, the fog clearing enough to peek out at another trapped soul. They had learned many things from each other, the stone sleep allowing for just enough awareness to hear and snatch images from the world that flowed around them. Many had retreated deep into this collective consciousness, the only comfort they had against the relentless tide of time.
Frey hadn’t told his kin, but he had a second comfort now, waiting anxiously for when his mate would draw close. All he had was an impression of her, as even with his senses restored somewhat by her presence, the curse ensured that he couldn’t quitesee, couldn’t quitediscern. Dark hair. Eyes the color of rich earth. Tall for a human woman. That was all he knew, but it was enough for Frey. For now.
He didn’t know what she looked like nor how she sounded, smelled, or tasted. But he would know. Soon. He had to believe it, had to hold onto this shred of hope with all his claws or else he would drift away, like so many had.
He had a mate,hismate, and it had to be enough.
Frey sensed her nearing, felt his stone flesh warm as she drew closer. He had no sense of day or night as a statue, but he’d come to realize that his woman took a meal near him. It was the clearest image he had of her, the back of her head, with those slight waves in her rich brown hair. He wanted to run his claws through that hair, use it to pull her close, into his body, where she could never leave him again.
Like most of his kind, Frey had always hoped to find his mate, his heartsong. Since their creation, over two thousand years ago, by a desperate clan of druids in the hills of what was now southern Wales, the guardians had only ever been able to sire younglings with their mates. Created to help the native Celts fight off the invading Romans, the druids had turned to magicks that were not their own, stealing from the fae themselves. From all manner of stone, the druids carved great statues, consummate warriors with bodies made for battle. Into the stone they poured blood and magick. The original spell had birthed them, but after the rock-born, the guardians had found their mates and become their own clans. Perhaps it was for fear of the creatures they had created that the druids ensured their numbers would always be low, but it wasn’t the guardians they should have feared.
