The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia McKillip

could see trees, the distant profile of the headlands, the sparkling blue-green waves bursting into froth against the cliffs. Emma had told her that people lived among the rocks. Fishing boats and ships sailed into the harbor below Aislinn House, which Ysabo could see out a different window: a stretch of blue beyond the wood as placid as a mirror. But no matter which window in all of Aislinn House she looked from, she never saw what Emma saw, only the wood, the cliff, the sea, as though her Aislinn House existed before the human world began.

    Why?

    Aveline and Maeve, whose silence never lasted long, had listened long enough to hers. Their voices pricked the air with little isolated stitches at first, then longer threads. They drifted into reminiscences; some threads seemed to have no end, just ran into the fabric of memory and disappeared. Others, unexpectedly colored, snagged themselves on Ysabo’s attention.

    “No, it was still autumn. The last day of it, I remember, the color of iron, and as cold as. Little flecks of snow in the wind, and the last black bitter leaves falling into the lake, where the cold silver shield and the torn pennant still lay on the tiny island in the middle of the water. The end of a world, it seemed. He said it was important. A sight to haunt this world through the centuries. I didn’t understand; I was too young.”

    What memory? Ysabo thought. What worlds?

    “And then he went away.” Maeve’s voice was thin as frayed thread.

    “But he came back. He always did.”

    “Until then.”

    “No—he came back again to take us to supper with Queen Hydria in her great court. You must remember, Maeve! The knights’ banners hung from the ceiling, all the rich threads of red and blue and gold glittering in the torchlight. Blagdon himself was there beside the queen, an old man as hale as a tree, bearded with moss, tussocks for eyebrows and ears like dried leaves. I was older then.” Aveline’s voice grew dreamy, rich as cream. “I wore pale green and dark blue, with gossamer over my hair. I remember the queen’s eyes, how beautiful they were. The colors of my gown, blue and green together. Do you remember?”

    “Yes. Now I do.” Ysabo heard Maeve’s needle pierce the taut fabric in its frame. It was another mystery, the queen whose name Ysabo had heard every day of her life but who remained invisible except in her mother’s and grandmother’s stories. “I do remember that wonderful feast. Twelve stuffed swans floating on platters of polished silver and twelve fat salmon on platters of gold . . . I don’t remember eating any of it, though. Did we? Do you remember?”

    “No. I remember music, though, but not the musicians; it was as though the music came out of fire and air.”

    Their voices trailed silent; their threads spoke, pushed and pulled, in and out. Ysabo felt again their little, fretting bird glances. So she turned to the musicians playing old ballads softly on harp and flute near the hearth.

    “That was lovely,” she told them, though she had scarcely heard what they had just finished. “Play it again.”

    Their music wove its own thread into the morning. Maeve and Aveline’s voices added texture, soft at first, then gaining depth as they misjudged the reasons for Ysabo’s abstraction.

    “I remember having trouble with that, too,” Aveline murmured. “I couldn’t wait for supper to begin, so I could see for certain which it was.”

    “And did you?”

    “Not at first. You know how they are. Not one face told me anything. They were lost in their own ritual. Do you remember?”

    Ysabo felt Maeve’s gray eyes, cold as cloud, drift over her face, away. “Very little. The ones you do remember—”

    “Yes,” Aveline said instantly. “Yes. The ones you remember are the ones you never meet during the ritual. Those you meet outside of time, in a stray hour, before beginnings, after endings ...”

    “Who? Tell,” Maeve commanded, her hands dropping onto