In DeMains’s studio, surrounded by the scents of turpentine and wet clay, Sir Henry removed the green velvet veil of his sea bride and gasped. She was exquisite—from the malachite of her eyes to the ivory of her skin and the arterial cascade of her hair, she fulfilled every promise of her beauty. “DeMains,” he whispered, “you are a true artist.”
With a small proud smile playing over his lips, DeMains bowed. “And I finished her just in time,” he replied.
“Yes,” Sir Henry said. “Tomorrow is Solstice Eve, and the eve of my birthday.”
“Seven times seven,” DeMains added.
Sir Henry sighed.
“Is everything else in order?” DeMains asked.
Sir Henry nodded. “The seamstresses have been working for a fortnight.”
“Ah. It bodes well.” DeMains cleared his throat. “Would you like… um… someone to accompany you?”
Sir Henry shook his head. “No. A man’s birthdays, like his marriages, are a private affair.”
DeMains bowed again. “As you wish.”
“I wish nothing of the sort,” Sir Henry added querulously. He was staring at his sea bride and felt his heart ache at the sight of her long red hair and green eyes. “But the law is the law.”
“So it is,” DeMains added philosophically. “So it is.”
At half-past nine on Solstice Eve, Sir Henry set out from his château, eager to finish the night’s sordid business. As the sun sank toward the horizon and the full moon rose in the sky, the pink clouds of sunset deepened to violet, and then to indigo. The seven-hour twilight had begun.
Though the air was warm, the sea breeze was chill, and Sir Henry shivered as he carried his shrouded beloved in his arms. Over one shoulder he’d slung a sack filled with everything he would need to welcome the dawning of his birthday, as he had every year since he’d come of age. Tomorrow was his birthday as it had been his father’s, and his grandfather’s, and his great-grandfather’s. He’d never questioned the oddness of this reoccurrence any more than he’d questioned the existence of the sea cliffs, or the gulls, or the hunger of the briny deep. It was as much a part of his inheritance as the château or the deference of the sailors, the fishermen, and their fishwives.
Climbing carefully down the steps cut into the sea cliffs, he focused on the worn stone beneath his feet. How long had this staircase been here? No one knew, but he suspected it was as ancient as the Stone Age settlements dotting the coastline, as old as the standing stones and barrows lining the grand processional that led here from the great stone circles of the east and north.
The staircase ended and Sir Henry carefully tucked his beloved into his shoulder sack before beginning the final stage of his journey. With an agility that belied his years, he scrambled down the steep scree-face, holding tightly to the old knotted rope his father had secured to the rock overhead. He knew from childhood outings that the scree, fallen from the cliffside, was full of fossilized sea creatures—oysters, trilobites, and the twisting palaces of conch shells.
Landing on the sand with a thump, Sir Henry turned his back to the cliff and let his gaze drift over the moonlit beach. The tide was out, but this was no natural tide, as this was no natural night. Though at its zenith the sea usually crashed against the black cliffs and at its nadir was reduced to a gentle lapping at the sand just a few yards away, tonight the mellow gold beach was exposed for more than half a mile, and the sea had been forced to lay bare her hidden treasures of kelp and bladder wrack, starfish and coral, wrecked ships and rotting sea serpents. Even those secret creatures usually hidden in the ocean’s depths were stranded in tide pools. Now those strange, phosphorescent monsters stared up at the moon and pale stars with huge lidless eyes, or gasped, their razor-sharp gills open, dying on the sand. The bones of a long-dead sailor and those of a mermaid, entangled in a final, passionate embrace, shimmered in Diana’s light. But it was on the horizon that Henry’s eyes focused as he stood with his back to the cliff.
Halfway between himself and the water’s edge rose a stone circle, enormous and ancient, exposed by the withdrawing tide. Like this expanse of beach, it was only visible one night each year. Sir Henry couldn’t help but wonder whether it existed in some liminal realm between worlds, a place that came into being during this night’s strange twilight.
Behind him, a low croak sounded. Glancing over his shoulder, Sir Henry spied a frog crouching on the scree between two clumps of rough seagrass. Swiftly, he reached down and snatched it. The frog struggled, but Sir Henry held it fast and then secured it in his sack. It kicked and bounced for a moment before lying still. Sir Henry smiled. Finding it was lucky. Carefully balancing his shoulder sack again, he began to walk, bending now and then to gather the strange treasures that would help him accomplish his task.
By the time he reached the seahenge, Sir Henry’s arms were piled high with magical finds and he was sweating. But still, as he approached the circle of monoliths, he felt his skin grow cold. Carefully he placed his treasures on the ground, and then his sack. He was so close now. The moon was bright and the tall stones jutted like the ragged teeth from the gaping maw of some enormous buried beast. And at the circle’s center, rising like a many-headed hydra or the tentacles of some colossal, fossilized kraken, were the roots of an ancient oak. It had been buried in a time before remembering, its branches and bole within the earth and its lower trunk and thick roots rising and writhing toward the sky. Like the stones, it was only visible one night each year, and belonged to this twilight world which itself belonged to both sea and land, below and above, sleeping and waking.
With a courtly bow, Sir Henry took a step forward and entered the circle. His skin tingled as the shadows of the stones fell upon him. “I have come,” he said, “as was promised long ago. I have come as my father came, and his father, and his father before him, back to the time before time when we emerged from your branches and bark; back before we wrested this land from the sea. I have brought you my bride, who is also my gift to you, as she is to the Ancient Ones of the Salt. But first, as you gave us life, I give you light.”
Sir Henry approached the tree deferentially. When he was close enough to touch the roots, he reached for his silver pocket lamp and pressed the side button. The cap ignited with a hiss and a whoosh, lighting the wick already drenched with fluid.
Delicately, Sir Henry reached forward and touched the flame to each rootling tip. The old sea-soaked oak caught and sparked and spat and finally burned with the aqua flame of salt-infused driftwood. Around and around the tree he walked, lighting the lowest rootlings like the many wicks of a giant candelabrum. And as each thin finger of wood ignited, the aqua flames spread upward from root to root, until the whole underworld canopy was ablaze and Sir Henry had returned to where he had started.
Stepping back, he shaded his face from the heat of the weirdling fire that flared up without devouring the wood, and which left the bole untouched. Beneath the flaming underworld oak, he loosened the drawstring of his sack. Ignoring the croak and hop of the struggling frog, he reached inside. As the sea slapped its watery hands against the beach, drawing a murmur of pebbles toward the deep before tossing them back with a hiss of seafoam, Henry withdrew a silver knife engraved with runes, a small sack of grave clay taken from his lady’s first resting place, a purse of herbs, a vial of elixir, a goblet whose cup had been cut from his great-grandfather’s skull, a bottle of his best champagne, a shimmering folded dress, and a huge conch shell inlaid with silver. Finally, he withdrew his veiled prize.