The Firebird's Vengeance Read Free Page A

stone knife. Then, she noticed his ears. His lobes stretched out so long that they dangled across his naked chest.
    “Finally,” he grumbled. “Damn white women. Always making you wait.”
    Grace’s chest seized up. Her first thought was to turn and run, but she held her ground. “Who are you?”
    “Rude too.” The red man inspected his work and shaved another sliver of wood from the stick.
    “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
    The red man squinted at his whittling. “Better,” he said. “But still too damn rude. I’m waiting.” He blew on the stick to clear away the chips.
    It was then Grace realized what else was wrong. She could not see his breath. It was so cold that her own breath steamed up in white clouds in front of her eyes, but the fat red man in front of her breathed invisibly, as if it were the warmest summer day.
    He cocked one round, black eye at her and grinned.
    Grace opened her mouth and shut it tight again. Anger at his impudence burned even stronger than the fear and drew her spine up straight. “Why are you waiting here?”
    “I was asked to.”
    This was becoming ridiculous, but Grace couldn’t stop. This … person was not right. He was not a ghost, but he was not a living being either. She needed to know what such a creature was doing on Ingrid’s grave. “Asked by whom?”
    “A vixen.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “You sure don’t.”
    Grace resisted the urge to shout in her frustration. “All right,” she said exasperatedly. “Why did this … vixen ask you to wait for me?”
    “Closer.” The Red ran his fat fingers over his work. “She wanted me to bring you a message. She says the cage won’t hold a second time. Think you can remember that?” He blinked his beady, black eyes at her.
    “I still don’t see …”
    “No you don’t.” He tucked knife and whistle into his loincloth’s thong. “ ’Cause you’re too scared to go where you need to.”
    Oddly, Grace felt those words stab straight at her pride. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
    The red man spat. “Here? What’s here but the dead? It’s what the living’s been up to you don’t want to face.” He picked himself up off the snow. “Don’t know what the fox’s game is, but I’m done with it. You remember, you forget. You find out what’s left at that lighthouse, you stay here and freeze yourself the rest of the way, it’s all the same to Nanabush.”
    Then the pudgy red man was gone, and there was only a winter-white rabbit dashing away, kicking up glittering sprays of snow behind itself until the trees hid it from view.
    Grace blinked hard and pressed her hand against her forehead. What had just happened here? Why was she standing about in the cold? There had been a rabbit on Ingrid’s grave … No. She squeezed her eyes shut. There had been a Red. He’d had a message …
    The cage will not hold a second time .
    What cage? What was he talking about? Grace swayed on her feet. Why had she stood here having a conversation with a rabbit?
    No. No. Not a rabbit. Keep your mind on what happened . Her memories were trickling away so fast she could feel them like a stream running through her mind. There was a Red. He told me the cage wouldn’t hold a second time. He said I was afraid to go where I needed to. That I needed to know what the living were up to .
    She shook her head. What did the living have to do with her? The living had left her flat, requiring that she make her own way in the world and they never once looked back to see how she was doing.
    But now there was this voice, and it was asking for help, and it might be Bridget, calling on Grace in her trouble, as her mother had never done. Grace clenched her teeth. If these things were to do with Bridget, living or dead, there was only one other place Grace could possibly go to find out what was happening—the Sand Island lighthouse. Bridget’s home. If her shade or her body was anywhere, it was there.
    She’d have to go out on the