Chapter 5: Aoife (part 3 of 4)

  Night had well and truly fallen over Enfield. Most houses had shut off their lights, making the road more difficult to navigate by sight. The smell of food had all but dissipated from the air.

  The pain in Aoife's ribs had receded to a dull thrum that spiked on a heavy step or a deep breath. Try as she might, she was unable to summon that rolling warmth again. But when she managed to wring out a drop of heat, she sensed that the bones were sturdier, as if they had already fused and started healing. She felt she should have been more mystified by this finding than she was, but she had begun to accept that there was far more she still needed to learn about her blood tricks.

  As she rounded onto Ember Lane, Aoife saw that one house in the block still had lights on downstairs. She walked closer and realized that it was her own house. Who were still downstairs at this hour, and what could they be up to? If it were one of her siblings, they'd get a good talking to. If it were Ma, at least that meant she had energy enough to stay up late, and Aoife would take that as a positive.

  She opened the door to find that both scenarios were correct. What she hadn't counted on was the additional presence of a complete stranger.

  Ma sat on one side of the dining table, with Clodagh standing close behind her and watching the stranger intently. On the end of the table, back turned to Aoife, sat a woman whose grey hair was tied into a ponytail. At the sound of the door, she stood and turned to face Aoife.

  The woman was Huaxian, one of only a handful that Aoife had ever seen, including Ma. She was quite tall, perhaps even slightly more so than Clodagh. Her knee-length dress had an unfamiliar look to it—tight-fitting and high-collared with colourful trims. She also wore thick padded pants beneath the dress and a fur shawl over her shoulders, despite the relative mildness of early autumn. Her grey hair and the lines on her face showed her age, yet her stately posture and shapely figure were those of a much younger woman. She inspected Aoife now with keen but bloodshot eyes. Aoife noticed that the tip of her nose was also slightly red. Had this woman been... crying, not long ago?

  "And this must be Ee... how do you say it? Ee-fa?" the woman had a clear and pleasing voice that befit her appearance, yet it took Aoife a second or two to register that she was speaking Anglish. It was in an accent she'd never heard before. The Huaxian woman enunciated each syllable deliberately and adorned them with undulating intonations. When she said her name, she had lingered on the second syllable for far too long.

  "Aoife," Ma offered, appearing perfectly at ease with a stranger—a foreigner to boot—sharing their dining table this late at tonight. In spite of the circumstances, Aoife was relieved to see that the colour on Ma's face hadn't faded yet.

  "Aoife. What a lovely name," the stranger's second attempt saw improvement, but now the 'Aoi' took on a meandering and musical quality. "I say, Aster, you've given all of your children such lovely names."

  Aoife frowned. The way the stranger turned to Ma with a conspiratorial smile, it was as if she was catching up with an old friend. There was something more, a tangible emotion as she spoke to Ma about the children—pride? And had she just called Ma 'Aster'?

  "My name is Asha," Ma calmly corrected the stranger again. She seemed to be under no alarm whatsoever, which helped to ease Aoife's own caution, but only slightly. Anytime a stranger came knocking past bedtime, it usually spelt trouble, and yet—

  "Yes. I forgot that you go by a different name now," the woman said this so casually, as if stating a common fact. Aoife couldn't keep herself in bewildered silence any longer.

  "Excuse me, but who are you?"

  The woman looked back at her. The smile she had shown Ma smoothed but didn't fade. Something shone in her eyes, producing a sheen over the dark-brown irises. Then a slight crease formed at her brow and she took on a pensive look, as though she were reliving a painful memory. Finally, she spoke, her voice hoarse with emotion and producing a crack in her veneer of composure. "My name is Ruixi Tao. I'm... well, I guess I'm your great-aunt."

  Aoife couldn't comprehend the name that was given, let alone recognize it. Rooey-shee? It was a far cry from the names of relatives she'd known in her life. Even Ma, the only member of the clan who had straight black hair and dark-brown eyes, had only ever gone by Asha Griffin. Was this woman a herald from the mysterious, long-lost bloodline of Ma's parentage? How had she found them after all these years, and why? But before all that, how could Aoife be sure that the woman was telling the truth?

  "There I go again. Excuse me," the woman coughed in embarrassment and swiftly brought a hand to her eye and away again. She let out a bracing sigh and recovered her dignified air. "I better sit down again. Aoife, would you please join us?"

  The woman indicated the empty seat next to Ma, acting as though Aoife had been the intruder on their perfectly natural conversation. Whoever or whatever she was, at least she did not seem to mean them any harm. Aoife took a few wary steps into the room, eyeing the woman who called herself 'Rooey-shee'.

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  "You'll have to excuse me but I'm parched," she said, and noted that this elicited a subtly raised eyebrow. This seemingly innocent piece of information seemed to mean something to the woman. She continued slowly. "I'm going to make myself some tea. Would you like some?"

  "I think it's a bit late in the day for me. I have enough trouble sleeping as is. Thank you, though."

  Aoife still wasn't sure what to make of the woman's overly familiar tone. She glanced at Clodagh, who had stood still this whole time with a bemused scowl.

  "Clodagh," she called to her sister. Woken from a reverie, Clodagh looked up at her in a daze. Aoife beckoned toward the furnace, hoping that Clodagh would be alert to her intentions. "Help me with this."

  A brief pause followed, after which Clodagh seemed to catch on and joined Aoife by the furnace. The kettle still sat there, keeping warm. Evidently, no one had taken the initiative in Aoife's absence to put the kettle away, which was just as well. Aoife waited until she heard the woman start speaking to Ma.

  "Alright, so, what the hell is going on?" she whispered to Clodagh while her hands busied with pots and tea leaves, a task that certainly didn't require the attention of two people.

  "I haven't got a clue any more than you do," her sister whispered back obligingly, though she was being a touch louder than Aoife would have liked. "Ma and I were getting ready to turn in when we heard the knock. This woman comes in and starts bawling the moment she laid eyes on Ma. We practically had to drag her inside, just to stop her making such a ruckus."

  "Do you believe her?"

  "About her being Ma's aunt? Well, I don't know, but the way she looks... and I guess she doesn't seem like she's trying to trick us somehow."

  Aoife considered this. If the woman breaking down in front of Ma hadn't somehow been an elaborate act, it seemed in keeping with her claim that she was long-lost family. There were still countless questions left to be answered, but it might be safe to broach them under the assumption that the woman could be trusted.

  The sisters returned to the table, Aoife carrying the teapot and a cup for herself and Clodagh contributing by carrying nothing. Ma and her so-called aunt stopped talking as Aoife set down the tea and took the seat beside Ma as had been offered. As she lowered herself into the seat, Aoife was reminded of her injury and did her best to hide a wince.

  First things first. Without speaking, Aoife poured herself a cup to the brim and inhaled the contents in one go, unbothered by the temperature. Then she filled another cup and, suddenly feeling self-conscious, consumed it in two separate gulps. Feeling somewhat refreshed, she tried again to access her warmth—a process that was quickly becoming as familiar as turning on her heat—and found it this time. The pain in her ribs quickly subsided.

  The Huaxian woman watched this with amused interest, a slight smile forming on her lips. Aoife had the uncomfortable notion that the woman was somehow seeing more than a tired girl guzzling tea. Their eyes met, and the woman spoke first. "Looks like you had quite an ordeal. Can I ask what you were doing so late at night?"

  "I was working. Busy night," Aoife mumbled. She first felt sheepish, then immediately indignant at the absurdity that she should be one to be explaining herself. "Never mind that. How about you start telling us more about yourself?"

  Instead of answering the question, Rooey-shee looked up at Clodagh, who had resumed her silent vigil behind Ma and Aoife. For someone who normally engaged easily with strangers, she was being unusually quiet.

  "Clodagh," Rooey-shee called, elongating both syllables and turning the 'dagh' into a sing-song question. "Why don't you sit with us too?"

  Clodagh started, looking oddly flustered. She also mumbled her reply quietly, which wasn't something she tended to do. "No thank you. I'm—"

  "Lady," Aoife cut in, deliberately adding an impatient edge to her voice. This woman might well be who she claimed to be, but for now, she was still an unannounced visitor who hadn't made her intentions clear. "How about you stop asking questions and start answering them?"

  Rooey-shee returned her attention to the table, unworried by the tension in Aoife's voice. The keen, bloodshot eyes flicked between her and Ma. For her part, Ma sat placidly, seemingly content to let the proceedings carry on without her intervention. The woman settled her gaze on Aoife before addressing her. "It seems you carry a bit of authority around here, Aoife. Doesn't your mother speak for herself?"

  "Never you mind who speaks for whom in this family. Just talk," Aoife spat with a ferocity that surprised herself. The warmth that she had kept bubbling within her momentarily flared into heat. Rooey-shee raised another eyebrow, but did not put up further challenges. By way of answer, she reached into a leather satchel and pulled out a small object, placing it carefully—almost reverently—on the table.

  Aoife's first thought was that it was an oddly shaped hourglass. It seemed to be a tubular glass container housed within a wooden frame. The frame had intricate, tortuous carvings on it, giving it an appearance reminiscent of vines and tree branches. The top of the frame was flat, roughly square in shape, and engraved with foreign characters. The characters themselves were unlike anything Aoife had ever seen—lines connected at strange angles with uneven spirals thrown into the mix. She could only assume they were of Huaxian origin, though they didn't seem to match her scanty knowledge of what Huaxian characters looked like.

  Her eyes were then drawn to the contents within the glass tube. It was a dark, reddish liquid with a rather viscous appearance. Unlike the foreign characters, this had a kind of familiarity to it. Was it... blood? Was this Huaxian woman, who claimed to be her great-aunt, carrying around a vial of blood on her person? Yet there was also something otherworldly about the blood. It seemed to be shimmering, reflecting light without a discernible source, and this non-existent light source appeared to change its position at regular intervals.

  "I know how this may sound, so I ask that you not be alarmed," Rooey-shee said calmly, giving each of the Griffin women a look a turn. "This is a sample of Aster's... sorry, Asha's blood."