"I must go," I said to Anis, but where, I did not know. I kissed her cheek; she drew a deep breath as I straightened.
"I can smell the wind and wood on you," she said, "as if you lived in them."
I opened the door and glimpsed, in the wild wind and sky, perhaps in her words, the next turn of the tangled path we walked.
Eleven
I went back to the well.
It was the only door I knew, besides the boarded I doorway in Lynn Hall, and I could not go there. I was afraid to find Corbet behind that door again, luring me in, warning me away, with his grandfather's eyes and his father's desperate voice. He was not in the hall when I crept past it at twilight; the makeshift stable, finished but lacking a door, was empty. The sight chilled me more deeply than the winds. He could have simply gone to the inn to eat. But I saw him sitting at our hearth, watching
Laurel out of secret, firelit eyes, while Perrin spoke of cows and our father snored. Play, I wanted to beg Perrin. Don't play cows and fields and next year's planting. Make a flute of your bones and play the music of your heart .
I had not been home all day. They knew I had gone to the village; they would think, when I did not return for supper, that I had stayed to eat with someone. What they would think later I could not pause to wonder. Above the wood, the twilight sky was a dusky 1avender, fading into deep purples and the vibrant grey of storm clouds. The winds smelled of rain; they held an edge of winter cold. They pushed me here and there as I walked, jostling me like invisible horses; they seemed to spring from any direction. Night came swiftly, caught me hrfore I reached the well. But I stumbled on, guided by the lowering shape of a lightning-split oak against a moment's scattering of stars, by a pattern of stones underfoot, a sudden glint of water, the dry rattling of rose vines in the wind.
I smelled wet stone, and an echo, a memory, of sunwarmed roses. I sank wearily down beside the little well. The leaves were sodden and crumbling; I could not bury myself in them, but I did not care. I wanted to be found. So I did what Corbet had done, that hot summer day. I pushed aside the rose vines with one arm and dipped my hand into the water and drank. The vines blew against me, snagged my hair and my cloak, until I could hardly move. I lifted water and drank, lifted water and drank, until I felt it run down my throat and breast, and the thorns wove into cloth and hair and skin, imprisoning me, but I did not care.
Then I heard the voices on the wind, and the silvery ring of tiny bells. The winds flooded through the bare trees; I heard one snap like a bone and fall. Vines whipped wildly around me, opening to reveal the well, and the stones, and the rose as red as blood that bloomed in the dark water, more beautiful than any living rose.
"Take it," a voice breathed into the wind. I freed my hand from the thorns and reached into the water. It pricked me as I lifted it out; I smelled its perfume, all the scents of the summer that had gone.
"I want him," I said to all the dark riders crowded around me, who had ridden down the wind. "I want him in this world."
Silvery laughter mingled with the bells. "No one ever wanted him. And so he came to us."
"I want him."
"Then you must hold fast to him, as fast as those thorns hold you, no matter what shape he takes, what face he shows. You must love him."
"I do."
Again I heard the laughter, sweet and mocking in the screaming winds. "You must be human to love."
"I am," I said, and the tiny bells rang madly amid the laughter.
"Then take him."
His face appeared in the water, like the rose, as beautiful and as cruel, smiling his faint, secret smile, his eyes glittering with moonlight and as cold. I felt my heart pound sickly, for I did not want what I saw. But I reached down to him through the water, deeper and deeper, for he eluded me; deeper, until I felt the cold dark well up around me, and I saw nothing.
When I woke, he was bending over me.
The light burned my eyes, though it was only the misty grey of an autumn morning. His eyes were no longer cold; his brows were drawn hard. I raised my hand to touch his face, which looked as colorless and bleak as the sky behind it. Then I winced, and felt, all over me, the burning roses of pain.
"She's awake," he said briefly to someone. Perrin answered.
"I'll lift her."
"She can't ride."
Perrin's trousers appeared beside Corbet's face. "I'd best go back and get her father's wagon," he said.
"I'll do it," Corbet said, and stood up; I lost his face. "And some blankets to lay her on. And I'll bring Laurel."
"Yes," Perrin said, and I would have sighed if the rose vines weren't growing up my back. Nothing had changed. I felt a tear slide down my cheek. Perrin's face appeared where Corbet's had been. He took off his wool cloak and folded it, and slipped it gently under my head. "Easy, girl," he said soothingly, as if he were talking to his horse. "We'll have you home soon. Looks like you fell into the brier roses, wandering around in the dark. Your sister rode for me at dawn; she went into the village to ask around, and I came out to the hall. Corbet brought me here. He said you liked this place."
"Where's my rose?" I asked, remembering it suddenly. Even my lips felt swollen. Perrin looked blank.
"What's that?"
"Where's my red rose?"
His brows lifted worriedly. "There's nothing blooming now, Rois. You're feverish. Lie quiet now, try to rest." But I made him help me sit until I could look around me. The stark, thick vines hid the well again; perhaps, I thought, if I parted them, I would see the rose floating just beneath the water. But I could barely move, and Perrin would have thought me crazed. Perhaps he already did. Perhaps, I thought dispassionately, I am.
I pick roses out of water. I talk to voices in the wind. I see ghosts walk out of light.
Corbet finally returned, driving the wagon as close as he could among the trees; Laurel leaped down before it stopped.
She said nothing when she saw me; I saw her face drain white as cream. She bent down, touched my cheek gently. Perrin lifted me; she walked beside him to the wagon, holding the edge of my cloak between her fingers, not knowing where to hold me. Corbet helped him lay me on the blankets in the wagon. By then I was crying silently, partly in pain, partly out of frustration, because I could not tell them why I had gone into the wood in the dark, why I had impaled myself on rose vines. Laurel spoke at me as if I were a demented child; Perrin whistled, determined to be cheerful, and Corbet, wearing his calm human face, was not about to offer inhuman explanations to anyone. I hated him then. His eyes, touching mine, gave me nothing.
My father, horrified and speechless, helped them carry me up to bed. They left me there with Laurel and Beda, who drew off my torn, bloody clothing, washed me with comfrey water, and smoothed one of my own oils over my skin until it felt a little less like shredded paper and I smelled like a garden run wild. I was still crying; I refused to answer any of Laurel's questions. She gave up talking, and left me with a cup of camomile tea, which was, I found when I lifted it shakily to my lips, mostly apple brandy.
I slept without dreaming, except once, when a red rose opened in the dark and I smelled its scent.
When I woke, Laurel was lighting a lamp in a corner of the room so that I would not wake in the dark. I said her name. She turned swiftly, bringing the lamp, and examined my torn wrists, my face. Then she sat on the bed and stared at me.
"Rois Melior, what on earth were you doing?"
I spoke cautiously; a thorn had caught my upper lip. "Nothing. It got dark sooner than I expected. That's - "
"Anis Turl said you came and asked her questions about Nial Lynn's death, about his son, about the curse on Lynn Hall. And then you forgot to come home before dark, you stayed out all night, and Corbet and Perrin found you in the wood near Lynn Hall, half-hidden in brambles, so tightly covered they didn't know at first if you were alive or dead. Perrin said it looked as if you were trying to drown yourself in thorns."
"I wasn't," I said shortly. "It
was very windy -I got tangled, and the harder I pulled, the more tangled I got - "
"You stayed in the wood to spy on Corbet. What you're tangled in is that old moldering tale, which is nothing but memory now, in the few minds left to remember, and they don't know the difference anymore between what was true and what was conjecture, and what was just stories tossed around the hearth or the tavern after too much ale. That tale about the boy murdering his father and running away without leaving a track in the snow - there's nothing magical about it! Either he did or he didn't, and if he did, by Anis' account there was enough snow falling to bury the tracks of a harrow pulled by a dozen oxen. And I don't know what confused ideas you have about Corbet - " Color flushed through her face at his name; she continued determinedly, "But you must stop playing among his ghosts - it's stupid and dangerous and completely pointless. He's trying to lay them to rest here, not stir them up, and you seem eager to drag out all the sad old bones of his history and make them dance again. It's not nice and it's not fair."
I didn't bother pointing out that she, along with most of the village, had been just as curious. Perhaps the tale I was unearthing had shed its colorful drama to reveal a misery and dreary cruelty we all lived too close to. I stirred restively, then changed my mind about moving. My head ached; I wanted Laurel's soothing hands, not her anger.
"What does Corbet say?" I asked. "Does he complain about me?"
"Of course not. He doesn't complain about anything. But - "
"What did he say about finding me in the rose vines?"
"Nothing." But there was something; I saw it in her eyes.
"What did he say?"
"I don't know. He was with Perrin. He-" She brushed the air with her hand, making nothing out of something. But she liked to say Corbet's name, and so she answered. "Perrin said the vines were so thick they had trouble freeing you. He wanted to ride back and get pruning shears, but Corbet did not want him to cut the vines. It's a small thing, but Perrin thought it odd. He went back for work gloves, and brought the shears anyway, but by the time he reached the wood, Corbet had gotten you loose. He was bleeding, but he didn't seem to notice. I put your oil on his hands when he came to get me."
I turned my face away from the light, feeling tears burn down my face again. Had he, I wondered, opened the vines to see the rose floating in the water? Had he been there among those dark riders to hear my plea?
Had he laughed with them?
"Rois." Laurel touched my face with lavender - scented linen. The whole house smelled of me, I thought; I had brought the wood in here. "Don't cry. Just promise me - just try - try not to be so wild." I heard her take a breath. "If you think you are in love with Corbet, and you want him to take an interest in you, then you must see that with all the work he plans to do, he will need someone with a little common sense. Not a wild woman who roams the wood and flings herself impulsively into rose vines."
I looked at her. "But that's what I am," I said. "He knows it. He always knew. I can't hide anything from him."
She was silent, her eyes lowered, the little frown puckering her brows. She couldn't hide anything from him either. She reached for the jar of oil beside the bed.
"Turn over," she said. "And I'll do your back. Rois, you even have scratches in your hair . . ."
"I know."
"What did you expect to find, watching Corbet's life at night? That he eats and sleeps like the rest of us? That he might have a lover?"
"He might have twelve," I said, with my mouth full of sheet I bit when the oil touched my mangled skin. I felt her hands pause, questioning: Does he? Who? "But not from our village," I added, "or we would all know the morning after."
She made a light sound, almost a laugh; her hands moved again. "I am willing to admit that we've all been curious about him. But you seem possessed. Talking to Anis and to Halov - "
"And to Leta Gett."
"All to find out which curse he is under - nobody was there to hear one, it's just one of those tavern stories." "Maybe." She drew the sheets down from my legs; the chilly air prickled over me. She wanted me to tell her; she wanted to hear anything at all about Corbet. "It's a sad story," I said temperately, avoiding what she would not listen to. "Nial Lynn was very cruel. He hurt his son in so many ways, until Tearle grew wild - "
"That was Corbet's father?"
"Is." Her hands paused again. "If what Corbet told us is true, and his father is still alive."
"Why wouldn't it be true?" she asked, but without conviction. I didn't bother to answer. She was silent a moment, weighing, I thought, her good sense against her curiosity. "Is that why Tearle Lynn killed Nial?"
"That's what they say."
"And then he walked on snow without leaving a track to follow."
"It must be as you said-" I bit the sheet again, as her fingers worked behind my knees. "The snow covered his footsteps."
"And no one ever heard of him again. He doesn't answer questions, does he?"
"Corbet?" "Yes. " "You ask them," I said. "He may answer you."
She was silent again. I heard Perrin playing the flute below, softly, a lilting ballad of betrayed love. Music has its messages, but even I could not guess what misgivings lay behind Perrin's clear eyes. Perhaps none; perhaps he trusted Laurel without question. Perhaps he was right. All I knew is what Laurel's hands said when she spoke Corbet's name. And how often she said it, until it seemed, like the falling autumn leaves, or the long ribbons of migrating birds, one of the season's changes.
I stirred again, the headache raging behind my eyes, seeing Corbet's face in the well, his hand lifted out of the water, not to my waiting hand to pull himself out, but to catch Laurel's hand and drag her down.
"Is he down there?" I asked, sharply.
She did not even ask who I meant. She pulled the quilts up over me, and handed me the oil. "You can finish. I'll bring you some supper. He came to ask about you."
I felt her hand on my cheek. "Don't think about him. Just try to be peaceful. Don't you have a tea for that?"
"Not for Corbet Lynn," I answered, but after she had gone.
Twelve
I dreamed of a red rose blooming in the snow. Corbet picked it and gave it to me. When I woke, I heard his voice, mingled with the sounds of Perrin playing the flute, Laurel's voice. I had slept through another day. Or perhaps there were no more days; they had withered and died for the season, left us with the winter flowers of darkness and dreams. I got out of bed, wrapped a quilt around me, and followed his voice down.
Fire bloomed in the dark, like the winter rose. I saw his face beside it. He smiled at me, shadow softly stroking his face, light catching in his hair, in a fold of his sleeve, sliding between his fingers. Perrin, softly playing on the other side of the fire, seemed to belong to another world; so did Laurel beside him, and our father falling asleep over his pipe. I went to Corbet; his eyes drew me, at once clear and secret, like the water in the well. He lifted a hand as I drew close, to draw me closer or to stop me. I took his hand and leaned over him. I felt the flush of fire in his skin, heard his indrawn breath just before I kissed him.
I heard the wind whispering around me, the trembling silver bells. Then the thorn bit my lip again, and I drew back.
That will cost you, his eyes said to me across the room. I stood at the foot of the stairs, shivering despite the quilt, sweating despite the cold I felt deep in me. An unbearable silver fire glanced off the flute as Perrin lowered it. Laurel said, surprised, "Rois. Are you awake or asleep?"
"I don't know," I said. I felt at my hair: a tangled bramble. I knew then that I was awake. Laurel rose quickly, felt my face.
"You're burning up."
"I know that. I want a silver cup." "What?"
"To drink the rose floating in the well."
"You're dreaming," Laurel said. "There are no roses. Look." She drew back a curtain and I saw the first winter snow streaking the dark outside the window.
I looked at Corbet. "What will you do?
" I asked, for the season of the curse was upon him. He did not answer; how could he know?
Laurel said, "He can borrow a lantern for the ride home. It's barely sticking to the ground."
Our father rose, awkward and perplexed in the face of illness. He came and patted my shoulder gently. I smelled ale and pipe and wood smoke, the smells of endless winter. "Should we send for the apothecary?" he asked me. I shook my head wearily.
"I have a tea for fevers."
"You spent a cold night bleeding on thorns," Perrin said grimly. "You might have caught your death. How much can you cure with those teas?"
I shrugged and was sorry. Corbet dragged at my eyes again, sitting silently beside the fire; I watched his face shape out of light, out of another world. Why would he want to stay in this one, winterbound in two cold rooms, waiting to be discovered by his grandfather? "You should not have come here," I told him, and Laurel exclaimed,
"Rois, you're the one who shouldn't be here. Go back to bed. I'll bring you whatever you want. You must stop brooding over Corbet's relatives, or it will be the longest winter we have ever lived through." Turning, she appealed to him, holding his eyes. "Tell her what she wants to know, Corbet; she's possessed by your ghosts."
"She knows everything she needs to know," he said simply. "Except one thing."
"What?" we all asked at once, even my father, who, hazy as he was about the details, guessed there was some link between Corbet and his daughter flinging herself into brier roses.
"Why she needs to know."
Perrin grunted softly. Our father lifted a thumbnail to smooth his eyebrow, his face puckered. Laurel looked at me speculatively, her own eyes opaque for once, secret, and I shivered suddenly in fear, pulling at the quilt.
"I know why," I said sharply. He rose without answering; shadows slid across his face. He spoke to Laurel; his voice sounded strained, haunted by all the ghosts I had set loose.
"I'm sorry. It seems I can't help. I won't come again until you send for me."
"It's not your fault," Laurel protested as he took his cloak off the hook and swung it over his shoulders. He bade us good night; she followed him, trying to persuade him of several things at once, above all that he must feel welcome any time. Our father followed him with a lantern. I sat down on the bottom stair. Perrin lingered 6eside me, watching the snow swirling into the light about them as the door opened. I looked up at him. He met my eyes. Silently, we told each other what we saw.
McKillip, Patricia A - Winter Rose Page 8
