McKillip, Patricia A - Winter Rose

by Winter Rose(Lit)

  He reached down, gently touched my shoulder. "You'd best get up to bed. This may well be the long­est winter we've all lived through, and we'll need you strong."

  I dreamed that night of Lynn Hall, as I had never seen it, perhaps as it had never been, with its fine, high walls the color of buttermilk, heavy silk curtains at every window looped back to reveal blazing clusters of crystal and candlelight, vast marble floors on which thin, bright carpets were placed as carefully as paintings, marble urns of roses everywhere. Entranced, I moved from window to window; each window I turned from darkened abruptly, as if such treasures only became visible when I looked at them. In the dark, I knew, the carpets turned to scattered leaves, and the curtains to spider web; rose petals the color of blood spilled onto the marble floors.

  I heard his voice.

  Don't leave me here.

  Rois .

  I woke to find smooth cold sky mirroring smooth cold fields. The world had turned as colorless and shadow less as the face of the moon, and as small; our hori­zons ringed us closely, reaching down, reaching up, to touch white. I wanted to bury myself away from the sight, under goose-down or leaves, until spring. I never knew what to do when the world turned skeletal and mute, with nothing but withered stalks pushing up between its bones.

  Perversely, I felt better, weak but clear-headed, and in far less pain. I vaguely remembered the things I had said to Corbet. Even in such stark daylight they seemed urgent and true; the winter curse lay over him, and in his two sparse rooms he waited for it. Or in some cold world he waited for the wood to claim him, for his house would never be rebuilt, nor would his fields grow for him.

  I bequeath all to the wood.

  I got up restlessly, to look out the window and see which way the wind blew the smoke above Lynn Hall. The wind had blown Corbet's way: I saw a set of fresh hoof prints in the snow, coming and going, or going and coming. I heard Laurel's steps on the stairs, as if she had heard mine overhead. Her face was still bright with cold; she carried Corbet in her eyes, the smile he had given her on her lips. She smelled of winter.

  "Rois." She felt my face, then saw what I was look­ing at. She said composedly, "You look better. I rode over to invite him for supper. Father sent me. He seems to think Corbet's presence will keep you from brooding about his absence."

  I did not say what I thought; perhaps, if it remained unspoken, it would become untrue. I said tiredly, "I will try to be civilized." My feet were cold. I got back into bed, wondering how I could find a door or passage out of this bleak world. Even the well would be covered with a sheen of ice. Perhaps Corbet would give me a key. And then I remembered what he had said: She knows every­thing she needs to know.

  Except one thing. why.

  I lay back, closed my eyes. I had no idea what he meant. Why ehe needi to know ... And I did not care. Need is need; it is its own explanation. Laurel said something about soup. I made a noise; she disappeared again. I slept a little; a voice as sweet as silver bells, as secret as the wind said: You rnccet hold fczet to him, af fa,,t ae thoee thorrz.-r hold you, no matter what ehape he takee.. . .

  The door opened; I heard no step. "Laurel?" I said with my eyes closed. No one answered. The door closed softly. One of the house's memories, I thought in my sleep. The door opened again; Laurel said as she came in, "Father is riding to the village. Do you want anything? Rois . . ." Her voice trailed away. I opened my eyes.

  The room smelled of roses, profuse and sun-warmed, on a hot midsummer day. Laurel, her thoughts drifting, seemed entranced but puzzled, as if she could not have said what caught her by surprise. She moved finally, set a tray of bread and soup on the bed. I said sleepily, "It's the house. Sometimes it does that."

  "What?"

  "Remembers a different smell."

  "Rois, you're making no sense again. Here. Eat this." "Suppose I am," I argued dourly. "Suppose I am the only one in this house making any sense at all. Suppose that everything I say is true, and everything I do is vi­tal - "

  "All right," she said. "I'll suppose. Corbet is cursed and you are trying - by some peculiar means - to rescue him. Now what?" I couldn't answer; I had no answers yet. She turned away; I saw her hands rise, push them­selves briefly against her eyes. "Just be careful, Rois. Just don't get hurt."

  I bathed myself for the first time in days, in water softened with oils of camomile and rose. I dressed, then combed my hair dry before the fire, thinking all the while of Corbet, wondering which way to turn next, what to do to help him, not knowing what to do to help any of us out of the trouble we headed into. Perrin did not ap­pear for supper; another sick animal kept him home. Cor­bet came late. He brought wine with him, not from the inn, he said, but from some other place.

  "What other place?" Laurel asked, smiling. "In win­ter, there are no other places."

  He smiled back at her, but did not answer. He poured wine into three of the cups Beda brought, handed one to Laurel, one to our father. Our father tasted it. His brows went up; he became suddenly lyrical.

  "It's wonderful-it tastes like the smell of new-mown hay." He took another sip. "In early morning, wet with dew."

  "It does not taste like hay." Laurel laughed. "It tastes like the year's first sweet bite of peach, warm from the sun and so ripe it slides off the bough into your hand when you touch it."

  Corbet raised the third cup to his lips. "Golden ap­ples," he said. "And hazelnuts." He looked at me. "Rois­I forgot. I brought you what you asked for." He turned, while we watched, baffled. He reached into the pocket of his cloak and pulled out a silver cup.

  I smiled a little, and then I saw his eyes: He was not humoring a sick child. Laurel exclaimed over the cup. Roses spiralled up its stem, spilled around its sides, trailed down over its lip. Our father beamed at Corbet, pleased with himself as well, for asking him to come. I stared at the cup as Corbet poured wine, feeling my heart beat in my throat. The wine, by candlelight, was of such pale gold it looked like water.

  He handed me the cup. I smelled roses and wet stone. In the bottom of the cup, a reflection of flame from a candle in its sconce above my shoulder changed into a blood-red rose.

  "Drink," he said. I looked into his eyes; they seemed colder and more distant than the stars.

  I raised the cup to my lips and drank.

  I saw the world out of Corbet's eyes.

  Our solid walls crumbled, showed stone under bro­ken plaster, and night where stone had fallen. Winds, dark and faceless, flew restlessly in and out of the holes in the roof between the sagging rafters. Beda and my father were shadowy figures, bulky, indistinct, their voices blurred, their gestures ragged and abrupt, like the gestures of scarecrows. The fire fluttered frantically in the darkness, giving little warmth and less light, even when the shadow with the burning pipe rose with a laugh that seemed to ripple across the air, echoing itself, and heaved a log into the flames. Only Laurel seemed unchanged, a glowing figure. Light caught at her and clung, framed her tranquil movements. Her voice came clearly through the errant winds, the constant flow of dry, invisible leaves rushing across flagstones, down all our crooked, mean­dering passageways.

  I didn't see myself out of his eyes. But I saw his face, pale as moonlight, as if the sun had never touched it. Ex­pressions shaped it with every touch of wind. Generations looked out of his eyes. Now he wore his grandfather's dan­gerous smile, now his father's helpless fury; now his own terror touched his eyes, or his desperate need for the one clear, bright figure in his world. And then he would look at me and his face would change again, beautiful and merci­less, luring me and warning me away.

  Wind pulled at my skirts as we sat at the table. Like him, I followed Laurel's calm lead and pulled out my chair, though one slat in the seat fell and scraped the flagstones as I sat. A faceless Beda, her cap like a frilly mushroom on her head, brought in something on a silver tray. Leaves, it seemed, or withered petals, flowed out of her ladle into our bowls. I watched Laurel numbly. She picked up her spoon and ate; so did our father, pul
ling dry, splintering wood apart to dip into his bowl.

  "What is this?" I breathed to Corbet. "What is this place? Is this where you live?"

  His eyes answered me. A sudden wind sang with an edged, dangerous voice; his face changed, grew taut, haunted.

  "You're not eating," Laurel said in another world. "Rois. Corbet."

  "Eat," our father urged. "It's Beda's finest: onion and potato soup. Rois, you have hardly touched a morsel in days."

  I picked up my spoon; it was tarnished, and so worn the silver parted into strands like a web. "Is this the place where you will answer questions?"

  He did not answer. His face changed again, as a fig­ure came to stand behind his chair.

  I knew that face, though I had never seen it so clearly before: that moonlight skin, those eyes the elusive burning blue of stars. Her midnight hair mingled with the winds, flowed everywhere, glittering as with stars.

  She laid an impossibly pale and delicate hand on his shoulder, and looked across the table at Laurel. Laurel changed under her gaze. Her movements, as she ate her soup, grew slower, stolid. Time mapped its course be­neath her eyes, along her mouth, spun a silver web over her chestnut hair. Corbet watched, motionless under the slender hand; I saw the longing for time kindle in his eyes.

  Laurel, caught in his gaze, stared back at him out of aging eyes; he made a sound, twisting against the hand on his shoulder, but it did not yield to him.

  "This," the woman said, her voice like high, sweet bells. She looked at me then. "And this."

  Winds dragged at my hair, petals caught in it. Seams tore along my sleeves; my hands grew creased, dirty, my nails broken and black with earth. A strand of ashen hair blew into my bowl.

  "Rois, your hair is in your soup," Laurel said pa­tiently, as to a sick child or a wandering old woman. Her own hair was bone-white now, the skin puffed and sag­ging on her face. Only her eyes were familiar, still the same wide-set, smoky grey, though the faraway world they saw seemed imminent now, defined.

  Still Corbet watched her, hungering for time. She smiled at him. Such a smile on any face is beautiful. His face changed again; a smile came out of him like light. I stared at my wrinkled hands; they closed like bird-claws around nothing.

  I felt his eyes then, as if my clawed hands held his heart. "Rois," he said, and nothing more. I did not look at him; I did not know how to change the shape of his heart.

  "Rois," Laurel said from the other side of that shadowland. "Are you all right?"

  "She's eaten nothing," our father grumbled, and raised his voice. "Beda! Bring her some roast fowl." He poured more wine into my cup. The wine was blood-red now, and the cup fashioned of bone that had lain season after season in the wood, scoured clean by water and light. I drank it and heard Corbet say again,

  "Rois."

  I looked at him, finally. The woman had disappeared. Or perhaps she had changed into the rustling ivy sliding over his chair, until he was enthroned in green and bound to it, leaves circling his wrists and hair and throat. I stared, my heart aching at all that green shining in such a dreary season.

  A shadowy Beda put something down in front of me; I started. Birds flew from my plate, leaving bone behind. Corbet made a soft sound. His eyes closed; he leaned back into the wood's embrace, all but vanishing into leaves.

  "Rois," he whispered. And then, so faint I might only have heard him with my heart, "Please."

  I felt the red rose bloom in my heart then; thorns

  scored it, thorns pricked behind my eyes. I could no longer see him, only a blurred, fiery green. "All right," I said, to whatever he was asking, though I did not know why he wanted time and Laurel when he could have the timeless wood in all its mystery. "But I don't understand.'

  "I will show you," his heart's voice said, a promise or a warning. "If you will come with me."

  "Rois," Laurel pleaded, "where are you? Are you wandering through the summer wood in winter? Corbet, call her back. She'll hear you. She must eat."

  He said my name. I saw the candlelight glide along the silver in Laurel's hands; her hands were young again; so was her voice. I raised my head, saw our father', plump, anxious face, and Beda watching me, her fingers twisting the cloth of her apron. I looked at Corbet, for the green that had embraced him and bound him; green was a memory, a longing, nothing real in this dead world.

  I picked up my fork, blinked at what lay on my plate. A chicken wing, my eyes told me finally, sprinkled with tarragon, a roast onion, braised carrots. I speared a piece of carrot grimly, as if I could pin the world into place on the end of my fork. "I'm all right," I said. "The wine made me dream."

  "It'll take you like that," our father said, relieved, "on an empty stomach."

  "Yes." It took as much effort to lift that carrot to my mouth as it would have to chop down a tree. It took more not to sit mutely staring at Corbet, waiting to be shown the tangled paths that lay behind his eyes.

  I ate what I could, silently, keeping my eyes on my plate, while Corbet spoke to Laurel and our father, invit­ing, in his light way, tales of the past, of Laurel's childhood on the farm, memories of our mother, who was only a vague word or two, a touch, an indistinct face, in my own past.

  "Laurel raised Rois," my father said, "though she was so young. She took to her responsibilities early. Beda did all she could, of course." He frowned at his plate; I wondered how much of her face he remembered by then, how much of his youth he had buried. "I was no help," he added, and sighed. "No help at all. I would look at Rois and see her mother's face, and that would be the last I could do. I let her run wild; I never checked her. She's been in and out of the wood in all seasons since she could walk. "

  As if he could have stopped me. I asked, to remind him I was still there, "Did she love the wood, too? Our mother?"

  There was a little, odd silence, as if an answer hung between us in the candlelight, but no one would say it. Then Laurel and our father spoke at once.

  "She took us walking in it-" "No. She never went into it."

  They stopped. I raised my eyes, found them looking perplexedly at one another. "But I remembered," Laurel said. "She would carry Rois - "

  "While I was in the fields," our father interrupted a little abruptly. "It must have been. She seldom mentioned it." He studied his plate, jabbed without interest at a slice of onion. "Anyway, she never foraged, like Rois does. She never ran barefoot."

  Laurel opened her mouth, closed it. Her eyes sought Corbet's. Something passed between them, and the little, puckered frown appeared between her brows. She glanced at me, then at her plate; she changed the angle of her knife a degree or two, and finally spoke. "No," she said. "She wore shoes and only picked the wildflowers."

  I wished I could remember. Corbet sat silently, his eyes on Laurel, then on our father, as if he could see what they did not say. I gave up trying to guess why our father took comfort in her shod feet.

  "How did she die?" Corbet asked, with an unusual lack of grace, I thought. But our father seemed to want to talk about it. Perhaps he felt that Corbet should know these things about our family, our blameless, unmysterious past, but there his reasoning fell apart. He refused to consider that Corbet might be in love with Laurel, but that left me, his fey daughter who drank roses, an even more unlikely choice for the heir of Lynn Hall. He dreamed a double wedding in spring; he would be lucky, I thought starkly, to have one, and in this world.

  "She died," he said heavily, "of some strange wasting illness. She could not eat. She fell sick during the autumn rains and died on the longest night of the year." He looked at me reproachfully; I stirred myself and ate an­other piece of carrot. "She had me shift her bed to the window so that she could look out. But there was nothing to see, just bleak winter fields and starless nights. I thought she watched for spring. But she died long before the crocus bloomed." He stared at his cup a moment. "Maybe it was not spring she watched for. Maybe she saw, finally, what she wanted; maybe she didn't. I'll never know."

  "I'm sorry," Cor
bet breathed.

  "At least I had my daughters to comfort me." He drank wine; the shadow eased out of his face. "My sweet Laurel and my wild rose." He smiled a little. "Rois kept bringing me things to cheer me up-some of them walked, I recall. A caterpillar, once, and a beetle with bright wings. A hummingbird's egg." He took a bite of chicken. "That was long ago."

  "Your mother died young, too," I said abruptly to Corbet. "Do you remember her?"

  He nodded. "Oh, yes. Very clearly." He touched his cup as if to lift it, but paused. His eyes, meeting mine, held a warning; I could almost hear the rustle of the ivy that held him in thrall. "She was tall, with very white skin. Her voice was gentle; she sang old ballads to me." "How did - "

  "I was never sure," he said, and drank before he continued, frowning a little, his eyes on the candle be­tween him and Laurel. "For a long time, my father only said that she had gone away. He grieved terribly; he spoke very little, and I could not bear the look in his eyes when I asked about her. So I stopped asking. Years later, I asked; he only said that she had died, as his own mother had, of being too delicate to live in the world."

  I swallowed dryly, pulling the husk loose from his answer to find the truth: She had been too human to live in the wood. Or too fey to live in the world.

  Or was it all chaff? Had his true mother stood be­hind him with her skin as pale as moonlight, her hand on his shoulder, fingers flowing into the ivy that bound him to her world?

  I watched him then, searching for her in his face, forgetting to eat while he watched Laurel, sometimes for­getting to eat, himself, at the way she spoke a word, or the way her face, under the shifting candlelight, changed every time she met his eyes. Our father, oblivious, and cheerful now, spoke of Perrin and his good nature, his hardworking ways, and of the grandchildren who were to overrun his old age.