McKillip, Patricia A - Winter Rose

by Winter Rose(Lit)

  "Eat," he urged me now and then. "Eat." But I could barely do more than watch the rich tapestry they wove of their glances and slow smiles, the words they spoke that said one thing to our father, and another to me, while the ivy, growing secretly all around us, whispered its warnings.

  I bequeath all to the wood.

  I drank more wine from my silver cup. It was pale sunlight now, and tasted of roses and blood. Snow whirled outside the window when we finished eating; Corbet, glancing out, said to Laurel,

  "I should leave now. While I can."

  "Yes," she said softly, and went to stand beside him, so closely they might as well have touched. "Later, it may not be possible."

  "Perhaps it is no longer possible."

  "Or course it is," our father said, lighting the iron lantern. "Only an inch or two on the ground yet. Follow the field wall when you leave the road-that will take you to the edge of the wood."

  Corbet drew his eyes away from Laurel to look at me. "We Lynns walk on snow," he said, smiling; his eyes held no smile. I smiled back, learning from him and Lau­rel how to say secrets in idle commonplaces.

  "What winter path will you take from place to place through the wood?"

  "I'll dream one up," he said, and swung his dark cloak over his shoulders. He turned again to Laurel, his face set, withholding expression. "Thank you for asking me." He touched me lightly before he left. His fingers burned like the touch of the briers; I looked for the rose they must have left, but saw nothing. "Finish the wine," he suggested. "There are dreams and more in that."

  And so I did. And so I dreamed his dream.

  Fourteen

  I stood in Lynn Hall.

  Corbet was there and not there. A man with his face, a boy with his expressions, watched something bubble in a pot hanging over the fire in the marble hearth. The boy was small yet, slender, with dark hair and wide grey eyes; he stared at the pot, trembling a lit­tle in hunger, in anticipation. His coat of fine blue cloth was patched at the cuffs. He wore a thin quilt over his shoulders; it trailed on the marble floor behind him like a king's mantle.

  The man turned away from the fire and began to pace. But not before I saw the fine honed bones of his face, the heavy-lidded eyes, the hair spun out of light. He drank from a silver cup; roses spiraled up its sides. He moved out of the circle of firelight into shadows disturbed only by a thin taper here and there. The winds shook the door until it rattled on its latch, wanting in; they reached down the chimney, but they could not get past the flames. "Go and get more wood," Nial Lynn said. Tearle shrugged the quilt to the floor and turned without a word. Nial Lynn paced back into light, and I saw that his eyes were not green, but grey, like his son's, and his mouth was thin and bloodless, as if he never smiled, as if he drank the thorns out of his cup instead of roses.

  The boy opened the door, struggling to keep it from crashing open against the stones. He went out in his frayed coat, without gloves, without a light. Nial Lynn paced. A taper guttered and went out. I could see no expression on his face; he seemed oblivious of himself, the pot over the fire, the storm, as if, in his own thoughts, he paced a different season, a different room.

  The shadows fanned across the walls, deepening; I felt a chill where I stood, a shadow in a corner, or maybe only a taper's eye. The fire was consuming itself, and still Nial Lynn paced without a thought for the boy he had sent into the storm. It was not until fire crawled into the last glowing log and fumed that Nial seemed to see the dark around him.

  He made an impatient noise, and kicked a flame out of the log with his boot. Then he went to the door and flung it open, calling. While he called, the boy, crouched against the door, slid into the room at his feet. Logs clat­tered out of his arms. He crawled, groping for them, shuddering. Nial Lynn reached for a log, tossed it into the fire, then, in the sudden brightness, resumed pacing, while the boy stumbled to his feet and brought the wood, piece by piece, to the fire.

  Nial Lynn spoke finally. "Where were you?"

  "I couldn't unlatch the door." He spoke without feel­ing, numb. "My fingers wouldn't move."

  "We'll need more."

  "I know." Tearle stood at the fire, his fingers under his arms, shivering. "I thought I saw things in the wind," he said after a moment. "Faces made out of wind and snow. Beautiful faces. Like my mother's."

  "Perhaps you did," Nial Lynn murmured. "Perhaps you did." His eyes were very wide, his head uplifted, as if he searched the shadows for that face. He turned abruptly. Something happened; I couldn't see clearly. Nial Lynn stood near the door, his raised hand falling, and halfway across the room, at the hearth, Tearle lost his balance, fell against the pot above the fire.

  It splashed him. I saw his mouth open, but he made no sound. He caught himself on the hearthstones before he fell into the fire. He leaned against them, trembling, holding one arm tightly, his eyes closed.

  "She's gone," Nial Lynn said patiently. "Don't speak of her."

  He did not speak again; the boy did not move for a long time, though I heard his harsh breathing. He moved finally, lifted a porcelain cup beside the hearth, to dip it into the pot. In the shadows, Nial Lynn turned again.

  "No," he said, and the boy froze. "Bring more wood before you eat."

  Tearle put the cup down without a sound, rose and went back into the storm.

  When he had fought the door closed again, the rooms grew black. I still heard the winds, whining and snarling. I shivered, chilled to the heart by the cold stones around me, the iron cold in Nial Lynn's voice. I saw Corbet, pacing the room as his grandfather had paced half a century before.

  I knew him, though his back was turned, though the only light came from the blood-red rose burning on the hearth. I said his name, and in my dream he came to me. He did not touch me; we seemed to stand together in different times, his past, my dream. He knew me, though; he said, "Rois."

  "What has this-" I could barely speak, shaking with the cold. "What has this to do with you? Why did you come back here?"

  "To find my way out," he said simply. "You know that. Look."

  He went to the door, opened it. I saw the boy crouched on the threshold again, weighed down by the wood in his arms, shivering too badly to stand. That is not what Corbet showed me. "Look," he said again, and I saw the riders in the storm.

  They rode horses as white as hoarfrost. Snow and star and dark whirled around one another to etch a fine boned face, eyes of night and crystal fire. Their mantles were of dark wind and snow; their wild hair caught snow and falling stars. The boy watched them, too, longing for their beauty, their mastery over cold and storm. Come the winds called. Come to us This is not your true home. You belong elsewhere. You belong with us.

  "How?" I whispered; if I had not been dreaming, he never could have heard me. "How did your father find his way to them?"

  He looked at me out of Nial Lynn's face, his cold secret eyes. "How did my grandfather?"

  Snow misted off the roof between us; he blurred. I reached out to him, trying to catch a shadow. My hand closed on a knife-edge of wind. "How?" I asked again. I saw only the boy on the threshold, huddled against the door, clinging to wood, watching the faces of the storm. I woke. It was still night; the winds in my dream sang their sweet, dangerous song around our house. Come to us. Come. Again I saw the frailness of our walls, how they could be broken by a thought, stone and board could sag like old web under a vision. I closed my eyes against the vision, and found my way back into the drift of leaves beside the well.

  Laurel seemed to have heard those winds, too. Some dream had disturbed her calm; her face, paler than usual, wore an unfamiliar frown. When Perrin came in for breakfast, she looked at him for a moment as if she did not recognize him.

  He had not slept well, either. "I kept hearing animals calling me from the barn - I'd wake and hear nothing but the wind." He brushed her cheek tentatively. "Are you all right? "

  "Yes." She averted her face abruptly, left him blink­ing at her. She turned back quickly, feeling his
dismay. "Those winds woke me as well. Only they had human voices. "

  "What did they say?" he asked, with an effort at humor. She only gazed through him.

  "Nothing human," she said at last, and turned away again. "They left me out of sorts. I'm sorry. I didn't expect you this morning."

  "I missed you," he said simply. He waited, holding the back of a chair as if for courage, while she stepped into the kitchen to tell Beda he had come. When she re­turned, he asked as simply, holding her eyes, "Was Corbet here last night?"

  "Yes," she said, and the blood ran into her face, turn­ing its winter pallor beautiful. His head bowed. He said nothing, just pulled out the chair in his hands to sit. I stepped into the room; his head lifted again.

  "Rois," he said tonelessly, then made an effort. "You're looking better. Tired, but better." He stood up again suddenly. "Maybe I should help your father finish the milking - "

  "Sit," Laurel said. She laid a hand on the crook of his arm. "Sit," she said gently. She did not meet his eyes, but her voice reached him. "These winter winds have us all confused. I barely know what I'm thinking or doing anymore.

  "What shall I do?" he asked her softly. He slid his fingers beneath her wrist a moment. "What would you like me to do?"

  "Just be patient with me. For now. " Her voice made no promises.

  "All right," he said steadily, and sat again, not so steadily. Beda came in with a great tray of eggs and sausage, bread, milk, butter, cheese and oatmeal porridge. She looked at our closed faces and heaved a sigh. "These winds." She unloaded the tray, rattling crockery. "And this is only the beginning."

  Corbet did not come for supper that night, only Perrin. That fretted both Laurel and me, though Laurel did her best to hide it. She sat beside the fire as usual, making lace, or at least making some attempt to move the hook occasionally. Perrin did not play. He tried to speak to Laurel; she answered absently, listening for another voice. At least I had him in my dreams, I thought; perhaps she did, too. But I hungered for his presence, his quick, rid­dling eyes that saw me more clearly than anyone had ever done, his lean, supple body, the questions he raised and left unanswered in the air, the glimpses he gave us of the world beyond our small lives, of a world even beyond that. Our father, fortunately, was in a talkative mood; he asked endless, detailed questions about Perrin's sick cows, until I could almost hear their plaintive bellowing and smell the barn. It made me want to walk into the snow, and keep walking, and keep walking, until I saw the faces in the wind and could follow them. Even Laurel looked haunted by her future; she threw Perrin a wide-eyed glance that he caught, mute and strained, while our father compared cow ailments.

  Perrin left early; Laurel walked him to the door. It had stopped snowing; the moonlight tossed uneasy shad­ows on the silvery ground. Perrin brushed Laurel's lips with his; his eyes asked a wordless question. She seemed to have no answer; he turned away quickly. She watched him ride out of the yard. I lifted my face to the milky sky, but nothing rode that moonlit path to earth.

  I asked Laurel later, when we turned down the lamps and banked the fire, "What will you do?"

  The fierceness in her voice startled me. "I don't know," she said. "I do not know." She put a lamp down and opened a curtain, gazing at the moon above Corbet's wood. Her eyes glittered with tears of frustration, bewil­derment; she gripped my wrist hard, as if she were falling, and looked at me finally. I did not recognize the expres­sion on her face. "It's so hard to think in winter. The world seems confined in the space of your heart; you can't see beyond yourself. How can I change in a season what I have wanted for years? How can I bear to hurt Perrin?"

  I was silent, chilled, remembering the rustling of the ivy in that room, those cold winter eyes. "You must wait," I forced myself to say, "until spring." Until the curse is past

  I wanted to say. Until we find the path out of the wood. She listened to me, her eyes wide, intent, as if she thought I had pulled up wisdom along with the mandrake root. "You'll think more clearly then. And you'll know Corbet better."

  She gazed at me, her fingers still tight on my wrist. "Rois," she whispered, and kissed me swiftly. I felt my throat burn. I shrugged impatiently, looking at candle­light, the moon, the white fields, anything but her face.

  "It's you he wants. Not me. I know that. I have al­ways known. But you must wait."

  "How can I?" she demanded. "How can I sit night after night making lace for a wedding with a man I don't know if I can - "

  "Hush," I breathed, hearing our father's step above our heads.

  "And how can I tell him? Our father?"

  "Don't. Don't tell him anything, not yet. You hardly know Corbet. He's a stranger; he'll catch at all our eyes until we're used to him, and by then maybe you'll - "

  "No"

  "You don't know him," I insisted. "He could hurt you."

  She was silent again, her eyes wide, dark. "I know," she whispered, surprising me again. "He is such a mys­tery. He could pick my heart like a rose and watch it wither in his hand. Sometimes I think he is like that. At other times I think he is as simple and golden and gen­erous as our father's fields. And then I see things in his eyes - things that I have never looked at, and I know that I have walked a short and easy road out of my past, while he has walked a thousand roads to meet me. I know Perrin's past; the same road runs into his future. I don't know Corbet. But I feel his hand upon my heart, and I wake wanting to say his name. I don't know, Rois, how much longer I can wait."

  The hard winds sang their way into my dreams again that night. Long, white, insistent fingers of snow brushed against the window glass until I saw the storm out of memory, snow falling endlessly, hiding the moon, the earth, and any footprints in the frozen ground. Come to us, the winds called. Come. And I rose and saw the light from Lynn Hall flickering like a star among the wind harrowed trees.

  So I went there, walking through that wild storm, scarcely feeling it, finding my way by the light I watched, the lodestar in the screaming night. Winds shook me apart piecemeal, flung a bone here, a bone there. My eyes became snow, my hair turned to ice; I heard it chime against my shoulders like wind-blown glass. If I spoke, words would fall from me like snow, pour out of me like black wind.

  As I drew close to the light in the wood, I began to hear the words they spoke. Fear sharper than the cold shook through me, but I had to see, I had to know the path that Corbet Lynn had taken out of the world.

  Winds shaped their voices - one desperate, wild, passionate, the other silken and biting, a blade of ice. Winds swirled into words; I did not want to hear them, but there was no place to hide, no haven but one from the storm they made between them.

  You will never leave me, said the silken wind. I am leaving you. Now. Watch me.

  You will die out there.

  You are colder than any winter night. You are more cruel than any wind.

  I will not let you leave. The door will not open for you. The window will not break. There I'd no way out of here.

  My mother found a way.

  Wind roared through the dark; I caught a straining tree and clung to it. Birch, its smooth, papery bark told my cheek. I closed my eyes, felt the sting of snow against them, and heard a sound like ice shattering.

  Then the winds died. Trees stood in a silence like the silence on the face of the moon. I turned, bewildered at first, then desperate; as I stumbled through the snow, the light seemed to move to meet me. And then the wind struck again, with terrible, icy force; I felt its bitterness in the hollows of my bones.

  You will never find your way out of my heart.

  The door opened; firelight fluttered across the threshold into the snow - streaked winds. I watched, trem­bling like the frail wings of light. A figure leaned against the doorway. I heard his uneven breathing, saw him racked with winds. He did not notice me as I crept out of the night into his shadow. His eyes clung to all the pale, beautiful riders in the wind. Corm, they said.

  A horse as white as buttermilk came out of the dark,
stood before him, looking at him out of still, onyx eyes. He mounted it. Then he bent down low, his hand out­stretched to me.

  "Rois," he said. I saw the color of his hair.

  I drew myself up behind him, held him as tightly as any brier rose.

  We rode into the winter wood.

  Fifteen

  I thought I knew what cold was, before cold stripped me bare of thought, then blinded me and froze my heart. I could not feel such cold and live; cold forced me into something other, something not quite human, who held a dream with bones of ice, and did not remember names, only what we once had been: a flower on a vine, a fall of light.

  When I began to see again, as wind sees, or the moon, I had drawn cold as close to me as death. I did not feel it now, any more than ice feels the falling snow. Again I saw the elusive faces of wind and shadow, the wild riders of the night. An enchanted wood flowed past us. Trees, embraced by ice, spangled the night with whorls of crystal branches. The odd leaf that still hung on them flashed silver or gold like some strange jewel that only grew on trees, and only in the coldest night. Streams forged paths of wind - scoured silver through the snow, that grew harder, brighter, as we passed. Snow hares froze in our wake; the fox and weasel in their winter coats grew even whiter. We left no path for human eyes to follow beyond swirling, misty ribbons of snow. No one human watched us ride. Only the white owls saw us; only they followed.

  Then we rode out of the heart of winter into light. Light fashioned me into something more nearly hu­man, and gave me back my memory. I had hair again, and skin; I had a name. But it could not reach my heart, still frozen by that cold, cold journey. I saw meadows and trees burning a young, fiery green, as if leaves had just opened, as if green itself had never existed before. I breathed heavy, golden air that might have pooled all summer over roses blooming in every color on a hundred trees. But I saw winter just beneath that scent, that green; I felt it just beneath my skin, and I didn't know anymore what I was, or if I was alive.