McKillip, Patricia A - Winter Rose

by Winter Rose(Lit)

  "I brought some things Corbet wanted from the inn. I didn't see any smoke from the chimney, but I thought I'd leave them anyway ... Looks like he hit his head, fall­ing." He paused briefly. "Or he was hit and fell. Rois -"

  He paused again, swallowing, not looking at me, his eyes on the dead man's face. "You didn't - he didn't-" His eyes came back to me, pleading. "Did you?"

  It might have made things easy again: I had found the young stranger there instead of Corbet, he had at­tacked me when I refused him, we had brawled among the crystal, I had pushed him and he fell. But, looking at the still face, all I saw was Corbet's father, who had fought for his son and lost. I could never tell such lies about him.

  I shook my head, swallowing sudden tears. "I never saw him before in this world." I struggled to my feet. Then I had to fold myself again, bone by bone, to close his eyes, so he would no longer have to see the cruel place he had fled.

  By the time we crossed my father's fields in Salish's sleigh, I could barely see past the pounding in my head. The fields seemed yet another boundary between worlds;

  I remembered Laurel then, and our father, and I won­dered what they must be thinking. Maybe they hadn't noticed me missing. The sun had barely risen; my father would still be in the barn. Laurel might have called me and thought me elsewhere, but only in the bath, or in the barn, or even out wandering in the quiet morning. But I saw the tracks of our sleigh in the fresh snow as Salish turned into the yard, and Laurel had flung open the door and come out before he pulled to a stop.

  "Rois!" She was shivering, her cheeks flushed with anger and relief and cold. "Where have you been all night?" Her eyes went to Salish then, and widened. Salish ducked nervously into his hood.

  "I'll leave you here," he told me gruffly, "and find someone in the village to go and deal with the other." "The apothecary," I suggested, and he nodded. I un­tangled myself stiffly from his furs and rugs, and climbed out into Laurel's confusion, which I could feel, like heat from glowing embers, from the bottom of the steps. "Our father took the sleigh to get Perrin," she said, "to help him look for you." Her eyes were red with sleep­lessness, the skin drawn taut across her face. She added, controlling exasperation, "We thought of course of Lynn Hall. But there was no smoke this morning, so we thought Corbet must have gone to the inn to wait out the storm. We thought that's where you might be." Her voice trailed; her eyes strayed again to Salish, who could not seem to find his reins among his furs. Unwilling to upset Laurel farther with a dead body, he was waiting for me to men­tion it. But I didn't know how to tell her, either, or even what.

  I said tiredly, "Thank you, Salish."

  He lifted the reins reluctantly. "If I see your father, I'll tell him you're home."

  I followed Laurel into the house. I was shivering badly, even in the warmth; things kept blurring in the fire behind my eyes. I fumbled with my cloak ties, managed

  to pull them into a knot. I felt Laurel's fingers move be­tween mine, work at it. "Were you with Salish?" she asked, without much hope; nothing could be that simple. "I was at Lynn Hall."

  Her fingers stilled. "Oh, Rois," she breathed. I put my hands over my eyes, struggling between words, be­tween tales.

  "I had a dream of Corbet - I couldn't sleep after it. I had to see-"

  Her voice came back abruptly, rising, and I winced. "How did you get there?"

  "I walked."

  "Through that storm? How?"

  "I don't know how - maybe I was still dream­ing-"

  "No wonder you look half dead. So of course he wouldn't have sent you home until morning - but why didn't he bring you himself?"

  I dropped my hands, remembering where I had left Corbet. "He wasn't there."

  "He wasn't-" Laurel stared at me. "You stayed all night in that empty place?"

  I nodded, not trusting my voice, looking everywhere but at her so that she would not see in my eyes what I had seen. She loosed the ties finally, pulled my cloak off.

  "He must be at the inn," she said slowly, troubled without knowing why, by all the things I had not told her. "Rois, are you all right?"

  "My head aches."

  "Go to bed. I'll bring you some tea."

  I smelled roses as I walked into my room. I stopped, beginning to shiver again, from more than cold, as I stared at them. They lay scattered all over the floor, the blood - red roses I had seen on the mantel in Lynn Hall. They had dried, passing between worlds, neither alive nor dead: another message. I know where you are, they said. I know what you love. I know you.

  I undressed and crawled under the quilts, pulled them over my head, trying to quiet pain and think. I slipped so easily into her world then, with Corbet beside me and Tearle still alive, that I wanted to weep when Laurel's step woke me. I could not find my way back in dreams, I knew then. They were memory and desire, ter­ror and hope; they told me only what I already knew.

  Laurel set the tea down and felt my face. "You're burning."

  "I got too cold in that house . . ."

  "I can't believe you even found it in that storm, with­out freezing to death first. You must have dreamed your way there."

  "Maybe."

  She picked up my clothes and folded them slowly, her mind elsewhere, not on me or my untidy room, but on Corbet, I guessed, by the faint worry in her eyes. He had not been where I had dreamed him ... She didn't question the dried roses all over the floor; she simply gathered them up, too, as if they were laundry. She asked finally, "Rois, what did you dream that made you run through a storm to Lynn Hall?"

  I struggled up, reached for the tea, held the warm cup a moment against my head. "It was more a feeling," I said finally, "that something was wrong."

  She gazed at me over the roses. "With Corbet? Was he hurt? Lost in the snow?"

  I took a sip of tea, swallowed a scalding yes. "He was - I was dreaming of Nial Lynn's curse. I thought Corbet was in trouble. That's why I went there."

  "That curse." She looked vaguely at the roses in her hands. "You've been haunted by it." The little line had formed between her brows. She didn't know which of us to worry about now: the woman obsessed by imaginary curses, or the man cursed by them. She dropped the roses into an empty pitcher and glanced out the window at the blank sky above the wood. Still undecided, she straight­ened the quilts around me. "Try to sleep. I'll find out where Corbet is."

  I slept until a white owl with sapphire eyes glided noiselessly out of the white sky to stare at me through the window. I woke with my heart pounding, heaving quilts aside as I rolled to face the window. I saw nothing except what might have been, to my sleep - blurred eyes, a reflection of white disappearing against the clouds. I heard strange noises, though, which separated into voices as I listened, and then into words.

  I got out of bed, went to the window. The cold glass against my face cleared my head a little; so did the scene below.

  Laurel was sitting in our sleigh, holding the reins and trying to move, while Perrin, holding the plow horses' heads, argued with her down their backs. His own horse, hock - deep in snow, nuzzled at his back. Their voices, nor­mally so patient, sounded ragged, barely restrained. Our father, astounded and forgotten, stood watching near the house below me.

  "This is nothing," Perrin said doggedly. "It's sea­sonal. It will pass. You've loved me and I've loved you since - "

  "People change," Laurel said without sympathy. "Not in a season! Not over the color of a head of hair! "

  "It isn't that- Perrin, it's more, much more -you've seen! All winter long, you've watched us - "

  "For years I've watched us - you and me. Is that worth nothing to you? You can't just pull love to a halt like a horse and a harrow - all I'm asking is that you wait. Just give yourself time. Give me time."

  "For what?" she demanded helplessly, flicking the reins a little; the horses, trying to go and stay at once, pushed, startled, against Perrin. He caught his balance, held them stubbornly. "How much longer do you want to sit there in the evenings, watching Corbet and me watchin
g each other? Watching me smile at him instead of you? Watching - " She gestured again, carelessly.

  Perrin finished grimly: "Watching you with him the way you used to be with me."

  She bowed her head; I could not see her face. Sud­denly frightened for her, I tried to open the window. She would only find winter, I wanted to tell her; she would have to go beyond the world she knew to find Corbet. Winter had sealed the window shut. Perrin stood mute, clinging to the horses, while she let the reins fall slack in her hands. She spoke finally; I couldn't hear. But I could guess: I can't help myself.

  "I'm sorry," she said more clearly. He did not an­swer, did not move. "Perrin. If he's not in the village and not in his house, maybe he left some message in Lynn Hall, some hint of where he is."

  "Rois was just there, you said-"

  "How much could she see in the dark?" "Let me go instead."

  "I'm going," she said flatly. I pounded desperately on the thick glass, but she was not listening to anything but herself. "And you must let me go. Can't you under­stand that waiting will not change the way I love? Maybe you and I are too much alike. Maybe if it hadn't been Corbet Lynn, it would have been someone else - "

  Perrin moved abruptly; so did the horses. "Don't say that," he said sharply. "Don't toss me away so cheaply. Neither of us has a wayward heart. We love what we love and that's that. That's why you should wait, test whatever this is you think is love - "

  She brought the reins down hard then, and he lurched backward. He loosed the horses; she turned them, edged them around him until they faced the road and she had brought the sleigh up to where he stood.

  "Love is what we say it is," she said fiercely. "That's all I know. That's all anyone knows about it. I'm sorry." He must have seen something in her face, some breath of indecision, in spite of everything. He said reck­lessly, "Then let's hear what Corbet Lynn knows about it," and pulled himself into the sleigh beside her, even as she brought the reins down again, and the runners sheared a path out of the yard toward Lynn Hall.

  I went back to bed. I heard my father's heavy tread on the stairs, slower and quieter than usual, even through my dreams. It stopped at my door. I woke again, near dusk, and heard him talking to Beda. I sat up and finished my cold tea, still listening, but I heard no other voices. The relentless pain in my head had finally subsided. My thoughts cleared enough to show me what I had to do in the next moment at least, which was to go downstairs and talk to my father before Salish's tale, transformed into who knew what wonders on its way through the village, got to him before I did.

  I found him beside the fire, brooding over his cold pipe. He looked startled at my wild hair, my red eyes, but he lifted one arm bravely and I sat next to him, dropped my head against his shoulder.

  "I'm sorry," I said wearily.

  "Sorry! Sorry can't speak to this. You could have died out there."

  "I know."

  "Laurel said you were dreaming - walking in your sleep. How could anyone sleep through that kind of weather?"

  "Is she back yet?"

  He shook his head, chewed hard on his pipe a mo­ment. "She went off to look for Corbet," he said finally, "with Perrin along for the ride. Corbet Lynn." He didn't like it, but he could not say why. "Did you see that com­ing?"

  "From the first."

  "I never saw it coming ... Maybe Perrin is right," he added without hope. "Maybe it will blow itself out by spring."

  "Maybe. If she finds Corbet."

  "Oh, he's around somewhere." He cheered up a lit­tle. "Maybe with some other woman. How far could any­one have got to in that storm?"

  "Maybe," I said again. I shifted, wondering how to begin. "Did you see Salish this morning?"

  "Salish? No. Laurel said he found you.

  "He found me, yes. He also - he also found a stranger in Lynn Hall. On the hearth. He was -he died there."

  My father's arm slackened on my shoulders. He pulled back a little, staring at me. "What?"

  "Corbet Lynn was gone. Someone died in his house last night. Salish left me here and went into the village to get the apothecary - "

  "What?" His voice rose. "What are you talking about? Laurel didn't say-"

  "Laurel didn't know. I didn't tell her. My head hurt, I couldn't think, and there was nothing she could have done - "

  "Who died? How did he die?"

  "I don't-it looked like an accident. He might have fallen and hit his head on the stones. He was -- "

  "Did you see it happen?"

  "No. I woke and he was there beside me on the floor."

  "What are you telling me?" my father demanded sharply. "That someone died beside you while you were sleeping and you never noticed? Where was Corbet dur­ing all this? Some stranger walked into his house while he was away and dropped dead on his hearth? In the middle of a blizzard?"

  "So it-" I paused, trying to swallow my own tale. "That's what it seemed-"

  The door opened abruptly; Laurel came in, with Perrin close behind her. She didn't bother taking off her snow - crusted cloak; she came to us quickly, dripping and shivering, her eyes luminous and strained from trying to see beyond the world.

  "Rois." She gripped my hands. "What exactly did you dream? "

  The blood pounded into my head; her face blurred. I told her what she already knew. "That he left Lynn Hall."

  "You didn't find Corbet," our father said flatly. Perrin shook his head.

  "The place is cold, the stable is empty." He stopped, started again. "It seems there was an accident - "

  "I know - Rois has been - he's not in the village?" Laurel put a hand to her mouth. "No." Her voice shook badly; kneeling close to the fire, she still shivered. "He's nowhere. He didn't even leave a message - "

  "He just left a dead man on his hearth? Did anyone recognize him? He must have had a horse, belongings with him. Nobody wanders around on foot in a blizzard. Except Rois."

  "He didn't - there was nothing . . ." Perrin's voice trailed away again; he shook his head, his mouth tight. My father asked again,

  "Did anyone recognize him?"

  "Well - that's just it. He must be some relation to Corbet, though they don't look at all alike." I stared at Perrin, amazed. "A brother, maybe, or a cousin, which makes things messier. But-"

  "But what?" my father pleaded.

  For once in his life, Perrin seemed reluctant to share gossip, even in the dead of winter, when there was nothing else to do. "Well, you know how news runs through the village, especially when everyone's out shoveling after a storm. But the oldest swear that's who surfaced out of their past to die where his father died-it's who he must look like, anyway-"

  My father's face smoothed in utter astonishment. "You can't mean - "

  "Nial Lynn's son."

  In the silence, Laurel got to her feet unsteadily. Perrin reached out to her, but she did not notice. She went to the window, stood staring out. I saw the tears in her eyes finally melt, catch light as they slid down her face. She made no move to brush at them; she made no sound. She stood there, watching for Corbet, while Perrin watched her, and I heard the deadly winds ride toward us across the fields.

  Seventeen

  All night I heard them call me. In my dreams they cried my name in Corbet's voice; awake, in the dark, I listened to her voice, the whisper of snow against glass, the murmuring and sudden, furious whine in the eaves. Sometimes I heard Laurel's quiet, disconsolate weeping weaving into the winds, until it sounded as if she were out among them, a ghost of herself, mourning another ghost. I realized, in those black hours, that I didn't know if Corbet was alive or dead. He had threatened; she had said ... But it was Tearle's body that she had left for us to find in the dead of winter, wearing his cursed, ambig­uous face, trouble for Corbet to explain in our world if he managed to escape the trouble in hers.

  I had to find him. I had gone into her world and come out of it once; I could do it again, though I didn't know how, or where, or what she would do when she saw me, except smile with her sharp white tee
th and break my heart like a bone between them.

  In the morning, I found Laurel at the same window, watching the motionless fields. If I hadn't heard her sob­bing in her bed, I would have thought she had been there all night. Her pale, still face, her wide eyes that had al­ways seemed to gaze beyond the world, frightened me; this emptiness was what they had found at last. She looked spellbound by Corbet's absence, even more surely than she had been by his presence. But our father, coming in from milking, only shook his head and refrained from calling her to breakfast.

  "It's the shock," he said to me. He looked holloweyed himself, with daughters and neighbors disappearing in the night, a stranger with a face out of the past dying in a cursed house, lovers quarrelling, and whatever apple brandy he had drunk to comfort himself burning behind his eyes. He added, "At least when she tried to send Perrin away, he had more sense than to go."

  I took my eyes away from the pale, still face of win­ter watching Laurel, and stared at my oatcakes, trying to think of some excuse to leave the house.

  "I should go to the apothecary's," I said finally, "while the weather is holding."

  He lifted his head sharply. "What for?" "Something I need for Laurel. It will help her sleep. She can't go on like this."

  "She'll get over it, and you've got every tea and root and dried weed-"

  "He sends for things I can't find." "No."

  "He may have news of Corbet. They may have found out who the stranger is."

  He hesitated, as curious as anyone; his "No" came with less conviction. He must have seen that I would go, anyway; I would walk if I could not ride, I would go barefoot if he hid my boots. How far I would go, he did not want to ask. He pointed his fork at me.

  "I want you there and back in the same morning and in the same set of tracks."

  I lied; he was suspicious. But it was better, he must have thought, than having two daughters waiting mute and red-eyed at the window for a man who might be anywhere. He watched me turn the sleigh down the road toward the village instead of across the field to Lynn Hall. I watched half a dozen sleighs laying tracks toward the hall, overladen with searchers, snowshoes, and more than likely the beer they hadn't finished through the night. They were looking for the path the wind had taken, I could have told them-the place where roses bloomed in snow. But they would never listen to me; they would go on searching snowdrifts for a man frozen to death in a storm, or his horse, or the stranger's horse and his pos­sessions, or any scrap of his cloak to tell them that he had not really wandered out of summer into Lynn Hall.