McKillip, Patricia A - Winter Rose

by Winter Rose(Lit)

  Her gold wedding ring.

  My throat burned as if I had swallowed gold and it had stuck there, an O of astonishment. I stood stunned in the doorway, while Perrin rode away from me into winter, and in a world he did not see, the fields and barren wood turned to green and gold and shadow in the light of memory.

  She must have carried me there secretly, perhaps while Laurel stayed with Beda and our father worked the distant fields. I smelled the roses as she laid me down, and the cool, mysterious scent of hidden water. She took off her wedding ring for me to play with, while she shaped longing into light, and light into the still, blurred figure waiting for her. She turned away from me, growing smaller and smaller until she met him in my ring of gold, and they both vanished into shadow.

  She died trying to shape the barren light of memory into love.

  "Rois." Laurel's voice, so infrequent now, startled me back into our world. I was still standing in the doorway, letting winter in. "It's cold." I moved and she shut the door behind me. She had been lying down, but her heavy eyes, the reflection of empty fields in them, told me she had not slept. "Is something wrong?"

  Yes! I wanted to shout. I don't know whose bones I have, whose eyes. If my mother had a lover from the wood when I was already born, then who gave me my sight? Or did she know him long before I was born? Had I come to life in secret, in a hot fall of light on a summer day, an idea so inconceivable to anyone that not even my mother questioned who my father was? I turned away from Laurel's eyes, straightened a chair, and then a rug I had kicked askew, feeling my blood beat like tiny, fran­tic wings through me. I couldn't ask Laurel; she didn't know. No one human knew. She drifted to a window, but not even she could see, in the way our mother saw, past her human heart to what she loved.

  After a while, she spoke again. "Rois, you're pacing." I stopped. "I'm sorry."

  "It's the season. You've always hated it. Everything one color, the coldest color of all."

  Her voice chilled me. It had lost all its color, as if she could no longer see beyond white. "I need to do something," I said. All my pacing would only weave a web around itself; I couldn't walk out of the world. Lau­rel's attention strayed away from me, and again I felt the urgent, desperate wings. She had so little time to give me, and what time she had 1 was afraid to find my way out of. I had no choice; I said tightly, "I'm going to Lynn Hall."

  "No one's there," Laurel said wearily. But she had turned away from her own reflection to look at me. "Maybe he left some message we both missed."

  "I looked. He left nothing."

  "You were looking for words. There are other ways to leave a message."

  Her eyes darkened, wandered past me then; she wanted simple answers, a message meant for her, not Rois' winter imaginings. She moved to the stairs, began to climb them, her steps slow and isolated, like an old woman's. "I suppose it might do you good to get out," she said with listless indifference. "But it's pointless going to Lynn Hall. He left nothing there for any of us."

  Our father grumbled, but hitched the sleigh for me; even he was desperate for the straw that blew the direc­tion Corbet had gone. "Everyone in the village has been in and out of that place for days. I don't know what you expect to find that they haven't. I want you back," he added, "before I remember that you're gone."

  I left the sleigh in front of the hall and stepped into the twilight of an empty house. It was scarcely warmer inside. I left footprints across the threshold that did not melt. A corner of tapestry, or an edge of eyelet lace on a pillow, might have snapped like ice in my hand. Fire itself would have frozen on the grate. Others had been in here, left messages of one kind or another. Someone had writ­ten Corbet's name in ash on the marble mantel; there was a swallow of stale beer in one of his glasses. Boot prints had tracked around the stain in the hearthstones, drawn to it as if the curse itself lay there, silent yet dangerous, winter's unsolved mystery.

  I knelt beside it, piled bits of half-charred wood left on the grate, and kindling someone had spilled carelessly on the floor. I was trying to build a fire without a flame, with only a wish to light it. I couldn't stay in that bitter cold, and I did not want to leave.

  "Corbet," I whispered hopelessly, my hands to my mouth, warming my fingers with his name.

  A rose bloomed on the grate and burst into flame. The kindling caught and blazed, fire pouring out of the cold wood as if it had been trapped there, waiting to be freed. Through it the rose opened fiery petals, con­suming but never consumed. I smelled both summer and winter in those flames: roses and the burning heart of applewood, the scent of wood in snow.

  The stones began to burn.

  I got to my feet then, backed away. Fire ate the hearth, the chimney stones, swarmed into the walls. Like a painting held too close to a taper, the room began to melt around me. I stood in the middle of it, staring at what the weaving and parting strands of fire revealed: colors I had never seen in winter, colors I had never seen together in one season, every shade of green.

  I saw Corbet as the flames turned into gold. I stood on grass, feeling sunlight on my hair, my hands. I had not imagined any world he would have died to leave could be so beautiful. He stood beneath an oak tree; the ivy that wound up its trunk and through its branches trailed a tendril of green leaves to touch his hair. His eyes reflected a distant landscape. I said his name without sound. Something changed in his eyes then, light gilding a snow­bound field, revealing cold, concealing cold.

  "Rois."

  He lifted his hand to meet mine; this time light and air and invisible leaves separated us. I could hear them massed and rustling between us; he seemed as far from me as ever.

  "Corbet, where are you?" I pleaded. "Where am I?" His voice shook.

  "With me. Even here."

  "But where?" Spring, I guessed, seeing a bank of' purple violets spilling down into a rill. Then I saw bur­dock as high as my shoulder, and blue vervain, and yar­row the rich ocher-gold of late summer light. And then I saw leaves as golden as the yarrow.

  The air smelled of violets, crushed raspberries, wood smoke. If I could have dreamed a world to escape the winter, I thought dazedly, it would be this timeless no­where, in which green trembled like water, even in deep shadow, as if we stood at the bottom of a translucent pool. "Is this where we came before?" I breathed. "The world you left to walk into my world?" I stopped, hearing myself. My world, I had said, drawing dangerous bound­aries. Your world.

  He smiled a thin, bitter smile I remembered. "It's one of her faces. One of her expressions. You've seen others; don't lose your heart to this one."

  "It's tempting." I tasted light on my lips as I spoke; a breeze shifted leaves and it filled my eyes. Corbet's face blurred against the ivy as if it were just emerging, shades of gold against the green, as I had first seen it. My hand, reaching out to him again, closed again on nothing. "What has she done to you? She has hidden you somewhere -"

  "She has hidden me from you. She knows you're here. She knows why."

  "Does she? Does she know I came here because I have no place else to go?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "No one else can tell me about my mother -no one else knows that my mother came into these woods in sum­mer, where the rose vines fall across the secret well, and met someone in a fall of light-"

  "How do you know?" he demanded.

  "I remember."

  "How do you know he was not human?"

  "Because she watched for him," I whispered, "in winter, the way Laurel watches for you. She died waiting for him to return. I don't know myself any longer. I don't know where I belong. I can see my way here, so I must belong here. At least, when you look at me and say my name, I recognize myself."

  "Why do you trust her?" he demanded recklessly. "You saw her heart - it's a howling desert of ice. She lies like the moon lies, a different face every night, all but one of them false, and the one true face as barren and hard as stone. Why do you believe her?"

  "You do." My words came out ragged with unsh
ed tears. "You knew me the moment you saw me. You said I see with the wood's eyes. That's why you turned to Laurel. You were afraid of me."

  "Rois-" He was trembling; I could hear the leaves rustling around him. "Yes. You seemed to live in the bor­derlands of the world I tried to escape. You tossed your heart after every passing breeze. Even after light. You did not seem-"

  The word pushed through my throat like two hard stones. "Human."

  Unseen leaves whispered the word. He said slowly, "I never knew until now what that word could mean. Here in her world of dreams and deadly lies, you seem very human."

  "Corbet." I swallowed something bitter. "Do you care for me at all? Or do you only need me?"

  He breathed a word: yes, or no, or Rois. His hand opened to my face; I felt only the cool invisible leaves. I lifted my own hand; in the light our shadows touched.

  "You come to me," he whispered. "Into every dark place. Into every memory. Into the empty eyes of winter. I go alone and find you with me. Why do you care for me?"

  I did not know until I spoke. "Because you are mak­ing me human."

  Again my hand found air and light, illusion, where my heart cried out for mortal flesh and bone. His face twisted as if he heard my cry. He looked down to where we could touch, and closed his eyes.

  I heard her voice then, a memory in the sighing leaves: You must hold fast to him, no matter what shape he takes...

  "How can I hold light?" I demanded in despair. You must love him

  "You cannot," he answered wearily. You must be human to love.

  I could hold him in my eyes, at least, for as long as she let him stay. "How much of you can she claim?" I asked him. "Some part of you is human."

  "My father married just as Nial Lynn married: a woman who had strayed into an accidental smile in his eyes. She could not escape this place once she desired it. He tried. He tried to love her. But he had never been taught how."

  "Then you don't belong here at all-"

  "Long ago a mortal man went walking in the summer wood one day near Lynn Hall. He fell in love with a stir of air, a scent of wild roses, a touch of light. She bore him a son."

  "Nial Lynn."

  He nodded. "My great-grandfather's human wife took the child to raise, but she was not pleased with him. Nial had strange powers, and was prone to odd fits of violence. But they had no other children. So he inherited Lynn Hall. I think he must have hated the human world because he could not find his way past it into her world." "Why didn't she - "

  He smiled a little, tightly. "Because he wanted it. She only takes those, like you and me, who could not bear to live here. Or like my father, who had no choice but to leave the human world."

  "Then you do belong here. Some part of you."

  I felt a brush of air like hoarfrost's fingers on my cheek. "Be careful," he said very softly. "She has held me fast since I was born. She will find a way to hold you, too, and another brier rose will bloom in the human world, that has its roots in this one."

  "And beside it will grow a laurel, and a linden tree. Who is she? Does she have a name?"

  He tried to answer. Leaves came out of his mouth instead of words. I cried out in terror, reaching out to him; my hands closed on shadow, on nothing. Leaves opened in his eyes and flowed like tears; leaves pushed through his heart. I tried to say his name; I had no voice, not even leaves. CorGet, my heart called over and over, until a brier tangled through the endless fall of ivy, and out of his heart a rose bloomed in answer.

  She came to me then, cloaked in ivy instead of owl white. Her long fingers touched my wrist and circled it. Tears and words and blood all in the shape of leaves slid out of Corbet to twine into her hair. I could no longer see him, only the vague form of a man within the green: a finger, a pale gleam of hair, a blind eye among the leaves.

  "You didn't come here for my name," she said, ignoring my broken, incoherent pleas. "You came for yours."

  My mother walked through the grass and wildflow­ers toward us. Her dreaming eyes saw nothing, her skin was polished pearl. I took a step back; fingers as strong as tree root stopped me.

  "She is still watching for him, Rois. Time pools here; it has nowhere to go. A hundred years might pass in your world before I call her to me again, but if I call her in a hundred years, she will come. She'll tell us who came to her out of my wood, who gave you his eyes."

  I could not move; I could not make a sound. And then I made a sound with my entire body, a silent scream that snapped through me and wrenched me free. The ivy around Corbet shook; I heard his sharp breath. Through the swirl of wind and light around me she spoke sweetly, but not to me.

  "Let me help you. Who are you looking for?"

  I saw my mother very clearly then, in one of those strange, timeless moments that seem to last forever be­tween two words, or while a knife falls, just before it slips and cuts. She was scarcely older than Laurel when she died, I saw with horror. She had given me her hair and her light eyes, but not her mouth; that and her slender hands had gone to Laurel. She was pale as milk and so thin her skin had pared itself down to the bone. She did not seem to see her questioner; her eyes held too much light, too much memory. But she heard the question.

  "He had no name," she answered. "He never spoke." Her dreaming voice was peaceful, remote. "I'll know him when he comes to me. I never see him clearly at first. He is a fall of light along the oak tree that stands behind the little well where the brier roses bloom. They open all sum­mer long, and where their petals fall, that's where I lay my Rois to wait."

  There was another question; I didn't hear. I shook like a naked child thrown into the dead of winter. I could not seem to cry; my tears had frozen in that cold.

  "He came with summer. One such summer becomes every summer; it seems he came to me in all of them. I saw him and I lost myself. I followed the path of the sun to the wood, always, in my mind if I could not leave the house. It had nothing to do with the life I knew, any more than dreams do. And so I thought, when the dream was over, that I would wake."

  I heard myself make a sound then; I put my hands over my mouth to stifle it. My mother did not hear. I did not exist, only the baby in her memories she had left be­side the well.

  "He never asked about Rois. He never spoke, any more than light speaks, until it changes, and then you understand and it is too late."

  "Let her go," I whispered through my hands. "Let her go."

  "She is searching for her heart. Humans think they lose such things here. She misplaced it in your world, left a hollow that nothing could fill until she wandered into light." She asked my mother, "Was he the first from the wood? Were there others?"

  "No," my mother said. "No one else. No one ever except him."

  I cried out then, moving toward my mother, trying to catch her eyes. "He is not here! You will never find him, ever, ever! He never loved you! Go back where you are loved! "

  But it was like shouting in a dream, or under water. My mother, hearing no more questions, followed a breeze toward a distant pool of light. She faded into colors, into air, before she reached it.

  I could not stand. I crouched on the ground, racked with cold, as if her ghost, her death, had passed through me. I could not cry, and I could not stop trembling. I felt a regard far colder than my mother's blindness, and looked up into sapphire eyes.

  "I wonder whose child you are ... I wonder if even she knew. But now you know where you belong. You have been coming to this place since you were born."

  "My father is a farmer," I whispered numbly, with­out conviction. "I belong to his world."

  "Then how did you see past his clods and endless furrows to come here?"

  "The way my mother did. I followed someone. Like her, I could not help myself." I stood up, still shivering, wanting to go, not knowing where to go, because I didn't know anymore what love meant, or why we were not all better off without it.

  I saw Corbet's eyes then, and his mouth, and one hand open among the leaves. His eyes held mine, more powerf
ully than any touch; they knew me. He whispered one word that was not a leaf, and I felt the deadly cold in me finally melt, my frozen tears break free.

  "Rois."

  "Yes," I told him. "I will come back." Which is why, I supposed, she let me go.

  Twenty Two

  Stone walls closed around me. I stood at the hearth in Lynn Hall, in front of my pile of twigs and split kindling, that had only burned in some other world, and left me cold in this one. The silent rooms were smoky wit I, late afternoon shadows. I had to go home, but somewhere beyond the pallid light, within the stones, Corbet had spoken my name, and I couldn't bear to leave the place where I was known. I knelt, folded myself against the cold, made myself small and still, something nameless in the winter watching and being watched.

  Don't leave me, he had said: a plea.

  You must hold him, she had said: a promise.

  She did not know me; I didn't know myself. I was something wild in her wood, as she was in mine, maybe human, maybe not, but even human I recognized her. My mother had called her, Laurel was calling her. She was the death of the heart, and she harvested in the dead of winter. She was transforming my world around me, reaching out to those I loved, changing them to suit her season. She had my mother, she had Corbet; she would take Laurel, she would take me, in the end, because I would follow my heart. But neither of us knew what I could or couldn't do within her wood.

  I heard something whisper through the air, and turned. A white owl flew across the room into the tap­estry. It gazed at me out of wide, golden eyes before it faded into formless thread. This time it didn't ask its mocking question. It only asked what it already knew. She had said: You must be human to love.

  Neither of us knew this Rois.

  I got up finally, before the world turned black and my father came for me. Snow mingled with the fading light as I drove home; flakes, catching in my eyelashes, seemed too heavy to bear. The snow never seemed to touch the ground; everything blurred around me. I held the reins, but the horses chose their path, it seemed, carrying me beyond the daylight toward an unfamiliar dark.