McKillip, Patricia A - Winter Rose

by Winter Rose(Lit)

  My name bloomed, blood-red, out of his mouth. I put my hands over mine. "Please-let him speak-"

  "Not until that no becomes yes." She waited; he shook his head mutely, swallowing leaves.

  "Please," I begged her again. His eyes, holding mine, were narrowed as against the fiercest of winds; his face held no more color than the stone behind him. "Maybe - maybe he doesn't love me."

  "Maybe he doesn't, but he will never leave you. The rose will wed the ivy in Lynn Hall, and they will be so tightly bound that to uproot one will be to uproot the other, and both will live or die together."

  He stopped struggling to find words then; his face grew very still. I saw the word in his eyes before he spoke. My own eyes burned with bitter tears. A shadow ­marriage in a shadowland was all we would ever have; we had left truth behind us in another time. His head bowed; he did not look at either of us.

  "Yes."

  She smiled her feral smile that held no trace of love or laughter. "Then light the tapers and prepare the hall. I will bring the wedding guests."

  It took me a moment to realize that she was no longer with us. Corbet gazed without moving at the air where she had vanished; his eyes held a bleak despair as he contemplated our future. Then he looked at me.

  I saw the ghost of his grandfather, in his pale, cold face, his mouth set in a thin, bloodless line. I do not know you, I thought suddenly, as fear rilled through me. I do not know you at all in this place.

  He saw my fear; he only turned away to light a line of tapers pinned on thorns along the wall. "You tried," he said to the wall.

  "I didn't know -- I had to, for Laurel - "

  "I know."

  "And I don't even know-" My hands closed tightly. "She won't even tell me if Laurel -"

  "She never gives, she never yields." He still faced the wall, but without moving, staring at the thorns. The taper was burning close to his fingers. He did not feel it, or maybe he did not care. He added softly, "I asked you for the impossible. I should never have done that. But I had no one else to turn to. And you were with me at every turn. I'm sorry."

  I whispered, "And every turn led us here. Back into these two small rooms."

  He felt the taper fire then; he shook it away from him into the grate. He said helplessly, "I tried-"

  "I know." I shivered, bone-cold. "You warned me." I moved to the hearth, where a log lay half-burned, eaten open to its heart, fuming sullenly. I knelt beside it. Corbet lit another taper and touched more candles caught on thorns, in the crook of roots, until it seemed that within the wild roil of root and stone fiery roses bloomed everywhere around us.

  Our eyes met. I heard the winter close around us, the shrieking, fighting winds racing toward us across a barren wasteland. His hand moved toward me, dropped helplessly, holding air and firelight. I did not try to touch him.

  And then I saw the shadows move around us, as if they had been silently listening, waiting for the moment when there was nothing left for us to say. Candlelight brushed an ivory curve of cheek, froze in a jewel, burned in an unblinking eye. I could see no one very clearly ex­cept her, moving slowly toward us, gathering a bouquet of burning roses from among the thorns.

  "You must have flowers." She placed them in my hands. The flames grew still, shaped petals of cold fire. "And a veil." She pulled the tapestry loose; it slid lightly down, silver and gold overflowing her hands. She drew it over my hair, my shoulders; it felt at once airy and clinging, like feathers. "And a ring." She opened her hand and I saw the golden circle through which I had once watched the sky.

  I looked at her blindly, remembering it falling in the daylight, in the autumn night, from my mother's hand, from her hand.

  "I gave this to you once before," she said, and I lis­tened for the faint, mocking laughter around her. But no one laughed. The smile in her eyes might only have been the light from Corbet's taper. "This time Corbet must give it to you." She took the taper from him. "Rois to wood, rose to ivy, maid to mortal man you will wed, in time and beyond time, and forever in my wood."

  She dropped the ring into Corbet's hand.

  I lifted my hand to take the ring, and felt the unex­pected warmth of time bound flesh and bone that mortals needed to continue their brief, drab, passionate lives.

  My fingers locked around his wrist.

  I felt him start. A word broke through the endless winter in his eyes. But she gave him no time to say it, except in leaves. Green wove through the air where he had been, and I felt tears burn in my throat because she had hidden him from me again. But I held him, vine and leaf and unspoken word, while gold slid through leaves to break the silence against the marble floor.

  "Yes," I said, to the wood and all his ghosts.

  I heard the sudden, fierce cry of wind blasting through the door. All the candles spun crazily on their sconces and fell, burning out like stars. I could only see her face in the firelight, and her wild, hoarfrost hair streaming like snow on the wind. Around us, her follow­ing, her ghosts, shifted uncertainly and whispered. Some laughed; again I heard the tiny, silvery bells, their singing brief and oddly jangled.

  I tightened my hold on the ivy, racked by wind that should have torn the leaves from the vine and the vine from my fingers. Not even that wind was strong enough.

  I couldn't speak, under the fuming, blue-black fire in her eyes. But I held her words fast, as fast as I held our lives. She had spoken, she had said; her own words challenged her.

  She minced no words now. "Laurel will die for this." I swallowed, forced out words as dry as leaves. "Not if I bring Corbet back with me. She'll see him and re­member how to live."

  "You will die here for nothing and I will keep your ghost. You will not free Corbet and you will never leave."

  "I will." My voice shook badly; again I heard the faint, tuneless laughter. "You told me how."

  "I played with you. You were a foolish rabbit caught between worlds in my rose vines, blinded by moonlight and thinking you wanted the moon. You had no idea what you asked for."

  "No, I didn't then." I shifted closer to the ivy; it clung to stone and thorn against her fury. "But you told me how to take it."

  "And you saw me to ask. You don't have human eyes, a human heart. You can't live in the human world - why do you think you pulled time and dreams apart to find my wood?"

  "He kept crying out from your wood for help. You killed his father. You turn his words to leaves. You take away his eyes, his voice. You don't love him. Why do you care where he goes?"

  "Because he is mine, of my blood and of the wood.

  Love and hate are nothing more than leaves here; he knows that. He was not born to learn them."

  "He does know them! He is human, except for the sliver of ice in his heart that came from you. It won't melt here, and it will destroy us both. Let him go. You only want him to reflect you, to see your power and beauty when you look at him. Nothing more than that. It was his human heart that led him to my world -you had no use for it here."

  "He has no heart." Her eyes burned still darker, holding mine. "I took it from him the moment he was born. And I will take yours."

  I felt a thin arm sliding through my fingers. I caught my breath in horror, tightening my grip before I lost it. Then I nearly lost it again when I looked for Corbet's face and found my mother.

  "Rois," she said reproachfully. "What are you do­ing? "

  I couldn't find my voice. "You are ivy," I whispered. "You are Corbet. You are not - "

  "You belong here," she said. "With me. And with your father." Her face, so like mine, transfixed me. I am you, it seemed to say. I am your fate.

  "I have a father."

  "Your true father is of this wood. You know that. You always knew. You saw her wood in every shift of light, in every secret shadow. You searched for it until you found it. You recognized it because you have his eyes."

  "I don't want a father I have never seen! I don't care who he was! And how can I have a father here? You loved one summer and died in winte
r and I was already born. Here love doesn't last beyond a season - it can't survive her winter."

  "There were other summers before I died. Others from the wood."

  "You are lying to me! You aren't even my mother­you're leaves, even your words are leaves."

  "I am your mother, Rois. You can see me here. You can speak to me. Stay with me. You love Corbet and you love the wood. Stay here with us. You could never have found your way here unless you belong here."

  "You did," I said through tears. "And look what hap­pened to you. You can't love me here." I spoke to them both: to her and Corbet, clinging to them both. "You can't love me here."

  "Don't leave me," she pleaded. "Don't leave me, Rois. Don't."

  "Come with me," I begged, gripping her so tightly that if she had not been illusion, and a ghost besides, I would have left an imprint on her bones. "Corbet."

  Her face changed. His face and not his face gazed back at me, and I felt an animal's fear prickle through me, such as Corbet's father must have felt under those powerful, barren grey eyes.

  "So you are playing a little game now, Rois," he said. The sudden twist of his arm in my lax hold nearly freed him; I caught him with both hands then, held on grimly, mindlessly, evading his eyes. I felt something shock through us both; sudden pain threw me to my knees. "You're dead," I whispered breathlessly, tasting blood. "Your son killed you. Nial Lynn."

  "Nothing dies in the wood," he said. "You saw that. Here no one can harm me. But I will hurt you if you do not let go of me. Love cowers from pain. Love hides itself. Love whimpers like a dog and runs."

  I whimpered like a dog. Roses bloomed in my hands; their thorns clung to me as tightly as I clung to them. Blood streaked my fingers, as if the blood-red petals bled. And then they flamed.

  I could not see anything but fire. Sweat and tears ran down my face. Love hurts, I thought crazily. Love hurts.

  "But I knew that," I said through blood and tears, still kneeling, hunched with pain, clinging to my burning bridal flowers. "You didn't have to tell me that."

  "I am doing this for your own good," Nial Lynn said. It sounded true: Not a tremor of pleasure disturbed the dead calm in his voice. "You have grown too wild, Rois. You must calm your imaginings. Even now you imagine you are here, trying to rescue someone you think you love, who in the waking world scarcely noticed you. He did not love you there, so you dream a world where he must need you, where he must be grateful to you. That is why you are forcing yourself to suffer this in your dreams. So that he will be grateful and love you. In your dreams."

  My skin was melting from my bones; finger bones were melting as I held his burning hands. I sobbed with­out noise; everything burned, even words. "Then I must end the dream to end the pain. And it will never end, ever, ever, for either of us, if I let you go. I must hold you fast, because you are part of him. You will trap him here and turn his heart to ice if I let go of you. In my dreams."

  The fire flared in my face. I jerked back, crying, feel­ing my face begin to melt. I heard his voice beyond the flames.

  "All you must do is stop the dream. Stop dreaming. Rois. Wake. Go back to the human world. Forget this world, because this moment is the only one you will ever remember of it when you try to remember." I could not see; I felt my eyes begin to burn. I screamed again, with­out sound, and drew in fire like air. My bones began to burn, and then my heart.

  "Rois. Wake. Rois."

  I heard myself say, somehow, for I had no lips, no throat, to speak with, "I must hold this dream fast, no matter what shape it takes, for it is only a dream; there is no fire, and no pain, and no Nial Lynn. You are dead. You have no power anymore. You are dead. Your son killed you and I know why, and when I pass your grave I will spit on it. I will cut down any flowers growing on it. I will - "

  I felt hands in my hands, cool strong fingers in mine. I had hands again. I had a mouth, eyes. I closed my eyes, held the hands to my face, and kissed petals of blood across them.

  “Rois.”

  I looked up. My hands tightened; it did not hurt any longer to hold. But I was not sure what I held.

  He said very wearily, "Rois, you must let me go." I saw his grandfather again in his cold eyes; I saw the fey beauty he had inherited from her, that lured me so pow­erfully, and then loosed me and turned away, leaving me with nothing but my hopeless, desperate longings. "I thought I could not lie to you, but I was wrong. I have been lying all along. I have never loved you. I don't want you here with me. If I loved anyone - if I can love anyone at all -it was Laurel. You know that. You have always known that." I stared up at him, wordless. He knelt sud­denly in front of me, holding my eyes, letting me see his face clearly. "I can't let you go through this torment for nothing. I will make you miserable if you stay here. You have already sensed that. I can see it in your eyes. You are afraid of me in this world. You are right to be afraid." I whispered his name.

  "There's something in you difficult to love. Some­thing scarcely human. You are too wild, Rois; you aren't like other women. It would be barely possible to love you in the human world, impossible to love you here. How could you imagine that I would really forget Laurel?" He glanced at my fingers, frozen around his. "It's better for both of us. I'll go to Laurel, she'll recover, and you'll be much happier without me. You'll lose nothing."

  I swallowed nothing, dust, hot ashes. My heart ham­mered sickly. Still his gaze trapped mine; I could not look away. He had found all my secret fears and loosed them one by one; they swarmed through me, howling, showing a bloody tooth. "I can't leave." My lips felt icy, as if I had been kissed by winter. "I want to stay with you. Perhaps you will love me in time."

  "Rois, I have tried - you've seen that-"

  I felt sorrow slide, cold and silent, down my face. "You're lying. You're not Corbet-"

  "You know me, Rois. Your heart knows me. Just as you know that what I say is true. I am sorry. What Laurel and I feel for each other is far different from anything you can imagine. You have tried to help me, and I am grateful. But love is not gratitude. I can't be content with you because of that."

  "No." The word hurt like a stone in my throat. "You can't." His face blurred in my eyes; I blinked it clear again. Nothing else seemed clear to me; everything he said to me I had said to myself. "But, Corbet, there were things - between us-"

  "You imagined many of them. You wanted them to be true, and so they were. But only to you." He dropped his head, kissed my icy fingers. "Now you must leave me. Go back to Laurel. She needs you far more than I. I’ll come to her soon. One day you will forgive me."

  I could not argue with him; I did not know anymore what I was doing or why. I clung to all I knew: his hands, her words. "She said I must hold fast to you-"

  He sighed. "Rois. You're only holding fast to some dream of love -nothing real."

  "No matter what shape you take - " "Rois."

  "No matter what face you show-"

  "Stop trying to help me. I don't want your help. I don't need you."

  "Don't leave me here. Don't leave me. Don't. You said that to me. And then you said my name."

  "You were dreaming - "

  "I will give you what you want." I could not find my voice, only a husk of one; it could barely pass through the fire in my throat. I clung more tightly to his hands, and held his eyes; I saw the first touch of icy anger strug­gle with his patience. "I will leave you. I won't trouble you any longer with my love. But I want to give you something first. With my love."

  "What?" he asked indifferently.

  "Freedom. From me, from this house, from her wood. I will hold you fast until you stand free of us all. And then I will leave you."

  I heard him say my name, just before the winds tore at him again. I lost hold of one hand; I held the other in both of mine as the wind tried to carry him away. I felt ivy again, and then a human wrist, and again ivy, and then the ivy closed around my wrist.

  Winds screamed through the sudden dark. "Who gave you your eyes?"

  I knew then
. I had been looking at the answer all my life, at all its beauty, its seasons, its ever-changing faces of life and death.

  "The wood."

  The ivy held fast to me then, as fast as I held it. Vine turned to bone, leaf to word.

  "Rois," he said, and I felt a rose bloom on my lips. I held him through the winter dark, through all my dreams until I woke.

  Twenty Four

  I lay awake a long time before I opened my eyes. I heard soft movements through the house, a word or two. I smelled bread baking, and a handful of dried flower petals simmering sweetly above the fire. Perhaps that had wakened me: the scent of spring.

  But it was still winter, I found, when I finally opened my eyes. Snow crusted the barn roof; the sky was stonegrey, the distant wood still leafless. No smoke rose from Lynn Hall.

  I gazed, perplexed, across the snowbound fields. My hands still felt the ivy the wind had tried to wrench from me; my bones remembered fire peeling them like twigs. I heard Nial's voice: This is the only thing you will remem­ber ... You imagine you are here. Stop the dream.

  I remembered Laurel.

  I pushed myself up at the thought. The floor felt icy as my bare feet hit it. Winter still wailed around the house, slid long, thin fingers through chinks and crevices. What had I done? I wondered, pushing hair out of my eyes. What had I done right or wrong? A gold ring, burn­ing roses, my mother's face, Corbet's despairing eyes my dream scattered piecemeal through my head. I had gone into the heart of winter, pulled Corbet out of it into this world, so that he could ride to our door on his but­termilk mare and find Laurel and say her name, so that she would remember who she was, what life was, before she left it.

  Maybe, I thought desperately as I swung the door open, that's where he was now: riding to our door.

  I went down the hall to Laurel's room, feeling a yoke of fear prick painfully at my neck, across my shoulders. I tried to enter noiselessly, but her door-latch slipped in my fingers, rattled. She stirred slightly and I breathed again, clinging to the door a moment, watching her. She looked like a woman made of silk and straw, so fragile that the wind outside could have blown her apart in a breath. Her skin molded itself against her bones. Her eyelids, frail as paper, lifted, as if she felt my eyes. She gazed at me senselessly a moment before she said my name.