I went to her, knelt beside the bed. The blue veins in her wrists were so clear beneath the skin, I could almost see them pulse. She lifted a finger, gave me a feathery touch.
"I had the strangest dream," she said. "What?"
"I'm not sure . . ." She was silent, her eyes fixed on some memory. She drew a faint breath. "I think you were in it. I don't know. All I see now are colors. I hear a voice, but I don't understand the words. You know the way it is when you try to remember dreams. Even what you do remember makes no sense......
"Sometimes it does."
"I mean, in the waking world."
I let it go; suddenly I understood very little. "Would you like me to bring you some tea?"
"No." Her eyes went to the window. I felt my own eyes widen and burn. I had done nothing; I had dreamed, and even in my dream I had done nothing. Or worse, none of it had been a dream, and I had done nothing right.
I felt her hand again on my arm. "This endless winter ... Rois. Do you know what I would like? Some hot milk." I nodded and got up, not looking at her so that she would not see my tears. Her voice stopped me at the door. "I smell bread baking. Rois, could you bring me some warm bread, too, when it's out?" I turned to stare at her. She was not looking out the window now; she was thinking of food.
"What else?" My voice caught on something too big to swallow. "Butter? An egg?"
"Butter, yes. That's all. I think. Thank you."
I went out. I was halfway downstairs, when I had to sit, trembling, holding my bones together, blinking so that I could see more clearly what appeared to be true: Laurel wanted to eat.
"Rois," my father breathed at the bottom of the stairs. I looked down, saw the terror in his eyes, and then saw myself, barefoot, in my nightgown, crouched and shaking on the stairs.
"It's all right," I said. I did not recognize my voice. "She just wants breakfast."
"She wants-"
"She's hungry."
He gripped the railing. I saw his face before he turned to sit down on the bottom step. He could not speak too clearly, either. "What - what does she want?"
"Hot milk. Hot bread and butter."
"Oh." It came out like the sound he might have made the first time he saw Laurel. I saw him shake. I stumbled down to him, my father in this world, in every world, and held him tightly. There Beda found us both, and left us both, her own eyes red, to get the apple brandy.
My father intercepted Salish on his sleigh, and sent a message to Perrin and to the apothecary. Perrin arrived first, with more soup from his mother; we hovered around Laurel, counting every mouthful. Later, the apothecary checked her, noted the faint flush of life beneath her skin, the sudden interest in her eyes.
"What did you give her?" he asked me incredulously. I could not tell him. I still saw how closely her skin clung to the lovely line of bone in her face, how her eyes held distances beyond the defined horizons of our small world. She had gone as far as we could go from one another and still come back. She knew it, I could tell; she kept me beside her, watching me sew or sip tea; she wanted me with her even while she napped. It was as if she needed to tell me something but did not know how, or maybe even what; she wanted me with her because I already knew.
She finally found the strength, one afternoon, to go downstairs and sit beside the fire. She watched the fire, while I set a crooked patch in our father's trousers. Wind scattered snow like chaff; it was hard to tell whether the whirling flakes fell from the roof or from the sky. Laurel's eyes were drawn to the window; I watched her, poking myself now and then, as I sewed. She had come back without Corbet; so had I, and neither of us had spoken his name.
She said softly, "It seems so like a dream. As if someone had cast a spell over me. I don't understand what I was thinking." She looked at me. "It seems so impossible now, to think of any man that way."
I nodded, frowning hard over my patch. I could not find Corbet anywhere in my dreams; I had no idea what world I had left him in. Perhaps I had only imagined a world and him in it; I could not make that last, impossible, magical gesture, and pull him from my head into the real world. It seemed, considering how completely he had vanished, most likely. But still I had to frown tears away, of worry and loss and simple exasperation, because I did not know who I had rescued from the wood: Laurel, or Corbet, or all of us, or if, in the end, I had only rescued myself.
Laurel's eyes strayed back to the window. "But I do wonder what happened to him. Did anyone ever hear?" No."
"He was so alone in that place ... No wonder he turned to us. I think that's why he left: He really could not live in that old ruin with all its memories. He left to find some other life than Nial Lynn's."
I looked at her, astonished at her calm. "You're not angry at him for leaving you?"
"I don't think about him," she said softly. "Where I went, I went alone, and that's what I think about, what I have to understand. Sometimes I wonder if what I did had as much to do with our mother as with Corbet. I watched her die. Maybe, when Corbet left me so suddenly, it was like another death. I grieved in some strange way for both of them."
I wanted to ask then, but I didn't know how to circle around the question and hope she would answer without noticing. Finally, I just asked. "You watched for Corbet,"
I said, staring at an uneven stitch. "You made me wonder who our mother might have watched for. Who vanished out of her life and never returned."
"Yes," she said, astonishing me again. "The thought has crossed my mind, these past few days. Who she might have felt such passion for, to abandon her own life when he abandoned her."
"Who?" I breathed. "Do you know?"
But she only shook her head. "If there was anyone, she couldn't have loved him very long. The whole village would have guessed at anything longer than half a season. Longer than a week, more likely. And then our father would have known."
"He never--"
"No. You see how he is about her. There's not a shadow of mistrust in all his memories." She looked at me then, her eyes the smoky-grey of the fading light over the fields, no longer haunted, still unfamiliar in their calm. "You brought this up before. You said I was doing what she did."
"Well, I wondered."
She held my eyes a moment longer, glimpsing something -a cascade of brier roses, maybe, a fall of light. Perhaps she had been there, as a child, perhaps she had seen ...
Perhaps there had never been anything at all to see. I saw snowdrops in the snow one morning, and the yellow buds of crocuses. It did not seem possible that this harsh winter could ever end, but the crocus did not lie. Snow fluttered in the air, but melted as it touched the ground. As days passed, patches of brown earth began to appear in the fields. I watched the last of winter rattle in an icy sheet off the barn roof, break into pieces on the ground. One day it rained. Laurel, whom I had helped wash and feed and dress without even thinking about it, finally pushed me away that morning, laughing. She was still thin, but she moved easily now, and her skin had lost the fragile, waxen pallor she had gotten from wandering among ghosts. We sat outside that afternoon for the first time, watching sunlight slip between the swollen clouds to ignite a sudden glitter of raindrops all around us, on branch and harrow tooth and stone. I could not see enough, I thought; I could not smell enough of earth, and rain, and the scent of rain on the slowly budding branches. I needed more eyes, another nose. So I complained to Laurel, and she laughed again, which seemed as improbable a sound as the sound of returning birds.
Then she put her arm around me tightly, kissed my cheek. "Thank you," she whispered, "for not leaving me alone this winter. For staying with me."
I was silent, surprised: I must have become more human in spite of myself. My thoughts veered abruptly; I tugged them back into here and now, afraid of the secret and dangerous wood within, afraid to wonder what was dream and what was truth, and how much of either of those was love.
Perrin rode into the yard then, splashing mud and water. He dismounted beside the porch and han
ded me some early violets. I dropped my face into them and breathed, feeling their sweet scent flow into my blood. Laurel and Perrin studied each other, searching for signs of new life. I saw some in the calm in Perrin's eyes, the faint, wry crook of his mouth. Sunlight had flushed the color into Laurel's skin, or maybe Perrin had. He smiled a little.
"You look beautiful," he said to her. He sat down on the steps, cast a practiced glance at our father's furrows. Laurel picked up the piece of linen she was embroidering with sunflowers for Beda. Perrin's eyes had snagged on distances; suddenly we were all looking where he looked, beyond the fields to the patch of wood that hid Lynn Hall.
"Whatever happened to him?" Perrin breathed. "What happened? I've been waiting for them to find his body thawing along the road somewhere, but he vanished like a ghost." His face turned swiftly then to Laurel. "I'm sorry."
She shook her head, her eyes still on the cloud and blazing blue where the chimney smoke would have drifted. "It's all right. I wonder, too, still." She drew her needle through the linen, painted a petal with yellow thread, while Perrin watched her. She seemed to hear his thoughts; she said slowly, "I wonder, but I don't look for him. When I think back that far, to what happened between us, I don't recognize myself. Now I hardly remember what did happen. If anything did at all, it happened to someone else." She met his eyes. "That's how it seems."
He nodded, not smiling now. "Do you miss him?"
"No," she said softly. "No more than I miss what I was when I did miss him."
For a while Perrin appeared sporadically, like the sun, not saying much, not staying long. And then the leaves began to open on the trees and he came every day, riding into the yard while I watched the sun flame behind the wood, then slowly fade. Spring brought back familiar human sounds as well as birds. Our father whistled, going from barn to house; I heard him and Perrin laugh together, muddy from plowing, too redolent with fertilizer to come into the house.
One night, going upstairs after supper, I heard Perrin play the flute again.
It brought tears to my eyes, memories I did not want to acknowledge. It also made me suddenly restless, impatient to feel wet grass under my feet, taste the wild strawberries. I wanted to drink the cold sweet water from the well, and see the new leaves covering the rose vines. I sat on the steps and listened, and thought of the wood at night, and how the moonlight would catch in the wet, silvery curves of branches, hang trembling from a leaf.
The playing stopped. I heard Laurel's gentle voice, teasing a little, our father's chuckle, Perrin's unruffled answer. I went up quietly, feeling the new leaves opening in me, catching light.
The next morning, I rode into the village with my father's winter boots to have the leaks cobbled out of them, and to get some salve for the cows from the apothecary. I told him about Laurel as he put the salve into a jar. As usual, his impassive face said very little; his eyes told me much.
"I thought she would die," he said simply. "That terrible winter night. I could not see any hope for her."
"None of us could, then."
"She never heard from Corbet?" I shook my head. "Then it really wasn't him who caused her illness. I wish I knew what it was ... It's a terrifying thing to watch." Yes."
"What have you found in the wood? I know it's early yet, but you were most likely out there before the snow finished melting. Myrtle blooms early, and violet; I could use both."
"I haven't-" I cleared my throat. "I haven't been out there yet."
His brows flickered; I had astonished him. "Have you been ill, Rois?"
"No. I've just been busy, with Laurel . . ." I paused, felt his clear, practiced gaze. I asked, without meeting it, "Did anyone ever find Corbet? Or hear any news of him?"
"No." He set a stopper in the jar mouth and reached for his seal. He said, melting wax, "Corbet Lynn has passed from gossip into one of the village mysteries, along with the stranger at his hearth, and whose baby it really was that got left at Ley Gett's door that summer. . ."
"No one came looking for the stranger?"
"I've kept him on ice, waiting for someone to claim him. But I can't leave him there much longer in this weather. It's time to put him under. I don't know what else to do with him."
I thought of Tearle, the outcast of two worlds, trapped in one even after death, about to be given a stranger's grave in the other. "Let me see him," I begged without thinking: His face was all I had of Corbet. I felt Blane's surprise, raised my eyes to meet his sudden suspicion. I added lamely, "I feel sorry for him. He died so young in a place where no one knows him."
"Rois - "
"There's nothing more I can tell you. But he can't just go into his grave without anyone sparing him a thought. He died beside me; I may have been asleep, but at least he wasn't entirely alone. I suppose you could say that of anyone around here, I knew him best."
"I suppose you could say that." I heard other things in Blane's even voice, questions that he would have to take to his own grave, because I would never answer them. He turned; I followed him through the inner room, and out the back door into sunlight. The stone icehouse, big enough to hold a coffin or two, windowless and with only one door, looked as likely a vault as any. "Best stay outside a moment," Blane suggested as he unlatched the door. "He's surrounded by ice and stone, but sometimes, when the weather changes, things get in . . ."
He stood there in the doorway without moving, without speaking, for a long time, letting the place air out, I thought, while I watched some birds fly north over Ley Gett in his field furrowing south. Then I looked at the apothecary's back. Still he hadn't moved; he might have been turned to stone.
"What is it?"
He didn't hear me. I went to the door finally and saw what he saw in the clear spring light.
The man lying there had long grey hair and a strong, aged face marked with all the lines and shadows of one who had traveled his way through human time. I recognized him; a ghost of his beauty lingered, in the graceful bones of cheek and jaw, in his hands. Tears of wonder stung my eyes: He was no longer spellbound. She could not hold him, or she no longer wanted him; she had relinquished him to time.
I didn't know I had stopped breathing until I took a breath again. "If you ask the oldest in the village," I said shakily, "they'll probably tell you who he is."
"I'm sure they will." I had never heard Blane's voice so dry. "And I'm sure you won't." I said nothing. He closed the door gently, so not to wake the dead. "The stranger we found in Lynn Hall died of natural causes, and I'll swear that on my father's bones to anyone who asks. Whatever haunted Lynn Hall has exacted its price. Enough is enough. I'll bury him tonight in an unnamed grave. If he's still around."
I heard Nial Lynn's voice out of the past: No one will know you when you die ... Even your gravestone will stand silent ... My skin prickled. They had all been true, as Corbet said, all the curses. Except that I had known Tearle, I had seen ... I had changed that curse at least, in spite of Nial Lynn; his son's unmarked stone would speak its tale to me.
I left Tearle Lynn at least in peace, but I still couldn't bring myself to go back to the wood. It seemed a shadow world I was afraid to return to, even in memory-not alone, not without Corbet. And I didn't know if I would ever see him again, outside of the dream where I had left him. Maybe, I thought, that's where he had always been. So my dream had told me in the end.
And then one morning I opened my window to the soft air, and heard the familiar sound of hammering from within the wood. I stared, stunned, across the sunlit green. I thought of Laurel, and my throat closed. I whirled, not knowing what to do, and bumped into her as she came in to find me.
She held my shoulders. "It's all right, Rois. I knew he was back."
"When-? How-?" I could not speak. He had not come to find me; I might not know this stranger who had returned to Lynn Hall. Everything had happened; maybe nothing had happened. A man rebuilding his house had gone away in winter and returned in spring.
"He sent me
a letter. He asked Salish to give it to our father. He read it and gave it to me. He-"
"When?"
"A few days ago. He must have gotten people to work for him again. Salish said all those wild stories about him came down to nothing but a stranger falling ill during a storm and wandering into Lynn Hall." She paused, the faint, anxious line appearing between her brows. "Rois you're not still-"
"No." I shook my head quickly. "No." That seemed a lie, but so did "yes"; I did not know in what dream I might still love him. "I'm just startled. Go on."
"So was I. I wanted time to think-that's why I didn't tell you. Then I realized that there wasn't very much left of anything to think about."
"What did he say?"
"That he had had to leave unexpectedly in the middle of that storm. There were urgent family matters. And then someone died. He had no time to send a message. Later, he began to realize that he might never be able to come back, and there seemed no way to tell me that. That's what he wrote. I'm not sure what he meant. He could not find a way to return here until winter's end. He said that he hoped some day I would forgive his silence, as well as any trouble he had caused. He said he understood that might not be easy."
"Have you?"
"What?"
"Forgiven him?"
She was silent a little; I watched the blood rise in her face. She smiled the dancing, sunlit smile she teased Perrin with, and I hugged her suddenly.
"You're going to marry Perrin."
"He found a way to forgive me."
"And Corbet?"
"I don't seem to have room to remember being hurt," she answered simply. "He said that if I ever wanted to see him as a friend, I should write to him, but that he wouldn't come here without permission. I'm glad you're not angry with me, Rois."
"For what?"
"For not listening to you. For causing you and Perrin and our father so much grief. You were right all the time. I should have waited for spring."
McKillip, Patricia A - Winter Rose Page 19
