Solstice Wood

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  Down on the pond-bottom, I didn’t want anyone. I wanted to be left alone.

  I smelled something. It smelled like a memory, which is why I opened my eyes. The Undine-thing was gone. I was alone except for the teasing smell, light and sweet, like grass or trees but with a few wildflowers thrown in. It meant something really good, but I couldn’t remember what. It lingered under my nose, while I searched for it in my past. A girl’s perfume? The smell of a store where I’d gotten a special present? Then I saw her.

  She wasn’t the butterfly girl, or the Undine-thing. At first I saw her sideways, the way I was lying; she stood so still she seemed unreal, not breathing, not blinking, just standing in a pool of light and watching me. I sat up on my knees to see better.

  After a moment I realized my mouth was hanging open. I closed it, still staring up at her. She looked like she was made of gold. Her skin and hair were ivory-gold, like the honeycomb Grandpa Liam had shown me in the wood. Colors seemed to flow around her, little silky drifts and ribbons of green and purple and blue, red and orange, yellow, ivory and gold, like she carried her own private breezes with her. I wanted to look at her forever. I didn’t know anyone could be that beautiful and still be real.

  Maybe she wasn’t, I thought then, but I didn’t care. Something about her felt old, like a boulder, or a tree when it’s watched the sun and the moon rise for a century or two. Quiet inside, like it’s got all the time in the world.

  She smiled and came to me. She knelt at the edge of the sheepskin, so that she could look straight into my eyes. She lifted her hand, touched my cheek with her long, delicate finger. I smelled that light sweetness again, and I wondered dizzily if it was the scent of her I remembered, in the air on a long-ago summer day, that had made me feel something brilliant was about to happen.

  “Tyler,” she said.

  “Hah,” I said. My mouth was hanging open again. She was so close, I saw my reflection in her eyes.

  “I made all this for you. So that you would be happy. You aren’t happy.”

  “I’m—I’m—” Nothing useful would come out.

  “There is rose-scented water for you to wash with, a pool full of warm, crystal water just outside if you want to bathe. The bed is for you; you don’t have to cling to this little island of sheep wool. Don’t be afraid. Nothing will hurt you.”

  “I’m not afraid,” I whispered. Her eyes were green, like new spring leaves. Like Undine’s, almost, but full of light. “Who are you?”

  Her smile deepened. “No one ever asks. No one ever has to. You know me. And I know this all seems a little strange to you, but you need do nothing except breathe my summer air, lie in the light, eat fruits and the finest bread and savory meats and sweetmeats, drink the purest of waters. You are my guest; you may have anything in my house you desire. Anything under my sky. Come. Take off your heavy shoes, feel summer beneath your feet. Come out and hear the birds sing. Or stay here and my musicians will play music while you rest.” I didn’t see her reach for it, but the gold cup was in her hand, and she held it out to me. “Drink. It’s just cold, fresh water, sweeter than the rarest of wines.” I lifted my hand, touched the cup. She breathed, “Drink.”

  I smelled the water just before I took the cup. Then I felt it again: the cold, dark, swift plunge into memory, the dank heaviness seeping through me again. I slumped back on my knees, while all the color and richness around me grew suddenly meaningless, worthless, nothing anybody could really want.

  “No, thanks,” I mumbled, and curled up again on my damp, smelly island. I shut my eyes and made her go away. There was an odd clink, as if the gold cup had fallen, or a word coming out of her had changed into something metallic before it hit the floor. Then even her scent was gone. I dug back into my underwater murk, wrapped myself in mud and memories, and hid there.

  14

  Iris

  I called Owen when Sylvia followed Leith Rowan into the wood and didn’t come back. They might have just walked together over to the nursery to visit with Dorian; it could be that simple. But she would have called to tell me. Other than that, I couldn’t imagine. I refused to. All those broken threads in the quilt had set a chill in my heart. Doorways unguarded, windows and chimneys wide open to any passing power— and now the heir to Lynn Hall had gone out for a moment, four hours earlier, and no telling by now in what world that moment was measured.

  “Owen,” I said, when I heard his polite, unencouraging greeting. “Is Sylvia over there with Dorian?”

  I heard his breath check. Then he grunted slightly, acknowledging my question, without wasting time on entire words. I waited.

  “She’s not here,” he said when he came back to the phone. “Dorian is in the nursery with customers. She hasn’t seen Sylvia today. Why?”

  “She followed Leith Rowan into the wood to talk to him for a moment, she said. That was four hours ago.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  He hung up before I could tell him I didn’t want him over here; I wanted him to go searching the hollow up Blue Bear Creek, where generations of Rowans lived farther back than anyone else went in those ancient mountains. Dorian and Leith. I’d heard their names coupled more than a few times in the past season. Owen would know by now on what lost branch of the creek, what offshoot of the twisty mountain roads Leith lived.

  Tyler was drifting through the kitchen, looking wistful, though he’d eaten his way through leftover vegetable soup and a quarter of a loaf of oatmeal bread a couple of hours before.

  “Sit down,” I said, and gave him some milk and cherry-chocolate cookies. He started at the crack of the screen door; Owen hadn’t wasted any time. Tyler started again, nearly spilling his milk, when Owen came through the door and looked at him. The boy had grown delicate overnight, it seemed, skittish as a fawn. Love, I supposed, had wrought its changes, though I’d never seen it give anyone the appetite of a young vulture before.

  Owen looked a trifle stunned, at least for him: his eyes widened and he was rendered mute by the clean, tucked-in shirt, the tied shoelaces, the slicked-down green hair.

  “Hello, Mr. Avery,” Tyler said politely, and offered a gift: “Would you like a cookie? They’re awesome.”

  “Ah,” Owen said. “No.” He added, not to be outdone in manners, “Thank you, Tyler.” He dragged his eyes off the boy finally and looked at me. Here? he asked silently. Or some place private? Tyler solved the problem, picking up his milk and cookies and taking them into the den; I heard the door close. Owen gave me an incredulous stare.

  “It’s all right,” I told him. “He’s in love.”

  “What?”

  “That’s why he’s so peculiar. Judith Coyle.”

  Owen closed his eyes and pressed fingers against his brows, murmuring something, a habit he’d acquired to clear his thoughts.

  “One thing at a time,” he said, emerging again. “Sylvia. She went where?”

  “We were up in the attic,” I explained. “She saw Leith Rowan in my wood through Hurley’s telescope, and she went down to talk to him. I have no idea why. She said she’d be back in a moment. You must know where Leith lives.”

  “Why would she go there?” he demanded.

  It wasn’t like him to ask unnecessary questions. “How would I know?” I asked him back. “I just want to know where she is.”

  “Why would she—” he started again, then stopped, stood thinking.

  “And another thing,” I told him. “That quilt I made years ago, each pattern guarding an entry into the house—” He nodded, fixing me with one of those ponderous, inexpressive gazes. “Well, the mice got at it who knows how long ago, and if there’s an unbroken pattern anywhere on it, I didn’t notice.”

  “Are you telling me this entire house is unguarded?”

  “No. I’ve added other guards to its passageways through the years. But those patterns guarded everything—every window and door, every flue, every water pipe, even Hurley’s skylight, which I added to the quilt when he put it in. The only t
hing I didn’t think to guard were mouseholes. Do you know where Leith lives? Can you go there and find out if Syl is with him, or if he saw her at all, or if she just—” Just walked out of the world. I shied away from saying that. “If he knows anything.”

  “I’ll find him,” Owen promised. He hesitated for some reason, finally added, “I think you should come with me.”

  “Why? How could I follow if you have to hike up a stream or a hillside? Anyway, what if Sylvia calls, needing me?”

  He glanced at the closed door of the den, and then back at me, looking oddly uncertain. “Then why don’t you call some of the guild members and have them come over and get the quilt? They can work on different patterns, get it back together as soon as possible.”

  “It’s closing the barn door,” I grumbled. But it was an idea, so I said I would. “Call me,” I added. “You have one of those pocket phones, like Sylvia. She might come back here while you’re out there, and I can let you know.”

  For some reason, that made him laugh. “Cell phone,” he said. “I’ll leave you the number, but there’s probably better reception on the moon than anywhere a Rowan lives.”

  Whatever that meant. “Just hurry,” I said, and he left.

  I had just lifted the phone to call Jane when Tyler opened the kitchen door again. I dialed Jane’s number, watching him walk over to the cookie jar and dip into it. Jane’s phone rang. Tyler’s hand emerged, stuffed with cookies, I saw with the kind of ungrudging awe the aged yield to the young when they perform their careless miracles: walking barefoot across a rain forest, somersaulting on a skateboard, surfing down the Amazon, consuming an entire pepperoni pizza.

  Then I saw his shadow.

  His arm crossed a shaft of sunlight as he put the lid back on the cookie jar. In that trifle of time, the shadow of his skinny arm dwindled even more, grew knobby, misshapen; his fingers looked like a handful of twigs, and more than anyone human could use. Of course I stared; I couldn’t control that. But he was busy wrapping the cookies in a napkin, so he didn’t meet my eyes for that second: he didn’t see in my expression how the sudden terror prickled painfully across my shoulders, and I could feel my hair blanch a shade whiter than it already was.

  Then he raised his eyes and smiled at me, and a voice said in my ear, “Jane Sloan.”

  “What?” I had forgotten about her. The Tyler-thing’s smile faded a little; I saw the sudden wariness in its eyes, a darker, wet-moss green spilling into them.

  “You called me,” Jane boomed irritably. “Who is this?”

  As always, her voice stiffened my backbone, put some starch into my expression. I managed a pinched smile at the Tyler-face and a frown at the phone at the same time.

  “Jane,” I barked back. “It’s Iris.” I flapped a shooing hand at the changeling, who, reassured, began its sidle toward me and the door. I opened it, gave the passing shoulder a couple of gingerly pats, feeling for unfamiliar knots and bumps, then closed the door firmly.

  “Iris!” She made an effort, considering my bereavement. “How are you? What can I do for you?”

  I had a sudden vision of the strange twig-child clinging to the other side of the door like some weird insect, its ear growing hollow and crusted with bark to hear us.

  I toned down my own regal register. “Jane. Can you come over?”

  “What? I can hardly hear you.”

  “I need your opinion about a quilt. It’s been up in the attic too long.”

  “Guilt? You have something guilty in your attic?”

  “Quilt!”

  “A guilty quilt? What is that? Some antique local expression I’ve missed? You mean as in—” I heard her suck in air with excitement. “Iris. You couldn’t have—”

  My voice spilled out again, probably shook the changeling off the door. “Jane, don’t be ridiculous! This is about threads, not beds! Just, please, come over.”

  “Well, of course, I would, but Agatha isn’t here to drive me.”

  “Call Joe Barnes. Better yet, call Penelope. Bring Miranda or Lacey if they’re not busy. I need all the opinions I can get.”

  “Have you called Owen?” she asked practically.

  “I’ve sent him on another errand.”

  She paused, finally impressed. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I hung up, listened for a breath, then realized that my listening was probably audible, and opened the door abruptly, as though I were running errands myself. The hall was empty. But light from the open porch door showed me a pool of cookie crumbs, like fairy dust, outside the kitchen door, that continued in a line across the floor underneath the closed door of the den.

  I stared at it, my mouth dry, and wished, suddenly, desperately, for Owen. Or Sylvia—she might not know what to do with a changeling, or even her unpredictable grandmother, but her instincts were sound, and there was a comfortingly fat waffle tread on the sole of her boots.

  The phone rang.

  I felt my old bones try to reshape themselves for a breath, before I pulled myself together and picked up the phone, hoping for Owen again.

  “Yes.”

  “Ms. Lynn?” a man said.

  I rubbed my eyes, answered impatiently, “Yes, what?”

  “This is Tarrant Coyle. I was hoping I could come by and speak to you for a moment.”

  I hung up, which was the only thing I wanted to say to Tarrant Coyle. Then I went back up to the attic to get Hurley to help me bring the quilt down.

  He’d been up there for hours, trying to get his new platform balanced properly so that it wouldn’t scrape the floorboards when he turned it. I’d sent what I thought was Tyler up earlier with a sandwich for him; I wondered grimly which one of them had eaten it. There was an empty plate on the floor beside the platform, and Hurley, aiming his lens at the woods, showed no sign of falling over from hunger.

  “Have you seen Sylvia?” I asked him.

  “She’s with Leith,” he said, with such lucid idiocy that I nearly exploded.

  Yes, she’s with Leith! I wanted to rage at him. She’s been with Leith for four hours and counting, and whatever wood she’s in I would bet your addled old head that it’s not the wood under your nose. And what, will somebody please explain to me, is she doing with any Rowan for four hours in any wood anywhere?

  I just said tersely, as I opened the cedar chest, “Hurley, come and help me with this. I need to take it downstairs. I’ll trip over it if I try to do it myself.”

  “Certainly, Iris,” Hurley said obligingly. But I had to wait, while something in the trees distracted him. I heard footsteps on the stairs and closed my eyes tightly, hoping for Sylvia, or Owen, or even Jane, limping up without her walker.

  But it was the changeling, smiling brightly as it came in.

  “Gram,” it said to me, and nodded to Hurley, who had absently turned the telescope to peer at it. “Grunc. I came to help.”

  It must have run out of cookies. “Good,” I said, and piled the quilt into its arms. Hurley had completely forgotten to help; he’d even forgotten to move, just stood there watching us through the telescope.

  The changeling asked, over the drooping hillock of quilt, “Where do you want it?”

  “In the big room full of furniture, on a couch.”

  It turned, paused at the top of the stairs to look back. “Are there more cookies?”

  “I’ll make you more,” I promised, and it disappeared down the steps. I closed the cedar chest, thinking wearily that the Tyler-thing could disappear out the back door and into the wood with that quilt for all the good those broken patterns would do any of us in either world.

  Hurley was still looking at me through the telescope. He asked cautiously, “Who was that?”

  “I haven’t a clue.” I heard a car coming down the driveway, then. Hurley, distracted again, trained the telescope on it. I asked tightly, “Who is it?”

  A car door slammed. “Jane Sloan,” he said tonelessly.

  I sighed. “Good.”

  An
other door slammed. “And Miranda. And Lacey.” His voice brightened at the sound of the last slam. “And Penelope,” he announced, emerging at last from behind his lens and smiling at the thought.

  The Starr sisters wore their gold and pearls, their silk twin-sets with midcalf skirts. It was nearly check-in time at the bed-and-breakfast, I remembered, even as Penelope said, after she had shoved open the front door, “I’m just dropping everyone off; we’re expecting guests any moment.”

  I stared at her hair. It seemed to glitter, like fairy-tale hair, with threads of white-gold in the honey-gold. She flushed a little, adding pink to the mix.

  “How did you do that?”

  “I streaked it this morning before breakfast. Are you all right, Iris? Is there anything I can do before I go?”

  “Nothing that simple,” I said tersely, and her eyes widened a little.

  “Trouble?”

  I nodded. But I didn’t know where the changeling was, so I just said, “Lacey and Miranda can tell you later.”

  “Call me when you want to go home,” she said to them. She kissed my cheek and went back to the car. Jane, with her nose for it, had already started down the hall toward the trouble. A piece of it, anyway. We caught up with her, paced ourselves to the walker, which she whipped along in her no-nonsense fashion quickly enough when she sensed something unsavory ahead. She came to a complete stop in the doorway of what I still thought of as Meredith’s drawing room. The changeling had put the quilt where I had asked, spread out on one of the couches. We all looked at it, unable to get past Jane’s walker.

  “Iris,” she barked. “Is that—Is that what I think—”

  “Yes,” I said wearily.

  “Well, how in the world did you let it get into that condition?”

  “Mice got after it, I suppose. I thought I’d put it in a safe place.”