Red as Blood: or tales from the Sisters Grimmer

by Tanith Lee

  One morning she woke up singing, singing in her sleep. She learned presently she herself had invented the fragment of melody and the handful of harmonies. She worked on it alone, forgetting she was alone, since the music was with her. She did not tell him about the music until he asked her, and then she played it to him.

  She was only ashamed very occasionally, and then it was not a cerebral, rather a hormonal thing. A current of some fluid nervous element would pass through her, and she would recall Levin, Lyra, Joya. Eventually something must happen, for all that happened now was aside from life, unconnected to it.

  She knew the Alien’s name by then. It had no earthly equivalents, and she could not write it, could not even say it; only think it. So she thought it.

  She loved him. She had done so from the first moment she had stood with him under the spring trees. She loved him with a sort of welcome, the way diurnal creatures welcome the coming of day.

  He must know. If not from her mind, then from the manner in which, on finding him, she would hurry toward him along the garden walks. The way she was when with him. The flowering of her creativity, her happiness.

  What ever would become of her?

  She sent her family three short noncommittal soothing letters, nothing compared to the bulk of their own.

  When the lawns near the house had altered to late summer, it was spring in the world and, as she had promised, Estár went to visit her father.

  3

  Buds like emerald vapor clouded the boughs of the woods beyond the house. The river rushed beneath, heavy with melted snows. It was a windless day, and her family had come out to meet Estár. Lyra, a dark note of music, smiling, Joya, smiling, both looking at her, carefully, tactfully, assessing how she would prefer to be greeted, not knowing. How could they? Joya was slim again. Her child had been born two weeks ago, a medically forward seven-month baby, healthy and beauteous—they had told her in a tape, the most recent of the ten tapes they had sent her, along with Lyra’s letters… Levin was standing by the house door, her father.

  They all greeted her, in fact, effusively. It was a show, meant to convey what they were afraid to convey with total sincerity.

  They went in, talking continuously, telling her everything. Lyra displayed a wonderful chamber work she and Ekosun, her lover, were at work on—it was obvious he had been staying with her here, and had gone away out of deference to Estár’s return, her need for solitary confinement with her family. Joya’s son was brought, looking perfectly edible, the color of molasses, opening on a toothless strawberry mouth and two wide amber eyes. His hair was already thick, the color of corn. “You see,” said Joya, “I know the father now, without a single test. This hair—the only good thing about him.”

  “She refuses even to let him know,” said Levin.

  “Oh, I will. Sometime. But the child will take my name, or yours, if you allow it.”

  They drank tea and ate cakes. Later there came wine, and later there came dinner. While there was food and drink, news to tell, the baby to marvel at, a new cat to play with—a white cat, with a long grey understripe from tail to chin-tip—a new picture to worship, Lyra’s music to be heard—while there was all this, the tension was held at bay, almost unnoticeable. About midnight, there came a lull. The baby was gone, the cat slept, the music was done and the picture had faded beyond the friendly informal candlelight. Estár could plead tiredness and go to bed, but then would come tomorrow. It must be faced sometime.

  “I haven’t,” she said, “really told you anything about where I’ve been.”

  Joya glanced aside. Lyra stared at her bravely.

  Levin said, “In fact, you have.”

  She had, he thought, told them a very great deal. She was strangely different. Not actually in any way he might have feared. Rather, she seemed more sure, quieter, more still, more absorbent, more favorably aware of them than ever in the past. One obvious thing, something that seemed the emblem of it all, the unexpected form of this change in her— her hair. Her hair now was a calm pale brown, untinted, no longer green.

  “What have I told you then?” she said, and smiled, not intending to, in case it should be a smile of triumph.

  “At least,” he said, “that we needn’t be afraid for you.”

  “No. Don’t be. I’m really rather happy.”

  It was Lyra who burst out, unexpectedly, shockingly, with some incoherent protest.

  Estár looked at her.

  “He’s—” she sought a word, selected one, “interesting. His world is interesting. I’ve started to compose music. Nothing like yours, not nearly as complex or as excellent, but it’s fulfilling. I like doing it. I shall get better.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Lyra. “I didn’t mean—it’s simply—”

  “That I shouldn’t be happy because the situation is so unacceptable. Yes. But it isn’t. I’d never have chosen to go there, because I didn’t know what it would entail. But, in fact, it’s exactly the sort of life I seem to need. You remember when I meant to go to Marsha? I don’t think I would have done as much good there as I’m doing here, for myself. Perhaps I even help him in some way. I suppose they must study us, benignly. Perhaps I’m useful.”

  “Oh, Estár,” Lyra said. She began to cry, begged their pardon and went out of the room, obviously disgusted at her own lack of finesse. Joya rose and explained she was going to look after Lyra. She too went out.

  “Oh dear,” said Estár.

  “It’s all right,” Levin said. “Don’t let it trouble you too much. Over-excitement. First a baby invades us, then you. But go on with what you were saying. What do you do on this mountain?”

  He sat and listened as she told him. She seemed able to express herself far better than before, yet even so he was struck by the familiarity rather than the oddness of her life with the alien. Really, she did little there she might not have done here. Yet here she had never done it. He pressed her lightly, not trusting the ice to bear his weight, for details of the being with whom she dwelled.

  He noticed instantly that, although she had spoken of him freely, indeed very often, in the course of relating other things, she could not seem to speak of him directly with any comfort. There was an embarrassment quite suddenly apparent in her. Her gestures became angular and her sentences dislocated.

  Finally, he braced himself. He went to the mahogany cabinet that was five hundred years old, and standing before it pouring a brandy somewhat younger, he said, “Please don’t answer this if you’d rather not. But I’m afraid I’ve always suspected that, despite all genetic, ethnic or social disparity, those they selected to live with them would ultimately become their lovers. Am I right, Estár?”

  He stood above the two glasses and waited.

  She said, “Nothing of that sort has ever been discussed.”

  “Do you have reason to think it will be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m not asking out of pure concern, nor out of any kind of prurient curiosity. One assumes, judging from what the others have said or indicated, that nobody has ever been raped or coerced. That implies some kind of willingness.”

  “You’re asking me if I’d be willing to be his lover?”

  “I’m asking if you are in love with him.”

  Levin turned with the glasses, and took her the brandy. She accepted and looked at it. Her face, even averted, had altered, and he felt a sort of horror. Written on her quite plainly was that look he had heard described—a deadly sorrow, a drawing inward and away. Then it was gone.

  “I don’t think I’m ready to consider that,” she said.

  “What is it,” he said, “that gives you a look of such deep pain?”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” she said.

  Merchant and diplomat, he turned the conversation at once, wondering if he were wrong to do so.

  They talked about something else.

  It was only much later, when they parted for the night, that he said to her, “Anything I
can do to help you, you’ve only to tell me.”

  And she remembered when he brought the rose and gave it to her, how he had said he loved her the best. She wondered if one always loved, then, what was unlike, incompatible.

  “This situation has been rather an astonishment to us all,” he added now. She approved of him for that, somehow. She kissed him good night. She was so much easier with him, as if estrangement had made them closer, which it had not.

  —

  Two weeks passed, Lyra and Joya laughed and did not cry. There were picnics, boat rides, air trips. Lyra played in live concert, and they went to rejoice in her. Things now seemed facile enough that Ekosun came back to the house, and after that a woman lover of Joya’s. They breakfasted and dined in elegant restaurants. There were lazy days too, lying on cushions in the communal rooms listening to music tapes or watching video plays, or reading, or sleeping late, Estár in her old rooms among remembered things that no longer seemed anything to do with her. The green rose of her summons, which would not die but which had something to do with her, had been removed.

  It was all like that now. A brightly colored interesting adventure in which she gladly participated, with which she had no link. The very fact that their life captivated her now was because of its—alienness. And her family, too. How she liked and respected them all at once, what affection she felt for them. And for the same reason.

  She could not explain it to them, and would be ill-advised to do so even if she could. She lied to herself, too, keeping her awareness out of bounds as long as she might. But she sensed the lie. It needed another glass of wine, or another chapter of her book, or a peal of laughter, always something, and then another thing and then another, to hold it off.

  At the end of two weeks her pretense was wearing thin and she was exhausted. She found she wanted to cry out at them: I know who you are! You are my dear friends, my dazzling idols—I delight in you, admire you, but I am sometimes uneasy with you. Now I need to rest and I want to go—

  Now I want to go home.

  And then the other question brushed her, as it must. The house on the mountain was her home because he (she wordlessly expressed his name) was there. And because she loved him. Yet in what way did she love him? As one loved an animal? A friend? A lord? A teacher? A brother? Or in the way Levin had postulated, with a lover’s love? And darkness would fall down on her mind and she would close the door on it. It was unthinkable.

  When she devised the first tentative move toward departure, there was no argument. They made it easy for her. She saw they had known longer than she that she wanted to leave.

  —

  “I almost forgot to give you these. I meant to the first day you came back. They’re fawn topaz, just the color your hair is now.”

  On Joya’s smoky palm, the stones shone as if softly alight.

  “Put your hair back, the way you had it at the concert, and wear them then.”

  “Thank you,” said Estár. “They’re lovely.”

  She reached toward the earrings and found she and her sister were suddenly holding hands with complete naturalness. At once she felt the pulse under Joya’s skin, and a strange energy seemed to pass between them, like a healing touch.

  They laughed, and Estár said unthinkingly, “But when shall I wear them on the mountain?”

  “Wear them for him,” said Joya.

  “For—”

  “For him,” said Joya again, very firmly.

  “Oh,” Estár said, and removed her hand.

  “No, none of us have been debating it when you were out of the room,” said Joya. “But we do know. Estár, listen to me, there’s truly nothing wrong in feeling emotion for this— for him, or even wanting him sexually.”

  “Oh really, Joya.”

  “Listen. I know you’re very innocent. Not ignorant, innocent. And there’s nothing wrong in that either. But now—”

  “Stop it, Joya.” Estár turned away, but the machines packing her bag needed no supervision. She stared helplessly at the walls. Joya would not stop.

  “There is only one obstacle. In your case, not culture or species. You know what it is. They way they look. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Estár. But this is the root of all your trouble, isn’t it?”

  “How do I know?” She was exasperated.

  “There is no way you can know. Unless you’ve seen him already, without that disguise they wear. Have you?”

  Estár said nothing. Her silence, obviously, was eloquent enough.

  “Go back then,” said Joya, “go back and make him let you see him. Or find some way to see him when he doesn’t realize you can. And then you will know.”

  “Perhaps I don’t want to know.”

  “Perhaps not. But you’ve gone too far.”

  “You’re trying to make me go too far. You don’t understand.”

  “Oh, don’t I?”

  Estár rounded on her, and furiously saw only openness.

  “You might possibly,” said Estár, “want to spoil—something—”

  “I might. But what does that matter? He—it—whatever the alien is, he’s real and living and male and you’re committed to him, and until you see him and know if you can bear it, how can you dare commit yourself?”

  “But they’re ugly,” Estár said flatly. The words, she found, meant very little.

  “Some humans are ugly. They can still be loved, loving.”

  “Suppose somehow I do see him—and I can’t think how I would be able to—and suppose then I can’t stand to look at him—”

  “Then your feelings will undergo some kind of alternate channeling. But the way you are now is absurd.”

  “Oh prithee, sweet sister,” Estár snarled, “let me be. Or, blameless one, throw thou the first stone.”

  Joya looked bemused. Then she said, “I did, didn’t I? Two of them. You caught them, too.”

  And went out of the room, leaving the brown topaz earrings in Estár’s hand.

  It was so simple to return in the end it was like being borne away by a landslide.

  All at once she was in a vehicle, the house flowing of! behind her to a minuscule dot, and so to nothing. Then she was alone and sat down with her thoughts to consider everything—and abruptly, before she was ready, the conical mountain loomed before her.

  There was a ghost of winter frost in the garden by the gate. Further on, the banana-yellow leaves were falling. She had seen many places anachronized by a weather control, yet here it seemed rather wonderful… for no reason at all.

  The blossom was gone from about the building, but roses had opened everywhere. Alien roses, very tall, the colors of water and sky, not the blood and blush, parchment, pallor and shadow shades of Earth. She walked through a wheatfield of roses and in at the doors.

  She went straight through all the intervening rooms and arrived in the suite the Alien called—had given her. There, she looked about her steadfastly. Even now, she was not entirely familiar with the suite, and unfamiliar with large sections of the house and gardenland.

  Under such circumstances, it was not possible to recognize this place as her home. Even if, intellectually, she did so.

  She wondered where he might be in the house. Surely he would know she had returned. Of course he would know. If she went out into her own garden, perhaps—

  A word was spoken. It meant “yes.” And although she did not know the word she knew its meaning for it had been spoken inside her head.

  She waited, trembling. How close they were, then, if he could speak to her in such a way. She had been probing, seeking for him, her intuitive telepathy now quite strong, and she had touched him, and in turn been touched. There was no sense of intrusion. The word spoken in her head was like a caress, polite and very gentle.

  So she went out into her garden, where is was beginning to be autumn now, and where the topiary craned black against the last of the day’s sunlight. He stood just beyond the trees, by the stone basin with the colored fish. A heron made of blue steel
balanced forever on the rim, peering downward, but the fish were sophisticated and unafraid of it, since it had never attacked them.

  Suppose it was this way with herself? There he stood, swathed, masked, hidden. He had never given her cause to fear him. But was that any reason not to?

  He took her hand; she gave her hand. She loved him, and was only frightened after all because he must know it. They began to talk, and soon she no longer cared that she loved him or that he knew.

  They discussed much and nothing, and it was all she had needed. She felt every tense string of her body and her brain relaxing. All but one. What Levin, her father, had hinted, what Lyra had shied away from saying and Joya said. Could he perceive and sense this thing in her thoughts? Probably. And if she asked, in what way would he put her off? And could she ask? And would she ask?

  When they dined that evening, high up in the orb of the roof, only the table lit, and the stars thickly clustered over the vanes above, she watched the molecules parting in his visor to accommodate cup or goblet or fork.

  Later, when they listened to the music of his planet, she watched his long hands, cloaked in their gauntlets, resting so quiet yet so animate on the arms of a chair they were like sleeping cats.

  Cat’s eyes. If she saw them would she scream with horror? Yes, for weeks her sleep had been full of dreams of him, incoherent but sexual dreams, dreams of desire. And yet he was a shadow. She dreamed of coupling in the dark, blind, unseeing. She could hate Joya for being so right.

  When the music ended, there came the slow turn of his head, and she beheld the graceful power of it, that concealed skull pivoted by that unseen neck. The cloaked hands flexed. The play of muscle ran down his whole body like a wave, and he had risen to his feet, in a miracle of coordinated movement.

  “You’re very tired, Estár,” he said.

  “But you know what I want to ask you.”

  “Perhaps only what you feel you should want to ask.”

  “To see you. As you are. It must happen, surely, if I live here with you.”

  “There’s no need for it to happen now. Sometimes, with those others like yourself who are the companions of my kind, it only happens after many years. Do you comprehend, Estár? You’re not bound to look at me as I am.”