Winter Rose

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  So I roamed the wild wood, far from the sound of axes and hammers and voices, and waited for him to come to us.

  He did finally, in civilized fashion, riding down the road after supper one evening on his buttermilk mare, carrying a handful of roses that had not been stifled by vines in the old garden for Laurel and me, and a bottle of fine port from the inn for my father. He had not accounted for Perrin, but he gave him a handshake and a friendly smile, and sat with us on the stone porch, as we always did, watching the day slowly bloom into night.

  That’s how it always seemed to me: not the fading of a withered flower, but the opening of some dark, rich blossom, with unexpected hues and heady scents. I sat to one side of Laurel on the steps; Perrin sat between her and our father on the long bench. Corbet dropped onto the steps, near my father, his body turned a little, as mine was, so that he could see both us and the fading colors in the sky. In the twilight, his pale hair and loose white shirt were vaguely visible. The rest of us were hardly clearer. Our father was a scent of pipe smoke, a burly shape; Laurel was a wing of white, now and then, when she lifted her hand to brush away an insect, and the light cloth of her sleeve glided on air. Perrin was a voice, a faint scent of hay and sweat, for he had come as usual straight from the fields. I don’t know what I was: a voice, a pair of eyes, watching that pale head turned toward me, toward Laurel, toward our father, toward the night.

  Then our father called Beda, and she brought us fat beeswax candles, and cups and my father’s brandy. Fire streaked the dark; moths flew toward the flames, dancing around them, compelled and doomed, until fire touched them and they dropped like autumn leaves.

  Light and shadow slid randomly over our faces as we talked: now revealing one eye and concealing the other, now stroking clear a straight jawline, now hiding a smile or a little anxious frown. As the brandy passed, questions came more easily.

  “So you are to be married,” Corbet said, looking from Laurel to Perrin. His head turned; shadow masked his eyes, but his smile remained. “Next spring?”

  “It does seem long,” Laurel said, answering the question in his voice. “But Perrin and I have known each other all our lives, and there’s no reason for haste. I want to savor the expectation.”

  “With every stitch in every fine sheet,” I teased.

  “Yes, and lace on every garment. Also, Perrin has been building a cottage for us behind his parents’ house, so we’ll have a place of our own.”

  “You live with them?” Corbet asked Perrin.

  “They’re getting on,” Perrin said easily. “My father still milks—he loves his cows. But I take care of the fields and even some of the milking; his hands are getting stiff. My mother cooks; my older sister does everything else for them. So you see, there’s not much privacy.”

  “I see.”

  “And the house will go to my sister, if she doesn’t marry, though most of the farm will go to me. I’d as soon have a place of our own. I’ll build onto it, as we have children. But building takes its time—you know that.”

  “Yes.” Corbet swallowed apple brandy. “This is wonderful.”

  “It’s my grandfather’s secret, the making of it,” our father said, and Laurel swiftly caught up the thread.

  “Did they know each other? Your father and Corbet’s grandfather?”

  My father was silent a moment, his brows knit, either trying to remember or straining to be tactful. Corbet said lightly, “Everyone knows everyone, here.”

  “I think,” our father said finally, “they did not get along.”

  We all laughed. Corbet, his head bowed so that his hair shone and his face slipped into shadow, said ruefully, “What a reputation the man had. Even his dog hated him, I’ve heard.”

  We were all silent then, questions trembling along the weave of fire and night between us: Why was he so hated? Why did his son kill him? What was the curse? How did your father die? Who are you?

  “Why?” I asked finally, and his face turned to me, fire catching in his eyes.

  He said slowly, “My father told me some things when I was almost too young to understand. He must have told my mother more; I never asked her. She was very beautiful and wealthy, and she married my father despite his cursed past. I have wanted all my life to come to this place.”

  “Why?” Laurel echoed softly. He turned to her, his eyes again in shadow.

  “I don’t know,” he said simply. “Perhaps it is the land.”

  “Or perhaps the curse,” I murmured; he heard, but did not look at me.

  “Perhaps,” he breathed. Then he smiled suddenly and sipped brandy. “But I am too busy to worry about tales, and if I am cursed, what can I do about it? Throw myself off my roof to avoid it?”

  Our father chuckled. “There’s the crux of the matter. What can you do? Wearing your grandfather’s face, you’ve stirred up some very old memories. But those who remember have few teeth left, and their minds are full of old bracken and fallen leaves. By spring—unless you provide us with something as colorful as your father did—we’ll have other things to bark at.”

  “Laurel’s wedding,” Corbet suggested.

  “There’s always something.”

  “Except,” I said, “that we will always be secretly watching for that curse to befall you.”

  “Well,” he sighed, “I hope it doesn’t befall before I get the roof up.”

  He rose then, leaving us, I thought, no wiser than before. But as he said good night to Laurel, I saw his eyes again, and suddenly I no longer knew what time might bring: a wedding or a curse or even another season. The night flower had opened all around us, with its dark, elusive colors and rich scents, holding us in its ancient mysteries.

  Four

  Summer ended between one breath and another, it seemed. One morning the first golden leaves appeared among the green. Then a tree flamed into crimson. The fields were stubbled gold, morning mists hanging over them, burned away slowly by the sun. Hot, blue summer sky slowly turned the deeper blue of autumn, as if it reflected, from another country, cold northern lakes and storms that did not touch us yet. I found great cobwebs everywhere, hung like chandeliers with prisms of dew. I brought home nuts and apples and bright sprays of leaves for Laurel. I found elderberries and juniper berries for Beda, and every kind of mushroom, until she asked, as she did every year, if I was trying to poison them all and inherit the lot. But the distorted shapes and unexpected colors of mushrooms fascinated me; I prowled through shadows and under bracken looking for them. They were ancient, wild things. No two were ever alike, and they had no roots to tie them to one place; like curiosity, they wandered everywhere. So did I, that brief, rich season between summer heat and autumn rain, when the light took its shades of gold from the dying leaves.

  Though my father continued his dour predictions, Crispin refused to vanish as his wedding day grew closer. I saw him now and then, mortaring stones into place at the hall, or pulling them raw from Corbet’s fields. I saw Corbet many times from a distance. I could not keep away from the wood. I found blackberries hanging huge and sweet on the brambles, still tasting of the summer sun. Beda baked them into pies flavored with a nip of apple brandy. I gathered rosehips and the last of the roses to dry their petals from the garden behind the hall. Corbet waved to me from his rooftop, balanced on a beam. I watched him, breathless, but he did not fall. Leaves drifted down into the open rooms, and windblown seeds, preparing to reclaim what he had cleared. But he had his wish at least: Two rooms would be whole before the rains came. He could leave the inn and live in the hall his father had left fifty-two winters before.

  Winter would trap him there, and we were his closest neighbors. I envisioned him riding his horse through the snow to find fire and human company, Laurel and me and our father’s apple brandy. Laurel would be sewing lace onto a sleeve and thinking of Perrin; Perrin would be softly playing the flute, and I would…

  What? The question perplexed me, and made me restless. Woodland creatures did not fare well in winter
. I had to wear shoes, I was enclosed by walls. Laurel told me I was impossible in winter; I might as well hibernate bearlike in solitude until I could be human again. What would Corbet do, I wondered, deprived of light, with only the shadowy greens of juniper and yew to break a wilderness of white?

  I found a perfect ring of mushrooms one afternoon, beside the hidden well. Of course I stepped into it; what else can you do? My feet were bare, dirty, and scratched from blackberry brambles; my pockets sagged with chestnuts. I wanted to see what there was to see within the ring, and what I saw then, walking toward me among the burning trees, seemed both the last thing and the one thing I expected.

  He looked amazed, too; perhaps only at the sight of a grown woman standing barefoot in the middle of a ring of mushrooms. He spoke first; I couldn’t find my voice.

  “Where are you going?”

  It was such a strange question that I could barely answer; I was not moving, he was.

  “Corbet.” My voice shook slightly. “You’re not working.”

  “In a sense.” He looked at me a moment longer, blinking. Then he turned, and pushed aside the dying roses to reveal the well. “I’m looking for water. The old spring is dry.”

  I caught my breath. Had he seen me, that midsummer afternoon, kneeling motionless beside the well, water spiraling down my wrist, as I watched him walk out of light? Or had he smelled water like an animal? I had lived all my life without finding it until the day I saw him. He glanced vaguely toward me, at the sound I made.

  “This is too far from the house. But if it comes from that direction…”

  “How did you find it?”

  He looked straight at me then, his brows lifted slightly in surprise. He had seen me, I thought, dazed. He hadn’t… His eyes dropped then to a line of stones that branched away from the well. Moss clung to them; they were damp from the water running silently beneath them. They wandered between tree roots toward the house, charting the flow for a little ways, and then the water ran deep and left no hint of itself above ground.

  Corbet made a move to follow, then paused. His shirt was loose, stained with dirt and sweat; his skin glistened with sweat. He shifted the rose vines again, carelessly; a thorn left a red weal down his wrist. He knelt beside the well and thrust both hands into it, drawing water to his mouth, his face, his dusty hair, splashing until his wet shirt clung to him, and the thick rose vines slid over his back as if to draw him deeper into the well.

  He pulled himself free and stood finally, wiping water from his eyes, running his fingers through his hair, pushing it back. He saw me staring at him, and smiled a little. Gold leaves drifted down around him. I felt blood beat suddenly in my throat. His eyes changed; something as subtle as a change of light slid over them, and they grew opaque. He moved, and then I did, taking half an aimless step; I could not remember why I had come there, or where I had wanted to go.

  “Can you use it?” I asked awkwardly, and he looked a question. “The well?”

  He shook his head. “Pity,” he said. “It’s very sweet. It tastes of roses.”

  “I know.”

  He smiled again, his eyes still secret, like the well, which, suddenly, was no longer there. “Yes,” he said softly. “You would know. You are drawn to secrets.” He turned. “I must get back to work.”

  I watched him until he disappeared into the constant, gentle fall of leaves. Then I looked down and saw that the ring I stood in was also disappearing beneath the golden leaves.

  I stepped out of it and went to the well. I slid apart the dying roses, and watched my reflection for a long time, until the faint rings and ripples he had left broke against the stones and faded, and the water grew calm, only trembling slightly with the hidden spring that fed it.

  I went home then, still feeling strange, as if I had stepped between two worlds, and had forgotten which I had come to and which I had left. I shook the chestnuts out of my pockets in the kitchen, then took one outside to peel and eat. I sat down on the steps, dropped shell slowly. The sun still hung high above the horizon; I saw Perrin and my father in a distant field, cutting the dry cornstalks down.

  Laurel came out to join me. She stood on the porch a moment, silently, watching the men in the field. Then she sat down beside me, and gave a little sigh. She said, “They’re so alike, those two.”

  “Maybe that’s why you love him. Nothing needs to change.”

  She was silent again. I saw Corbet bent over the well, gold leaves falling around him, roses clinging to him, stars of water catching light, spilling over him, falling back into deep water.

  “I saw Corbet,” I said, wanting his name in my mouth. “In the wood.”

  She made a noise of interest or disinterest; I couldn’t tell which. She said at a tangent, “Crispin will invite him to the wedding.”

  I hadn’t thought so far. “Will he go?”

  “He should. He could lay a few rumors to rest. It would be neighborly, which his grandfather, apparently, was not.”

  I nodded. The entire village had been invited to the wedding, despite the reasons for it. It was autumn; we needed something merry and mindless before the world grew bleak. There were a number of bets, I heard, that wouldn’t be settled until Crispin stood meekly beside Aleria and pledged her his lifelong devotion.

  “Nobody,” I commented, “is betting that the bride will run.”

  “Not everyone is as restless as you. Where would she run to, anyway, with a child coming?”

  “She should run. How long will Crispin stay faithful to those gooseberry eyes?”

  Laurel gave me a little push with her hand. “Rois. Are you jealous? Did you want him?”

  I laughed, looking down at my bare, dirty feet. “I suppose I haven’t much better to offer him.”

  “You do look like a wild thing…” She thought a moment, her arms clasped across her knees, her face resting on them as she studied me. “Rois,” she said again, softly. “We’ll make you into a rose for Aleria’s wedding. There’s that dusky rose dress of our mother’s with the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons down the front. You must find some roses in the wood—”

  “They’re all but dead by now.”

  “Find them. I’ll put them in your hair, which will be coiled into a crown on top of your head, instead of flying behind you catching gnats.” She straightened suddenly, smiling. “You’ll be beautiful—no one will recognize you.”

  I grumbled something. But what I thought was: Corbet. He would forget about the barefoot, disheveled woman standing like a wild child in a ring of mushrooms. I would make his eyes change when he looked at me, and this time he would not turn away.

  “I’ll find roses,” I said breathlessly. “Yes.”

  Two weeks later, we stood on the green among the villagers, listening to Crispin’s sheepish vows and Aleria’s firm ones, while trees burned all around us against a clear sky that held within it all the shadowy blues of winter. Gamblers exchanged wry glances as the brief ceremony ended; I wondered how many coins and kegs, tools and hunting dogs, had changed owners in that moment. The couple kissed, and other, private bets were made: How long would it be before he…before she… They parted, turned and smiled, Aleria’s hand resting calmly on her small, mute future. We cheered, and the music began.

  We ate roast pig and corn, salads and breads of all description; we drank ale and wine and apple cider. The bride cut a cake dense with apples and nuts, and so redolent of our father’s brandy that you could fall over, Perrin said, just from the fumes. He looked handsome, in a white shirt Laurel had made for him, his dark hair neatly trimmed, his harvest stubble finally shaved. When we finished eating, he swung Laurel into the dancing. She wore autumn red, which brought out the light in her chestnut hair, and the smoke in her grey eyes. She laughed up at Perrin as she whirled, lithe and slender in his arms, and beside me, our father said wistfully, “Your mother and I danced like that once.”

  “Then you can do it again,” I said, and pulled him among the dancers. He protested, but stay
ed. I watched over his shoulder, saw the eyes that watched me, surprised and curious and smiling, but none of them with that surprise, that smile. Corbet had come, but late, and I had caught only glimpses of him—a flash of light hair, an ivory shirt sleeve flowing in a gesture, a tankard upraised in his hand.

  “You look like her, in that dress,” our father told me shyly, unaccustomed to complimenting me. He added, as I stepped on his foot, “You don’t dance like her.”

  “I haven’t had her practice,” I said amiably. I had a circlet of wild roses around my coiled hair, and my best grey kid shoes with buckles on my feet. It was only a matter of time before he saw me.

  Then I saw him, dancing with the bride who, torn between smiling at him and watching her feet, finally gave up on her feet and watched his eyes. They talked as they danced; I watched them both, wondering what he said. The music ended; he loosed her. I kept a firm hold on my father, whose eye was wandering toward the ale.

  “It’s a young man’s work,” he complained, but my sister had done her work too well: The young men did not know what to make of me. My father’s feet were younger than his head; they spun me into circles until I felt my hair begin to slide, and a rose fell past my shoulder to my feet.

  I crushed it in a step. Then someone stopped us, and my father, laughing and panting, yielded me into Corbet’s arms.

  “You look lovely,” he said lightly. “A Rois among dandelions.” I smiled up at him, but his eyes were elsewhere, caught by something over my shoulder: the color of a skirt, or maybe the fiddler’s bowing. He added, before I could speak, “It’s a pleasant afternoon for a wedding. Everyone looks unfamiliar, especially Crispin. I’m used to seeing him working with his shirt off and his hair dangling to his nose.”

  “That’s an unfamiliar sight itself,” I said. “Crispin working.” Then I saw Corbet with his wet shirt clinging to his body, the skin golden and muscular beneath, and I felt the quick blood beat in my fingers touching his shoulder, his bare hand. His eyes came back to me, as if he felt something pass between our hands. I did not know, until then, that you could disappear into someone’s gaze, that bone and heart and breath could melt like shadow into light, until only light was left. “Corbet—” I did not know whose voice spoke, whose heart beat so violently, whose fingers shifted from his shoulder to the bare skin beneath his hair.