Winter Rose

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  Then I heard his voice within the dream: Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me. Don’t.

  He stopped as abruptly as he had begun. His eyes sought Laurel; she stared at him, her face flushed, her eyes wide, startled, as if she had just seen him for the first time, stepping out of light.

  I felt the fear and wild grief flood through me. I would never see that kingdom; that song was not for me. As if he sensed my thoughts, his eyes flicked to me. Don’t, he said. Rois.

  He lowered the flute. “That’s the only song I know.”

  Our father moved finally, tapping his pipe, which had gone out. He seemed bemused, as if he had heard something, or seen something, but did not know what to call it, and was not certain that he liked it. “It takes you,” he said, but did not say where.

  “My mother taught it to me,” Corbet said. He put the flute back on the shelf above his head.

  “It was beautiful,” Laurel whispered. “I’ve never heard anything so beautiful.” She blinked, stirring out of her spellbound thoughts. She appealed to me. “Have you, Rois?”

  I shook my head, mute, wishing desperately for Perrin. We needed Perrin’s boots and clear thoughts and the big, easy lines of his body between Laurel and Corbet.

  And, as if I had wished him into being, there he was, coming into the room, shedding rain everywhere as he swung off his cloak.

  “Cow’s fine,” he said, smiling. His eyes went to Laurel; his smile deepened a little. “You look awry—all bright and unsteady, like a candle in a breeze. Have you been playing your game of questions with Corbet?”

  “We’ve just been sitting,” she said. There was a little silence; none of us mentioned Corbet’s playing. She rose abruptly. “Beda has supper for you in the kitchen.”

  “Good. I’m hollow.”

  Corbet stood up. “I’ll bid you good night, then.”

  “No, stay,” Perrin said. “We’ll join you soon.”

  “There’s brandy,” our father offered. Corbet shook his head.

  “I’ve been chopping wood,” he said to Perrin, and Perrin grunted.

  “You could use an early night.” He slipped his arm around Laurel as she passed him; she turned abruptly in his hold to face Corbet.

  “Next time,” she said, “I will have questions for you. You won’t get away so easily.” She did not smile; neither did he. He gave her a little nod. Her eyes loosed him; he turned to get his cloak.

  “Next time,” he said, promising nothing, and left.

  Nine

  I went to the village to talk to Crispin’s grandfather.

  He was a brawny old man who still liked to pound a horseshoe now and then. He spent one night a week at the tavern, drinking with Crispin’s father, until, red-faced and shouting, they would stumble home, waking neighbors and dogs, and swearing bitterly that they could not abide one more moment under the same roof with each other. In the morning, Crispin’s grandfather would wake tremulous and penitent, and Crispin’s father would wake oblivious of everything that had been said, and Crispin’s mother would be banging pots in the kitchen, furious with them both.

  So gossip told it, but this was not one of Halov’s penitent days. I found him in the barn, whistling cheerfully as he pitched the mire out of the cow stalls. He peered at me with surprise, his eyes misted with the bloom of age.

  “Rois?” He heaved dung out the door. “Are you looking for Salish?”

  Salish was Crispin’s younger brother, who had, unlike Crispin, inherited his grandfather’s energy. I supposed Halov had become used to young women wandering around the place looking for Salish.

  “I’m looking for you,” I said.

  Perplexed, he leaned on the pitchfork a moment. “Ah?” he said vaguely. I glanced around for some place to sit, and hoisted myself onto the top rail of a stall. He might, I thought, be more inclined to ramble if he kept working. I was silent until, bemused, he shrugged himself off his pitchfork and made a few tentative swirls in the straw.

  Then I said, “It’s about Corbet Lynn. You knew his father.”

  His brow wrinkled. He sent a forkful of straw out the barn door with a sudden, energetic thrust. “And his grandfather. That buzzard. Crazy as a bed quilt.”

  “Is that why Tearle Lynn murdered his father?” I asked, groping. “Because he was crazy?”

  He stopped to rub his eyebrow with a thumbnail, as he looked back at the past. Then he rumbled and spat with some emphasis. “From where we all stood, if he hadn’t, his father would likely have murdered him.” He got to work again. “The boy was wild, like a dog goes wild, with ill-use, out of desperation. Nial Lynn scared us all. He was cold as iron in an icehouse. When he lashed out, you never saw it coming. That’s how he was with Tearle. He’d walk beside him with no expression on his face, barely looking at him, and the next thing you’d know, the boy was in the dirt with a bloody mouth, and no one seeing it could swear Nial had laid a hand on him.”

  Corbet, I thought, chilled, then remembered: It was his father Halov spoke of, not him. There was no wildness, no despair in his eyes. “Except,” I whispered, “when I dream about you.” Halov, moving to the next stall, did not hear. My hands gripped the railing tightly; my heartbeat seemed strong enough to shake me loose.

  Don’t leave me here, he had said in my dream. Don’t. Leave me. Don’t.

  “Everyone seems to remember a different curse,” I said to Halov’s back. “How would anyone have heard the curses?”

  As if, I thought, I knew where “here” was, and how I could travel there to free him.

  Halov seemed not to hear me; he didn’t answer. But his pitching slowed a little, then slowly stopped. He leaned on his fork, gazing out the open doors of the barn, across the fields, as if he too searched for a frail thread of smoke rising into the grey sky from within the trees.

  “‘May yours do to you what you have done to me,’” he said.

  “Did you see Tearle kill his father?”

  “It was dead winter when he died,” he said softly to the distant wood. “I was huddled by the hearth in a dozen quilts, trying to sweat a fever out of me. The snow was piled halfway to the eaves. I would have had to shovel my way to Lynn Hall, to have seen anything.”

  “Then how do you know the curse?”

  “Somebody had been out there, to bring the news back,” he answered vaguely. “The ground was frozen solid, but luckily there was the family vault, so we didn’t have to keep him around until spring. No one showed up wanting his body, so we put him in there next to his wife.” He moved the pitchfork again, but absently. “The hall began to fall to the wood then. It seemed a place that would stand longer than the village itself. But flood waters seeped up from underground, vines cracked the stones and pried them loose, snow packed itself on the roof, found seams and cracks to melt into until the roof rotted and fell. That’s how old houses go. But this went far too fast, as if the hall itself were cursed.”

  “Who—” I had to clear my throat. “Who found Nial Lynn’s body? Who brought back the news?”

  Halov thought, then shook his head, his vague gaze returning from the wood to my face. “I don’t remember. It seemed somehow that everyone just knew.” I slid down from the railing; his eyes brightened a little as he watched me. “It’s a good thing to check into, before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before you fall in love with someone cursed.”

  “No one seems to have heard a curse,” I said a trifle testily. “Though you all know a different one.”

  “Well, maybe we invented them all,” he said placatingly. We both thought about that, and came to the same conclusion. “No. None of us would have laid a curse on Tearle Lynn. He was maddened with despair, but not wicked. Not mean. We pitied him.”

  “Somebody cursed him,” I said hollowly, remembering his son’s despair in my dream. A cold wind whipped into the barn and I shivered. Rain tapped lightly on the roof, wanting in.

  “Find Salish,” Halov suggested. “He’ll give you a ride
home.”

  But I did not have the good sense to be interested in Salish.

  I walked home in the rain, taking the road, puzzling over what Halov had told me. Someone had heard Nial curse his son, some cruel, bitter fate that no villager would have wished on the boy. But who? Maybe Caryl Gett had been right: It was a winter’s tale, spun on long, firelit evenings, each version flavored with a different kind of wine. No one would see Nial Lynn come back to refute it, and from the sound of things, if Nial Lynn had a dying breath to use, he would have cursed with it. I was so engrossed in my thoughts I almost didn’t see the buttermilk mare. Something—a flick of color, the faint beat of the earth under my feet, or maybe my name in someone’s thoughts—made me lift my eyes.

  There he was, riding across our father’s fields. And there she was, wearing her teal blue cloak, her hood down, her chestnut hair streaming in the wind, riding with him on her dappled horse to Lynn Hall.

  Again I felt the wild, unreasoning sorrow, that I would never ride with him like that, my hair and my cloak weaving into the winds behind me. And then I remembered what doors he knew, what thresholds and passages, and my grief turned to fear that he would leave, and take Laurel with him, and I would never see either of them again.

  I ran across the fields, fighting the wind, ignoring the cold rain that the massed grey clouds scattered now and then like handfuls of seed. The fields were furrowed of mud and stubble; I could not move quickly. By the time I reached the wood, smoke rose again above Lynn Hall. I slowed, winded and aching, my hair tangled and wet, my feet so muddy I stopped to clean them in a puddle. I did not know what I would say to them when I knocked; I only wanted to see their faces.

  I heard their laughter just before I knocked. There was a brief silence. And then another laugh, and the door swung wide to reveal me, lank-haired and muddy, from some cold world beyond them. I saw the surprise in their eyes. Laurel sat beside the fire, her cloak in a heap on the spotless marble floor. Corbet swung the door wide, after a moment. His eyes changed; their expression baffled me.

  “Rois,” Laurel exclaimed. “I thought you were in the village.”

  “I was walking home; I saw you…”

  “You’re drenched. And barefoot.” She rose abruptly, her brows twitching together in that familiar worried frown. “You look as if the wind had blown you here.”

  “I think it did,” Corbet said. “Leave your cloak there and come to the fire.”

  I unpinned my sodden cloak and dropped it where I stood, speechless, feeling awkward now, the unexpected guest who is neither invited, nor dressed for the occasion, nor prepared by wit or charm or beauty to persuade anyone that she should be here and not elsewhere.

  I joined Laurel by the fire. Corbet poured a glass of wine the color of golden apples into a crystal glass that looked as thin as a thumbnail.

  “I hoped you would join us,” he said, handing it to me.

  You did not have this fine crystal before, I wanted to say. Instead, I just drank, while Laurel sat again, ignoring her wine, looking the way she had when I blew in out of the dark after Crispin’s wedding.

  “I thought you were Crispin,” Corbet said, picking the name out of my head. “He is coming to talk to me about building that stable so that I won’t have to sleep with my horse all winter.”

  “That’s why we couldn’t wait for you,” Laurel said. She touched my hand. “You look very strange. What were you doing in the village? Did you visit Leta?”

  “No.” I drank more wine. They waited, so I had to answer. “I went to talk to Crispin’s grandfather.”

  “Halov,” Laurel said, astonished. “Why?”

  “Did you see anything of Crispin?” Corbet asked at the same time. I shook my head, not believing his tale about Crispin and the stable. It was only an excuse to come here alone with Laurel.

  “I would think he’s home with Aleria,” I said finally, and forced myself to meet his eyes. “I went to talk to Halov about your grandfather.”

  Corbet was silent. He put his cup on the mantel a little abruptly; a sweet note sounded against the marble. “You did.”

  “What for?” Laurel asked, bewildered and innocent, thinking she sat secure on silk within four stone walls. But I saw the endless wood around her, reaching out to her, as it had reached out to engulf Lynn Hall. The expression in Corbet’s eyes, an odd mingling of fear and hope, surprised me.

  “I can’t get the tale out of my mind,” I said recklessly. “Corbet tells us nothing, and you think it’s just game. I have to piece it together until I know what happened—”

  “But Rois, it’s not your business,” Laurel interrupted.

  “I don’t care.”

  “That’s very rude.”

  “I don’t care,” I said again. “Can’t you understand? This haunts me—and it harms no one. The harm was done generations ago—”

  “Yes,” Corbet said softly.

  “And it still haunts the village. Leta Gett remembers. Two rooms, she said they lived in—your father and your grandfather—two rooms only, in this huge place. She said—”

  “Yes,” he said again. His hand slid away from his glass to grip the stone beneath it. His face seemed calm, but it was the color of the marble. “These two rooms. My father told me.”

  Laurel turned from me to stare at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Why?” I demanded. “Why did you do it this way? Choosing to live through the winter the way they lived—are you trying to bring one of those curses down on your head?”

  “No—”

  “Enough,” Laurel said, rising. She spoke sweetly, but decisively, and we were both quiet. “Rois, you are being absurd. And morbid. You should go home and make yourself a tea. You’ll catch a fever anyway, the way you’ve been running wild. And Corbet, you should not encourage this.”

  “Why?” he asked her, but gently. “Don’t you think I am curious, too? And the villagers would never talk to me the way they talk to her. The ones who know, the ones who watched, who remembered.” Laurel opened her mouth, her eyes pleading; he took her hand suddenly, stopping her. “It’s like being lost in the wood. Everything and nothing points the way toward home. Every path is tangled; neither sun nor moon shed any light on the matter. I can do no more than I can. I build two rooms that mirror the past. Did I know that when I built them? Or did I only recognize them when I felt myself finally secure from winter? I can only do the simple things. Rois sees all the tangled paths.”

  Laurel gazed at him, wordless. Her eyes dropped to their touching hands; she did nothing for a moment, simply studied them, as if she were looking for an answer, a path out of her own wood. Then she slipped her hand free and sighed. “I don’t understand either one of you. But I suppose you will do what you must without advice from me. Rois always has.” She lifted her hand, looked down at it again, and added softly, “I am not so sure I understand myself anymore.” She raised her eyes to his face and smiled suddenly, a little, bittersweet smile that made my throat burn. I did not dare look at him.

  There was a sudden knock at the door. “That will be Crispin,” Corbet said, and went to open it.

  Ten

  They had a few bright, chilly days to build that stable. I heard their hammering echo across the fields as I wandered toward the autumn wood. There was not much left alive in the wood; things were withering, dying back, withdrawing beneath the ground to wait through the winter. Among great masses of dead leaves, tumblings of brown vines, hillocks of stark brambles picked clean of their berries by the birds, branches torn down by the fierce winds, abandoned nests swaying on leafless boughs, a rare color caught my eyes: the burning green of holly, or the strange flowers of the witch hazel, their thin yellow petals curling like clusters of wood shavings on stripped, bare branches. I picked a few for Laurel, and found some rosehips for my teas. I did not go near Lynn Hall. I drifted, I felt, in Corbet’s tangled wood, where light did not reveal the truth, and every path led into shadow.

  He had tol
d me where I was lost, but he had not told me how to find my way out of the wood. My thoughts roamed as I roamed, through the tales I had been told, through memories of Corbet, his riddling eyes and unexpected pleas, emerging out of dreams or casual conversations, for me to untangle paths for both of us. But I was afraid of the wood in which he was lost, and he knew it. I did not want to think of it, which is why, I realized finally, I did not want to see him. He did not come to the house during those days; perhaps he did not dare see Laurel. Perhaps he thought if he hewed enough, hammered enough, he could drive the sound of her voice out of his mind, he could build a wall against her eyes. She did not see him either. She kept the house spotless and sat with Perrin every evening. Only occasionally did she linger at a window to gaze at the distant wood which, with all its bare trees, still hid Lynn Hall within its heart.

  I could not stop thinking, though I avoided thoughts that led down the most dangerous paths. I chose an easier way. I went back to the villagers to find the needle in the haystack: who had been in the wood to find Nial Lynn’s body, who had heard his dying words.

  “‘Sorrow and trouble and bitterness will hound you and yours and the children of yours…’” Shave Turl’s ancient great-aunt Anis said as I poured her a cup of blackberry tea. She had yellow-white hair and softly crumpled skin that draped itself in graceful folds over her bones. She had raised six children and buried four more in her long life. She moved stiffly now, and recognized voices instead of faces, but she was not infirm, and she liked her tea hot, strong and richly laced with cream. I sat with her in her quiet house; Shave, who lived with her to keep her company, had felt a chill in his bones and went back to his bed after checking to see if anyone interesting had come in to visit his aunt. He seemed inclined to linger, but when I offered to make him a tea to cure his chill, he took himself and his bones away. “That boy,” Anis said, breaking off in the middle of the curse. “They’re too delicate, these days. It’s like soil, I think; one planting saps energy from the next.”