Winter Rose

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “You can’t fight me,” Tearle reminded him harshly.

  “I know.” In the placid light, his face looked chilled and very weary. “But I can die.”

  There was silence within the hall and without. No voices called lightly across distances; no birds sang. Everything listened, it seemed, even stone and air. Tearle held words locked in his hands, in his tight mouth, in his eyes, as he stared at his son. Corbet did not move or speak; he simply waited for his father to find a word to free them both.

  She came out of nowhere, shaping herself out of air and light and the barren midnight I saw in her eyes. Winter followed her; I felt the icy glide of air along my skin; I smelled it. Her long dark hair, tossed by the winds of a deadly season, tangled wildly around her. Winds tugged at her skirt and trailing sleeves, revealing winter faces: a dark eye, a clawed and bloody paw, a white wing. She looked at me and smiled. Her teeth were pointed like an animal’s, and her sapphire eyes flared like stars. I wanted to melt into the stones behind me, crawl among the shadows in the chimney. Even the fire had frozen in her smile. She turned away from me and showed a different face to Corbet, a different season, one I had no name for; the brief, sweet seasons in my small world could only hint at it.

  “Clouds have formed above the meadow,” she said. “And all the birds in the garden are gone.” She touched Corbet lightly; her long fingers closed around his wrist. “You lingered in the human world too long; you are behaving like a human.”

  He did not look at her; he held his father’s eyes. He said to both of them, “I will not stay.”

  “And I will not let you leave me.” Her tranquil voice carried a warning to them both. She answered Corbet, but turned her dark, unblinking gaze on Tearle until she had his attention and his eyes. “Tell him so. Tell him that he will never leave us.”

  “I will not stay.”

  “Tell him that I can keep him past death: His ghost will wander forever through my seasons. Death leads nowhere but to me. Tell him.”

  Expression emptied out of Tearle’s eyes, left an opaque mist. Corbet trembled suddenly, as if he too felt the gnawing winds. Then I could no longer see his face; it blurred under my tears. Her attention seized me, swift and predatory, sensing any mortal warmth.

  “Who is this, weeping at my hearth? I remember you. You saw me once or twice before. I thought you were some farmer’s lovesick child. Look at me. Let me see your eyes.”

  I would rather have stared down a raging blizzard until it blinded me. But I seemed helpless under the force of her regard; her eyes seemed everywhere, even behind my closed eyes. I opened them finally, and fell into some vast, blank shadow, the dark side of the moon.

  “Rois.”

  The shock of my name in this strange world brought me back to it: a lovesick farmer’s daughter who had wandered out of the world to hear her name spoken by the queen of summer and winter and the harvest of the dead. Her eyes had narrowed at what she saw. I felt the rattling icicle fingers of the wind again, and I wondered if, like the winter here, I had turned white to match her cold.

  She said softly, “You see too much. Who gave you your eyes?” I couldn’t speak; I could only stay frozen and mute under her hawk’s stare, hoping that if I did not move she would think me something not worth the effort. She loosed me abruptly and turned, but I was no longer safe. “I will keep you here. You belong with me.”

  “No,” Corbet said quickly. “Rois doesn’t belong here; she is mortal—”

  “Then why did you bring her? If you don’t want her?” He found himself wordless; she smiled a fine, sweet smile. “You brought her because you think she sees what you cannot. You are wrong. There is no way out of my heart for either of you.”

  He moved, pulling so fiercely against her hold that he startled her: the seasons in her changed again, revealing the wildness beneath the summer light. Her fingers turned to thick tree roots; she shook him to his knees. She spread her other hand across his face and left a mask of ice; his mouth opened, froze into a silent scream.

  Tearle moved. That’s all I saw, before winter raged through the house. Winds shrieked like ravens; the frozen fire broke into pieces on the grate. Ghosts spun out of blown snow snatched at my eyes, my breath. I thought I heard voices, but they kept weaving into wind. The winds grew owls’ feathers, owls’ claws, and streaked across my eyes. I felt my bones change into air, into stone, into ice, until I heard my own voice crying one word that turned me human again,

  “Corbet!”

  I heard a single winter Rois among the deadly voices of the winds.

  I stumbled to my feet, fought toward him through her winter, reaching out to him at every step, though her winds sealed my eyes shut and I had only my heart to see with. I could not find him, though I ran beyond winter into silence; my hands held only longing. Finally even my heart’s eye closed in the bitter dark; I fell into the embrace of stone.

  Sixteen

  I woke to the sound of Salish’s voice.

  What Salish was doing in my bedroom I could not imagine. Then I felt the hard, cold bed I lay on, and I lifted my head, stared at white marble. I dropped my head again, groaning, making sense of nothing.

  “Rois,” Salish pleaded. He dropped something over me; I smelled damp wool, fur. “Rois. Please wake up.” I did, so suddenly I startled him. Memory came back, not piecemeal like a dream, but whole and stark. I had been in Lynn Hall; I was still in Lynn Hall. I had lost Corbet in the wrong hall. I tried to get up; my bones had turned to marble against the stone, too awkward and heavy to lift.

  “Are you hurt?” Salish asked. His voice wavered oddly. He was wavering, too; I blinked him into focus. His face, a younger, more stolid version of Crispin’s, was patchy with fear; he looked close to tears.

  “No. Just frozen.”

  “Well, what are you doing here in Lynn Hall freezing next to a dead body?”

  I felt my heart flare painfully, breaking or coming back to life. I pushed myself up, and blood pricked through me again. I could not find my voice.

  Corbet’s father lay beside me on the hearthstones. He looked like something frozen in time, encased in a sheen of frost. Even the blood that had flowed from his head glittered icily on the white marble. His eyes were open; they held a faint glaze of horror, as if he had glimpsed these two rooms as he died. His elegant clothes belonged in a different season; his fine, eerie beauty belonged anywhere but in our small world.

  She had killed him; she had flung him here like a dead animal, a message, a warning. I put my hands to my mouth, beginning to shake, feeling her eyes everywhere. I had found my way out of her world when she had said there was no way out. I know your world, her message said. I know your tales. I am in your winter.

  “Rois.” Salish touched my shoulder. “Who is he?”

  I moved my hands, folded them tightly, trying to think. “I just came to see Corbet. I built a fire. I must have fallen asleep beside it, waiting.”

  “He never came?”

  “No.”

  “Well, where is he? And who is this dead on his hearth, dressed for spring? How did you get here? I didn’t see your horse.”

  “I walked.”

  His voice rose. “Through that storm?”

  Pinwheels of fire sparked behind my eyes. “Don’t shout—”

  “He’s not likely to wake up, is he? He must have walked as well; he didn’t leave a horse in the stable. The door’s wide open; there’s nothing in there but snow. You didn’t see this one come in?”

  I shook my head, burrowing deeper into Salish’s cloak. Beneath the fur, I could reach out, touch a motionless shoulder. He had fought her for Corbet’s sake and died. He must not have yielded easily; she had left him where she had found him, in the place he hated most.

  “You didn’t hear the fight?”

  I stared at Salish. Then I saw, beyond him, the shards of crystal scattered on the floor, candles knocked out of their sconces, a lamp on its side in a pool of oil.

  “Someone left the doo
r open,” I said uncertainly. “The winds got in.”

  “This one left it open when he came in? Dressed like he is? Or Corbet left it open when he came and went?”

  “I don’t know.” I rubbed my eyes, feeling tangled in my own lies; I had said what I thought was easiest to believe, but even I wasn’t finding it easy. “What are you doing here?” I asked wearily. If Salish had not come, I could have just gone home, leaving the mystery behind me for someone else to find.

  “I brought some things Corbet wanted from the inn. I didn’t see any smoke from the chimney, but I thought I’d leave them anyway… Looks like he hit his head, falling.” He paused briefly. “Or he was hit and fell. Rois—”

  He paused again, swallowing, not looking at me, his eyes on the dead man’s face. “You didn’t—he didn’t—” His eyes came back to me, pleading. “Did you?”

  It might have made things easy again: I had found the young stranger there instead of Corbet, he had attacked me when I refused him, we had brawled among the crystal, I had pushed him and he fell. But, looking at the still face, all I saw was Corbet’s father, who had fought for his son and lost. I could never tell such lies about him.

  I shook my head, swallowing sudden tears. “I never saw him before in this world.” I struggled to my feet. Then I had to fold myself again, bone by bone, to close his eyes, so he would no longer have to see the cruel place he had fled.

  By the time we crossed my father’s fields in Salish’s sleigh, I could barely see past the pounding in my head. The fields seemed yet another boundary between worlds; I remembered Laurel then, and our father, and I wondered what they must be thinking. Maybe they hadn’t noticed me missing. The sun had barely risen; my father would still be in the barn. Laurel might have called me and thought me elsewhere, but only in the bath, or in the barn, or even out wandering in the quiet morning. But I saw the tracks of our sleigh in the fresh snow as Salish turned into the yard, and Laurel had flung open the door and come out before he pulled to a stop.

  “Rois!” She was shivering, her cheeks flushed with anger and relief and cold. “Where have you been all night?” Her eyes went to Salish then, and widened. Salish ducked nervously into his hood.

  “I’ll leave you here,” he told me gruffly, “and find someone in the village to go and deal with the other.”

  “The apothecary,” I suggested, and he nodded. I untangled myself stiffly from his furs and rugs, and climbed out into Laurel’s confusion, which I could feel, like heat from glowing embers, from the bottom of the steps.

  “Our father took the sleigh to get Perrin,” she said, “to help him look for you.” Her eyes were red with sleeplessness, the skin drawn taut across her face. She added, controlling exasperation, “We thought of course of Lynn Hall. But there was no smoke this morning, so we thought Corbet must have gone to the inn to wait out the storm. We thought that’s where you might be.” Her voice trailed; her eyes strayed again to Salish, who could not seem to find his reins among his furs. Unwilling to upset Laurel farther with a dead body, he was waiting for me to mention it. But I didn’t know how to tell her, either, or even what.

  I said tiredly, “Thank you, Salish.”

  He lifted the reins reluctantly. “If I see your father, I’ll tell him you’re home.”

  I followed Laurel into the house. I was shivering badly, even in the warmth; things kept blurring in the fire behind my eyes. I fumbled with my cloak ties, managed to pull them into a knot. I felt Laurel’s fingers move between mine, work at it. “Were you with Salish?” she asked, without much hope; nothing could be that simple.

  “I was at Lynn Hall.”

  Her fingers stilled. “Oh, Rois,” she breathed. I put my hands over my eyes, struggling between words, between tales.

  “I had a dream of Corbet—I couldn’t sleep after it. I had to see—”

  Her voice came back abruptly, rising, and I winced. “How did you get there?”

  “I walked.”

  “Through that storm? How?”

  “I don’t know how—maybe I was still dreaming—”

  “No wonder you look half dead. So of course he wouldn’t have sent you home until morning—but why didn’t he bring you himself?”

  I dropped my hands, remembering where I had left Corbet. “He wasn’t there.”

  “He wasn’t—” Laurel stared at me. “You stayed all night in that empty place?”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice, looking everywhere but at her so that she would not see in my eyes what I had seen. She loosed the ties finally, pulled my cloak off.

  “He must be at the inn,” she said slowly, troubled without knowing why, by all the things I had not told her. “Rois, are you all right?”

  “My head aches.”

  “Go to bed. I’ll bring you some tea.”

  I smelled roses as I walked into my room. I stopped, beginning to shiver again, from more than cold, as I stared at them. They lay scattered all over the floor, the blood-red roses I had seen on the mantel in Lynn Hall. They had dried, passing between worlds, neither alive nor dead: another message. I know where you are, they said. I know what you love. I know you.

  I undressed and crawled under the quilts, pulled them over my head, trying to quiet pain and think. I slipped so easily into her world then, with Corbet beside me and Tearle still alive, that I wanted to weep when Laurel’s step woke me. I could not find my way back in dreams, I knew then. They were memory and desire, terror and hope; they told me only what I already knew.

  Laurel set the tea down and felt my face. “You’re burning.”

  “I got too cold in that house…”

  “I can’t believe you even found it in that storm, without freezing to death first. You must have dreamed your way there.”

  “Maybe.”

  She picked up my clothes and folded them slowly, her mind elsewhere, not on me or my untidy room, but on Corbet, I guessed, by the faint worry in her eyes. He had not been where I had dreamed him… She didn’t question the dried roses all over the floor; she simply gathered them up, too, as if they were laundry. She asked finally, “Rois, what did you dream that made you run through a storm to Lynn Hall?”

  I struggled up, reached for the tea, held the warm cup a moment against my head. “It was more a feeling,” I said finally, “that something was wrong.”

  She gazed at me over the roses. “With Corbet? Was he hurt? Lost in the snow?”

  I took a sip of tea, swallowed a scalding yes. “He was—I was dreaming of Nial Lynn’s curse. I thought Corbet was in trouble. That’s why I went there.”

  “That curse.” She looked vaguely at the roses in her hands. “You’ve been haunted by it.” The little line had formed between her brows. She didn’t know which of us to worry about now: the woman obsessed by imaginary curses, or the man cursed by them. She dropped the roses into an empty pitcher and glanced out the window at the blank sky above the wood. Still undecided, she straightened the quilts around me. “Try to sleep. I’ll find out where Corbet is.”

  I slept until a white owl with sapphire eyes glided noiselessly out of the white sky to stare at me through the window. I woke with my heart pounding, heaving quilts aside as I rolled to face the window. I saw nothing except what might have been, to my sleep-blurred eyes, a reflection of white disappearing against the clouds. I heard strange noises, though, which separated into voices as I listened, and then into words.

  I got out of bed, went to the window. The cold glass against my face cleared my head a little; so did the scene below.

  Laurel was sitting in our sleigh, holding the reins and trying to move, while Perrin, holding the plow horses’ heads, argued with her down their backs. His own horse, hock-deep in snow, nuzzled at his back. Their voices, normally so patient, sounded ragged, barely restrained. Our father, astounded and forgotten, stood watching near the house below me.

  “This is nothing,” Perrin said doggedly. “It’s seasonal. It will pass. You’ve loved me and I’ve loved you since—”
/>
  “People change,” Laurel said without sympathy.

  “Not in a season! Not over the color of a head of hair!”

  “It isn’t that—Perrin, it’s more, much more—you’ve seen! All winter long, you’ve watched us—”

  “For years I’ve watched us—you and me. Is that worth nothing to you? You can’t just pull love to a halt like a horse and a harrow—all I’m asking is that you wait. Just give yourself time. Give me time.”

  “For what?” she demanded helplessly, flicking the reins a little; the horses, trying to go and stay at once, pushed, startled, against Perrin. He caught his balance, held them stubbornly. “How much longer do you want to sit there in the evenings, watching Corbet and me watching each other? Watching me smile at him instead of you? Watching—” She gestured again, carelessly.

  Perrin finished grimly: “Watching you with him the way you used to be with me.”

  She bowed her head; I could not see her face. Suddenly frightened for her, I tried to open the window. She would only find winter, I wanted to tell her; she would have to go beyond the world she knew to find Corbet. Winter had sealed the window shut. Perrin stood mute, clinging to the horses, while she let the reins fall slack in her hands. She spoke finally; I couldn’t hear. But I could guess: I can’t help myself.

  “I’m sorry,” she said more clearly. He did not answer, did not move. “Perrin. If he’s not in the village and not in his house, maybe he left some message in Lynn Hall, some hint of where he is.”

  “Rois was just there, you said—”

  “How much could she see in the dark?”

  “Let me go instead.”

  “I’m going,” she said flatly. I pounded desperately on the thick glass, but she was not listening to anything but herself. “And you must let me go. Can’t you understand that waiting will not change the way I love? Maybe you and I are too much alike. Maybe if it hadn’t been Corbet Lynn, it would have been someone else—”