Winter Rose

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “And you saw me to ask. You don’t have human eyes, a human heart. You can’t live in the human world—why do you think you pulled time and dreams apart to find my wood?”

  “He kept crying out from your wood for help. You killed his father. You turn his words to leaves. You take away his eyes, his voice. You don’t love him. Why do you care where he goes?”

  “Because he is mine, of my blood and of the wood. Love and hate are nothing more than leaves here; he knows that. He was not born to learn them.”

  “He does know them! He is human, except for the sliver of ice in his heart that came from you. It won’t melt here, and it will destroy us both. Let him go. You only want him to reflect you, to see your power and beauty when you look at him. Nothing more than that. It was his human heart that led him to my world—you had no use for it here.”

  “He has no heart.” Her eyes burned still darker, holding mine. “I took it from him the moment he was born. And I will take yours.”

  I felt a thin arm sliding through my fingers. I caught my breath in horror, tightening my grip before I lost it. Then I nearly lost it again when I looked for Corbet’s face and found my mother.

  “Rois,” she said reproachfully. “What are you doing?”

  I couldn’t find my voice. “You are ivy,” I whispered. “You are Corbet. You are not—”

  “You belong here,” she said. “With me. And with your father.” Her face, so like mine, transfixed me. I am you, it seemed to say. I am your fate.

  “I have a father.”

  “Your true father is of this wood. You know that. You always knew. You saw her wood in every shift of light, in every secret shadow. You searched for it until you found it. You recognized it because you have his eyes.”

  “I don’t want a father I have never seen! I don’t care who he was! And how can I have a father here? You loved one summer and died in winter and I was already born. Here love doesn’t last beyond a season—it can’t survive her winter.”

  “There were other summers before I died. Others from the wood.”

  “You are lying to me! You aren’t even my mother—you’re leaves, even your words are leaves.”

  “I am your mother, Rois. You can see me here. You can speak to me. Stay with me. You love Corbet and you love the wood. Stay here with us. You could never have found your way here unless you belong here.”

  “You did,” I said through tears. “And look what happened to you. You can’t love me here.” I spoke to them both: to her and Corbet, clinging to them both. “You can’t love me here.”

  “Don’t leave me,” she pleaded. “Don’t leave me, Rois. Don’t.”

  “Come with me,” I begged, gripping her so tightly that if she had not been illusion, and a ghost besides, I would have left an imprint on her bones. “Corbet.”

  Her face changed. His face and not his face gazed back at me, and I felt an animal’s fear prickle through me, such as Corbet’s father must have felt under those powerful, barren grey eyes.

  “So you are playing a little game now, Rois,” he said. The sudden twist of his arm in my lax hold nearly freed him; I caught him with both hands then, held on grimly, mindlessly, evading his eyes. I felt something shock through us both; sudden pain threw me to my knees.

  “You’re dead,” I whispered breathlessly, tasting blood. “Your son killed you. Nial Lynn.”

  “Nothing dies in the wood,” he said. “You saw that. Here no one can harm me. But I will hurt you if you do not let go of me. Love cowers from pain. Love hides itself. Love whimpers like a dog and runs.”

  I whimpered like a dog. Roses bloomed in my hands; their thorns clung to me as tightly as I clung to them. Blood streaked my fingers, as if the blood-red petals bled. And then they flamed.

  I could not see anything but fire. Sweat and tears ran down my face. Love hurts, I thought crazily. Love hurts.

  “But I knew that,” I said through blood and tears, still kneeling, hunched with pain, clinging to my burning bridal flowers. “You didn’t have to tell me that.”

  “I am doing this for your own good,” Nial Lynn said. It sounded true: Not a tremor of pleasure disturbed the dead calm in his voice. “You have grown too wild, Rois. You must calm your imaginings. Even now you imagine you are here, trying to rescue someone you think you love, who in the waking world scarcely noticed you. He did not love you there, so you dream a world where he must need you, where he must be grateful to you. That is why you are forcing yourself to suffer this in your dreams. So that he will be grateful and love you. In your dreams.”

  My skin was melting from my bones; finger bones were melting as I held his burning hands. I sobbed without noise; everything burned, even words. “Then I must end the dream to end the pain. And it will never end, ever, ever, for either of us, if I let you go. I must hold you fast, because you are part of him. You will trap him here and turn his heart to ice if I let go of you. In my dreams.”

  The fire flared in my face. I jerked back, crying, feeling my face begin to melt. I heard his voice beyond the flames.

  “All you must do is stop the dream. Stop dreaming. Rois. Wake. Go back to the human world. Forget this world, because this moment is the only one you will ever remember of it when you try to remember.” I could not see; I felt my eyes begin to burn. I screamed again, without sound, and drew in fire like air. My bones began to burn, and then my heart.

  “Rois. Wake. Rois.”

  I heard myself say, somehow, for I had no lips, no throat, to speak with, “I must hold this dream fast, no matter what shape it takes, for it is only a dream; there is no fire, and no pain, and no Nial Lynn. You are dead. You have no power anymore. You are dead. Your son killed you and I know why, and when I pass your grave I will spit on it. I will cut down any flowers growing on it. I will—”

  I felt hands in my hands, cool strong fingers in mine. I had hands again. I had a mouth, eyes. I closed my eyes, held the hands to my face, and kissed petals of blood across them.

  “Rois.”

  I looked up. My hands tightened; it did not hurt any longer to hold. But I was not sure what I held.

  He said very wearily, “Rois, you must let me go.” I saw his grandfather again in his cold eyes; I saw the fey beauty he had inherited from her, that lured me so powerfully, and then loosed me and turned away, leaving me with nothing but my hopeless, desperate longings. “I thought I could not lie to you, but I was wrong. I have been lying all along. I have never loved you. I don’t want you here with me. If I loved anyone—if I can love anyone at all—it was Laurel. You know that. You have always known that.” I stared up at him, wordless. He knelt suddenly in front of me, holding my eyes, letting me see his face clearly. “I can’t let you go through this torment for nothing. I will make you miserable if you stay here. You have already sensed that. I can see it in your eyes. You are afraid of me in this world. You are right to be afraid.”

  I whispered his name.

  “There’s something in you difficult to love. Something scarcely human. You are too wild, Rois; you aren’t like other women. It would be barely possible to love you in the human world, impossible to love you here. How could you imagine that I would really forget Laurel?” He glanced at my fingers, frozen around his. “It’s better for both of us. I’ll go to Laurel, she’ll recover, and you’ll be much happier without me. You’ll lose nothing.”

  I swallowed nothing, dust, hot ashes. My heart hammered sickly. Still his gaze trapped mine; I could not look away. He had found all my secret fears and loosed them one by one; they swarmed through me, howling, showing a bloody tooth. “I can’t leave.” My lips felt icy, as if I had been kissed by winter. “I want to stay with you. Perhaps you will love me in time.”

  “Rois, I have tried—you’ve seen that—”

  I felt sorrow slide, cold and silent, down my face. “You’re lying. You’re not Corbet—”

  “You know me, Rois. Your heart knows me. Just as you know that what I say is true. I am sorry. What Laurel and I
feel for each other is far different from anything you can imagine. You have tried to help me, and I am grateful. But love is not gratitude. I can’t be content with you because of that.”

  “No.” The word hurt like a stone in my throat. “You can’t.” His face blurred in my eyes; I blinked it clear again. Nothing else seemed clear to me; everything he said to me I had said to myself. “But, Corbet, there were things—between us—”

  “You imagined many of them. You wanted them to be true, and so they were. But only to you.” He dropped his head, kissed my icy fingers. “Now you must leave me. Go back to Laurel. She needs you far more than I. I’ll come to her soon. One day you will forgive me.”

  I could not argue with him; I did not know anymore what I was doing or why. I clung to all I knew: his hands, her words. “She said I must hold fast to you—”

  He sighed. “Rois. You’re only holding fast to some dream of love—nothing real.”

  “No matter what shape you take—”

  “Rois.”

  “No matter what face you show—”

  “Stop trying to help me. I don’t want your help. I don’t need you.”

  “Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me. Don’t. You said that to me. And then you said my name.”

  “You were dreaming—”

  “I will give you what you want.” I could not find my voice, only a husk of one; it could barely pass through the fire in my throat. I clung more tightly to his hands, and held his eyes; I saw the first touch of icy anger struggle with his patience. “I will leave you. I won’t trouble you any longer with my love. But I want to give you something first. With my love.”

  “What?” he asked indifferently.

  “Freedom. From me, from this house, from her wood. I will hold you fast until you stand free of us all. And then I will leave you.”

  I heard him say my name, just before the winds tore at him again. I lost hold of one hand; I held the other in both of mine as the wind tried to carry him away. I felt ivy again, and then a human wrist, and again ivy, and then the ivy closed around my wrist.

  Winds screamed through the sudden dark. “Who gave you your eyes?”

  I knew then. I had been looking at the answer all my life, at all its beauty, its seasons, its ever-changing faces of life and death.

  “The wood.”

  The ivy held fast to me then, as fast as I held it. Vine turned to bone, leaf to word.

  “Rois,” he said, and I felt a rose bloom on my lips. I held him through the winter dark, through all my dreams until I woke.

  Twenty-four

  I lay awake a long time before I opened my eyes. I heard soft movements through the house, a word or two. I smelled bread baking, and a handful of dried flower petals simmering sweetly above the fire. Perhaps that had wakened me: the scent of spring.

  But it was still winter, I found, when I finally opened my eyes. Snow crusted the barn roof; the sky was stone-grey, the distant wood still leafless. No smoke rose from Lynn Hall.

  I gazed, perplexed, across the snowbound fields. My hands still felt the ivy the wind had tried to wrench from me; my bones remembered fire peeling them like twigs. I heard Nial’s voice: This is the only thing you will remember… You imagine you are here. Stop the dream.

  I remembered Laurel.

  I pushed myself up at the thought. The floor felt icy as my bare feet hit it. Winter still wailed around the house, slid long, thin fingers through chinks and crevices. What had I done? I wondered, pushing hair out of my eyes. What had I done right or wrong? A gold ring, burning roses, my mother’s face, Corbet’s despairing eyes—my dream scattered piecemeal through my head. I had gone into the heart of winter, pulled Corbet out of it into this world, so that he could ride to our door on his buttermilk mare and find Laurel and say her name, so that she would remember who she was, what life was, before she left it.

  Maybe, I thought desperately as I swung the door open, that’s where he was now: riding to our door.

  I went down the hall to Laurel’s room, feeling a yoke of fear prick painfully at my neck, across my shoulders. I tried to enter noiselessly, but her door-latch slipped in my fingers, rattled. She stirred slightly and I breathed again, clinging to the door a moment, watching her.

  She looked like a woman made of silk and straw, so fragile that the wind outside could have blown her apart in a breath. Her skin molded itself against her bones. Her eyelids, frail as paper, lifted, as if she felt my eyes. She gazed at me senselessly a moment before she said my name.

  I went to her, knelt beside the bed. The blue veins in her wrists were so clear beneath the skin, I could almost see them pulse. She lifted a finger, gave me a feathery touch.

  “I had the strangest dream,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure…” She was silent, her eyes fixed on some memory. She drew a faint breath. “I think you were in it. I don’t know. All I see now are colors. I hear a voice, but I don’t understand the words. You know the way it is when you try to remember dreams. Even what you do remember makes no sense…”

  “Sometimes it does.”

  “I mean, in the waking world.”

  I let it go; suddenly I understood very little. “Would you like me to bring you some tea?”

  “No.” Her eyes went to the window. I felt my own eyes widen and burn. I had done nothing; I had dreamed, and even in my dream I had done nothing. Or worse, none of it had been a dream, and I had done nothing right.

  I felt her hand again on my arm. “This endless winter… Rois. Do you know what I would like? Some hot milk.” I nodded and got up, not looking at her so that she would not see my tears. Her voice stopped me at the door. “I smell bread baking. Rois, could you bring me some warm bread, too, when it’s out?” I turned to stare at her. She was not looking out the window now; she was thinking of food.

  “What else?” My voice caught on something too big to swallow. “Butter? An egg?”

  “Butter, yes. That’s all. I think. Thank you.”

  I went out. I was halfway downstairs, when I had to sit, trembling, holding my bones together, blinking so that I could see more clearly what appeared to be true: Laurel wanted to eat.

  “Rois,” my father breathed at the bottom of the stairs. I looked down, saw the terror in his eyes, and then saw myself, barefoot, in my nightgown, crouched and shaking on the stairs.

  “It’s all right,” I said. I did not recognize my voice. “She just wants breakfast.”

  “She wants—”

  “She’s hungry.”

  He gripped the railing. I saw his face before he turned to sit down on the bottom step. He could not speak too clearly, either. “What—what does she want?”

  “Hot milk. Hot bread and butter.”

  “Oh.” It came out like the sound he might have made the first time he saw Laurel. I saw him shake. I stumbled down to him, my father in this world, in every world, and held him tightly. There Beda found us both, and left us both, her own eyes red, to get the apple brandy.

  My father intercepted Salish on his sleigh, and sent a message to Perrin and to the apothecary. Perrin arrived first, with more soup from his mother; we hovered around Laurel, counting every mouthful. Later, the apothecary checked her, noted the faint flush of life beneath her skin, the sudden interest in her eyes.

  “What did you give her?” he asked me incredulously.

  I could not tell him. I still saw how closely her skin clung to the lovely line of bone in her face, how her eyes held distances beyond the defined horizons of our small world. She had gone as far as we could go from one another and still come back. She knew it, I could tell; she kept me beside her, watching me sew or sip tea; she wanted me with her even while she napped. It was as if she needed to tell me something but did not know how, or maybe even what; she wanted me with her because I already knew.

  She finally found the strength, one afternoon, to go downstairs and sit beside the fire. She watched the fire, while I set a crooked patch in
our father’s trousers. Wind scattered snow like chaff; it was hard to tell whether the whirling flakes fell from the roof or from the sky. Laurel’s eyes were drawn to the window; I watched her, poking myself now and then, as I sewed. She had come back without Corbet; so had I, and neither of us had spoken his name.

  She said softly, “It seems so like a dream. As if someone had cast a spell over me. I don’t understand what I was thinking.” She looked at me. “It seems so impossible now, to think of any man that way.”

  I nodded, frowning hard over my patch. I could not find Corbet anywhere in my dreams; I had no idea what world I had left him in. Perhaps I had only imagined a world and him in it; I could not make that last, impossible, magical gesture, and pull him from my head into the real world. It seemed, considering how completely he had vanished, most likely. But still I had to frown tears away, of worry and loss and simple exasperation, because I did not know who I had rescued from the wood: Laurel, or Corbet, or all of us, or if, in the end, I had only rescued myself.

  Laurel’s eyes strayed back to the window. “But I do wonder what happened to him. Did anyone ever hear?”

  “No.”

  “He was so alone in that place… No wonder he turned to us. I think that’s why he left: He really could not live in that old ruin with all its memories. He left to find some other life than Nial Lynn’s.”

  I looked at her, astonished at her calm. “You’re not angry at him for leaving you?”

  “I don’t think about him,” she said softly. “Where I went, I went alone, and that’s what I think about, what I have to understand. Sometimes I wonder if what I did had as much to do with our mother as with Corbet. I watched her die. Maybe, when Corbet left me so suddenly, it was like another death. I grieved in some strange way for both of them.”

  I wanted to ask then, but I didn’t know how to circle around the question and hope she would answer without noticing. Finally, I just asked. “You watched for Corbet.” I said, staring at an uneven stitch. “You made me wonder who our mother might have watched for. Who vanished out of her life and never returned.”