by Tanith Lee
Hephaestion let the old man take the plant called Febrifuga.
“Is that the proper dose?” Hephaestion asked her, when they had been sent back from the curtain and again left alone, but for the guards, who had also moved off across the hall, as if to be sure no error of Coira’s could rub off on them.
“It’s what I recall. Perhaps it isn’t right. That measure was for a woman, and Hadz is a man.”
“If it fails, take to your heels. You may escape them. I can see to a few here.”
But she did not reply, until she said, “You’ll leave me soon, am I right, Hephaestion? When the spring is full, then?”
“Oh, maybe.”
“Do the others go with you?”
“Proud and the rest? No. I’d travel alone, now.”
“Is that my doing?”
“No. I’ve had my days with them.”
“And with me.”
“Not here, Coira. Wait until we’re free of this.”
“Very well,” she said. “But if the herb doesn’t help. I won’t run away.”
“why? Not run away—to punish me. like some bitch, for going off? Coira—”
“Hush,” she said softly, as if to a child she loved.
And Hephaestion did as she said.
How long they waited neither of them knew.
With no warning, an insane, loud cry burst up from behind the curtain, echoing all through the wide hall.
The guards raced forward. They made a circle around the girl and the dwarf, lined inside with drawn knives.
Hephaestion saw he had been romancing when he tried to convince her he could make any delay for death. They were in the hall of Death, in any case.
Then the old man was there, pushing the guards away with unusual strength. He poked his head forward at Coira. “Where did you get this knowledge?”
“From my nurse.”
“She was a witch?”
“A Woodswoman.”
“She taught you well.” Impatient, he turned to the lingering guards. “Get back, you oafs. It’s not poison. I took it and live. And on him it was a miracle. A great miracle.”
“Is that what made him call out?” Coira said.
“Yes. I got him to eat it before he properly woke. He lay like the dead and then he cried out loud, and then he looked at me with his eyes wide, as he’s not been able to open them three days. He said he felt the first leaf move in him like a snake. It found the pain and bit it in two pieces, and both flew up out of his skull and were gone. That was only the one leaf.”
“Then, no more,” said Coira, placid again as some nun, “no more until tomorrow, unless the pain returns.”
“You shall see to it,” said the old man. As if he rewarded her.
“No,” Coira said. “You must do it.”
They stood gaping at her, the ring of men, the guards, the sinister old one, and her lover, astounded by the sheer glass of her denial from which they slipped away.
And when she turned and walked out of the hall of King Death, only Hephaestion followed her.
Five days passed before the steward came again to the shack-house. He brought back all the mirror-lid silver that had been tithed from the dwarves. He told Coira she must gather or dig up Febrifuga from the hills. The prince would need it all.
“It won’t live down here in the dark,” said Coira. Careless, she added, “I’ll dry the leaves so he can keep them by him. I’ll show whomever you want where it grows.”
By then she and Hephaestion had talked openly of his departure. Neither had raised their voice. She had not pleaded for his change of mind, as she had pleaded in her heart for him to come to her at the first.
“I’ll go up with you when you gather the leaves. When it’s done, you mustn’t stay down here. Go with me anyway, as far as Korchlava. You’re the king’s daughter—”
“What is that?” she asked him, this marble priestess. “What is that worth?”
He could not tell her—for kings, and king’s daughters, meant nothing also to him. And she—she had seen even her love did not penetrate his inmost skin.
“Forgive me, sweetheart, sweet girl.”
“I made you do it,” she said. “It is my fault.”
“I was glad to do it. You’re the best of all women—but not a woman of my kind. I made no secret of it.”
“You allowed me to love you,” she said. “That’s all I asked. Our bargain is complete. And over.”
II.
THAT DAY WAS TO BE THEIR LAST, together.
They went up to see the market, and to gather one final sheaf of herbs to satisfy Hadz.
In the night, they would lie together.
Then, it would be done. He would leave her. She would make her life alone, below the ground or above. Wherever, without him.
So, they were deep in thought, each of them, and very courteous, very considerate of each other, for he was burdoned by unease, and in her, rancor did not exist. She must face her loss, as ever, without rage. And her agony had become so vast, she had to turn her face from it, like a sickness of her flesh she no longer had patience with.
On the hills, the spring market was by now established. There were performances of many sorts to watch, and things to buy with the real value of coins.
He gave her a pomegranate like a rosy bulb of rock, mummified and hard. “You can’t eat it, now, it’s mulch inside. But it will keep its shape until the fresh ones come in summer.” They had talked about pomegranates once, those she had seen grown at Belgra Demitu. They had been thought unlucky by the Woods People, but even so Ulvit had contrived to let her taste the winey pink seeds. Now he gave her this token which would not even last. As if he too tried to ensorcel her, so her painful love of him would eventually crumble and rot, like the stone fruit.
But he bought her a long piece of blue silk, too, for a gown. And then a bracelet of thin amber. So she said, “Please don’t buy me anything else.”
“Very well,” he answered soberly.
He stored his gifts for her in the inner places of his tunic, as she requested. They would keep the aroma of his flesh for her, a short while.
For him she bought nothing. She had money now, for he had given her half of what he had, a staggering amount to any but the daughter of a king. The coins conveyed little, of course. And she had anyway given him everything, all her self, and this had not been enough. Trinkets were superfluous.
They went up and down the hills under a pale sky, looking at the market and searching for the one last fine crop of Febrifuga. She would dry its leaves over the fire, as she had done with the others, crush them into powder, which now sometimes was what she sent to Prince Hadz. She had also marked a scrap of parchment, brought her by the steward, with the spots on the hills where the plant would grow. The old man had sent someone besides. They knew the plant’s places. But it seemed they valued her preparation of the herb as much as the herb. She was, after all, a witch.
“Don’t linger in Elusion,” Hephaestion warned her. “He may decide to keep you. The old fellow saw you were beautiful, and God knows how Hadz’s tastes may run. The stories about his perversions are endless. Won’t you come with me to Korchlava?” And be left there, he meant.
“I won’t linger here.”
He did not ask her where she would go. But again he said, “I’d be glad if you came on with me to the city.”
They would part tonight. She said, “Let’s not talk of that.”
Slowly he nodded.
They turned away from the market now and once more ascended. Crossing over large stones, he assisted her like a deferential courtier.
They found a lush clump of Febrifuga easily. It was powdered by the white dust of the quarries, from which drifted the rhythm of picks. Once they had the plant free, Hephaestion wrapped it in a cloth; when visible, there were often enquiries, rude, even dangerous.
The sky was raining when they came down. Coira pulled her shawl up over her head, but they did not hurry. Everything on this
last day was to be experienced, stored. (Would they ever again behold thick spring rains unmoved?)
Hephaestion failed, and Coira, to see the old woman standing by the path. Did not notice her as they passed her so closely.
The guard at the cave-entry made some remark upon them, the girl and her dwarf, the imp and his mistress. They paid no attention to that, either. This man knew what they had been at, and who needed the herb, so he was not as coarse as others. Coira was a witch. Coira was in favor with the Prince of Hell.
And when Coira was next followed by an eldritch beggar-crone with a basket, the guard was not surprised to learn she was the witch’s kin, and knew to be careful of her, too.
She paid for her journey through Elusion with apples.
Coming in where she had, she did not need to use Hate River, but she saw it below as she wandered like a shadow in her daughter’s wake. She saw all of Hell, the cliffs and great rock rafters, the descents and inner darknesses. Nothing moved her. Only her goal had meaning.
But at length she saw the torchlit, pale-glowing shack-house on the ledge above, with the pearly root-claws arching over it. To her, this was some cot in the winter wood.
She stopped still, and watched the two figures go inside.
After a while, when they did not come out again, she sat down on a spur of rock, and put her basket by her.
It was almost empty, the basket. A few copper coins were in it, and three or four fruits she had not given away to men who had come at her in the mine-caves.
No one bothered her now. She had become apparently indigenous.
Arpazia did not know it, but the day passed on. She fell asleep. She was woken by the lone mooing of the single horn from the prince’s valley, which signaled midnight. Shouts went off here and there about the cavern at this note. Then died down.
She looked only at the shack-cottage. She knew the girl had not left it. Oh yes, Arpazia would now have felt such a thing, even in sleep.
And slumber came again, and took her away.
Did Arpazia dream? She thought she did. She was wandering in the Underworld, and cloudy shapes blew against her but did her no harm. She held a torch high, but it had gone out. Even so, she saw her way by all the other lights of Hell.
In the dream, the cottage was made of silver and had a golden roof. The tree was silver, too, a silver web which held the cottage fast. She sensed a snake coiled in the tree, a snake or spider, protecting something.
Arpazia knocked on a door of brackish green, polished beryl. “Let me in, let me in—”
“Who is there?” the girl called out in the dream.
“I am here.”
“Is it you? But who are you?”
“Only yourself.”
Arpazia thought she would go in and find a child with long black hair. She would comb the hair and dress the child in a white dress, tie a ribbon at her waist. Or the child might be a baby still, and then she must suckle it, give it the milk that flowed clear white from her breast.
In the magic beryl of the door, Arpazia seemed to foresee all this.
But then a new brassy shouting rose on all sides and woke her again. It was the trumpets of the cavern, which bellowed for dawn.
Arpazia sat bemused on her stone. What must she do?
While she worried at this, a man came down the rocks and passed her. He was a handsome, broad-skulled, cripple-footed man the height of a child. His face was melancholy and shut tight. Ambiguous as a mask.
Hephaestion did not see her, again, as he went away, nor she him, now.
Not long after this, two other dwarves came out from the cottage. (Tickle and Proud, going to their work in the mines.)
Arpazia watched, carefully.
Had all of the dwarves now left the cot?
She had lost count—had seven come out? Perhaps.
Half-closing her eyes, Arpazia fancied she saw the alchemical serpent twined in the tree roots above the house. It would be guarding the apples which grew there, forbidden to mankind.
Arpazia stood up. Her stiffness went from her instantly. She picked up the basket reflexively. How young she felt.
She went up the rock and, when she reached the torch, she looked in the shack’s doorway. Something shone out—back at her.
For a second she saw herself, an old beggar-woman with a basket—
She had caught in her vision a long glass crack showing in the covered mirror on the shack’s wall.
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Am I the fairest of them all?
She was not.
But now—now the actuality replaced the lie.
For there she was in the flesh. A slim alabaster form, combing a veil of raven hair. Coira had come from her alcove. Alone (utterly alone), she stood naked in the shack, clad only in her hair.
Arpazia remembered and recognized the proper image.
She crept near and called, “I’m here, my love. Let me in.”
III.
SHE HAD BEEN THE WOMAN, SHE had been the Witch, and the Queen, and she had even been a stepmother, which was to say a mother to a child orphaned by the maternal parent’s death. She had been magnetic and unreachable as the moon. She had grown awful and phantasmal as a demoness. Her back, her turned face, these were the memory; her frozen hands.
In this new, disturbed garb, ragged garments, raddled skin, could Coira even know her?
“What do you want?” Coira said. And she drew her shawl up to cover herself, without rush or shame, more as a civility to the stranger.
But Arpazia had seen. It was herself right enough. The mirror had lessoned her in this body and this face.
“You don’t know me, then,” she said, rational and cool. Madness had made her again in a form of sanity. “You don’t know who I am.”
Always these exchanges between them: Is it you? Who are you? You don’t know me.
Who could say they knew themselves? Who can? Even the ancient gods had reminded men of this.
Coira’s brain was full only of one lost one.
As was Arpazia’s brain.
“Only I’m here,” said Coira. “Do you want to barter what’s in the basket?” Even in her misery, she did not cast the destitute crone out.
“Delicious fruit,” said Arpazia, scathingly. She realized she was hungry, so she drew out one of the yellow preserved apples and bit into it. The honey was now so saccharine it puckered her mouth. She took another bite, then held out the apple to the girl—to Coira—to her child.
But Coira did not take the apple.
There was a narrow bracelet on her wrist. Arpazia looked at it. “Let me comb your hair.”
Coira said nothing. She sat down woodenly on a stool by the fire-pit, in her covering of shawl and tresses.
“Yes,” said Arpazia. “I’ll comb your long black hair. I’ll make it smooth. That nurse-woman pulled at your hair. I saw her. She pulled it, that wretched girl, my hair, until I threw the glass bottle at her. But I can do it nicely.”
Something lifted and looked up, behind Coira’s face.
She stayed motionless, as the crone came gliding up to her. She had no comb, yet seemed to think she had one—Coira’s she did not take. Instead she began to run her long, thin fingers through and through the rich, filmy skeins of hair, which grew electric at the touch, and flew up like smoke.
“Who are you?” said Coira. Her voice was like a child’s, high and rough.
“Who am I?” said Arpazia, combing her daughter’s hair, combing the hair which was hers. “Guess who I am. Who could I be? Who would come here after you?”
There were no rings, to catch. Something so curious—the fingers silking through and through her hair—a kind of spell, an enchantment. Hypnotized, Coira leaned back upon the hands which played her hair like the strings of harps—
How cold these hands. (She had not seen their snow-scars.) Hands without rings …
Hands meeting in a wood-dance, like a blow.
Coira did not move. Her body leaned back
against the hard body of the crone—who smelled of honey and apples, of frost and burned wood.
Within Coira something moved, darting behind her eyes.
“Are you my mother?”
“Yes, yes. I am your mother.”
“Did—he send you away?”
“Hush, my love. Who could do that?”
“Why are you here?”
“Where else should I be?”
In Coira’s fever dream: the shining brazier, the sweet odor of the divine wood, the golden mother who comforted her and made her immortal. But that had been Demetra, the goddess.
In Arpazia’s waking dream: the golden faces and the diamond tears, oh, the sorrows of the flesh, my dear, my dear. It’s a terrible thing to lose your child.
“But I’ve found you,” said Arpazia, combing and stroking the living hair of the young girl, which was her own, which she had created with her own womb. “He told me you lived, even though I tried to make you die. He said you lived and here you are. My dear, my love—”
And Arpazia folded her arms gently around her child, cradling her shoulders and the head which leaned on her.
Inside Coira torrents of spring rain, leaping under her eyes—
“Why did you hate me then?” she said, in her child’s voice. “Why did you—did you try—to kill me—”
“Oh, I never did. I could never do that. You’re myself born again in flesh. His and mine. All made of love. How I love you, Coira, best of all.”
Coira turned in her mother’s arms. She clung to Arpazia, and the torrents burst from her. She wept, clinging to this woman who was her mother, and her mother held her close.
Coira thought, What is this that I’m doing? Fool—fool—who is she?
It made no difference.
And she could hear that the woman cried too, long, hoarse sobs that were full of emptiness becoming filled, and silence finding how to make a sound.
Coira had learned to trust no one. But this was beyond trust.
The spiteful voice in Arpazia’s head could discover no words.
On the hearth the fire crackled, and far off the mines boomed like the sea.