Veiled Rose

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  “Give her what she needs, my Lord. I beg you. Since I cannot help her, give her what she needs to walk your Path in safety.”

  When Beana spoke again, she sent her voice through the bars, deep into the swirling smoke, desperate for it to carry across distances greater than she could guess.

  “Remember the Name, Rosie.”

  Beana had warned her of the Paths.

  Warned may not be the right word. But when Rose Red was a little girl, she had taken Beana’s words as a warning. The Paths were dangerous unless used with great care. They crisscrossed the entire world, and one could follow them across vast distances in a moment. But sometimes it wasn’t a moment . . . sometimes it was a thousand years. One must choose a Path carefully.

  Some Paths were good. One could follow these and be certain to reach the right destination in a right time. Others, however, were malevolent or controlled by those with malicious intent. It was best to avoid a Faerie Path unless one knew for certain who controlled it. With good intentions and a trusting heart, a body could step onto a Path, expecting a clear road through the wood, and end up instead in the depths of a swamp at the mercy of a will-o’-the-wisp, or at the gates of some dark tower to which travelers are lured, imprisoned, and never seen again.

  “Most mortal folk can’t see the Paths,” Beana had explained, “but they can stumble onto them just the same and end up in a terrible mess, dragged into the Halflight Realm or into the Far World beyond. They’ll lead you through any place and time, sometimes all at once. Most who follow a Faerie Path never return.

  “This is why I’m showing you now, my Rosie. Learn to recognize which Paths are safe and which are not, which will lead you straight and true, and which are no better than snares. And my best advice to you: Don’t use any of them!”

  This Path was a trap if ever there was one. Rose Red recalled Leo’s boyhood voice, speaking from across the years: “In my book, there is an engraving of the Gateway to Death. It looks like that. Like a wolf’s head.”

  But this was the Path down which Daylily had wandered.

  Rose Red passed through the door into the tunnel. It was like stepping off a cliff, that crossing into the Netherworld. This was the Dragon’s Path, more dangerous than any she had encountered on the mountain . . . save the one she’d followed to the Monster’s Cave. At the time, that Path had seemed harmless. But the moment Rose Red’s feet crossed the threshold into the descending tunnel, she realized that this was, in fact, the very same Path she’d walked in the mountains. Only now she recognized it for what it was.

  The Path to Death’s world.

  “Remember the Name, Rosie.”

  The voice touched Rose Red with more force than a mere memory just as she stepped through the doorway. She stopped as her hand let go of the supporting door frame and she stood fully in the darkness of that tunnel. She closed her eyes and pictured her goat, her comforter, her friend.

  “But you’re alone now,” she whispered to herself, and her eyes flared open again. “Beana’s gone. You’re alone now, and you’ve got to be strong.”

  Rose Red walked blindly down that dark incline. She had never before encountered darkness so absolute. Always her eyes behind their veil could find some light and make use of it to guide her steps. There was no light here, however, no help for her. She must walk forward through that sickening stench, feeling out each step with a tentative toe. At first she was afraid to seek the wall of the tunnel for support, but at length she put out her hand. She nearly screamed at what she felt.

  The familiar plaster and woodwork of the stairway.

  In a flash of faint half-light, she saw that her feet were climbing spiral steps, and the closeness of the foul tunnel was replaced with the closeness of a passageway. This sensation roiled through her mind, and she quickly withdrew her hand. The darkness returned. Once more she stood in the cave. Once more she heard the trickle of water somewhere to her left.

  Her mind revolted. Rose Red could either go mad or pretend she did not understand what was happening. She chose the latter and continued on her way, careful not to touch the walls again.

  Even so, as she progressed, sometimes she could have sworn she still climbed the servants’ stair. Only it was the longest in the world, like a stairway to the stars; either that or she climbed the same steps again and again, unable to progress. If anything, it was better in the depths of the tunnel. A nightmare seemed more bearable than a reality gone wrong.

  The stench eventually either faded or she grew accustomed to it. The trickle of running water disappeared as well, and there was nothing but darkness around and uneven stones underfoot.

  Then she saw a light ahead.

  No more than a tiny pinprick, perhaps very far, perhaps very near; impossible to tell in that blackness. Like a star it shone in the depths of space, quite unlike dragon fire.

  “Don’t go near the light, princess.”

  The Dragon’s voice hissed in her ear. For an instant she thought she must have died; but then her heart started to beat again and she managed to draw a breath.

  “Avoid the light,” he said. “Avoid it at all costs.”

  She kept walking.

  “It’s not worth it,” he said.

  “I . . . I’ll go where I please.” Her voice emerged in a tiny gasp. But Rose Red meant what she said.

  The Dragon snarled, circling behind her. Then he spoke in her other ear. “You’ll wish you hadn’t. You’ll only find sorrow. You’ll only find regret.”

  “I’ll find what I find,” she replied and managed another step. And another. She knew he dogged her footsteps. She knew darkness fell into deeper darkness on either side of her. But she kept her eyes on that pinprick spark and moved toward it, sometimes down a rocky incline, sometimes up a spiral stair, always forward.

  The Dragon’s voice surrounded her. She felt him stalking her like a lion, disembodied yet potent.

  “He killed his brother, killed him in his anger and his jealousy. He wanted to meet me, wanted to know the beauty of my kiss. But his brother would not let him. So he killed his brother and buried him here. Then in regret, he left a light upon the grave. How pathetic! As though such a light may atone for his sin.”

  Rose Red continued walking, her gaze fixed upon the glow. It was growing now, bolder and stronger. It cast shadows on the rocks around her, and occasionally on the rail of a stair.

  “You know their names . . . the Brothers Ashiun.”

  She did not answer.

  “They came across the Final Water to teach mortal man the cursed Sphere Songs. They doomed mortals to lives of slavery and taught them to fear the gift I offered.”

  “Good job on their part, I expect.” Rose Red held her skirts in her hands, climbing the stair now. Her breath came in short gasps, partly because of fear, partly because of irritation.

  “The younger brother longed for my kiss. He saw the hopelessness of his state, chained to a duty he could never fulfill. There could be no other alternative. There can be release only in my gift! His brother was different. His brother was favored by the Prince of Farthestshore, commissioned to carry a certain lantern. A blaze of white fire, princess. It will hurt your eyes. You must avoid it at all costs.”

  “I could try to care about what you’re sayin’.” Rose Red panted as she took another step and found the stairway gone and the rocks once more beneath her feet. Her head hurt with disorientation and she longed to close her eyes. But then she would have no light to guide her. “I could try to care, but I ain’t sure it’s worth the bother.”

  “But the younger was entrusted with a gift less fine, for he was less favored. Nothing more than a silver sword, a useless weapon . . .”

  The Dragon’s voice trailed off. Rose Red thought he might still be speaking, but she could no longer hear him as she neared that light.

  She saw a grave.

  The moment she recognized it for what it was, the cave gave way, and she stood on a vast, empty plain. No sky vaulted overhead, only
emptiness. The light illuminated rolling gray hills, sparse with ugly growth. A lone wind drifted her way, tugging at her rags and her veil, billowing through the rough grasses that grew around the grave.

  It was an old grave, she knew, though the turf looked newly turned. Something in the air told her that whoever dug this grave had come and gone long ages ago. But that one had done a neat job of it, even fixing a stone marker in place.

  “The stone is white,” Beana had said, “but you hardly see that for the brightness that shines upon it. A silver lantern of delicate work older than you can imagine. And within that lantern shines a wonder. Like a star, yet unlike as well.”

  Rose Red gazed at the lantern that sat, as her goat had told her, atop the marker. It was like a small, brilliant star she could hold in her hands. But the light was warmer than starlight, like a home fire upon a hearth for comfort, though of purer quality. A white light but full of colors like the sunset, just like Leo had once told her in his story long ago.

  She could feel the Dragon trying to draw her back. His impotency in his own realm infuriated him, and the heat of that fury reached her even here, where he could not come. She approached the light, her ears stopped to his voice, alone on that empty plain save for the lantern and the grave.

  The wind blew again, and it was cold. This she did not mind. She knelt at the grave. The letters in the stone were elegantly carved and foreign, and she doubted that she would have been able to read the writing even had she been taught as a child. They looked nothing like Southlands writing, but like something much, much older.

  Suddenly, to her surprise, the markings on the stone shifted. As though dancing, they lifted and moved across the stone. They became images, like paintings come to life, yet not paintings either. Moods and expressions springing right into her head.

  She read and understood.

  Beyond the Final Water falling,

  The Songs of Spheres recalling.

  While you walk the Path to Death’s own throne,

  You will walk with me.

  The wood thrush, her Imaginary Friend, sat on the handle of the lantern. You know my song, he sang, and she understood his words the same way she understood the strange writing. The music of his voice pierced her heart.

  It has been with you from the time you were a babe. Falling from the sky, ringing through the mountains. Your father hummed it as he worked, and the trees surrounded you with their chorus. All sang my song to you.

  Rose Red swallowed. Her own voice when she spoke was nothing but dirt and clay. “You still left me alone.”

  You are not alone, my child.

  “You’re no better than the Dragon,” she said, standing and stepping away from the stone, from the lantern, from the bird. “You want me for yourself.”

  I want you for yourself. I want you to be everything you were intended to be before the worlds were formed. Everything this death-in-life has prevented you from becoming.

  “You sound like the Dragon. He calls me a princess.”

  I call you my child.

  She shook her head at him. “Both of you want something from me.”

  Yes, sang he. We both want your love, your loyalty. And you cannot give it to both of us.

  “What if I don’t want to give it at all?”

  The bird’s voice became sad, a trill of notes that might have broken her heart had she not set herself against him. But he replied, I will never take something from you that you do not wish to give.

  She did not answer. She thought of the Dragon and his demands, and she shuddered. “I’m afraid of you,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of giving you—or him—anything! What will be left of me if I do?”

  Give me nothing, then, said the bird. I will love you even so, though you break my heart.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know if I can believe you.”

  You may, said he. Will you accept a gift?

  Rose Red did not answer.

  This Path you walk is perilous, and Death waits at its end. Those without hope will not survive. So please, my child, take this lantern. Take Asha in your hand and hold on to its light.

  The light was so warm, so full of comfort. Rose Red remembered Beana’s words: “The folks who see the lantern, they take it with them as they walk the path. And the light guides them through the darkness, keeping at bay all the terrors of the Netherworld.”

  As long as you carry Asha, sang the bird, no monster of this realm may harm you. It is my gift, my protection.

  Hesitantly, she put out a hand. The bird spread his wings and flew from the handle even as her gloved fingers closed around it. It is my protection, he sang once more even as she lifted the light from the gravestone.

  It remained in place. Simultaneously, it came away in her hand.

  There were two lanterns now, only not really. Rather, the lantern remained unbound by time, so it was at once both in her hand and upon the stone. Either way, it was where it belonged.

  Her Imaginary Friend was gone. But somehow, Rose Red no longer felt alone.

  With the light held at arm’s length before her, Rose Red continued on across the plain. Now and then when she blinked, the rolling, spurge-covered hills vanished, and she saw herself in a hallway of the Eldest’s House, still dark with otherworldly gloom. It would seem she had climbed that endless stair at last. But the hall, when she glimpsed it, stretched ever on before her, and it was easier in a way to return to the plain.

  The darkness shifted. Along the distant horizon a thin scarlet line like seeping blood appeared. The sun began to rise. Only it wasn’t the sun Rose Red knew. It was like the Dragon’s eye, red and boiling, and it peered at her from over the hills. A vast, ugly head, smoke pouring from its nostrils—or were those clouds? It was too horrible. Rose Red lifted up the silver lantern to shield her face.

  The light in the lantern grew in potency, as though to combat that leering sun. Rose Red closed her eyes, then felt rather than saw a bolt of blinding light.

  The words of the Dragon crashed down around her like fiery hail. “Take it from her! Destroy that light!”

  The light of the lantern grew in potency, swallowing up the fire in its pure glow. It was all too terrible, and Rose Red screamed.

  When she looked again the plain was gone, as was the boiling eye.

  She stood on a mountain. It was barren, stripped of all growth, naked rock beneath that empty expanse above. Rose Red, still clutching the lantern in both hands, turned to gaze at the half-lit range of mountains stretched about her. They were the Circle of Faces. In this place, the faces themselves were more clearly defined than ever; hollows became gaping mouths and eyes, landslides became hair, became tears, became teeth. The ugly faces and twisted bodies of ancient giants.

  And this mountain upon which she stood . . . Rose Red looked up to its peak, black as pitch. This must be Bald Mountain.

  The Place of the Teeth rose up before her.

  Rose Red stared. She knew the story behind the Place of the Teeth, a secret hollow somewhere on the slopes of Bald Mountain to which no one ever ventured anymore. It was a site of sacrifice. Five stones like jagged teeth, carved from the natural rock, rose up from a smooth slab of stone, four of the teeth at the slab’s corners, and one jutting from the middle. All were stained with blood, the middle one most of all. For here, in ancient days, the warlike elders had sacrificed ewe lambs to appease the Beast that was their god.

  And here too it was that Maid Starflower had been bound and left under the cold light of the moon. Only there was no moon in this place.

  No sooner had this thought crossed Rose Red’s mind than she heard deep, guttural breathing. An instant later, an enormous black shape leapt onto the slab and paced around the central stone. It was like a wolf but, terribly, also like a man. His face was the face of the Monster Cave, only in flesh rather than rock. Blood matted his fur and dripped from his jaws.

  “That cursed light,” he snarled. His voice heaved, as though speech gave him pain. But his eyes g
leamed in the glow of the lantern, glaring at Rose Red with hatred and despair. “Who dares bring that poison light and shine it in my eyes? Have you no compassion?”

  Rose Red swallowed hard, her hand trembling so hard that she would have dropped the lantern had she not reached up hastily to grasp it in her other fist as well. “I ain’t nobody,” she gasped. “Nobody important.”

  The creature paced to the edge of the slab. He was bigger than a horse, with a ruff of shaggy fur like a mane about his face. But Rose Red realized that the blood in his coat was from many, many horrible wounds. Savage teeth had torn the flesh and left it gaping and bleeding.

  “You . . . you’re dead,” she whispered. “Ain’t you?”

  He raised his enormous head and howled at the empty vault. The sound shattered through Rose Red’s soul, and she crouched down upon the mountainside, holding the lantern before her face.

  “They tore into me!” he bellowed. “My own! My own! She betrayed me, though I loved her. Yes, my love was all too violent, too terrible and great for her to comprehend. But she betrayed me, and they tore me to pieces.”

  The words trailed off into another long howl that rattled the Place of the Teeth like a chattering skull. But the howl too caused him pain. It ended abruptly in a snarl, and he bowed his head, panting and showing his teeth.

  “I . . . I’m sorry,” Rose Red managed, sitting upright at last. “It don’t sound like you’ve had too great a time of it.”

  “Why,” the creature gasped, “do you walk this Path? You are yet living.”

  “I’m lookin’ for someone.”

  “Look elsewhere. Flee this place while you may.”

  Rose Red swallowed hard then set her jaw. “I cain’t,” she said. “The Dragon’s taken someone I promised to protect.”

  “It’s too late for that one,” said the beast.

  “No it ain’t. She weren’t dead neither, and he wouldn’t dare kill her.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I just . . . know.”

  Here the creature looked her right in the eye. “If she’s not dead, then she’s been taken to the Village.”