Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02

by Witchlight (v2. 1)

  It wasn't like that, Daddy! Winter protested, years too late. All I wanted was someone who would like me, not Kenneth Musgrave's daughter. . . .

  The rain gusted against the window. It had been raining that night, too.

  No. Oh, please, not that. Not here. The pain behind her eyes shook her, making her surroundings glow and waver.

  By the time she'd reached her teens Winter no longer remembered the imaginary playmate of her childhood who had yanked pictures off the walls and broken plates with a gesture; nor that the blinding headaches she'd once gotten had coincided with electrical shorts in any machinery close by. She'd only known that there must be more to life than the garden club and the boardroom—something beautiful, meant for her alone. She'd wanted to go to UCLA or Berkeley, but her parents had insisted on an East Coast college. She'd chosen Taghkanic over Albany, even though Taghkanic was closer, because of the liberal arts program at the college and because the fact that it hosted the Bidney Institute horrified her mother.

  Don't think I'm going to let you fill this house with a pack of scruffy college students after all my hard work, young lady. If you think you're bringing any of them to this house, think again—

  —7 wouldn't bring anyone here that I LIKED, Mother!

  And then she'd met Grey. And he'd been all of her dreams come true.

  No—no—no—/ Winter pounded her fist on the windowsill, knowing that in some sense she had planned her own agony. Why else come back, when she'd sworn she'd never return here, after—

  She'd never return here—

  It was raining, and—

  Never come back here. Never—

  It was raining that night fourteen years ago. She hadn't told them she was coming; she'd taken the train downstate to New York, then the LIRR to the closest station, then a taxi to the foot of the drive. . . .

  Winter groaned aloud. In a moment more she would remember; she could feel the psychic scars opening, leaving the wounds as raw and bleeding as if it were yesterday.

  She'd walked up from the foot of the drive—to give herself time, to prepare for having to tell them—and the rain had soaked her to the skin, first chilling, then numbing her. She'd wished she could be as numb inside; she would rather feel nothing than the pain. . . .

  She would rather feel nothing than the pain.

  She could still refuse to remember. To sit here looking inward took more courage than she would need to face a loaded gun; Winter had always thought she had courage, but she knew now those beliefs were a lie. All her life was a lie, carefully constructed.

  And now she knew it.

  The girl raised her hand to the door-knocker, trying not to think. About what was to come, and what had already happened.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PAST REASON HUNTED

  Age makes a winter in the heart, An autumn in the mind.

  —JOHN SPARROW

  IN THE ORCHARD BEHIND GREYANGELS, THE APPLE TREES were in full bloom. When she'd gotten back from the doctor earlier today all she could think of was finding some way to tell him privately—but on a small campus where both of them were so well known, privacy was hard to come by. Professor MacLaren didn't mind Taghkanic students trespassing in his orchard, so she'd asked Grey to bring her here.

  But now that she had him alone, Winter Musgrave, age twenty-two and in her senior year at Taghkanic College, didn't know where to begin. "I have something I need to tell you," she'd said, and then had chattered on about meaningless things: spring break, the graduation ceremonies only a few months away, plans for the coming summer that she now knew were meaningless.

  "Come on," Grey said. He'd leaned toward her, the fringe on his white buckskin jacket swinging. A stray sunbeam glinted off the glass-bead embroidery across the jacket's shoulders; a blue more brilliant than the sky. "You've been dancing all around SOMETHING. What?" he'd demanded. "Didyou hear something about the internship? 'Dandy' Lion was supposed to hear this week—"

  They'd both applied for summer intern positions with the American Shakespeare Company, and Professor Wei landhadthought there was a good chance that Grey, at least, would get his. Winter brushed the thought aside. Like all her other plans for the future, it no longer mattered.

  "I'm going to have a baby," she'd blurted out.

  Grey had gone instantly still, staring at her with wide gray eyes. Even in this moment, knowing he was going to reject her, Winter could not help loving him the way she loved the wild beauty of the hawks or the Taconic hills. The spring breeze from the river had fluttered through his pale hair and the beaded fringe on his jacket, and it seemed as if the world held its breath.

  "A baby." Grey had taken a deep breath and smiled. "A baby! Our baby! Why didn't you tell me? How long have you— How do you know?" He'd reached for her and Winter gestured irritably, stopping him.

  "I went to the doctor," Winter told him in a small cross voice. "Dammit, those pills are supposed to work."

  Grey had laughed. "Everything always works out for the best." He'd tried to put his arms around her, but Winter whirled away, glaring at the inoffensive apple tree directly before her and willing the tears not to come. Flower petals were everywhere, covering the spring grass in mock snow. She 'd brushed them forlornly off the shoulders of her fake-fur jacket, hating the mess.

  "For the best! Grey, what am I going to DO?" she'd wailed, leaning suddenly against the tree. It was somehow worse that he'd accepted it. When she wasn't facing active resistance, Winter had never known quite what to do.

  "Don't you want a baby?" Grey said then, and the sober note in his voice had made her turn back and look at him. "Do you want to, uh . . ." His voice trailed off awkwardly.

  I don't know, I don't know—

  "I don't KNOW/" Winter wailed. "You aren't— We aren't—" She gestured helplessly, unable to put her thoughts into words, conscious only of feeling trapped. "What am I going to do?—Mother said they'd send me to Europe for the summer after graduation—mostly to get me away from you—and Daddy wants me to go to work for a friend of his on Wall Street—or get married—and I don't even know what I'm going to tell them, and—"

  "Marry me," Grey had said. "We'll have the baby, and if that internship thing doesn't work out I can do the Renfaire circuit out in California full time. We have the Blackburn Work, and I know some people out in the Bay Area who'll help us. Everything's going to work out. You'll see."

  Winter had gone on the circuit with him last summer, doing the pseudo-Elizabethan Renaissance Pleasure Faires up and down the West Coast. She'd played the guitar; Grey had done stage magic. They'd spent the summer sleeping on friends' couches or in the back of Grey's van; fine for a few weeks, but for a life? With a baby coming?

  "I don't know," Winter began, hesitantly. She could see the beginnings of confusion on Grey's face; the question he was too proud to ask: "Don't you love me, Winter?"

  I DO, GREY--- I DO! BUT I'm SO AFRAID--

  "Stay with me, Winter," he said, holding out his hand one last time. "Stay with me."

  She put her hands behind her back, afraid that if she took his hand she'd lose all common sense and blindly follow her heart.

  "I... I have to think, Grey. Take me back." It wasn't true—she hadn't been able to think, not with so much uncertainty swirling around her.

  "It's my baby, too; don't you think it's my decision, too?" Grey sounded hurt then and she couldn't bear it.

  "No!" Winter exploded. "No I don't! It's my body and my life, and I can't just—"

  He'd closed the distance between them and put his arms around her. She'd clung to him as if she were drowning and cried as if everything she loved were already gone. He held her until her tears were exhausted, teased her until she smiled, and promised her the sun, the moon, and the stars.

  And he' d thought everything was settled then, with the easy confidence of one who had never known defeat. But she'd had no faith in the future he painted for her.

  And that night, without telling anyone, not even Cassilda, sh
e'd taken the train south.

  Home.

  Winter opened her eyes. The storm had softened to a steady drumming rhythm that could go on for hours, and through the open window the room was filled with the smell of rain and wet earth. Laboriously Winter picked herself up off the floor of her room. When she moved, she found that her entire body ached with chill and tension, but the headache had passed, leaving a light-headed lethargy in its wake. Unwillingly she looked around. For a moment she expected to see the rows of carefully preserved stuffed animals, but that belonged to the past; she'd given them all away years ago.

  Winter's eyes brimmed with the unshed tears of a grief too long deferred. She had built her self-image on her risk-taking and courage, and all of it was a lie. She wasn't brave. She'd betrayed everything and everyone she really loved. Unforgivably. Irrevocably.

  Winter climbed shakily to her feet, wondering how long she'd been lying on the floor. She no longer wondered why no one had come to look in on her and see if she was all right—she knew all of Wychwood's secrets now. Automatically she looked out the window, but could tell nothing of the time. It was late, that much she knew. The rain spilling from the gutters was a silvery waterfall in the house's security lighting, and the rest of the house's inhabitants must long since be in bed. Low blood sugar made Winter's hands shake, and her skin felt cold and clammy. That much, at least, she could fix.

  All trace of use had been cleared away; the cloth changed, Grandmother Winter's sterling centerpiece returned to its accustomed place. Winter walked into the dining room. Everything was where it should be. Nothing was out of place—not the furniture, not the children. Any exceptions were swiftly dealt with.

  And they kept at me and at me—they were my parents—they were supposed to know what was best—not just what was convenient!

  But that wasn't true. She hadn't been a child any longer by the time she'd come home to Wychwood that spring. She should not have given them the kind of control an adult took of a child's life over hers.

  But she had. She'd given them that power through fear or cowardice or even stupidity. She'd known she wanted something different than her mother's life and her father's, but in the end she hadn't trusted herself enough to take charge of her own future.

  She'd paid for that.

  But she wasn't the only one.

  She—and Grey—and the child who had never been born—all of them had paid. And the girl she'd been, like some spell-cursed princess, had been doomed to dream away her life inside the arctic armor Winter had forged about herself to numb the pain of that disastrous choice.

  Until . . .

  Winter felt the flickering feeble attempt of the destroying angel to rouse beneath her skin. She pushed it away, back into the world of dream. She had made her power into a dream—a bad dream—and had dreamed on, insensible, until something had come looking for her.

  Something that was tithed in blood. Something Winter had retreated into madness to escape, not knowing that to do so would free that long-denied, long-betrayed, part of herself—or that, freed, it would fight to reach her across the borderland of her unconscious mind.

  With one last clutch, Winter felt the coils of her hate-born shadow-self relax forever. All that was left was Winter Musgrave.

  Who's a fool.

  For a moment she allowed the self-hatred to well up, then let go of that, too. Even after her mother had gotten her way about the baby, Winter could still have taken back her life—but grief and self-hatred had paralyzed her and she had let others choose her future for her—choices that had not been made out of love, but out of anger. Wychwood held little love within its walls.

  Winter laughed a little shakily, and flipped on the dining room lights. By all means, let's have all the demons out of the box in one go. She walked through and into the kitchen and began opening cupboards, her body's demands uppermost in her mind. She found a box of raisins and began stuffing the fruit into her mouth, swallowing almost without chewing.

  But even while her body concentrated on the food, her mind refused to stop spinning. Something inside her wanted her to understand everything she'd refused to face for all those wasted years.

  Parents were supposed to love their children. But love didn't necessarily make someone wise. God knows I'm living proof of that. . . . And anger at their own missed choices had become anger for its own sake, anger that, like the serpent, was willing to strike at any target.

  Even at their own children.

  So no one could be allowed to escape. Because if someone did manage to break free, it proved there was another way, another life possible, and all the sacrifice and pain would have been for nothing. . . .

  There was a sound behind her. Winter turned around just in time to see Wycherly walk through the dining room into the kitchen.

  He was rumpled and disheveled, his hair as wet as if he'd been walking outside in the storm. His jacket was gone and his feet were bare; with a small disinterested part of her mind Winter wondered what he'd been doing. He glared at her balefully before seeming to recollect that she was his sister and there was no particular cause for enmity between them.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked ungraciously. Without waiting for an answer he crossed to the enormous built-in refrigerator and pulled open one of the doors.

  "Leaving," said Winter, and as she said it, it was true. The mistake that had led to everything that followed had been lack of faith. She would not make it twice. It wasn't too late; she could still change, take back the life she'd relinquished.

  And even if she couldn't, at least she could keep from hurting anyone else. She could stop the rage, the hunger. . . .

  "I doubt it." Malice gleamed in Wycherly's eyes—the only honest expression of his feelings she'd seen since she'd come back. But without the poltergeist-gift, the expression of Wych's anger would be controlled by his conscious mind. He made a mocking salute with the bottle of orange juice in his hand, and drank.

  "Believe it. I have what I came back for," Winter said. Even if I didn't want it very much. "I have nothing more to say to any of. . . them." She hesitated on the last word, mentally absolving Wycherly of any part in the events of that horrible summer. He'd been eighteen, then, on the verge of his own life.

  And was still, fourteen years later, on the verge of his life.

  "Wych, get away from here," Winter said impulsively. "I know it seems like staying is the only way, but it isn't. If you—"

  "That's rich coming from you, sister dear. Isn't it supposed to be the cuckoo that throws the other chicks out of the nest? But you're a true-born Musgrave, right enough: our motto, 'Expediency uber Alles.'" He closed the refrigerator with a careless slap and strode over to her. This close, she could see the faint red-golden stubble along his jaw.

  "You haven't had much use for us while you were feathering your Wall Street nest, but now I suppose you think it's time to make amends in order to be on hand for a favorable redrawing of the will. Well, go ahead!

  Let Mother pick you out a trophy husband—something chic, a thirty-eight-long in legal sharkskin—and Pats can sell you a crackerbox palace nice and close, so Mommy Dearest can manage your life, too—"

  Wycherly stopped, but more from lack of breath than because he'd run out of things to say.

  Winter shook her head, holding up her hand as if she were calling a time-out. Somehow the venom in Wych's words only strengthened her faith in her choice. They carried no pain with them—it was as if they were addressed to someone else.

  "No." / had a lover, once, and I threw him away. "Wych, I think you should leave, but I'm not going to run your life for you. But I'm leaving. Things happened here—" And I can't forgive my parents for them, even though they're partly my own fault. She shrugged. "I'm leaving first thing tomorrow morning and I'm never coming back here again. That's all."

  "I don't believe you," Wycherly said uncertainly.

  Winter laughed, and felt the crushing weight on her heart ease slightly at last. "Oh, Wych! As t
he man said about life after death, sooner or later you'll know, so why fret about it? Believe me or don't—I don't care."

  She watched doubt and sullen anger chase each other across Wycherly's face until he settled on a guarded blankness.

  "Mother will have a fit," he pronounced with faint satisfaction.

  "Let her," Winter said. It'd be a shame to waste all that practice.

  When Winter finally returned to her room, her sleep was too deep for dreams; the felled coma that followed an emotional purging. The alarm clock she'd set jangled her awake at 5 A.M.; moving with machinelike precision Winter dressed quickly in the clothes she had worn on the airplane yesterday, made one quick phone call, and then hurried downstairs.

  As she had believed, her parents still had morning coffee together before the car came to bring Kenneth Musgrave into the city. As Winter stepped into the breakfast nook, she saw that this morning they were not alone; Wycherly was with them.

  Well, what did you expect? she scolded herself, sighing. Theirs was not a family for loyalty; Wych had been right: "Expediency iiber Alles" would be an appropriate family motto.

  "Winter! Come in, dear," Miranda Musgrave cooed.

  A less suspicious person than Winter would have heard the tension in Mrs. Musgrave's voice. Her mother's rings flashed as she twisted her hands nervously.

  Winter took a deep breath.

  "Mother, Father. I have something to say to both of you. It won't take long, but I'd rather it was private. Wych, you really ought to pick a side and stick to it; it's much less confusing. Now go away."

  "I think he should stay," her mother said tightly.

  Winter looked at her father. Kenneth Musgrave glowered back, his baleful eyes piercing.

  "I don't think you have anything to say you can't say in front of your brother," he rumbled. Only last night his displeasure would have terrified her, but not now. Never again.

  "All right." Now that she was committed, a curious peace settled over Winter, akin to that which she'd once felt on the Street, on the trading floor. It was almost as if she was being reminded that some good things could be salvaged from even the worst mistakes. She took another steadying breath.