When Rose Wakes

by Christopher Golden

  “What the heck is she doing?” Rose asked.

  “I told you she needed some air,” Aunt Suzette said, as if what Rose had just seen was perfectly ordinary.

  Aunt Fay waved to them and started walking to meet them.

  Rose smiled in disbelief and shook her head. “I love you both very much,” she said, “but that was incredibly weird.”

  Aunt Suzette took her hand and helped her the rest of the way down the steps, where Aunt Fay met them.

  “Darling Rose,” Aunt Suzette replied sweetly, “we never said we weren’t weird.”

  Late at night, it is cold in the corridors of the castle. The chill seems to seep up through the stone floor and to slither through the halls and coil in the corners. It never really troubled Rose before. In cold weather there would be roaring fires, and on long nights there would be the smiles of her teachers and her father’s servants, warm furs, and visits from her closest friend, Rielle, to take her mind off the cold.

  Tonight, though, the atmosphere within these walls is grim and heavy, and despite the thick cloak she wears over her shoulders, ice has begun to form inside of her. This is not winter, she knows. It is fear. All of her life she has looked upon her father as a hero, as a great king, like those found in ancient myths. He is a good and decent man and a just ruler, who provides for all of those beneath him, and cares for each of them, from the wealthiest patron to the lowliest orphan.

  Even now, as she becomes a young woman, she finds it almost impossible to believe that her father will not find some way to triumph over his enemies. But those enemies are persistent and plentiful. Their armies camp not far from the castle and village. Every day she sees the vigor and hope and determination fade from her father’s eyes.

  It is crushing her, this revelation of her father’s humanity. His ordinariness.

  He is still decent and just and loving, but he is only a man.

  Rose has found it more and more difficult to sleep of late. Tonight, as many nights, she prowls the halls of the castle. She wants to see him, but does not know what she will say. He has always looked after her, and it is strange to think that the time may have come when she must look after him.

  At the base of the stairs that lead into his private chambers, she pauses. An icy ripple of dread races up her spine and she feels as though she is being observed. She turns, holding her breath, and stares at the shadows in the recessed doorways that lead away from this anteroom. The shadows seem darker here than elsewhere in the castle. She cannot help thinking that there are whispers strung through them like spiderwebs, a low susurrus of voices she cannot really hear—but would hear, if she dared get any closer.

  A soft laugh drifts around her, caressing the stone walls and gliding across the floor. Rose twists around, fearful and angry and frustrated. She looks up through the long throat of the hollow tower above her, but sees only more shadows. Something is here with her—she can feel the ominous weight of its presence—but she cannot see it.

  “Show yourself!” she demands.

  For a minute or two she stands and listens, waiting for any further sign that she is not alone.

  A loud creak startles her and she spins, heart fluttering like a frightened bird. Breathless, she stares at the heavy door swinging inward, and for a moment she fights the urge to flee or scream. A pale face looms in the shadows, and then emerges.

  Rose can only stare and then chuckle softly at herself. “Miranda,” she says. For that is the name of the serving girl who stands staring at her.

  “Milady,” Miranda replies, managing to bow her head without tipping the heavy tray out of her hands. Upon it is a jug of wine and a goblet, as well as a plate of bread and cheese. “You startled me.”

  Rose laughs out loud. The sinister weight of the shadows has not vanished, but it has lessened.

  “And you, me,” she replies. “Is that tray for my father?”

  “It is,” Miranda says. “He couldn’t sleep, and…”

  The girl—only a little older than Rose—says nothing more, but it is evident that she wishes that the king could have slept so that she herself would not have to be up in the middle of the night fetching wine and bread and cheese.

  “Let me take it to him,” Rose says, her heart leaping at the realization that she was not alone in the cold dark, that her father had also been unable to sleep. She had walked this way only with what she thought was an empty wish that she would be able to see him, to find some comfort in his tender eyes and gentle voice.

  Miranda does not dare argue with her, nor does it appear she would want to. The girl hands Rose the heavy tray, then hurries up the dozen steps ahead of her to open the door to the king’s chambers. She bows her head as Rose passes her and clanks the door shut once Rose has entered.

  For just a moment Rose thinks of Miranda scurrying back to the warmth and comfort of her bed and the release of sleep, and she is envious. But she chides herself, knowing that Miranda—and all of those in the castle and the village—are anxious and fearful about how this war will end. The enemy is not at their gates, but they soon will be, and they will tear those gates down.

  Rose walks through her father’s rooms, all of which flicker with the golden glow of candles. Their flames dance, throwing eerie shadows upon the walls, but she ignores them now, forging ahead to her father’s sleeping chamber.

  “Father?” Rose ventures.

  The door is ajar, and she uses her shoulder to push it wider, carrying the tray into his bedroom. A crackling blaze burns high in the fireplace, radiating heat and warm orange light. At first she thinks her father is seated in his tall chair before the fire, but then she sees that it is only his blanket there. Confused, she glances around and finds him standing at the window, staring out at the night.

  “Father?” she says again.

  “Rose,” he says without turning.

  “I met Miranda on her way to you and told her I would bring your tray,” she explains, sliding it onto a low table against the wall by the door.

  “I’m glad you came,” he says, but he hangs his head. “I wanted to speak with you. I’d intended to wait until morning, but as you are here, it seems fated that we speak of this now. Or perhaps it is not fate, but the weight of my heart that prompts me not to hold my tongue till morning.”

  She has never heard him sound so tired, or so full of anguish.

  “What is it, Father?” Rose asks.

  He turns toward her, and in the firelight she can see that his cheeks glisten with quiet tears. The sight frightens her even more than the presence she felt in the shadows of the tower room.

  “The enemy has offered us peace,” says the king.

  Rose stares at him. “But that’s wonderful. All of our people, saved! I don’t understand, Father. Why has this upset you so much?”

  He turns to look back out the window. “It is what he demands in return that haunts me, darling Rose.”

  “What, Father?” she says. “What does he ask?”

  The king turns to her, and he looks a hundred years old.

  “You,” he says, his voice cracking. “He wants you, Rose.”

  •

  Tuesday turned out to be the best day Rose could remember. Of course, she couldn’t remember many of them, but that did not undermine the bliss of the day. She had slept late and woken without remembering her dreams, if she’d had any, and she considered that a mercy. Her aunts took her to lunch at Felix’s, a little Italian trattoria whose owners—according to Aunt Suzette—were so snooty that they had given their restaurant a name better suited for French cuisine, as if they were ashamed of their food. Rose didn’t care what they called the place; the food was to die for.

  Pretty much every day since she had woken from her coma, she had peppered her aunts with questions about her life before, trying to find anything that might trigger a flood—or at least a trickle—of returned memories. But it had been such a perfect day that she did not want to spoil it with any talk of her troubles or anxieties.
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  After lunch they went shopping on Newbury Street. The little dress boutiques were charming, but Rose considered each purchase carefully, even though she had slowly become aware that her aunts were quite well off. In the end she bought two dresses, a skirt Aunt Fay declared much too short but which Aunt Suzette loved, a pair of stylish boots, and a long knit sweater. The pleasure of these acquisitions was bittersweet due to the realization that she would be forced to wear a uniform at St. Bridget’s. That might not have been so terrible if the uniform included skirts, but all students, male and female, had the same dress code except for the shoes. Which meant pants.

  That would take some getting used to. Fortunately, Sister Anna had agreed to give them a two or three week grace period for Rose to acquire her uniform pants and shirts, so at least at first she would be able to wear skirts and dresses. Aunt Suzette worried that it would set her apart from the others, but Aunt Fay had argued that it wasn’t as though the other students wouldn’t realize she was the new girl.

  Their frequent sisterly bickering made Rose smile. She knew her aunts were eccentric, and with each passing day her estimation of just how eccentric they were seemed to increase. Their peculiar behavior the previous day had baffled and even unsettled her, but their affection and concern for her seemed so genuine that she could not hold it against them.

  In truth, the sweetest part of the day had nothing to do with shopping. The air was cool and crisp, perhaps in the upper fifties, but the sun shone brightly and warmed them and the Tuesday afternoon sky was a bright blue that seemed to go on forever. Rose found the greatest pleasure just walking along Newbury Street, mingling with other people who were window-shopping or walking their dogs or hurrying back to their offices or to meet friends or lovers.

  As they walked back the way they had come, laden with shopping bags and finally headed for home, Aunt Suzette stopped in front of a café.

  “It’s a bit chilly now,” she said, glancing at Aunt Fay. “Shall we have a coffee?”

  Aunt Fay turned a questioning glance at Rose.

  “Not for me, thanks,” Rose said, “but don’t let me stop you. You’ve earned it.”

  “Cocoa?” Aunt Fay asked.

  “I’m good,” Rose said, taking a bag from Aunt Suzette so that each woman would have a free hand. “Go ahead. Something warm for the walk home.”

  Aunt Fay glanced around as though worried someone might steal her away if they left her out on the sidewalk. Rose wanted to remind her that she was sixteen years old, and though perhaps not the strongest or toughest girl in Boston, certainly old enough not to be lured off by a stranger with candy.

  “She’ll be all right,” Aunt Suzette assured Aunt Fay.

  Rose gave a small laugh. “Seriously. What do you think is going to happen?”

  Aunt Fay smiled thinly. “Last chance. You don’t want anything?”

  “Go,” Rose told her. “I promise I won’t slip back into a coma while you’re in there.”

  “That’s not funny,” Aunt Fay chided her, but her smile widened a bit and she went into the café.

  “Stay right here,” Aunt Suzette said, her customary smile vanishing.

  Rose sighed, no longer amused. It had been a perfect day, and now her aunts’ weird protectiveness had tainted it. She gave Aunt Suzette a look that she hoped said exactly that, and it must have gotten the message across because Suzette hurried after her sister. Rose watched them get in line through the glass.

  Out on the sidewalk, a woman walked by with a hideously ugly dog that looked more like a giant shaved rat than any sort of canine. Somehow all that ugliness made the dog cute and pitiful all at the same time, and when it came over to sniff her foot, she nodded hello to the owner.

  “Can I pet him?” she asked.

  “Go ahead. He’s very sweet and he loves people.”

  Rose crouched and stroked the wrinkled skin on the dog’s head and back. The animal stretched and made a noise that in a cat would have been a purr, but Rose figured that a dog would find that description of its contented rumble an insult.

  “What’s his name?” she asked, looking up at the white-haired woman.

  As she did, she caught sight of a woman on the opposite sidewalk, standing in front of the stairs to an art gallery. Tall and thin, with delicate hands hung at her sides, she seemed almost frozen, as though she had been painted onto the scene. She wore calf-high boots and a charcoal skirt and stylish cardigan, looking as if she had just stepped out of one of the trendy shops down the block. People walked by without so much as glancing at the woman despite her ethereal beauty, though surely her lush, raven black hair and wide, striking eyes should have attracted attention.

  The dog owner must have said the animal’s name but Rose did not hear.

  The woman in front of the art gallery had not drawn Rose’s eye because of her beauty, but because she was staring. At Rose. The other people on that far sidewalk passed back and forth in a blur but the pale woman with her dark hair stood out starkly against them because of her utter stillness.

  Rose stood abruptly, gaze locked on the woman.

  “Excuse me,” she muttered as she stepped past the dog owner and off the curb.

  The dog began to bark, straining its leash, as though it wanted to follow her. Rose watched the raven-haired woman, but traffic swept by in both directions, a tour bus and then a delivery truck blocking her view, and then there were more people passing the art gallery, moving around the woman as if she were a stone in a river. Rose lost sight of her for a moment, then glimpsed those startling eyes still watching from the midst of the passersby.

  Rose hurried into the street, but a strong hand clamped on her arm and hauled her back, turning her roughly. Aunt Fay glared at her, fingers digging painfully into her biceps.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Aunt Fay demanded.

  Behind her, coffee in hand, Aunt Suzette looked terrified.

  “I…” Rose began.

  But looking at the fury in Aunt Fay’s eyes, she stopped herself. Her aunts always brushed off her dreams, ignoring the things that troubled her. It made her feel foolish sometimes, and she suspected this would be no different, especially with how angry Aunt Fay seemed.

  “Yes?” Aunt Fay said.

  Rose exhaled and looked around. The hairless dog and his owner had continued on down the sidewalk, but the white-haired woman looked back with concern. Rose glanced into the street and realized that she had been walking right into traffic, that only pure luck and Aunt Fay’s intervention had prevented her from being hit by a car, and she felt a little frightened that her mind had wandered so much that she had put herself in such danger. No wonder Aunt Suzette looked so terrified.

  “I was… I wanted to go into that art gallery,” she lied.

  “You could’ve been killed,” Aunt Suzette said.

  Rose nodded. “I’m sorry. I guess maybe I’m still not quite right.”

  Aunt Suzette came over, coffee in one hand and shopping bags in the other, and kissed her cheek.

  “No one is, Rose darling.”

  Rose stared at a coffee cup on the sidewalk, its contents splashed onto the concrete, and she could picture Aunt Fay casting it aside and running into the street after her.

  “You dropped your coffee,” she said.

  Aunt Fay let out a long breath and smiled wanly. “Let’s get you home, Rose.”

  Rose nodded. That sounded like a very good idea.

  School began sooner than Rose had expected. On Thursday morning Mrs. Barkley called and spoke to Aunt Fay and announced that Rose had been accepted to St. Bridget’s as a sophomore. Her aunts had been afraid that she would be disappointed, given that at her age she ought to have been a junior, but Rose was just happy not to have had to start as a freshman—the embarrassment would have been too much.

  On Friday she woke early and got ready for school, donning one of the dresses her aunts had bought her earlier in the week, a simple burgundy thing that sort of matched one of the
colors the school’s uniform shirts came in. During breakfast an argument had ensued when Rose discovered that her aunts intended to walk her to school. She tried to explain that the situation would be intimidating enough without the mockery that would no doubt be rained upon her if anyone saw that she’d had to be escorted like some elementary school kid. Aunt Fay and Aunt Suzette grew stern, but when at last Rose declared that she would not go at all if they intended to walk with her, they surrendered.

  Now she stood outside the door to her homeroom with Mrs. Barkley smiling at her and ushering her in.

  “Go on,” the secretary said, eyes bright and kind. “No one will bite.”

  Rose nodded and took a breath. “Thank you.”

  “Anytime, honey. If you need anything, just come and ask.”

  Rose saw other students coming down the hall, seemingly aiming for the same room, and she scurried in so as not to block their way. Half a dozen others were already in the room and she found herself disappointed to find that Jared Munoz was not among them, even though the odds had been against it.

  Her homeroom teacher, Mr. McIlveen, sat behind his desk glancing through a folder full of what appeared to be corrected test papers. Rose stopped at the desk and waited for him to look up.

  “Yes?” he asked, brows knitting in curiosity. She had a moment of panic that she’d somehow ended up in the wrong room before realization struck him. “Oh, right. You’re the new girl.”

  A ripple of mutterings went through the now dozen or so students in the room.

  “Rose DuBois,” she said.

  Mr. McIlveen nodded, smiling up at her. He was a big man with graying hair, a thick mustache, and thick glasses. His shirt and tie were rumpled and he seemed like he might have been more at home with a motorcycle gang than a bunch of Catholic school kids, but he had greeted her warmly enough.