When Rose Wakes

by Christopher Golden

  The spret drops down beside her, flying just beside her ear, wingbeats strangely loud.

  “The Black Heart will not kill you, though she wishes you dead,” Rielle says.

  “Then what is this?” Rose gasps.

  “Something for you to fear. Something to hurt you. For she would love to see you hurt.”

  Rose runs wide-eyed, no longer caring about branches that claw at her as she passes. Dead is dead, she thinks, but pain can be an eternity. Stop that. Just run. Her breath comes in ragged gasps and darkness fills the corners of her vision and disorientation begins to shift the world out from under her. She staggers, nearly falling.

  “You’re nearly there, Rose,” Rielle urges. “Keep running and you will be safe. But listen to me now as you’ve never listened to me before. When you marry this Luc, as you must, you cannot lie with him, Rose. You mustn’t let him inside you. If he pricks you, all is lost.”

  Shocked, Rose turns to look at Rielle, and her boot catches on a root hidden beneath the snow. Crying out, she tumbles forward, spilling to the white-blanketed ground in a flailing tangle of arms and legs and the billowing cape of her jacket. As she struggles to rise, snow slips down her collar and clings to her face, but she finds herself just at the edge of the wood, trees around her but open, snow-cloaked ground spread out ahead and the village and castle beyond.

  Her father stands in the snow, torch in hand. Other searchers, dim figures in the storm, call her name not far off. Many are near the edge of the Feywood but she did not hear them calling her, not while she herself was amongst the trees. Her father, though, does not seem to have been calling her name. He seems only to have been waiting, there with his torch, and now he crouches beside her and offers his hand.

  She studies his eyes, so full of regret and worry. His beard has become grayer of late, not quite winter but deep into autumn, and she fears that his life has also been foreshortened by the strain of this war and now his concern for her.

  “Darling Rose,” he says. “Come home. There are decisions to be made.”

  “Yes, Father,” she says, taking his hand and rising. She will tell him soon enough that decisions have already been made, that no matter what her fate, she will not allow the war to continue if it is within her power to stop it. The killing. The dying. She will tell him, but not just now.

  “Bid your aunts farewell,” the king says.

  Confused, Rose turns back toward the wood. At first there are only shapes amongst the trees, but then those forms resolve and she sees them. Aunt Suzette and Aunt Fay, cloaked in snow and shadow. In the branches above them, ravens track her with cruel eyes. Something flutters in the branches, something with violet eyes.

  And she hears the words again.

  All is lost.

  •

  And Rose wakes.

  She opened her eyes to the solidity, the firm reality, of her bedroom on Acorn Street, and exhaled.

  “We need to talk.”

  Twisted up in her bedsheets, Rose jerked back, startled by the sight of Aunt Suzette and Aunt Fay standing just inside her bedroom door. She looked past them into the gloom of the hall, fearful of what might accompany them.

  “Rose, darling, what is it?” Aunt Suzette asked, starting toward her.

  Rose, darling. Just the way her father said it.

  “Another dream; what do you think?” Aunt Fay said, curt with her sister.

  Rose exploded from the bed.

  “It’s not a dream!” she screamed, pursuing her startled aunts as they retreated in shock. All of her fear and frustration, both sleeping and waking, boiled over. “Goddamn you both, it’s not a dream!”

  They backed into the hallway, staring at her wide-eyed, trying to stammer some sort of reply.

  Rose slammed the door. After a moment, heaving to catch her breath, heart like a hummingbird—or something else, something with violet eyes—she turned her back to the door and slid down it, burying her face in her hands.

  And she whispered to herself, “Please, let it be a dream.”

  Madness. What else could it be? Insanity or brain damage, or some hideous cocktail made up of equal parts both, with a little bit of imagination thrown in. What had the coma done to her?

  Rose wandered the paths of Boston Common on that Saturday morning, nursing a cup of coffee and studying the people she passed. Guys her age or a little older rode chopped-down bicycles far too small for them. Others—dressed in rumpled clothes, one a blond guy with thick dreadlocks—tossed a Frisbee around as a dog bounded amongst them. Couples strolled with baby carriages. And yet, amongst them all, almost unseen, were the homeless. There weren’t many out this morning, but how many lost souls would count as a lot? Grizzled old men sat on benches, a middle-aged woman with a rat’s nest of unwashed gray hair pushed a small cart loaded with torn trash bags, a crucifix dangling from one handle of her cart. A black man who might have been forty or sixty stood on a path trying to hand out some sort of pamphlet, but people steered around him, unseeing.

  They were invisible to others, but Rose saw them. She wondered what they saw when they looked at her. Did they see their own reflections? The question haunted her, because, as much as it terrified her, she saw some of herself in them—people who seemed to have woken to a world of confusion, a life where they weren’t at all sure who they were, or what purpose they were supposed to serve. They didn’t belong out here in the park, but they had nowhere else to go… nowhere they belonged.

  Her aunts wanted so badly for her to feel at home with them, but they treated her like some hothouse flower, warmed and nurtured and carefully cultivated, but trapped behind glass, within walls both real and imagined. They claimed they wanted her to settle in at St. Bridget’s, to fit in there—and Rose wanted that so much—but their bizarre obsession with her staying away from guys, like she was supposed to be some kind of virgin princess, made her feel awkward even when they weren’t around.

  They wanted her to build a life, instead of waiting for her memories to return, to forge ahead with new days and new friends. The doctors had told her that she needed to let the memories return slowly, not to attempt to force them, but without a past to rely on she had no foundation. She knew things but had no way of knowing how she knew them or what experiences they might be tied to. No frame of reference.

  Rose had done her best so far. As much as starting at St. Bridget’s had been terrifying, it had also been exciting. And she felt fortunate to have made a couple of good friends already. But there were times when the temptation to hide and curl up in her bed grew almost impossible to resist, and the fear of slipping out of the world again and having to start over was the only thing that kept her going.

  After the dustup with her aunts this morning she had felt the urge to hide in her room, but instead she had pulled on a red sweater and a pair of blue jeans, attempting to get used to wearing pants. She had slipped on her sneakers and left the apartment. Aunt Suzette had tried talking to her on the way out, but Rose had told her firmly but politely that she needed to walk and clear her head.

  No luck on that score. The walking, yes, but her head felt more cluttered than ever. Paranoia sat like a devil on her shoulder, pointing out the crows that flapped overhead and weighed down the branches of trees in the park. But they were only crows—not as numerous as the pigeons, but not unexpected—eating cast-aside bits of bagel and awaiting the remnants of hot dog and pretzel that the late morning and early afternoon would earn them.

  Yet the walk had done her good. Despite the confusion that swirled in her, she felt calmer, less claustrophobic. And she knew she had been gone long enough. Her aunts would be starting to worry, and no matter how much their peculiarities aggravated her, they did not deserve that.

  “Spare change?”

  Rose halted, startled by the man who had appeared to block her path. His hair had been red once and now had turned to gray rust, a stubble not much longer than that on his face. His wind-worn skin crinkled like leather as he squinted at her
, as though he saw her slightly out of focus. The navy peacoat he wore was clean and relatively new, but the clothes beneath it were stinking and faded from the elements and his boots were cracked and wound with duct tape.

  “Got a dollar, miss? Anything, really. Gotta eat.”

  Yes, she thought, the crows won’t leave a scrap for you. And then she wondered where the thought had sprung from.

  Without hesitation, she put her hand in her pocket and dug out the single dollar and scattering of coins that had been her change from the five-dollar bill she’d used to get her coffee. She held it out to him, and as she did, she noticed that unlike most of the homeless she saw begging, he had no cup for her to drop the money into. Instead, she placed it directly into his hand. He had seemed slightly erratic, looking anywhere but into her eyes, but the moment she touched him he went very still and raised his gaze to meet her own.

  “You’re not invisible,” she said, surprising herself with the words. “I see you.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, nodding, eyes crinkling further. “I see you, too, princess.”

  His hand closed around the bill and change and he backed away, turned, and hurried along the path toward a trio of women walking their dogs together, his new target. Rose stared after him.

  I see you, too, princess.

  She shivered. Had there been strange weight to the words? What had he seen in her, exactly? She considered pursuing him for answers.

  Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket, making her jump. Flushing with embarrassment, she glanced around to see if anyone had noticed, but only the birds seemed to be paying her any attention at all. The little devil, paranoia, was on her shoulder again. She fished her phone from her pocket and stared at it. She’d talked on it before—most recently last night with Kylie and then with Jared—but it hadn’t rung this time, only vibrated and given two quick buzzes. Now the screen showed a small envelope, telling her she had a message. It took her a moment to realize she had received a text. She hadn’t ever gotten one, never mind sent one, but she knew about texting as a concept. Kids at St. Bridget’s were not allowed to do it during school, but she knew it was a major addiction for most of them.

  Studying the phone, she figured out how to open the message, saw it was from Jared, and smiled. A calm radiated from her center.

  So am I going to see you at this party tonite?

  Rose thought about her aunts and her dreams; she thought about her coma and her lost memories. It was all so screwed up, and even though she had no frame of reference to judge anything by, everything felt so odd to her. Everything except for this. She knew that her brief taste of life at St. Bridget’s must be typical of a high school sophomore anywhere in America, the cruelties and the kindnesses alike, but it had still felt foreign and new to her. But the warm flutter in her chest when she thought of Jared… that felt good and right and normal, and she took huge comfort from that.

  What do I have in common with this guy? she wondered. And then she laughed at herself. She didn’t really have anything in common with anyone, because she had no real interests at all. Not yet. But she was starting to develop them—a certain taste in music, mostly frantic, edgy pop, and a love of old movies on cable, to begin with. She knew she would love horseback riding whenever she had a chance to try it again. But none of those things were enough to start building a relationship on. No, she had to go by instinct and her own judgment, and both of those made her like Jared very much. He had kind eyes, and that was somewhere to begin.

  The texting thing was remarkably easy to figure out. Hit reply, spell out the words. She had to backtrack a couple of times, but she answered him.

  See you at 8.

  Trying to figure out who the hell she was, she had found one thing that made her feel normal—her attraction to this sweet guy—and she would cling to that.

  The phone buzzed again. Another text.

  Great.

  Rose grinned. Feeling at last as though something tethered her to the world, she left the park and the other wanderers behind and headed back toward Beacon Hill. She dropped her almost empty coffee cup into a trash can and crossed the street, and when a bird took flight from the branches of a nearby tree, she did not flinch. Looking up, she saw it was a seagull that had strayed in from the harbor on the October breeze.

  As she walked up the hill, she did not look back, determined to leave paranoia and bad dreams behind her and to focus on the real and the tangible.

  When she entered the apartment on Acorn Street, she could smell something delicious cooking. Her dreams had combined with her aunts’ strangeness to make the place seem hostile and almost surreal, but somehow that smell—Aunt Fay making her delicious onion soup—welcomed her and eased her mind.

  Rose stepped into the kitchen. Aunt Fay glanced up from the stove, but she did not smile.

  “Good. You’re back,” she said, but she had no smile for her niece. Instead, she stirred her soup, tapped the wooden spoon on the pot, and set it aside, then went past Rose into the corridor and called up the stairs. “Suzette, she’s back!”

  “That smells delicious,” Rose offered, trying to melt the ice that had formed between herself and her aunt. But her rudeness that morning had obviously upset or offended Aunt Fay deeply, and soothing that hurt would not be so simple.

  Aunt Suzette came downstairs and joined them in the kitchen, reading glasses propped on her head. She glanced at her sister and then gestured at the small oak table beside the tall window that looked down on Acorn Street.

  “Rose, sit down,” Aunt Suzette said. It was not a suggestion.

  Sunlight washed across the table. She pulled out a chair, its feet squeaking on the tile floor, and sat in the warm light. Aunt Fay went back to stirring her soup, turning her back to them.

  “I’m sorry I shouted at you,” Rose said.

  Aunt Suzette nodded. “You were upset. Teenage brains are chaotic. It won’t be the last time. We understand that, don’t we, Fay?”

  “We do,” Aunt Fay said without looking around from the stove.

  “But it’s going to be a morning for apologies,” Aunt Suzette went on.

  Rose’s heart sank. “What else have I done?”

  “Not you,” Aunt Suzette replied. “Us.”

  “I don’t understand. Why do you need to apologize?”

  Aunt Suzette glanced back at Aunt Fay, who seemed almost to be pretending they were not in the kitchen with her.

  “This party you mentioned last night,” Aunt Suzette said. “You can’t go.”

  Rose felt her heart sink into despair, then almost as quickly a fire rose up within her.

  “Why? Why wouldn’t you want me to go?” she demanded, rigid in her chair.

  “We don’t know these people—”

  Rose laughed. “Bullshit.”

  Aunt Fay turned around, wooden spoon dripping onion soup, to stare at her. “Rose!”

  “No, no. It is total bullshit. I have a cell phone. I can call you as soon as I get there, give you the phone number, everything. It starts at eight, and I can promise to be back by midnight. I’d be there maybe three hours.”

  “No,” Aunt Suzette said. “You won’t be there. You’ll be here.”

  Rose stood so abruptly that her chair tipped backward and slammed to the floor, cracking a tile.

  “I don’t understand you two at all. Are you kidding? This is what you wanted, me making friends, trying to fit in and make some kind of life here. How am I supposed to have friends or a life if you won’t let me?”

  “Friends,” Aunt Suzette said calmly, putting her hands on her plump hips. “Not boy friends.”

  Rose could only laugh in disbelief. “Come on! What is wrong with you two? You want me to be a nun or something? I go to school with boys. I talk to them. That doesn’t mean we’re screwing in the broom closet!”

  Aunt Suzette slapped her hard enough to rock her head back.

  “You don’t talk like that to us,” she said coldly.

  Rose held a h
and to her cheek, staring at her aunt—her kind, jovial Suzette—trying to make sense of the sting of the blow.

  Aunt Fay exhaled loudly and stirred her soup. “We should have taken her back to France.”

  Rose stared at one and then the other, shaking her head, finally settling on Aunt Suzette since Aunt Fay would not even look at her.

  “I can’t believe you just did that,” she whispered, still holding her cheek.

  “You need to listen,” Aunt Suzette said, faltering, a glimmer of guilt finally making its way into her eyes.

  “That’s how you make me listen? Maybe I was better off in a coma.”

  “Don’t—”

  “Maybe I’m better off without my memories, if this is what’s in them.”

  “Rose,” Aunt Suzette said, “you’ve got to listen.”

  “No,” Rose said. “You’ve got to trust me. You two are way, way overboard about this whole boy thing. It’s so bad, it’s haunting my dreams. It’s out of control. If I ever kissed a boy before, or did anything at all, I don’t remember it. I’m not looking to jump into anything. I’m not going to go around kissing random boys. I just want to be with other kids. I’m starting to think I may never get my memories back—”

  “But you will,” Aunt Suzette said.

  “What if I don’t?” Rose shouted. She shook her head, hating every second of the argument. “Really, what if I don’t? I need to start trying to figure out what normal even means. I mean, I’m Rose DuBois, right? But right now I’m creating Rose DuBois from nothing. It’s like building a sand castle, trying to make it take shape without it all falling apart. How can you not understand that?”

  Aunt Fay sighed and turned toward them. She tasted the soup on her spoon and shut off the burner, setting the wooden implement aside.

  “You can go,” she said.

  Aunt Suzette turned on her, wide-eyed. “What?”

  “She can go. Under the terms she put forth. Home by midnight. No traveling alone—”