Witchlight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Is he a patient here?” the nurse said. Winter could see her nameplate: Carol Taylor.

  Do you think I’d be here if he wasn’t? “Yes,” Winter said. The contrast between this place and Fall River gave her a sudden unwelcome pang. If Fall River had been horrible, how much more horrible could this place be?

  “Are you a relative?” the nurse asked.

  Winter’s head drooped. Yes. I’m the woman who should have married him. “I’m Winter Musgrave.”

  A simple trick that Winter had learned years before was that any answer, no matter how meaningless, would be taken for the proper answer if only it was uttered in a confident tone of voice. Though she had provided no explanation and no proof, the nurse pressed a button, and an aide in a bright-flowered smock popped out of one of the rooms down the hall.

  “Ashley will show you to Mr. Greyson’s room,” the nurse said.

  “AND HOW are we today, Hunter?” Ashley chirped brightly. She walked past the bed by the door, opened the curtain, checked the air conditioner to see that it was running, and then turned back.

  Winter stood looking down at the bed by the window. “Hello, Grey,” she said. Her lips moved, but no sound came.

  The man on the bed was thin and frail. His long blond hair was pulled back in a limp braid. His eyes were closed as if he were asleep.

  But he wasn’t.

  In the space between the two beds a respiratory ventilator worked, its sound an awful parody of human breathing. A blue-tinted hose led from the machine to a bubbling humidifier to a hole in the throat of Hunter Greyson. Through the tube’s translucent plastic Winter could see the pale flash of the tracheostomy fittings, and a nauseated wave of denial rose up behind her clenched teeth.

  “Is this your first visit?” Ashley asked, her voice low with professional compassion. She moved closer to the bedside, lifting Grey’s slack hand and taking his pulse with automatic efficiency. “Come on, Hunter, wake up, guy. You’ve got visitors.”

  “Don’t,” Winter begged. Grey. His name is Grey.

  Ashley looked at her pityingly. “You’ve got to talk to them,” she said, still holding Grey’s hand. “Maybe they know you’re here. And sometimes they wake up, even from the machine.”

  Winter stared at her. She could not have spoken if her life depended on it. After a moment Ashley shrugged almost imperceptibly and moved toward the other bed.

  “Hiya, Bobby. How’re we doing today? Ready for a little softball on the beach?” she said with bright enthusiasm.

  “What happened to him?” Winter asked. Ashley pulled the covers up around “Bobby’s” neck and turned to face her.

  “Hunter? It was a motorcycle accident, the admitting report said. We got him—I mean, he was transferred here after about six weeks at Sacto; we had the only available bed in the area. He was riding in the rain … they found his bike at the bottom of the cliff near Antonia Beach and they’re lucky they found him at all. Hit and run, maybe. If he wakes up, maybe he can tell us. Right, Hunter?”

  The dark, the rain—hadn’t looked like rain when I left; got to get the bike under cover—Headlights in the wrong lane, sliding around the curve—drunk driver; which way’s he going to swerve?—No! Oh, God, it’s so cold—

  Winter jerked back to reality with Ashley’s hands clamped around her arms.

  “Come on over here; we’re going to sit down now.”

  Winter felt the edge of a chair at the back of her legs and lowered herself gratefully into it, sweating and sick with the sudden flashback to the recurring nightmare that had haunted her for weeks before her admission to Fall River. Only it wasn’t a nightmare. She knew that now. It was the truth.

  Savagely Winter forced the tears black, wishing she could disown as well the memories of the pain and broken bones, of lying in the rain not knowing how bad the injuries were but knowing they were bad, of feeling life and consciousness ebb like the ocean on the rocks below and praying that someone, anyone, would come.

  Winter drew a deep breath.

  “Are you all right? Shall I get the nurse?” Ashley said.

  “No. Yes. I mean—It was just a shock, seeing him. I’m all right now,” Winter lied glibly.

  “When did you find out?” Ashley said. “About him?”

  Winter glanced up at her in surprise.

  “You aren’t really family, are you?” Ashley said. “A friend?”

  There was no point in denying it now. What could they do, other than throw her out? “Yes,” Winter said.

  Ashley sighed, and for a moment all the vitality seemed to drain out of her. “Oh. I’m sorry to hear it. I was kind of hoping you could sign the papers,” she said softly. “We haven’t been able to find any family. Do you know where they are?”

  Grey had never spoken of his family, not that Winter ever remembered. “No. What papers?”

  “To pull the—To turn off his respirator. He came in on one from Sacramento, and by state law we can’t disconnect it without the family’s consent. But he’s been here more than a year, and I don’t really think he’s going to wake up,” Ashley said sadly. “He’s only thirty-five. He could be like this for the next thirty years. And sometimes, when I work midnights I come in here and sit with him. I think he wants us to let him go … but we can’t.” Ashley hesitated. “Do you want me to leave you alone with him for a while?”

  “Thank you,” Winter said.

  “I’ll be down at the other end of the hall,” Ashley said. “It’s just me and Mrs. Taylor on today—that’s the nurse down at the station. Marcie called in sick. Just press the button if you need anything.” Her white orthopedic shoes whispered over the battered linoleum as Ashley whisked out, closing the door behind her.

  WINTER WALKED BACK over to the body in the bed. The thump and sigh of the ventilator was loud inside the room, and the sunny day outside seemed only a mockery painted on the glass.

  “Hello, Grey,” she said again. She reached out and took his hand.

  And vanished.

  OR, RATHER, the world around her vanished, as suddenly as if someone had put a bag over her head. There was a confusing maelstrom of images: the gulls crying, and rain; a roaring sound like a powerful engine running flat-out; and the taste of copper. It was as if some playful god were pawing through some toybox of the senses.

  And then, so fast that Winter, scrabbling for her sanity, was sure this was only one more layer of hallucination, she found herself standing in the spring orchard below Greyangels Farm. She had barely grasped where she was—against all possibility—when the apple-blossom petals began to spill from the trees, and the grass to turn to dust. For an instant the branches of the orchard were silvery bare, before the trees themselves withered away to ash, and a cold, cold wind swirled the remains of the orchard away. I’m going to scream now, Winter thought, though she knew that once she began to scream she would never stop.

  “Hello, Winter.”

  Dr. Luty was right. Everybody was right. I’ve been crazy all along.

  Winter Musgrave turned around and looked into Hunter Greyson’s eyes.

  HE WAS DRESSED as she’d seen him in her dreams, in the white buckskin jacket and jeans he’d worn in that springtime orchard so many years ago. As she watched, the jacket darkened, became rain-spotted motorcycle leathers, and the lines of age flickered across his face like summer lightning.

  She was not seeing Grey, Winter realized with a horrified pang. She was seeing the idea of Grey—and she had not seen him in so many years that her mental picture of his appearance was only confusing things.

  She was terrified, exhausted, and sick with grief. But more than that, Winter was a woman who refused ever to fail. Deliberately she forced herself to relax, to let go.

  Grey’s blurred image steadied; a vigorous man of her own age, in his thirties, and not the wasted ghost in the hospital bed. His pale blond hair, still long, was pulled back into a silky ponytail. Instead of anything resembling street clothes, he wore a long white robe with an open-f
ronted red robe over it. The inner robe was belted in with what looked like a jeweled serpent, and resting on his hair was a laurel-leaf crown made of gold. On his right wrist he wore an iron bracelet set with red stones, and there was a signet ring on his finger. He looked …

  He looked like the picture of Thorne Blackburn from the front of Truth’s book.

  “Grey,” Winter said wonderingly, and then, with the inanity that was sanity’s only possible defense: “What do you do for a living?”

  Grey—or his image—laughed. “I’m an unemployed actor, what did you think?” He came forward and took her hands in his, and possibly the greatest shock since her arrival was that his skin seemed warm and living against her own.

  “You came. I thought you’d forgotten me,” Hunter Greyson said.

  I did for a while. But not any more. “Grey, what is this place? Where am I? How did I get here?” Winter babbled.

  “You aren’t here; not really. Your body is right where you left it. This is only a dream. Do you remember, Winter? We built our stronghold here, a long time ago.”

  Winter looked over his shoulder. The flat featureless light that allowed her to see came from nowhere and everywhere, illuminating a universe as unnatural as a movie sound-stage. In the middle distance she could see twelve cairns of stone, half crumbling and seemingly very old, set in a circle.

  “Yes, Grey. I remember.” And as she said it, the words were true.

  “Help me, Winter. You’re my last hope,” Grey said. “No one else came.”

  Once more there came that sick flutter of uncertainty: the night, the road, the glare of the oncoming headlights, and then the cold … . She shuddered, pulling closer to him, and Grey embraced her as if her presence could warm him.

  “It took me a long time to realize I wasn’t dead,” Grey said against her cheek. “If I’d been dead, I would have known what to do; after all, I’d been preparing for it all my life. Death isn’t the end. It’s only a way-station on the journey.”

  “You’re in a coma,” Winter said pulling back to look into his face. “Hooked up to a respirator.” She felt like Alice having a conversation with the Red Queen—no matter what she said, it would sound totally surreal. As long as she didn’t think about where she was or who she was talking to, she was okay, but nothing in the bizarre manifestations of the last several months had come even close to preparing her for this.

  “A coma.” Grey nodded. “I thought it might be something like that. I can’t go on, I can’t go back. I’m just … here. Not even as real as a ghost. I tried to reach some of the people I knew, but the way I am now, things don’t work the way they should. The only way I could reach the physical world at all was to call back the magickal child that Nuclear Circle created, and—”

  “You sent it? It was you all along? You killed Cassie?” Winter interrupted. She jerked away from him and stepped back, putting as much space between them as she could. Anger called to her; a fury that here, in this world, would be as tangible as their two bodies. Cassie was dead and Grey had killed her. He’d sent the magickal child that had started the fire. He’d said so.

  Betrayal fed her anger—only now did Winter realize how much she had been counting on Grey to live up to her dreams of him.

  “Killed—?” Grey’s face went pale with shock. He threw up his hands, sketching a figure in the aethyr—

  —and Winter was back in the hospital room, staring down at Grey’s body across their clasped hands, her heart hammering with fury and shock.

  “Grey!” she cried. The body in the bed did not stir. “Grey, answer me!” She took him by the shoulders, shaking him. His head lolled limply on the pillow.

  “Is everything all right in here?” Ms. Taylor came into the room, starched and efficient in her nursing whites, and looked down at Grey. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Leave my patient alone. Winter heard that unspoken rebuke as clearly as if it had been uttered aloud.

  “No,” she said, summoning a smile with an effort. “Everything’s fine. Could I be alone with my—with Grey, please?”

  She didn’t dare claim a relationship she couldn’t prove, dearly as she wished to. The moment she did there’d be papers to sign and questions she didn’t dare face—not someone whose recent treatment in a “sanatorium” could too easily come to light. She had to stay calm, or she could help no one.

  “We’ve always called him Hunter,” Ms. Taylor said, seeming to accept the explanation that was no explanation. She smoothed the hair back from Grey’s brow. Winter felt a flare of jealousy before realizing that this woman had as much right as she did to touch him—and maybe more.

  “The family always called him Grey,” Winter said, skating perilously close to a lie. “He hated—hates—to be called Hunter.” With reflexive pragmatism, she wondered who was paying the bills to keep Grey here, if he really had no family.

  “I’ll tell the girls, then. We try to call them by name as much as possible. People have come out of comas much longer than this one, Ms. Greyson, you mustn’t give up hope. Please stay as long as you want. Oh, and could you stop by the administration office on your way out? Mr. Peters needs to talk to a member of the family about what to do with the billing once the Medicaid runs out.” Ms. Taylor smoothed Grey’s hair back one last time before she left.

  ALONE ONCE MORE, Winter stared down at Grey. If she touched him again, would she find herself back in the Twilight Zone talking to a ghost?

  Just how much credence could she give to everything she thought she had heard Grey saying, anyway? Wasn’t it so much more likely that the whole thing had been some kind of delusional flashback? No matter how much reason she’d had for it, she’d still had a nervous breakdown—or the next best thing to one.

  “Well,” Winter said aloud, “you can’t have it both ways.” Either what had just happened was a hallucination—in which case she had no more reason to believe that Grey had killed Cassie than she’d had before—or it wasn’t.

  And Grey had killed her friend.

  No, Winter told herself. Think about it. He said he’d sent the magickal child. He didn’t seem to know about Cassie’s death at all—in fact, he seemed pretty shaken up by it when I told him.

  What was she supposed to believe? Who was she supposed to believe?

  “Why trust anybody, Winter?” Grey spoke to her out of her memory. “It’s a free country. Doubt everything. Question authority.”

  “Okay,” Winter said. “You’re the authority, and I’m going to question you.”

  She dragged the chair she’d been sitting in before over beside Grey’s bed and reached through the guardrails to clasp his hand once more. I need to know. If you hate me enough to kill me I need to know.

  It was like choosing to step off a high-diving board. She let go and fell through that strange kaleidoscopic disorientation once again; scenes and sensations bizarrely disconnected from all familiar context.

  And then, faster than before, the flicker through the orchard—there’s something here I need to understand—and Grey, the plain, the ruined citadel in the distance.

  He was dressed as before, only now the bright scarlet of the outer robe had cooled to a dark wine color, and everything about him seemed less bright. For a moment her senses rebelled against the compelling reality of all of this—this—this Stephen King fantasy world that was as concretely here as a New York City street.

  As she fought it, the world around her flickered and vanished, and the sounds and smells of the hospital room welled up around her once more. She heard Grey cry out—from that world or this?—and belatedly understood that the Otherworld was not something forced on her, but a thing that she was somehow helping to create.

  How can this be? a part of her mind cried out, terrified. But this was a part of reality that Truth and others Winter had met on her travels accepted as simply as they accepted the physical world around them, and Winter was out of options. Accept and use it unquestioningly, or more people would die.
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  She relaxed, and the only world Grey had left came real once more.

  She could feel the cold sinking into her bones, and wished, for a ridiculous moment, that she’d brought a heavier coat. But no earthly garments could warm her here.

  “Take my hand.” Grey’s fingers closed over hers, and the world steadied around her. Winter looked up into his face.

  He was not the way she had remembered him. Too many years had passed for that. But traces of the boy she’d known remained in the man, and for a moment the memory of how much she’d loved him threatened to overwhelm everything.

  For a moment.

  “You killed Cassie,” Winter said, tightening her grasp on his hand. Determination made a cold weapon of her heart. The answer was here after all.

  “No.” Grey’s denial was slow, uncertain. “I … But … you’re here, Winter. Why you? You didn’t have any more interest in the Work—” his tone was bitter “—and Cassie did, at least a little; enough that I thought a message from the astral had a chance of reaching her. How did she die?”

  “Burned,” Winter said brutally. “Burned to death in her bookstore—trying to communicate with what you sent after her.”

  “But that isn’t the way it should have happened,” Grey protested. His unhappiness and puzzlement communicated themselves to Winter, tingeing her feelings with his own. “I’m caught between life and death—I don’t have either the animal energy of a physical body or the spiritual power of the disembodied to draw on.”

  “‘Your powers are weak, old man,’” Winter quoted, and Grey smiled painfully.

  “Something like that. So what I sent was the Elemental that Nuclear Circle had played around with back in college—we pretty much didn’t know what we were doing back then, but on the astral every action leaves a trace. The idea of it still existed, and I was able to lend it enough will to give it coherence again—but it should never have been able to affect the physical plane at all.”