Patricia McKillip - Winter Rose

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One

They said later that he rode into the village on a horse the color of buttermilk, but I saw him walk out of

the wood.

I was kneeling at the well; I had just lifted water to my lips. The well was one of the wood's secrets: a

deep spring as clear as light, hidden under an overhang of dark stones down which the brier roses fall,

white as snow, red as blood, all summer long. The vines hide the water unless you know to look. I found

it one hot afternoon when I stopped to smell the roses. Beneath their sweet scent lay something shadowy,

mysterious: the smell of earth, water, wet stone. I moved the cascading briers and looked down at my

own reflection.

Corbet, he called himself to the villagers. But I saw him before he had any name at all.

My name is Rois, and I look nothing like a rose. The water told me that. Water never lies. I look more

like a blackbird, with my flighty black hair and eyes more am-ber than the blackbird's sunny yellow. My

skin is not fit for fairy tales, since I liked to stand in light, with my eyes closed, my face turned upward

toward the sun. That's how I saw him at first: as a fall of light, and then something shaping out of the light.

So it seemed. I did not move; I let the water stream silently down my wrist. There was a blur of gold: his

hair. And then I blinked, and saw his face more clearly.

I must have made some noise then. Perhaps I shifted among the wild fern. Perhaps I sighed. He looked

toward me, but there was too much light; I must have been a blur of shadow in his eyes.

Then he walked out of the light.

Of course I thought about him, at first the way you think about weather or time, something always at the

edge of your mind. He didn't seem real to me, just something I dreamed on a hot summer day, as I

swal-lowed water scented with roses and stone. I remembered his eyes, odd, heavy-lidded, the color, I

thought then, of his hair. When I saw them a day or two later, I was surprised.

I gathered wild lilies and honeysuckle and bleeding heart, which my sister, Laurel, loved. I stayed in the

wood for a long time, watching, but he had gone. The sky turned the color of a mourning dove's breast

before I walked out of the trees. I remembered time, then. I was tired and ravenous, and I wished I had

ridden to the wood. I wished I had worn shoes. But I had learned where to find wild ginger, and what

tree bled a crust of honey out of a split in the wood, and where the 1 berries would ripen. My father

despaired of me; my wondered at me. But my despair was greater if I my wonder, like a wild bird. Some

days I let it fly and followed it. On those days I found the honey the secret well, and the mandrake root.

My sister, Laurel, is quite beautiful. She has chesnut hair, and skin like ripened peaches, and great grey

eyes that seem to see things that are not quite discernible others. She doesn't really see that well; her

world is pie and fully human. Her brows lift and pucker worriedly when she encounters ambiguities, or

sometimes on Everyone in the village loves her; she is gentle and : spoken. She was to marry the next

spring.

That twilight, when I came home barefoot, my skirt, full of flowers, her lover, Perrin, was there. Perrin

looked at me askance, as always, and shook his head.

"Barefoot. And with rose petals in your hair. You look like something conceived under a mushroom."

I stuck a stem of honeysuckle in his hair, and bleeding heart into my father's. It slid forward to in front of

his nose, a chain of little hearts. We laughed. He pointed a stubby finger at me.

"It's time you stopped dancing among the ferns put your shoes on, and learned a thing or two from your

sister's practical ways." He drank his beer, the hearts trembling over his nose. I nodded gravely.

"I know."

"You say that," he grumbled. "But you don't listen." He pushed the flower stem behind his ear, and drank

more beer.

"Because you don't really mean what you say." I dropped all my flowers in Laurel's lap, and went behind

him to put my arms around his neck. "You love me as I am. Besides, when Laurel marries, who will care

for you?"

He snorted, even as he patted my hands. "You can't even remember to close a door at night. What I

think is that you should find someone to care for you, before you tumble in a pond and drown, or fall out

of a tree."

"I haven't," I lied with some dignity, "climbed a tree for years."

Perrin made an outraged noise. "I saw you up a pear tree near the old Lynn ruins only last autumn."

"I was hungry. That hardly counts." I loosed my fa-ther, and reached for bread, being still hungry. He

sighed.

"At least sit down. Never mind about getting the bracken out of your hair, or washing your hands, or

any-thing else remotely civilized. How will you ever find a husband?"

I sat. A face turned toward me out of light, and for just a moment I forgot to breathe. Then I swallowed

bread, while Laurel, gathering flowers on her lap, said amiably,

"Perhaps she doesn't want one. Not everyone does." But her brows had twitched into that little, anxious

pucker. I was silent, making resolutions, then discarding them all as useless.

"I want," I said shortly, "to do what I want to do." We lived comfortably in the rambling, thatched

farmhouse that had grown askew with age. Centuries of footsteps had worn shallow valleys into the

flagstones; the floors had settled haphazardly into the earth; door frames tilted; ceilings sagged. Other

things happen to old houses, that only I seemed to notice. Smells had woven into the wood, so that

lavender or baking bread scented the air at unexpected moments. The windows at night sometimes

reflected other fires, the shadows of other faces. Spiders wove webs in high, shadowed corners that

grew more elaborate through the years, as if each generation inher-ited and added to an airy palace. I

wondered sometimes if they would die out when we did, or leave their intricate houses if we left ours. But

I doubted that I would ever know: My father, with his wheat, and apple orchards, and his barns and

stables, only grew more prosperous, and my sister's marriage at least would provide him with heirs for his

house and his spiders.

Perrin was looking at me with that dispassionate, speculative expression he got when he was trying to

imag-ine who among the villagers might be enchanted by me.

I couldn't think of anyone. They were a hardheaded lot, though they were beginning to come to me for

the healing oils and teas I made from my gleanings in the wood. Even Perrin, with his easy ways, would

have been exasperated by me. And I would never stay where I was not free; I would simply walk out the

door and vanish, vows or no.

That frightened me now and then, filled me with ur-gent, unreasoning despair, as if I lacked something

vital -an arm, an eye -but did not know what it was I lacked that other people had to make them fully

human. But most of the time I did not care. It would be nice, I thought, to have a Perrin with that

wayward jet hair to smooth, or those shoulders to shape beneath my hands.

But not this Perrin. Nor anyone that I had grown up with, even among those whose own restlessness

had led them to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

Laurel rose to put the flowers into water. I nibbled this and that: a chicken wing, a spoonful of raisins and

walnuts in a sweet sticky sauce that our cook, Beda, knew

I loved. She loved the wild herbs and mushrooms, the ginger and rosehips I brought her. Everyone else

had eaten, not waiting for me to come home. My father got out his pipe; Laurel put flowers in niches and

corners; Perrin found Laurel's flute and blew softly into it, begin-ning an old ballad of lovers parted on

earth and reunited in the grave. He had not gotten through a verse when Laurel said sharply, "Don't play

that."

We all looked at her, astonished. Color fanned across her face; she turned abruptly, shifted a vase an

inch. Perrin said quickly, "I'm sorry, love."

"It's bad luck."

"It's only an old ballad," I said, still surprised at the tone in her voice. She was so rarely cross or abrupt.

"We've all sung it a hundred times."

She was silent. Then she shivered slightly and turned to us again, her face softening into an apologetic

smile. "I know. It just - I don't want to think of such unhappiness now." Perrin stretched out a hand,

wordlessly; she came to him, took his hand in both of hers. "Play only happy songs," she commanded

him. Her voice was light, but her smile had gone, until he spoke.

"I will play," he said gravely, "'The Ballad of Pig's Trough Tavern.' "

She loosed him then, and rapped him on the head with an empty tankard. "You will not. Play ‘The

Mari-ner's Lay for His Lady,' or I will never love you again, and you can take back the ribbons, and the

blown glass horse and all your poetry."

"Poetry!" our father and I exclaimed together, and Perrin turned red as a cock's wattle. But he was

laughing, and so was Laurel, and then, that was all that mattered.

A day or two later, I learned his name.

I had put my boots on, braided my hair, and ridden to the village with our father and a wagon full of

apple brandy, which he had aged in small oaken kegs. While he delivered it to the village inn, I took a pot

to the smithy to be mended, and bought ribbons to weave around sacks of dried petals for Laurel to lay

among her wedding lin-ens. The village was a scattering of houses, the stolid inn, a sagging tavern, an

apothecary, the smithy, a stable, a baker, a weaver, a chandlery, the mill, and a swath of green in the

middle of it, where geese and the weaver's sheep and the innkeeper's cow wandered. When I went into

the inn to retrieve my father, who above all loved his ale and his company together, I heard the smith's

lazy-boned son Crispin say, "My grandfather remembers it all: how his father and grandfather fought, and

the son killed his father, and a curse was laid on the family with his grandfather's dying breath."

It was a moment before anyone sorted this out. My father said, "Wait-"

"His grandson," Crispin nodded, "it would be." He had a beautiful smile, and a smooth easy voice that

made youforget the time it wasted. He sipped his beer, then enlightened my father. "Corbet, his name is.

Corbet Lynn. Hisfather died, and he has come to claim his inheritance."

"That old wreck?" The innkeeper, Travers, shook his head, mopping a ring my father's beer had left.

"The land must be worth a fortune, but where's he going to live? The hall is in ruins. Nothing but a broken

husk of stone overgrown with vines. The wood is taking it back. Will he sell the land?"

"He told my father no. He intends to stay. He's out there now." His eyes found a skirt and long hair in the

doorway, and he smiled; he didn't need to see a face, just the suggestion of shape caught him that way.

"Rois."

My father turned vaguely toward me. But his atten-tion lay elsewhere. "Corbet."

Crispin nodded. "Riding through the village on a horse as white as milk," he said liltingly. "Or buttermilk,

at least. Pretty. She threw a shoe at the crossroads. So we got his story first."

"His father wasn't hanged?" the innkeeper asked. "No. He vanished. No one searched very hard for him.

My grandfather said Nial Lynn had it coming. Any-way, no one saw anything."

"Then how-"

"No one admitted to seeing or hearing anything. But somehow everyone knew who spilled the blood in

Lynn t 1a11, and how the family was cursed."

"What was the curse?" I asked, as entranced as any-one by such passions in our quiet world, and

equally as skeptical.

"'May yours do to you what you have done to me.' That's what my grandfather remembers."

My father's brows were up; he was thanking himself, I could see, for his wisdom in having only

daughters. "And did he?"

Crispin shrugged. "Kill his father? He didn't mention it. He has his grandfather's face. So mine said. But

others may remember differently. He seemed cheerful enough, if he did."

My feet had begun to want out of their boots. "Fa-ther," I said, and he rose. Crispin smiled at me again,

raised his beer.

I turned, walked into the hot noon light, and saw him, with his pale gold hair and light-filled eyes, riding

his horse the color of buttermilk across the green grass, as if he were human as the rest of us, not

something that had stepped out of light into time. I could not move; I could not breathe. And then, as if he

read my thoughts, his eyes met mine. Pale green seemed to melt through me, and I thought: How could

they be any other color?

"Rois," my father said, and his eyes loosed me, and I could move again.

Ten

They had a few bright, chilly days to build that sta-ble. I heard their hammering echo across the fields as

I wandered toward the autumn wood. There was not much left alive in the wood; things were withering,

dying back, withdrawing beneath the ground to wait through the winter. Among great masses of dead

leaves, tumblings of brown vines, hillocks of stark brambles picked clean of their berries by the birds,

branches torn down by the fierce winds, abandoned nests swaying on leafless boughs, a rare color

caught my eyes: the burning green of holly, or the strange flowers of the witch hazel, their thin yellow

petals curling like clusters of wood shavings on stripped, bare branches. I picked a few for Laurel, and

found some rosehips for my teas. I did not go near Lynn Hall. I drifted, I felt, in Corbet's tangled wood,

where light did not reveal the truth, and every path led into shadow.

He had told me where I was lost, but he had not told me how to find my way out of the wood. My

thoughts roamed as I roamed, through the tales I had been told, through memories of Corbet, his riddling

eyes and unexpected pleas, emerging out of dreams or casual conversations, for me to untangle paths for

both of us. But I was afraid of the wood in which he was lost, and he knew it. I did not want to think of

it, which is why, I realized finally, I did not want to see him. He did not come to the house during those

days; perhaps he did not dare see Laurel. Perhaps he thought if he hewed enough, hammered enough, he

could drive the sound of her voice out of his mind, he could build a wall against her eyes. She did not see

him either. She kept the house spotless and sat with Perrin every evening. Only occasionally did she

linger at a window to gaze at the distant wood which, with all its bare trees, still hid Lynn Hall within its

heart.

I could not stop thinking, though I avoided thoughts that led down the most dangerous paths. I chose an

easier way. I went back to the villagers to find the needle in the haystack: who had been in the wood to

find Nial Lynn's body, who had heard his dying words.

" 'Sorrow and trouble and bitterness will hound you and yours and the children of yours ...... Shave

Turl's ancient great-aunt Anis said as I poured her a cup of blackberry tea. She had yellow-white hair

and softly (,rumpled skin that draped itself in graceful folds over herbones. She had raised six children

and buried four more in her long life. She moved stiffly now, and recognized voices instead of faces, but

she was not infirm, and she liked her tea hot, strong and richly laced with cream. I sat with her in her

quiet house; Shave, who lived with her to keep her company, had felt a chill in his bones and went back

to his bed after checking to see if anyone in-teresting had come in to visit his aunt. He seemed inclined to

linger, but when I offered to make him a tea to cure his chill, he took himself and his bones away. "That

boy," Anis said, breaking off in the middle of the curse. "They're too delicate, these days. It's like soil, I

think; one planting saps energy from the next."

It was a kindly way of looking at Shave, who once stayed in bed for a week while he lost a toenail he

had stubbed on a harrow. I poured my tea and tried to ignore my own restless feet fidgeting in their

boots. Outside Anis' thick window panes the distorted sky hung low and dove's wing-grey; the

intermittent rains felt icy, and the wind had a sharp, testy mutter to it.

I said, turning her back in time, "How could you remember that curse all these years?"

"How could I forget it?" she asked with a certain, skewed reasoning.

"Other people remember different curses." "It's as they remember."

"Did you see Nial Lynn die?"

She sipped tea almost as pale as cream. Her eyes seemed the same cloudy pale; she saw faces, she

said, as blurs of shadow, though things farther away became, like memory, more detailed.

"I had a houseful then, and it was winter. That meant water boiling for laundry in one pot, soup

simmering in another, bread rising, children everywhere underfoot, the littlest trying to walk, and apt to

fall in the fire or out the door in a moment." She sipped tea. "Not," she said calmly, "that I would have

stepped in to rescue him if I had seen it. He came here, sometimes.

"Nial?" I asked, startled.

"No. Young Tearle. Some years after his mother died and we ran free as rabbits that summer night to

spy on Lynn Hall. I married young and already had my hands full, with my own and others' children come

to visit them. Tearle would walk in, just come in like a wild thing out of the cold at odd times. He never

said much. He would just sit and watch the others running and shrieking and laughing, watch me sewing,

or cooking, or trying to catch one of them to bathe. I'd look up and there he'd be, like a ghost in the

shadows, watching the children. He was much older than they, but young enough still to miss what he'd

never had. They'd say his name, but they never teased him or bothered him. I'd go back to work, and

look up again, and he'd be gone." She paused; entranced, I did not even blink. The lines on her face

rearranged themselves, her thin mouth all but dis-appearing before she spoke again. "Once or twice I'd

see bruises on him. He wouldn't let me touch them; he would not admit they were there. Once he ate a

piece of plum cake I handed him. He ate it so slowly, crumb by crumb, as if he marvelled at every taste.

Once he reached out and caught the baby when she tripped over her feet. Once she came and put her

face on hislegs and went to sleep. He watched her, not moving, un-til she woke again.

"And then he came."

"Nial," I guessed, as fine seams and wrinkles knot-ted.

He came in without knocking, bade me good morn-ing with a smile,,and walked to where Tearle sat in a

corner. He put his hand down, as if to help the boy up off the floor, and then - I don't know - Tearle

started to stand, and was sitting again, his eyes closed, his head rolling limp against the wall, as if he had

fallen asleep. Nial spoke his name, not sharply, and he struggled up, looking dazed. He stumbled a little,

walking past me. I didn't see a mark on him. But something happened. He left without speaking. He

never came again."

She lifted her cup delicately with both hands and drank. Neither of us spoke. The wind shrieked

suddenly under the eaves and she started as at a child's voice.

"I never saw him much after that; I only heard the tales of him running wild with the wildest of ours. And

then Nial cursed him and died and he ran away."

"Who heard the curse?" I asked. "Who saw Nial murdered?"

She was silent again, gazing at the clouds in her tea, watching a face form in them. She blinked; it swirled

away. "I don't know that anyone saw it. Til Travers brought the news, though. He was broad as an oak,

and burly, a great bullock of a young man, who would walk through a blizzard and not feel it, and not

lose his way. He had a bird's sense of direction. He had taken a sleigh with provisions from the inn for the

hall, a standing order every twelve days. I knew because my Nysa liked to ride with him, and I always

fretted in bad weather. But she had sent him off into the storm that day. They had a quarrel, and she was

red-eyed and scowling, and watch-ing for him to come back anyway.

"And he came. He had Nial Lynn slung on top of his provisions, covered with sacks and two inches of

snow. Nysa saw the blood on the sacks and rushed out into the snow to Til. He said there was blood on

the marble floor, and Tearle Lynn had disappeared. He said something else, and then the children were

wailing and Nysa was crying again, and Nial was sliding out from under the sacks, so I sent him with Til

to the apothecary, who would know what to do if there was any life left in him." She paused; her eyes,

pale as they were, fixed on her cup, reminded me of ravens' eyes.

"Did Til hear the curse?"

"He didn't say." She blinked and sat back in her chair. "What he said was that Tearle Lynn had

van-ished -"

"Yes - "

"But his horse was in the stable and there were no tracks anywhere in the snow except Til's. They

searched, later. The snow lay unbroken all around the hall, except for Til's sleigh. Tearle Lynn had turned

himself into a bird and flown . . . "

I stared at her, bewildered. "Maybe," I said finally, "he ran away before the snow fell. Maybe Nial

Lynn's heart gave out and he struck his head, falling. Maybe Tearle never killed him at all."

"We asked all those things," she said. "They searched all over the house, the woods. They found no

secrets, no hidden doors or passages. But no one could explain the bruises around Nial Lynn's throat, or

the table on its side, or the wine bottle smashed against the far wall. Nial Lynn had been murdered, and

Tearle Lynn had killed him and had run. But out of what door and down what road no one could say."

I was silent. My hands were clenched under the ta-ble; I could feel my nails trying to hold thoughts still,

but they ripped loose anyway, clamored like a flock of fright-ened birds.

He had opened a door and fled down a tangled path into the wood ...

His son could not find the way back.

I shuddered, hearing the true curse that Nial Lynn had laid upon his son:Ibequeath all to the wood.

And the wood had taken all.

I finished my tea and stood up. Corbet built his walls and his stable, roofed his rooms, spoke of clearing

fields and finding water, but he lived among us as if each action might make him human, as if each wish,

spoken, might make itself true. But it was little more than his father had done, sitting in Anis' house,

watching, pretending that he belonged in that safe world, among those laughing, squab-bling children, that

the opening door would not lead him back to the cold and empty shadow world that claimed him.

"I must go," I said to Anis, but where, I did not know. I kissed her cheek; she drew a deep breath as I

straightened.

"I can smell the wind and wood on you," she said, "as if you lived in them."

I opened the door and glimpsed, in the wild wind andsky,perhaps in her words, the next turn of the

tan-gled path we walked.

Eleven

Iwent back to the well.

It was the only door I knew, besides the boarded I doorway in Lynn Hall, and I could not go there. I

was afraid to find Corbet behind that door again, luring mein,warning me away, with his grandfather's

eyes and his father's desperate voice. He was not in the hall when I crept past it at twilight; the makeshift

stable, finished but lacking a door, was empty. The sight chilled me more deeply than the winds. He

could have simply gone to the innto eat. But I saw him sitting at our hearth, watching

Laurel out of secret, firelit eyes, while Perrin spoke of cows and our father snored. Play, I wanted to beg

Perrin. Don't play cows and fields and next year's planting. Make aflute of your bones and play the music

of your heart .

I had not been home all day. They knew I had gone to the village; they would think, when I did not

return for supper, that I had stayed to eat with someone. What they would think later I could not pause

to wonder. Above the wood, the twilight sky was a dusky 1avender, fading into deep purples and the

vibrant grey of storm clouds. The winds smelled of rain; they held an edge of winter cold. They pushed

me here and there as I walked, jostling me like invisible horses; they seemed to spring from any direction.

Night came swiftly, caught me hrfore I reached the well. But I stumbled on, guided bythelowering shape

of a lightning-split oak against a mo-ment's scattering of stars, by a pattern of stones under-foot, a

sudden glint of water, the dry rattling of rose vines in the wind.

I smelled wet stone, and an echo, a memory, of sun-warmed roses. I sank wearily down beside the little

well.Theleaves were sodden and crumbling; I could not bury myself in them, but I did not care. I wanted

to be found. So I did what Corbet had done, that hot summer day. I pushed aside the rose vines with

one arm and dipped my hand into the water and drank. The vines blew against me, snagged my hair and

my cloak, until I could hardly move. I lifted water and drank, lifted water and drank, until I felt it run

down my throat and breast, and the thorns wove into cloth and hair and skin, imprisoning me, but I did

not care.

Then I heard the voices on the wind, and the silvery ring of tiny bells. The winds flooded through the

bare trees; I heard one snap like a bone and fall. Vines whipped wildly around me, opening to reveal the

well, and the stones, and the rose as red as blood that bloomed in the dark water, more beautiful than

any living rose.

"Take it," a voice breathed into the wind. I freed my hand from the thorns and reached into the water. It

pricked me as I lifted it out; I smelled its perfume, all the scents of the summer that had gone.

"I want him," I said to all the dark riders crowded around me, who had ridden down the wind. "I want

him in this world."

Silvery laughter mingled with the bells. "No one ever wanted him. And so he came to us."

"I want him."

"Then you must hold fast to him, as fast as those thorns hold you, no matter what shape he takes, what

face he shows. You must love him."

"I do."

Again I heard the laughter, sweet and mocking in the screaming winds. "You must be human to love."

"I am," I said, and the tiny bells rang madly amid the laughter.

"Then take him."

His face appeared in the water, like the rose, as beau-tiful and as cruel, smiling his faint, secret smile, his

eyes glittering with moonlight and as cold. I felt my heart pound sickly, for I did not want what I saw. But

I reached down to him through the water, deeper and deeper, for he eluded me; deeper, until I felt the

cold dark well up around me, and I saw nothing.

When I woke, he was bending over me.

The light burned my eyes, though it was only the misty grey of an autumn morning. His eyes were no

longer cold; his brows were drawn hard. I raised my hand to touch his face, which looked as colorless

and bleak as the sky behind it. Then I winced, and felt, all over me, the burning roses of pain.

"She's awake," he said briefly to someone. Perrin answered.

"I'll lift her."

"She can't ride."

Perrin's trousers appeared beside Corbet's face. "I'd best go back and get her father's wagon," he said.

"I'll do it," Corbet said, and stood up; I lost his face. "And some blankets to lay her on. And I'll bring

Laurel."

"Yes," Perrin said, and I would have sighed if the rose vines weren't growing up my back. Nothing had

changed. I felt a tear slide down my cheek. Perrin's face appeared where Corbet's had been. He took off

his wool cloak and folded it, and slipped it gently under my head. "Easy, girl," he said soothingly, as if he

were talking to his horse. "We'll have you home soon. Looks like you fell into the brier roses, wandering

around in the dark. Your sister rode for me at dawn; she went into the village to ask around, and I came

out to the hall. Corbet brought me here. He said you liked this place."

"Where's my rose?" I asked, remembering it sud-denly. Even my lips felt swollen. Perrin looked blank.

"What's that?"

"Where's my red rose?"

His brows lifted worriedly. "There's nothing bloom-ing now, Rois. You're feverish. Lie quiet now, try to

rest." But I made him help me sit until I could look around me. The stark, thick vines hid the well again;

perhaps, I thought, if I parted them, I would see the rose floating just beneath the water. But I could

barely move, and Perrin would have thought me crazed. Perhaps he already did. Perhaps, I thought

dispassionately, I am.

I pick roses out of water. I talk to voices in the wind. I see ghosts walk out of light.

Corbet finally returned, driving the wagon as close as he could among the trees; Laurel leaped down

before it stopped.

She said nothing when she saw me; I saw her face drain white as cream. She bent down, touched my

cheek gently. Perrin lifted me; she walked beside him to the wagon, holding the edge of my cloak

between her fingers, not knowing where to hold me. Corbet helped him lay me on the blankets in the

wagon. By then I was crying silently, partly in pain, partly out of frustration, because I could not tell them

why I had gone into the wood in the dark, why I had impaled myself on rose vines. Laurel spoke at me

as if I were a demented child; Perrin whis-tled, determined to be cheerful, and Corbet, wearing his calm

human face, was not about to offer inhuman expla-nations to anyone. I hated him then. His eyes, touching

mine, gave me nothing.

My father, horrified and speechless, helped them carry me up to bed. They left me there with Laurel and

Beda, who drew off my torn, bloody clothing, washed me with comfrey water, and smoothed one of my

own oils over my skin untilitfelt a little less like shredded paper and I smelled like a garden run wild. I was

still crying; I refused to answer any of Laurel's questions. She gave up talking, and left me with a cup of

camomile tea, which was, I found when I lifted it shakily to my lips, mostly apple brandy.

I slept without dreaming, except once, when a red rose opened in the dark and I smelled its scent.

When I woke, Laurel was lighting a lamp in a corner of the room so that I would not wake in the dark. I

said her name. She turned swiftly, bringing the lamp, and examined my torn wrists, my face. Then she sat

on the bed and stared at me.

"Rois Melior, what on earth were you doing?"

I spoke cautiously; a thorn had caught my upper lip. "Nothing. It got dark sooner than I expected. That's

- "

"Anis Turl said you came and asked her questions about Nial Lynn's death, about his son, about the

curse on Lynn Hall. And then you forgot to come home before dark, you stayed out all night, and Corbet

and Perrin found you in the wood near Lynn Hall, half-hidden in brambles, so tightly covered they didn't

know at first if you were alive or dead. Perrin said it looked as if you were trying to drown yourself in

thorns."

"I wasn't," I said shortly. "It was very windy -I got tangled, and the harder I pulled, the more tangled I

got - "

"You stayed in the wood to spy on Corbet. What you're tangled in is that old moldering tale, which is

noth-ing but memory now, in the few minds left to remember, and they don't know the difference

anymore between what was true and what was conjecture, and what was just stories tossed around the

hearth or the tavern after too much ale. That tale about the boy murdering his fa-ther and running away

without leaving a track in the snow - there's nothing magical about it! Either he did or he didn't, and if he

did, by Anis' account there was enough snow falling to bury the tracks of a harrow pulled by a dozen

oxen. And I don't know what confused ideas you have about Corbet - " Color flushed through her face

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OneTheysaidlaterthatherodeintothevillageonahorsethecolorofbuttermilk,butIsawhimwalkoutofthewood.Iwaskneelingatthewell;Ihadjustliftedwatertomylips.Thewellwasoneofthewood'ssecrets:adeepspringasclearaslight,hiddenunderanoverhangofdarkstonesdownwhichthebrierrosesfall,whiteassnow,redasblood,allsummerlong...

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Patricia McKillip - Winter Rose

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