Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

“A pretty catamite,” he announced. He kissed me on the mouth and set me back on the grass.

“I am Toby Rhymer, boy,” he intoned, thrusting his hand at mine. “A nom du theatre, of course. Né’e Toby Crouch, of the Historians.” As I took his hand, Justice slipped beside me. Toby glanced at him, nodding. “Toby Rhymer, my dear.”

“Justice Saint-Alaban,” he said. “You’ve met my companion Aidan.”

“Aidan,” said Toby.

“Aidan,” a soft voice echoed. From behind him peered the tiny figure I had glimpsed before. I squinted, trying to make out the wizened face hidden behind the torn lace. From within the cloud of white netting I glimpsed only a flash of intelligent black eyes surveying me calmly.

“That is a woman, sieur,” she whispered. Justice flinched beside me, but Toby only guffawed and pinched my cheek.

“I bet you could play the part better than I ever could, eh, boy?” He laughed, and gave Justice an admiring look. “A handsome leman, Saint-Alaban.”

I stepped from him to gaze down at the figure who had recognized me so easily. From the folds of her bonnet peered a shriveled face, so that for a moment I thought her a very old woman. But a hag with extraordinarily bright eyes and a gentle voice. She gazed back at me unperturbed, so that I drew even closer, until I gazed directly into her face and found myself drawing back her silken bonnet. , I stepped back in amazement.

“Justice!” I gasped. “Look!”

With a sigh the little figure raised her head to Toby, then plucked back the bonnet with very long slender brown fingers. Justice drew in his breath.

“A monkey!”

Toby Rhymer shook his head and knelt beside her, drawing his arm protectively about the folds of her gown. “No,” he said. “Miss Scarlet is a wonder, a marvel, the prodigy of a prodigal age; a troglodyte with the wit and grace of a Paphian and the brilliance of a Curator, a beacon in these dark and desperate times. In short, An Actress.”

She tipped her head modestly, her long lips drawing back to show sharp yellow teeth. “Ah, Toby,” she murmured; in her voice the rustle of warm leaves. “He is a showman,” she said aside to me apologetically; then fixed me with a piercing look. She said no more; but in her deep-set eyes I read that while she had seen through my disguise she would not betray my secret.

“My dear Miss Scarlet,” gushed Lalage, brushing aside the insistent hands and imprecations of Toby’s troupe to greet the chimpanzee. “It’s been much too long since I had the honor of seeing you perform.”

“How kind of you,” murmured Miss Scarlet, extending those extraordinarily long fingers to be kissed.

Behind her the plump girl and her mustachioed companion mocked Lalage’s greeting. Toby glanced back at them.

“Ladies! Perhaps our hostess will not object to your performing ablutions before performing a Bluebeard or Hamlet this evening?” He inclined his head to Lalage.

“Of course not.” She rose and shook the grass from her shift, motioning the girls to follow her.

“Fabian—you will assist Lalage in serving our meal,” Toby ordered. With a wink the long-legged young man disappeared after the others.

“Please forgive my rudeness,” Justice began. Toby brushed him aside, taking Miss Scarlet’s hand.

“I am not in need of your apologies, and Miss Scarlet Pan rises above such idle speculation. It is Her Way,” he said. “May we join you?”

We settled back at the stone table, Toby escorting his little soubrette and seeing that she was comfortable before seating himself. I was unable to resist staring at Miss Scarlet. She beckoned for me to sit beside her.

“I have never known an animal that could speak before,” I said. Across from us Justice was offering Toby the last sip of Lalage’s plum wine. “We had macaws and budgerigars at HEL , but they only repeated our speech. They had no reason.”

The chimpanzee nodded, extending one foot to grasp a peach in her curling toes. She passed the fruit from foot to hand and began to munch it daintily.

“I grew up among the Zoologists,” she began, pausing to flick a drop of ambrosia from her lip. “As I girl I was quite ill, and underwent a number of operations which resulted in long periods of convalescence. The Zoologists have a cinematograph, film projectors, and video monitors. I spent the months of my recovery watching the spectacles of the last centuries. The experience left me with an undying affection for the glories of the proscenium and the lost and lamented silver screens. I was, in short, stagestruck.”

I listened eagerly, sensing within her tale faint echoes of my own fate. “These operations gifted you with speech?”

Miss Scarlet nodded. “Yes.” She stroked her throat, extravagantly furred with lustrous dark hair. “I bear scars, here, and—” She caressed her temple, pulling the hair back so that I could discern the faded impression of an incision. “ Here.”

She regarded me curiously. “Do I detect a resonant sympathy within your bosom, Aidan?” She dropped her voice to a husky whisper. “I call you Aidan because your friend addresses you thus; you own another, a gentler name perhaps? Do you too heed the circean songs of Melpomene and Thalia and Calliope?”

I shook my head. Toby Rhymer had now extracted a flask from within the folds of his tunic. He and Justice passed this between them, engaged in their own discussion—which inspired Toby Rhymer to fix me with a very long, searching stare. I turned back to Miss Scarlet.

“I am an heteroclite, like yourself.” I bowed my head to display the scars upon my own scalp. “I also was given speech as a child—”

“But as your birthright.” Miss Scarlet reached to touch a node upon my temple. I shivered: the touch of that gnarled hand, so like and yet so alien to my own, filled me with a vast and lonely awe. “But all such miraculous venesections have a price. I lost all contact with my family, all pride in my race. When I last glimpsed the faces of my parents it was with the terrible knowledge that they were brute animals, and ever would be.”

She pressed her fingers to her jutting mouth as though to stave off the painful memory. “And you, Aidan? What did they take from you?”

“My heart,” I said softly. “My soul.”

“But surely you have a heart, who travels in such romantic fashion with one of the Children of the Magdalene.” She indicated Justice on the other side of the table. “And we all have souls.”

“He is not my lover,” I replied. “And my soul is not my own.”

She edged closer to me, her petticoats rustling as they brushed my knees. “I understand,” she said at last. She gazed so intently that I looked away. “There is another set of eyes that sees me through your own. You are possessed by an afreet. A demon.”

She leaned back once more, resting her hand upon my knee reassuringly. “Well, Aidan, that is not such a bad thing. Changelings have their own kind of luck—literature teaches us that if nothing else!—as well as beauty; and while heartless and soulless they may still assist mortal men and women in their sanguine challenges—”

She coughed delicately, then recited in a soft voice:

“ They that have power to hurt and will do none,

That do not do the thing they most do show,

Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,

Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;

They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces,

And husband nature’s riches from expense;

They are the lords and owners of their faces,