Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

“‘The Romantic History of Algernon Moncrieff and Gwendolen Fairfax,’ as performed by Toby Rhymer, His Troupe, Featuring Miss Scarlet Pan as Lady Bracknell.”

And I am a virgin witness as the Players begin their show.

WESTERING LIGHT MADE A burnished cathedral of the trees when I finally paused in my flight through the forest. In my madness I had fled the Museum, wearing once more the brocaded tunic and ribands that marked me of the House Miramar: these and my sagittal the only arms I bore against the night. And night it would be soon; and I had lost my way.

Rumors that the Ascendants planned vengeance for a murder had alarmed the Regents enough to place sentries at each Museum. But the Technician posted by the North Gate scarcely glanced at me, so intent was she upon a volume of archaic holograms depicting the life cycles of extinct primates. In my Paphian garb I must have looked as though I was to attend the ball at High Brazil that evening. I had passed several high-ranking Curators in the Rotunda, all dressed in sober robes as they made their way to the North Gate to meet the palanquins from High Brazil that would bear them to the masque. I could have followed them, commandeered a palanquin for myself; but that would have meant answering questions, dealing, with elders from High Brazil who would not have my name among those they were to receive. And I did not want to see Roland, not yet. So I left through the South Gate. The sentry raised her head. Seeing only myself, she returned to her reading, I strode purposefully down the steps, through the broke columns facing the Narrow Forest, and to the edge of the forest itself. Here I hesitated. In the late afternoon light it was easy enough to orient myself to the northwest, where our Houses stood. In the distance the Obelisk pierced the trees’ canopy, a somber point among all that glittering greenery. If I steered to its right I would eventually come to the Tiger Creek, or perhaps even a road leading to the Hill Magdalena Ardent. I imagined that I saw the river itself sparkling through the shifting leaves. Before my nerve could break I hurried beneath the trees.

Here the late summer’s heat filtered through the leaves to drip in an almost palpable golden broth. Too late I wondered if perhaps I should have worn my Aide’s shift-stained and ugly, but woven of lighter cloth. But pride and my determination to confront Roland at the Masque and regain standing among my people had made me choose my own clothes—which quickly grew damp and weighted from the heat. My heavy braid burned against my neck. I winced and shrugged it from shoulder to shoulder, until it snagged on a bramble hedge. I tugged it loose and tucked it into my collar. Almost immediately I snared my sleeve upon the same briars. I pulled the thorns free, careful not to tear my brocade; another step and I was trapped on more. Neither were my boots fit for this sort of travel. The marshy ground soaked the felt soles until with each step I thought I sank to my ankles in muck. But I scrambled on trying to keep a spur of grief and indignation at my heel.

The late hour held little chance of my meeting anyone else, although there was much traffic among the Museums that bordered this part of the forest. For a short distance well-trodden paths wound between great oaks and with apples already burdened with fruit: west to the Historian south to the Weavers and Aviators and Botanists who trafficked with the Ascendants. To the northwest stretched a broken stone road leading to the Zoological Garden, perhaps an hour’s walk from here.

I followed this path. I hoped it would bring me to the Tiger Creek, which I could then follow to where it poured into the Rocreek not far from High Brazil. Myrtle and kudzu choked the path; slender apple and cherry saplings sprang from the ferns, heralding new wild orchards. With only a few hours of daylight remaining I walked determinedly, fending off tree limbs and straggling vines as I tried to keep the Obelisk in sight.

I went slowly, swiping at trailing vines and strands of spiderweb heavy with pollen and the striped husks of butterflies. Other trails intersected mine. These seemed to lead nowhere, and were probably known only to the lazars who traveled them on their midnight raids and forays. Certainly only lazars or the great hunting beasts—wolves and wild dogs, cat-a-mountains and eyra and the dog-faced lardmen who figured so prominently in Doctor Foster’s most gruesome stories—could slip down those strangled green tunnels.

The ground beneath my foot suddenly shuddered. A strangled shriek made me yelp and jump back, terrified. In the center of the path squatted a couvado toad, fat and round and misshapen as a rotted pumpkin. As I stared it grinned fatuously at me. Then its huge mouth gaped open and, with a gurgling belch, it turned itself inside out, exposing its pulsing heart and vivid entrails.

I covered my mouth with both hands and quickly turned away. Blindly I chose another path that seemed to veer toward the setting sun. I staggered down this, stumbling madly through honeysuckle thickets and rank orchards.

THE FARTHER IN I went, the less clearly marked was the trail. Eventually I found myself in a tiny clearing where a dozen breaks in the underbrush might have been paths leading deeper into the forest. I chose one because pale blue veronica carpeted the earth there. As my feel crushed the soft blue mat of flowers their blossoms wept sweet tears. I hesitated, breathing their fragrance and recalling the name Doctor Foster had taught us for these tiny blooms: lose-all-care. They had a haunting scent, redolent of spring rain and the promise of twilight. But when I started to move again I found that I had forgotten which way I wanted to go. I turned, and sighted a patch of narcissus nodding in the bole of a dead tree. I shook my head trying to recall which path was mine. Surely I wanted to follow the sun? This way, then, where the light poured through a gap in the trees …

But a moment later I knelt among the white narcissus …

I did not wonder how they came to bloom there in early Autime, which were harbingers of spring; nor how the faintest of breezes seemed to make them whisper and sigh like frightened children, so that I crooned comforting words to them. I only knew they were the most lovely flowers I had ever seen, and I did not want to leave them.

And I might have remained there until full dark brought my doom, had not a fire ant climbed and stung my wrist. Its bite seared through my entire hand. I gasped, killing the ant with an ungrateful swat. Then rubbing my eyes I stumbled back to my feet.

Ruddy light now filtered through the leaves. I had long since lost sight of the Obelisk, and hours might have passed since I first entered the woods. My flesh crawled as I recalled Doctor Foster’s tales of the evil flowers spawned by the rains of roses: of Philantha Persia’s abduction by lazars when she went to hear daffodils laughing by the river; of Botanists lured to their deaths in the Rocreek by sighing lyacinths with the eyes of women; of almond-scented lilies whose fragrance alone brought madness and death. Such stories I had always dismissed; yet here I was now, bewitched by a patch of narcissus! I moved to brush the leaves from my hair, and as I did so saw that a slender green shoot had wrapped itself around my sagittal as I lay dreaming. I cried out and yanked the vine from my wrist, heedless of the cries of the flowers I trampled, I turned and ran.