Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

I slid across the bed to where a tiny refrigerator had been hung for my medications. I pulled it open and saw the familiar battery of vials and bottles. As a child first under Dr. Harrow’s care I had imagined them a City like that I glimpsed from the highest windows at HEL , saw the long cylinders and amber vials as abandoned battlements and turrets to be explored and climbed. Now I lived among those chilly buttresses, my only worship within bright cathedrals.

“Two hundred milligrams,” I said obediently, and replaced the bottle. “Thank you very very much.” As I giggled he left the room.

I took the slender filaments that had tapped in to my store of memories and braided them together, then slid the plait beneath a pillow and leaned back. A bed like a pirate ship, carved posts like riven masts spiring to the high ceiling. I had never seen a pirate ship, but once I tapped a Governor’s son who jerked off to images of yellow flags and heaving seas and wailing women. I recalled that now and untangled a single wire, placed it on my temple and masturbated until I saw the warning flare on the screen, the sanguine flash and flame across my pixilated brain. Then I went to sleep.

Faint tapping at the door woke me a short while later.

“Andrew.” I pointed to where my toe poked from a rip in a much-patched blanket. “Come in. Sit.”

He shut the door softly and slid beneath the sheets. “You’re not supposed to have visitors, you know.”

“I’m not?” I stretched and curled my other foot around his finger.

“No. Dr. Leslie was here all day. The Governors are angry. Anna said they’re taking us away.”

“Me too?”

He nodded, hugging a bolster. “All of us. Forever.” He smiled, and the twilight made his face as beautiful as Anna’s. “I saw Dr. Harrow cry after he left.”

“How did you get here?” I sat up and played with his hair: long and silky blond except where the nodes bulged and the hair had never grown back. He wore Anna’s bandeau, and I tugged it gently from his head.

“The back stairs: no one ever uses them. That way.” With his foot he pointed lazily toward a darkening corner. His voice rose plaintively. “You shared that poet with Anna. You should’ve saved her.”

I shrugged. “You weren’t there.” The bandeau fit loosely over my forehead. When I tightened it, tiny emerald feathers frosted my hands like the scales of moths. “Would Anna give me this, do you think?”

Andrew pulled himself onto his elbows and stroked my breast with one hand. “I’ll give it to you, if you share.”

“There’s not enough left to share,” I said, and pulled away. In the tiny mirror hung upon the refrigerator I caught myself in the bandeau. The stippled green feathers made my tawny hair look a deeper auburn, like the poet’s. I pulled a few dark curls through the feathers and pursed my lips. “If you give this to me …”

Already he was reaching for my hand. “Locked?” I glanced at the door.

“Shh …

Afterward I gave him one of my new pills. There hadn’t been much of Morgan left and I feared his disappointment would evoke Anna, who’d demand her bandeau back.

“Why can’t I have visitors?”

I had switched off the gaslight. Andrew sat on the windowsill, luring lacewings with a silver lighter tube. Bats chased the insects to within inches of his face, veering away as he laughed and pretended to snatch at them. “Dr. Harrow said there may be a psychic inquest. To see if you’re accountable.”

“So?” I’d done one before, when a schizoid six-year-old hanged herself on a grosgrain ribbon after therapy with me. ‘“I can’t be responsible. I’m not responsible.’” We laughed: it was the classic empath defense.

“Dr. Leslie wants to see you himself.”

I kicked the sheets to the floor and turned down the empty BEAM , to see the lacewings better. “How do you know all this?”

A quick fizz as a moth singed itself. Andrew frowned and turned down the lighter flame. “Anna told me,” he replied, and suddenly was gone.

I swore and tried to rearrange my curls so the bandeau wouldn’t show. From the windowsill Anna stared blankly at the lighter tube, then groped in her pockets until she found a hand-rolled cigarette. She glanced coolly past me to the mirror, pulling a strand of hair forward until it fell framing her cheekbone. “Who gave you that?” she asked as she blew smoke out the window.

I turned away. “You know who,” I replied petulantly. “I’m not supposed to have visitors.”

“Oh, you can keep it,” she said.

“Really?” I clapped in delight.

“I’ll just make another.” She finished her cigarette and tossed it in an amber arc out the window. “I better go down now. Which way’s out?”

I pointed where Andrew had indicated, drawing her close to me to kiss her tongue as she left.

“Thank you, Anna,” I whispered to her at the door. “I think I love this bandeau.”

“I think I loved it too,” Anna nodded, and slipped away.

Dr. Harrow invited me to lunch with her in the Peach Tree Court the next afternoon. Justice appeared at my door and waited while I put on jeweled dark spectacles and a velvet biretta like Morgan Yates’s.

“Very nice, Wendy,” he said, amused. I smiled. When I wore the black glasses he was not afraid to look me in the face.

“I don’t want the others to see my bandeau. Anna will steal it back,” I explained, lifting the hat so he could see the feathered riband beneath.

He laughed, tossing his head so that his long blond braid swung between his shoulders. I thanked him as he held the door and followed him outside.

On the steps leading to the Orphic Garden I saw HEL’s chief neurologist, Dr. Silverthorn, with Gligor, his favorite of the empaths as I was Dr. Harrow’s. Through the heavy jet laminate of his eyeshield Gligor regarded me impassively. Beside him Dr. Silverthorn watched my approach with distaste.

“Dr. Harrow is waiting for you,” he called out. He took Gligor’s arm and steered him away from us, to the walk’s border edged with tiny yellow strawberries. As he stumbled after him Gligor crushed these carelessly, releasing their sweet perfume into the autumn air. He waved blindly in our direction, his head swinging distractedly back and forth as he tried to fix me with his shield, like a cobra seeking a rat by its body’s heat.

“Wendy!” he said. “Wendy, I heard, it’s—”

“Hush,” said Dr. Silverthorn. As Justice and I passed he leaned back into the tall hedge of box trees until their branches snapped beneath his weight. But Gligor waited on the walk for me. He plucked at my arm and drew me to him. I smelled the adrenaline reek of his sweat as he brushed his lips against my cheek, his tongue flicking across my skin.

“Anna told me,” he whispered. “I’ll come later—”

I returned his kiss, my tongue lingering over the bitter tang of envy that clung to his skin. I ignored Justice waiting, and lifted my sunglasses to grin at Gligor’s keeper.

“I will, Gligor,” I said, staring into the dark furies of Dr. Silverthorn’s eyes rather than into the ebony grid that concealed Gligor’s own. “Goodbye, Dr. Silverthorn.”

I dropped my sunglasses back onto my nose and skipped after Justice into the Orphic Garden. Servers had snaked hoses through the circle of lindens and were cleaning the mosaic stones. I peered through the hedge as we walked down the pathway, but Morgan’s blood seemed to be all gone.

Once we were in the shade of the Peach Tree Walk I removed my glasses and put them into my pocket. Justice quickly averted his eyes. The little path dipped and rounded a corner humped with dark green forsythia. Three steps farther and the path branched: right to the Glass Fountain, left to the Peach Tree Court, where Dr. Harrow waited in the Little Pagoda.