Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

None of the lazars pursued him. He cleared the top step. It seemed he might escape, go free to summon aid, when a bowstring twanged. The figure halted, jerked back and forth like a teetotum. Then he toppled and rolled down the steps, a scarlet streamer unraveling behind him upon each white stair.

A moment more of silence. Then from the main balcony rang a strong familiar voice.

“Greetings, cousins!”

Whitlock started as I turned and began to look among the spectral children ranged across the House, until I saw her.

The yellow janissary’s jacket slipped from her thin shoulders as she balanced atop the balustrade on one foot. A grinning child at each side waited to catch her if she fell. She raised her arms, crowing with delight at the terrified revelers huddling below. Laughing she cried, “The bad fairies have come to the ball!”

She turned to face our side of the Great Hall, her eyes probing the blank faces of the Masquers. Then she stiffened, and slowly raised her head to where Whitlock and I stood in the Hagioscopic Embrasure. Her eyes fixed upon mine. With a swagger she tossed back her tangled hair. The janissary’s jacket slid back a little more upon her narrow shoulders as she cried for all to hear.

“Ill-met by moonlight, Young Lord Baal! Many thanks for the invitation! My master bids you come now as his guest to the Cathedral. But I go to meet your lord: he waits for me below. Look for me in the gray lands among the gaping ones—”

Then she leaped, spinning so that her wasted smile flashed one last time from within that tangle of white hair. On the floor below masquers scattered, giving voice to the first wails of horror and despair as the girl struck the marble and, like a child turning in her sleep, tossed one broken arm across her smiling face and lay still.

“Baal …” whispered Whitlock. His eyes showed fear, but he did not pull away from me. “She named you Baal? How did she know you, Raphael?”

I shook my head. “The river,” I said. “They think I am the one the Saint-Alabans call Baal or the Hanged Boy—”

A wave of sound overtook the Great Hall. Shouts and wails and bleating cries mingled with the gleeful yelps and laughter of the lazars as they watched the hapless revelers try to flee. Several of the children who had stood beside Pearl now turned their eyes upon the embrasure where Whitlock and I stood. I could see them talking excitedly and pointing to us.

“The Hanged Boy,” Whitlock repeated, licking his lips. He nodded slowly, his ruby eyes filling with tears even as he smiled. “Ah, Raphael—it has come, then.”

“What?” I cried. “What has come?”

“Like the Saint-Alabans always told us. The Final Ascension, the coming of the Hanged Boy—”

“I am not the Hanged Boy! I’m Raphael Miramar—you’ve known me your whole life!”

Smiling, he leaned to kiss me gently upon one cheek. “Ah yes. Well. I know, dear heart.” He gestured toward the far balcony. “But they see us, there—they will come for you, and kill me.

“I don’t want them to kill me, Raphael. …”

He drew my hand to his face, pressed the sagittal against his neck as he raised his mouth to kiss me. “Take me, Raphael,” he murmured. “Let me die now, with you, and take some memory of beauty with me.”

I tried to push him away, but he only smiled and crushed me closer to him. “They’re right, you know,” he whispered between kisses as we sank to the floor. “You were the most beautiful of us all, Raphael. Let me die now with you …”

Without wanting to I tangled my fingers in his silver hair and kissed him, groaning. A shimmer where my sagittal cast a violet nimbus about his lovely face. Then he drew my hand close until the bracelet rested against his throat and he arched against it.

A sound soft as night falling; the clouded blur of the spine darting into Whitlock’s skin. He shuddered. For an instant his eyes fixed upon me, soft and ardent.

“Remember me at Winterlong,” he sighed; and was dead.

“TOO MUCH RED,” MISS Scarlet said at last. She pursed her long lips so that she looked even more soulful than usual. With one finger she dabbed at the inner corner of my eye, drew her finger away blotched with the rouge I had too vigorously applied so that my eyes would stand out boldly before my audience. “Just two little dots, there and there— ”

I shut my eyes as she touched me. I felt the impression of her finger setting the cool dye upon my face and knew again that strange surge inside me, a fingerling of joy that only came at times like this, as we readied ourselves for a performance. From the House Miramar’s tiny stage down the hall I heard the shuffle and laughter of those taking their seats: the suzein of the House Miramar and his guests, Botanists who had traded hemp and roses for the Miramars’ last masque. In the room where Miss Scarlet and I costumed ourselves bowers of roses bloomed in cracked bottles, showering the slanted floor with their petals. One perfect bloom peeked from within the folds of Miss Scarlet’s peignoir. She had tucked it there until she might wear it in Act Three of our play, when as the widowed Olivia she sought to court me in Viola’s disguise of young Cesario.

A discreet rap at the heavy oaken door of our chamber.

“Near time, Master Aidan,” called Mehitabel. Even after these many weeks I could still hear the bemusement in her voice. A young actor so shy he would disrobe only before a chimpanzee! “Miss Scarlet—”

“Is it a full house?” the chimpanzee asked. Her hands trembled as they fastened the last button upon the back of my long and carefully torn skirts.

“Not quite,” said Mehitabel. “But very well dressed! And the suzein has already invited you and Toby to supper afterward. I hear Miramar has a very good cook,” she added, then drummed her fingers in a farewell upon the door.

Miss Scarlet sighed. She stepped from the little stool she used to help me dress, holding up the hem of her peignoir like a demure young bride.

“Would you tend to my coiffure, Wendy?” she murmured, settling herself on the floor in front of me. I squatted behind her, careful not to let my skirts graze the floor awash in flakes of eye-paint and powder and stray hairs fallen from wigs. With one foot Miss Scarlet reached for a pillow and slid it to me. I sat upon it and began to groom her.

With a purr Miss Scarlet shook herself free of my hands and nodded. “Now for my wig,” she said, sighing luxuriously and stretching her long toes to pick up an ebony kohl wand. “Thank you, Wendy. I think I hear the overture?”

This a delicate reminder not to miss my cue. The overture itself consisted only of Gitana’s unpleasant brayings upon an archaic solar melodeon. I nodded, straightened my wig, and scratched her head in farewell, then slipped into the hallway.

“Hello, goodman divel,” a voice called from behind folds of velvet. Justice stepped forward to join me in the darkness. The heavy soft drapes fell back behind him to obscure the little proscenium.

“Hello, Justice,” I said, shrinking from the touch of his hand upon my elbow. He winced; then nodded and tossed his long hair.

“Put my braid under the cap,” he said. He handed me the Captain’s livery he wore in the first scene. I did so quickly, listening to the nervous giggles of Gitana and Mehitabel as they struggled into their boys’ tunics (they always missed their entrance) and wondering where Toby was.

“Ah, Master Aidan,” came his sonorous voice suddenly at my ear. One huge hand descended upon my shoulder like an owl roosting there. With the other he dismissed Justice, snapping his fingers and pointing to where Fabian struggled with a lightpole. “You make a fetching Viola.”