Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

I strode out beside Gitana, herself still attired as a manservant (her downy mustache helped). I paused upstage to allow the audience a moment to note the effectiveness of my masculine attire. That delighted gasp of amused recognition I was accustomed to by now; but then I heard a sharper intake of breath from several in the audience. Suddenly I felt my knees shake, knew the vertiginous approach that meant I was flashing onto something else, someone else, and who was it this time?

Emma Aidan Melisande?

Morgan Justice Scarlet Pan … ?‘

Or Him, the heavy thing I bore like a dart lodged immovably inside my head, leeching all those others into Himself until He might devour me as well? I began to shake, caught Gitana’s alarmed stare, and realized that for the first time I had dried up. Behind me Toby had already made his entrance.

“ ‘ On your attendance, my lord, here!’” I stammered as Gitana scampered offstage. Toby smiled. He cuffed me with grim playfulness as he walked upstage, nearly knocking me to the floor.

“ ‘ Stand you awhile aloof, Cesario,’” he commanded.

I caught my breath and balance, made a low bow and let the blood rush to my head. Then I straightened to continue with the scene. As we bantered, the Voices inside my head crept back into their secret places, small creatures with patient claws. A pulse of adrenaline. I spun on my heel to exit and dared a direct glance at the audience, aimed my sight at the center row where the suzein sat—

Bolt upright, staring at me with utter amazement. As I stepped offstage I heard his voice from the front of the house, repeating softly but insistently a name:

Raphael.

“You are his very likeness.”

The tumbler the suzein handed me glittered green with sweetmint tea. We were gathered in the Pandoric Seraglio of the House Miramar. A number of television monitors were set about the chamber, hundreds of years old and recently acquired from the Historians. Through their cracked glass flickered candlelight, and in some of them little figures had been set, dolls and small automatons, robotic hands encrusted with rings and armillas, dried nosegays of roses and lilies-of-the valley. I could smell the opiated fumes rising from the narghile in Toby’s hand. Beside the suzein three leaden-eyed Botanists sprawled upon pillows. Seated near me were Miss Scarlet (refusing like myself all refreshment save plain tea and a plate of sweet loquats), Justice, and Toby Rhymer.

“Master Aidan is an almost supernaturally talented young man,” said Miss Scarlet, drawing back her long upper Lip to show yellow teeth. She inclined her head to Gower Miramar, plucking a loquat from the platter and offering it to the suzein.

“Thank you, Miss Scarlet,” replied Miramar. When he moved, the azure lumens on his robes blinked to detail the constellation known as The Capitol. Behind him our shadows fluttered upon the seraglio’s tapestried walls, were trapped within the gold-shot eyes of the ancient monitors. A small room, oddly shaped so that the soft and richly hued cloths fluttering from the ceiling made it seem we were embarked upon some strange vessel. Miramar crumbled a leaf of sweet-smelling herb before his face and inhaled before continuing.

“Ah, Miss Scarlet! Aidan’s talent I have no doubt of—a lovely performance, sieur,” he said, turning to me. “I have always respected Toby’s craft, his attention to the details of an ancient art. Among other things, encouraging young men to play the feminine roles originally written for them.”

Miss Scarlet sniffed. I had to keep from smiling at the remarkable conceit of a girl disguised as a boy disguised as a girl traveling incognito upon the stage!

“But you know I am not Raphael Miramar,” I said again. Across from me a young Botanist snored. “You are certain of that.”

“I am,” said Miramar; but he looked disturbed. His glance lingered again upon my throat, where earlier his long fingers had sought a birthmark that was not there. “Your learning proves you grew up among the Librarians after your parents’ death—” (This was the story Justice and I had created to explain my erudition, if not my beauty.) “But you are certain you have no surviving family? No sister?”

I laughed, dread uncoiling inside me like an asp. “No, sieur! No sister—

“ I am all the daughters of my father’s house, And all the brothers too— ”

And I am certain I have no brother.”

Miramar sighed. “Well, it is very strange then. The favorite of our House left here two months back: Raphael, whom you so closely resemble that I thought you must be that other child I sold to the Ascendants many years ago …”

My fingers tightened upon my tumbler. It was as if some great and terrible vista was opening before me; as though a mountain that for my entire life had reared above my home had suddenly one day begun to tremble and fall into ruin.

A brother, I thought. From beneath the layers of scarred brain tissue that buried my past something stirred, thrashed as in wakefulness and then fell back into the abyss.

A brother; a twin brother. Emma and Aidan Harrow, and now myself: another twin. Another girl torn from her brother …

No wonder I had been Emma’s pet. No wonder it had not been difficult to pattern me with the intricate spires and helices of her tortured consciousness; no wonder I had driven her to madness and suicide, when through me she could not reclaim the boy she had loved and lost but never escaped from.

It can’t be true, I thought; but inside me a Small Voice (Dr. Harrow’s perhaps; but I could not be sure) said: It is so.

Abruptly I remembered where I was and drew myself up to gaze at Justice across the table from me. He blinked, once, twice, and gazed at me with wonder.

Say nothing! I tried to command him with my eyes. But already he spoke, phrasing a question with stunned slowness.

“You sold her to the Ascendants?”

“Yes,” said Miramar. Next to him Toby Rhymer tapped a generous stream of brown powder from a small vial into his tea. Miss Scarlet sat very straight beside him on two pillows, her black eyes fixed upon mine. “There were two children—”

Miramar hesitated. Toby quaffed his drink and belched loudly, then with eyes closed leaned back against the tapestried wall. The Botanists slept on, their snores stirring the fragrant air with a faint tepid odor of earth and fish emulsion. Only Justice and Miss Scarlet and myself waited for the suzein to continue. He glanced at each of us in turn, seeming to measure one against the other.

“Well,” he said at last. His gaze settled upon me. “It was some time ago— years ago, oh—!” He turned his palms upward in a helpless gesture. “We are no good at these things, keeping track! Doctor Foster would know; but he is at nocturne castigations. But there were two children, a boy and a girl. Twins. I took them in, because they were very beautiful. The mother I left to the lazars. She was scarred from childbirth. And she was mad, she talked of visions, of seeing the Magdalene and—Oh, it was such a long time ago, I can’t remember it all.

“The little girl was mad as well. At least Doctor Foster thought so. She couldn’t talk, not to be understood. Just nonsense with her brother. Raphael Miramar, my dearest child.” He sighed and stared at me.

“Even your eyes are much like his,” he said after a moment. He beckoned me closer. “And not just the color: those same wild gray eyes. Even as a child Raphael had wild eyes, always looking into corners and finding the oddest things …

With a dismissive gesture he flicked his fingers. He turned to Miss Scarlet and added graciously, “But your eyes as well are profound, and a lovely shade of brown.”