Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

The garden server returned to pour me more mineral water. I drank it and asked, “Is Dr. Leslie a nice doctor?”

For a moment I thought she’d upset the table, as Morgan had done in the Orphic Garden. Then, “I don’t know, Wendy. Perhaps he is.” She sighed and motioned the server to bring another cold split.

“They’ll take Anna first,” she said a few minutes later, almost to herself. Then she added, “For espionage. They’ll induce multiple personalities and train them when they’re very young. Ideal terrorists.”

I drank my water and stared at the gaps in the Pagoda’s latticed roof, imagining Andrew and Anna without me. I took the chocolate wafer from my pocket and began to nibble it.

The server rolled back with a sweating silver bucket and opened another split for Dr. Harrow. She sipped it, watching me through narrowed gray eyes. “Wendy,” she said at last. “There’s going to be an inquest. At Tast’annin’s request. It will probably be the last time I will supervise anything here. But before that, one more patient.”

She reached beneath the table to her portfolio and removed a slender packet. “This is the profile. I’d like you to read it.”

I took the file. Dr. Harrow poured the rest of her champagne and finished it, tilting her head to the server as she stood.

“I have a two o’clock meeting with Dr. Leslie. Why don’t you meet me again for dinner tonight and we’ll discuss this.”

“Where?”

She tapped her lower lip. “The Peacock Room. At seven.” She bowed slightly and passed out of sight among the trees.

I waited until she disappeared, then gestured for the server. “More chocolate, please,” I ordered, and waited until it creaked back across the dusty floor, holding a chilled marble plate and three wafers. I nibbled one, staring idly at the faux vellum cover of the profile with its engraved motto:

HUMAN ENGINEERING LABORATORY

OF THE

NORTHEASTERN FEDERATED REPUBLIC OF AMERICA

PAULO MAIORA CANAMUS!

“‘Let us raise a somewhat loftier strain,’” Gligor had translated it for me once. “Virgil. But it should be deus ex machina,” he added slyly.

God from the machine.

I licked melting chocolate from my fingers and began to read, skimming through the charts and anamnesis that followed. On the last sheet I read: “Client requests therapy in order to determine nature and cause of these obsessive nightmares.”

Beneath this was Dr. Harrow’s scrawled signature and the blotchy yellow star and triangle that was the Republic’s emblem. I ate the last wafer, then mimed to the server that I was finished.

We dined alone in the Peacock Room. After setting two places at the vast mahogany table the servers disappeared, dismissed by Dr. Harrow’s brusque gesture. We ate in silence for several minutes beneath the hissing gaslights.

“Did you read the profile I gave you?’ she asked at last, with studied casualness.

“Mmmm-mmm,” I grunted.

“And … ?”

“She will not make it.”

Dr. Harrow dipped her chin ever so slightly before asking, “Why, Wendy?”

“I don’t know.” I sucked my fork.

“Can’t you give me any idea of what makes you feel that?”

“Nothing. I never feel anything.”

“Well then, what makes you think she wouldn’t be a good analysand?”

“I don’t know. I just—” I clicked the tines of my fork against my teeth. “It’s like when I start head-banging—the way everything starts to shiver and I get sick. But I don’t throw up.”

Dr. Harrow tilted her head. “Like a seizure. Well.” She smiled, staring at me.

I dropped my fork and glanced around in impatience. “When will I meet her?”

“You already have.”

I kicked my chair. “When?”

“Fourteen years ago, when you first came to HEL .”

“Why don’t I remember her?”

“You do, Wendy.” She leaned across the table and tapped my hand gently with her knife. “It’s me.”

“Surprised?” Dr. Harrow grinned and raised the sleeves of her embroidered haik so that the early morning sunlight gleamed through the translucent threads.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, enviously fingering the flowing cuffs.

She smiled and turned to the NET beside my bed. “I’m the patient this morning. Are you ready?”

I nodded. There had been no Aides in to see me that morning; no report of my stolen dreams; no blood samples given to Justice. Dr. Harrow had wheeled in a rickety old wood-framed cot and now sat on it, readying her monitors. I settled on my bed and waited for her to finish. She finally turned to me and applied electrolytic fluid to the nodes on my temples, placed other wires upon my head and cheekbones before doing the same to herself.

“Justice isn’t assisting you?” I asked.

She shook her head but made no reply as she adjusted her screens and, finally, settled onto her cot. I lay back against the pillow and shut my eyes.

The last thing I heard was the click of the adaptor freeing the current, and a gentle exhalation that might have been a sigh.

“ Here we stand …”

“ Here we stand …”

“ Here we lie …”

“ Here we lie …”

“ Eye to hand and heart to head,

Deep in the dark with the dead.”

It is spring, and not dark at all, but I repeat the incantation as my brother Aidan Harrow gravely sprinkles apple blossoms upon my head. In the branches beneath us a bluejay shrieks at our bulldog, Molly, as she whines and scratches hopefully at her basket.

“ Can’t we bring her up?” I peer over the edge of the rickety platform and Molly sneezes in excitement.

“ Shhh!” Aidan commands, squeezing his eyes shut as he concentrates. After a moment he squints and reaches for his crumpled sweater. Several curry leaves filched from the kitchen crumble over me and I blink so that the debris doesn‘t get in my eyes.

“ I hate this junk in my hair,” I grumble. “Next time I make the spells.”

“ You can’t.” Aidan stands on tiptoe and strips another branch of blossoms, sniffing them dramatically before tossing them in a flurry of pink and white. “We need a virgin.”

“ So?” I jerk on the rope leading to Molly’s basket. “You‘re a virgin. Next time we use you.”

Aidan stares at me, brows furrowed. “That won’t count,” he says at last. “Say it again, Emma.”

“ Here we stand …”

Every day we come here: an overgrown apple orchard within the woods, uncultivated for a hundred years. Stone walls tumbled by time mark the gray boundaries of a farm and blackberry vines choke the rocks with breeze-blown petals. Our father showed us this place. Long ago he built the treehouse, its wood lichen-green now and wormed with holes. Rusted nails snag my knees when we climb: all that remains of other platforms and the crow’s nest at treetop.

I finish the incantation and kneel, calling to Molly to climb into her basket. When my twin yells, I announce imperiously, “The virgin needs her faithful consort. Get in, Molly.”

He helps to pull her up. Molly is trembling when we heave her onto the platform. As always, she remains huddled in her basket.

“ She’s sitting on the sandwiches,” I remark. Aidan hastily shoves Molly aside and retrieves two squashed bags. “I call we break for lunch.”

We eat in thoughtful silence. We never discuss the failure of the spells, although each afternoon Aidan hides in his secret place behind the wing chair in the den and pores through more brittle volumes. Sometimes I can feel them working — the air is so calm, the wind dies unexpectedly, and for a moment the woods glow so bright, so deep, their shadows still and green; and it is there: the secret to be revealed, the magic to unfold, the story to begin. Above me Aidan flushes and his eyes shine, he raises his arms and —