Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

And nothing. It is gone. A moment too long or too soon, I never know; but we have lost it again. For an instant Aidan’s eyes gray with tears. Then the breeze rises, Molly yawns and snuffles, and once more we put aside the spells for lunch and other games.

That night I toss in my bed, finally throwing my pillow against the bookcase. From the open window stream the chimes of peepers in the swamp, their song broidered with the trills of toads and leopard frogs. As I churn feverishly through the sheets it comes again, and I lie still: like a star’s sigh, the shiver and promise of a door opening somewhere just out of reach. I hold my breath, waiting: Will it close again?

But no. The curtains billow and I slip from my bed, bare feet curling upon the cold planked floor as I race to the window.

He is in the meadow at wood’s edge, alone, dark hair misty with starlight, his pajamas spectral blue in the dark. As I watch he raises his arms to the sky, and though I am too far to hear, I whisper the words with him, my heart thumping counterpoint to our invocation. Then he is quiet, and stands alert, waiting.

I can no longer hear the peepers. The wind has risen, and the thrash of the beech trees at the edge of the forest drowns all other sounds. I can feel his heart now, beating within my own, and see the shadows with his eyes.

In the lower branches of the willow tree, the lone willow that feeds upon a hidden spring beside the sloping meadow, there is a boy. His eyes are green and lucent as tourmaline, and silvery moths are drawn to them. His hands clutch the slender willow wands: strong hands, so pale that I trace the blood beneath, and see the muscles strung like strong young vines. As I watch he bends so that his head dips beneath a branch, new leaves tangling fair hair, and then slowly he uncurls one hand and, smiling, beckons my brother toward him.

The wind rises. Beneath his bare feet the dewy grass darkens as Aidan runs faster and faster, until he seems almost to be skimming across the lawn. And there, where the willow starts to shadow the starlit slope and the boy in the tree leans to take his hand, I tackle my brother and bring him crashing and swearing to earth.

For a moment he stares at me uncomprehending. Then he yells and slaps me, hits me harder until, remembering, he shoves me away and stumbles to his feet.

There is nothing there. The willow trembles, but only the wind shakes the new leaves. From the marsh the ringing chorus rises, swells, bursts as the peepers stir in the sawgrass. In the old house yellow light stains an upstairs window and our father’s voice calls out sleepily, then with concern, and finally bellows as he leans from the casement to spot us below. Aidan glances at the house and back again at the willow, and then he turns to me despairingly. Before I can say anything he punches me and runs, weeping, into the woods.

A gentler withdrawal than I’m accustomed to. For several minutes I lay with closed eyes as I tried to hold on to the scents of apple blossom and dew-washed grass. But they faded, along with the dreamy net of tree and stars. I sat up groggily, wires still taped to my head, and faced Dr. Harrow, who was already recording her limbic system’s response from the NET .

“Thank you, Wendy,” she said without looking up. I glanced at the BEAM monitor, where the shaded image of my brain lingered, the last flash of activity staining the temporal lobe bright turquoise.

“I never saw that color there before.” As I leaned to examine it an unfocused wave of nausea choked me. I staggered against the bed, tearing at the wires.

Eyes: brilliant green lanced with cyanogen, unblinking as twin chrysolites. A wash of light: leaves stirring the surface of a still pool. They continued to stare through the shadows, heedless of the play of sun and moon, days and years and decades. The electrodes dangled from my fist as I stared at the blank screen, the single dancing line bisecting the NET monitor. The eyes in my mind did not move, did not blink, did not disappear. They stared relentlessly from the shadows until the darkness itself swelled and was absorbed by their feral gaze. They saw me.

Not Dr. Harrow; not Aidan; not Morgan or Melisande or the others I’d absorbed in therapy.

Me.

I stumbled from ‘the monitor to the window, dragging the wires behind me, heedless of Dr. Harrow’s stunned expression. Grunting, I shook my head, finally gripped the windowsill and slammed my head against the oaken frame, over and over and over, until Dr. Harrow tore me away. Still I saw them: unblinking glaucous eyes, tumbling into darkness as Dr. Harrow pumped the sedatives into my brain.

Much later I woke to see Dr. Harrow staring at me from the far end of the room. She watched me for a moment, then walked slowly to the bed.

“What was it, Wendy?” she asked, smoothing her haik as she sat beside me. “Can you tell me?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said, biting the tip of my thumb. Then I twisted to stare at her and asked, “Who was the boy?”

Her voice caught for an instant before she answered. “My brother Aidan. My twin.”

“No—the other—the boy in the tree.”

This time she held her breath a long moment, then let it out in a sigh. “I don’t know,” she said. “But you remember him? You saw him too?”

I nodded. “Now. I can see him now. If I—” And I shut my eyes and drifted before snapping back. “Like that. He comes to me on his own. Without me recalling him. Like—” I flexed my fingers helplessly. “Like a dream, only I’m awake now.” ’

Slowly Dr. Harrow shook her head and reached to take my hand. “That’s how he found Aidan, too, the last time,” she said. “And me. And now you.” For an instant something like hope flared in her eyes, but faded as she bowed her head. “I think, Wendy,” she said with measured calm; “I think we should keep this to ourselves right now. And tomorrow, maybe, we’ll try again.”

He sees me.

I woke, my heart pounding so that for a dizzying moment I thought I was having a seizure and reflexively braced my hands behind my head. But no: it was the dream, it was him —

I breathed deeply, trying to keep the dream from fleeing, then slowly opened my eyes to my room bathed in the glow of monitors and a hint of dawn. In the air before me I could still see his eyes, green and laughing, the beautiful boy’s face adrift in a sea of young leaves more real than the damp sheets twisted around my legs. He reached a hand toward me, beckoning, and intense joy filled me as I smelled new earth, apple blossoms, the breeze carrying the promise of sun and sky and burgeoning fruit. I leaned forward in my bed, clutching the sheets as I began to reach for him, to take that white hand in my own—

When like the rind of some bright fruit peeled back to reveal squirming larvae, the boy’s skin shriveled and fell from him. A skeletal hand clawed desperately for mine. Beneath its shell of flesh the skull shone stark white. I screamed and snatched back my hand, then staggered from my bed to the window. He was gone.

I don’t know how long I knelt there, resting my forehead against the sill, blinking against tears: real tears, my own tears. Because it was not that awful cadaver that burned within my mind’s eye but the boy with green eyes and fair hair, heartbreakingly lovely, new leaves brushing his brow, and the cry of tiny frogs piercing the shadowy air about him. A sense of terrible desolation filled me at waking alone in this dark place. I thought of Aidan Harrow weeping: to have had the radiant promise of those eyes before him and then forever gone …

From outside came a sound. I lifted my head to see a phalanx of wild geese, black against the pale September dawn. Their cry held nothing but regret and sorrow for the summer gone, and a shrill hope for distant warmth. I watched until they disappeared, their grief fading into the rising wind, and fell asleep there with my head pillowed upon my arms. Hours later I woke to Dr. Harrow’s knock upon my door, and her announcement that we would not repeat the experiment that day.