Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

“Now Jane, mmm, come along, it’s frightened the nesting hoopoes into the rafters and Fauna Avis seems to think you’re the only one can get them down again, mmm mmm.”

He took Jane’s arm and started to walk off with her, leaving the sambar to the care of the two gatekeepers. Jane patted it goodbye and waved at Miss Scarlet, then gazed at me coldly. But after a moment she grinned wryly. “I’ll find you and Scarlet later,” she said, and sauntered off.

This left me alone with Miss Scarlet. The early afternoon’s cool breeze licked at my neck and I shivered.

“Come, Wendy,” Miss Scarlet said in a low voice, slipping her small hand into mine. “I’ll show you where I grew up.”

We started along a neat little path of crushed tarmac, weeds and dead plants trimmed from its borders. In the near distance several odd buildings poked through the mesh of leafless trees and tall wild grasses. On the paths between these raced figures clad brightly as Jane Alopex, carrying buckets and trays and brooms in a rumpus of activity such as I had never seen elsewhere in the City.

We passed a red-roofed pagoda with a wrought-iron stork standing one-legged at each end of its peak. Two real storks stalked splenetically between these effigies, ugly and bald and with beady eyes as bloodshot as a Senator’s. When they met in the roof’s middle they paused, flapped their wings and clacked their bills together dolefully before continuing on their brooding perambulation.

“The Bird House,” explained Miss Scarlet. She waved at the storks, who glared down disapprovingly as we walked past.

Next was a stark glass and steel structure that gleamed coldly in the sun. Amorphous figures fluttered in some of its dark windows. In others tiny furred faces pressed close against the glass to stare out at us with wide mad eyes, baring their teeth and scrabbling at the glass as we went by. Miss Scarlet grew tight-lipped at the sight of them and quickened her pace, head bowed. After this a gentle slope rose before us, topped by a mock gothic cathedral with stone geckos and chameleons instead of gargoyles perched upon its eaves.

“You look uneasy,” said Miss Scarlet. She nodded as we passed a young boy pushing a wheelbarrow full of stones. “Which is understandable.”

I grimaced. I was not accustomed to having others know what I was thinking. Miss Scarlet laughed, her fingers tightening about mine. “When I first met you, Wendy, your face was blank as a block of wood. But now!”

She stopped and drew herself up, her dark agile face contorting as she mimicked my expressions: alarm, fear, wonder, pique, delight.

“I don’t look like that,” I said, offended.

“See for yourself.” From the satin reticule at her waist she withdrew a tiny mirror set in a sheath of aluminum. I grabbed it and tilted it before my face.

“I look exactly the same,” I pronounced. But as I squinted at my reflection I noted with surprise the new constellation of freckles arrayed across my cheeks. I pushed back a wisp of hair at my temple and rubbed the fleshy nodule hidden beneath. It felt smaller, less swollen. When I tipped the mirror to peer at it I saw that the scar tissue had indeed grown smoother. The node itself seemed to be shrinking. Turning to inspect its mate on the other temple I saw that it was no longer than my thumbnail. I let my hair fall back to cover the scars and returned the mirror to Miss Scarlet. She replaced it, then stroked her throat wistfully.

“I don’t suppose mine will ever disappear,” she said. She indicated a curving grass-grown pathway that crept over the hill. I followed as she clambered up, holding her skirts to keep them from dragging in the high yellow grass. “The Zoologists don’t have the sort of refined instruments that the Ascendants used with you. I’ll bring these scars to my grave.”

I winced as a long briar tendril whipped back into my face. “Mine weren’t supposed to heal.” I slapped the dust and clinging seed pods from my trousers, straightening as we stood at the top of the little rise. “And for all I know they’re not healing at all. I’ve had no medication for months now. Maybe this is terrible for me. Maybe I’m dying.”

I pressed a finger to my temple, biting my lip as I realized I felt nothing: no customary ache as though I grazed against bruised flesh, no tremor of pain or longing triggered by the random firing of nerves. I was afraid then, to think that I might be losing my sole conduit for the only emotions I had ever known, those channeled into me at HEL through Emma Harrow.

“But maybe it is good for you, Wendy,” said Miss Scarlet. She pulled a burdock sticker from her skirt and popped it into her mouth. “Maybe the medication made you sick. Maybe now you can begin to get well.”

I shuddered at the thought of being so exposed to raw sensation. “No! I hear Voices. I see faces in the air. I had a seizure this morning and almost killed your friend Jane. I will never be well, Miss Scarlet.” I smiled bitterly. “I am as you see me: a Player only.”

Miss Scarlet nodded. She raised a finger as though to make a point but then stopped. “Well, perhaps. But I will show you something while we wait for Toby and the rest. Just don’t tell him that I missed my nap.”

I smiled and motioned for her to lead on.

Before us swept the curved gray buttresses of the faux gothic Reptile House. Lizards and serpents of chipped green enamel clung to its crumbling walls, half-hidden by a sheath of Virginia creeper gone crimson since the first frost. On the lintel above the main entrance stood a stegosaurus of red sandstone, its lumbering gait captured by some artisan centuries earlier. Crouching at its tail was a little carven mouse, winking slyly at onlookers below.

“At least it’s always warm in here,” said Miss Scarlet as we passed through the entrance.

I sighed gratefully as a blast of heated air rolled over me. It was dark inside, illuminated only by squares of greenish light coming from glass cages set into the walls. An overwhelmingly pungent smell pervaded the chambers, rotting flesh and rotting vegetation; but the floor was immaculately swept and the glass fronting the cages was so clean that more than once I paused to prod it with my finger, just to be certain there was something between myself and the cages’ sluggish inhabitants. The place was empty, although brooms and mops and nets stacked in corners seemed to caution that its Keepers would return soon.

“They’re busy getting ready for this evening,” said Miss Scarlet. She stopped in front of a large cage. She eyed its inhabitant with loathing—a serpent coiled about a dead stump. “Are you warmer yet, Wendy?”

I nodded, stooping to stare at a speckled viper. It regarded me balefully, black tongue flicking in and out, then without warning lunged toward us and struck the glass. I stumbled backward, tripping over Miss Scarlet, then laughing a little breathlessly helped her to her feet. A small bloody streak smeared the glass. On the floor of the cage the viper lashed back and forth, trying to find us in the darkness.

“Did you see that?” I exclaimed, pushing my hair from my eyes. “I’ve never seen a—”

I turned to see that my friend had collapsed against the wall, heedless of the brooms that had toppled beside her. “Miss Scarlet! Are you all right?”

As I knelt beside her she nodded. “The snake,” she said faintly. “I can’t bear them.”

I helped her to her feet and looked around for someplace to sit.

“Really, I’m fine, Wendy—Here, turn at this corner, I wanted to show you something in here.”

We hurried past a huge display area covered by a glass roof, where crocodiles like immense and idle machines floated in stagnant pools. Crested white herons stepped nimbly from one plated back to another, dipping their bills to spear fish from the dark water. Miss Scarlet looked away and held her breath until we were safely past, but I glanced back, marveling that they never moved.