Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

“Did you hear them?” I whispered gleefully. “ ‘Lord Death, Lord Baal!’”

From the other side of the stage came Toby’s voice reminding me of my cue. I motioned for Justice to wait, and began to sing offstage in Ariel’s voice:

“ ‘ … Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange …’”

As I sang I tore off the red tunic, spat into my hands, and tried to rub the dirt from my cheeks. I was so elated I was shaking, and reached for Justice’s shoulder to steady myself.

“Shh!” He glanced over his shoulder, then pointed to the side of the hill where trees were crowded near the last row of benches. “Wendy, there are lazars here—”

I stared at him in disbelief. I smoothed Ariel’s gossamer webs and tugged a leaf from my brow. “Where?”

“On the hillside there, among the trees.”

A bellow as Toby repeated a line. Justice grimaced and ran onstage for a brief scene. He returned minutes later to whisper, “Look to the left when you next go on: hiding in the bushes by that big oak. I counted five, and something else with them too—aardmen, I think.”

Beneath the flaking powder and rouge his face was ashen, and his voice shook as he said, “It’s like the Butterfly Ball, Wendy—they’ll take us—”

“No,” I whispered,- glaring at the dim silhouettes as though I might destroy them with my eyes. “No, they won’t. I won’t let them.”

“Wendy! How can you—”

But here was another cue. I squeezed his hand and darted on, gave Ariel’s speech and flitted offstage. I had several minutes before I would be on again as Caliban. Behind the stage was a small stand of birch trees. I grabbed my tunic and crept among them unnoticed. I hugged close to one of the bigger trees and scanned the hillside for lazars.

And found them. My heart tumbled to see how near they were. They ringed the top of the amphitheater, hidden for the most part behind tall grass and brush. But they must be growing bolder. Several no longer crouched but stood to watch the play unfold—with great interest, it seemed, since in the wan torchlight I saw them covering their mouths to stifle their laughter. A quick count gave me ten. Not all children, either. I saw four tall figures standing close together, long hair matted and their faces filthy. But even from that distance I could make out the dusky skin and round eyes that marked them of the House High Brazil. They watched hungrily, like the weary dead envying the living their share of a feast.

A few steps away from them another tall form stood aloof: wiry and with long tangled hair, a silhouette that was somehow familiar to me. I stared for a long minute, trying to place her: no doubt an admirer from an earlier masque. I finally turned my attention to the other, stranger creatures pacing restlessly among the Paphians. At first I thought that more of the Zoo animals had escaped. Large powerful beasts, stooped like the apes I had seen in the Primate House, with spines curved as though they were unaccustomed to standing upright. I glanced at the stage to make sure I had not missed my cue, then turned back to them, fascinated. They slunk back and forth among the lazars, short wiry tails whipping through the high grass. Every few minutes they would pause to press close to the tallest Paphians. Pointed ears raised as they listened to the voices rising from the amphitheater. But large intelligent eyes glinted beneath their heavy brows, and their powerful forelegs ended in huge gnarled hands. I sniffed, caught their rank smell: canine servility and wolfish bloodlust just barely held in check by the presence of the human lazars.

Aardmen, and the enslaved Paphians who served the Madman in the Engulfed Cathedral. For the first time I realized how brave (or reckless) the Zoologists must really be, to live with them so near.

I turned back to survey my fellow Players and our audience. Zoologists and Paphians alike stared enthralled as Toby cast his spells and Miss Scarlet Pan defied him. For the moment the watchers on the hill were equally entranced. Lazars and aardmen tamed by an ancient play upon a stage: that would make a story Toby Rhymer himself would be proud to tell, only who would be left to hear it? A score of maddened chattering monkeys and countless caged beasts. I could make an escape now if I tried, might even alert Justice or some of the offstage Players to run to safety and leave the rest, actors and audience alike, to the mercy of King Mob.

But I could not leave them. I tried to imagine fleeing, tried to picture myself safe, taken in by one of the Paphian Houses or by the Curators, or even back at HEL . But each time I brought up an image of myself safe within the Home Room or a seraglio at the House Miramar, a gory shade would thrust it aside. Miss Scarlet with her head shaved and electrodes protruding from her skull, starving behind iron bars. Toby Rhymer torn by the ravening jaws of the aardmen. Jane Alopex fighting bravely until she fell “pierced by a lazar’s arrow. And worst of all the thought of Justice lying dead, his golden hair matted with blood and his blue eyes cold and empty.

Sudden anger tore through me, frustrated rage that I should be thus enslaved. My head swam as I stared at the stage where Toby gesticulated wildly and tossed handfuls of glitter. Prospero’s bitter words slashed through the air:

“ ‘ Poor worm! Thou art infected;

This visitation shows it!’”

I nodded grimly. I could not leave them to die. Something bound me there to all of them, Justice and Miss Scarlet and sour Gitana, Jane Alopex and those nameless others, swaggering Zoologists and mincing Paphians and even the mute apes mindlessly signaling to one another in their barren cages. Voices whined in my ears: no longer the Voices of the dead, but the remembered words of those who watched or strutted nearby. Miss Scarlet reciting poetry, Justice weeping that he loved me, Jane Alopex’s hoarse laughter. I ground my teeth, trying to will myself to turn and flee. But it was no use now. For good or ill I had thrown my lot with this mess of Players and Whores and Curators. I would die with them if I had to. From the stage rang Fabian’s sweet tenor, reminding me that in a few moments I should make my next entrance. I pulled on my tunic, trying to think of some way to keep the renegade Paphians and aardmen from attacking. My bold words to Justice earlier had been mere bravado. But I felt an edge of exhilarated terror and expectation now, the Boy’s hypostate seething inside me: a leviathan beneath calm waters. I recalled again Miss Scarlet’s doggerel:

They that have power to hurt and will do none,

That do not do the thing they most do show …

And I felt terror and strength and desire all at once, knowing that I was going to do the one thing I should not do.

“Greetings, young Lord Death,” I whisper, and laugh.

I step to the edge of the stage, tense my body and focus on the image of a tree, new leaves and a softer air than stirs this late autumn night. My hands clench as I summon Him; very faintly the Small Voices wail, warning me—

‘“ No , Wendy! He is too strong, so cold, he is so cold! —”

I push them back, draw up in the image of the doomed twins among boughs of apple blossom, fragments of leaf and flower sparkling in the air and their high voices intoning:

Here we stand

Eye to hand and heart to head,

Deep in the dark with the dead.

The rush comes on, my heart hammers as though I have received a crystal pulse of adrenaline. As I step onstage I hear tiny frogs singing, whispered nonsense words; the creak of a branch breaking beneath a dangling form as a pendulum swings back from another time. My mouth fills with bitter liquid, a taste like hot copper. Through the air cascades the scent of apple blossom.