Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

From behind me came a soft sound, a snort as of suppressed laughter. I whirled, half-expecting to see Justice there. But it was not he.

Beneath the cold moon stood the Boy: leaf-crowned, naked, His skin shimmering white. He seemed completely unaware of His surroundings, as though like a hummingbird He moved through a finer air than held these things, moon and trees and iron gates, and perceived them as some kind of mist. But He saw me, and acknowledged me with a bow. Mockingly I thought: but when He raised His head His emerald eyes regarded me with respect.

“Greetings, Lady,” He said. Laughter in that voice despite His serious demeanor. Laughter and what might have been pity, if He had seemed capable of it. He did not.

“I am called Aidan Arent.” I moved away from the oak and smoothed my hair, then looked down the hill to where the bright strains of the Masque of Owls echoed.

“They cannot hear us, Wendy.” The Boy shook his head, smiling. “And I know who you really are.”

“Why are you here?” I drew closer to the tree.

“Because you called me,” He said. “I always come when called.”

“How do you know my name?”

He laughed. “I have always known you and I have always known your name, Lady. I knew Aidan Harrow too, though he would not recognize me now.”

“Why wouldn’t he recognize you?” I asked. I took a wary step away from Him.

“Because to him I am horror and corruption, and while he calls me by one name it is not my only name,”

“And what name is that?” Suddenly I felt elated, almost bodiless. This was like a marvelous dream; like tapping some harnessed soul at HEL and discovering a secret strand of desire as yet untasted. I grinned, and He smiled at me. “Tell me, Boy.”

He parried, “What do you think it is, Lady?”

I frowned a little at being called Lady again. Perhaps He was mocking me, after all. “The Paphians call you the Gaping One.”

He narrowed his eyes, nodding slightly: as though He were an Ascendant rector who had received only partial answer to a complicated question. “The Paphians do not make a practice of calling things by their real names,” He said. “They say, the Gaping One, the Naked Lord, the Lord of Dogs. Others have named me things similar to these: Baal-Zebub, the Lord of Flies; and Baal-Phegor, which means the Gaping Lord. But I am also called simply Baal, which is Lord; and Osiris, and Orpheus, and Hermes Chthonius; and in the East they named me Joshua, and Judas; and in Boeotia, Dionysus Dendrites, which means the God in the Tree.”

He finished and looked at me expectantly.

“What did Morgan Yates call you?” I began slowly.

“Poetic Ecstasy.”

“And that woman in the sleeplabs?”

“Sexual Desire.”

I thought for a minute. I asked, “What did Melisande call you?”

“Peter Pan.”

“And Dr. Harrow?”

“Unreason.”

“And her brother Aidan?”

“Despair.”

I fell silent. In the chill air the masque’s clamor racketed more loudly. Even from here I sensed the revelers’ desires, tugging insistently at me as they begged for release. How easy it would be to join them, pass among those bright figures and take from each whatever sensation I desired. I could let this other dream pass; but that was dangerous. Because if others had seen Him now, the Boy in the Tree, the Gaping One, then surely His power had grown beyond imagining; and how easy it would be for the Aviator to use Him against the City. I shuddered and bit the ball of my thumb, hard. That was how I used to wake myself from a patient’s bad dreams at HEL .

I did not wake; the Boy did not disappear; but I was able to think clearly again.

I said, “So those are not your names?”

He grinned, flashing small even white teeth. “They are all my names.”

I hesitated. “ I think you are Death.”

The Boy stared at me with those fathomless summer eyes. “I am.”

“Then Aidan was right, to name you Despair.” I held out my hand as if to take a prize.

“No,” He said. “He was not right; because he did not want to learn the rest of it. Lazy thing.”

Suddenly He laughed, tossing His head so that the crown of leaves sprang through the air and unfurled to reveal a froth of blossoms, white and gold and periwinkle blue. I caught and held them before me: leaves such as I had never seen, leaves like verdant stars and silvery blades and cupped hands, and all entwined with flowers that smelled of every spring that had ever been hoped for in the shrunken heart of winter.

“ You must teach them the rest of my name, Lady!” He laughed again and bounced back on His feet as though he could scarcely contain Himself from leaping into the air. “You must tell them stories, you must tuck them in at night, you must be their Mother!”

I glared at His foolishness, and placed the crown of flowers upon my head. “And what will you be, Boy?” I said. “Their Father?”

“Of course! And your brother, and lover, and victim all in one! Just like before. All of it, all the same! All singing, all dancing all dying!”

“You sound mad, like that Aviator they talk about, the one Anna called the Consolation of the Dead.”

He frowned. “He is a fool, a neophyte. He does not understand what must be done. You will see for yourself when you meet him.”

He turned away, for the first time noticed the moon and made a mocking bow to it, as He had to me earlier. Then he glanced back. “I go now, Wendy, sister mine. We will meet again; but not for a little while, and likely as not you won’t recognize me, and you may not remember my names. Although perhaps by then you will recall your own.” He shrugged, tossed His fair curls as though He had grown weary of this game.

“When will we meet?” Suddenly I was frightened of His leaving me, but as I reached to hold Him He skipped away, shaking His head.

“Why, at Winterlong of course,” He cried, and laughing sprang into the air as though He would seize the moon. I shielded my eyes from its yellow glare; but when blinking I tried to find Him again He was gone.

A small sound by the Regent’s Oak. I turned expectantly. But this time it was Justice, looking shy and uncertain as he stepped from behind the tree.

“I heard you talking,” he said, looking surprised to see me alone. “I’m sorry, I’ll leave you—”

My disappointment at losing the Boy eased. “No,” I said. I took a step toward him. “I hoped you’d come.”

Justice smiled, glanced up at the moon and then at me. He touched the crown of flowers upon my brow. “Really, Wendy?”

“Really,” I replied, and took his hand. Together we walked down to the Masque of Owls.

THEY STOOD AT THE foot of the altar beside a stone basin: three young boys, all Paphians. Two had the tawny skin and black eyes that marked them of the House High Brazil, slender and long-legged. They still wore fine ropes of gold looped through their ears, and each had his dark hair braided down his back. The other was a Saint-Alaban, blond and blue-eyed and the youngest of the three. When he saw me he spat and crossed his arms before his bare chest, hands splayed in the protective gesture against the Gaping One. They were naked, save for wreaths of leafless vines about their necks. That morning before dawn they had been forced to gather the vines themselves. Aardmen led them to the river and watched panting on its banks while the boys pulled the plants from the earth. Their hands still bled where the vines had fought, and the Saint-Alaban’s breast was scored with livid wounds like lashmarks. Now they waited while the Consolation of the Dead questioned them as to the whereabouts of the empath named Wendy Wanders.