Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

The child’s body still hung in the center of the room. I walked to it and placed my hand upon it, then wrenched it from the metal spike so that it fell, the head with its tangled golden hair spilling into the blood-filled basin at my feet and the torso sprawled beside it. I glanced down, then kicked it so that the rest of the body tumbled into the basin.

I lifted my head to stare at the Consolation of the Dead as he watched me. I raised my hand to point, first at the aardmen and then Oleander.

“Bring me all of the girl children who are still alive in this place,” I said. I turned and walked to the marble bench upon the dais and sat there upon it.

The Consolation of the Dead regarded me for a long moment, then slowly began to smile.

“It is as you wish, Lord Baal,” he replied.

I waited upon the marble bench until they returned. I watched unblinking all that followed, all that I commanded. I felt no need for sleep, or for any sustenance besides that offered me from the stone basin where the Consolation of the Dead presided. I felt nothing, nothing at all.

JANE ALOPEX JOINED US at the theater the morning of the eve of Winterlong. We were eating a more formal and elaborate breakfast than we usually did: dried fruits and bread, the last of Toby’s gingko brandy and my own sweet-mint tea hoarded all these weeks, pickled carp and a smoked ham from the Zoologists that Toby had been saving for a special occasion. No one said what we feared this occasion was: the last time we would all be alive together.

“Maybe we shouldn’t go,” Mehitabel said for the tenth time. “Aidan told us, that lazar warned him not to attend the Masque Winterlong.”

“But we have to,” said Miss Scarlet, sipping from her demitasse. “The Show Must Go On.”

Even she sounded doubtful. For all that it was still early morning—the sky was sunless, the trees pleached with snow and ice—we had the air of campaigners working through the night, or of party-goers reluctant to end a bibacious evening. The room smelled of brandy and wood-smoke. A half-dozen empty bottles and the shards of candicaine pipettes added to the scene of exhausted if desperate gaiety. Only Jane seemed unconcerned. She sat beside Miss Scarlet, cleaning her fingernails with a bread knife.

“God forbid the Paphians should miss a party,” she said dryly. “If it were up to me, I’d be home in bed. But there were aardmen’ skulking around the Zoo last night. The animals went half-crazy and I was up all night trying to calm them. When I saw the weather this morning I thought I’d better come here, in case you needed an escort to the House Saint-Alaban.”

She looked out at the snow, heavy wet flakes that hissed against the windowpanes. I had seen snow only a few times in my life, and wondered what this storm portended.

“Well, thank you for coming, Jane,” said Toby, and poured her the last of his gingko brandy.

That night we talked for hours, Jane and Miss Scarlet and Justice and myself, all of us crowded into the little room I shared with my Paphian consort. I suspected the other Players were up too, Gitana and Mehitabel gossiping in their chamber, Toby and Fabian keeping unease at bay by practicing their fencing in the gymnasium. Justice and I sprawled on one bed, enjoying the luxury of being with trusted friends. A fire smoked in the little stove that heated the room. Jane’s boots sent up plumes of steam and a muddy smell where she had leaned them to dry against the grate.

“Will there really be a Final Ascension, d’you think?” she wondered aloud. Through the narrow windows with their panes of diamond glass we could see the snow still slanting down. Now and then a gust would shake the window, and Jane and Miss Scarlet would pull their hassocks closer to the stove.

“My people think so,” Justice replied softly. He stroked my neck, staring at me with eyes wide but unafraid. “All the signs are there: the brilliance in the sky the night of the Butterfly Ball, the massacre at High Brazil; aardmen and lazars hunting together in the Narrow Forest; a boy who impersonates the Gaping One, and the Madman in the Engulfed Cathedral. And now it is Winterlong. We have only to wait, and see if the Magdalene awakens as they say She will, to confront the Gaping One.”

“A man,” Jane snorted. “Remember the Aviator’s only a man, and not even much of a man anymore, eh Scarlet?”

She nudged Miss Scarlet’s hassock. The chimpanzee shook her head, continuing to stare at the embers glowing in the grate.

“It is the end of something,” she murmured. “The end of the way things are now, at least.”

Jane tucked her feet under the hassock and glanced over at me. “The beginning of something else, too, I guess.” She sniffed, eyeing Justice as he toyed with my hair. “So much for the chaste young Sieur Aidan.”

She made a face and turned to Miss Scarlet. “Aw, don’t get all worked up over it, Scarlet, it’s just another costume party.” She tugged at the hair flopping into her eyes, then reached to pat the chimpanzee. Miss Scarlet sighed, adjusted the collar of her gown, and pursed her lips.

“I consulted the pantomancer Zuriel Persia when we gave The Spectre’s Harlequinade last week,” she said.

“That fraud!” snorted Justice. He reached for another candicaine pipette.

I propped my chin on my hand. “So that’s why you weren’t at the supper afterward,” I said. “I wondered.”

Justice cracked a pipette beneath my nose. I shut my eyes, tried to think what it reminded me of, this cold rush of pleasure. But all I came up with was the memory of the supper at the House Persia, where Justice and I had lingered with the suzein over candicaine and morpha tubes. Lately all I could think of was Justice, his hands and mouth and the taste of his skin, his hair soft as feathers. When I tried to remember what had haunted me since leaving HEL , the eyes I drew up were not green but blue, the loveliest sapphire blue: a boy’s shining eyes and not a demon’s.

“ You needn’t have stayed there quite so long, Wendy,” said Miss Scarlet. “You two certainly made a sight, carrying on like that.”

She pulled up her skirts, stretched her furry legs until her toes curled in front of the glowing stove. “Although I don’t imagine it matters much anymore.”

She sighed, hunching forward to gaze into the coals. Justice leaned to kiss my shoulder. I closed my eyes and murmured happily, looked up to see Jane Alopex staring at me in disgust. Justice drew three fingers to his lips and made the Paphian’s beck, winking.

Jane looked away. “So what did Zuriel Persia, that fraud, say exactly? Tell me, Scarlet. I didn’t come all this way in a snowstorm to watch the Gaping One roll her eyes at Justice.”

“ He said,” Miss Scarlet began, drawing herself up to command us with her sober brown eyes, “that the Masque at Winterlong would not be the one traditionally performed.”

“Well,” said Justice, “we haven’t heard that they’ve changed it, have we?”

I shook my head. I started to reply but Jane silenced me with a glare. “Go on, Scarlet,” she ordered.

“I met him in the Chamber of August Divination. He took an impression of my face in heated wax. ‘For the Ages,’ he said. ‘So that we may remember the greatest glory of our Stage.’ He was really quite charming, although he had an odd sort of voice.”

Jane frowned. “ That doesn’t sound so charming, Scarlet. Taking a death mask before you’re dead.”