Emma Bull - Bone Dance

“The head,” I said. “His feet will be lighter.”

“Don’t be chivalrous. You haven’t the plumbing for it.” She stood back to let me out. Mr. Lyle was nearby, his distance nicely judged: too far for us to surprise him, but close enough to stop us if we did something rash.

“But I’ve got the energy.” I grabbed the inert Mick under the armpits and dragged. “I thought you had to eat a poisoned apple to stay under this long. What do you suppose they did to him?”

“Not, I hope, an apple, or one of us will have to kiss him. Perhaps if we’re very good the lady with the alarming eyebrows will tell us. She might even tell us where she got the eyebrows. God damn it !” she said suddenly, then pressed her lips closed. It was the only leak in her supernatural self-command. It wasn’t so bad for me; I didn’t expect to be able to control the situation.

Since I’d picked the head, I went up the steps and into the house backward. I don’t suppose the effect would have been much softened if I’d gone in face first.

The coved ceilings were fifteen feet high, all of them, and the hall and the two parlors to either side were outlined and ornamented in glossy walnut. In one parlor, the walls were the color of chilled butter, and painted ivy climbed out of the baseboards and twined around the window frames. In the other, the paint was pumpkiny; beneath the ceiling molding was a frieze two feet high of Egyptian kings and queens and gods and all their attendants and accessories. The door I’d just come through was double, and mostly stained and leaded glass. It was flanked by a pair of benches that looked Middle Eastern, piled with pillows covered in African cloth. Under my feet was a carved-pile Chinese rug; inside the door of the ivy room was a stone carving that might have been Mayan; on the hall table was a shallow reed bowl that was almost certainly Native North American. I didn’t want to be obvious about looking, but I had the impression that the place went on in that style: a world government of interior design, rich in a way that couldn’t be achieved solely by money.

And one thing more. Around the edges of the rug, the parquet floor was bordered with inlay in many woods. It ran across thebottom of the door, along the walls, and continued unbroken across the doors to the two parlors. In it I saw designs and figures I almost recognized, from Sherrea’s cards, from the veves, from amulets. If the border was continuous behind me, too, then whoever stood in the hall would be well protected. Or nicely contained.

“Mr. Lyle,” the woman said from behind me, “would you take him now, please?”

Mr. Lyle had come in after us. He nodded and smiled, and gathered Mick up and over his shoulder.

“You should rest,” the woman said. She stood at the foot of the wide walnut staircase. “Then we will talk. Come with me.”

Frances might have been made of stone, if stone could shrug. She walked stiffly toward the stairs. Mr. Lyle, behind me, said, “After you.” So I went.

We climbed to the third floor, turned right down a short hallway, right again, and stopped halfway down another hall, carpeted, lighted by a window at one end. The walls were yellow, and the trim was white. It’s hard to feel apprehensive in surroundings like that, but I did. After all, werewolves only grew hair at the full moon. The woman opened a door and stood aside for Mr. Lyle to pass. Then she went to the next door in the hall and opened that.

“Yours,” she said to Frances. “If you need anything, pull the bell.”

After an instant’s hesitation, Frances inclined her head and went in. I didn’t hear any loud noises.

I, of course, got the next door. It was open, and the woman waiting for me to go in, when I said, “Do I need to call you anything yet?”

A look crossed her face, something like embarrassment. “I’m China Black,” she said. “Though there are many other things to call me, even respectful ones. Is it respectful to call you ‘Sparrow’?”

“It’s the only name I have.”

She nodded. “Until you have another, then.” She turned and walked to the joining of the two halls, where Mr. Lyle waited for her. I heard them a moment later, going down the stairs.

I looked back at the open door. Apparently it was not going to be locked behind me. I went in.

It was a very nice room. It had sloping, papered walls and a large dormer window. It was so honest and pleasant and innocent that I felt a rush of panic. I hurried to the window. It was neither barred nor locked, and looked out over the gardens we’d just driven through. I thought back over the orientation of the stairs and hallways. I must have missed something; I hadn’t expected this to be the front of the house. I opened the window and sat on the bench under it to examine the rest of the room.

There was a bed, with a high carved head and foot, and a dresser with a round mirror. On the dresser was a pitcher and bowl, soap and towels. Any minute the porter will bring my luggage up , I thought wildly. Across from the dresser was an armoire. I got up and flung its doors open. A sudden movement, a person—a mirror on the inside of one door. I closed the armoire and sat on the bed until my pulse settled down. On a table next to the bed was an oil lamp and a box of matches. One doesn’t supply a prisoner with the means to burn down the house. Unless it’s impossible to do; I thought of the inlay in the hall.

“Comfortable?” said Frances from the door, and I jumped.

“I see you’re not resting.”

“No. I’ve reconsidered the wisdom of keeping from trouble. I want to know what happens when we try to walk out.”

“You should have just made a break for it back in the Night Fair.”

“Oh, I expect to be stopped. But I think it would be instructive to know where, and how. Care to join me? We could say we were looking for the bathroom.” She seemed relaxed and casual, leaning in the doorway; but I suspected she wasn’t.

“No.”

“Care to join me anyway?”

I looked sharply up at her.

“I find I’m reluctant to leave you behind,” she said. “I think you’d best come along.”

The bathroom was at the end of the hall, perfectly agreeable, with a tub big enough to drown in. We continued to retrace our route, left and another left. But we didn’t come out at the top of the stairs.

“Over there,” Frances said softly. She pointed down the corridor. I saw the turned walnut newel post and frowned.

At the landing, instead of turning left to the next flight, the stairs turned right. “The back stairs?” I muttered.

Now Frances was frowning.

We might eventually have reached the first floor, but we couldn’t tell. We might have passed through the basement on the way to it. The halls were graciously appointed, the stairs were ornate, the rooms we peered into and passed through sunny and innocuous and even a little bland. And at last, without ever going up a flight of stairs that I remembered, we turned a corner into a hallway with yellow walls and white woodwork and a window at the far end.

“Oh, Lord,” Frances sighed. She was pale and inclined to lean. “Shall we make book on the next scene? We open the doors to our rooms and find ourselves sleeping on the beds. We open the doors and find the pits of hell. Or someone with a sword, who kills us. Or a bag of gold.”

I stalked to the door of mine and wrenched it open. “Or the room, just as we left it.”

“Could we have been drugged, do you think?”

“I’m too tired to think. I’m going to take my damn boots off and lie down. If you want to explore, have fun. Don’t wake me “ I didn’t actually slam the door. It had a bolt, so I turned it.

The sheets, of course, smelled like lavender.