Patricia McKillip - The Tower at Stony Wood

He reined sharply. The sounds of murmuring water, the distant voices from the fields, the rooks he had disturbed in the trees behind him, all spun to a fine clarity in that moment. He felt his heart pound. He looked up again, swallowing dryly. For a moment he saw only the ornate mirror on the window ledge, the tower’s eye gazing at what passed down the road.

And then the mirror fell, shattering against a cornerstone into a rain of glittering fragments at a careless sweep of sleeve, as a woman leaned over the ledge to look down at Cyan.

He felt his heart crack like the mirror before he shouted, “No!”

He wrenched at the reins, sent the startled gelding splashing into the river, where it had to swim a pace or two through a tangle of water lilies. Cyan, drenched and trailing lilies, waded onto the island beside the gelding. He searched frantically for a door, tearing great swaths of ivy from the walls, sending a cloud of small gold birds fleeing across the water. He uncovered a rotting portcullis closed across an archway near the tower. Ivy trailed across the far arch, hiding the inner yard. He slammed into it. The old wood groaned under him, rattled like bones. Something flying over his head startled him before he tore through the portcullis. It changed shape as it descended, elongating, wrinkling, growing new wings. It hit the water and floated. The slow current tugged it straight. Cyan, staring, saw circle after circle of embroidery on an endless length of linen: the changing images of the woman’s silent, changeless days.

He hit the cracked wood hard and fell through it onto a damp tangle of grass and weed within the archway. He paused then, drew his sword, and spilled the river water out of its sheath. He sheared impatiently through the cascading ivy that hid the courtyard. The yard was choked with weed and wildflower, brambles and climbing roses. The stone fountain in the center of it was dry and filled with dead leaves; the figure in the fountain’s basin poured ivy from its urn instead of water. He waded through weed as through water, feeling it drag at him as he made his way toward the door in the inner wall of the tower. The only other way out for her was through the window. He could only hesitate a breath before he guessed, door or window, and he dared not change his mind.

The arched wooden door was warped and blackened with moss; it did not give at his first pull. At the second, the iron ring he gripped came out of the door into his hands. He stared at it incredulously, then flung it away, and began to pry between wood and stone with his sword. The door made a sound like a tree split in two, and fell suddenly, ponderously, out of the stones on top of him.

He remembered, after a moment or two, why he was lying underneath a door. He pushed himself out from under it, and stood up shakily, wiping blood from a cut on his forehead. The tower steps made a neat, marble-white fan unfolding around their central core. They might have been freshly laid, never walked on until he came up them, leaving the first faint stains of grass and earth on them, wearing down the first shadow-thin layer of stone. He heard nothing as he moved but his own steps, his own breathing. The tower was as still as death. She had turned into thread, he thought numbly. Or she had gone out the window while he came through the door. She had flung herself into the river, wound herself in her embroidery and let it drag her down among the water weeds and lilies.

He reached the door at the top of the tower and opened it.

She stood at the window, her back to the world, her hands clenched, hidden in her skirt, watching him enter. He saw the face in the silver disk, lovely and white as marble, her pale hair rippling down her back, her eyes as blue as the summer sky behind her. She was trembling, he saw. She could not seem to speak. She let a tear fall instead. He watched it slide down the curve of her cheek, pass her mouth, and trace the long, graceful line of her throat before he remembered to move.

He said nothing, either, simply knelt and bowed his head to the true Queen of Yves and the North Islands and Skye.

She whispered, “You looked at me.”

He raised his head, not making sense of the words then, or much of anything at that moment, except that he had found her and she was alive.

He said, “My name is Cyan Dag, my lady. I was sent from Gloinmere by the Bard of Skye to find you.”

She shifted slightly; her voice found its timbre. “Idra.”

“She said—she said you would die if you looked at the world. If you leave the tower—”

“You looked at me,” she repeated. He was silent, still looking at her, perplexed. Color flowed beneath her skin; her eyes grew bright again, heavy. She moved then, crossed the room quickly and knelt in front of him to take his hands. He shook his head a little, feeling her wonder, and a sense of sorrow past endurance. Tears stung his own eyes; her face blurred.

“I don’t understand.”

“They knew I was here. Farmers passing to their fields saw my mirror every day. Knights pointed to my window, told one another about me; I could see them talking. Sometimes I even heard them. Fishers moored their boats among the water lilies and wondered aloud what I was doing here. I was cursed, they guessed; I would die if I looked past the mirror, at the world out of my own eyes. They were half-right. I was some magical, fey being, fit to tell stories about to pass the time of day, to wonder about and pity, and try to imagine what might be so compelling to me that I might fling my life away to look at it.” She was trembling again, he felt as she gripped his hands; her voice was dry and hollow, still not yet freed. He wanted, only a little less than his own life, to put his arms around her, hold her and her fear and grief, until she no longer felt the tower around her. “They passed me every day, the fine knights, the poets, the folk of the city and the fields. I was part of their lives, like the rooks, the tower, winter, sun. They knew me. But you are the only one who ever looked beyond the mirror at me. You are the only one who ever saw that I was real, and came to help me.”

“I still don’t—”

“If I looked at the world I would die. If the world looked at me, saw me with courage and compassion, and reached out to help me—how could I not live? How could that not make me free?”

He tried to answer, could not. She brushed at the tear furrowing down his own face, then touched the disk that had fallen out of his shirt.

“My face,” she said wonderingly. He raised her face with his fingers, felt her poised in his hands like a bird, to stay or fly. She stayed. He kissed her very gently, feeling Regis Aurum’s eyes on him across two lands.

He stood up, suddenly as drained as if he had fought a battle and lived. “You’re not afraid of leaving?”

She gave him the beginnings of a smile. “It’s the world,” she answered. “I should be a little afraid. Will you take me to Gloinmere?”

“Shall I take you to your father, first?”

“No. I want to see Regis.” She turned, for one last glance out the window. “I have lived in Skye all my life, yet I have no idea where we are. You will have to guide me.”

He followed her down the steps, keeping his sword unsheathed. He was still wary of the woman far away in Gloinmere, who wore the mask of the queen’s face, and drank out of her cup, and who would turn a black venomous eye their direction when she found her tower empty. But he found nothing to disturb him until he reached the bottom step. He paused there, his taut face easing into a smile as the Lady from Skye, moving eagerly out of the tower into light, reached up with both hands toward the sun.

Her shadow swept back across the weeds and fallen leaves to Cyan’s feet. On the white marble of the threshold he saw her hands.