But they were gone. Only their memories, like ghosts, remained.
Leo sat beside the creek, his wet shoes still in the flowing water, his shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry, Rose Red,” he whispered, and the babbling water drowned his voice. “I’m sorry for what I saw in the cave.”
An awful silence fell.
It was as though deafness struck him, and all the sounds of the mountain went still, even the stream’s murmuring. He felt the strange tension of the forest. For a moment, he sensed the anger that flowed across the mountain, indefinable but undeniable. He drew his feet up from the water, which was suddenly warm, almost hot. The air trembled, and Leo, just in that instant, was afraid.
The moment passed. The silence broke to the sound of birdsong far away. Birdsong that nearly, but not quite, held words:
Beyond the Final Water falling
The Songs of Spheres recalling . . .
“Rose Red,” Leo whispered, bowing his head, “won’t you return to—”
“What are you doing?”
He startled. Daylily stood across the creek, her hands holding her skirts, which were more than a little mussed by now, and her bonnet was crooked on her head. But her face, though flushed from the climb, was as quiet and inscrutable as ever.
“What are
you
doing?” Leo asked back, and though he knew it was terribly impolite, he did not rise. After all, it wasn’t ladylike for Daylily to be tramping about the forest; why should he follow all the social niceties?
Daylily put out a daintily shod foot to one of the creek stones, felt it to make certain she would not slip, then stepped onto it. In this way she crossed over the creek, only wetting the edge of her skirt. Then, to Leo’s surprise, she took a seat on the dirty bank beside him.
“You are hunting something out here, aren’t you?” she said, and he felt her penetrating gaze on the side of his face. He shrugged. “Not a monster?” she guessed.
“No,” said Leo. “Not a monster.”
Daylily’s eyes narrowed as she studied him. His features were soft, more a boy’s than a man’s as yet. But she could see where maturity might make him handsome. He was, she thought, one who would need to succeed at something. Not merely succeed to the position to which he was born; no, much more than that. He would need a quest, a purpose, some deed to fulfill before he could hope to become the man he should be.
A pity, really, for a boy like Leo was rarely given such an opportunity.
Daylily pursed her lips, surprised how, for the briefest moment, her heart went out to this boy who, though the same age as she, seemed so much younger. “Why are you sad?” she asked.
“I’m not sad.”
“You are.”
“Where did you leave Foxbrush?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
Leo hung his head lower, his black hair flopping over his forehead.
But Daylily persisted. “You’re searching for someone. Whom?”
“My best friend.”
“Ha!”
Leo looked up in time to see her brief smile. It was the first he’d seen on her face since she came to Hill House, and it was, he thought, rather nice, if not altogether comfortable on her face.
“Not Foxbrush, then.”
“No! Definitely not Foxbrush.”
“Someone you met when you came here before?” She reached out and put a hand on top of one of his. He flinched but did not pull away. Her hand was soft. “Someone
they
don’t want you to associate with?”
Leo nodded. Her eyes were so blue. He had never seen eyes like hers before.
“What was his name?” she asked in a gentle voice.
“Rose Red,” Leo blurted, though he’d not intended to share. Something in those eyes of hers made him want to tell her his secrets, even as he blushed. “Her name was Rose Red. She was a girl who kept a goat around here.”
“Oh.”
Daylily’s hand withdrew from his, and he found that he rather missed it. Her whole body stiffened beside him, and she wrapped her hands very firmly about her knees. “I see. They would frown upon you associating with one of the country goat girls, wouldn’t they?”
“Well, you know, they—”
“Young love is always quickly squelched in a boy of your position, and I understand why you would resent it.”
“I wasn’t really—”
“But no fear,” continued Daylily, rising and brushing off her skirts in a most businesslike manner. “I’m sure you will find your—what was her name?—your little goat girl again. These things have a way of coming out right.”
“Daylily, I—”
“We’d best be on our way.” She was already halfway across the creek, and Leo hastened to rise and follow her. “I left Foxbrush in a bramble somewhere, and I doubt that he’s extracted himself. I don’t suppose you brought a pair of gloves with you?”
Daylily descended the incline with surprising grace in all those skirts, and again Leo thought, as he followed her, that perhaps pretty girls had more uses than he’d ever given them credit for.
I
feared you’d never come back to me.”
Rose Red enters the cave as though drawn against her will. Steam rises and swirls about her uncovered face like caressing hands as she kneels before the dark pool. She turns away. But she cannot escape the voice.
“I thought you would forget me again, now that he’s returned.”
“I want to forget you.”
“But you always come back to me.”
She shudders in the dark of that nightmare and clenches her hands into fists. “You never let me go!”
“You never leave.”
“How can I leave? You plague my dreams.”
Her Dream smiles up from the water, and his face is horrible to see. “If you wanted to, you could leave the mountain. Yet you choose to stay. You cannot be parted from me, my sweet princess.”
Her head bows to her chest. Tears burn in her eyes. “Beana don’t want me to leave the mountain.”
“Beana does not love you as I do.”
“Shut up.”
“Leo does not love you as I do.”
“Shut up!” She leaps up and grabs the nearest loose stone she can reach, flinging it at the face in the water with all her strength. The splash shatters the image, and for a moment Rose Red is free of his gaze.
But the rock sinks. The waters settle. And the face returns.
“Someday, princess, you will understand that no one can be so constant a friend as I.”
Then his eyes burn hers, and she cannot look away.
“If you choose him over me, make no mistake . . . I will make him pay.”
Rose Red woke up. She was covered in sweat yet very cold.
Those dreams! They grew more horrible with each passing night, and sometimes she could not shake them even as day drew on. “Just a dream,” she whispered, trying to force her heart to slow its racing. “Just a dream, nothin’ more.”
She put up a hand, realized that her face was bare, and hastily felt around for her veil. Not that there was anybody near besides Beana, but she did not like to take chances.
It was chilly in the cottage. She had not lit a fire in the hearth for many months now, nor had she attempted to mend the thatch. It was more like a shed these days than a home, an empty, inhospitable shed. Beana slept in the center of the one room, and Rose Red lay with her head pillowed on the goat’s shaggy back. She sat up now and drew her veil over her head, listening for the familiar sound she knew she would not hear.
The old man’s snoring.
How long had it been now since . . . since everything?
Rose Red got up carefully so as not to disturb Beana and stepped through the sagging cottage door. How long had it been since she’d had a proper meal? Much too long ago to calculate! How long since she’d had a proper night’s sleep? Several weeks now at least. Not since the boy had returned to Hill House.
She made her way into the yard. It was a shambles these days, and the kitchen garden was overgrown with weeds save where Beana had nibbled them down. Though the night was dark, Rose Red could see it all clearly through the slit in her veil, but she turned her gaze away and passed into the forest.
The watching and unhappy wood.
She did not know how intently it watched her, though she felt the tension running through the very bones of the mountain. Was the wood’s unhappiness connected with her own?
The shadows fell deep and solemn where she walked. She caught a gleam of white in the darkness and recognized at once her Imaginary Friend. But she turned away, shaking her head. She did not want to imagine anything right now.
A thrush sang in the darkness. Then she heard the soft rustle of wings and a light weight pressed into her shoulder.
My child,
said the thrush in the voice of her Prince.
Why do you scorn me?
“I don’t want you,” said Rose Red, trying to shrug the little bird away. “Scat.”
You are weary with sorrow. Allow me to comfort you.
“Some comfort you are.”
Have I not promised never to abandon you?
“Is that so?” She took hold of the gently gripping claws with her gloved fingers and wrenched the bird from her shoulder. It fluttered from her grasp and settled on the ground before her, the white of its breast luminous in the darkness. But Rose Red turned away and continued down the mountain. “Make me some more promises, why don’t you? Promise imaginary food to keep off starvation. Promise imaginary shelter to keep me warm. Promise a whole town full of imaginary folks what will pretend they don’t hate the very sight of me. Promise to give me work so that I might pretend to live again!”
The thrush took to the air and followed her. She did not see it, for her head was bowed. “Promise imaginary medicine what can pretend to heal,” she whispered, “even after hope of healin’ is long gone.”
My child—
“Stupid fancies!” she growled. “Why do you trouble me so? You when I’m awake,
him
when I’m sleeping! Cain’t you just let me alone?”
The bird spoke no more, at least not that she heard. The silence of the wood fell heavily around her. How long, she wondered, since she’d spoken a word to another person? Beana didn’t count. She was only a goat, after all, and so couldn’t really talk, for all she was the best friend Rose Red had.
Leo had been her best friend once. But that was years ago. He wouldn’t remember her. Not the way she remembered him.
She’d seen the carriage climbing the hill from her perch in the topmost boughs of the grandfather tree. Somehow she’d known it must be he. But the thought gave her no joy.
She emerged from the forest onto the path and continued on down. “I ain’t goin’ to the house for him,” she muttered to herself as her feet padded softly on the hard dirt. Her quick eyes darted about, for even at this darkest hour of the night it wouldn’t be impossible to meet one of the mountain folk coming or going. That was the last thing she wanted. And as she approached Hill House, she must watch all the windows for any sign of a candle, any indication that some member of the staff might yet be awake or even rising early for some odd duty.
There was none, so she climbed the garden gate into the yard.
The gardens held no interest for her, not even the starflower vines that bloomed white at night. She passed over the lawns to a quiet corner in the back. A corner where marble stones were planted in the earth, some elegantly carved, some not. The founder of Hill House had a most impressive statue, a white panther seated with its mouth open. A spider had, indecorously, built a web among those carved fangs.
In a smaller, simpler nook were wooden markers carved with nothing save names. Rose Red, like a ghost in her rags and veils, passed between the graves until she came to one of those wood markers on which the name
Mousehand
was written, though she could not read it.
She knelt there and wept behind her veil.
“What did you have to go and die for, Dad?” she demanded, putting a hand on the marker. “What did you have to go and die for and leave me all alone? I told you, didn’t I? I told you not to!”
She pressed her forehead to the marker, and her veil grew damp with her tears.
He had died on a cold autumn night, many months ago now. She had known he would but had lied to herself that he would not. In retrospect, she could not deny that she had known all along that it was his final night when he crawled onto his pallet and called her to him.
“Rosie, com’ere a moment, will you?”
“Yeah, Dad?” She’d knelt by his side and put out a hand for him to find and grasp. When his fingers closed about hers, she noticed how weak they were.
His fingers squeezed hers until the blue veins stood out. “Rosie,” he said, “did I ever tell you about the first time I laid eyes on you?”
“ ’Course you did,” she whispered, but he wanted to tell it again, and she did not stop him.
“It was late one moonlit night,” he said, “and you know I cain’t sleep in the full moon. It works on my joints a right awful magic! So I took myself for a little walk. Now that was back when I worked for the Eldest, our good King Hawkeye. He’d asked me to plant the red roses along the Swan Bridge path. A sad thing that, for now all the roses are gone. Aye, within a year of that very night, some strange blight struck every bush in Southlands, and not a single blossom grew, not so much as a pink-edged bud.
“But that night, I was mighty proud of the landscaping I’d done, and there is nothing like the scent of roses in the moonlight to fill a man with all sorts of goodness, swollen joints be dashed!”
Rose Red smiled, running her thumb up and down the man’s bony wrist.
“I strolled down that path, enjoying my roses, then on out across Swan Bridge. I walked a long way out there under the moon, and looked down into the dark wood below. All the trees rippled like water, their leaves reflecting back the white light so’s I could have thought I stood above the ocean. It was a sight, Rosie!”