Veiled Rose (17 page)

“Sure, Dad. Sure it was.”

“But it was cold too, so I had to start making my way back homeward. I was nearin’ the end of the bridge and just getting a whiff of them roses of mine when I heard in my ear the prettiest sound I ever did hear. It was a bird’s song, one I didn’t know, prettier than a nightingale, prettier than a mourning dove’s coo.”

“A wood thrush,” Rose Red murmured.

“That’s what it was, girl, right enough. A wood thrush, and at that hour, singing as though his heart would break for the pure joy of singin’! And I saw him, sittin’ all proud and mighty like a little prince in the throne of my grandest, reddest rosebush, not two steps from Swan Bridge.”

The old man’s voice trailed off, and Rose Red thought perhaps he had gone to sleep. But when she tried to lay his hand aside, his grip tightened. A deep chuckle rumbled in his chest, though it ended with a wheezy cough. “Ah, Rosie,” he said, “I’ll not forget my surprise when suddenly this awful commotion under the bush started up! But then I saw this white bundle and realized it was that bitty thing makin’ all the racket. So I made my way to the bush, and that’s when I found you.”

He smiled a toothless smile, and his dim eyes circled about, as though wanting to meet her gaze. “You were somethin’ different, Rosie,” he said. “Like no other baby I’d seen.”

“I’m sure I was that,” she said.

“Now, Rosie, there ain’t no call for soundin’ so down in the mouth! When I say you were like no other baby, I mean because it was obvious to me that you were a miracle, brought to me by the moon and that bird, and born right under my reddest bush, with three great red petals fallen on your forehead.”

She could tell he was close to dozing off by now. His eyelids slid slowly over his bleary eyes, and he rubbed them with his free hand like a toddler insistent on staying up.

“My Rose Red,” he said, “you are a Faerie child. Born different from everyone else, and that’s why you look the way you do. It takes special eyes, Faerie eyes, to see you as you really are.

“You’ve never seen them, my girl, but listen to me now: Not in all the world was there a flower that can excel the rose. The fairest of the fair is she, with a smell as sweet as spring and summer combined. But when I looked at you there in the moonlight, you were more beautiful even than my reddest rosebush. You listenin’ to me, girl?”

“I’m listenin’, Dad.”

In that last moment before sleep claimed him, his eyes became very bright. “Rosie,” he said, “keep yourself safe, d’you hear me? Keep your face covered, for they won’t know what to make of a face like yours. And never forget, you were the greatest gift to me.”

With that, he let go of her hand and fell asleep, filling their hovel with his thunderous snores. And when the sun crested the mountain and Rose Red went to shake him awake before the porridge went cold, she found he’d gone and died on her without so much as a by-your-leave.

She’d had to carry his body down to Hill House. Those who served in Hill House were honored to be buried among their predecessors, and Mousehand deserved that honor more than anyone. Down the deer trail and the mountain path Rose Red had borne him, to the gates of Hill House . . . then the most horrible part. She could not call out to those in the house. She could not ask for their aid. No, she must leave the man she called father there by the gate to be discovered later that day, for the household to suppose that he had died on his way to work.

For if the household saw him with her, even in death, they would shun him and refuse to lay him to rest in the house graveyard.

He was found, he was buried, his name carved on a wooden marker.

She did not realize until he was gone just how greatly she had depended on the old gardener. Of course she had loved him and been cared for by him. Though they had lived simply, she had never had to worry about where the food would come from. Mousehand would venture down to the village to buy the meal and barley. Mousehand had purchased seeds as needed for the kitchen garden, and when the garden was insufficient, Mousehand had provided supplements.

Rose Red, covered in her veils, dared not venture to town. So she remained in the forest, and winter set in, and she rationed out her meager supplies. Those supplies failed, and Rose Red starved.

Eventually, things became so bad that hunger drove her from her safe cottage yard and into the more remote mountainfolk homesteads. She stole for the first time in her life. Only little bits and pieces, things she was almost certain would not be missed. But that did not make it any easier on her, and she hated herself for having come to this state.

“Don’t blame yourself, Rosie,” Beana told her. “If these folks were as good and kind as they like to think themselves, all you’d have to do is ask, and they’d give you as much or more.”

There could be no asking, however. So Rose Red stole from storage houses and took no comfort in Beana’s words. After all, Beana was only a goat. What did she know?

The only relief in all this terrible time was that when she fell asleep at night, she never dreamed.

When spring and summer returned, survival became a little easier. Rose Red could find roots and wild vegetables, and her body was tougher than anyone looking at her small form might suppose. Beana was always there with her to comfort her. She busied herself making plans for the coming winter, attempting to salvage what she could of the kitchen garden despite the lack of new seeds.

But then Leo had returned to Hill House. And with him came the dreams.

Angry dreams born, Rose Red was sure, out of her hurt and fear. Dreams that grew angrier with each passing day, until even in waking hours she still felt that anger surging along beside her. Beana sensed it too, but they never spoke of it, nor of Leo. But what work Rose Red had managed on the kitchen garden failed, and ruin took the cottage yard in a hold that would never be broken. The summer was passing; winter would soon be upon them.

As she knelt that night before Mousehand’s grave, her back to the house and her veiled face streaked with drying tears, Rose Red knew that she would not survive another such winter.

“Bah.”

A gentle nose nuzzled the back of her neck. Rose Red startled only a little before turning to put an arm over Beana’s neck. “What you doin’ here, fool goat?”

“I could ask the same of you,” Beana replied.

“How’d you get through the gate?”

“You left it open.”

Rose Red frowned. “I didn’t.”

The goat tossed her horns. “You’re not supposed to come down here. It isn’t safe; you know that.”

Rose Red turned back to the grave and rested one hand on the mound of earth under which the old gardener rested. “I miss him sometimes.”

“Doesn’t make it any less dangerous,” said Beana, but she knelt down beside the girl anyway, and they remained awhile in silence, listening to the sounds of the night.

“Beana,” Rose Red said, her gloved fingers twining in the goat’s hair, “what becomes of a person when they die?”

The goat gave her a sidelong glance. “How should I know? I’m just an old goat.”

“He cain’t be gone. Not completely,” Rose Red persisted. “His body wore out, but
he
wouldn’t just be gone.” Tears dampened the veil where it rested on her cheeks. “Don’t goats have notions of what happens afterward?”

Beana sighed, tilting her head as she thought. “Mind you,” she said at last, “I couldn’t tell you for sure, but . . . but what I heard is that when a body dies, the spirit leaves this world and passes into the Netherworld, where one must walk Death’s Path. This path looks different to different folks. For some, it is a hard and lonely way . . . and they walk it alone, in darkness.”

Rose Red breathed a shuddering sob and bowed her head over the grave once more.

“No, no, listen!” the goat hastened to say. “It isn’t that way for everybody! Some, once they’ve passed through the gate, see a light shining on top of an old stone by the pathway. An old gravestone.” Her voice became faraway, as though she were recalling something from her own past, not merely recounting a story she’d once heard. “The stone is white, but you hardly see that for the brightness that shines upon it. A silver lantern of delicate work, older than you can imagine. And within that lantern shines a wonder. Like a star, yet unlike as well.”

Rose Red whispered, “The Asha Lantern.” She remembered the legend of the Brothers Ashiun that Leo had related to her years ago.

“This lantern,” said Beana, “is full of Hope. Not hope as you and I think of it, an emotion or a dream. I mean true, brilliant Hope. That you see and smell and feel through your whole body.

“The folks who see the lantern take it with them as they walk the path. And the light guides them through the darkness, keeping at bay all the terrors of the Netherworld. At long last it leads them to the Final Water, and there . . .”

“And there, what?”

The goat shook her horns and snorted. “I don’t know exactly from that point. It’s not as though I’ve crossed the Final Water myself!” Then she reached up and nuzzled her girl. “But you may be sure the man you call father has. He found that lantern beyond the gate, and it guided him true. And when the time comes for you to cross the Final Water yourself, he’ll be waiting for you on the Farthestshore. And that’s a place you’ll want to see, for it’s a land where no lantern is needed. Darkness has no room in that country where Hope is finally satisfied.”

Rose Red ran a hand down her goat’s neck and sighed. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about exactly,” she said. “But it sounds pretty. Thank you.”

“Bah.” Beana shivered the fur down her spine, a goat’s shrug. “Like I said, it’s what I’ve heard. Being an old nanny, I don’t pretend to be an expert on these things.”

Rose Red was silent a long moment as she continued to stroke Beana’s neck. “Beana,” she said at last, “what would you say to . . . us two makin’ our way off?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean . . .” She hesitated, then continued in a rush. “I mean leavin’ the mountain.”

“What?”

“It’s too dangerous for us up here, Beana! Folks are scared of us . . . of me. I’m not a fool, Beana, I know what they say. They ain’t never goin’ to give us a chance to make it. But down there, down in the low country, they don’t have no mountain monster to . . . to make them nervous. They don’t have no reason to hate us like these folks do, and I could find work maybe, and—”

“Rose Red,” said Beana with a bleat that sounded much too loud in that quiet graveyard, “if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: You must
not
go down the mountain!” She bleated again but calmed herself with an effort and went on in a softer tone, “Why do you think the old man left his place at the Eldest’s House?”

Rose Red shrugged.

“For you, girlie. He understood more than you think; he understood that he had to get you away, into the high country, where you could not hear . . . where you would be safe. Lonely, yes. Shunned, yes. But safe, my Rosie, as you can never be down in the tablelands.”

“But I don’t—”

The goat nuzzled the girl’s hand and lipped at her sleeve. “Please don’t ask why. It’s best you know as little as possible. Someday, perhaps, I’ll be able to explain. But in the meanwhile, you must trust your old Beana.”

“Trust my goat,” said Rose Red, “who cain’t really talk. You know what you are, Beana? You are my own mind makin’ up excuses not to face my fears, that’s what you are.”

“My, my,” said the goat, “aren’t we the little philosopher?” She chewed her cud at a furious rate. Then she said, “You should talk to the boy.”

“What’s that you say?”

“Tell him your father died. Ask him for help.”

Rose Red shook her head and removed her hand from the goat’s neck, wrapping both arms around her middle instead. “I ain’t askin’ him for nothin’.” She tilted her head to one side, trying to keep more tears from falling, though the goat could not see them. “He don’t remember me.”

“Bah!” said the goat. “Sure he does. Give him more credit than that!”

“Now you’re just my own mind tellin’ me what I want to hear. I ain’t listenin’, Beana!”

The goat bleated angrily. “Stop talking foolishness, girl! You know as well as I that we won’t pull through this next winter without a little help. Ask the boy. He can do something for us, I have no—”

“I ain’t askin’,” Rose Red said in a voice that was quiet but absolute. They were silent again for some time, pressing into each other. But Rose Red’s mind was not still; it was full of a voice from a dream that burned in her memory no matter how often she told herself it was not real.

“I will make him pay.”

“I ain’t askin’ him,” she said to herself in a voice too low for the goat to hear. “I’ll keep Leo safe from the monster if it kills me.”

A few hours later, dawn crept up to the mountaintops and spilled at last into the Hill House gardens. It touched the markers of humble graves, but the girl and her goat had long since gone, leaving Mousehand, and all those of the house, to sleep.

“Make him pay, will you?”

“Don’t take on so! I’ve got to keep the girl in check, haven’t I? What business is it of yours what I tell her?”