Winterlong (4 page)

“An Aviator?” I repeated; but Dr. Harrow seemed not to have heard me.

“A hero of the Archipelago Conflict. Margalis Tast’annin: a brilliant man from the
NASNA
Academy. We knew him there, Aidan and I. He is to assume control of the City, set up a janissary outpost.”

I thought of what Justice had told me, of the people who lived in the Museums and the ruins of the ancient Embassies. “What about the people there now?”

Dr. Harrow tilted her head back and shut her eyes as the afternoon sun touched her face. “I suppose they will be killed if they resist, or enslaved. Although Margalis Tast’annin doesn’t seem the type to take prisoners.

“He arrived yesterday with Dr. Leslie, Wendy. Dr. Leslie told him about you, about Melisande and Morgan Yates and the others. He wants you for—
observation.
He wants this—”

She pressed both hands to her forehead and then waved them toward the sky, the unpruned fruit-laden trees, and the rank sloping lawns of Linden Glory. “All this, Wendy. They will have me declared incompetent and our research a disaster, and then they’ll move in. They’ve been looking for an excuse; the Wendy suicides will do nicely.”

The garden server returned to pour me more mineral water. I drank it and asked, “Is Dr. Leslie a nice doctor?”

For a moment I thought she’d upset the table, as Morgan had done in the Orphic Garden. Then, “I don’t know, Wendy. Perhaps he is.” She sighed and motioned the server to bring another cold split.

“They’ll take Anna first,” she said a few minutes later, almost to herself. Then she added, “For espionage. They’ll induce multiple personalities and train them when they’re very young. Ideal terrorists.”

I drank my water and stared at the gaps in the Pagoda’s latticed roof, imagining Andrew and Anna without me. I took the chocolate wafer from my pocket and began to nibble it.

The server rolled back with a sweating silver bucket and opened another split for Dr. Harrow. She sipped it, watching me through narrowed gray eyes. “Wendy,” she said at last. “There’s going to be an inquest. At Tast’annin’s request. It will probably be the last time I will supervise anything here. But before that, one more patient.”

She reached beneath the table to her portfolio and removed a slender packet. “This is the profile. I’d like you to read it.”

I took the file. Dr. Harrow poured the rest of her champagne and finished it, tilting her head to the server as she stood.

“I have a two o’clock meeting with Dr. Leslie. Why don’t you meet me again for dinner tonight and we’ll discuss this.”

“Where?”

She tapped her lower lip. “The Peacock Room. At seven.” She bowed slightly and passed out of sight among the trees.

I waited until she disappeared, then gestured for the server. “More chocolate, please,” I ordered, and waited until it creaked back across the dusty floor, holding a chilled marble plate and three wafers. I nibbled one, staring idly at the faux vellum cover of the profile with its engraved motto:

HUMAN ENGINEERING LABORATORY

OF THE

NORTHEASTERN FEDERATED REPUBLIC OF AMERICA

PAULO MAIORA CANAMUS!

“‘Let us raise a somewhat loftier strain,’” Gligor had translated it for me once. “Virgil. But it should be
deus ex machina,”
he added slyly.

God from the machine.

I licked melting chocolate from my fingers and began to read, skimming through the charts and anamnesis that followed. On the last sheet I read: “Client requests therapy in order to determine nature and cause of these obsessive nightmares.”

Beneath this was Dr. Harrow’s scrawled signature and the blotchy yellow star and triangle that was the Republic’s emblem. I ate the last wafer, then mimed to the server that I was finished.

We dined alone in the Peacock Room. After setting two places at the vast mahogany table the servers disappeared, dismissed by Dr. Harrow’s brusque gesture. We ate in silence for several minutes beneath the hissing gaslights.

“Did you read the profile I gave you?’ she asked at last, with studied casualness.

“Mmmm-mmm,” I grunted.

“And … ?”

“She will not make it.”

Dr. Harrow dipped her chin ever so slightly before asking, “Why, Wendy?”

“I don’t know.” I sucked my fork.

“Can’t you give me any idea of what makes you feel that?”

“Nothing. I never feel anything.”

“Well then, what makes you think she wouldn’t be a good analysand?”

“I don’t know. I just—” I clicked the tines of my fork against my teeth. “It’s like when I start head-banging—the way everything starts to shiver and I get sick. But I don’t throw up.”

Dr. Harrow tilted her head. “Like a seizure. Well.” She smiled, staring at me.

I dropped my fork and glanced around in impatience. “When will I meet her?”

“You already have.”

I kicked my chair. “When?”

“Fourteen years ago, when you first came to
HEL
.”

“Why don’t I remember her?”

“You do, Wendy.” She leaned across the table and tapped my hand gently with her knife. “It’s me.”

“Surprised?” Dr. Harrow grinned and raised the sleeves of her embroidered haik so that the early morning sunlight gleamed through the translucent threads.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, enviously fingering the flowing cuffs.

She smiled and turned to the NET beside my bed. “I’m the patient this morning. Are you ready?”

I nodded. There had been no Aides in to see me that morning; no report of my stolen dreams; no blood samples given to Justice. Dr. Harrow had wheeled in a rickety old wood-framed cot and now sat on it, readying her monitors. I settled on my bed and waited for her to finish. She finally turned to me and applied electrolytic fluid to the nodes on my temples, placed other wires upon my head and cheekbones before doing the same to herself.

“Justice isn’t assisting you?” I asked.

She shook her head but made no reply as she adjusted her screens and, finally, settled onto her cot. I lay back against the pillow and shut my eyes.

The last thing I heard was the click of the adaptor freeing the current, and a gentle exhalation that might have been a sigh.

“Here we stand …”

“Here we stand
…”

“Here we lie
…”

“Here we lie
…”

“Eye to hand and heart to head,

Deep in the dark with the dead.”

It is spring, and not dark at all, but I repeat the incantation as my brother Aidan Harrow gravely sprinkles apple blossoms upon my head. In the branches beneath us a bluejay shrieks at our bulldog, Molly, as she whines and scratches hopefully at her basket.

“Can’t we bring her up?” I peer over the edge of the rickety platform and Molly sneezes in excitement.

“Shhh!” Aidan commands, squeezing his eyes shut as he concentrates. After a moment he squints and reaches for his crumpled sweater. Several curry leaves filched from the kitchen crumble over me and I blink so that the debris doesn‘t get in my eyes.

“I hate this junk in my hair,” I grumble. “Next time I make the spells.”

“You can’t.” Aidan stands on tiptoe and strips another branch of blossoms, sniffing them dramatically before tossing them in a flurry of pink and white. “We need a virgin.”

“So?” I jerk on the rope leading to Molly’s basket. “You‘re a virgin. Next time we use you.”

Aidan stares at me, brows furrowed. “That won’t count,” he says at last. “Say it again, Emma.”

“Here we stand
…”

Every day we come here: an overgrown apple orchard within the woods, uncultivated for a hundred years. Stone walls tumbled by time mark the gray boundaries of a farm and blackberry vines choke the rocks with breeze-blown petals. Our father showed us this place. Long ago he built the treehouse, its wood lichen-green now and wormed with holes. Rusted nails snag my knees when we climb: all that remains of other platforms and the crow’s nest at treetop.

I finish the incantation and kneel, calling to Molly to climb into her basket. When my twin yells, I announce imperiously, “The virgin needs her faithful consort. Get in, Molly.”

He helps to pull her up. Molly is trembling when we heave her onto the platform. As always, she remains huddled in her basket.

“She’s sitting on the sandwiches,” I remark. Aidan hastily shoves Molly aside and retrieves two squashed bags. “I call we break for lunch.”

We eat in thoughtful silence. We never discuss the failure of the spells, although each afternoon Aidan hides in his secret place behind the wing chair in the den and pores through more brittle volumes. Sometimes I can feel them working
—
the air is so calm, the wind dies unexpectedly, and for a moment the woods glow so bright, so deep, their shadows still and green; and it is there: the secret to be revealed, the magic to unfold, the story to begin. Above me Aidan flushes and his eyes shine, he raises his arms and
—

And nothing. It is gone. A moment too long or too soon, I never know; but we have lost it again. For an instant Aidan’s eyes gray with tears. Then the breeze rises, Molly yawns and snuffles, and once more we put aside the spells for lunch and other games.

That night I toss in my bed, finally throwing my pillow against the bookcase. From the open window stream the chimes of peepers in the swamp, their song broidered with the trills of toads and leopard frogs. As I churn feverishly through the sheets it comes again, and I lie still: like a star’s sigh, the shiver and promise of a door opening somewhere just out of reach. I hold my breath, waiting: Will it close again?

But no. The curtains billow and I slip from my bed, bare feet curling upon the cold planked floor as I race to the window.

He is in the meadow at wood’s edge, alone, dark hair misty with starlight, his pajamas spectral blue in the dark. As I watch he raises his arms to the sky, and though I am too far to hear, I whisper the words with him, my heart thumping counterpoint to our invocation. Then he is quiet, and stands alert, waiting.

I can no longer hear the peepers. The wind has risen, and the thrash of the beech trees at the edge of the forest drowns all other sounds. I can feel his heart now, beating within my own, and see the shadows with his eyes.

In the lower branches of the willow tree, the lone willow that feeds upon a hidden spring beside the sloping meadow, there is a boy. His eyes are green and lucent as tourmaline, and silvery moths are drawn to them. His hands clutch the slender willow wands: strong hands, so pale that I trace the blood beneath, and see the muscles strung like strong young vines. As I watch he bends so that his head dips beneath a branch, new leaves tangling fair hair, and then slowly he uncurls one hand and, smiling, beckons my brother toward him.

The wind rises. Beneath his bare feet the dewy grass darkens as Aidan runs faster and faster, until he seems almost to be skimming across the lawn. And there, where the willow starts to shadow the starlit slope and the boy in the tree leans to take his hand, I tackle my brother and bring him crashing and swearing to earth.

For a moment he stares at me uncomprehending. Then he yells and slaps me, hits me harder until, remembering, he shoves me away and stumbles to his feet.

There is nothing there. The willow trembles, but only the wind shakes the new leaves. From the marsh the ringing chorus rises, swells, bursts as the peepers stir in the sawgrass. In the old house yellow light stains an upstairs window and our father’s voice calls out sleepily, then with concern, and finally bellows as he leans from the casement to spot us below. Aidan glances at the house and back again at the willow, and then he turns to me despairingly. Before I can say anything he punches me and runs, weeping, into the woods.

A gentler withdrawal than I’m accustomed to. For several minutes I lay with closed eyes as I tried to hold on to the scents of apple blossom and dew-washed grass. But they faded, along with the dreamy net of tree and stars. I sat up groggily, wires still taped to my head, and faced Dr. Harrow, who was already recording her limbic system’s response from the
NET
.

“Thank you, Wendy,” she said without looking up. I glanced at the
BEAM
monitor, where the shaded image of my brain lingered, the last flash of activity staining the temporal lobe bright turquoise.

“I never saw that color there before.” As I leaned to examine it an unfocused wave of nausea choked me. I staggered against the bed, tearing at the wires.

Eyes:
brilliant green lanced with cyanogen, unblinking as twin chrysolites. A wash of light: leaves stirring the surface of a still pool. They continued to stare through the shadows, heedless of the play of sun and moon, days and years and decades. The electrodes dangled from my fist as I stared at the blank screen, the single dancing line bisecting the
NET
monitor. The eyes in my mind did not move, did not blink, did not disappear. They stared relentlessly from the shadows until the darkness itself swelled and was absorbed by their feral gaze. They saw me.

Not Dr. Harrow; not Aidan; not Morgan or Melisande or the others I’d absorbed in therapy.

Me.

I stumbled from ‘the monitor to the window, dragging the wires behind me, heedless of Dr. Harrow’s stunned expression. Grunting, I shook my head, finally gripped the windowsill and slammed my head against the oaken frame, over and over and over, until Dr. Harrow tore me away. Still I saw them: unblinking glaucous eyes, tumbling into darkness as Dr. Harrow pumped the sedatives into my brain.

Much later I woke to see Dr. Harrow staring at me from the far end of the room. She watched me for a moment, then walked slowly to the bed.

“What was it, Wendy?” she asked, smoothing her haik as she sat beside me. “Can you tell me?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said, biting the tip of my thumb. Then I twisted to stare at her and asked, “Who was the boy?”