I dreamed of a red rose blooming in the snow. Corbet picked it and gave it to me. When I woke, I heard his voice, mingled with the sounds of Perrin playing the flute, Laurel’s voice. I had slept through another day. Or perhaps there were no more days; they had withered and died for the season, left us with the winter flowers of darkness and dreams. I got out of bed, wrapped a quilt around me, and followed his voice down.
Fire bloomed in the dark, like the winter rose. I saw his face beside it. He smiled at me, shadow softly stroking his face, light catching in his hair, in a fold of his sleeve, sliding between his fingers. Perrin, softly playing on the other side of the fire, seemed to belong to another world; so did Laurel beside him, and our father falling asleep over his pipe. I went to Corbet; his eyes drew me, at once clear and secret, like the water in the well. He lifted a hand as I drew close, to draw me closer or to stop me. I took his hand and leaned over him. I felt the flush of fire in his skin, heard his indrawn breath just before I kissed him.
I heard the wind whispering around me, the trembling silver bells. Then the thorn bit my lip again, and I drew back.
That will cost you, his eyes said to me across the room.
I stood at the foot of the stairs, shivering despite the quilt, sweating despite the cold I felt deep in me. An unbearable silver fire glanced off the flute as Perrin lowered it. Laurel said, surprised,
“Rois. Are you awake or asleep?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I felt at my hair: a tangled bramble. I knew then that I was awake. Laurel rose quickly, felt my face.
“You’re burning up.”
“I know that. I want a silver cup.”
“What?”
“To drink the rose floating in the well.”
“You’re dreaming,” Laurel said. “There are no roses. Look.” She drew back a curtain and I saw the first winter snow streaking the dark outside the window.
I looked at Corbet. “What will you do?” I asked, for the season of the curse was upon him. He did not answer; how could he know?
Laurel said, “He can borrow a lantern for the ride home. It’s barely sticking to the ground.”
Our father rose, awkward and perplexed in the face of illness. He came and patted my shoulder gently. I smelled ale and pipe and wood smoke, the smells of endless winter. “Should we send for the apothecary?” he asked me. I shook my head wearily.
“I have a tea for fevers.”
“You spent a cold night bleeding on thorns,” Perrin said grimly. “You might have caught your death. How much can you cure with those teas?”
I shrugged and was sorry. Corbet dragged at my eyes again, sitting silently beside the fire; I watched his face shape out of light, out of another world. Why would he want to stay in this one, winterbound in two cold rooms, waiting to be discovered by his grandfather?
“You should not have come here,” I told him, and Laurel exclaimed,
“Rois, you’re the one who shouldn’t be here. Go back to bed. I’ll bring you whatever you want. You must stop brooding over Corbet’s relatives, or it will be the longest winter we have ever lived through.” Turning, she appealed to him, holding his eyes. “Tell her what she wants to know, Corbet; she’s possessed by your ghosts.”
“She knows everything she needs to know,” he said simply. “Except one thing.”
“What?” we all asked at once, even my father, who, hazy as he was about the details, guessed there was some link between Corbet and his daughter flinging herself into brier roses.
“Why she needs to know.”
Perrin grunted softly. Our father lifted a thumbnail to smooth his eyebrow, his face puckered. Laurel looked at me speculatively, her own eyes opaque for once, secret, and I shivered suddenly in fear, pulling at the quilt.
“I know why,” I said sharply. He rose without answering; shadows slid across his face. He spoke to Laurel; his voice sounded strained, haunted by all the ghosts I had set loose.
“I’m sorry. It seems I can’t help. I won’t come again until you send for me.”
“It’s not your fault,” Laurel protested as he took his cloak off the hook and swung it over his shoulders. He bade us good night; she followed him, trying to persuade him of several things at once, above all that he must feel welcome any time. Our father followed him with a lantern. I sat down on the bottom stair. Perrin lingered beside me, watching the snow swirling into the light about them as the door opened. I looked up at him. He met my eyes. Silently, we told each other what we saw.
He reached down, gently touched my shoulder. “You’d best get up to bed. This may well be the longest winter we’ve all lived through, and we’ll need you strong.”
I dreamed that night of Lynn Hall, as I had never seen it, perhaps as it had never been, with its fine, high walls the color of buttermilk, heavy silk curtains at every window looped back to reveal blazing clusters of crystal and candlelight, vast marble floors on which thin, bright carpets were placed as carefully as paintings, marble urns of roses everywhere. Entranced, I moved from window to window; each window I turned from darkened abruptly, as if such treasures only became visible when I looked at them. In the dark, I knew, the carpets turned to scattered leaves, and the curtains to spider web; rose petals the color of blood spilled onto the marble floors.
I heard his voice.
Don’t leave me here.
Rois.
I woke to find smooth cold sky mirroring smooth cold fields. The world had turned as colorless and shadowless as the face of the moon, and as small; our horizons ringed us closely, reaching down, reaching up, to touch white. I wanted to bury myself away from the sight, under goose-down or leaves, until spring. I never knew what to do when the world turned skeletal and mute, with nothing but withered stalks pushing up between its bones.
Perversely, I felt better, weak but clear-headed, and in far less pain. I vaguely remembered the things I had said to Corbet. Even in such stark daylight they seemed urgent and true; the winter curse lay over him, and in his two sparse rooms he waited for it. Or in some cold world he waited for the wood to claim him, for his house would never be rebuilt, nor would his fields grow for him.
I bequeath all to the wood.
I got up restlessly, to look out the window and see which way the wind blew the smoke above Lynn Hall.
The wind had blown Corbet’s way: I saw a set of fresh hoof prints in the snow, coming and going, or going and coming. I heard Laurel’s steps on the stairs, as if she had heard mine overhead. Her face was still bright with cold; she carried Corbet in her eyes, the smile he had given her on her lips. She smelled of winter.
“Rois.” She felt my face, then saw what I was looking at. She said composedly, “You look better. I rode over to invite him for supper. Father sent me. He seems to think Corbet’s presence will keep you from brooding about his absence.”
I did not say what I thought; perhaps, if it remained unspoken, it would become untrue. I said tiredly, “I will try to be civilized.” My feet were cold. I got back into bed, wondering how I could find a door or passage out of this bleak world. Even the well would be covered with a sheen of ice. Perhaps Corbet would give me a key. And then I remembered what he had said: She knows everything she needs to know.
Except one thing.
Why.
I lay back, closed my eyes. I had no idea what he meant. Why she needs to know . . . And I did not care. Need is need; it is its own explanation. Laurel said something about soup. I made a noise; she disappeared again. I slept a little; a voice as sweet as silver bells, as secret as the wind said: You must hold fast to him, as fast as those thorns hold you, no matter what shape he takes. . . .
The door opened; I heard no step. “Laurel?” I said with my eyes closed. No one answered. The door closed softly. One of the house’s memories, I thought in my sleep. The door opened again; Laurel said as she came in, “Father is riding to the village. Do you want anything? Rois . . .” Her voice trailed away. I opened my eyes.
The room smelled of roses, profuse and sun-warmed, on a hot midsummer day. Laurel, her thoughts drifting, seemed entranced but puzzled, as if she could not have said what caught her by surprise. She moved finally, set a tray of bread and soup on the bed. I said sleepily, “It’s the house. Sometimes it does that.”
“What?”
“Remembers a different smell.”
“Rois, you’re making no sense again. Here. Eat this.”
“Suppose I am,” I argued dourly. “Suppose I am the only one in this house making any sense at all. Suppose that everything I say is true, and everything I do is vital —”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll suppose. Corbet is cursed and you are trying — by some peculiar means — to rescue him. Now what?” I couldn’t answer; I had no answers yet. She turned away; I saw her hands rise, push themselves briefly against her eyes. “Just be careful, Rois. Just don’t get hurt.”
I bathed myself for the first time in days, in water softened with oils of camomile and rose. I dressed, then combed my hair dry before the fire, thinking all the while of Corbet, wondering which way to turn next, what to do to help him, not knowing what to do to help any of us out of the trouble we headed into. Perrin did not appear for supper; another sick animal kept him home. Corbet came late. He brought wine with him, not from the inn, he said, but from some other place.
“What other place?” Laurel asked, smiling. “In winter, there are no other places.”
He smiled back at her, but did not answer. He poured wine into three of the cups Beda brought, handed one to Laurel, one to our father. Our father tasted it. His brows went up; he became suddenly lyrical.
“It’s wonderful — it tastes like the smell of new-mown hay.” He took another sip. “In early morning, wet with dew.”
“It does not taste like hay.” Laurel laughed. “It tastes like the year’s first sweet bite of peach, warm from the sun and so ripe it slides off the bough into your hand when you touch it.”
Corbet raised the third cup to his lips. “Golden apples,” he said. “And hazelnuts.” He looked at me. “Rois — I forgot. I brought you what you asked for.” He turned, while we watched, baffled. He reached into the pocket of his cloak and pulled out a silver cup.
I smiled a little, and then I saw his eyes: He was not humoring a sick child. Laurel exclaimed over the cup. Roses spiralled up its stem, spilled around its sides, trailed down over its lip. Our father beamed at Corbet, pleased with himself as well, for asking him to come. I stared at the cup as Corbet poured wine, feeling my heart beat in my throat. The wine, by candlelight, was of such pale gold it looked like water.
He handed me the cup. I smelled roses and wet stone. In the bottom of the cup, a reflection of flame from a candle in its sconce above my shoulder changed into a blood-red rose.
“Drink,” he said. I looked into his eyes; they seemed colder and more distant than the stars.
I raised the cup to my lips and drank.