Wonders of the Invisible World (6 page)

She could not even scream, her voice was that shriveled with fear. She could only squeak. Then the door was taken firmly out of her hands, closed against the night.

The scholar grumbled, returning to his work, “I couldn’t hear a thing with all that racket. Are you still here? Take a lamp with you when you go home.”

She went home late, terrified at every step, every whine of wind and crackle of branch. Her cold hands woke Dylan as she hugged him close in their bed for warmth and comfort. He raised his head, breathing something that may have been a name, and maybe not. Then his voice came clear.

“You’re late.” He did not sound worried or angry, only sleepy. “Your hands are ice.”

“Dylan, there was something wicked in the woods tonight.”

“What?”

“I don’t know—riders, dark riders, on horses with flaming breath—I heard horns, as if they were hunting—”

“Nobody hunts in the dark.”

“Didn’t you hear it?”

“No.”

“Were you even here?” she asked incredulously. He turned away from her, settled himself again.

“Of course. You weren’t, though, so I went to bed.”

“You could have come to fetch me,” she whispered. “You could have brought a lamp.”

“What?”

“You could have wondered.”

“Go to sleep,” he murmured. “Sleep.”

Winter, she thought as she walked to the scholar’s cottage the next morning. There wouldn’t be so much work then, with the snow flying. No gardens to tend, no trees to chop, with their wood damp and iron-clad. She and Dylan would see more of one another, then. She’d settle the scholar and come home before dark; they’d have long evenings together beside the fire. Leaves whirled around her. The brightly colored autumn squashes were almost the last things still unpicked in the garden, besides the root vegetables. One breath of frost, and the herbs would be gone, along with most of the green in the world.

“You’ll need wood for winter,” she reminded the scholar. “I’ll have Dylan bring you some.”

He grunted absently. She sighed a little, watching him, as she tied on her apron.

I’ve grown invisible, she thought.

Later, she caught herself longing for winter, and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Dylan stacked the scholar’s wood under the eaves. The squashes grew fat as the garden withered around them. The air smelled of rain and sweet wood smoke. Now and then the sky turned blue; fish jumped into sunlight; the world cast a glance back at the season it had left. On one of those rare days Leta spread the washing on the bushes to dry. Drawn to the shattered oak, she left her basket and walked through the brush to look at it, search for some sign that she had truly seen—whatever she had seen.

The great, gnarled stump, so thick that two or maybe three of her might have ringed it with her arms, stood just taller than her head. Only this lower, rooted piece of trunk was left intact, though lightning had seared a black stain on it like a scar. It stood dreaming in the sunlight, revealing nothing of its secrets. Just big enough, she thought, to draw a man inside it, if one had fallen asleep against it. In spring, living shoots would rise like his dreams out of the trunk, crown it with leaves, this still-living heart big enough to hide a sleeping mage....

Something moving down the river caught her eyes.

She went through the trees toward it, unable to see clearly what it was. An empty boat, it seemed, caught in the current, but that didn’t explain its odd shape, and the hints of color about it, the drift of cloth that was not sail.

She ran down the river path a ways to get ahead of it, so that she could see it clearly as it passed. It seemed a fine, delicate thing, with its upraised prow carved into a spiral and gilded. The rest of it, except for a thin line of gold all around it, was painted black. Some airy fabric caught on the wind, drifted above it, and then fell back into the boat. Now the cloth was blue, now satiny green. Now colors teased at her: intricately embroidered scenes she could not quite make out, on a longer drift of linen. She waited, puzzled, for the boat to reach her.

She saw the face within and caught her breath.

It was a young woman. She lay in the boat as though she slept, her sleeves, her skirt, the tapestry work in her hands picked up by passing breezes, then loosed again. Her hair, the color of the dying leaves, was carefully coiled and pinned with gold. Leta started to call to her. Words stopped before they began. That lovely face, skin white as whitest birch, held nothing now: no words, no expressions, no more movement than a stone. She had nothing left to tell Leta but her silence.

The boat glided past. Golden oak leaves dropped gently down onto the still figure, as though the trees watched with Leta. She felt sorrow grow in her throat like an apple, a toad, a jewel. It would not come out in tears or words or any other shape. It kept growing, growing, while she moved because she still could—walk and speak and tell and even, with a reason, smile—down the river path. She followed the boat, not knowing where it was going, or what she was mourning, beginning to run after a while when the currents quickened and the trees thinned, and the high slender towers of a distant city gleamed in the light of the waning day.

T
he
K
elpie

Ned met Emma Slade at her brother Adrian’s new lodgings, the night Bram Wilding brought the monkey and it set fire to the veils in which Euphemia Bunce was posing for Adrian’s painting. Ned had come to the party with some friends who knew Adrian, and had been invited to help him celebrate his new studio. Drink in hand, trying to remember people’s names in the lively, disorganized gathering, Ned watched Bram catch the monkey with one elegant hand and, with the other, dump a vase full of water and drooping lilies—a prop for the painting—onto the flaming veils, which were now down around Miss Bunce’s ankles. There had not been much under them. The model, a flame-haired stunner with a body the color of fresh cream, grabbed the tapestry covering the piano and wrapped herself in it, spitting some choice language at Bram. He threw back his head and laughed. She picked up the candle the monkey had dropped on her veils and flung it at him. Then Adrian’s housekeeper, cooing soothingly, bundled a cloak over her and drew her away to dress.

Ned spotted a familiar face, with a beard like a hedgehog sprouting from its chin. The face belonged to a tall, vigorous poet by the name of Linley Coombe.

“What did she call him?” Ned asked, raising his voice above the din.

“Ah, Bonham. I didn’t know you were acquainted with Adrian.”

“I’m not; I followed some friends here. A clabber-brained—some
thing?”

“A clabber-brained jabbernowl,” Linley said, relishing the syllables.

“Meaning?”

“Pretty much what he is,” a young woman commented tartly, “bringing a monkey into this jungle.”

Hers was another recognizable face, Ned saw with pleasure: the lovely Sophie Burden, another model. He had painted her a year earlier as Cassandra prophesying some dire event in the marketplace and being ignored. With her storm-gray eyes and long black hair, she made a marvelous doom-laden figure, barefoot among the cabbages while lightning flashed above her. Now she smiled at him cheerfully. “Hello, Mr. Bonham. Have you got me hung yet?”

“I’m touching up the painting for the spring exhibit. You look wonderful, but the cabbages seem strangely lurid under the lightning.”

“Lurid cabbages,” Coombe murmured with delight, then eyed Sophie quizzically. “Was that a note of disparagement I heard toward the incomparable Wilding? I thought all his models fell in love with him.”

She made a wry face, flashing the dimples that kept plaguing Ned at odd moments as he painted the dour Cassandra. “He’s careless of people,” she said briefly, and did not elaborate.

The monkey had escaped from Bram’s hold. A tiny, golden, spidery-limbed creature, it was sitting on the mantelpiece now, chattering at the party. Some very fine pieces of blue and white pottery stood near it. Ned wondered how long it would be before the little monkey started heaving them across the room. Someone else had foreseen disaster, and was moving through the crush toward the monkey. Ned watched her. She was very tall; it made her movements somewhat tentative, uncertain, as though she didn’t quite know what disorders her rangy limbs might cause. Like a wood-nymph at a tea party, he thought. She scooped up the monkey easily with her long fingers and turned, looking for its owner. Ned saw her face and blinked. She really was a nymph, he thought dazedly. Or one of the minor goddesses, a forgotten sister or daughter of one of those deities who attract all the attention and cast their relatives into obscurity. Obviously she had gotten lost on her way to some ethereal gathering; here she was, minding a monkey in an artist’s rackety studio instead.

“Who is that?”

“Which?” Linley Coombe asked.

“Which? Which, indeed! That fair-haired young Amazon carrying the monkey.”

“Oh. That’s Miss Emma Slade, Adrian’s sister.”

They watched her ease back through the crowd with that odd, cautious manner, as though she walked on water but didn’t understand by what grace.

“Coltish,” Coombe commented.

“She probably grew tall very fast,” Sophie said shrewdly. “Country living might do that to a girl. All that fresh air and rambles across the cow pastures. She only just came to the city recently to help Adrian get organized. I’ve heard Adrian’s encouraging her to paint.”

“I’d love to paint her,” Ned said fervently.

Sophie flung him a mischievous glance. “Maybe she’d like to paint you.”

Miss Emma Slade resembled her brother Adrian, Ned thought. Both had curly golden hair and wide-set eyes beneath broad, untroubled foreheads. He couldn’t see the color of her eyes; they were lowered, intent on the monkey. Then, as he watched, they lifted, turned to gaze at someone. It was Bram Wilding, Ned saw, come to take his monkey from her. Their eyes were at a level. His, dark as a horse’s, seemed transfixed by the airy azure of hers.

Ned, who had opened his mouth to ask Coombe for an introduction, closed it. As usual, Bram had wasted no time getting acquainted with the charming newcomer. His paintings had power and discipline; his reputation grew daily, it seemed. He would ask her to pose and who would resist? Slightly older than the roisterous young men in Adrian’s circle, he had an aura of experience and was, with his black flowing locks and profile like a Greek statue that had been lightly toasted by the sun, remarkably handsome. Some said devilishly so. Ned could claim his own amount of manly attributes: muscles where they were needed, nutmeg curls, hazel eyes, an open, modest demeanor often sought after by his painter friends when they needed someone to pose for the friend of the dying knight, or the rejected suitor.

He found the poet’s hand on his shoulder. “Have you met Adrian yet?”

He shook his head. “The friends I came with pointed him out, and then we all got distracted by the fire.”

Coombe grinned at the memory. “Come with me. Why should Bram have all the fun?”

Adrian was found sitting on a crate of unpacked books, opening a bottle of wine. He recognized Ned’s name, and, to Ned’s delight, even remembered where he’d seen it.

“You painted that marvelous landscape with the white owl and the full moon shining over the snow:
Winter Solstice
,” he said, rising to grasp Ned’s hand. “I wished I had thought of it first.”

“I would like to have done your
Last Roman Soldier Standing Watch on Hadrian’s Wall
.”

Adrian shook his head, drawing the cork out of the bottle. “No, you wouldn’t. It rained every single day while I was painting the wall, and when it wasn’t raining, the mosquitoes surrounded me in droves. Most miserable experience I’ve ever had. I came home with a massive cold and painted the soldier in my studio, between sneezes. Where’s your glass?” Ned held it out; Adrian refilled it, then turned to Coombe. “I hope you brought some poetry to read.”

“An epic,” Coombe assured him.

“Oh, good. I thought we might scatter some of these crates around, since there won’t be enough chairs. Ah, there you are, Buncie.” He reached quickly for another glass, peering at his model, who had reappeared. She was dressed now, and, but for her reddened eyes, a bit more composed. “Are you all right? You didn’t get hurt, did you?”