Page 26

The hillsides around Rose proved quite different from the lands she had whizzed across. Here they lay crimson. At first glance, she had thought herself in a place much like the garden of her childhood, surrounded by her namesake, but these were poppies rather than roses, and only in the valley into which she had stepped did their march falter on approaching the boggy ground around the ambling stream.

She stood for a moment then made a slow turn, taking in the scene, looking for any signs of habitation—a house, a trail, anything. Nothing but poppies. She yawned hugely, jaw-creakingly wide. She wasn’t sure when she’d last slept, but it had been a while. For a moment she considered finding a rock to sit on by the stream, or maybe even a patch of grass to lie on, but it all looked a bit damp and uncomfortable.

Rose studied her stolen shoes. She had her own pair clutched in her left hand. A little of the sparkle seemed to have gone out of the witch’s slippers. Did the woman’s magic die away after her own demise? Certainly, the Tin Man claimed to have been freed from her spell the moment that the tree crushed her.

Still yawning, Rose moved away from the stream, following the slope up toward where the poppies ruled unchallenged. She wasn’t sure what poppies should smell like, certainly not in such abundance, but even where she stood there was a sweetish aroma.

She reached the first of the brilliant red blooms, and ahead their numbers grew rapidly until they made an unbroken carpet, rippled by the breeze. The crimson flowers, each with a dark eye at the center, pressed so close on each other that the green of the plants beneath could hardly be seen.

Something caught Rose’s eye. Something white amid all that red. She peered, unable to make sense of it. It almost looked like thin fingers…white branches. Achingly tired and wanting nothing more than to lie down in the scarlet tide, she angled toward the objects.

“Wait…” She blinked and rubbed her gritty eyes. “Bones?”

The fingers were a rib cage, picked clean, the remains of a horse perhaps, or a cow, the skull hidden by the flowers.

thy bed of crimson joy

Despite her unease, Rose yawned, unable to stop herself. She took another step, and something crunched beneath her foot. Some brittle thing. Looking down, she found herself almost overcome with sudden vertigo. She moved her foot aside. More bones, the shattered skeleton of a small mammal. A rabbit perhaps. Her gaze tracked between the stalks and blooms. Another skeleton, smaller than the first—a rat? And there! The decaying corpse of a…was it a falcon? The breeze shifted and the sweet, sick smell of decomposition rolled over her. She retched, finding nothing to vomit.

O Rose, thou art sick

Somehow, she was on her knees, yawning yet another vast yawn despite her stomach’s revolt.

“The poppies…” She saw it now. Or rather she smelled it. The scent of them was dragging her down into sleep.

Another yawn cracked her jaw. When she’d been a small child, she’d taken naps in the middle of the day. It looked so comfortable down there among the blooms, a soft, velvety crimson. They even called it a bed of flowers…

She remembered those nursery sleeps. Even as she struggled to stay awake, her past tried to drown her with images of different days. Rose’s memories of her early childhood were a strange kind of dream to her. The Muse had given Miss Havisham regular breaks from the burden of care. Rose had been taken visiting to many unusual places. She had spent time playing with a little boy who lived on an asteroid no bigger than a house. She had danced with wild things on distant shores. Wandered chocolate factories, visited magic lands at the top of a nearby tree, played in the jungle with a boy who knew bears and panthers and elephants.

The memories that felt both most important and fuzziest—a combination that puzzled her as she lay down among the crimson flowers—were of visits to the Chimney Woman and to the Antler Man. They didn’t live in the same place, but some common thread ran through the both of them.

Everyone else, even Miss Havisham, treated the Muse like some kind of royalty. Even the little prince on his asteroid had bowed to her. The jungle animals had too, elephants going to one knee and lowering their great heads. The Chimney Woman was respectful but lacked that awe all the rest showed. And the Antler Man, he watched the Muse with curious eyes, and she, speaking with her hands as she always did, seemed almost to treat him as an equal. Almost.

The Chimney Woman Rose remembered for her cooking, and for the fact the Muse always took her there down the chimney. The Chimney Woman was kind but sad. She taught Rose many lessons, but the sort that escaped her memory and instead wrapped themselves around her bones, so deep that she called them instincts rather than taught things. Rose recalled only their last visit with any clarity. The Chimney Woman had given her oatcakes and told her, with an air of regret, that freedom was the only thing of any real value. She had told Rose that the time would come when she would leave the garden and the Muse behind. Her blood would tell her when.

The Antler Man had been very different. There were no cakes with him. There was the dancing of many ragged people around standing stones beneath the blaze of a million stars. There was the cruel flint curve of a sickle knife, the burning of herbs, the tear-making sting of smoke. The Antler Man had been scary. His world had nothing safe about it, and yet Rose had walked muddy footed through its wet fields and narrow lanes, knowing that the ties of some deal struck between the Muse and the man would see her return to the garden.

The Antler Man spoke with his hands and with his body, like the Muse, and where her oh-so-rare words were always a revelation wrapped in epiphany, the Antler Man’s guttural utterances never felt as if they would add much to Rose’s understanding of his message even if she had fathomed their meaning. He taught her about a world red in tooth and claw, about how a rabbit must be skinned and gutted if it’s to be eaten, and how there are secrets to be read into the vagaries of its insides. He set her in the roundhouse when the women gave birth. He sat with her to watch when the young men fought over nothing, razor shards of flint jutting from their battle sticks.

And when she left him, when they stood in the shadow of the Muse and could understand each other’s tongue again, he gave her two parting gifts.

“This is the first gift, child of time.” He held up the iron blade with which he made blood flow. “Know that if you ever return to me, I will sacrifice you to the stones. And this, child, this is the second gift…” He slapped her hard across the face.

Rose startled awake, clutching her stinging cheek. Poppies surrounded her on every side, and now as she sat up, they still reached her shoulders. In another few breaths she would be slumbering again among their nodding heads. And this time she wouldn’t wake up again. Ever. The Antler Man’s gift wouldn’t save her again.

Whatever book this was, Rose needed out of it, and immediately. Another seven-league step to some other location in this world of wicked witches, cursed lumberjacks, and poisonous flowers would just deliver her up to some new problem.

“Get up.” She slapped herself in the face. Hard, just as the Antler Man had.

Rose made it to her feet, though the reprieve was only temporary. Swaying and yawning, she knew that even down in the valley, the blooms’ scent would wrap her in sleep. Digging to freedom wasn’t going to work this time. It had to be the slippers.

“Get me out of here. Really out!” She took the small step she hoped would be a giant leap.

The blurring this time came with a sense of acceleration that made Rose scream and drove the sleepiness right out of her. She found herself in a small room whose walls were entirely hidden behind packed bookcases. In fact, the walls may actually have been bookcases.

A young man with longish, blondish hair stood with his back to her and one hand stretched out to trail his fingers across the books on a shelf at hip height. His gaze, though, was fixed on the doorless exit that looked to lead to a book-lined corridor.

Interesting as the young man might be, it was the books that called to her. Although each showed only a spine, often battered, it felt as if every one of them faced her way like flowers to the sun, each of them a door to a new world. Whatever design their covers might sport, when Rose turned her mind toward any of the thousand choices, she saw a rectangle filled with light that was more than light, colors that went beyond her spectrum, a picture that painted emotion and atmosphere, as if offering up the contents of the book in a single visual flood of knowing. She felt overwhelmed, blinded, dizzy with possibility. She would have reached for the man’s shoulder for support, but he had moved on, fingertips touching each spine.