Norton, Andre - Novel 23 (14 page)

 
          
 
Against the wall of the house, on low stools,
sat three figures,
who
were shadowed from light. Their
faces Saranna could not see except as whitish blurs. But it was they who made
that music which had drawn her. The instruments which they played were also so
deep in the shadows she could not see them clearly.

 
          
 
While out on the terrace in the full light—

 
          
 
She heard her own gasp even through the
wailing chords of that playing.

 
          
 
For, drawn up in ordered rows, facing the
three musicians were—foxes!

 
          
 
Large and small, even
differing a little in color.
For some were plainly darker in shade than
their neighbors. And two were an amazing silver-white. Yet all sat in nearly the
same position, as if they were listening—or waiting—

 
          
 
She thought the last only when there was
movement within the circle of the moon door. Someone came out of the house,
advanced into the open where the moon's radiance caught her plainly.

 
          
 
It was a woman wearing a long robe, the
sleeves of which covered her hands, being of such a length they swept to the
pavement of the terrace. She came dancing, weaving a graceful pattern with the
fluttering of her overlong sleeves. Her hair was dressed high in stiff
formality, and in those rolls, gemmed pins caught the moon, reflected that
light with small glitters like the sparkles on frost-rimmed snow.

 
          
 
But—

 
          
 
Her head had turned a little as she wove her
airy design with the fluttering sleeves before the foxes. Her face—

 
          
 
A fox! A fox's countenance on a woman's
shoulders, beneath that high piled hair!

 
          
 
Saranna's hand flew to her mouth, in somewhat
the same gesture Damaris used, to suppress a cry. Her first astonishment did
not give way to any fear. She felt nothing now but wonderment. There was an
unreality about the whole scene which brought not terror but interest. As if
this was something to be cherished, that Saranna was in a way privileged to be
a witness here and now.

 
          
 
She never knew how long she stood there
watching the intricate steps of the dancer, bewitched by the eerie music, the
sight of that motionless, fascinated pack of foxes watching with her as their
fur-visaged mistress swayed gracefully in the full light of the moon.

 
          
 
Then the dance halted; the woman's arms swept
out in a gestured of command. From the furred throats before her came a loud
yapping chorus. At once, the foxes scattered, melting away from the terrace.
The music had also stopped, but the Fox Lady did not return to her house.

 
          
 
No, her muzzle pointed in Saranna's direction.
The girl knew without any doubt, that her presence had been detected; yet
again, the knowledge brought her no fear. Instead, as one of those
sleeve-muffled hands raised to beckon, she went forward to answer the unvoiced
summons, moving across the terrace toward the dancer.

 
          
 
Before she quite reached the other's side, a
light flickered to life within the moon door itself, and then a second, sending
yellow fingers out to dispute the paler radiance of the moon. As the dancer
half-turned from Saranna to that doorway, she beckoned a second time.

 
          
 
With an odd confidence that this was right,
the girl followed the other into the house where five lanterns on legs sat
around a room, giving vivid life to its furnishings.

 
          
 
A woman with the seamed and wrinkled face of
age, yet who moved with some of the spring of youth, had just put light to the
fifth and last of the lanterns. She wore a short black satin jacket,
embroidered with red, over black trousers. Her hair was drawn so smoothly back
from her
face, that
it lay against her skull as if
painted in black strokes of ink. The bulk of it was knotted at the nape of her
neck with two gold pins through the knot.

 
          
 
But the dancer wore a loose robe of
a brilliant
rust which was also the red of an autumn leaf or
a fox's coat. It was tied by a sash high under her arms in a fashion such as
Saranna had seen pictured on a lacquer screen among Tiensin's treasures—a
screen many centuries old.

 
          
 
The gemmed pins in her high piled hair were
her only ornaments and her fox face was very obvious, the upper lip lifted a
little to show the gleaming of teeth. Yet Saranna felt none of the astonishment
which had first gripped her at the sight of the dancer.

 
          
 
In one corner was just such a bed as Damaris
had in her chamber, giving the impression of being an alcove of the room,
rather than a piece of furniture. Two lanterns stood at either end, affording
more light at that point. Screens and the drapery of brocaded curtains of a
yellow-red shade afforded privacy, and there was a low railing about it which
opened in the center of the side nearest them.

 
          
 
A pile of what might be quilts was folded
lengthwise in place at the back along the wall. And on a brocaded padding a
very short-legged table sat on the surface of the bed. With graceful ease, the
Fox Lady drew her long skirted robe about her and seated herself on one side of
that table. Again, she gestured to Saranna to join her at the opposite side of
that board.

 
          
 
In the air hung a spicy scent
whose
like Saranna thought she remembered from her visit to
Damaris' room. But she was far more interested in the fox woman herself than in
her surroundings. As if, when the dancer were present, nothing else mattered.

 
          
 
As Saranna, suddenly conscious of her
disheveled hair (she must have lost her nightcap among the bushes), her snagged
shawl, and her heavy muslin nightgown, all appearing in painful contrast to the
elegance of her strange hostess, settled herself on the edge of the huge bed,
she felt very insignificant, very much an intruder. The Fox Lady's sleeves
fluttered back away from her hands which she clapped together.

 
          
 
Her flesh was like carved ivory, there was no
hint of a fox's paws here, rather fingers, long and slim. And, covering the
nails on each hand, sheaths of gemmed and filagreed gold protruding far beyond
any natural length.

 
          
 
At her signal, the older woman pattered
forward, carrying a tray on which rested two covered cups of jade, but a jade
so different in color that Saranna only knew it to be that precious stone from
Damaris' tutoring. For this was cream-white, a flowered branch carved in high
relief on the side of each. The Fox Lady gracefully slipped the top from her
cup, held it to her muzzle. At the inclination of her elaborately coiffed head,
Saranna followed her example.

 
          
 
This was tea before her, but with the addition
of some herb, the girl believed. At least, she had never sniffed such an aroma
rising from any tea she had had poured from a
New England
pot.

 
          
 
For the first time the Fox Lady spoke, though
her jaw did not move to shape the word.

 
          
 
"Mei—"

 
          
 
Her slim, nail-sheathed hand moved forward so
that she nearly, but not quite, touched one straying lock of Saranna's long
hair which had escaped down the girl's shoulder.

 
          
 
Damaris had said that word meant
"sister." Was it because her rust-red locks did resemble a fox's coat
that this dancer thought to call her so?

 
          
 
"Mei —" the other repeated and then,
which seemed very strange indeed, she added a word in Saranna's own language:

 
          
 
"Drink!"

 
          
 
Saranna found that the contents of the jade
cup were not too hot to drink after all. The taste was odd but she liked it.
There was something so refreshing in the liquid that she swallowed eagerly again
and again, until the cup was indeed empty.

 
          
 
The eyes of the fox mask regarded her
steadily. Yet Saranna sensed that this person, whoever or whatever she might
be, meant her no ill. There was a drift of scented smoke rising from a brazier
beyond the draped curtain of the roomlike bed. That smoke appeared now to be
growing thicker—like a fog or mist—like the mist which had folded in upon the
sloop which had brought her upriver.

 
          
 
Through the mist came sharp glints.
From the gemmed pins in the dancer's hair?
Or were those
eyes—the eyes of foxes gathering within this room, padding through the moon
door out of the night to join their mistress? Saranna blinked and blinked
again, striving to fight a new languorous apathy which gripped her.

 
          
 
Fox eyes—gems—moonlight—a dancer with the form
of a woman, but a sharp pointed, red-furred muzzle for a face— Fox face—fox
eyes—

 
          
 
"Miss Saranna!"

 
          
 
Far away a voice calling.
Then nearer, nearer—more urgent.

 
          
 
Saranna stirred. They must be hunting her.
Would they come into the hidden garden—through the moon gate— and—?

 
          
 
She opened her eyes. Her lids seemed so heavy;
she did not want to look around her, to take up the burden of knowing again. To
drift in the scented beauty of the dancer's room—
To
—

 
          
 
But—this was
her own
bed!
Her own bed, with Millie leaning over to shake her
shoulder a little timidly.
She was in her own bed. She had only been
dreaming! But so real a dream—so very real a dream!

 
          
 
Only, of course, it could only be a dream.
There could not possibly
exist
any exquisite figure
with a woman's body, a fox’s face! But never before in her life had Saranna
dreamed in such vivid detail. She could, at this moment, still somehow feel the
smooth jade cup within her hand, list the number of lanterns, describe the hangings,
the folded covers of that bed, the sweep of the dancer's long sleeves as she
turned and twirled until those ribbons of soft material had whirled out—
"Miss Saranna—it do be breakfast time—nearly—" Millie was staring at
her.

 
          
 
"Oh." The warnings of Mrs. Parton's
demand for promptness came to mind. Saranna got out of bed.

 
          
 
For a moment, she felt a little dizzy and
queer. She put her hand up. No, her hair was not straying free. It was
decorously tethered beneath her nightcap. Of course, she had not gone running
out through the night.

 
          
 
"I'll hurry, Millie. Put out the sprigged
cotton, please." There was a can of hot water waiting by the washbasin.
With her face cloth, she rinsed the last remnants of the dream from her. And it
was not until she hooked the bodice of what she knew was a hideous and
out-of-date dress (drab black with very small and faded sprigs of off-color
white) that she saw what lay on the dressing table.

 
          
 
A loop of silken cord of the same rust-yellow
as the dancer's robe coiled around what must be a pendant of jade, the same
milk-white jade of the tea cup. Only this piece of that imperial stone was
wrought in the form of a fox head, and the eyes were small yellowish gems which
held a glow, as if, in their depths, there was indeed a spark of actual,
knowing life.