Winterlong (55 page)

From the ground beneath my brother a faint light glittered, and grew brighter, until the black stones cracked and split like a great fruit. And to my amazement it was not my brother who lay there after all. It was Justice. But Justice as I had never seen him, laughing with joy as he leaped from the frozen earth and reached for me and glad, so glad! to see me. He gathered me to him and then it was myself who was laughing and crying to see him again, not dead but alive, alive! and his hands warm about me and his mouth soft and laughing as he pulled me to him.

As he drew me to him he also reached for Miss Scarlet. He pulled her to him as well, until the three of us stood embraced. It seemed the world had stopped turning except for our mingled tears and laughter and their hands in mine, hands strong and small and strong and large. And suddenly I felt inside me the vibration of my heart thrumming and my breath coming loud and hard in sobs that were not sorrow but a joy I had never known. I don’t know how long we stood there; a long time, I think, because when I opened my eyes once more I blinked at the light: not lantern light but dawn. I drew away from Justice and Miss Scarlet.

At my feet lay Raphael. He was bathed in golden brilliance. I heard a wailing as of some creature falling from the air and looked up. I saw the stars, one by one, coming into sight once more, and the sky folding itself back like the dark underside of a leaf turning to the rain.

I drew my breath and turned to my friends there beside me, Justice and Scarlet Pan. Justice looked at me and smiled. He took my face in his hands and kissed it, and said, “Now you know, Wendy. Now you are truly awake and you can see, it’s not all horror and confusion; even death.”

I kissed his mouth. “Now I know”

He stooped to lift Miss Scarlet and kissed her as well; and then holding her he turned to me and said goodbye.

“But it’s only started,” I cried.

He nodded. His eyes were not sad, but still they held something in them of pity.

“I know,” he said; “but I have to go on, you see. Because I’ve done what I had to do. And besides, I’ve already left.”

He set Miss Scarlet gently back upon the ground and pointed to where my brother lay, his face so pale and his eyes twitching beneath their lids in troubled sleep.

“There is your brother to be made whole,” he said. His arms swept out to encompass the dark pit about us, barren glassy Saint-Alaban’s Hill and the sky pale and still, the lazars still struggling to flee. “A City to be made whole, a world perhaps …”

He took me once more and kissed me, and I wept. But this time there was no bitterness, nothing of vengeance or horror but only sadness to see him go.

“You still have your good Angel there,” he said, smiling as he pointed to Miss Scarlet. “Even though you have grown a conscience of your own.”

He touched me on the forehead and quoted, laughing softly: “‘If you learn to be brave, honest, and unselfish, then you will become a real girl.’”

He bowed to us both, drawing three fingers to his mouth in the Paphian’s beck, then dropped one and then the other until only his index finger remained upon his lips.

“Remember, Wendy: It is all one,” he whispered. “Death and growth and desire and fear. It is all one.” He was gone.

I stood, dazed, and stared at the sky. Above me reared the launcher. As I watched it shuddered, then recoiled as with a tremendous shriek the missile shot from it, speared the clouds and burst into flames of white and red. The launcher shuddered again, then was still. After a moment debris rained down like hail, but I was heedless of it striking me.

The explosion in the heavens faded to black smoke, streamers of gray and white. In the distance the horizon glowed pale pink. The Cathedral’s dark spires pointed heavenward where the last stars gleamed faintly: all but one that flared brightly and then faded to a prick of white like the others upon that black map. Beside me stood Miss Scarlet: not a woman but the same small wizened figure as before, staring at her gnarled hands in disbelief.

“Wendy?” She turned to me pleading. Her eyes fell upon Raphael, the small forms scattered about the pit, and she was quiet. After a moment she said, “It doesn’t matter, really, does it? We’re alive, at least—”

“Yes,” I said. I reached to take her small hand. “But it did happen; something did happen.”

For a moment we stared at each other, and I wept to remember Justice Saint-Alaban.

Then a shout rang through the air. We turned, and saw against the wall something slumped beside a small body covered with a rainbow cloak. The Aviator lay there, dead, his ruined face staring at the dawn. Above him stood Jane Alopex, disbelief turning to joy as she waved her pistol, then with a whoop threw it so that it bounced over the rim of the pit. I smiled despite my sorrow, and looked down.

He lay there still, the broken boy; but his face was not so tormented as it had been. It seemed even that he might dream of gentle things, for his eyes no longer twitched beneath their lids, and the soft full curve of his mouth now turned slightly upward. I stood a moment, then looked to the east where the sky now was yellow. I waited until the first brilliant blade of sunlight sliced across the Cathedral’s tallest tower. I stooped and brushed the tangled hair from my brother’s brow, and kissed him upon the forehead.

“Wake, Raphael,” I whispered. His eyes twitched and opened to stare at me, a gray flash of alarm that faded as quickly as the stars.

“Wh—” he started, but I touched his mouth with my finger.

“We are waking now,” I said, and stood.

Behind me Jane started to say something, fell silent. I felt Miss Scarlet’s hand slip into mine.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “Or doesn’t it matter now?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Well, yes; I suppose it probably does.”

I brushed the hair from my eyes. I took Miss Scarlet into my arms and with Jane behind me climbed the ladder until we stood above the pit, gazing down from Saint-. Alaban’s Hill.

The sun had risen above the horizon, and I could see the entire City of Trees laid out before me, trees and ruined buildings and four fair Houses upon a hill. Far far beyond these I made out the faint sparkling cusp of the river.

“Well,” I said, tightening my grip upon Miss Scarlet’s hand. I looked at her and then at Jane. “I guess we’d better go.”

They nodded. Together we walked down Saint-Alaban’s Hill.

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stele.

—And thence we came forth, to see again the stars.

My concern in
Winterlong
is the relationship between consciousness and reality, and in particular the way in which an artistic medium may be used to explore the interstices between the objective, waking world and those other, more richly textured and deeply shadowed realms that most of us visit only fleetingly.
Winterlong
explores these regions through the peculiar sensibility of Wendy Wanders. In
Aestival Tide,
an independent companion novel, I take a different route: we move outward from the disfigured City to the broader stage of a transmogrified oceanscape, conducted (or kidnapped) by a narrative consciousness that is even more out-of-the-ordinary than Wendy’s.

Wendy, Miss Scarlet, Jane Alopex all appear in
Aestival Tide.
But the primary narrative is that of Jenny-the-fox, neophyte in an arcane cult whose members live in the ruins of an ancient weather-tracking station in the coastal town of Occis. Jenny is caught up in the ongoing intrigue between the Ascendant hegemony and the Balkhash Commonwealth. She is also increasingly obsessed with what she believes is her crucial role in bringing about the necessary destruction of Occis itself. Aestival Tide, the annual celebration of the summer solstice, brings hundreds of carnival-goers to the former ocean resort—among them Wendy and Scarlet and Jane. There’s a kidnapping, a geneslave insurrection involving the reluctant Miss Scarlet, messianic obsessions and the looming threat of a killer hurricane that has been predicted for over three hundred years. As in
Winterlong,
I’m using subtexts drawn from Near Eastern mythologies, along with the more familiar elements of the Demeter/Persephone myth, the story of the Magdalene, and even the Biblical tale of Lot’s wife. And I hope that the different narrative structure, alternating between third-person and yet another first-person narrator (a la Lawrence Durrell’s
Alexandria Quartet)
will give even more depth and texture to my continuing exploration of the coming of the Magdalene.

Elizabeth Hand (b. 1957) is the award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy titles such as
Winterlong
,
Waking the Moon
,
Black Light
, and
Glimmering
, as well as the thrillers
Generation Loss
and
Available Dark
. She is commonly regarded as one of the most poetic writers working in speculative fiction and horror today.

Hand was born in San Diego and grew up in Yonkers and Pound Ridge, New York. During the height of the Cold War, she was exposed to constant air raid drills and firehouse sirens, giving her early practice in thinking about the apocalypse. She attended the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, where she received a BS in cultural anthropology.

Hand’s first love was writing, but many Broadway actors lived in her hometown of Pound Ridge, and by high school she was consumed with the theater. She wrote and acted in a number of plays in school and with a local troupe, The Hamlet Players. After college, writing stories became her primary interest, and the work of Angela Carter cemented that interest. Hand realized that she wanted to create new myths and retell old ones, using a heightened prose style.

Hand’s first break came in 1988 with the publication of
Winterlong
. In this novel, Hand explores the City of Trees, a post-apocalyptic Washington, DC. The story focuses on a psychically enhanced woman who can read dreams and her journey through the strange city with her courtesan twin brother. The book’s success led to two sequels:
Aestival Tide
and
Icarus Descending
. All three novels were nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award.

Beginning with the James Tiptree, Jr. Award–winning
Waking the Moon
, Hand wrote a succession of books involving themes of apocalypse, ancient deities, and mysticism.
Waking the Moon
centers on the Benandanti, an ancient secret society in modern-day Washington, DC. that also appeared in
Black Light
, a
New York Times
Notable Book.

In 1998, Hand released her short story collection
Last Summer at Mars Hill
. The title story won the Nebula Award and the World Fantasy Award. Most recently, she has published two crime novels focusing on punk rock photographer Cass Neary—the Shirley Jackson Award–winning
Generation Loss
(2007) and
Available Dark
(2012).

When Hand isn’t writing stories of decadence and deities, she divides her time between the coast of Maine and London, with her partner, UK critic John Clute. She is a regular contributor to numerous publications, including the
Washington Post
and the
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
.

Hand is the oldest of five siblings in a very close-knit family. This photo shows them in 1967, on one of their camping trips to Maine and Canada. All five kids, then under the age of ten, shared a canvas tent with their parents. From left to right: Brian, Patrick, Elizabeth, Kathleen, and baby Barbara. “Maine imprinted on me during this time, which is why I've lived there for the last twenty-five years,” Hand says.

Hand in her driveway with her beloved family dog Cindy shortly before leaving for college in Washington, DC. “Note the skirt, made from a pair of massively embroidered jeans; my favorite red velvet beret, which my mother gave me for Christmas and which disappeared under dark circumstances a few years later; my Mom’s suede jacket (I added the denim cuffs); and needlework belt with my initials on it, made by my grandmother Hand. You can’t see them, but I was also wearing my lace-up Frye boots.”