The Catswold Portal

Surely Vrech had not simply discovered the boy here. He must have brought him here to this garden. She wondered how he had managed that. If Netherworld spells did not work here, what manipulations had Vrech used?

No matter. The changeling boy was here. Soon Vrech would take him down into the Netherworld. She wished powerfully she could undo her tryst with Efil last night. Thinking of bearing Efil’s child, without clear promise to the throne, made her feel imprisoned, trapped and shamed.

When the garden was empty she came out from the bushes and approached the glass door. She wanted to see inside the house; she wanted to be in there, perhaps discover something to stir further memory. She felt torn between the two worlds, she did not know where she belonged.

Chapter 21

Night was drawing down over the garden, making the vast sky seem less daunting. Melissa approached the glass door and slipped into the shadows. Up the hill behind her, lights burst on suddenly in the center house: not the slow rising of lantern light, but all at once, bright and steady. She tried the knob, pushed the glass door open. Letting herself into the bright room, she moved away from the lighted lamp, hoping not to be seen through the windows.

The smell of the studio was of canvas and turpentine and linseed oil. Familiar smells that filled her with nostalgia. She touched a corner of the nearest painting, and finding the paint dry, she stroked the colors, caught by the comforting feel of the oils. But the memories that came glanced away too soon; she could make nothing more of them than pleasant, familiar sensations.

Tubes of paint were laid out neatly on the table in three rows. Clean brushes stood bristles up in a heavy mug. A can of turpentine and a bottle of oil stood behind the little cups which would hold them. Stretcher bars and rolls of canvas leaned against the wall. But these items used by a painter did not belong to the memory of this house; they belonged somewhere different. And no detail of that other place would reveal itself.

She entered the short hall knowing she would find, on her right, the kitchen, on her left, the bedroom, and the bath straight ahead.

In the kitchen she reacquainted herself with the taps for running water, with the refrigerator, and with the knobs that gave fire to the stove. She took two apples from a bowl, and a bottle of milk and some cheese from the refrigerator. She drank the milk and put the empty bottle back. She found the bread, ate two slices, and tied six more and the cheese and apples in a dish towel.

When she looked into the bathroom she remembered the floor of small, white tiles. She remembered bathing in the tub when she was a child, squeezing soap bubbles over the ornate fish spigots. Then in the bedroom she stood at the open window looking downhill to the highway, watching the lights of passing cars reflected in the marsh water, watching night fall across the bay, as she had done many times when she was small. She sniffed the familiar salty air, gripped by nostalgia, and distressed at her inability to remember more. She went slowly out again to the terrace, caught in the half-awake dream, and unable to put anything together.

The past that she could glimpse was not whole—feelings and places all were scattered. The people flashing vaguely in her memory could not be drawn forth—they were shadows, their voices were unidentifiable whispers.

Outside, looking up the darkening garden, she searched for Vrech, then went quickly up through the tangle of bushes and flowers and small trees, hurrying past the upper houses into the woods.

The scent of the trees was almost like a Netherworld forest, familiar and comforting. She found a nest of fallen boughs between three trees, and rearranged the dry, soft-needled limbs to make room for herself. Apparently this was the nest of some animal, but tonight it would be hers.

As she ate her supper of cheese and bread and apple, the night around her pushed the last long shadows together into chambers of darkness. Below her in the white house a light went out. The wind turned colder. In the dark-shingled house, a light went on upstairs. She could hear music, then strangely resonant voices that startled her until she remembered radios.

She remembered listening to the radio while lying snuggled in her bed with the lights out, listening to a radio story in the dark…whispering to someone in the bed across from her. They were shivering at the story and laughing together…

But who? Someone young and laughing. But nothing she could do would bring more than that fragment of memory.