Bone Dance

“I’ve been here,” Frances said. “Before… The row houses look the same. I wonder who lives in them.”

We were on an old brick street that followed the edge of the island. To our left, the river ran gold in the morning light. The row houses were on our right, a handsome old block of gray stone and long windows, glossy doors with brass hardware. We drove past. Trees hung heavy over the road and shrubbery grew up between them, making a dim green tu

“It was always a little wild,” Frances said softly behind me. “But never so wild as this.”

I thought I knew what she meant. People lived here; but it was as if the land had gathered itself around them, veiling and swaddling them, hiding them and the signs of their habitation. If I hadn’t been on the outside of it, it might have seemed benevolent.

The car turned and nosed up to a peeling wooden double gate in a piebald wall of round stones and mortar. Ivy and clematis were turning the wall into a hill of shifting green starred with crimson. There was a flash of yellow on the other side of the gate, and it swung open to reveal an elderly woman in a yellow dress. She made a half bow to the car in general. The people in the front seat smiled at her. Since my window was one-way glass, I didn’t feel I had to.

Then we were on the other side of the wall; and if what we’d passed through was wild green, this was its civilized cousin. It was solid garden on either side of the gravel drive. There were fruit trees and flowering ones; the dense, druglike smell of mock orange and butterfly bush, strong even in the car; a mass of tall orange and yellow flowers like a streak of fire; grapes hanging heavy and green on a long arbor; the red cones of hot peppers set like jewels in their bushes. There might have been paths or terraces of grass, but I couldn’t see them from where I was.

And in the middle, a somber monarch in some highly ornamental court, was a three-story, sprawling wood-frame Victorian house. It was mostly dark green, trimmed in black, brick-red, and yellow. Once, maybe, it had been of modest size, before the gables and dormers and bays, the additional rooms and entire wings. It should have been awful; instead, it had a sort of rhythm, as if half a dozen dissimilar people had agreed to dress alike and dance in figures.

“I would swear,” Frances said, “this wasn’t here when I left.”

“How the hell long ago did you leave?”

“I know. That house is a lot older than I am. Still… ”

By that time, the car had stopped at the broad front porch, and the tri-wheeler had pulled up behind us. Mr. Lyle got out, the dog following with a great lazy spring, and opened the passenger door for the woman. He performed the same office for Frances, as his — employer? partner? — went briskly up the steps, the sound of her heels uncompromising on the wood. She turned at the top.

“I think,” she called back, “that you should carry your friend. It will be more work than it would be for Mr. Lyle, but it will keep you from trouble.”

Frances stood in the angle of the open door and looked in at me. She seemed torn between amusement and frustration. “Let us, by all means, be kept from trouble. Would you like the head or the feet?”

“The head,” I said. “His feet will be lighter.”

“Don’t be chivalrous. You haven’t the plumbing for it.” She stood back to let me out. Mr. Lyle was nearby, his distance nicely judged: too far for us to surprise him, but close enough to stop us if we did something rash.

“But I’ve got the energy.” I grabbed the inert Mick under the armpits and dragged. “I thought you had to eat a poisoned apple to stay under this long. What do you suppose they did to him?”

“Not, I hope, an apple, or one of us will have to kiss him. Perhaps if we’re very good the lady with the alarming eyebrows will tell us. She might even tell us where she got the eyebrows. God damn it!” she said suddenly, then pressed her lips closed. It was the only leak in her supernatural self-command. It wasn’t so bad for me; I didn’t expect to be able to control the situation.

Since I’d picked the head, I went up the steps and into the house backward. I don’t suppose the effect would have been much softened if I’d gone in face first.

The coved ceilings were fifteen feet high, all of them, and the hall and the two parlors to either side were outlined and ornamented in glossy walnut. In one parlor, the walls were the color of chilled butter, and painted ivy climbed out of the baseboards and twined around the window frames. In the other, the paint was pumpkiny; beneath the ceiling molding was a frieze two feet high of Egyptian kings and queens and gods and all their attendants and accessories. The door I’d just come through was double, and mostly stained and leaded glass. It was flanked by a pair of benches that looked Middle Eastern, piled with pillows covered in African cloth. Under my feet was a carved-pile Chinese rug; inside the door of the ivy room was a stone carving that might have been Mayan; on the hall table was a shallow reed bowl that was almost certainly Native North American. I didn’t want to be obvious about looking, but I had the impression that the place went on in that style: a world government of interior design, rich in a way that couldn’t be achieved solely by money.

And one thing more. Around the edges of the rug, the parquet floor was bordered with inlay in many woods. It ran across thebottom of the door, along the walls, and continued unbroken across the doors to the two parlors. In it I saw designs and figures I almost recognized, from Sherrea’s cards, from the veves, from amulets. If the border was continuous behind me, too, then whoever stood in the hall would be well protected. Or nicely contained.

“Mr. Lyle,” the woman said from behind me, “would you take him now, please?”

Mr. Lyle had come in after us. He nodded and smiled, and gathered Mick up and over his shoulder.

“You should rest,” the woman said. She stood at the foot of the wide walnut staircase. “Then we will talk. Come with me.”

Frances might have been made of stone, if stone could shrug. She walked stiffly toward the stairs. Mr. Lyle, behind me, said, “After you.” So I went.

We climbed to the third floor, turned right down a short hallway, right again, and stopped halfway down another hall, carpeted, lighted by a window at one end. The walls were yellow, and the trim was white. It’s hard to feel apprehensive in surroundings like that, but I did. After all, werewolves only grew hair at the full moon. The woman opened a door and stood aside for Mr. Lyle to pass. Then she went to the next door in the hall and opened that.

“Yours,” she said to Frances. “If you need anything, pull the bell.”

After an instant’s hesitation, Frances inclined her head and went in. I didn’t hear any loud noises.

I, of course, got the next door. It was open, and the woman waiting for me to go in, when I said, “Do I need to call you anything yet?”

A look crossed her face, something like embarrassment. “I’m China Black,” she said. “Though there are many other things to call me, even respectful ones. Is it respectful to call you ‘Sparrow’?”

“It’s the only name I have.”

She nodded. “Until you have another, then.” She turned and walked to the joining of the two halls, where Mr. Lyle waited for her. I heard them a moment later, going down the stairs.

I looked back at the open door. Apparently it was not going to be locked behind me. I went in.

It was a very nice room. It had sloping, papered walls and a large dormer window. It was so honest and pleasant and i