Rose Madder

“Girl, why you so slow? Move!” She slipped her left arm around Bill, whose coughing fit had begun to ease, and assisted him down to where

“Wendy” was impatiently waiting. By the time Rosie got him there, she was mostly carrying him.

“Who’re… you?” Bill asked the black woman when they reached her, and then promptly fell into another coughing fit.

“Wendy” ignored the question and slipped her own arm around him, supporting the side that kept leaning away from Rosie. And when she spoke, it was Rosie she spoke to.

“I put her spare zat around the side of the temple, so that’s all right… but we got to be quick! There ain’t one single moment to waste!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rose said, but in some part of her mind she thought that perhaps she did.

“What’s a zat?”

“Never mind your questions now,” the black woman said.

“We best step lively.” With Bill supported between them, they went down the slope toward the Temple of the Bull (it was really quite amazing how it all came flooding back, Rosie thought). Their shadows walked beside them. The building loomed over them-seemed to loom toward them, actually, like something that was alive and hungry. Rose was deeply grateful when

“Wendy” turned to the right, leading them around the side. Behind the temple, dangling from one of the massed thorn-bushes like a garment hanging from a closet hook, was the spare zat. Rosie looked at it with dismay but no surprise. It was a rose madder chiton, the twin of the one the woman with the sweet, insane voice had been wearing.

“Put it on,” the black woman said.

“No,” Rosie said faintly.

“No, I’m afraid to.”

“COME BACK HERE, ROSE!” Bill jumped at the sound of that voice and turned his head, his eyes wide, his skin paler than the moonlight could account for, his lips trembling. Rosie was also afraid, but she felt her anger beneath her fear, like a large shark circling under a small boat. She had held onto the desperate hope that Norman wouldn’t be able to follow them through, that the picture would snap closed behind them somehow. Now she knew that hadn’t happened. He’d found it, and would be with them in this world soon enough, if he wasn’t already.

“COME BACK, YOU BITCH!”

“Put it on,” the woman repeated.

“Why?” Rose asked, but her hands had already gone to her blouse and pulled it over her head.

“Why do I have to?”

“Because it’s the way she wants it, and what she wants, she gets.” The black woman looked at Bill, who was staring at Rosie.

“Turn your back,” she told him.

“You c'n look at her naked in your world til your eyes fall out, for all of me, but not in mine. Turn your back, if you know what’s good for you.”

“Rosie?” Bill said uncertainly.

“It is a dream, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said, and there was a coldness in her voice-a sort of spontaneous calculation-she had never heard there before.

“Yes, that’s right. Do as she says.” He turned so abruptly he looked like a soldier executing an about-face. Now he was looking down the narrow path which led along the back of the building.

“Take off that tit-harness, too,” the black woman said, poking an impatient thumb at Rosie’s bra.

“Can’t wear it under a zat.” Rosie unhooked her bra and took it off. Then she pushed off her sneakers, still laced, and removed her jeans. She stood in her plain white underwear and looked a question at

“Wendy,” who nodded.

“Yep, those too.” Rosie pushed her underpants down, then carefully plucked the gown-the zat-from where it hung. The black woman stepped forward to help her.

“I know how to put it on, get out of my way!” Rosie snapped at her, and slipped the chiton over her head like a shirt. Wendy looked at her with assessing eyes, making no move to step forward again even when Rosie had a brief difficulty with the zat’s shoulder-strap. When it was fixed, Rosie’s right shoulder was bare and the armlet gleamed above her left elbow. She had become a mirror image of the woman in the picture.

“You can turn around, Bill,” Rosie said. He did. He looked her up and down carefully, his eyes lingering for an extra moment or two on the shapes of her nipples against the finely woven cloth. Rosie didn’t mind.

“You look like someone else,” he said at last. “someone dangerous.”

“That’s the way things are in dreams,” she said, and once again she heard coldness and calculation in her voice. She hated that sound… but she liked it, too. “do you need me to tell you what to do?” the black woman asked.

“No, of course not.” Rosie raised her voice then, and the cry that came from her was both musical and savage, not her voice at all, the voice of the other… except it was her voice, too; it was.

“Norman!” she called.

“Norman, I’m down here!”

“Jesus Christ, Rosie, no!” Bill gasped.

“Are you nuts?” He tried to grasp her shoulder and she shook his hand away impatiently, giving him a warning look. He stepped back from it, much as

“Wendy Yarrow” had done.

“This is the only way, and it’s the right way. Besides…” She looked at

“Wendy” with a flicker of uncertainty.

“I won’t really have to do anything, will I?”

“No,” the woman in the blue gown said.

“Mistress go

“Lead him on,” Rosie murmured, and her eyes swam with silver moonlight.

“That’s right,” the other replied.

“Lead him down the path. Down the garden path.” Rosie pulled in breath and called to him again, feeling the armlet burn against her flesh like some strange, deliriously sweet fire, liking the sound of the voice coming but of her throat, so loud, like her old Texas Rangers warcry in the maze, the one she’d used to get the baby crying again. “down heee-eeeere, Norman!” Bill, staring at her. Frightened. She didn’t like seeing that look in his face, but she wanted to see it there. She did. He was a man, wasn’t he? And sometimes men had to learn what it was to be afraid of a woman, didn’t they? Sometimes it was a woman’s only protection.

“Now go on,” the black woman said.

“I’ll stay here with your man. We’ll be safe; the other one’ll go through the temple.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because they always do,” the black woman said simply. “remember what he is.”

“A bull.”

“That’s right; a bull. And you’re the maid who waves the silk hat to draw him on. Just remember that if he catch you, there ain’t any

“/alias to distract him off. If he catch you, he kill you. That’s flat. There’s nothing me or my mistress could do to keep him from it. He wants to fill up his mouth with your blood.” I know that better than you do, Rosie thought. I’ve known it for years. “don’t go, Rosie,” Bill said. “stay here with us.”

“No.” She pushed past him, feeling one of the thorns rake her thigh, and the pain was as sweet to her as her shout had been. Even the sensation of blood slipping down her skin was sweet.

“Little Rosie.” She turned back.

“You have to get ahead of him at the end. Do you know why?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“What did you mean when you said he’s a bull?” Bill asked. He sounded worried, pettish… and yet Rosie had never loved him more than she did then, and she thought she never would. His face was so pale and seemed so defenseless. He began to cough again. Rosie put a hand on his arm, terribly afraid he might shrink away from her, but he didn’t. Not yet, anyway. “stay here,” she said. “stay here and be perfectly still.” Then she hurried away. He caught one moonlit flip of the chiton’s skirt at the far end of the temple, where the path appeared to open out, and then she was gone. A moment later her cry rose in the night again, light and yet somehow awful: