Rose Madder

“Go back the way you came,” Rose Madder said. She was standing by the stairs; Rosie stood on the far side of the clearing, at the head of the path, with her back turned. She didn’t want even to risk looking at Rose Madder now, and she had discovered that she could not entirely trust her own eyes to do as she told them.

“Go back, find Dorcas and your man. She has something for you, and I would have more talk with you… but only a little. Then our time is finished. That will be a relief to you, I think.”

“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Rosie asked, looking steadfastly along the moonlit path. “really gone.”

“I suppose you’ll see him in your dreams,” Rose Madder said dismissively, “but what of that? The simple truth of things is that bad dreams are far better than bad wakings.”

“Yes. That’s so simple most people overlook it, I think.”

“Go now. I’ll come to you. And Rosie?”

“What?” “remember the tree.”

“The tree? I don’t-”

“I know you don’t. But you will. Remember the tree. Now go.” Rosie went. And didn’t look back.

X. ROSIE REAL

Bill and the black woman-Dorcas, her name was Dorcas, not Wendy after all-were no longer on the narrow path behind the temple, and Rosie’s clothes were gone, too. This raised no concern in her mind. She merely trudged around the building, looked up the hill, saw them standing beside the pony-trap, and started toward them. Bill came to meet her, his pale, distracted face full of concern.

“Rosie? All right?”

“Fine,” she said, and put her face against his chest. As his arms went around her, she wondered how much of the human race understood about hugging-how good it was, and how a person could want to do it for hours on end. She supposed some did understand, but doubted that they were in the majority. To fully understand about hugging, maybe you had to have missed a lot of it. They walked up to where Dorcas stood, stroking the pony’s white-streaked nose. The pony raised its head and looked at Rosie sleepily.

“Where’s…” Rosie began, then stopped. Caroline, she’d almost said, Where’s Caroline?

“Where’s the baby?”

Then, boldly:

“Our baby?”

Dorcas smiled.

“Safe. In a safe place, don’t you fret that, Miss Rosie. Your clothes’re “round to the back of the cart. Go on and change, if you like. You be glad to get out of that thing you wearin now, I bet.”

“That’s a bet you’d win,” Rosie said, and went around. She felt an indescribable sense of relief when the zat was off her skin. As she was zipping her jeans, she remembered something Rose Madder had told her.

“Your mistress says you have something for me.”

“Oh!” Dorcas sounded startled.

“Oh, my! If I went n forgot that, she’d rip the skin right off me!” Rosie picked up her blouse, and when she pulled it down over her head, Dorcas was holding something out to her. Rosie took it and held it up curiously, tilting it this way and that. It was a cu

“One drop. For him. After.” Rosie nodded as if she knew exactly what Dorcas was talking about. It was simpler that way. There were questions she could ask, perhaps should ask, but her mind felt too tired to frame them.

“I could have give you less, only he may need another drop later on. But have a care, girl. This is dangerous stuff!” As if anything in this world is safe, Rosie thought.

“Tuck it away, now,” Dorcas said, watching as Rosie slipped the tiny bottle into the watch-pocket of her jeans.

“And mind you keep quiet about it to him.” She jerked her head in Bill’s direction, then looked back at Rosie, her dark face set and grim. Her eyes looked momentarily pupilless in the darkness, like the eyes of a Greek statue.

“You know why, too, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Rosie said.

“This is woman’s business.” Dorcas nodded.

“That’s right, that’s just what it is.”

“Woman’s business,” Rosie repeated, and in her mind she heard Rose Madder say Remember the tree. She closed her eyes.

The three of them sat at the top of the hill for some unknown length of time, Bill and Rosie together with their arms around each other’s waist, Dorcas a little off to one side, near to where the pony still grazed sleepily. The pony looked up at the black woman every now and again, as if curious about why so many people were still up at this unaccustomed hour, but Dorcas took no notice, only sat with her arms clasped around her knees, looking wistfully up at the latening moon. To Rosie she looked like a woman mentally counting the choices of a lifetime and discovering that the wrong ones outnumbered the right ones… and not by only a few, either. Bill opened his mouth to speak on several occasions, and Rosie looked at him encouragingly, but each time he closed it again without saying a word. Just as the moon snagged in the trees to the left of the ruined temple, the pony raised its head again, and this time it gave voice to a low, pleased whi

“No,” Dorcas agreed, “and don’t ask no questions, Billy, even if she invites you to.” He looked uncertainly from Dorcas to Rosie, then back to Dorcas again.

“Why not? Who is she, anyway? The Queen of the May?” “she’s queen of whatever she wants to be queen of,” Dorcas said, “and you better remember it. Don’t look at her, and don’t do anything to invite her temper. I can’t say more'n that; there’s no time. Put your hands in your lap, little man, and look at them. Don’t you take your eyes off them.”

“But-”

“If you look at her, you’ll go mad,” Rosie said simply. She looked at Dorcas, who nodded.

“It is a dream, isn’t it?” Bill asked.

“I mean… I’m not dead, am I? Because if this is the afterlife, I think I’d just as soon skip it.” He looked beyond the approaching woman and shivered.

“Too noisy. Too much screaming.”

“It’s a dream,” Rosie agreed. Rose Madder was very close now, a slim straight figure walking through jackstraws of light and shadow. The latter turned her dangerous face into the mask of a cat, or perhaps a fox.

“It’s a dream where you have to do exactly as we say.”

“Rosie and Dorcas Says instead of Simon Says.”

“Yep. And Dorcas Says put your hands in your lap and look at them until one of us tells you it’s all right to stop.”

“May I?” he asked, giving her a sly up-from-under-the-lids glance that she thought was really a look of dazed perplexity.

“Yes,” Rosie said desperately.

“Yes-you-may, just for God’s sake keep your eyes off her!” He folded his fingers together and dropped his eyes obediently. Now Rosie could hear the whicker of approaching footsteps, the silky sound of grass slipping across skin. She dropped her own eyes. A moment later she saw a pair of bare moon-silvery legs come to a stop before her. There was a long silence, broken only by the calling of some insomniac bird in the far distance. Rosie shifted her eyes to the right and saw Bill sitting perfectly still beside her, looking at his folded hands as assiduously as a Zen student who has been placed next to the master at morning devotions. At last, shyly, without looking up, she said: “dorcas gave me what you wanted me to have. It’s in my pocket.”