“I’m sure she would forgive you,” he said at last, and crossed to get her a chair.
After a moment, when she still didn’t move, he asked, “Would you like to sit down?”
She didn’t look as if she would, but she did, sitting on the edge of the seat. “I want to tell you I’m sorry, too,” she said with an effort.
“Me?” he asked dubiously. “For what?”
She swallowed, and gave a terrified sigh. “I lied to you.”
“About what?”
“I followed Rose to the barn. By myself.”
Fish’s insides tightened, but outside he was unmoved. After a moment, he prompted, “What did you do there?”
She bit the tops of her fingers as she sobbed. “I went inside the barn and I thought I would scare her.”
“And—?”
“I picked up some rope that was hanging there, and I was deciding what to do next,” she couldn’t face him then, but her words were still clear. She had shrunk to almost half her size in the chair.
“And then what?”
“I saw someone else up there with her.” She managed to stifle her sobs. “And I left. I thought it was a friend of hers.”
Fish sat, staring at her. Someone in the barn with Rose…within a half hour of the accident…
Donna put her hand over her mouth for a moment, then went on, “When I heard she had fallen down, I went to the hospital to see her—but when I saw you there, I realized that you would think that I had something to do with it. And I know you probably still think that I did it. So that’s why I didn’t say anything.” She broke out into new sobs, still not looking at him.
“What was Rose doing when you walked into the barn? Talking to this person? What?”
“I couldn’t see Rose. I just heard her whistling to herself and moving papers around. But I saw someone else standing behind the hay bales.”
“What did they look like?”
“I just saw part of their back. Someone wearing a black coat.”
“A man or a woman?”
“I couldn’t tell. But it was someone either bigger or older. It wasn’t a kid.”
“Did you know if Rose saw him?”
“Well, I thought she did. But I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t see her.”
“Donna, did you see Rose fall?”
“No, I left right away. I was scared. I got in the car and drove back to the mall and met my friend.”
“Did you see another car at the barn?”
“No, just the car Rose drove.”
Her voice had steadied a bit and she looked a bit less afraid. “You believe me?” she said at last.
Fish, being Fish, didn’t want to answer the question directly. “What do you have to gain by telling me?”
She pursed her lips and trembled. “Nothing.”
“Then thank you for telling me,” he said simply, and she cried again, but this time, he could tell she was more relieved.
“Thank you for—letting me tell you,” she said at last. “I was making myself sick over it.”
“I’m glad you had the courage to speak up,” he responded. He was still withholding judgment, but he wanted to set Donna at ease.
“Do you have any idea who might have been up there with her?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Until this moment, I had no idea that anyone else might have been.”
“Then I’m glad I told you,” she said in a low voice.
“Will you tell this to the police?” he asked.
“If I need to,” she said.
“You need to. If you want, I’ll go with you,” he said. “If you think that will make it any easier.”
The police wanted to see the exact part of the barn where Donna had seen the person, and so they all drove out to the old barn once more.
Donna showed them where she had parked her car, and had traced her route to the barn.
“The doors were banging open because of the wind,” she said. “I just kind of stepped inside when they blew open.”
She described how she had heard Rose and had gone to the pillar to get the rope. “Which isn’t here,” she said, looking around.
“It’s over there,” Fish said, pointing to the corner. “I threw it there. It was on the floor here when I came in.”
“Yes, that’s about where I dropped it,” Donna said, her face red.
“What were you going to do with the rope?” the officer asked.
Donna looked down. “Something stupid,” she murmured. “To scare her. It just came into my mind when I saw it. It was stupid.”
“Stupid,” meaning “evil,” Fish thought to himself. He was repulsed, and had to look away from the girl. It was still difficult not to despise her.
She looked up at the ceiling of the loft and pointed to the hole. “That’s where the person was standing. I saw the shoe, there, through that hole.”
Fish looked at the officer, who nodded, and Fish climbed up the side ladder to the loft, and made his way through the bales to the place where the hole was. He stood so that his shoes covered part of the gap. “How’s that?”
He couldn’t see the officer and Donna from this position, but it was clear they could see him.
“Yes,” Donna called, “just like that. All I can see is part of your shoulder behind the hay bales. But whoever was up there was taller than you are. I could see more of his shoulders, and the shoulders were broader.”
“Can you see my head?” Fish asked.
“No,” they both called back.
Fish tried to look over the bales to see the place where Rose had been working with the file boxes. Everything was still in the place where she had left it. “From this position, Rose definitely couldn’t see me, but if I looked through these cracks at the top, I could see her—well, not much of her, but I could see she was there,” he said.
“How easy would it be for you to get to where she was?” the officer asked.
“Pretty easy. All I’d have to do is slip around this way—” Fish demonstrated, “and I could get to her. She’d have her back to me.”
The police detective climbed up into the loft, and Fish showed him the exact places, and the man marked them with chalk and snapped some photos. They both looked around a bit more, then returned to the ground.
“Thank you for your help, Ms. Stetter,” the police officer said when the reached the ground. “We appreciate you contacting us with your information.”
Donna looked at them uncertainly. “You’re welcome,” she said, and edged out of the barn and back to her car.
Fish looked at the police detective critically. “What do you think?” he asked when she was out of earshot. “Would she have any reason to come forward with this information?”
The detective shook his head. “We haven’t turned up anything else. Until now, the department had it written off as an accident. Seems to me like she took quite a chance by coming forward at all.”
“She might have been writing her own arrest warrant,” Fish agreed. “Especially admitting that she had lied the first time around.”
“Well,” the officer looked up at the hole in the floor. “We can’t prove that she’s telling the truth, but it seems to me that it would be pretty difficult to come up with this story all by herself. Pinpointing it down to a view of a shoulder and the sole of a shoe.”
“If she had pushed Rose off herself and then lied about it, her fabrication would be something more simple,” Fish said. “And would have given a better identity to the unknown person, probably. All the same, I wonder if anything else will turn up that shows that she might have had a motive for coming forward now.”
“We’ll be looking for that ourselves,” the officer said.
Fish stared at the loft. “Let me just figure this out,” he said, and crossed to the corner and picked up the rope. “If I were Donna, and I wanted to scare Rose, I’d probably do this, so she wouldn’t see me.” He moved to the ladder fastened to the side of the barn, slung the coil
of rope over his shoulder, and climbed.
Then he tried to make his way through the hay bales to where Rose had been working. After a few tries, he found it was close to impossible. There was simply too much hay stacked up. “I’d have to climb over,” he said at last, shimmying up the bales and climbing over them. “That’s quite a risk. She’d hear me before she saw me.”
He looked down at the officer, and tossed the rope back into the corner of the barn where it had been lying.
“So if anyone got up there to scare Rose, they had to have used that ladder,” the police nodded at the ladder on the ground.
“Or they climbed up here before she arrived,” Fish said. He leapt down to the place where Donna had claimed to have seen a person hiding. Then he crossed to where Rose had been working and moved back into the secluded place. “If they were out here and heard someone coming, it would be easy for them to slip back here and get out of sight.”
“Maybe a tramp,” the man said. “Or a hiker. The National Forest is right over there.”
“Yes. It doesn’t seem likely that someone who had accompanied Rose would go back there to watch her,” Fish said. He crossed back to the boxes and looked around.
“What would that someone have been doing up there in the first place?” the officer said. “That’s the question.”
Fish looked around him at the scattered file boxes.
“Perhaps looking for something,” he murmured.
Hers
Something had changed. For a moment, she found herself in the blue world, abruptly, suddenly. Then there was a hiss, and the water around her began to change. It became wetter, and more slippery, and she didn’t feel like moving for fear of sliding away. She tried to sit up and found she couldn’t.
Once again, she was in the chair with the roses, but beneath the water. The air was bright around her, but with a sickly, unpleasant hue. There was a sweet taste in her mouth, as though she had been eating fruit.
She looked down at her arm and saw it was fastened to the arm of the chair with a crystalline band that resembled a bracelet, and then, as she watched, the bracelet changed into the brown loops of the serpent. Its silver eyes shone up at her through the water.
I’m sorry it has to be this way. I never met someone with so much vigor.
Someone had spoken to her. She looked at the crystal-brown serpent with the crafty eyes.
Let me go.
I’m afraid I can’t. You’ll have to stay put, my wanderer.
Why are you keeping me in this prison?
Silence. The serpent began to swell in size, and its head lifted and gazed into her eyes. Its eyes were fiery coals.
I see. Because you’re going to kill me.
Such unnecessary fears. The serpent had shrunk into a thin rope again.
But Rose realized with a sinking feeling that this was what was indeed going to happen. The serpent was biding its time. But when the time came, it would swell into a dragon, and devour her.
Breathing deeply, she tried to remain still. But she couldn’t help twisting at her arm, which the serpent still had pinched tight.
I need you to tell me all about yourself, the serpent’s voice came through the water.
About myself? Why?
It could be important. Very important.
Will it stop you from killing me?
Perhaps.
The serpent lazily hovered over her arm, then stung. Rose watched the silver needle sink into her arm, though she could feel nothing.
Now talk. I know you like to talk. You must be yearning to talk to someone.
Am I awake?
No. You’re still dreaming.
Dreaming about speaking with serpents.
Do I look like a serpent to you?
Right now you do. A serpent, a dragon in disguise.
What imagination. Do you always see things this way?
Sometimes. Are you going to kill me now?
No, you’re in no danger. Just relax, and talk.
About what?
About yourself. It would be interesting to know more about you. Why don’t you tell me about the last thing you remember doing before you came here?
First, can I ask you something? Have you seen Fish?
A fish?
Not a fish. Fish. My friend.
Who is Fish?
He’s a man who always rescues me whenever I’m in trouble. He has a veritable habit of doing it. I was thinking I could use him now.
Was he working with you in the barn?
I don’t think so.
The serpent bit her arm again and she flinched. You can tell me.
Why should I tell a serpent?
I’m not going to tell anyone. And you want to tell me everything, don’t you? It will be so much easier if you tell me everything. You’ll feel better.
I don’t understand why I am here. Why is everyone here asleep?
Because you are asleep, and this is all part of your dream.
So if I wake up, will they all wake up?
But you’re not going to wake up, and there’s no one you can see or talk to except for me. And I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere, because you’re in a coma. No one can help you.
Rose flexed her fingers uselessly against the serpent’s coils, and felt despair eat away at her. The serpent is right, she realized. There’s no escape.
17
...And round the castle, a hedge of thorns grew high and wide...
HIS
He wandered alone along the silent hallways of Graceton, a Styrofoam cup of tea and sandwich bag in his hand. The late afternoon January sunlight was slanting in the massive Victorian windows that ranked the walls, fragmented by the winter-bare trees. All around him was silence. Except for the occasional passing technician, he might have been alone in this world of slumbering souls.
When he had arrived, Dr. Murray was giving Rose a medical exam, so he had taken himself for a walk. He paced up the side staircases with their marble steps and then stepped down the central stair that broadened into a grand promenade on the first floor. As he walked, he listened to his footsteps, echoing.
He had thought he knew the meaning of solitude. But this kind of isolation was more intense. Perhaps before, he had never been so acutely aware of lacking a companion.
At last he journeyed back to her room, and found her alone again. He sat down in his usual chair beside her bed and put down his tea on the bedside table.
“Rose,” Fish said to the face of the immobile girl. “Can you hear me?”
There was no answer but breathing. He curled his fingers around her hand. Their hands were nearly the same size, he realized, his and hers, but hers were a girl’s hand, with long delicate fingers, and his was a man’s hand, rougher, bulkier, the knuckles more pronounced.
He massaged the center of her palm, looking at her eyes for a response. As usual, there was nothing.
It seem'd he never, never could redeem
From such a steadfast spell his lady's eyes;
“I’ve got time on my hands now. I’m still out here on break for another week,” he said, putting down his lunch and taking a sip of his tea. “And none of your strange friends are around either. Surprised that I miss them. The good news is that I found an apartment that’s halfway between Graceton Hall and the University. I’m moving there next week. It’ll mean I can stay longer, since I’ll be closer. So you’ll be seeing more of me. Well, at any rate, I’ll be seeing more of you.”
He paused. “I’ve been trying to figure out what you were doing in that barn, Rose,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t suppose you can tell me?”
He addressed the blank mask of a face once more. “It’s funny, you used to tell me so much, and I seldom told you anything. Now, it seems, it’s the other way around. If I knew you were listening, I’d tell you more. But it doesn’t seem like you can hear me.
“Now Rose, I’m figuring out that you were after those ‘top-secret’ interviews of your dad’s. But m
aybe you were just looking for memories. I’ve been to the barn and looked through some things—not all of it. Your dad must have saved every scrap of paper with writing on it that came his way. Far worse than me. It would take me months to go through it alone. But I’m doing it whenever I can find time.”
He rubbed her hands again. “I’ve never told you this, Rose, but you have lovely hands.”
Having no response, he remarked, “And that’s the first time I’ve never seen you blush when I gave you something that could be possibly construed as a compliment.”
His eyes traveled over to his cup of tea, and the unopened sugar packets beside them. It occurred to him that he was still grabbing two packs of sugar automatically every time he bought tea, but that he always forgot to put them in. He had to smile wryly. Rose would be pleased.
He leaned towards her and brushed back the hair from her head. “Well, kiddo, you better keep on trying to find your way back to me. Because I’m not getting very far without you.”
Next week, as he was finishing moving his belongings into his new apartment, he was pleasantly surprised to get a call from Kateri on his cell phone.
“I’m back at school,” she said cheerfully. “I wanted to go see Rose, and I don’t have a car this semester. Are you coming out this way any time soon?”
“I can come out now,” he said, wiping his forehead. He had been moving crates of books up the flight of stairs to his new rooms. “Actually, I need to talk to you. Something happened with Donna.”
“Want to tell me now?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.”
He cruised onto campus and picked up Kateri from her dorm. He noticed that she actually had red and green thread on her braids. “Do you ever wear jingle bells on them?” he remarked.
“Sometimes,” she said, with an impish smile. “Did you have a good Christmas?”
“Quiet. But my life is lot quieter since Rose fell asleep,” he said.
“I can understand,” Kateri said soberly. “Well, mine, as usual, wasn’t quiet. Maybe next year we can bring Rose to our house for Christmas. A Kovach Christmas, with all twenty-seven of us in our old farmhouse, would wake anyone.”