“Wendy” seemed to feel her eyes and looked up at her.
“It’s the big piece you’ll want first,” she said.
“Be ready with it.” Before Rosie could answer, “Wendy” had pierced her own skin with the tip of the dagger. She hissed a few words Rosie didn’t understand-maybe a prayer-and then drew a fine line across her forearm, one that matched her dress. It fattened and began to run as the skin and underlying tissue drew back, allowing the wound to gape.
“Oooh, that hurt bad!” the woman moaned, then held out the hand with the dagger in it.
“Give it to me. The big piece, the big piece!” Rosie put it in her hand, confused and frightened but not nauseated; the sight of blood did not do that to her.
“Wendy Yarrow” folded the strip of cotton cloth into a pad, which she placed over the wound, held, then turned over. Her purpose did not appear to be compression; she only wanted to soak the cloth with her blood. When she handed it back to Rosie, the cotton which had been cornflower blue when Rosie lay down in her Trenton Street bed was a much darker color… but a familiar one. Blue and scarlet had combined to make rose madder.
“Now find a rock and tie that piece of cloth around it,” she said to Rosie.
“When you got that done, take off that thing you’re wearing and wrap it around both.” Rosie stared at her with wide eyes, far more shocked by this order than she had been by the sight of the blood pouring off the woman’s arm.
“I can’t do that!” she said.
“I don’t have anything on underneath!”
“Wendy” grinned humorlessly.
“I won’t tell if you won’t,” she said.
“Meantime, gimme that other “un, before I bleed to death.” Rosie handed her the narrower strip of cloth, this one still blue, and the brown-skinned woman began to wrap it swiftly around her wounded arm. Lightning exploded on their left like some monstrous firework. Rosie heard a tree go over with a long, rending crash. This sound was followed by a cannonade of thunder. Now she could smell a coppery odor on the air, like pennies that had been flash-fried. Then, as if the lightning had ripped open the sky’s bag of waters, the rain arrived. It fell in cold torrents driven almost horizontal by the wind. Rosie saw it hit the pad of cloth in her hand, making it steam, and saw the first runnels of pink, bloody water coming out of it and trickling down her fingers. It looked like strawberry Kool-Aid. Without any further thought about what she was doing or why, Rosie reached over her shoulder, grasped the back of her nightgown, bowed forward, and stripped it off over her head. She was immediately standing in the world’s coldest shower, gasping for breath as the rain needled her cheeks and shoulders and unprotected back. Her skin tightened and then broke out in hundreds of tiny hard goosepimples; they covered her from neck to heels.
“Ai!” she cried in a desperate, breathless little voice.
“Oh, ai! So cold!” She dropped her nightgown, still mostly dry, over the hand holding the bloody rag and spied a rock the size of a cinnamon bun lying between two of the fallen pillar’s segments. She picked it up, dropped to her knees, and then spread her nightgown over her head and shoulders, much as a man caught in an unexpected shower might use his newspaper as a makeshift tent. Under this temporary protection she wrapped the bloodsoaked rag around the rock. She was left with two long, sticky ears, and these she tied together, wincing with disgust as
“Wendy’s” rain-thinned blood ran out of them and pattered to the ground. With the rock tied in the rag, she wrapped her nightgown (no longer even close to dry) around the whole thing, as instructed. Most of the blood was going to wash out anyway, she knew. This wasn’t a shower, or even a downpour. This was a flood.
“Go on!” the brown-skinned woman in the red dress told her.
“Go on in the temple! Walk right through it, and don’t stop for nothing! Don’t pick nothing up, and don’t believe in anything you see or hear. It’s a ghos place, no doubt about that, but even in the Temple of the Bull there ain’t no ghos can hurt a livin woman.” Rosie was shivering wildly, water in her eyes doubling her vision, water dripping from the tip of her nose, drops of water hanging from the lobes of her ears like exotic jewelry.
“Wendy” stood facing her, hair plastered to her brow and cheeks, dark eyes blazing. Now she had to shout in order to make herself heard over the relentlessly rising wind.
“Pass through the door on the other side of the altar and you gonna find yourself in a garden where all the plants n flowers are dead! Acrost the garden you gonna see a grove of trees, all of them dead, too, all cept one! In between the garden and the grove there runs a stream! You dassn’t drink from it, no matter how much you might want to-dassn’t-or even touch it! Use the steppin-stones to get acrost! Wet so much as a single finger in that water, you gonna forget everythin you ever knew, even your own name!” Electricity raced through the clouds in a glare of light, turning the thunderheads into strangulated goblin faces. Rosie had never been so cold in her life, or so aware of her heart’s strange exhilaration as it tried to force a flush of heat to her rain-chilled skin. And the thought came to her again: this was no more a dream than the water cascading down from the sky was a sprinkle.
“Go in the grove! Into the dead trees! The one tree still livin is a pom'granate tree! Gather the seeds that you find in the fruit around the base of that tree, but don’t taste the fruit or even put the hand that touches the seeds into your mouth! Go down the stairs by the tree and into the halls beneath! Find the baby and bring her out, but “ware the bull!
“Ware the bull Erinyes! Now go! Hurry!” She was afraid of the Temple of the Bull, with its curiously twisted perspectives, so it was something of a relief for Rosie to discover that her desperate desire to get out of the storm had now superseded everything. She wanted to get away from the wind and rain and lightning, but she also wanted to be under cover in case the rain decided to turn to hail. She found the idea of being naked in a hailstorm, even if it was a dream, extremely unpleasant. She went a few steps, then turned back to look at the other woman.
“Wendy” looked as naked as Rosie did herself, her gauzy red gown now plastered to her body like paint.
“Who’s Erinyes?” Rosie shouted.
“What is he?” She ventured a glance at the temple over her shoulder, almost as if she expected the god to come at the sound of her voice. No god appeared; there was only the temple, shimmering in the downpour. The brown-skinned woman rolled her eyes.
“Why you act so stupid, girl?” she yelled back.
“Go on, now! Go on while you still can!” And she pointed wordlessly at the temple, much as her mistress had done.
Rosie, naked and white, holding the soaked ball of her nightgown against her stomach to protect it as much as she could, started toward the temple. Five paces took her to the fallen stone head lying in the grass. She peered down at it, expecting to see Norman. Of course it would be Norman, and she might as well be prepared for it. That was the way things worked in dreams. Except it wasn’t. The receding hairline, fleshy cheeks, and luxurious David Crosby moustache belonged to the man who had been leaning in the doorway of The Wee Nip tavern on the day Rosie had gotten lost looking for Daughters and Sisters. I’m lost again, she thought. Oh boy, am I. She walked past the fallen stone head with its empty eyes that seemed to be weeping and the long wet strand of weed that lay across its cheek and brow like a green scar and it seemed to be whispering from behind her as she approached the strangely configured temple: Hey baby wanna get it on nice tits whaddaya say wanna get it on wanna do some low ridin wanna do the dog whaddaya say? She walked up the steps, which were slippery and treacherous with overgrown vines and creepers, and seemed to sense that head rolling on its stone cranium, squelching muddy water up from the soaked earth, wanting to watch the flex of her bare bottom as she climbed toward the darkness. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think. She resisted the urge to run-both from the rain and from that imagined stare-and went on picking her way, avoiding the places where the stone had been cracked open by the elements, leaving jagged gaps where one might twist or even break an ankle. Nor was that the worst possibility; who knew what sorts of poisonous things might be coiled up in those dark places, waiting to sting or bite? Water dripped from her shoulderblades and ran straight down the course of her spine and she was colder than ever, but she nevertheless stopped on the top step, looking at the carving above the temple’s wide, dark doorway. She hadn’t been able to see it in her picture; it had been lost in the darkness under the roofs overhang. It showed a hard-faced boy leaning against what could have been a telephone pole. His hair fell over his forehead and the collar of his jacket was turned up. A cigarette hung from his lower lip and his slouched, hipshot posture proclaimed him as Mr Totally Cool, Late Seventies Edition. And what else did that posture say? Hey baby was what it said. Hey baby hey baby, want to get down? Want to do some low riding? Want to do the dog with me? It was Norman.