Winter Rose - Couverture souple

McKillip, P.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0441004385 ISBN 13 : 9780441004386

Editeur : Ace Books, 1997

Synopsis

Book by McKillip Patricia A

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Sorrow and trouble and bitterness will hound you and yours and the children of yours . . .

Some said the dying words of Nial Lynn, murdered by his own son, were a wicked curse. To others, it was a winter’s tale spun by firelight on cold, dark nights. But when Corbet Lynn came to rebuild his family estate, memories of his grandfather’s curse were rekindled by young and old — and rumors filled the heavy air of summer. In the woods that border Lynn Hall, free-spirited Rois Melior roams wild and barefoot. And as autumn gold fades, she is consumed with Corbet Lynn, obsessed with his secret past . . .

“The pace here is deliberate and sure, with no false steps; the writing is richly textured and evocative . . . [Winter Rose] weaves a dense web of desire and longing, human love and inhuman need.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Fascinating and enchanting.”

—The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

“The prose is impeccable, the story memorable, and the characters admirable.”

—*Science Fiction Chronicle

“McKillip manages to be both subtle and wise . . . Winter Rose confronts icy feyness with warm humanity, and leaves us surprised by joy.”

—Faren Miller, Locus

“McKillip’s prose, which is always wondrous, is rarely less than perfect here.”

—Shira Daemon, Locus

“Characteristically fresh, dainty fantasy . . . tingling and affecting work . . . delightful, delicate.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Like some exquisite bloom, rich in subtlety and headily intoxicating with lush prose.”

—Starlog

“The story is well crafted and intriguing, McKillip’s prose is as good as ever, and her evocation of both the familiar and the mysterious is nothing less than masterly. . . . An excellent book.”

—Booklist

“A work rich in language . . . and dramatic in its emotions, Winter Rose envelopes the reader with a dense sensuality . . . a complex romance of magic and longing.”

—Adventures of Sword & Sorcery

“Weaving folkloric elements into a fresh and original tale, McKillip employs deliberate, evocative language. She narrates her tale at a regal, measured pace that neither lags nor falters. This is not a book to be read in a hurry; it is meant to be savored. At the same time, it is dotted with deft touches of humor and with familiar, ordinary details which heighten the authenticity of the emotions it evokes. Fantasy addicts looking for a refreshing change will especially appreciate this one.”

—KLIATT

“Exquisite fantasy.”

—VOYA

“A surprisingly moving story of love and sacrifice, one that echoes that fairy-tale classic ‘The Snow Queen.’”

—Time Out Books

“McKillip’s writing is also warm and intimate and always approachable . . . a haunting novel . . . beautifully deliberate, richly textured.”

—Valley Times

“There are no better writers than Patricia A. McKillip.”

—Stephen R. Donaldson

“McKillip tells an intricate, beautiful . . . tale with her usual cool elegance.”

—Chicago Sun-Times

“Seamlessly classic in its passion and elegance.”

—Locus

“Lush imagery and wry humor . . . McKillip’s rich language conveys real strangeness and power.”

—Starlog

“McKillip’s tale is decidedly atmospheric, complex, compelling, and filled with rich imagery.”

—Booklist

Ace Books by Patricia A. McKillip

THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD

THE SORCERESS AND THE CYGNET

THE CYGNET AND THE FIREBIRD

THE BOOK OF ATRIX WOLFE

WINTER ROSE

SONG FOR THE BASILISK

RIDDLE-MASTER: THE COMPLETE TRILOGY

THE TOWER AT STONY WOOD

OMBRIA IN SHADOW

IN THE FORESTS OF SERRE

ALPHABET OF THORN

OD MAGIC

HARROWING THE DRAGON

SOLSTICE WOOD

Collected Works

CYGNET

Winter
Rose      

PATRICIA A. McKILLIP

Table of Contents

One

They said later that he rode into the village on a horse the color of buttermilk, but I saw him walk out of the wood.

I was kneeling at the well; I had just lifted water to my lips. The well was one of the wood’s secrets: a deep spring as clear as light, hidden under an overhang of dark stones down which the brier roses fall, white as snow, red as blood, all summer long. The vines hide the water unless you know to look. I found it one hot afternoon when I stopped to smell the roses. Beneath their sweet scent lay something shadowy, mysterious: the smell of earth, water, wet stone. I moved the cascading briers and looked down at my own reflection.

Corbet, he called himself to the villagers. But I saw him before he had any name at all.

My name is Rois, and I look nothing like a rose. The water told me that. Water never lies. I look more like a blackbird, with my flighty black hair and eyes more amber than the blackbird’s sunny yellow. My skin is not fit for fairy tales, since I liked to stand in light, with my eyes closed, my face turned upward toward the sun. That’s how I saw him at first: as a fall of light, and then something shaping out of the light. So it seemed. I did not move; I let the water stream silently down my wrist. There was a blur of gold: his hair. And then I blinked, and saw his face more clearly.

I must have made some noise then. Perhaps I shifted among the wild fern. Perhaps I sighed. He looked toward me, but there was too much light; I must have been a blur of shadow in his eyes.

Then he walked out of the light.

Of course I thought about him, at first the way you think about weather or time, something always at the edge of your mind. He didn’t seem real to me, just something I dreamed on a hot summer day, as I swallowed water scented with roses and stone. I remembered his eyes, odd, heavy-lidded, the color, I thought then, of his hair. When I saw them a day or two later, I was surprised.

I gathered wild lilies and honeysuckle and bleeding heart, which my sister, Laurel, loved. I stayed in the wood for a long time, watching, but he had gone. The sky turned the color of a mourning dove’s breast before I walked out of the trees. I remembered time, then. I was tired and ravenous, and I wished I had ridden to the wood. I wished I had worn shoes. But I had learned where to find wild ginger, and what tree bled a crust of honey out of a split in the wood, and where the blackberries would ripen. My father despaired of me; my sister wondered at me. But my despair was greater if I caged my wonder, like a wild bird. Some days I let it fly free, and followed it. On those days I found the honey, and the secret well, and the mandrake root.

My sister, Laurel, is quite beautiful. She has chestnut hair, and skin like ripened peaches, and great grey eyes that seem to see things that are not quite discernible to others. She doesn’t really see that well; her world is simple and fully human. Her brows lift and pucker worriedly when she encounters ambiguities, or sometimes only me. Everyone in the village loves her; she is gentle and sweet-spoken. She was to marry the next spring.

That twilight, when I came home barefoot, my skirt full of flowers, her lover, Perrin, was there. Perrin looked at me askance, as always, and shook his head.

“Barefoot. And with rose petals in your hair. You look like something conceived under a mushroom.”

I stuck a stem of honeysuckle in his hair, and one of bleeding heart into my father’s. It slid forward to dangle in front of his nose, a chain of little hearts. We laughed. He pointed a stubby finger at me.

“It’s time you stopped dancing among the ferns and put your shoes on, and learned a thing or two from your sister’s practical ways.” He drank his beer, the hearts still trembling over his nose. I nodded gravely.

“I know.”

“You say that,” he grumbled. “But you don’t really listen.” He pushed the flower stem behind his ear, and drank more beer.

“Because you don’t really mean what you say.” I dropped all my flowers in Laurel’s lap, and went behind him to put my arms around his neck. “You love me as I am. Besides, when Laurel marries, who will care for you?”

He snorted, even as he patted my hands. “You can’t even remember to close a door at night. What I think is that you should find someone to care for you, before you tumble in a pond and drown, or fall out of a tree.”

“I haven’t,” I lied with some dignity, “climbed a tree for years.”

Perrin made an outraged noise. “I saw you up a pear tree near the old Lynn ruins only last autumn.”

“I was hungry. That hardly counts.” I loosed my father, and reached for bread, being still hungry. He sighed.

“At least sit down. Never mind about getting the bracken out of your hair, or washing your hands, or anything else remotely civilized. How will you ever find a husband?”

I sat. A face turned toward me out of light, and for just a moment I forgot to breathe. Then I swallowed bread, while Laurel, gathering flowers on her lap, said amiably,

“Perhaps she doesn’t want one. Not everyone does.” But her brows had twitched into that little, anxious pucker. I was silent, making resolutions, then discarding them all as useless.

“I want,” I said shortly, “to do what I want to do.”

We lived comfortably in the rambling, thatched farmhouse that had grown askew with age. Centuries of footsteps had worn shallow valleys into the flagstones; the floors had settled haphazardly into the earth; door frames tilted; ceilings sagged. Other things happen to old houses, that only I seemed to notice. Smells had woven into the wood, so that lavender or baking bread scented the air at unexpected moments. The windows at night sometimes reflected other fires, the shadows of other faces. Spiders wove webs in high, shadowed corners that grew more elaborate through the years, as if each generation inherited and added to an airy palace. I wondered sometimes if they would die out when we did, or leave their intricate houses if we left ours. But I doubted that I would ever know: My father, with his wheat, and apple orchards, and his barns and stables, only grew more prosperous, and my sister’s marriage at least would provide him with heirs for his house and his spiders.

Perrin was looking at me with that dispassionate, speculative expression he got when he was trying to imagine who among the villagers might be enchanted by me. I couldn’t think of anyone. They were a hardheaded lot, though they were beginning to come to me for the healing oils and teas I made from my gleanings in the wood. Even Perrin, with his easy ways, would have been exasperated by me. And I would never stay where I was not free; I would simply walk out the door and vanish, vows or no.

That frightened me now and then, filled me with urgent, unreasoning despair, as if I lacked something vital — an arm, an eye — but did not know what it was I lacked that other people had to make them fully human. But most of the time I did not care. It would be nice, I thought, to have a Perrin with that wayward jet hair to smooth, or those shoulders to shape beneath my hands. But not this Perrin. Nor anyone that I had grown up with, even among those whose own restlessness had led them to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

Laurel rose to put the flowers into water. I nibbled this and that: a chicken wing, a spoonful of raisins and walnuts in a sweet sticky sauce that our cook, Beda, knew I loved. She loved the wild herbs and mushrooms, the ginger and rosehips I brought her. Everyone else had eaten, not waiting for me to come home. My father got out his pipe; Laurel put flowers in niches and corners; Perrin found Laurel’s flute and blew softly into it, beginning an old ballad of lovers parted on earth and reunited in the grave. He had not gotten through a verse when Laurel said sharply, “Don’t play that.”

We all looked at her, astonished. Color fanned across her face; she turned abruptly, shifted a vase an inch.

Perrin said quickly, “I’m sorry, love.”

“It’s bad luck.”

“It’s only an old ballad,” I said, still surprised at the tone in her voice. She was so rarely cross or abrupt. “We’ve all sung it a hundred times.”

She was silent. Then she shivered slightly and turned to us again, her face softening into an apologetic smile. “I know. It just — I don’t want to think of such unhappiness now.” Perrin stretched out a hand, wordlessly; she came to him, took his hand in both of hers. “Play only happy songs,” she commanded him. Her voice was light, but her smile had gone, until he spoke.

“I will play,” he said gravely, “‘The Ballad of Pig’s Trough Tavern.’”

She loosed him then, and rapped him on the head with an empty tankard. “You will not. Play ‘The Mariner’s Lay for His Lady,’ or I will never love you again, and you can take back the ribbons, and the blown glass horse and all your poetry.”

“Poetry!” our father and I exclaimed together, and Perrin turned red as a cock’s wattle. But he was laughing, and so was Laurel, and then, that was all that mattered.

A day or two later, I learned his name.

I had put my boots on, braided my hair, and ridden to the village with our father and a wagon full of apple brandy, which he had aged in small oaken kegs. While he delivered it to the village inn, I took a pot to the smithy to be mended, and bought ribbons to weave around sacks of dried petals for Laurel to lay among her wedding linens. The village was a scattering of houses, the stolid inn, a sagging tavern, an apothecary, the smithy, a stable, a baker, a weaver, a chandlery, the mill, and a swath of green in the middle of it, where geese and the weaver’s sheep and the innkeeper’s cow wandered. When I went into the inn to retrieve my father, who above all loved his ale and his company together, I heard the smith’s lazy-boned son Crispin say, “My grandfather remembers it all: how his father and grandfather fought, and the son killed his father, and a curse was laid on the family with his grandfather’s dying breath.”

It was a moment before anyone sorted this out. My father said, “Wait —”

“His grandson,” Crispin nodded, “it would be.” He had a beautiful smile, and a smooth easy voice that made you forget the time it wasted. He sipped his beer, then enlightened my father. “Corbet, his name is. Corbet Lynn. His father died, and he has come to claim his inheritance.”

“That old wreck?” The innkeeper, Travers, shook his head, mopping a ring my father’s beer had left. “The land must be worth a fortune, but where’s he going to live? The hall is in ruins. Nothing but a broken husk of stone overgrown with vines. The wood is taking it back. Will he sell the land?”

“He told my father no. He intends to stay. He’s out there now.” His eyes found a skirt and long hair in the doorway, and he smiled; he didn’t need to see a face, just the suggestion of shape caught him that way. “Rois.”

My ...

Revue de presse :

“The pace here is deliberate and sure, with no false steps; the writing is richly textured and evocative...[Winter Rose] weaves a dense web of desire and longing, human love and inhuman need.”—Publishers Weekly

 

“Fascinating and enchanting.”—Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

 

“The prose is impeccable, the story memorable, and the characters admirable.” —Science Fiction Chronicle

 

“McKillip manages to be both subtle and wise...Winter Rose confronts icy feyness with warm humanity, and leaves us surprised by joy.”—Faren Miller, Locus

 

“McKillip’s prose, which is always wondrous, is rarely less than perfect here.”—Shira Daemon, Locus

 

“Characteristically fresh, dainty fantasy...tingling and affecting work...delightful, delicate.”—Kirkus Reviews

 

“Like some exquisite bloom, rich in subtlety and headily intoxicating with lush prose.”—Starlog

 

“The story is well crafted and intriguing, McKillip’s prose is as good as ever, and her evocation of both the familiar and the mysterious is nothing less than masterly...An excellent book.”—Booklist

 

“A work rich in language...and dramatic in its emotions, Winter Rose envelopes the reader with a dense sensuality...a complex romance of magic and longing.

”—

Adventures of Sword & Sorcery

 

“Weaving folkloric elements into a fresh and original tale, McKillip employs deliberate, evocative language. She narrates her tale at a regal, measured pace that neither lags nor falters. This is not a book to be read in a hurry; it is meant to be savored. At the same time, it is dotted with deft touches of humor and with familiar, ordinary details which heighten the authenticity of the emotions it evokes. Fantasy addicts looking for a refreshing change will especially appreciate this one.”—KLIATT

 

“Exquisite fantasy.”—Voice of Youth Advocates

 

“A surprisingly moving story of love and sacrifice, one that echoes that fairy-tale classic ‘The Snow Queen.’”—Time Out Books

 

“McKillip’s writing is also warm and intimate and always approachable...a haunting novel...beautifully deliberate, richly textured.”—Valley Times

 

“Weaves a dense web of desire and longing, human love and inhuman need.

”—

Publishers Weekly

 

“In this lyrical book, every sentence seems chipped from jewels or woven from water; the sheer beauty of language is enough to transport you.”—Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Ace Books
• Date d'édition: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0441004385
• ISBN 13: 9780441004386
• Reliure: Poche
• Nombre de pages: 262