“What are you doing?” Leo asked back, and though he knew it was terribly impolite, he did not rise. After all, it wasn’t ladylike for Daylily to be tramping about the forest; why should he follow all the social niceties?
Daylily put out a daintily shod foot to one of the creek stones, felt it to make certain she would not slip, then stepped onto it. In this way she crossed over the creek, only wetting the edge of her skirt. Then, to Leo’s surprise, she took a seat on the dirty bank beside him.
“You are hunting something out here, aren’t you?” she said, and he felt her penetrating gaze on the side of his face. He shrugged. “Not a monster?” she guessed.
“No,” said Leo. “Not a monster.”
Daylily’s eyes narrowed as she studied him. His features were soft, more a boy’s than a man’s as yet. But she could see where maturity might make him handsome. He was, she thought, one who would need to succeed at something. Not merely succeed to the position to which he was born; no, much more than that. He would need a quest, a purpose, some deed to fulfill before he could hope to become the man he should be.
A pity, really, for a boy like Leo was rarely given such an opportunity.
Daylily pursed her lips, surprised how, for the briefest moment, her heart went out to this boy who, though the same age as she, seemed so much younger. “Why are you sad?” she asked.
“I’m not sad.”
“You are.”
“Where did you leave Foxbrush?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
Leo hung his head lower, his black hair flopping over his forehead.
But Daylily persisted. “You’re searching for someone. Whom?”
“My best friend.”
“Ha!”
Leo looked up in time to see her brief smile. It was the first he’d seen on her face since she came to Hill House, and it was, he thought, rather nice, if not altogether comfortable on her face.
“Not Foxbrush, then.”
“No! Definitely not Foxbrush.”
“Someone you met when you came here before?” She reached out and put a hand on top of one of his. He flinched but did not pull away. Her hand was soft. “Someone they don’t want you to associate with?”
Leo nodded. Her eyes were so blue. He had never seen eyes like hers before.
“What was his name?” she asked in a gentle voice.
“Rose Red,” Leo blurted, though he’d not intended to share. Something in those eyes of hers made him want to tell her his secrets, even as he blushed. “Her name was Rose Red. She was a girl who kept a goat around here.”
“Oh.”
Daylily’s hand withdrew from his, and he found that he rather missed it. Her whole body stiffened beside him, and she wrapped her hands very firmly about her knees. “I see. They would frown upon you associating with one of the country goat girls, wouldn’t they?”
“Well, you know, they—”
“Young love is always quickly squelched in a boy of your position, and I understand why you would resent it.”
“I wasn’t really—”
“But no fear,” continued Daylily, rising and brushing off her skirts in a most businesslike manner. “I’m sure you will find your—what was her name?—your little goat girl again. These things have a way of coming out right.”
“Daylily, I—”
“We’d best be on our way.” She was already halfway across the creek, and Leo hastened to rise and follow her. “I left Foxbrush in a bramble somewhere, and I doubt that he’s extracted himself. I don’t suppose you brought a pair of gloves with you?”
Daylily descended the incline with surprising grace in all those skirts, and again Leo thought, as he followed her, that perhaps pretty girls had more uses than he’d ever given them credit for.
3
I feared you’d never come back to me.”
Rose Red enters the cave as though drawn against her will. Steam rises and swirls about her uncovered face like caressing hands as she kneels before the dark pool. She turns away. But she cannot escape the voice.
“I thought you would forget me again, now that he’s returned.”
“I want to forget you.”
“But you always come back to me.”
She shudders in the dark of that nightmare and clenches her hands into fists. “You never let me go!”
“You never leave.”
“How can I leave? You plague my dreams.”
Her Dream smiles up from the water, and his face is horrible to see. “If you wanted to, you could leave the mountain. Yet you choose to stay. You cannot be parted from me, my sweet princess.”
Her head bows to her chest. Tears burn in her eyes. “Beana don’t want me to leave the mountain.”
“Beana does not love you as I do.”
“Shut up.”
“Leo does not love you as I do.”
“Shut up!” She leaps up and grabs the nearest loose stone she can reach, flinging it at the face in the water with all her strength. The splash shatters the image, and for a moment Rose Red is free of his gaze.
But the rock sinks. The waters settle. And the face returns.
“Someday, princess, you will understand that no one can be so constant a friend as I.”
Then his eyes burn hers, and she cannot look away.
“If you choose him over me, make no mistake . . . I will make him pay.”