“Tell him your father died. Ask him for help.”
Rose Red shook her head and removed her hand from the goat’s neck, wrapping both arms around her middle instead. “I ain’t askin’ him for nothin’.” She tilted her head to one side, trying to keep more tears from falling, though the goat could not see them. “He don’t remember me.”
“Bah!” said the goat. “Sure he does. Give him more credit than that!”
“Now you’re just my own mind tellin’ me what I want to hear. I ain’t listenin’, Beana!”
The goat bleated angrily. “Stop talking foolishness, girl! You know as well as I that we won’t pull through this next winter without a little help. Ask the boy. He can do something for us, I have no—”
“I ain’t askin’,” Rose Red said in a voice that was quiet but absolute. They were silent again for some time, pressing into each other. But Rose Red’s mind was not still; it was full of a voice from a dream that burned in her memory no matter how often she told herself it was not real.
“I will make him pay.”
“I ain’t askin’ him,” she said to herself in a voice too low for the goat to hear. “I’ll keep Leo safe from the monster if it kills me.”
A few hours later, dawn crept up to the mountaintops and spilled at last into the Hill House gardens. It touched the markers of humble graves, but the girl and her goat had long since gone, leaving Mousehand, and all those of the house, to sleep.
“Make him pay, will you?”
“Don’t take on so! I’ve got to keep the girl in check, haven’t I? What business is it of yours what I tell her?”
“He’s mine, brother,” says the Lady, and her empty eyes bore into the Dragon’s with a force greater than fire. “Don’t forget who won our game. Touch him, and I’ll take that girl from you!”
“You wouldn’t dare,” snarls the Dragon. “I’ve worked too hard. My Enemy’s Beloved will become my child, and I will finally have my vengeance for those centuries of binding. Don’t you dare take her from me.”
“Then don’t touch the boy. His dreams are mine.”
The Dragon flashes his long teeth. “I’ll use him as I can to win that kiss,” he snarls, yet the rules of the game hold fast. “I’ll not touch his dreams, sister. But I’ll use him as I can. And the girl had better not leave the mountain.”
4
THE SUMMER WAS NOT TURNING INTO anything like Leo had expected, but that didn’t mean it was worse. After all, childhood memories rarely matched up with reality. He would not have enjoyed a summer traipsing about the mountainside as he once had, carrying a silly beanpole and building dams. Quiet afternoons of playing cards or chess with Daylily were a fine substitute, and this way he didn’t have to worry about the household staff watching him wherever he went.
Foxbrush gave him the evil eye more often than not, but that was nothing new, so Leo ignored him.
He slept well at night for the most part, with his window open to admit the fresh mountain air, so different from the stifling atmosphere of the tablelands in the summer. Sometimes, if he half awoke, he would think the drifting curtains looked like a spectral woman’s robes and billowing hair, but after a few blinks, the illusion would fade, and Leo could sleep again.
One night, sleep did not come to him as easily, nor did that daft image of the specter fade like it should. So he got out of bed and marched right to the window, grabbing the curtains in both hands just to prove to himself that they were, in fact, curtains.
They were, which was something of a relief.
Before returning to bed, he gazed out on the moonlit lawns, admiring how the starflower vines blossomed white at night. During that lonely moment, he remembered Rose Red more clearly than he had since the day he last climbed to the creek. But she was gone, he was certain. It was foolish to think he would find her again.
And foolish to try to make sense of what he had seen in the cave that night so many years ago. He’d probably dreamt it.
Leo went back to bed and fell asleep immediately.