This is a retelling of two stories at once. I think they meld nicely. Try and imagine a kind of pastoral modern life.
The evening sun was fiery in the sky, pouring redness from its open mouth like wine to spill over the dusky groves and orchards in shadow beneath the deep grey of the mountains. Even the birds had stopped singing to witness the glory of the sinking sun. On the steeps, where the red light lingered longest, I stood and leaned my head on the still-warm trunk of a tree, waiting until the last of the day had winked out behind the western peaks before shouldering my basket of fruit and climbing down into the dusk.
Mother waited for me by the door, her folded arms promising a lecture on the merits of getting home before dark, but her smile took the threat away. "It was particularly good tonight," she said.
"Yes," I said simply. "Deep red, and going on forever, until I could see the stars through it."
Together we carried the basket inside. Mother was experimenting with new ways to preserve fruit; all the available flat surfaces in the house were covered in jars glowing translucently with the gold of apple and the ruby of raspberry, the deep burgundy of bitter cherries and the sunset orange of the apricot. The fruit groves on the mountaintops were if anything more gravid under this weight of harvesting, and I rather wondered which would give out first: my back, from carrying all the raw materiel, or Mother's interest in the subject. "I had another idea today," she told me, as she sorted through the mixed pears and citrons heaping the table. "What about damson and gooseberry?"
"Too sharp," I told her. "Damsons need something sweet to balance them."
"You just like sugar, that's your trouble," she said, laughing. I put my hand on my hip and tried to look affronted.
"Is there anything for dinner, or are we to fast in order to further this obsession with preserves?"
"That depends," she said, "are you going to help me lay the table or stand there making pithy comments all night?"
Mother is beautiful. Really, simply beautiful, with gold hair the color of wheat in the sun and astonishing amber eyes. She is also ageless, which her friends rib her about, but there's something about her that makes them quiet down after a few remarks and look as if they wish they hadn't said anything. I don't know why she never seems to get any older, but in the photographs I have of her in her teens she looks very much the way she does now. Her hair was long and unruly when she was my age; it is long and very well-behaved now. My own hair is not like hers at all, nearly black, with red lights in it when the sun is very strong, and more curly than straight, although it refuses to ringlet nicely. We don't talk about my father. I have never heard his name.
Mother gave up on the citrons, which I thought were rather satisfyingly tart after the surfeit of sweetness we had experienced while she was playing with berries, and led the way into the kitchen. "Bread and cheese and wine and new potatoes boiled with mint," she said, gesturing. I hastened to lay the table for two, thought briefly and produced a small candle. "Where did that come from?" she wanted to know.
"My friend Lana," I said truthfully. "She was making them the other day and thought, Kore might like one. Have we got any matches?"
"In the kitchen drawer," Mother said. "Wasn't that nice of your friend Lana?"
"Lana is nice," I said. "So nice all the young men are crowding round her and offering to take her for rides or give her things or tell her how beautiful she is."
Mother put down the plate she was holding and tipped up my chin so she could look me directly in the eye. "Kore," she said. "Firstly, you are beautiful, no matter what you may think; and secondly, having young men crowd around you and offer you things is a lot more trouble than it's worth. They tend to imagine that you owe them something, and when you don't pay up they get upset, and then they aren't at all nice to be around." Her eyes were faraway; both of us understood that she was no longer speaking about me.
"Yes, well," I said. "The question remains academic. Let's have dinner."
Morning dawned grey and misty and quiet. The work of the small house would not be put off, however, and I went outside in the drizzle to get wood for the fire. Our house has a central fireplace which more or less does away with the need for central heating, and we live in a very temperate climate; nevertheless, the fire is required on mornings such as these, and I am the household woodchopper. Birds sang and somewhere up the mountain a fox barked sharply, in the mists.
I suddenly felt someone watching me. Turning, I looked around in the swirling grey for any sign of a watcher, but there was no one there; I had a fleeting impression of a tall pale figure with dark eyes, but couldn't resolve it from the mist, and when I blinked it was gone. I was suddenly very cold.
I hurried inside. Mother was awake, making tea on the old range. She looked at me, and her face changed suddenly; and for a moment I was not sure I knew the eyes that met mine. "What have you seen," she asked sharply.
"I...was chopping wood outside, and it was misty, and I thought I felt someone watching me, only no one was there. Only...I saw something, but it was gone immediately, and I don't know if it was really there. A pale man. Tall, dark eyes, couldn't really see the face. Wearing something white."
She got up and went to the window, twitched the curtain aside. I had the impression she was looking with something other than her eyes. "It's gone now, whatever it was," she told me, and her voice was calm and believable and her own. "I don't think it's anything to worry about."
Already the sun was beginning to burn off the mist, and when I went back outside there was no terror in the morning. I had forgotten about the watcher by dinnertime, when Lana came by with an invitation.
"There's a party in the village," she said. "Corin and Breghl are having some sort of combined birthday party, and everyone's going. It ought to be fun," and she looked at me with pleading eyes.
"You mean, 'Kore please come so I can tell my mother I'm not going alone', don't you."
"Something like that, yes. Look, Peter's invited me and he says bring friends, and I know Ma won't let me go with him because his hair's too long and he doesn't work..."
"...and he's not wholesome," we finished in unison. Lana's mother was comfortingly predictable. "All right, I'll ask. I'm not promising anything, you understand." She smiled gratefully.
"Thanks, Kore," she said. "What are all these jars, anyway?"
"My mother's new thing: preserving fruit. Though why she should want to preserve the damn stuff when we have it coming out of our ears as it is escapes me."
We both laughed, and ate half a jar of apricots, and Lana explained to me the difficulty in choosing what to wear to such a party. "It's all right for you, you've got that innate sort of style, anything you put on looks simple and elegant..."
"Everything I have is simple," I said sourly. She frowned at me.
"...but I can never find anything that looks halfway decent, and if I do then my hair will be impossible, and..."
"All right," I said lightly, "I will come to your house and put my ineffable style to work selecting your dress and doing your hair for you and deciding what jewelry you ought to wear, if that will make you happy," and she hugged me tightly and told me I was wonderful. "Have another apricot," I told her. "We have a few."
For all my pretty words I was at a loss what to wear myself, looking through a wardrobe populated mainly with serviceable jeans and plain knitted shirts; my few dresses were all rather elderly, and rather too small. The past year had seen some improvements in my shape; while still far thinner than was considered comely, I had developed breasts and some inkling of hips, and it was apparent that I was if not attractive at least obviously female, which was something. I approached Mother mournfully.
"I've got nothing to wear to the party," I said, standing at the door of her bedroom in my slip. She looked me up and down and appeared to think.
"No, you haven't, have you," she said. "The last time you had a new dress is sometime last year, Galen's christening I think it was. Come in and let me see what I can find you."
"Your clothes aren't going to fit," I said, "you're a lot more curvaceous than I am."
"Try this on," she said, waving a cream-colored garment at me from the depths of her wardrobe. I pulled the dress over my head, afraid I would tear it, but it stretched over my new-found chest with ease. Mother had emerged from the wardrobe, and was looking at me critically. "You need some earrings," she said, and fished around in her jewelry box until she came up with a string of tawny-gold wheatears, cunningly linked together so they seemed to flow seamlessly round the throat, and a pair of earrings to match. With the necklace and the earrings on, I felt more presentable; then she led me to the tall cheval glass in the corner, and showed me myself.
"Not bad, huh," she said, pulling my heavy hair away from my neck, then letting it fall again. "I think your hair needs to be loose for this dress," and she moved away again, letting me see myself.
It was hard to believe that the girl in the mirror was me. She was short, which seemed familiar, and her brows were still lowering over the strange yellow eyes, and her lips were still too wide; but she wore a simple pale dress that clung to her and fell away, showing as she moved the nascent curves beneath it, and dark gold glinted at her throat and ears, and the long dark fall of her hair sparked red under the ceiling light. "Not bad," I repeated, and both of us smiled.
I walked down to Lana's in the dusky light of late afternoon, wearing the dress and my mother's jewelry under a brown coat. She lived in a house smaller than ours, with an old-style thatched roof and roses climbing extravagantly all over the front wall, and diamond-paned windows; there were twice as many people living in a house perhaps half the size of ours, and it still managed to seem cosy rather than cramped. Lana's family had that wonderful ability to welcome any outsiders and make them into de facto family members without difficulty or embarrassment; my mother and I were hermits by comparison.
Lana's younger brother opened the door. "Kore," he said. "You look...different."
"It'll be the dress," I said. "Take a good look; you're unlikely to see me wearing anything this impractical again anytime soon."
"It looks nice," he said simply. I decided not to argue.
"Is Lana around?"
"Yeah, she's upstairs bitching about how she hasn't got anything to wear and it's a tragedy and what is she going to do with her hair, etcetera. Girls," he said in gender embarrassment.
"Girls," I agreed, and climbed the stairs to Lana's little room. She was really supposed to share the room with her brother, but after a few years of this it was silently agreed that Davy would live in the attic, which he vastly preferred, and Lana would keep the tiny rose-painted room under the thatch eaves. I knocked, and came in.
Lana's not inconsiderable wardrobe was flung over all available flat surfaces, covering the bed in gauzy folds and heaping her chair with shoes. "Kore," she cried. "Save me."
"Oh, for gods'sake," I said. "Calm down. What seems to be the problem?"
"My blue dress has a stain on it, and I can't find the shoes that go with the gold dress, and anyway one of my earrings has disappeared, and..."
"Show me the blue dress," I said autocratically, folding my arms. She fished around on the bed and came up with a midnight blue gown cut like an ancient Greek chlamys, straight up-and-down but pleated with hundreds of tiny little folds so that it moved with the wearer and seemed to flow like water. "Where's the stain?"
She pointed to a minute area of darker blue on the breast of the gown. "Look, I think it's beetroot juice or something, it won't come out."
"That's the only stain on the dress?" I demanded. She nodded, and I said, "Show me your jewelry." Puzzled, she handed me a small box overflowing with trinkets. I sorted through enamel butterflies and faux pearls, probably the gifts of wellmeaning aunties, since Lana's taste was a little more flamboyant, and came up with a small brushed silver crescent moon pin. "Put on your blue dress and look winsome," I told her, and she pulled the chlamys over her head and regarded me as if I had gone mad. I found the little dark blotch and pinned the crescent moon over it, at a slight angle, and stood back. Amid the myriad folds of midnight blue the little moon glimmered as if it was real, alight in a starless sky.
"Not bad," I said. "Have you got any silver shoes?"
"Yeah, over there on the bed. Do you really think it hides the stain?"
"Look for yourself," I told her, handing her the little mirror half-buried under scarves on the windowsill. She frowned critically.
"It looks all right, especially if I put my hair up," she said, and put the mirror down, and hugged me. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, darling Kore, you've saved my life..." She pulled back and seemed to see what I was wearing for the first time. "Turn around," she told me.
I let the brown coat slip from my shoulders and turned slowly, feeling foolish. Lana squeaked. "You look fantastic!" she said, "I haven't seen that dress before, and you never ever let your hair down, and where did that amazing necklace come from?"
"My mother," I told her. "As I said to Davy, enjoy it while you can, because all this splendor is going to be a one-night thing. When does the party start, by the way?"
"Oh, sometime soon," she said airily. "You think the silver shoes not the dark blue ones with this?"
We walked down the rose-fragrant lane resplendent in our finery, feeling like queens and silly little girls at the same time. Lana far outshone me, of course; she was Artemis, and I was....Kore. A strange name, and one my mother had never explained to me, but not at all glamorous. Lana's corn-gold hair was piled on top of her head artlessly, with tendrils escaping here and there, and her lips were stained with dark wine-berry gloss; I wore no makeup, and my long hair was heavy about my shoulders and neck. We made a strange pair, I thought suddenly.
Lana's current boyfriend Peter was waiting at the bottom of the lane. "Took you long enough," he said, and kissed her familiarly; I tried not to watch. He noticed me trying not to watch, and was kind enough to say nothing, and my heart warmed towards him. "Come on, the party's begun already," and he opened the door of his car for her. I crept in the back seat, quiet and very much aware of the fact that I was not really supposed to be there. Peter gunned the engine and we sped away, down into the village alight with evening lamps and already humming with music.
I felt again the sensation of being watched as the car bore us down the long hill into the village proper, and turned to look through the back window. I was just in time to see the figure of a man, clearly a man dressed in white, standing by the side of the road and following us with his eyes; as I watched he turned and loped away silently into the shadows of the hedge. I shivered and wrapped my coat more closely around me, aware that I should not be seeing the things I saw.
Aidon watched the car, with the girl's white face visible through the back window, disappear down the hill. He turned back into the shadows, furious with himself; he had been seen twice now, and on the same day. He must be getting soft.
He had watched Kore for about a month, in the early hours when she was chopping wood or on her way to school or the shops; he had been careful to keep out of sight, and there had been only one nasty moment when she had looked directly at him, and he was forced to slip out of human sight until she looked away again. By rights even that should not have saved him; if she was what he believed her to be, human sight was not the limit of her visual powers. He could only assume that she was so used to human limitations, perhaps she had never known anything else, that they seemed natural to her now. He knew he had frightened her this past morning, and again when she looked back to see him watching her.
He cursed himself silently. There was no reason for it, he told himself; one does not, simply does not, stalk attractive girls. It just isn't done. And she was attractive, he could not deny it, in a strange bone-shaking sort of way; he had seen that sort of beauty only once before, when he had watched Ceres harvesting apples back on the mountain, in the very old days. Like mother, like daughter, he thought dryly. None of this helps me.
What am I supposed to do? he demanded of the late rose, which hung its heads all over the hedgerow and exuded perfume in a blameless sort of way. What am I supposed to do?
Go home, the rose said sniffily. You don't belong here, and you're upsetting her.
I know, and I'm sorry for it, but...
But nothing. Go home, Aidoneus. Your place is not here, and hers is.
What do you know, he demanded. You're a flower. Or were you a nymph back when the boss was going through his nymph phase, and you got turned into a flower because you said no?
Hah, said the rose. Shows how much you know. I'm Persian.
Persian, he repeated. Then you know about love.
I should think so too, it retorted. The red rose is one of the symbols of love.
And the white?
Depends what country we're in. Can mean mourning; can mean purity, can mean a host of other things.
Death?
Maybe, it said. I think that's black. And anyway, you're not Death.
No, he said. I'm not.
You're not doing anyone any good, you know, the rose told him. You're making her frightened, and the edges of this world a little too friable for their own good, and you're going to make yourself ill if you don't go home soon. Your country's suffering.
I know, he said miserably. I know, it's just...
You're besotted with a girl you don't know, it finished for him. He stiffened, and in a sudden access of anger reached out and snapped one of the white rose blossoms from its stem.
Succinct, he said coldly, and made a strange gesture in the air with one hand, and was just as suddenly gone; there was nothing to mark where he had been save a brown and dried-up rose petal, long dead and gone to dust.