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shelves; nothing there surely but Christmas ornaments, boxed games,
lampshades, empty jars, young Peter's tenting and backpack frame, oddments of
china set aside for a jumble. On the other side of the door, the tea chest
containing Peter's business papers, books, the family's suitcases as neatly
stacked as they'd been since the day after removal from London.
Yet Sally Merrion had been dressed in royal blue ... a queen's color ... and
gauzes!
A flash of color caught her eye and she turned toward the chest, blinking. She
could have sworn that the topmost sheet had been, however fleetingly, a
brilliant blue. To reassure herself, she smoothed the sheet, but her fingers
told her that it wasn't velvet, just worn linen. She stood up, closing the lid
of the chest, almost dropping it the final few inches as the full weight of
the wood tore the lid from her fingers' inadequate grasp.
She'd ask Fran in the morning where she'd found those dress-up clothes.
Possibly she'd misunderstood.
The frisson caught her by the back of the neck before she'd reached the safety
of the door. It was like a hand on the scruff of her neck, pulling her back to
the scent of some childhood crime: an injunction against a cowardly retreat.
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In spite of herself, Amy turned back into the room and stared around her. The
scent of lavender and cinnamon was cut by a sharper smell, vinegarish. Then a
sweetish odor, familiar but unnameable, assailed her, an odor as sharp as the
previous intangible command to stay. Stiffly, Amy walked back to the chest,
set her hand on the lid, imagining, as Sally might have, wondrous costumes in
which to be medieval ladies-in-waiting ... and a queen.
No torn sheets, no dull woolen jumpers now lay exposed, but royal blue velvet,
a deep red wool dress, a green surcoat fur-trimmed, and belts, encrusted with
rough-cut bright stones set in the dull gleam of gold links.
She let the lid drop and the compressed air smelled of sweat, human and horse,
of stale food and spilled, soured wine, heavy perfumed musk mixed with
camphor. Weakly, Amy sank to the cold stone floor, impervious to that chill.
"The Alderdyces came into money. . . ." Mr. Suttle's words came to mind. ,
Had some Alderdyce child, or adult, dreamed of hidden treasure in the old
keep? And found it in the chest?
Amy shook her head, fighting to think rationally. Did the chest grant wishes,
then? Pray God it was only one wish and Fran had had the chest's quota for
them all, and that was the end of the matter.
She thought of gold and jewels, rich fabrics. Oriental silks, and gauzes, of
ornate Arabian leather slippers. And opened the chest. Her heart pounded as
she dropped the lid on those same imagined riches.
Mrs. Mallett? She'd lived in Tower Cottage for years, spry till the day of her
death. Hadn't Mr. Suttle said so? Wanting for nothing, the house and grounds
supplying her requirements.
Amy laughed, a single sound, hard and strained, like her credulity. What had
the widowed Mrs. Mallett lifted the lid to find? A body? As Peter had
whimsically suggested.
The sweetish odor, familiar but unidentifiable, pervaded the box room.
Amy screamed, a soft tortured cry, her hands stifling it to a whisper, lest
Peter or Patricia hear her. That same sweetish odor had filled her nostrils as
she'd knelt before Peter's coffin in the church. How could the house have
killed her Peter in that bombed-out public house. It couldn't have....
Illusions! Her longing for him that day!
"NO!" The single negative was as low as it was firm. She spread her hands,
fingers flat on the lid of the chest, denying what could be if she so desired.
"No!"
She spread her arms across the chest in repression, in supplication, in
prayer. This was just a chest with old clothes in it, two torn sheets and some
dresses waiting for parties, for children to grow up to fill. This was just an
ancient tower, used as part of an old house, a house where children could grow
up in healthy country air, on fresh vegetable and milk, and where they could
pick apples and pears in an orchard and bramble berries from hedges. Just an
old house that had served many families in the same way.
The nauseating sweetness dispersed: lavender and cinnamon returned, and the
smell of night and rain.
Slowly Amy pulled her arms together, rose to her knees before the chest. She
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placed the heels of her hands under the lid and, swallowing against the
dryness of her throat, pushed upward. Her body blocked some of the light from
the overbright bulb, but she saw the comforting white of old cotton sheeting,
caught a whiff of her favorite cologne, impregnated in the dresses stored in
the chest, a hint of the cedarwood. It was as she'd wished. She let the lid
down gently and leaned her forehead weakly against the edge.
It took her a few moments to gather enough strength to rise. Really, she told
herself as she walked toward the door, she ought not to attempt to do so much
in one day, though they'd enough bramble jelly to last years, even with the
amount Peter slathered on his toast.
She switched off the light and closed the box room door behind her. Her
fingers hovered briefly over the key. No, she could not lock out what had
apparently happened or lock in whatever it was. That would be superstitious as
well as downright useless.
Nonetheless, when she flicked off the hall light, she said "good night" just
as if there were someone waiting to hear.
The Bones Do Lie
They have pierced the wall of Time
And let the flood of centuries pour
Down in torrents of abused past
And future follies. Nor
Can the wit of man dam up
This foul stream, polluted
With History's excrement,
Channeled now in convoluted
Ways, cross-currented with tide,
Ebb and neap, with storm
From which only few can hide.
Vale was standing on Elric's shoulders, reaching for clumps of deep red
cherries on the upper boughs when he thought he saw a wavering in the air. He
went rigid with fear.
"Danger?" The Viking might speak bad English but he knew body language well.
"I thought I saw something!" Something like a shift ripple"
"Shift?" The Viking's fingers clenched Vale's knee so hard that he yipped in
protest. "Elric turn?"
"No. Just hold still."
Vale parted the branches obscuring his view of the valley. It was so peaceful,
with no suggestion of the ripple, like a flood of water on a glass pane, that
preceded a shift. And Chloe was watching. Chloe was always on watch. She
wouldn't let anything happen to her people. That was the one constant for Vale
since he had got caught in a time shift.
He had so hoped that there wouldn't be a shift for a long, long time. That
they'd have the summer in the valley and he'd be able to leave the cellar all
day long, to explore a region so familiar in contour, so differently habited
in this kind shift by wood and meadow. He seemed to spend so much time
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