Killing Violets, Tanith Lee [the two towers ebook .TXT] 📗

working the sharp knife in the cooked dough by a process of directive magic having nothing to do with sight or hands.

“Please just forget you found it, Anna.”

A torrent rushed against her brain. She wanted to fling herself at him, crying that it must be thrown away, he must never, never…

Her mouth was wise, refusing to form these words.

She said nothing, and then, when Árpád said again, uncertainly, “Anna?”, Anna said, “Of course. I’m sorry. Let’s talk about something else.”

That night they went walking through Preguna, among the shadows. There were posters up under the lamps, reminding the city of approaching carnival.

In the bed, they made love. As he came against her, slipped aside, kissed her, slept, she thought of the mouse, going to sleep so peacefully in its straw.

She waited several days, and nights. She wasn’t sure that he would trust her; perhaps he would. But probably, most likely, he would check the bottle had been replaced, and left alone.

When she thought there had been enough time, one day when he was gone, she took the poison bottle out again.

She couldn’t quite bring herself to destroy it. It was, if horribly, his property, and in any case, poured down a drain or thrown away outside, might kill other blameless things, beasts, or children. She hid it as best she could.

Anna had known about the carnival at Preguna since she had first been there. People had talked to her, reminisced about it. Even the old professor.

He had, apparently, masked himself as a ram, and danced in a ballroom with a woman of mystery and charm. She had not been masked, simply had had her face painted, partly black and partly silver, and somehow this had made it useless for him to try to guess who she might be, and she had known that too, flirting and leading him on. She was not truly, (naturally), the sort of woman he preferred. But carnival galvanised and disorientated. For three days and nights after, he had been haunted by her presence, the memory of her voice.

Peepy too, at the shop, had held the girls spellbound, (blondes, brunette, redhead, sitting naked, smoking), with the tale of how a young man had pursued a young woman all through the carnival, he in his immaculate dinner clothes, and she in a starry gown, only her eyes concealed by a wisp of tinsel. He had possessed her at last in a stationary carriage among some nightingaled gardens. But as the dawn flowed in, the fatal woman dissolved in scented powder. She was only some exquisite ghost, cursed for ever to lure men to her on that single lawless night.

Anna had said to Árpád, they might go out, mightn’t they? For she was also lured by the stirring excitement, the prickling and elasticity of the air, as if before a storm.

He had, she knew, a set of perfect evening garments, night-black, moon-white, left from some unavoidable function. And she had the moon-white dress he had bought for her, after she had run to him in it.

She bought a slender mask, a white moth, with diamond-sequinned eye-holes. She described herself to him in this garb; her lips lipsticked crimson, her opalescent hair sleeked in the diamanté clip.

“All right, Anna. If you want. I know, it’s a fever, the carnival. I’ve watched from the window…”

Anna thought of photographs seen of the carnival, the masks, or faces spectacularly painted, a man speckled like a leopard, a woman whose cheeks were transformed to flowers like some glorious leprosy.

Árpád was reluctant. What else? No, no, he was terrified. She could not give him quarter.

And carnival arrived.

Long before the sun had gone, revellers were on the streets. The trams clanked up and down, and other vehicles hooted, and the gold leaf of the falling sun showed her, leaning from the window, the garlanded figures, the black and white men, the women who were rainbows, the children running, and none, none of them with a properly human face. A night of animals, phantoms, and secrets, walking on two legs.

She had bathed and used perfume. She dressed in the white dress, and did her hair. At the mirror he had bought for her, Anna made up her face, darkening her lashes, affirming her lips. She put on her mask, and a moth enclosed her eyes. She felt utterly suddenly, like a hundred thousand others, I am no longer myself. I am in disguise. Now I may do as I wish.

At this instant, Árpád appeared behind her in the mirror.

“Anna – how wonderful you look.” His voice was hollow and too low.

“Hurry and dress,” she said. “Where is your mask?”

“Anna – Anna forgive me. I’ve been – dreading this. No, Anna. I won’t.”

She did not turn to him, but drew her head up, eyes masked, set free. In the mirror she confronted him.

“You’re handsome, Árpád. You don’t see it.”

“Anna, don’t be a fool.”

“Beautiful. Like a prince. You…”

“Be quiet, Anna,” harshly now. “Don’t insult me.”

His face, turned sidelong, speaking from the edge of itself. Not looking at his own disfiguration.

She raised the lipstick in her hand, and whirled it over the mirror glass, a long bloody strand.

“You don’t have any care for me,” she said arrogantly.

He turned from her almost entirely.

“You don’t trust me,” she said. “You think I’ve lied to you.”

“I think – oh God, Anna, I think you see me in a way no one else can. I cherish you for that. But the rest…”

Moving, his face, its clear left side, all in the coalescence of the light, reflected behind the streak of lipstick on the mirror.

Anna stood alone in stasis.

Presently, after a minute, she could speak. “Árpád…” and then in a rush, “let me do something. Let me try.”

He was tired. In despair, he had put on the splendid evening clothes. They must have weighed like lead. His shoulders sagged.

“What?”

“Sit down. Sit there, where the light falls.”

“Why?”

“Please, please – just for a moment. If you trust me at all.”

He sat in the chair