Winterlong Read Free Page A

remarked with a cough, sidling two steps away to the corner of the elevator. The brass door folded into a lattice of leaves and pigeons that expanded into peacocks. “She’s having your things sent up now. Anything else you need, please let her know.” He cleared his throat, staring straight ahead as we climbed through orchid-haunted clerestories and chambers where the oneironauts snored and tossed through their days. At the fourth floor the elevator ground to a stop. He tugged at the door until it opened and waited for me to pass into the hallway.
    “I have never been in the Home Room,” I remarked, following him.
    “I think that’s why she thought you’d like it.” He glanced into an ornate mirror as we walked. I saw in his eyes a quiver of pity before he looked away. “Down here.”
    A wide hallway ended in an arch crowded with gilt satyrs.
    “This is it,” said Justice. To the right a heavy oaken door hung open. Inside, yellow-robed Aides strung cable. I made a face and tapped the door. It swung inward and struck a bundle of cable leading to the bank of monitors being installed next to the huge bed. I paced to the window and gazed outside. Around me the Aides scurried to finish, glancing at me sideways with anxious eyes. I ignored them and sat on the windowsill. There was no screen. A hawkmoth buzzed past my chin and I thought that I could hang hummingbird feeders from here and so, perhaps, lure them within reach of capture. Anna had a bandeau she had woven of hummingbird feathers that I much admired. The hawkmoth settled on the BEAM monitor beside the bed. The Aides packed to leave.
    “Could you lie here for a moment, Wendy, while I test this?” Justice dropped a handful of cables behind the headboard. I nodded and stretched upon the bed, pummeling a pillow as he placed the wires upon my brow and temples. I turned sideways to watch the old BEAM monitor, the hawkmoth’s wings forming a mask across the flickering map of my thoughts.
    “Aggression, bliss, charity,” droned Justice, flicking the moth from the cracked screen. “Desire, envy, fear.” I sighed and turned from the monitor while he adjusted dials. Finally he slipped the wires from me. The others left. Justice lingered a moment longer.
    “You can go now,” I said, and tossed the pillow against the headboard.
    He stood by the door, uncomfortable, and finally said, “Dr. Harrow wants me to be certain you check your medications. She has increased your dosage of acetelthylene.”
    I slid across the bed to where a tiny refrigerator had been hung for my medications. I pulled it open and saw the familiar battery of vials and bottles. As a child first under Dr. Harrow’s care I had imagined them a City like that I glimpsed from the highest windows at HEL , saw the long cylinders and amber vials as abandoned battlements and turrets to be explored and climbed. Now I lived among those chilly buttresses, my only worship within bright cathedrals.
    “Two hundred milligrams,” I said obediently, and replaced the bottle. “Thank you very very much.” As I giggled he left the room.
    I took the slender filaments that had tapped in to my store of memories and braided them together, then slid the plait beneath a pillow and leaned back. A bed like a pirate ship, carved posts like riven masts spiring to the high ceiling. I had never seen a pirate ship, but once I tapped a Governor’s son who jerked off to images of yellow flags and heaving seas and wailing women. I recalled that now and untangled a single wire, placed it on my temple and masturbated until I saw the warning flare on the screen, the sanguine flash and flame across my pixilated brain. Then I went to sleep.
    Faint tapping at the door woke me a short while later.
    “Andrew.” I pointed to where my toe poked from a rip in a much-patched blanket. “Come in. Sit.”
    He shut the door softly and slid beneath the sheets. “You’re not supposed to have visitors, you know.”
    “I’m not?” I