Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer: Expanded Edition by Tanith Lee Page A
Authors: Tanith Lee
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frayed out about her everywhere.
The scents of the smokes made Jaspre drowsy and sad. Her heart beat in her very womb, and she lay listening to it.
The woman said to her out of a blue fire-cloud in the air: “You have brought many offerings to the Lord Angemal. Do you fear to give him of your blood?”
“No,” said Jaspre.
She did not know what she had said. Yet her soul knew and beat its wings within her, attempting, like the caged bird it was, to fly.
How beautiful she was. The woman, bending above her with the silver knife, comprehended without human lust this beauty. After all, had she not trained it, complimented it, nourished it, setting all things to inspire the enchantment of physical perfection? A child of golden light.
“Fix your thoughts,” the woman said, “upon him. Do you consent to be his?”
Jaspre breathed. “I do.”
She felt a flicker of pain. It did not trouble her, she rejoiced in it. Her pain, too, she would render him. Was it sufficient? She almost entreated to be hurt again.
The dream began subtly, first with a vague awareness, then with a still certainty, of where she was, and the reason and the logic of it.
Far down under the house, beneath the very surface of the ground, the insularium was a cellar. Only the telescope craned, and that merely by the means of a stone funnel and twisted lenses, upward into the sky. Now, however, some portion of the chamber, that magian centre at which Jaspre lay—the pivot of the Star—had become the head of a mighty tower.
The tower was stone. She could visualize it quite clearly, the roofed cup of its spire, which contained her, the perilous swooping descent of its sides. Slowly, Jaspre rose. She looked about. The room in the head of the tower was small, and, of course, pentagonal. In each of the five sides, a long window lacking glass framed an uncanny vaporous darkness, without form and void—indeed, as the first darkness of all, the dark of Chaos, had been described in the parchments of the Judaians.
Yet, Jaspre was not afraid of the void darkness, nor of the height of the tower. She went to the window before her, toward which formerly her own skull had pointed, and looked out of it.
The scentless, moistureless yet somber mists, disturbed a little, seemingly by human warmth, swirled and floated. Nothing else was visible before her, and so she turned her eyes to gaze downward.
The spire plummeted below her, it seemed, forever. She grasped at once, as if she had always been cognizant of the fact, that the sub-earth cellar of the insularium could be also the top of a tower because such a place thrust on, by sorcerous means, deep into the core of the world, to those nether regions, those buried caverns that had been named Hell, or Hades, or Tellus Occultus in explanatory, analogous legend. It seemed to fall miles below her, growing ever more slender as it fell, becoming eventually nothing larger or stronger than a needle, and on this the upper masonry balanced, and she within it, so she seemed to experience all at once a gentle swaying in the cup of the tower, rhythmic as that of a pendulum, mild as that of a flower-stalk in a breeze. And still, she was not afraid, either to sense this motion, or to stare downward into the formless abyss.
There were carvings in the sides of the tower, the magic symbols from the chamber as it had been, the zodiac, the Crown, the Sword, the Chalice—she knew such seals must hold the spire safely.
And then she became aware of the little fluttering at her left wrist. She looked, and a scarlet butterfly flew away from her, away down the length of the tower, and then another, another, an unraveling scarf of butterflies like winged blood. Jaspre watched them descend, and as she leaned there, strands of her unbound hair came streaming over her shoulder, and spilled away also, unfurling like a shining ribbon, down, down, down with the red ribbon of the butterflies, down, down into the dark below.
Jaspre was filled by
The scents of the smokes made Jaspre drowsy and sad. Her heart beat in her very womb, and she lay listening to it.
The woman said to her out of a blue fire-cloud in the air: “You have brought many offerings to the Lord Angemal. Do you fear to give him of your blood?”
“No,” said Jaspre.
She did not know what she had said. Yet her soul knew and beat its wings within her, attempting, like the caged bird it was, to fly.
How beautiful she was. The woman, bending above her with the silver knife, comprehended without human lust this beauty. After all, had she not trained it, complimented it, nourished it, setting all things to inspire the enchantment of physical perfection? A child of golden light.
“Fix your thoughts,” the woman said, “upon him. Do you consent to be his?”
Jaspre breathed. “I do.”
She felt a flicker of pain. It did not trouble her, she rejoiced in it. Her pain, too, she would render him. Was it sufficient? She almost entreated to be hurt again.
The dream began subtly, first with a vague awareness, then with a still certainty, of where she was, and the reason and the logic of it.
Far down under the house, beneath the very surface of the ground, the insularium was a cellar. Only the telescope craned, and that merely by the means of a stone funnel and twisted lenses, upward into the sky. Now, however, some portion of the chamber, that magian centre at which Jaspre lay—the pivot of the Star—had become the head of a mighty tower.
The tower was stone. She could visualize it quite clearly, the roofed cup of its spire, which contained her, the perilous swooping descent of its sides. Slowly, Jaspre rose. She looked about. The room in the head of the tower was small, and, of course, pentagonal. In each of the five sides, a long window lacking glass framed an uncanny vaporous darkness, without form and void—indeed, as the first darkness of all, the dark of Chaos, had been described in the parchments of the Judaians.
Yet, Jaspre was not afraid of the void darkness, nor of the height of the tower. She went to the window before her, toward which formerly her own skull had pointed, and looked out of it.
The scentless, moistureless yet somber mists, disturbed a little, seemingly by human warmth, swirled and floated. Nothing else was visible before her, and so she turned her eyes to gaze downward.
The spire plummeted below her, it seemed, forever. She grasped at once, as if she had always been cognizant of the fact, that the sub-earth cellar of the insularium could be also the top of a tower because such a place thrust on, by sorcerous means, deep into the core of the world, to those nether regions, those buried caverns that had been named Hell, or Hades, or Tellus Occultus in explanatory, analogous legend. It seemed to fall miles below her, growing ever more slender as it fell, becoming eventually nothing larger or stronger than a needle, and on this the upper masonry balanced, and she within it, so she seemed to experience all at once a gentle swaying in the cup of the tower, rhythmic as that of a pendulum, mild as that of a flower-stalk in a breeze. And still, she was not afraid, either to sense this motion, or to stare downward into the formless abyss.
There were carvings in the sides of the tower, the magic symbols from the chamber as it had been, the zodiac, the Crown, the Sword, the Chalice—she knew such seals must hold the spire safely.
And then she became aware of the little fluttering at her left wrist. She looked, and a scarlet butterfly flew away from her, away down the length of the tower, and then another, another, an unraveling scarf of butterflies like winged blood. Jaspre watched them descend, and as she leaned there, strands of her unbound hair came streaming over her shoulder, and spilled away also, unfurling like a shining ribbon, down, down, down with the red ribbon of the butterflies, down, down into the dark below.
Jaspre was filled by
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