14. Yarrow Is in the West Passage and So Are Some Other People

14. Yarrow Is in the West Passage and So Are Some Other People

The first thing Yarrow did was climb the tower. She had no maps of the palace, and the top of Grey Tower seemed like a good place to get her bearings. It was very cold, and snow had buried the floor of the atrium up to the fourth step. At the top, Yarrow walked around the parapet, hoping to see an easy way through the cloisters to the South Passage. Yes—she'd reach it if she just headed directly south. Easy enough.

She placed the route carefully in the halls of her memory and went back down the stairs and into the Room of Masks. Respects must be paid to the mask of the Mothers. For her to leave, she needed to do them proper obeisance, all those generations of Yarrows before her. She was doing this for them. If they were conscious of her actions at all, she hoped they were pleased.

The mask of the Mothers was there, but the green mask of the guardians was not.

A great rage welled up from the soles of her feet to the top of her head. The worst sacrilege! Yarrow clenched her fists and two tiny hot tears came to her eyes. Who could have done this? Who would have done this? The mask belonged to Grey Tower! It had not left it once in all the long eras. Who would dare steal it?

She stalked out, rigid with anger. The mask had to be returned. No matter how difficult it might be to track down, no matter how far across the palace it had traveled, Yarrow would find the mask and bring it back.

Two duties burdened her now, one practical, one sacred. Yarrow was good at her duties. She was even better at doing them angrily. Fresh purpose came into her step and a granite gleam into her eye. And off she went toward Black Tower.

Rather than follow the first bit of her journey, let us look at what she did wrong. Her first mistake was heading south. To leave Grey, the only thing to do was head north. The old women had never bothered to tell her this most important principle of travel, so Yarrow, alone and ignorant, passed through ten cloisters before she suspected anything, and only when she came through a door to a broad open space did she know something was fully wrong.

She stood in an arched doorway decorated with grinning horned heads. Ahead of her, a long statue-lined avenue stretched into the distance. High walls flanked it, their turrets and crenellations gnawing at the sky, their stones blanketed by ivy. The statues themselves were all identical: old women, left hands raised with palm outward, right hands cradling a book. They stood on harsh green grass. The avenue itself was smooth stone.

Hot tears of shame and dread burned Yarrow's eyes. She was miles away from the river. She stood at the start of the West Passage, and Black Tower was nowhere in sight. Only Yellow rose before her, blade-edged enough to cut the eye.

When she turned to go back, the door had locked itself. Things like that happened in parts of the palace, she had heard: there were ancient stories of women in grey getting lost in the Passage attempting to get to Yellow or Black for births and funerals. Usually the stories ended with their bones being found by other women years later. But Yarrow had been so careful. She had taken the right road and everything, but here she was. For a moment, she nearly cried.

Then she squared her shoulders, tilted her chin up, and set one foot in front of the other. What good was there in waiting around? At least this way she would get somewhere . And perhaps this would work to her advantage: the Passage was a clear shot out of Grey, so there'd be no need to navigate the warren of cloisters and colonnades. The only cause for anxiety lay directly ahead: The lot of Yellow is to take, the saying went. The carrion crows came from there. Yellow Tower was not built to give an air of friendliness, but more than that: according to the old Yarrow, there was still the ancient Lady seated within.

A feeling of unease crept over her as she moved through the Passage. It wasn't the silence; everything in Grey was quiet. It wasn't the lack of people. It wasn't the horizon, though she'd rarely seen one from ground-level before.

There . Once you noticed it, it was impossible to escape: the Passage was clear. No trash or loose stones scattered about. No husks of miracles in out-of-the-way corners. Parts of the walls had fallen in, but the piles of rubble had been removed. And the granite pavement had no potholes. There was nothing but her, the statues, and the pale tower ahead.

Though it grew no closer as she walked, she was able to see Yellow in some detail, certainly more than she ever had before. Its base was hidden from her by the Passage's convergence on the horizon, so there was no telling what lay around it. The tower seemed to have three sides and rise several hundred feet in the air. Its top was sheared off at a hard slant, with none of the turrets or crenellations that marked the other towers. No ivy or moss blanketed its walls; instead, a grooved border was incised along each of its edges, as if a giant had taken a pencil and underlined its harsh angles. Its few windows were dark and scattered randomly over the pus-colored stone. A few white birds fluttered about it, no bigger than dust motes in the morning sun.

The statues petered out and came to an end, though pedestals for many more marched along both sides of the road for some way. The smooth pavement roughened and became cobblestones. In some places, they were worn away to the ground, which a recent rain had turned into mud. The walls of the Passage grew ever taller and began to be pocked with windows and prickled with turrets. No faces looked out of the windows, many of which were closed with wooden shutters, or gaping open like dead mouths.

Crows lined the walls and wheeled overhead. Perhaps this was where they nested when the women in grey did not require their services. They called to each other, their rough voices echoing off the stones. Many stared at the little woman making her way down the empty road.

Yarrow did not like any of this. She liked it less when she came to a mud puddle laid across the road, and she liked it still less when in the mud she saw a handprint.

Not a reasonably sized print. It belonged to no hand you could comfortably shake. At least seven feet from heel to fingertip, it made five long ditches in the wet ground. Some considerable weight had pressed up the mud into ridges, all crackled and dry on their top edges. Worse than that, the near side of the mud was dented with a few crescents, as if the fingers of a second hand had been pressed there: each was as wide as Yarrow's torso. And still worse, prints were left on the dry stone beyond, getting less distinct as the dirt wore off, but continuing on in a straight line toward Yellow Tower. There were no corresponding footprints. Whatever had passed this way seemed to walk on two hands like a monstrous acrobat.

Going home looked like the safest option. Yarrow turned around and had actually taken a few steps when she saw the grey sky over Grey Tower. Nothing ever looked colder than that small, ancient pinnacle of dark stone, holding up its five turrets like fingers to ward off a blow.

Yarrow faced Yellow Tower and resumed walking. Her stomach rumbled. She had eaten nothing since early morning, so she sat on one of the empty pedestals and opened her sack. She planned to allow herself one biscuit and one fig. While rummaging for the figs, her fingers brushed something hard and flat in her spare robe. Biscuit in one hand, she searched the robe with the other and discovered the guardian's book still in her sleeve, along with candied angelica and a few buttons. She ate some angelica. The book she had no immediate use for, but as something that came from Grey House, leaving it behind would be unbearable. She replaced it in the sleeve. Someone she met might know what it meant.

After eating, with angelica-flavored honey gumming up her mouth, Yarrow was very thirsty. She had brought no water. The enormity of this mistake slid right past her brain: like the handprints, she could not fully comprehend it, only sense its passing. Perhaps farther down the Passage she might find some fountains. Grey had them all over the place, many of them scummy and disused, but nonetheless there.

She set off again. The air was still cold, but with more of a tingling springtime chill than the numbing deadness of winter. Yarrow gritted her teeth. It was quite shameful somehow that Yellow had spring while Grey's summer had been cut short.

The pedestals ended, leaving only two shoulders of brown grass on either side of the road. Lichen and moss spread over the walls. No longer smooth, they bulged with bartizans, bay windows, machicolations, oriels. They were much taller now, so that as wide as the avenue was, it felt more like an alley. After some time they began to hang over the grass, then the road. Yarrow came to a place where two buildings met in an enclosed bridge, pierced with lattices, and after that bridges and walkways were commonplace. The grass vanished, replaced with dark, vigorous ivy. The road went straight as straight, but the buildings pushed out of the wall and onto its stones, making Yarrow zigzag. They rose up in spires and crenellations and vast windows, as if the walls were dissolving into the air. But even as the buildings became livelier, the air, though warm, was dead. Yellow Tower with its white birds was lost beyond the profusion of roofs and bridges. No crows were to be seen. No laundry hung between walls. No footstep was heard but her own. No doors opened to let her out.

The ivy hung down in curtains from the bridges, intermixed with creeping thyme, which blossomed bright pink. Yarrow came to a place where the draped ivy completely filled the road with a tapestry of green. Butterflies moved in and out between the waving tendrils as if among the ribs of a corpse, perching here and there on slim pale limbs. Some of them had court dress on, others wore nothing at all. Their beauty transfixed her, and tears came to her eyes for some reason she dared not think about.

As she watched, a hand darted out of the ivy, snatched a butterfly, and withdrew. The sounds of chewing were heard. Yarrow gripped her bag, ready to run.

The leaves parted, and a red ape came out. A white chaperon covered its head; the dangling liripipe was soiled and frayed. Over its hairy body it wore an ill-fitting, pinkish scholar's robe. The ragged blue ends of a butterfly's wing protruded from its lips for a moment before it swallowed. After nodding solemnly at Yarrow, it proceeded to gather butterflies one after another and cram them into its mouth. Dribbling saliva soaked the front of its robe.

Yarrow pressed her lips together in thought. Could it talk? No way to tell just by looking.

"Good day," she said.

The ape looked over its shoulder at her, its tiny dark eyes completely expressionless as it chewed its iridescent snack.

"Could you perhaps—" Oh, confound it, how did the old Yarrow talk? How did she summon up that reserve of dignity? "—if it please you, show me where I might find some water?" She curtseyed quickly at the end. It was probably too much respect to show to this creature, but better safe than sorry.

Keeping its eyes on hers, the ape stuffed another handful of flutter ing insects into its mouth. It chewed a moment, then showed its teeth in a grin full of butterfly guts and bright shreds of wing and gown. The ape swept another hand through the air, indiscriminately gathering butterflies and thyme sprigs alike, filled its mouth once more, then went back through the ivy. Was that a good sign? She waited.

The ape thrust its head out of the leaves and gibbered at her. It waved clumsily, then withdrew again. Presumably she was meant to follow.

Yarrow slid into the swaying plants. Ivy snagged on her clothes and wimple: she had to hold it in place as she pushed through. Thyme leaves rubbed their spiciness off on her. As she came out the other side of the vine-hung bridge, a blue butterfly landed on her nose and spread its wings, blindfolding her. A moment later it was gone: the ape had eaten it.

The ape and the woman stood regarding each other. They were in a sort of plaza formed by the corners of four buildings thrusting out into the West Passage. Beyond, the Passage rose up a hill to the clear sky, where the tip of Yellow Tower glowed in the noon sun. Between the plaza and the hilltop was a warren of buildings more ramshackle and looming than any Yarrow had yet seen. Instead of grey granite, they had become a warm brown sandstone. Delicate carvings flowered around the doors and eaves, and makeshift awnings of pink or blue or white fabric shaded the windows. Some of the windows had glass rather than lattice, though a lot of the glass was broken.

But there were still no people.

"Water?" said Yarrow.

The ape loped away from her on its short legs and long arms. For a moment of near-delirium she thought perhaps it was responsible for the handprints, but it walked not on splayed fingers but curled-up knuckles, and of course it was far too small. She had never been so thirsty in her life.

Straight on under more overgrown bridges went the ape, past empty windows and lichen-bearded walls, its limbs making soft flabby noises on the cobblestones. Straight on went Yarrow in its trail, trying not to think of cold water from the house well, or the drops she had caught on her tongue on rainy days, or the milk the women gave her as a child. Even the after-dinner wine would have been welcome. Her mouth and throat burned, and her head ached. Still the ape went on, at a steady, moderate pace, occasionally treading on the hem of its own gown, now and then snagging a butterfly to munch. Yarrow did not for a moment think it could lead her astray: it was a relief to have someone to follow again.

They passed under another curtain of ivy, but when Yarrow emerged the ape had vanished. The crest of the hill was a few yards away, framed by two mismatched towers. Assuming she would see the ape from there, she went forward.

The Passage fell away before her feet at a sheer angle, so steep that for a moment she thought it was vertical. Stairs flanked it on both sides as it plunged to the bottom of a great circular valley, then continued on straight to Yellow. For the first time, she saw the foot of the hideous tower.

All around the vertiginous sides of the valley were mansions and courts of buttery stone, even more ornately carved than those in the Passage, and roofed with green copper. Many of them held fields or orchards, much like those around Grey, but these were flourishing. The courts were arranged in nine large rings, enclosing and enclosed by gardens full of lawns and topiaries and pavilions. Promenades and avenues linked them up; Yarrow thought she could see tiny figures moving along the roads. As she stood there, a white bird took flight from a nearby roof, drawing her eye along the valley floor.

In the center of the ringed courts was a wide maze of green, living hedges. Nine pools were scattered through the maze in no apparent pattern. Every one sported the white plume of a fountain, like an egret's feather in a cerulean beret. From each pool, a thin stream ran with uncanny straightness into the wide, still lake at Yellow's foot. A corbel-arched portal stood out from the tower's side. A sleek, dark boat was moored there, for the tower rose right out of the water. The bird winged up and up, and Yarrow took a simple pleasure in its flight. Then it passed in front of Yellow Tower and she realized that something was off. Aside from the familiar, violent ugliness of Yellow, some small element in the valley was amiss, as if the place were sick and didn't yet realize it.

The tower cast no reflection. The pools in the maze showed only sky and hedges; the lake held clouds in its deep blue, and quicksilver images of the white birds, even the high, thin bow and stern of the boat; but neither pools nor lake reflected the tower.

A horrid noise behind her startled Yarrow. The ape was poking its head out of an open window and making some awful hoo hoo hoo racket to get her attention. Eagerly, she turned her back to the bright sickness of the valley and went to the window.

"Water?" she said.

The ape retreated into the building. Yarrow waited. A door opened that she had not noticed, and the ape stood just inside, clearly expecting her to enter as well. She stepped over the threshold and out of the West Passage.