“It’s best to be ruthless with the past. It ain’t the blows we’re dealt that matter, but the ones we survive. Now remember, for your sanity’s sake if not your life’s, don’t look at her!”
The woman in red spoke these last words in an emphatic little mutter. Less than a minute later, Rosie was once more standing in front of the blonde woman. She fixed her eyes firmly on the hem of Rose Madder’s chiton, and she didn’t realize she was clutching the baby too tightly again until “Caroline” wriggled in her arms and waved an indignant arm. The child had awakened and was looking up at Rosie with bright interest. Her eyes were the same hazy blue as the summer sky overhead.
“You’ve done well, so you have,” that low and sweetly husky voice told her. “I thank you. Now give her to me.”
Rose Madder held out her hands. They swarmed with shadows. And now Rosie saw something she liked even less: a thick, gray-green sludge was growing between the woman’s fingers like moss. Or scales. Without thinking about what she was doing, Rosie held the baby against her. This time she wriggled more strongly, and voiced a short cry.
A brown hand reached out and squeezed Rosie’s shoulder. “It’s all right, I tell you. She’d never hurt it, and I’ll have most of the care of it until our journey’s done. That won’t be long, and then she’ll turn the child over to ... well, that part don’t matter. For a little while longer, the baby’s hers. Give it over, now.”
Feeling it was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do in a life full of hard things, Rosie held out the baby. There was a soft little grunt of satisfaction as the shadowy hands took her. The baby gazed up into the face which Rosie was forbidden to look at ... and laughed.
“Yes, yes,” the sweet, husky voice crooned, and there was something in it like Norman’s smile, something that made Rosie feel like screaming. “Yes, sweet one, it was dark, wasn’t it? Dark and nasty and bad, oh yes, Mamma knows.”
The mottled hands lifted the baby against the rose madder gown. The child looked up, smiled, then laid her head on her mother’s breast and closed her eyes again.
“Rosie,” the woman in the chiton said. Her voice was musing, thoughtful, insane. The voice of a despot who will soon seize personal control of imaginary armies.
“Yes,” Rosie nearly whispered.
“Really Rosie. Rosie Real.”
“Y-Yes. I guess.”
“Do you remember what I told you before you went down?”
“Yes,” Rosie said. “I remember very well.” She wished she didn’t.
“What was it?” Rose Madder asked greedily. “What did I tell you, Rosie Real?”
” ‘I repay.’
“Yes. I repay. Was it bad for you, down in the dark? Was it bad for you, Rosie Real?”
She thought this over carefully. “Bad, but not the worst. I think the worst was the stream. I wanted to drink.”
“There are many things in your life that you would forget?”
“Yes. I guess there are.”
“Your husband?”
She nodded.
The woman with the sleeping baby against her breast spoke with a queer, flat assurance that chilled Rosie’s heart. “You shall be divorced of him.”
Rosie opened her mouth, found herself quite incapable of speech, and closed it again.
“Men are beasts,” Rose Madder said conversationally. “Some can be gentled and then trained. Some cannot. When we come upon one who cannot be gentled and trained—a rogue—should we feel that we have been cursed or cheated? Should we sit by the side of the road—or in a rocking chair by the bed, for that matter—bewailing our fate? Should we rage against ka? No, for ka is the wheel that moves the world, and the man or woman who rages against it will be crushed under its rim. But rogue beasts must be dealt with. And we must go about that task with hopeful hearts, for the next beast may always be different.”
Bill isn’t a beast, Rosie thought, and knew she would never dare say that aloud to this woman. It was too easy to imagine this woman seizing her and tearing her throat out with her teeth.
“In any case, beasts will fight,” Rose Madder said. “That is their way, to lower their heads and rush at each other so they may try their horns. Do you understand?”
Rosie suddenly thought she did understand what the woman was saying, and it terrified her. She raised her fingers to her mouth and