treasured far more than you ever were in that dingy mill town of yours.'
Granddad left. Andrew found himself at the balcony with dry heaves, no food in his gut. He cried, wept until he ached all over. Then he crawled on to the bed and stared up at the canopy of gilded silk. He longed for the smells of home. The wet stone, moss, the musty cellar, a crackling fire of hickory and oak, and Aunt Molly's scones. Here, the dry air smelled of dust and peat, cinnamon and sage.
It was dark when the door opened and an old woman entered. She went to the bedside and sat down, stroking Andrew's hair. In the darkness, he whispered, 'Mum?'
'I will be your mother, your father, your God, my son. And you will be my greatest joy. Lie still, remember all that has been your life, and feel the joy and pleasure that innocence brings. I will not cause you pain, or touch you. In turn, your fear will pass, your cares and longings will lessen.'
Andrew tried to sit up. Her hand went softly to his chest. 'No, Andrew. Trust me. This will be like a dream. Lie still.'
He obeyed. The woman had a quality even more compelling than the granddad. Her eyes shone in the dark, the same pale blue, her pupils sharp pinpoints floating in the centre. She smelled of cedar wood and orange blossoms, though it was more like distant smoke from a smouldering fire than emanating from her. She put her hands over him, as if warming them on the heat that rose from him. He closed his eyes and the dream came.
Nightmares, really. First, he saw his mother, young and naive, silly and carefree. She went to the pub to drink ale with her girlfriends, until a tall, handsome man came in and broke up the girls. He cornered Bernadette and filled her full of flattery. She kissed the man she hardly knew and let him paw her right there in the pub. His hand went under her skirt and she was wet with desire.
The man walked her to his car and proceeded to take her. They were like two naked organisms, undulating and folding into and out of each other. After he was done with her, he told her he loved her. She didn't believe him. She didn't dare. They kissed passionately, he promised he would call on her, and then he dropped her at her parents' flat.
The next night, she found another man, and the next night another. None of them ever called for her, and none of them was around when she found herself pregnant. So, she began sleeping with her sister's husband Phillip, who had always fancied her more than the plain Molly. She claimed Phillip was the father. He killed himself rather than face the shame, and Molly. Poor Molly.
Phillip had mortgaged the house to the limit, had gambling debts and expense accounts for presents to the lovely young Bernadette that were begging payment. Molly lost the house, destitute, on the dole, but when her sister came crawling for help with the brat, Molly swallowed her pride and went to live with Bernadette in their parents' house. In the end, Molly thought, the baby boy could not have been Phillip's. The timing was off by almost three months. Phillip had just been another one of Bernadette's fools.
Then there was poor Aunt Molly; stealing from the people she cleaned house for, taking a ring here, a watch there. Nothing they could prove Molly had taken, things they could have easily misplaced. In the dream, Andrew saw her standing at her wardrobe, a box of booty in her arms, thinking of the life she'd have when she hocked it all and bought herself a flat of her own. Her antipathies for her bitter sister were evident in her wish that all that was Bernadette's turn to dross. That Andrew was more her child than Bernadette's and one day she would tell Andrew the truth. That his mother was a whore, not a secretary at Babington Hospital. She laughed then, deeply, loudly, without remorse.
The nightmare ended. The woman swooned, sated, as he awoke. He looked up to her. She had an aura of light around her that twinkled and pulsed. She sat down on the chair beside the bed and wept. Andrew sat up. In his mind, he thought to go to her, comfort her. She sobbed on. But he could not seem to muster the concern to move. He watched her until she went quiet.
'What happened to you? Why do I feel like this?'
She seemed to wake from a reverie, and then fixed him with her bright eyes. 'He did not tell you?'
'The granddad? No, he just talked about essence and treasures. Was it me made you cry?'
The old woman rose up, took a few steps away. She thought a moment about what she might say, then said nothing. She opened the door.
'Please,' Andrew said flatly.
'Oh, what's the harm.' She returned to the bed. 'You will know as soon as you talk with the other children.' She sat down, leaned against the bedpost. 'My son, do you see some of the uglier truths of your life now? Do you feel the sorrow in that truth?' She waited but Andrew remained impassive, silent. 'I have lifted the veil of ignorance you have relied on all of your ten years. Do you not feel different for the weight of your innocence now gone into me?'
Andrew looked within. It was as dark and wet as the night the granddad had taken him, but there was no glistening.
'You are unlucky in that you are mine. I will always weep at your loss and the sweetness of my fullness. It confuses. In time, you will no longer be confused. You will just be .' She laughed dryly, as the granddad had. 'And to think that some of the silly human race rather reveres that state being . They call it 'enlightenment' and spend a lifetime seeking to attain it.' She rose again, chuckling, went to the door and smiled a smile like dice without dots. 'Until tomorrow.'
When the door shut behind her, Andrew looked at his hands, felt his face. They were the same as always. He had not changed, really. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would look and see if they had a library with any books on Turkey. He hadn't finished the one he'd left behind. Somewhere.
Venus Rising on Water
Tanith Lee
Tanith Lee was born in London and lives on Britain's Sussex Weald with her husband, writer John Kaiine, and two cats. She began writing at the age of nine and worked variously as a library assistant, shop assistant, filing clerk and waitress before having three children's books published in the early 1970s.
When DAW Books released her novel The Birthgrave in 1975, and thereafter twenty-six other titles, she became a full-time writer. To date she has published more than seventy books and nearly 200 short stories. Her novels include Sabella, or The Blood Stone, The Blood of Roses, and the 'Blood Opera' sequence (Dark Dance, Personal Darkness and Darkness, I ), while her short fiction is available in collections such as Red as Blood, or
