The Face in the Frost

fear of dry insect shells, crackling, peeling, dusty things with skeletal limbs, choked him and made him thrash around in the chair until he woke up.

Immediately, he sat up straight and looked around the dark room. Nothing was wrong. He shook the ashes off his lap and went to the window to open the heavy shutters and let in the chilly night. Across the empty square, the stretched mask of an orange-brown moon was setting behind the wreckage of Melichus' house. The briar tree hissed and tossed a little and then was quiet. Prospero left the window and checked the staff, which was still propped against the door. He went to the plain oak bed, turned back the sheets that smelled a little of cedar nuts, and stretched out under the blankets till his feet touched the solid footboard. Prospero slept quietly till morning, dreaming only, as far as he could remember, of floating over housetops in a balloon. He would reach down and spin the weathercocks with his hand.

5

5

When Prospero awoke the next morning, he stared for a long time at the blinding white clouds that lay along the broken line of gabled rooftops. After a few minutes, his eyes began to hurt, so he rolled over and stared at the white blotches that danced in the black mouth of the stupidly ferocious gargoyle fireplace. He feared the day's work, and he wanted (half-consciously) to keep his mind unfocused. But, as soon as he was aware of what he was doing, he shook his head, shuddered, jumped out of bed, and began mechanically gathering up his belongings, as if he were collecting firewood.

After he had stuffed books, snuffbox, and tobacco box into his green bag, Prospero looked quickly around the homely little room and took his staff away from the door. As he grasped the heavy stick, the knuckles of his right hand rested momentarily against the thick wooden door, and he had an odd sensation in that instant. It seemed that the wood suddenly gave under his hand, as if some pressure from outside had suddenly been removed. Prospero stood there for a few seconds, and then he pulled the door inward, so violently that it slammed against the whitewashed stone wall. No one was in the hall, which was still dark, though it was morning outside. A couple of burned-out candle ends dripped wax beards from their sconces.

He went back into the room and lit the bedside candle, which he held up close to the outer face of the door. The wood was crisscrossed over and over with long scratches: some of them were needle scrapes, others were wide and deep, and one ended in a ragged gouge that must have gone halfway through the door. Prospero dropped his candle. When he could think clearly again, he began to wonder why the thing hadn't climbed in through the window. The shutters had been open most of the night.

He turned and went back into the room. The window sill was the answer to his question: Some superstitious (or prudent) traveler, days or weeks ago, had drawn a powerful hex sign on the stone sill in rain-blurred yellow chalk. Prospero thanked him, whoever he was, and sat down on the bed.

'I wonder if the landlord was disturbed by the thing?' he said to himself out loud.

This question, in its turn, was answered by the look on the landlord's face when Prospero went downstairs to pay the bill.

'Keep your witch's money,' said the old man, staring hatefully at him. 'And, take your magic out of this inn and out of this town. Do I look tired? Well, I've been up all night praying. I don't know what you brought in here last night, but I hope the other guests didn't hear it or smell it, the way I did. I'd call the watch and have you put in prison till we could try you and burn you, but they say you can come back after you're dead. The other one did.'

Prospero would have explained, but he knew that the response would be another tirade. So, he took three gold coins out of his pocket and flipped them casually over his shoulder. They shot the length of the room and were imbedded deep in the limestone mantel of the fireplace, where they are to this day. On his way out, for good measure, he crossed the eyes of the stone gorgon.

As he walked across the square, Prospero thought of his planned investigation of the ruined cottage. That would have to be left to Roger if he came this way, assuming he was alive, and Prospero was assuming that his best friend was still alive.

It did not take Prospero long to get to the west gate of the town. But, once he was outside the thick spiny hedge, he realized that he didn't have the faintest idea of which way to go. He hardly expected signs, but on the other hand, what was he going to do? Two farmers stood by the city gate, arguing about seed prices. He walked up to them, took off his hat, and bowed.

'Excuse me, but I am traveling north on foot, and I want to avoid going through the forest you people talk about here. The inn was full of terrible stories about it.'

One farmer turned and gave him an odd look. 'I'm surprised they'd talk about it at all. But, if you want to know where it is, so that you can avoid it, I'll tell you. Straight along that dirt road about five miles. If you want to be sure just step off the road and stand inside the forest a bit. Then get out of it and go on. You're safe during the day, as long as you don't go too far in. You'll know when you're in it.' He gave Prospero another suspicious look and turned away.

The black mucky road ran straight down the western face of Briar Hill and into a green shadowy cleft. It cut between two banks of shelving mossy sandstone for about three of the five miles Prospero followed it, and then it became a weedy ditch about three feet wide that wound through scratchy bushes and large sprouting ferns with scrolled green fronds. After that, the road stopped-no longer a road, just a wide clearing, flat as a lake and covered with hairy, tangled, yellow grass that lay close to the ground. And on the other side, the forest.

It did not look haunted, especially at noon, this crowded, textured, interwoven wood. Prospero saw every shade of green, from light, bleached, papery, yellow-green to a dark, wet, inky green that was almost black. Willows, poplars, maples, oaks, and stubby kinked mulberry trees. As he crossed the little clearing, he noticed that the wood-at least the part of it that he saw-was surrounded by a loose fence of closely planted wooden poles tipped with spear blades and linked by three tiers of reddish iron chains. Nothing that a man might not break down in a few minutes, but it could keep something in. The gate was more impressive: two heavy round stone pillars, and between them, a single spike-topped door of thick pine boards banded with iron. Again, like the fence, this barrier was merely symbolic, since it was fastened by an unlocked metal latch that could be lifted easily. Atop the wide pillars were two rain-eaten stone statues. The one on the left was a cowled monk who stood facing into the forest with upraised arms; the other statue, a naked, scrawny, kneeling shape, looked out toward the glade, but his hands covered his face. Prospero looked once around him, shifted the heavy bag to his left hand, and lifted the curved latch. The door swung inward very easily, and without noise. When he turned to push it shut behind him, he looked up at the protesting stone monk. The lower half of the face was broken away, leaving in the hollow of the cowl a look of blank gap-mouthed fear.

Once he was actually inside the forest and the oiled gate was shut behind him, Prospero knew what was wrong. There are times when you feel that you hear doors slamming in the distance, voices calling your name; you see blurred things, far away or very close up, that look like people until you focus on them. That was the trouble. The whole place seemed slightly out of focus, very slightly off.

If was as if you were half asleep. There was a buzzing in Prospero's ears, and he had to stare at a tree for several seconds before it looked like a tree and not a leaning furry shadow. He felt very nervous, drowsily nervous, with prickling dark borders on his sight. A glass bell was ringing somewhere deep, deep in the forest. An icy green glass bell ridged with frost, trembling on a green willow branch.

Prospero shook his head to clear it of this image. The light on the forest floor, even at noon, was dim, with little wavering circles in clusters here and there. The circles moved back and forth in a way that Prospero did not like,-the branches shifted and did strange things just out of his line of vision. After a few minutes, some of the strangeness went away, but the queasy feeling of distortion was still there. He picked a narrow strip of crushed grass and fol­lowed it into the close-crowding trees.

As he walked along, Prospero noticed more things that he did not like: Clumps or mangy and worm holed ivy