The Face in the Frost

went back to the kitchen, where he nervously finished his dinner as the rain swished and rattled at the diamond- paned window; he tried to play solitaire with an old oblong deck of tarot cards; and he finally settled in his wing chair again to read by the light of a squat, ruby-shaded oil lamp.

By nine o'clock, the storm had passed over and crickets were chirping in the wet grass outside. Prospero found himself still edgy, and he was reading the same sentence about wood trolls for the third time when the door­bell rang. The bell was a small, tinkling silver toy with a chain pull, but just then, it sounded like a rusty iron bourdon tolling in an empty church on a winter night. Prospero let the heavy volume he was holding slip to the floor with a loud dust-raising whump. He stared for several minutes at the half-open study door that led to the dark front hall. Finally, with a sudden resolute jerk, he stood up, crossed the room, and peered into the narrow vestibule. The linen-curtained square window in the front door threw a wavering yellow patch on the splintered floorboards, and the huddled shapes of picture frames, dressers, and coat trees leaned out from the walls. Staring intently at the blank yellow window, Prospero stepped into the hall and lurched into a massive mahogany coat tree. The tall spindled thing rocked on its warped base, and three or four umbrellas fell in the wizard's path with a swishing clatter. Shaken, but still relatively calm, he stepped over the scattered junk and got to the door, grasped the cold porcelain knob, and pulled. The swollen black door would not open at his first jerk, or at the second. On the third try, it rattled suddenly inward and the chilly night air, smelling of cut grass and rain-drenched lilacs, blew gently into the hall. From the blistered white porch ceiling hung a square yellow-palled lantern, and around it mosquitoes, moths, and other night insects flittered and ticked. The tiny doorbell was still trembling on its rusty hook. No one was there.

Prospero stood under the lamp, staring out into the moonless night. At first, he saw only vague shapes, some darker than others, but before long, he became aware of a small figure standing halfway down the flagstone walk. As Prospero watched, the figure raised a threatening arm and spoke in a deep voice:

'Kill them all!'

At this, Prospero did a strange thing. He began to smile. His long wrinkled face, which had been set in a tense frown, was now creased by a delighted grin.

'Kill who all?' he asked in an amused voice.

'All those blasted, pesty, nitty insects!' the figure roared. 'If yellow light attracts moths the size of horse blankets, why don't you get a purple lamp or a green lamp? At least let me smash the one you have!'

Still grumping, the person on the walk came forward until he stood in the light. Prospero saw a short, burly, middle-aged man with a close-trimmed dark-red beard; the hair on his head was beginning to get gray, and it was hard to tell whether he was going bald or just wearing a badly overgrown ton­sure. The monkish aspect was also suggested by a mud-splashed brown robe, over which a shiny rain slicker was thrown. But, instead of sandals, the man wore scuffed brown walking boots. In one hand, he held a dripping sou'wester rain hat, and in the other, he held a long brass-tipped staff. A fat brown valise crouched at his feet, like an absurd and lumpy short-haired dog. It was Roger Bacon, one of Prospero's best friends and a pretty good sorcerer in his own right. He had been in the North Kingdom for the last three years, and before that, he had been in England for three years. But, you would have thought the two men had not seen each other in fifty years, the way they pounded each other on the back, bellowing wisecracks about falling hair and midriff bulge. When the welcoming uproar had subsided, Prospero stepped back and made a deep, comic bow.

'Welcome, noble friar! And, when did you return from the land of ice and mist?'

'Just tonight. A fishing boat put me ashore on, the coast, and I found my way here as well as I could, I got-'

Suddenly, Roger looked up, because some movement near the porch ceiling caught his eye. A huge gray moth, at least two hand spans across, came flapping down from the shadows. It went straight for Prospero, and before he could raise his hand, it had plastered itself against his face. Roger gave a sharp cry and rushed forward, shooing at the thing until it dropped to the floor with a light plop and an unpleasant rustling sound. But, before Roger could step on it, the moth rose, dived once at his head, ad then floated off into the night. The two men stared after it for a full minute, and when Roger turned to look at Prospero, he saw that his face was pale, even in the yellow light. And, his hands were trembling.

'Look here,' said Roger in a worried voice. 'I wish you'd tell me what's going on. You're not normally scared of insects, but then that was no ordinary moth. I've never seen one like it.'

Prospero sighed and robbed at his face with both hands, 'I'd tell you what was going on if I knew. I've never seen anything like it either. It smelled like a basement full of dusty newspapers. But, the smell isn't the worst thing about it.'

'That's true,' said Roger, looking up at the porch lamp. 'It never came close to me and I was scared of it. Well, it's just more of what I felt when I got here two hours ago, and-'

Prospero stared at him. 'Two hours ago! Why didn't you come in?'

Roger took a deep breath and let it out slowly. 'As soon as I came through the gate, I knew that something else was here, something that had nothing to do with you or your spells. So, I poked around out here in the rain in hopes of catching the thing or at least finding out what it was.'

'And, did you find anything?'

'No. Out by the fountain, I scared off something that might have been a dog, though it didn't look like one: It stood near the edge of the forest and stared at me for a moment, but when I threatened it with my staff, it ran away. There were sounds in the tall grass and in the bushes. All this in the wild rain, and your house all lit up. It was a bit like a dream I used to have as a child: I would be chased around and around the outside of my house by a tall, form­less dark creature; every window in the house was brightly lit and yet I couldn't go in. Of course, I could have come into your house if I had wanted to. But, I felt you were safe; the thing was outside.'

'It had been inside,' said Prospero grimly. And now, it was Roger Bacon's turn to stare.

Prospero decided right then that a little false courage was needed-other­wise the two of them would spend the rest of the night looking in closets and under tables.

'Come on inside,' he said. 'The ghastly grimling is gone, at least for the time being, and we have a lot of talking to catch up on. It's getting chilly, so why don't you start a fire, and I'll go downstairs-' He paused and laughed. He was not frightened now and he was genuinely amused at himself. Roger, naturally, still looked puzzled, 'Never mind,' Prospero went on, 'I'll explain later. Anyway, as I was saying, I'll go downstairs and get a bottle of good red wine and some of that hundred-year-old brandy you had the last time you were here. And well see what we can do to that large Cheshire cheese in the kitchen. How does that sound?'

'Fine,' said Roger, and he started to take off his heavy raincoat.

Before long, the two of them were comfortably planted in two large, sagging easy chairs drawn up before a warm fire, which sometimes burned bright sea green or deep cobalt blue because of salts that Prospero had thrown onto the logs. Between the chairs was a small octagonal table holding a dusty green wine bottle, a rapidly diminishing half wheel of cheese, and a plate of crackers. Roger Bacon had been telling about some of his more notable successes in England, and now, he began to tell, with equal delight, some stories about his more egregious failures.

'... and so, I went to work on a brazen head that was going to tell me how to encircle England with a wall of brass, to keep out marauding Danes and other riffraff. I think something went wrong when i didn't put enough yellow regulus of phosphorus in-or maybe there was too much astatine permanganate. Anyway, I got a head that was at least as talkative as your mirror ...'

'I heard that!' yelled a voice from upstairs.

'You be quiet,' shouted Prospero over his shoulder. 'Why don't you go watch late movies or something?'

There was silence upstairs, followed shortly by the muffled sound of bird imitations.

'Anyway,' Roger went on, munching a piece of cheese, 'the head did talk a lot, but unlike your mirror it was deaf as a ... as a ...'

'Brass post?' put in Prospero helpfully.

'Yes,' muttered Roger, giving him a dirty look. 'You might say so. Well, I asked it how to make a brass wall to encircle England, and it said 'Hah?' 'Brass wall,' I said, louder.