Tanith Lee by Snow-Drop

Author:Snow-Drop
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-12T02:16:47+00:00

The house glowed at them from across the lake, and when the car brought them to the door, extra lights flamed on in welcome. Cristena could see Snow-Drop was impressed. A nasty complacency had thinned her lips.

They went into the living room. Here, where the watercolors had hung in such abundance, Snow-Drop made a living sculpture. Cristena tensed for the house to respond in some way. But, when it did not, when no poltergeist activity of any sort took place, she decided that she had already exorcised the architecture.

They drank a fresh yellow wine.

Cristena asked Snow-Drop questions about her life, and rather to her surprise Snow-Drop responded without either reticence or verbosity. She laid out events in bleak rows before Cristena. It was a sordid, unjoyful existence which Snow-Drop led, out of all keeping with her looks. And it had made her mean and ordinary in spite of herself. She had not ascended to tragedy or grotesqueness, but plummeted to the mealymouthed and the dull. Only glints of acquisitiveness distinguished her, and it was obvious she reckoned she would get—was getting—something out of Cristena. Otherwise she dwelt in the shadow of the circus and especially of the dwarfs. She was their slave, seeing to their laundry by hand, shopping for and cooking their meals on those occasions they demanded it. Cristena suspected that Snow-Drop was also their sexual toy. For that matter, almost anyone’s, maybe. There was a metallic fragrance of willingness, which grew stronger as the wine left the decanter and filled their bodies.

“Off-stage, do you always plait your hair?” asked Cristena.

“Shall I undo it?” asked Snow-Drop.

“Yes, why not? I’ve got a marvelous comb that perfumes the hair. We can go upstairs. I’ll show you my dresses. You might like to choose some. They’d be too big for you, but we can always have them re-tailored.”

They went up the stair and along a passage where the artist’s paintings had hung, and into Cristena’s dressing room.

Cristena threw open doors.

“Look, that crimson silk would suit you. My husband bought it. I never wear red. And this black one with sparkles.”

With a studied unself-consciousness, Snow-Drop slipped off her tawdry skirt and top and stood in faded under-things, dim pants and tights, and since she did not wear a brassiere, only a thin little cotton bodice to conceal her bosom. Her acrobat’s body was perfect, firm slim muscle lightly padded by white satin, and the symmetrical rounded young breasts bobbing in their vest. She tried on the dresses greedily. Cristena pinched in material to show how well they would suit Snow-Drop once they had been altered.

From its case she brought the magic comb and switched it on. When it had heated up, she combed Snow-Drop’s amazingly long, tendrilly hair. A scent of warm roses, jasmine and cinnamon throbbed in the room. They drank more wine.

“There are some gorgeous underclothes, too,” said Cristena. “I never use them.”

She opened the drawers, and let fall a shower of black and white silk corsets, black stockings sewn with orchids, garters of crow lace with silver buckles.

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