Illyria by Elizabeth Hand Read Free Book Online

the third floor my anxiety faded somewhat, though as I walked into Rogan's room, I didn't feel the relief I'd expected. Without him, the old nursery looked impossibly, almost cruelly barren and sad. It was even colder than downstairs. There was a glass of water next to the unmade bed, a flashlight, a
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    notebook I prodded with my foot. Rogan's school clothes were strewn across the floor, corduroy trousers and a new jacket, dirty socks and T-shirts.
    I picked up a flannel shirt and brought it to my face. It smelled of Rogan, smoky, slightly acrid. It smelled warm. I removed my jacket and my own shirt, and pulled on his. I closed the door to his room, got the flashlight and turned it on, and went into the outer attic.
    I stepped gingerly between cardboard boxes until I reached the back wall. I balanced the flashlight as best I could, then began to pull out the stack of cartons. Once or twice it nearly toppled onto me, and I swore under my breath until I could get everything back into place. Finally I moved the cartons enough that I could unlatch the hidden door and open it enough for me to slip inside. I pulled the door closed behind me and shone the flashlight across the narrow space.
    Everything was as we'd left it, blankets in disarray and the few books scattered. The loose board hadn't budged. I leaned the flashlight against the door, knelt, and folded the blankets and stacked the books; retrieved the flashlight and turned it off, and sat cross-legged in the darkness.
    Silence. I held my breath as long as I could, and listened. But there was still nothing.
    "Rogan," I whispered.
    I lay down on the blankets, pulled up the flannel shirt until it covered my face. I breathed in his scent, squeezed my eyes tightly shut even though there was nothing to see. I found the place where the blankets still smelled of us, murmured his name, and tried to bring back the sound of Rogan singing, his voice strung between us
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    like the glimmering thread that stretched from Arden Terrace to the city. Only the faintest echo of it came to me; but when it did, there was an instant when I imagined I saw Rogan moving beneath me, darker even than the room, darker than anything; the shadow of the song.
    I shuddered and lay without moving, my tear-streaked face pressed against his shirt. Minutes passed. I listened to my heartbeat slow. Then I heard another sound.
    It was the same rhythmic tapping I'd heard the other day with Rogan, the same oddly surging whistle, like wind or waves. I pulled my shirt down, wriggled forward until I could touch the wall. I pried my fingers under the board until it came loose, set it down, and looked through the opening.
    At first I thought my vision was blurred. The toy theater was exactly where I'd last seen it--perhaps four inches from the wall, lit by those same unearthly footlights.
    But now the stage seemed distorted and unsteady, as if it were underwater. I rubbed my eyes, squinting to get a better view, then sucked my breath in.
    Snow was falling. Not everywhere. Only behind the proscenium, on the tiny stage itself.
    Not real snow. Fake snow.
    And not white but silver and palest blue, finer than any glitter I had ever seen, finer than salt or powder, like something that would flake from the most microscopic shining matter you could imagine: glitter's glitter. It sifted onto the stage floor and whirled in tiny eddies, as though stirred by tiny unseen feet, and where it fell too near the
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    footlights there were infinitesimal flares of gold and scarlet, and the most delicate fragrance, roses mingled with scorched sugar.
    I stared at it entranced, barely registering the shift in light toward the back of the stage where the topiary trees, now crystalline and opal-colored, gave way to knife-edged mountains and a snow-covered beach beneath a night sky, with a full moon snared in the rigging of a spectral shipwreck and a fluttering shadow like a moth's moving slowly, as though injured, across the white dunes. All