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In the back of the house, some of the tall windows still have unbroken glass. Dust motes float in moonlight, seem to sparkle and illuminate the high ceilings with their elaborate molding. In one corner, where in the daytime sunlight would pour through the window, a lily has taken root. Its bloom glows white in the rays of moon and starlight. Its scent fills the room. As she bends to breathe in the blossom's fragrance, Viridis is reminded of the great bouquets of lilies in the little chapel. The whisper of prayers. A hymn. The priest's droning voice.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.
She pulls her red wrap more tightly around her shoulders. The spring night has a chill in it, nearer winter than true spring, though tonight is the turning of the season.
Leaving the lily, Viridis goes to stand at the foot of the great staircase. The railing sags, and as she ascends the stairs, they protest with creaks and sharp cracks, as if they would rather collapse into a heap than bear the burden of her steps. I know, she thinks. I, too, could collapse, shatter into a million pieces, were it not for this skin, these bones insisting on holding together.
Her little watch chimes. Five minutes. Viridis hurries up the stairs, ignoring the sounds of protest they make beneath her feet. Dipping her fingers into the pocket of her wrap, she touches the little piece of parchment, ancient, cracking, rolled up and bound with a thin piece of red leather.
On the first day of spring, Viridis, her mother told her, we will take this to the third room on the third floor of the House of Saint Jerome. I left my mark there, when I came to this world. That, with the words on the scroll, will get us home.
Where you grew up? Viridis asked. But...
It is safe, now, her mother reassured her. They've all gone. The children are grown, the trustees gone or dead, and the house is dying as well. This is the right year. As the winter turns to spring, we can open the door. We can go home.
Home, Viridis thinks. Not my home, but I haven't any home in this world, so why not in my mother's world, that she loved so dearly and never meant to leave for so long? I have no one, no where, nothing left to hold me.
She reaches the third room, stands in the doorway. The floorboards creak and groan. On the walls are scrawls of graffiti from floor to ceiling. Surely not done by the children who lived here, once. But perhaps by lost children who used this house after the other children left. She wondered where the lost ones had gone. The biggest scrawl: Can we go home now? catches her eye. Beyond it, a set of double doors open into another room. Her watch chimes again.
She stands in the middle of the room, takes out the scroll, unties the red leather thong, unrolls the bit of parchment. No moonlight illuminates the room, the darkness making it difficult to read the scroll. She has a little flashlight, holds it over the parchment, chants the words written there in no alphabet she ever learned in school, no language spoken in this world except by two, now by only one.
The house shudders and shakes as if in a great wind. She can hear trees raking the sides of the house, and beyond the double doors, a golden light begins to glow. As she steps forward, the planks of the floor fall away into a great, gaping chasm between herself and the glowing portal beyond.
Viridis steps back from the edge, but she knows she has only moments to enter the portal. Her mother must have forgotten the second room, or maybe Viridis hadn't listened well enough. In those split seconds, her mind races. She could stay – she half belongs in this listless world. She could make it her home. The people in it seem happy enough sometimes, despite the world's desperate troubles, the hungers and the terrors and the haunting despair. She could stay.
But no. A longing, intense and unbearable, pulls at her. The golden light reaches for her, surrounds her. She can smell HOME, hear HOME, taste HOME. She feels it in her bones. She cannot stay. She cannot wait.
The boards beneath her feet fall away. She leaps, soars into the gold of an opulent sun.