Touch

A forest sprang up around us we pedaled down a lane in the French countryside. All was green darkness, until we burst back out into sunlight to see a sparkling white chateau before us. We stopped.

I pulled out the guidebook. "Says here, the building is made of limestone, which gets harder and whiter as it ages."

"That's nice," she said, her eyes on the gleaming chateau. "I'd like to go touch the castle."

I nodded, nose to guidebook as she skipped towards the building.

I was well acquainted with her desire to touch. At Notre Dame, she had moved from pillar to pillar, dragging her fingertips across the stonework. Her face had been in shadow but her eyes glowed in stray sunbeams from on high.

I joined her at the chateau steps moments later. She gazed about in wonder. "Paris was familiar. And Rouen, too. But when we got here… this countryside. It's like home. But... I feel like there's something that I've forgotten, something very important. She picked up a piece of gravel, and rubbed it between her fingers.

We bought tickets. The first ones of the day, the gatekeeper told us, handing us a pamphlet.

We went through a portrait gallery, the folk who owned the chateau throughout the ages. At the other end of the gallery, we took the stairs upward. On the landing there was a great cut-glass urn, filled with roses as bright as new blood. I admired them, and went on.

I heard a gasp behind me. My wife stood before the urn of roses, fingers in her mouth.

"What happened?"

"Thorns," she mumbled around her fingers.

"The roses had thorns," I said, like an idiot. Then, as though she were the idiot, "Honey, why did you touch the roses?"

"I wanted to see if they were real. They were."

"Stop touching things," I said gently to her, and took her hand in mine.

We wandered from room to room, following signs and reading placards like good tourists. She was subdued, and did not speak.

We went into a child's nursery on the third floor.

"Honey, what's wrong?"

She looked away from me. "I feel… like this whole castle is asleep."

"Maybe because there aren't any other tourists here? Or furniture. It's Victorian. It doesn't go with the castle."

"Maybe."

I squeezed her hand, let go. I read to her from the pamphlet: "The nursery. The bed accommodated a night nursery maid. The day-nanny had the room to the right (closed for renovations until June)..."

I read the entire blurb aloud. She said nothing. I looked behind me, to see her reaction--but she was no longer in the room. She might have gone off looking for a restroom. I looked down at the guidebook again. A slight, cold breeze touched my cheek. I looked around.

Just beyond the night nursery maid's bed, there was a crack in the wallpaper. The breeze hissed from there. I jumped the velvet rope that was supposed to keep the tourists from fondling the linens, and slid my hand into the crack. It was a door.

I pulled the door open. A staircase spiraled up. Dust lay deep and even on the stairs, dented by a set of footprints. I followed the footprints up.

At the top was a round room, a tower room; it had once been glassed in, I supposed, but the glass had broken and fallen out long ago. Leaves lay like a thick carpet on the floor, and pigeons roosted in the rafters.

A bed, covered in tattered graying cloth sat opposite a large spinning wheel. The spinning wheel was polished to gleaming, a dark wooden jewel in the sunlight.

My wife stood next to this spinning wheel, running her fingers over the curves of it. I was transfixed. Her hand came over the round of the wheel, and probed upward over the bumps of the spindle. I was filled with dread. I tried to cry out, to warn her. Her fingers approached the wicked point, stopped there but for a moment.

Blood welled up as the point pierced her fingertip. My wife's eyes met my own.

"I just wanted to touch it," she said. She crumpled to the floor.

"No--! No, no, no," I gasped, rushing towards her. My foot caught, and I went sprawling. I tried to stand up, but something held me down. Sharp pains darted through me at my wrists and ankles, and when I managed to look around, I saw that briars were holding me down.

The thorns-- were they drinking my blood? Roses grew and bloomed over my eyes.

The sleep touched us both.