The Hill House

The Hill House pretended to stand on a hill in much the same way it pretended to be a house, which is to say there was a hill but no house to stand atop it, and the adventurous who tried to reach it often found themselves confused and ambling back the way they had come. 

It was not a place one returned to. From the sky, the only way was down, and down began at the gates of a house-like thing that could never quite decide what kind of house it wanted to look like. It did not know how many rooms it had, or what kind of rooms there were, if there were rooms at all — a loophole granted only to the partially existent, because to name a number was to commit, and the Hill House did not do commitments. 

Hence the policy of no returns. Hence the absence of people willing to return.

Armina unlatched and opened the gate — a cheerful little thing, carved from wood and painted soft white — wondering if doing so marked her different up here, or if it marked her different down there. Whatever she had given up to make this entry, she could not feel it. Perhaps it was not important. 

Perhaps it was, and she’d simply forgotten why.

She walked up the path, letting the gate clatter behind her. Little birds hopped out from under her feet, twitching their speckled feathers. Birch trees arched overhead, their striped trunks curved in elegant, unnatural shapes, their scattering of leaves decorating the ground with dappled sunlight, their roots tangling round circlets of meadow flowers and spotted mushrooms. 

The path curved left, away from the House and toward the wheat fields where the whipping-trees sang hollow songs under guise of wind. It itched at her to follow. There would be time later to share morning tea with the First of Them, to watch the adventurous make their rounds, to eat rose cakes ad rinse her honey-stuck hands in the fountains. There would be time later to make up for her wanderings now, if she took the proper left and lay on folded wheat to watch the cabbage-eaters flutter their paper-thin wings while the sun baked her skin brown and the bittersweet juice of wild apples ran down her chin to dry on her throat and woo the clover bees.

This was the Hill House, after all. Time would always wait for her here. 

She pulled off her sweater. From her pocket tumbled a wooden bird, a little lark, and when she picked it up, the crest atop its little head pressed faded lines of charcoal into her hands.

The path curved left. Armina folded her sweater over her left arm, held the lark firm in her left fingers, and walked herself to the right. Shin-high grass crunched under her boots. The sun pressed down, the wind wove round her, and the hill breathed its greetings even as it tried to make her leave.

In thirteen strides there crossed a stream, and she almost washed the lark clean in it. 

In thirteen strides there lay a tree, and she almost pressed the lark into it. 

In thirteen strides there stood a small cottage house like a decades-old postcard unexpectedly brought to life, and she almost dropped the lark at the sight of it.

Rai smiled at her from the old rocking chair. “Darling, it is good to see you.”

Armina pressed her fingers into the crest, searching for charcoal to grind between her fingers.

“It hasn’t changed,” she said.

“Oh, it has. It remembers you, is all. It knows the way you like these things and it is very happy to see you—“ Rai’s voice went sharp, to match the press of clavicles through her sun-worn skin— “as am I.”

“I’m sorry. It’s good to see you, too.”

“Forgiven, darling. Come sit with me. The cakes are not done, I thought you might want to see the fields first, but tea is almost ready.” Rai adjusted the sun draped across her shoulders, letting it spill down her right side and pool at her feet. A tea set flew out of the open door, the polish glinting, and settled neatly on the foldout table on Rai’s left. “Sit, darling, before you suffer from the heat. Everything will be ready soon.”

“That’s alright. I ate before coming here,” Armina said.

“Did you, now? What did you eat?”

Armina gripped the lark. “I don’t remember.”

“And you are not hungry?”

“I’m sure.”

Rai smiled thinly at her. “Your room is ready, you know, if you want to nap. I’m sure your road was very long.“

“I’m leaving.”

Rai paused, delicate. “I think you are confused, darling. I think it is the sun.”

“No, no. I’m alright.” Armina shook her head. She was not here for the boys that had left a long time ago. “I came to tell you that I’m leaving.”

The smile flattened. For a moment, Rai looked old, with her white-wisp hair floating round her sharp face — but she was and would always be the First of Them, the First of Paradise, the one and only of her kind. Time was odd, at the Hill House, because Rai had not made space for it. There was a price for entering the Hill House, because Rai demanded it. The Hill House was Rai’s house, the paradise that Rai had made, and it was not a place one returned to because it was not a place that one ever left.

“For how long?” Rai said.

“Forever.”

“Ah.” Rai leaned back into her rocking chair. “You mean to say you are leaving me.”

“Yes.”

“What do you plan to do?”

Armina did not try to remember. “I don’t know.”

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t know.”

Rai curled her lip. “Do you know why you are going?”

“No.”

“And you do not care?”

“I’m going with a friend.” The lark was a bruise in her clenched first. “We’ll figure it out.”

“You mean the one on the hill? I was wondering why they would not come closer. I take it you warned them?”

“They promised to wait. I didn’t have to tell them anything.”

“And you do not mind trading my affection, my support for their . . . ah, presence?”

“No.”

“I see.” It was as though Rai had tasted something sour. “It is cheating, you know, to bring trinkets with you.”

“We thought it was only fair.”

Rai rocked forward and stood. The birch trees stilled, caught in a moment, and the speckled birds all hopped out of sight. Something about the we had gotten to her — now it was her turn to hit back.

“It is supposed to be a cleansing,” Rai said, her voice a lullaby, singing of birch wreathes and dances under summer rain. “You are supposed to sacrifice, and the sacrifice shows you the way. If you rely on the trinket, you will never know if you made the right choice.”

“I made the choice before I came here.”

“But you do not remember it. How can you know it was the right choice?”

The lark turned to putty. It was still wooden, but it was no longer lark-shaped, and instead fit the curves and creases of Armina’s clenched fist.

“I don’t think it’s about right and wrong. I think it’s about choices. I made one down there because I never remember to make one up here.”

“You don’t know that for certain. As you said, you do not remember. What if you are wrong?”

Armina shrugged. Rai’s face bled youth as though she had never lost it.

“Maybe, but I remember that I have people waiting on me. I have to follow through. I’m leaving, First of Paradise. Thank you for the honey cakes.”

The House collapsed in on itself. The birch faded into callous pine. What had been sunlight and sweet-smelling meadow ringed by apple trees drowned in weeds, their purple flowers reaching hungrily skyward, and the rocking chair leaned awkwardly on broken legs beside a rotted table and pieces of smashed of porcelain.

Armina stood alone on an unremarkable hill in an unremarkable corner of the world, nothing but a dilapidated cottage with its filthy garden, no more a beacon in her life than a road inn or a local bar. The Hill House was Rai’s house, had been Armina’s house, a place to call her own, so long as she followed the Rai-made rules. There was a cost to leaving it.

“I will take this, then,” Rai said.

Armina blinked. She could smell wheat fields, blown to her by an inexplicably dry wind, and with it the urge to find them so she might lay down and watch the march of popcorn clouds across the sky, to paint her fingers red with hand-picked berries and spend an evening catching frogs, if only for a short moment — but any recollection of where she might find such a paradise was gone.