“Focusing?”
“I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s this place in my thoughts that keeps bringing things through.”
“Keeps?” His gaze cut to me. “Has this happened before?”
“The violet I made, for my test. I think it was the same. Only instead of something coming through on its own, I reached in and plucked it.” I didn’t mention Rochelle—I didn’t feel confident arguing with him, knowing he still thought her appearance an illusion of my desire.
His mouth settled into a thoughtful line. I felt restless and turned again to the narrow window. “Why do we need to be up here?”
“It’ll be easier for you. You’ll feel it right away.”
“Feel what?”
He gestured to the floor. “Lie down.”
My legs didn’t seem to want to move.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, soothing. “Whatever comes, you will never be alone. We will do it together.”
Reassured by his promise, wanting to believe there was a world where I’d never be alone, I gave a tight nod and went to the center of the carpet to lie down.
“Most sorcerers cannot do this awake. But the last time I tried to help you, you”—he looked down, as if overcome with emotion—“left me.”
The night in the chapel. The place in my mind where those memories lived drifted toward me, but though I stiffened, I let them pass untouched. “I am sorry. I hadn’t understood.”
“Most don’t. I sometimes forget that your power does not always match your capacity to understand it. I’m trying to teach you something most sorcerers do not have the capability for. You can do it. I know you can.”
He was so easy to believe. His promises didn’t seem outlandish or absurd. It seemed to me, a prostitute, a novice in all things, that this way of obtaining power—listening to his every word, believing the world he created for me—was the true way. Hadn’t the nuns spoken always of Jesus’s surrender? Hadn’t I already learned what every patron desired in exchange for their gold? So I crossed my hands over my belly and took deep breaths against the race of my betraying heart.
“Close your eyes and let me find you,” he ordered. His voice was Lord Death as I met him on the road.
The surrender was hard, which filled me with shame—that after all this time I could not make it easier. Partly, this was because I sensed the thread of myself, the spiderweb that Perchta had taught me to find. And because I knew it was there, even if only a little, I felt him push against it and I had to lower it to allow him in.
When I did, there was a rush, the bracing chill of his presence, pulling me right out of my body. I steeled myself against the urge to shove him out, to run again. I would not run again.
As I rose, it was startling to see myself—my body—left behind. I could see myself as I never had before, without the warp or illusion of glass or dreams. I looked healthy and well kept, dressed in fine clothes, with color in my cheeks and my black hair nearly blue with its shine in the afternoon light. My flesh filled out on my bones after a lifetime of hunger. And yes, Renaud was right, I was beautiful. I looked like asorceress, a powerful sorceress. A sudden rush lifted me higher, and my body below arched as if we were connected by an invisible cord.
Could the cord be cut? I panicked—trying to ask Renaud, and then panicking again when I realized I had no voice. I was above my body. I did not know how to return. I nearly lost my grip on everything, but beneath me, Renaud knelt and laid one broad hand on my stomach, over my hands, fingers splayed wide and masterful. It was clear what he was trying to tell me. He would keep my body safe. He would keep me safe with himself. His presence filled that shell of myself and I heard his whisper in my own mind.
Fly.
I looked up to the roof of the tower and soared.
The pitched black tile fell below me. The endless blue sky rose. I flew! I cannot tell you, even now, how it felt. I tipped in the wind like a red kite, wings spread, through the tightly folded mountains, and it was as if I were truly myself for the first time. The forest was so rich and dark beneath me. It didn’t feel malevolent from this height. I wanted to bury my hands in its canopy like I was a child digging my fingers into warm river mud. I circled and dove and swept along the top of the swirling trees. My heart lightened, every fear falling away. I felt, for the first time, completely and utterly free. And in that freedom, I knew exactly where I wanted to go.
Trusting Renaud had a firm hold on my body, I turned into the wind. High over the mountains, I found the river and followed its thin silver vein, over waterfalls and ravines, high peaks, and then finally, the village appeared in a wide-open valley of vineyards and clustered farms.
I just wanted to see Dacia. I wanted to see her face. I wanted to make sure she had not been taken. I had sent my letter, but of course there was no way for her to respond.
I felt as if I were seeing the village for the first time. It seemed even smaller and meaner—a mar on the landscape at the edge of the vineyards. The Blue Moon was easy to spot on the eastern wall. I droppedto the thatch, expecting to have to find a way inside, but I slipped right through the roof. It seemed all barriers were permeable in this form. I slid down in the eaves where we slept, and found the girls were all getting dressed for the evening.
My months in Renaud’s home had made me forget these details of my life. I was shocked to remember how small these attic quarters were, how many girls he had stuffed up there, how few belongings we had, and how thin the blankets were. And then, too, there were the spirits. Girls without faces, girls with broken limbs, girls mute and desolate. How had I lived among them for so long like this? They clung to the rafters and the corners, always in the peripheries. I had pushed away the memory of them as soon as they weren’t around me.
Beneath me, the women fretted together, shivering despite the heat. Dacia kept to herself, dressed only in a thin shift with her legs pulled up and her sewing in her lap. She sat in a corner, her curly hair bound back under a loose white veil, and though she sat quietly I could tell she was focused. Her gaze kept flicking to the younger girls as she worked, listening. I wanted to cry. I wanted to fall into her arms. I was relieved to be near her and see her whole, but it also made my throat ache. Unbidden, all the memories of her body, opened and softened to me, leapt to mind. But I would never forget her eyes when she saw me revealed, the rejection I had both feared and known would come from the moment we met. I was nothing to her.
“We’ll go together, two by two,” Dacia said to Christine and the two young girls.
“Is that enough?” Christine asked.
