“Like I said, I don’t remember it well,” said Jol. “She kept me for a while, afterward. I don’t know how long. I lived in her house. I was happy, I think. She was kind to me. And then she sent me out to the market, and when I came back, the doors were locked. I waited outside for a while. Weeks. I slept on the stair like a beggar. But they never opened for me again.”
I felt a shiver of fear as I imagined the House closed against me tonight, Cornelius waiting, unknowing, on the other side of the door, for a friend who never would come home.
“And what about you?” I said, turning to Basil.
He fussed about with his collar for a minute, as conscious of his dignity as a cat. Two spots of high color showed on his thin cheeks. He was embarrassed, I realized, despite his air of officious assurance. We were all embarrassed, to have fallen in love so deeply and ridiculously, romantically or otherwise, and to have discarded our lives and families for the sake of that hopeless, helpless love.
“I met a Lady,” he said stiffly, giving the word one of his capital letters. “And the rest is much the same as the others. She did not take the whole thing. Just a part of it. I do not remember the actual taking, as Jol does not.”
“You do not feel it?” I asked. “You live, as normal?”
“It is different,” said Basil. “I have a portion of my heart left, and so I do not suffer as Jol does. And as others do.” He cast his gaze around the room.
“But ...” I clasped my hands together, struggling to understand. “I work in a butcher’s shop. I slice bodies up for a living. I know how they work, the machinery of it. It is not possible for anyone—an animal, a person—to live without a heart pushing your blood about. It just isn’t.”
“We do not know the manner in which they take it, or what exactly they leave in its place,” said Basil. “There are many who lose so little, barely a speck of a heart, that they can live a long life without missing it. But those of us who are called by them and follow—they carve pieces from us.”
“I remember jars,” Jol piped up unexpectedly. “Rows of jars, like someone was making jelly.”
“But you all survived it,” I said. “You all still live and work. And you meet here to talk about it. Theyreleasedyou. And if you stay close enough, you’re not in pain . . .?”
It’s not so bad, a soothing, lying inner voice said to me.You can stay with him. You can live this way, too. They do. It’s not so bad.
“I wouldn’t say we survived it,” said the elderly woman sourly.
“We were all taken in the last year or two,” said Basil. “That’s about how long we last. Afterward.”
“What do you mean, how long you last?”
“How longwelast,” said the elderly lady sharply. “You’re one of us.”
“Whatever replaces our heart seems to wear out after a few years,” explained Basil in a village-preacher voice. “That’s why time is of the essence. For all of us. More so now than ever, as you’ll see. Some seem to live longer than others, which may be due to the varying severity of their harvesting, or to the relative skills of the sorceresses. Some of the Ladies may be more powerful than others, we speculate.”
“And then what happens? When it wears out?” I asked.
“We ... go away,” he said.
“Are you saying we die?”
“We don’t know,” said Basil. “Some of us have died, certainly, at our own hands, or from the inevitable heartsickness, but others just ... disappear, eventually. This ... society of the similarly affected has been in place for many years, and we have written records of all who have come here. Aside from those who, as I said, decided to take their own lives, we have never receivedanyinformation about the hundreds who have come here for help and then vanished.”
“Hundreds?” I repeated faintly.
“Hundreds. And we have, as I said, been operating for a long time. There may, of course, have been others who were ‘harvested,’” he winced a little saying the word, as if it offended his delicate sensibilities, “of whom we don’t know, but they, perhaps, did not make it to the city, to their ... captors. We cannot be sure.”
“It’s not such a bad life,” said Em bravely. “We keep each other company. You know, for as long as we can. I have a job in the fish market. So long as I stay close enough to the sorceresses, it doesn’t hurt too badly. And who knows, I might have a good year left in me.”
“Itisa bad life,” said Nat violently. “It’s no sort of life at all. And it’s getting worse.”
“Show her,” said Basil.
There was a stirring, a feeling of sudden, focused attention. Nat hesitated, then began to unbutton his shirt. I could tell this was for my benefit only—everyone else had seen this before. I watched, unable to imagine what might be there. My mind was numb.
When he had unbuttoned it far enough, he twitched aside the left-hand side of his shirt, revealing his chest. Which was ... missing. The left-hand side of his rib cage had caved in, exactly like the overripe peaches eaten out by fruit flies in our garden.
What was there instead? A furred cavern of mold. A hole in his chest, obscuring what would have been nipple and muscle. Ashen and rotten, and, I think, spreading. The veins that snaked out in tendrils from this hole were an unhealthy greenish black, and the very edges of the skin surrounding it were pink with sepsis.
“What’s that?” I asked after a long pause. “Is that what you all look like?”
