I fumed in the kitchen, fiddling with a pigeon pie crust and pointedly avoiding the sorcerer until he left, hearts dancing across my brain. I nursed my anger like a beloved babe at the breast, making sure it grew and strengthened, fueling me in preparation for the pain I would have to endure that day.
I had fashioned a heart shape on the roof of the pie without realizing it—a child’s heart, simple and symmetrical. Innocent. Nothing like the real thing, which was lumpen and lopsided, valves popping out like tentacles. I had seen more than enough of them in the butcher’s shop.
I could not hear any sounds of the horses or the carriage, but as soon as the sorcerer left the House, I felt it. His carriage was swift, and the pain increased just as swiftly. It was like the journey from my village had been, but in reverse, as the pain worsened with every mile between us—the magical horses ran faster than the real thing.
And as that invisible rope that tied me to him stretched and frayed, I doubled over, startling Cornelius, who jumped back with a bottlebrush tail. I ruined my heart-shaped crust as my hand flailed out and caught its edge.
“Are you all right?” mewed Cornelius.
“No.” I groped for the black wall, realizing, now that the sorcerer had gone, how fleshlike it felt to the touch despite its hardness. It turned my stomach, suddenly, the warm black mass of it.
The House felt alien and strange without the sorcerer, its familiarity and homeliness gone, as if it had never been. And the pain was a torment. Worse than before, or at least I thought it was—waves upon waves, each growing in power, washing me toward a dreadful shore.
Perhaps I had just forgotten the agony of it, as they say women forget the pain of childbirth and long for another babe after a few short years.
I plopped down into a chair, my head in my hands, and imagined the sorcerer on his journey. I pictured the carriage rolling into a village, as it had on the day I had been snagged, all dark curlicues and jewel-studded spokes.
I pictured the door opening, as it had then, and Sylvester stepping out with that fine, high shine on his boots and the light glancing off the blade of his equally fine cheekbones. I pictured him brushing his black curls aside, scanning the crowd with his gray blue eyes, and fixing his gaze on one of the prettier girls, someone like Hallie, maybe, or one of her friends.
She would make her way through the hushed crowd toward him, staggering a little as if mazed, and he would stretch out one white hand to draw her in to the carriage, close the door, and twitch shut the velvet curtains.
Once inside, what? He would fill her ear with sweet words, perhaps, as he dazzled her eyes with his beauty. Perhaps he would dampen her wondering, open mouth with kisses, as well. Perhaps more. Perhaps the long, white hands would open her bodice, or part her legs.
That was what we all believed they did—or hoped they did, in our shameful and fevered imaginings. It is what I imagined him doing to me, although I allowed myself only a minute or two of such dreaming, alone in my chamber at night.
I put up with the pain for an hour, maybe more, sitting doubled over on the kitchen chair, with Cornelius at my side, before crumpling and feeling my way down the long corridors to my bedchamber.
The House sat inert, refusing to make my staggering journey any shorter or easier. Cornelius trotted along by my feet, clearly concerned. As concerned as a cat could get, at least, which was merely one or two notches above complete indifference.
“If I lie down for a while ...” I said, but couldn’t finish the sentence.
I collapsed onto the dark bed like a toad plopping into its pond and fell into a parody of slumber. The dreams of vines and long, twisting passageways were back. The passageways were familiar now, having spent so many days wandering the fickle corridors of the House. But the vines were just as strange and unkind as they ever had been, fat as snakes, and I pushed my way through them with ever-failing strength.
I slept a damp, overheated sleep that left me feeling more exhausted than if I had never slept at all. Cornelius stood guard beside the bed, tail lashing.
In my troubled dreams, he grew sometimes as big as a house, a panther made of black flame, and then shrank down to a flake of ash that could have fit beneath my fingernail. Once, he stood on his hind legs and grew as tall as a man, and wore a shifting, many-caped coat, like the sorcerer’s traveling garb.
“Foss,” I heard him say once or twice. Or perhaps he was just hissing. With a cat, it was hard to tell.
I had even less perception of the passing of time than usual. The pain was a dark, emaciated figure that picked me up between its teeth and worried me like a terrier does a rat, then dropped me for a moment of relief before dancing back, laughing, to snatch me up again.
“Why is it so much worse?” I panted to Cornelius, but of course he could not answer, because I had not really spoken, but merely dreamed that I had spoken.
The fever-dream Cornelius spread great bat wings and flew to the ceiling, where he hung staring at me with enormous upside-down eyes.
In my few moments of clarity, I thought that perhaps the sorcerer’s magic was as chaotic and disorganized as he said, and tinkering with the spell had only made it worse. Typical. He should have left well alone, rather than tangling me in another spell gone wrong.
To my surprise, however, the pain seemed to break eventually, like a fever. I lay on the sodden sheets, gasping, aware that the respite would not last forever, but grateful for it all the same.
I stayed very still, as I had when I was a sprout and had imagined monsters under my bed waiting until they heard movement to pounce. The pain did not come back, though, and I ventured to sit up and look around. Cornelius was at the foot of the bed, curled up and sleeping, but stirred when I shifted position.
“You all right?” he said.
“I think so,” I said. I stretched out my arms experimentally. They looked white and frail, but the movement didn’t cause any pain. I swung my legs out of bed and staggered to the washbasin to splash my face.
“Is he back?” I asked. That would surely be the only reason for the sickness easing.
“No,” said Cornelius. “Still gone.”
