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Taking a deep breath, I stretch my left hand out, cupping it as though to catch a stream of falling water.
The world explodes into color and light and sound. Things I only vaguely sensed before wash over me like ocean waves.
I hear Remi shifting in his bed above and see dust motes drifting down from the ceiling. A wisp of pungent smoke comes through a crack between the floorboards at my feet, and I can smell that it belongs to the burning leaves in the magister’s pipe and not the hearth. I’m wearing thick wool socks, and not only do I feel the tight weave of Mistress la Fontaine’s knitting, I’m aware of the grain of the wood I’m standing on and the small knot beneath my big toe.
It’s more than I can comprehend at once. Even the air in my chest is so heavy with scents I have the urge to expel it. I’m drowning.
I jerk back out of the moonbeam like it’s made of fire, and to my relief—and agony—everything looks normal again. Almost. I can see and hear much better than before, but not nearly as well as when my hand was in direct moonlight. Overwhelming as those moments were, there had been something…wonderfulabout them. Powerful.
I want more.
There must be a way to ease into it. I cover my ears with myhands and close my eyes to cut those elements off. Then I exhale until there is nothing left in my lungs and step fully into the light.
Three. Two. One.
I inhale slowly and deliberately, savoring individual scents as they pass through my nose: the scratchy, dense fibers of wool from my skirt, the arid dust from the ceiling dancing with the fresh, floral pollens of spring. An unpleasant sourness from the barrel of food scraps Mistress la Fontaine places where street urchins can dig through it. That last one is muffled. The lid hasn’t been raised yet by searching hands.
Once I’ve identified everything I can distinguish, I shift my attention to what I can feel. The moonlit air caresses my skin like silk. Below my feet, the floorboards bow a hair’s breadth with my weight. If I concentrate, I can sense the eight-legged treading of a spider until it crosses the gap to the next plank of wood. My skirt sits low on my hips, pulling on my waist enough that the bruises from the other night feel fresh.
Now sound. I ease my hands away from my ears.
Wind brushes across the window frame as loudly as a broom. Remi snores—no, Mistress la Fontaine in the room across from his does. I turn my focus to the night outside and discern the rapid fluttering of moth wings and the leathery rustle of a bat diving toward it with a high-pitched shriek I’ve never been able to perceive before.
There are the steps of the watchman patrolling one block away, alternating with the rusty squeak of his lantern. Drawing back in, closer, I hear the scrabbling of rats in the attic of the home behind ours, the drip of water from a gutter.
The heartbeat of the man standing in the alley below.
