Page 13 of Spring's Arcana
There were, in fact, feline footprints in the snow all through the back garden, circles and loops, lines and the odd blank space where one had leapt instead of striding or trotting. Maybe they’d held a whole damn convention there last night, like that old story about the King of Cats.
“Still, I suppose it’s not bad,” Maria Drozdova continued. “You will hurry and fetch a few things, then Baba will make me all better.” Mom laced her skeletal fingers together, the knuckles turning white. It was the only sign of anxiety she permitted herself, even now. “But listen, you must bring everything to me. Not toher,youbring everything tome first,you understand? You must think of your Mama.”
“Yes, Mama.” Nat worried at the top of the cardboard box, working stiffened paper free of industrial glue. She had her mother’s tapering fingers and cupped palms, and sometimes Uncle Leo studied her hand with a strange expression, rubbing her knuckles with his thumb.Dancer’s hands, just like your Mama.“Sure you don’t want some of these?”
“I’m not hungry, Nat.” There was a flare of her mother’s patented temper, still terrifying even when she was knocked horizontal and full of metastasizing cells in failing organs.
Nat swallowed, hard. “All right.”Why did you accuse me of lying all those years? You had to know.But asking would only make Mom sullen, so Nat turned—as always—to what would please the queen of the little yellow house instead. “So I bring you this thing, whatever it is, and she makes you better? That’s it?”
“That’s it. And then it’s home to see dear Leo.” Mom’s eyes darkened, half-lidded, her eyelashes gray instead of rich chestnut with gold at the tips as they had been until two months ago. “He didn’t come this time, either.”
Considering how you act when he does, I’m not surprised. But keeping the peace was Nat’s job, so she suppressed a weary sigh. “It’s hard on him, Mama.”
“Hard onhim.” Mom closed her eyes, her kerchief rustling against the pillow as she shook her head. “I’m the one dying.”
Don’t say that. But honestly, Nat hadn’t expected anything less from her mother. When you grew up with someone, you learned more than you ever wanted to know about them; weren’t all children supposed to keep secrets and bear up under the weight? “How exactly is Mrs. de Winter going to help you?”
“She has her ways.” A faint glimmer showed under Mom’s lashes. Was it tears? “Now, you might want to write this down, Natchenka. You know how your head is.”
“I think I’ll remember.”I’m not twelve anymore, for God’s sake.And she’d just managed to save up enough for first, last, and deposit on a shitty little sublet in Bed-Stuy just before her mother’s collapse. So,so close to escape, scrimping hard because, of course, most of what she brought home had to go into the yellow house’s hungry mouth.
Cradling her mother’s bony form on the kitchen floor, waiting for the ambulance, and Nat thinkingjust when I was about to get out of here too—the memory filled her with unsteady loathing each time she thought about it.
“Very well, but if you forget…” All trace of excitement or strength was gone. In its place was Maria’s old familiar weariness, a creature enduring because submission was not even close to an acceptable option. “You should take care too. Not even a scarf on your head, you’ll catch cold. Then where will I be?”
“I guess you’ll have to make do with the nurses if that happens.”And good luck bullying them around instead.But that was a terrible thing to think; if Nat was lying in a hospital bed all day feeling her body die by inches, she’d be a little cranky too. “So what’s this thing I have to get?”
“Many things, and one very important.” Mama made another irritable little motion. Even her feet twitched. “Come here so I may whisper, Natchenka. Baba has her ears everywhere.”
Oh, for God’s sake. Nat hauled herself up again, stowed the crackers, and moved to put the railing down.
After all, what was the harm? Mom couldn’t grab Nat by both shoulders and terrify her with hissed imprecations anymore. If she wanted to whisper like girls at a slumber party, fine.
KNOCK THRICE
It hurt to breathe, it hurt to move. It hurt to look at the wistfully pretty young woman with her honey-tinted hair and her dark eyes. But she did, because she was Maria Drozdova, the original instead of the copy, and she’d trained the girl to be obedient.
To be a good child, to do as she was told.
It had been difficult, yes. First, of course, there was wringing the parasite free of your own body, and she could have swallowed it then—but that wasn’t the best solution, was it?
No, if you wanted something better, something more permanent, there was another path. Drozdova thought she’d had more time; the flower had stubbornly refused to open after a steady diet of Catholic school and American television, the penitential poison and that hateful glass teat dripping its toxin everywhere, siphoning off good energy that could be used for other things.
Still, it was sometimes pleasant waiting in the little yellow house. There was Leo, and there were other lovers—though none with his usefulness, and even he started to fade as she did. There were also the stray sips and swallows she could gather around the edges, while a tear-streaked face was lifted to hers and a little maggot sniveled “But I heard it, I did, I’m not imagining!”
Though you could encourage, it didn’t do to outright hurry a flower; delicate processes respond poorly to brute force. So time passed and this inimical country scraped every inch of the Drozdova, a relentless abrasion.
Sometimes it was little prickle cat-claws, hair-fine needles doing almost no damage. Most often, though, it was the roughest possiblesandpaper stripping away her power, her grace. And every bit of scouring was cumulative.
Her daughter was taller now. She waxed while Maria waned, and forcing the child to visit Baba had been unexpectedly difficult. The layers of obfuscation, of careful misdirection, that allowed Maschka to crouch in the little yellow house had turned in her hand, like a sharp garden tool biting its user. Soon not even the house’s carefully painted camouflage would keep the angular shadows at bay, and once Maria’s daughter was eaten the shadows would come for her.
Which would be ironic, and infuriating as the deep, grinding cancerous ache burning in her belly.
So the Drozdova lay in her hospice bed, enduring the shouting nurses and poking, prodding doctors, waiting for the culmination of careful work she’d done for nearly two decades. Not very long; an eyeblink, really, for one of her kind.
Time had crawled at a mortal pace, these past two months. And the little honey-haired bitch might be enjoying her new status, unaware of what all that fresh, warm strength meant. She’d always been stupid, dreamy—a thoroughly American child.
It didn’t matter. Finally, the tiny spaniel had trotted to Baba’s, probably shaking and shivering with fear the whole way. Now she was even asking about thecats,Christ forgive her as Leo would mutter, though the man knew how she felt about that pale bastard stealing one of her most treasured festivals.
