Page 61 of The Salt-Black Tree
There wasn’t even the faintest hint of her mother’s perfume, or the rosewater she dabbed beneath her eyes.To keep them bright, Natchenka.Just bleach, floor wax, the persistent reek of mortal illness, and a brassy edge of finality.
Of death.
All the times she’d been in here, Nat had never done more than glance out the window. Now she stepped close, resting the fingertips of her right hand on the sill.
The glass panes in their heavily repainted frame gazed onto what had been a mansion’s garden back in the Gilded Age; in summer the nurses might wheel a patient or two out to get some sun. Now it was a forlorn, half-frozen star of wheelchair ramps set amid winter-dead shrubs in concrete containers, a leafless oak too sleepy even to shiver stretching its bare arms skyward in the southern corner.
Nat turned away, stuffing both hands back into safe pockets. They turned into fists, clenched aching-hard. She stared at the empty bed, sunshine on her shoulders granting no warmth.
I want to live.
“Mama.” It was ridiculous to talk to yourself in an empty hospice room, but who cared? Maria couldn’t hear her daughter now; Nat could say whatever she wanted.
Of course, had her mother ever really heard her? Nat had just been an impediment, a tool.
“God,” she breathed, reflexively. It was silly, even if she’d still been mortal. Who did divinities pray to? There didn’t seem to be anybody; the buck stopped right at your own front door.
What was she doing here? Nat closed her eyes, but only for a moment; the sudden velvety blackness was a reminder of the crusted tree’s squeezing, amniotic dark.
If you’d loved me, Mom, I might have traded myself withouthesitating. But if you’d loved me, would you have asked me to? Would you have done this?
There was a step in the hallway, cat-soft with a slight metallic tinge at the forefoot like a sharp, bright silver toe-cap on a black leather boot. Nat ghosted to the door on slipper-soft espadrilles. Peering out into the familiar, dingy mortal passageway, she bit her lower lip.
Nurses at the station, their scrubs in cheerful cotton colors. A balding male orderly pushing a cleaning cart; in the next room, muffled voices—a doctor’s tone of forced cheerfulness, a patient’s hesitant replies.
The Drozdova let out a shaky breath. She glanced back at the pristine, much-bleached bed, waiting uncomplaining for its next occupant.
Things did change after all. Even divinities.
A few moments later, the room was empty. Not even a lingering thread of jasmine remained.
HOME AGAIN
She could have made the bus come early, but Nat waited at the familiar stop amid a collection of oblivious mortals. The morning warmed as noon approached, slush trickling under icy carapaces. Tires grinding over sand-gritty slush made sounds like salt-crust dropping from black branches into a cinder crust; when the bus finally snort-heaved its massive bulk to temporary stasis she climbed aboard, tapping her finger once on the fare-reader. It beeped pleasantly, and the driver—a woman in a black knit cap with frost-reddened cheeks—didn’t even blink, staring at traffic to gauge its flow before piloting her battleship into the stream.
Sniffles and coughs ran down the bus’s length; a businessman cradled a leather attaché and half-dozed, swaying as the vehicle jolted into motion. A young curly-headed man gave his seat to a heavily pregnant Filipina woman in a flowered blue scarf, a patterned, padded plaid raincoat straining at her middle. A schoolkid with a red backpack sat next to a brown-haired woman whose chin and protective closeness both suggested they were related; he stared at Nat from under his thick blond bangs, his mouth slightly open.
Nat smiled. He grinned back, one of his front teeth gone. It felt like he had a doctor’s appointment. A faint golden sparkle swirled over him and his adult companion—mother, aunt? A pang went through Nat’s chest.
So she could bless them, the… the human beings, the mortals. It was a nice surprise.
She held on to the upright, her legs remembering how to ride a bus’s sway with no trouble at all. The rolling of Marie Laveaux’s carriages was far more unsettling; so was the steady rhythm of Ranger’s big black horse. She even preferred this to the floating speed of Dima’s black car.
The familiar, no matter how painful, was often preferable to anything else.
Each stop was a port on a bumpy, heaving sea. Nat worked her way closer to the door; already, they were only two scheduled halts away from South Aurora and Harney. Which was a few blocks from her destination, sure, but she wanted to walk.
Besides, there was a faint grinding at the edge of her awareness. A heavy growl under a shining black hood, its snarling silver ornament a shape somewhere between wolf and bear.
She hopped down from the bus steps and set off at an amble, hands back in her pockets and her head down. A mortal girl would hurry, her mind already home and planning cleaning chores, watering houseplants, making sure an elderly uncle had eaten, worrying about the bills, considering want ads for sublets or roommates, wondering if she could pick up a few more hours at her first or second job.
Someone shouted. A car horn blared in reply, the song repeatedad infinitumover the city all day, and all night as well. Under that music lurked the carnivorous engine-sound, a gleaming black car moving shark-lazy. A dark gaze behind a clean windshield—no ice or slush-spatter daring to collect on its lens, no snow falling to clump on wipers—rested upon her back. Incense-heavy cigarette smoke floated lazily through a slightly lowered window.
No mortal car would honk atthatblack beast. It stayed hidden behind the packed mountains of snow solidifying after being scraped aside by plows; the drains underneath ran with stealthytrickles as a midday thaw worked at the edge of winter’s bony grasp. Scattered salt frayed the freeze as well. After a last violent hurrah, the season of cold rest and dormancy was taking a breather. Maybe there would be another storm or two, but some invisible balance had tipped.
The days were lengthening, a globe-wobble drawing the sun closer.
Nat paused at the corner, considering the snowy waste of a half-vacant lot. The haunted house was a lot smaller than she remembered. Its boarded-up windows were no longer as baleful, and though she remembered what it was like to run past with her heart pounding and her breath whistling, she felt nothing but a strange piercing nostalgia.
