Page 53 of As Many Souls as Stars
‘Do it,’ bloodied Esther told her. Esther spun around to look at her. ‘It is the only way.’
Short-haired Esther said, ‘Kill me, and our souls can be mended.’ Then she stretched her arm out further, to display the weapon. It was an oyster knife, snub-bladed and hooked. ‘Cut me like she did.’
Esther took a small, hesitant step forward. Then someone screamed, and the scream was painful, white-hot and burning. Esther shrieked, scrabbled at her own skin, writhed and gasped as the dream burst its seams—and she was in her room. It was dark. Something was moving outside her window, cawing furiously, raking at the glass, filling the room with high-pitched squeals.
Esther groaned and rolled off the bed, stumbling toward the window. She saw the bird outside and realised, betrayed, that it was her Little Shadow. ‘Stop,’ she cried, as she opened the window. ‘Stop,please.’
The crow cawed and shuffled in place, seeming almost contrite. A cool breeze flowed across the room, Esther’s skin puckering with the chill.
‘You wanted to wake me,’ she said to the crow. It cocked its head at her.
Now that Esther thought about it, there was something newly familiar in her Little Shadow. Its eyes, featureless pools of black, seemed to betray a flash of human intelligence.
The crow hopped nervously from foot to foot. Esther reached out a hand—usually, it let her pet it—but this time, it turned and launcheditself into the night sky. Esther opened her mouth to call out for it, but it was no use; the crow had disappeared.
Her eyes prickled with exhaustion. Esther closed the window, and then she went to pull the covers back on the bed. She was surprised to find the tips of her fingers raw and oversensitive, dragging against the fabric with a painful rasp. Hissing, she withdrew her hand to look at it. There were specks of blood and dark filaments beneath her fingernails, as if she had been pulling a tapestry apart.
Esther spent most of the next day practising what Miriam had taught her, making her hand immaterial, over and over, putting it through tables and walls. Then she did it with her entire body, becoming as insubstantial as air; she stood in the cavity between two rooms, feeling the shadows curl around her. She usually didn’t like the dark, but it was almost comforting to be part of it, to disappear entirely. No curse, no Thomas, no Miriam Richter. Just Esther and the shadows, twins in the black.
It was an unpleasant feeling, the faint pain of the shadows taking power from her; but the joy of the outcome seemed to allay the cost. Miriam had said, hadn’t she, that her soul was strong enough to sustain such magic? Everything worth doing required sacrifice—Esther knew that intimately. Her life had been full of the sacrifices she had made in the name of her curse: her relationship with her brother; her chances of marriage; her ability to live without regret or fear. In the face of those things,thisseemed so inconsequential. She would feed herself to the shadows with a smile, knowing that this time, at least, she was guaranteed her reward.
At one point—her hand halfway into the wall—Isaac emerged from his own room into the same corridor. He had a top hat on that appeared a little large, halfway falling off his head, and a gold-topped cane that Esther suspected he had stolen from Thomas.
‘I’m off to my club,’ he said. ‘Daniel Hawthorne got his ear cut off in a duel, and he’s put it in a jar to be displayed. We’re doing a ceremony for it.’
‘I am very happy for you,’ Esther replied.
Isaac glanced at her outstretched arm. ‘Your hand is in the wall.’
‘Yes.’
They stared at each other in silence.
‘Righto,’ he said. ‘Bully for you, I suppose. I’ll see you this evening.’
‘Have a good day,’ Esther said, and he tipped his hat to her.
Once he was gone, Esther grew bold enough to experiment further, offering more and more of herself to the shadows. The more she did it, the more instinctive the process seemed to become—the darkness started to intuit her requests before she could even form the thoughts fully. In exchange for a mote of her soul, it formed a series of shapes on the wall: silhouettes of ships on roiling seas, spinning snowflakes, a bent-over apple tree. It felt like offering a dog bites of food for tricks—if the food were herself, she supposed, as macabre a thought as that was.
As Esther made one of the shadow-apples fall to the floor, she noticed a light patter, and looked outside to see that it was raining.
Esther crept down to the kitchen, out the back door, and into the garden. She took her coat with her, expecting to cover her hair from the rain—but once she was outside, she found the sensation of it pleasant, and she let the water drip into her eyes. It wasn’t a cold day—likely the warmest day of the year so far—and the rain was soothing as it drummed softly against her skin. Esther discarded her jacket onto a bench and reached her hands outwards.
She wasn’t certain it would work. It was midday, and the clouds prevented many visible shadows. Little to command, then, but they would be enough; they had to be.
Esther closed her eyes, and she offered herself to the darkness. She imagined that this spring rain was a storm, that the clouds were seething and furious. She pictured lightning dancing dragon-like above her, weaving its way toward the ground; that when it touched her, it would not hurt her, but instead embrace her as a lover; and then there was pain as the shadows took their due, a searing sharpness that was both awful and exquisite. Through her lids, she saw a furious light, and the air filled with the scent of char. When she opened her eyes again, her hair was floating with static around her face. A crackling brightness was pooling in her palm: lightning squirming like a living thing, fluttering between her fingers.
‘Esther,’ came a voice, and the lightning skittered away, shooting back into the sky.
Esther turned around. Thomas was in the doorway, watching her with his face blank, as she stood, soaking wet, in the middle of the rain.
He didn’t look surprised. He didn’t look frightened. He didn’t even look angry.
Esther thought that somewhere—in the minute fissure of his pressed-thin lips—there was the beginnings of a smile.
Isaac was at his club for dinner, so it was just her and Thomas left at the townhouse. They ate in the dining room, a space dominated by a large oak table so tall Esther’s elbows had to raise awkwardly high so she could eat. Despite there still being some waning daylight, Thomas had the curtains closed and the candles lit. It could have been much later than it was; there was no clock here, unusually, and so the passage of time was uncertain. The stuffiness of the room, with its heavy Persian carpets and its dark-green walls, was oppressive. The air smelt more of damp and candle smoke than it did of food.
Thomas had yet to comment on what Esther had done with the lightning. He had only told her it was time for dinner, and then walked inside. She had followed him, dripping water onto the floor, and traipsed upstairs to change. When she’d returned to the dining room, he’d been sitting at the table, waiting for her.
