The Mirrored World by Debra Dean

Author:Debra Dean [Dean, Debra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adult, Historical
ISBN: 9780061231452
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Unloosing the Material World

Chapter Eight

I found I could feed Xenia by pressing a spoon to her lips till they opened, ladling in a bit of broth, retrieving the spoon, and holding her jaw shut till she swallowed. It required the unflagging persistence of a mother bird. I took Andrei’s place in their bed that I might look after her, and my sleep was as restless as it had been when we were children and last shared a bed. Muffled sobs seeped into my dreams, along with muttered sounds that might have been words. Once, she cried out, “Blood! Blood!” her voice choked with anguish. When I tried to rouse her, she clutched blindly at my arm. “There is so much greed in the world.” She keened and mewled but could not be roused from sleep, and in the morning she was just as she had been, vacant-eyed and mute. Then one night I awoke and felt her watching me.

“How long has it been?” The voice, though feeble, was her own.

“A week and some. A week and two days.”

“You’ve returned, then.”

I answered that I had not left, except to go out for necessity.

“Moy solovushka,” she whispered.

It was her pet name for Andrei, “my nightingale.” I thought she was asking for him, and I was loath to tell her again what had broken her in the first place. I cast about for some way to couch the truth in gentleness or avoid it altogether.

“Do you suffer?” she asked.

Her gaze seemed directed behind me, and I looked there. The room was black and still, and I could see nothing. It came to me then: it is on the ninth day after death that the soul is said to leave the body. On the fortieth day, it departs this world. Between these two points lies a blank space that the Church does not account for, but peasants will tell you that the soul returns home and takes up residence behind the stove. She thought he was in the room with us.

My senses stretched taut against the darkness. Her breath caught. And released. Caught, caught again, then released, thick with tears.

“I thought it would be me,” she rasped. “Not you.”

Over the following days I tried to draw her out from her trance, talking on whatever subject came into my head. I shaped my discourse round familiar things, reminding her of times from our girlhood—the day she had fallen into the river, the bonfires built by the villagers to celebrate Shrovetide, the elephant that carried the jester and his wife—anything I could think that might spark some recognition in her face. I sometimes fancied she was listening, but she might only have been entranced by the movement of my lips or the sound of my voice.

Then, one afternoon, I suggested that the bedchamber might use a little airing. Struggling with the latch on the window, I pried it open. The bright smell of fresh snow washed into the room. “There, that’s better, don’t you think?”

“Ice.” The word popped out like a cork from a bottle.

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