10th of Winter
Hurston Hall
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The clock ran a tarnished brass hand across its dust-grimed face with exceptional slowness. It was running at least - Emily had remembered the winding of it. She craved these small tasks with a simple sense of completion at their close, those last few days, for it kept her mind at a task still attached to a sense of hope and read, however meaningless the hope, and worthless the reward. A running clock - but it ran because she recalled the winding of it, and this gave her a haven to hide her mind in.
Her mourning was in silk. She couldn’t afford it of course but at one level, it hardly mattered, now. She had watched others fall into the distasteful slide to penury, and had slid some herself - she had, after all, insufficient servants now to do things like wind her clock. Her husband had sold the more valuable furniture a season ago, and even now, in her final extravagance, she did not have lace or crepe or jet beads. Simple silk that flowed like the spring melt of soot-blackened snow, a silver brooch with the mark of the University. But she would slide no further than that. She would have things done as they should have been, as they always had been, now, to the last. Preservation became an act instead of a plan - Hurston Hall would fall anyway, for she had produced no heir, not even the last years, when she grew desperate and took a lover to try to cheat her way to that place. She was the last flame of the place, and so she would burn, instead of smothering.
She wondered if the lenders would hold until her mourning ended. A full year? It was unlikely. But perhaps.
She embroidered quietly, a single rook, the Hurston’s mark, onto a veil of white for her husband’s grave. It was the last task to prepare him for his burial, for she had not only tidied up his robes of office, but even taken the time to tailor them to the most flattering shape. It was hard for her to say just why. She had never loved him, of course. She had even stopped loving his position, stopped loving the name he had given her, this last year. But, even as that last love died, a ghost sprang into its place, an emotion much harder and surer, and unflinching. He had been a professor of the University, a fellow of full tenure and rank, at one time, before the Corpse had taken hold of the city, even a departmental chair. He had been wealthy, philanthropic (through her, at any rate, for he had found the subject dull), a pillar of the greatest city in the world. His name stretched to the very first days of the Valerian. She was an extension of that and the gods damn her if she did not live it out.
And a martyr in the end, too! Dead in the streets of the University, dead by the hands of the explosion that had rocked the city to its heart. Damn the magicians for their cheek! The Black Wing, she had called their side, truly enough. The joy and beauty of Zeltiva was not in hand-waving and flash and bang. If anything, magic, as far as she could see, was the city’s curse. What had it brought them, after all? Death, destruction, rivalries. The Valerian itself, if she had her guess. And, of course, the Corpse, and his meddling hand.
She was too tense, her stitch slipped and she pricked her finger with the needle. She hissed and pulled it her mouth instinctually, sucking on the wound, testing the rust-salt flavor of her own blood on her tongue. And of a sudden, she could stand the work no more. It was not performing its role, for her mind was back in the dark things, the unchangeable things. She threw the embroidery from and it struck the wall by the clock. The clock stared back, still clawing tiredly at the dust.
She stood, and her foot knocked into a brandy bottle at her heel - empty. And again, she thirsted the stuff. IT was time she should be abed, now, and how would she sleep without it? She pushed hard against the shame at the sordidly of it - was she a drunk, now? A real drunk? And instead she took a candle up - greasy, yellow tallow which irked her further - and held it to the fire a moment to light it, feeling the way the fire heated and curled the minuscule hairs of the back of her hand. Flame slithered onto the wick, and she lifted it again, a drop of hot wax flying from it in the movement to land on her neck.
It sent a sharp cry of animal alarm up her spine, and she drank the alarm in. So this, she thought bitterly, This is how Lefting feels, with that nasty business in her books, the nails in her palm, the blood in her lips.
Felt, she reminded herself. For she must be dead now. And in that thought, as she threaded through the parlor into kitchens - empty - and toward the cellar stairs, she realized she felt a kind of sour pity for the woman, and that shocked her enough that she stopped. For Minnie Lefting? The gutterslut doctor? And yet, for all the mockery she called up, the pity stayed in place, even grew a little.
“Well, I wonder if she’d like my poems now,” she said, and she noticed the slur in her speech. she was, she realized uncomfortably, already a little drunk, and this made her illogically, powerfully angry. She fumbled won the steps into the cellars, and reaching to brush a cobweb from her hair, she realized, too, that she was crying a little bit. And then, with that, she couldn’t hie form it anymore, and her awareness of herself flooded in. She was a 35 year old widow, deep in debt, with a house that leeched money, standing on the bottom of her own cellular steps in an unwashed dress, in search of a liquor bottle. Crying.
And she stood outside of her, and with the freedom of her displacement, she understood the woman there at the bottom of the stairs, and the pity she felt for that woman overwhelmed her. She started to sob, more freely and completely and honestly than she had cried since she was a child.
x
Hurston Hall
————————
The clock ran a tarnished brass hand across its dust-grimed face with exceptional slowness. It was running at least - Emily had remembered the winding of it. She craved these small tasks with a simple sense of completion at their close, those last few days, for it kept her mind at a task still attached to a sense of hope and read, however meaningless the hope, and worthless the reward. A running clock - but it ran because she recalled the winding of it, and this gave her a haven to hide her mind in.
Her mourning was in silk. She couldn’t afford it of course but at one level, it hardly mattered, now. She had watched others fall into the distasteful slide to penury, and had slid some herself - she had, after all, insufficient servants now to do things like wind her clock. Her husband had sold the more valuable furniture a season ago, and even now, in her final extravagance, she did not have lace or crepe or jet beads. Simple silk that flowed like the spring melt of soot-blackened snow, a silver brooch with the mark of the University. But she would slide no further than that. She would have things done as they should have been, as they always had been, now, to the last. Preservation became an act instead of a plan - Hurston Hall would fall anyway, for she had produced no heir, not even the last years, when she grew desperate and took a lover to try to cheat her way to that place. She was the last flame of the place, and so she would burn, instead of smothering.
She wondered if the lenders would hold until her mourning ended. A full year? It was unlikely. But perhaps.
She embroidered quietly, a single rook, the Hurston’s mark, onto a veil of white for her husband’s grave. It was the last task to prepare him for his burial, for she had not only tidied up his robes of office, but even taken the time to tailor them to the most flattering shape. It was hard for her to say just why. She had never loved him, of course. She had even stopped loving his position, stopped loving the name he had given her, this last year. But, even as that last love died, a ghost sprang into its place, an emotion much harder and surer, and unflinching. He had been a professor of the University, a fellow of full tenure and rank, at one time, before the Corpse had taken hold of the city, even a departmental chair. He had been wealthy, philanthropic (through her, at any rate, for he had found the subject dull), a pillar of the greatest city in the world. His name stretched to the very first days of the Valerian. She was an extension of that and the gods damn her if she did not live it out.
And a martyr in the end, too! Dead in the streets of the University, dead by the hands of the explosion that had rocked the city to its heart. Damn the magicians for their cheek! The Black Wing, she had called their side, truly enough. The joy and beauty of Zeltiva was not in hand-waving and flash and bang. If anything, magic, as far as she could see, was the city’s curse. What had it brought them, after all? Death, destruction, rivalries. The Valerian itself, if she had her guess. And, of course, the Corpse, and his meddling hand.
She was too tense, her stitch slipped and she pricked her finger with the needle. She hissed and pulled it her mouth instinctually, sucking on the wound, testing the rust-salt flavor of her own blood on her tongue. And of a sudden, she could stand the work no more. It was not performing its role, for her mind was back in the dark things, the unchangeable things. She threw the embroidery from and it struck the wall by the clock. The clock stared back, still clawing tiredly at the dust.
She stood, and her foot knocked into a brandy bottle at her heel - empty. And again, she thirsted the stuff. IT was time she should be abed, now, and how would she sleep without it? She pushed hard against the shame at the sordidly of it - was she a drunk, now? A real drunk? And instead she took a candle up - greasy, yellow tallow which irked her further - and held it to the fire a moment to light it, feeling the way the fire heated and curled the minuscule hairs of the back of her hand. Flame slithered onto the wick, and she lifted it again, a drop of hot wax flying from it in the movement to land on her neck.
It sent a sharp cry of animal alarm up her spine, and she drank the alarm in. So this, she thought bitterly, This is how Lefting feels, with that nasty business in her books, the nails in her palm, the blood in her lips.
Felt, she reminded herself. For she must be dead now. And in that thought, as she threaded through the parlor into kitchens - empty - and toward the cellar stairs, she realized she felt a kind of sour pity for the woman, and that shocked her enough that she stopped. For Minnie Lefting? The gutterslut doctor? And yet, for all the mockery she called up, the pity stayed in place, even grew a little.
“Well, I wonder if she’d like my poems now,” she said, and she noticed the slur in her speech. she was, she realized uncomfortably, already a little drunk, and this made her illogically, powerfully angry. She fumbled won the steps into the cellars, and reaching to brush a cobweb from her hair, she realized, too, that she was crying a little bit. And then, with that, she couldn’t hie form it anymore, and her awareness of herself flooded in. She was a 35 year old widow, deep in debt, with a house that leeched money, standing on the bottom of her own cellular steps in an unwashed dress, in search of a liquor bottle. Crying.
And she stood outside of her, and with the freedom of her displacement, she understood the woman there at the bottom of the stairs, and the pity she felt for that woman overwhelmed her. She started to sob, more freely and completely and honestly than she had cried since she was a child.
x
