Rosabelle
Chapter 1
When I open the cupboard, the shelves are empty.
This is no surprise, of course; the shelves have been empty for weeks. It’s for Clara’s sake that I make a show of opening them every morning, pretending there might be more than the same skittering cockroach living inside.
I close the cabinet door, then turn to face her. Clara never leaves the bed unless I carry her; today she’s sitting up and staring out the icy window, her pale eyes made paler by the blast of early morning light. Her hand trembles as she twitches the threadbare curtain, and a blue glare briefly illuminates the glass.
“We’re out of bread,” I announce. “I’m heading out.”
Some days Clara lets me leave without asking questions. Other days she asks me how I pay for the food I bring home. Today she says, “I dreamed of Mama last night.”
I keep my face impassive. “Again?”
Clara turns toward me, so gaunt her eyes appear sunken in her face. “She wasn’t well, Rosa. She was suffering.”
I step into my boots, shaking my head as I move into a shaft of light. “It was only a dream,” I say to her. “The dead don’t suffer.”
Clara looks away again. “You always say that.”
“And you stare at her photograph too much,” I say, knotting my laces. My right hand doesn’t shake today, and I experience a rush of relief as I straighten, then a flash of terror as I note the dwindling fire in the hearth—and the disappearing pile of firewood beside it. I force the terror down. “Besides,” I add, “you hardly knew her.”
“Well, you hardly speak of her,” Clara counters with a sigh.
Through the window I glimpse a redheaded woodpecker and watch, transfixed, as it hammers its beak into a mossy trunk. It’s been just over a decade since the fall of The Reestablishment—just over a decade since we’ve lived here, on Ark Island—and I, too, wish I could bash my head over and over against a hard surface every day. I take a sharp breath, ignoring the ever-present ache of hunger.
It’s still strange to see the birds.
They fill the sky with sound and color, rattling roofs and branches. All around us evergreens spiral skyward, never surrendering to the seasons. It’s always damp here; viridescent; cold. Lakes shimmer unprovoked. Distant mountain ranges seem painted in watercolors, layers of teeth made translucent by fog. The warm and well-fed have been known to call this land beautiful.
“I won’t be long,” I say, buttoning myself into Papa’s old coat. Years ago I cut off the military insignias with a dull blade, earning myself a scar in the process. “I’ll see about rebuilding the fire when I get back.”
“Okay,” Clara says quietly. Then: “Sebastian came by yesterday.”
I stiffen.
Very slowly I reanimate, wrapping my mother’s tattered scarf too tightly around my neck. I was allowed to work at the mill yesterday, and by the time I got home Clara had been asleep.
“He came to deliver the mail,” she says.
“The mail,” I echo. “He came all this way just to deliver the mail.”
Clara nods, then reaches under her pillow to retrieve a folded newspaper and a thick, unmarked envelope, both of which she holds out in offering. I tuck the two into my coat pocket without glancing at either.
“Thank you,” I say softly. I imagine, for a moment, how it might feel to slit Sebastian’s throat.
Clara tilts her head at me. “He said you missed last week’s meeting.”
“You were sick.”
“I told him that.”
I look toward the door. “You don’t need to tell him anything.”
“He still wants to marry you, Rosa.”
I lift my head sharply. “How do you know about that?”
