A Drop of Night by Stefan Bachmann Page A

1789
    Thick fingers find the sack’s hem and drag it off my head. I am standing in a dark room, a jewelry box of red plush and smoldering gilt. My sisters are with me. The ceiling is tented, a canopy of ribbed silk. Dim lamps hiss softly along the walls. Father sits at the center of the room like a troll king in his lair, huge and hulking upon a delicate chair, one leg hooked over the other.
    He is as enormous as Havriel, but that is where all similarities between them end: where Havriel is a mountain of calm and shadowy grace, Father is like a boar after the hounds have caught it, heaving and fighting and grasping for life, though the chance for that has long since fled. He wears a splendid coat of cherry red. On his head is a chalk-white wig. His mouth is in perpetual motion in his powdered face, shivering and twitching, forming silent words that he does not utter, and he holds a small tin mask full of herbs andperfume to his nose even as he speaks. He has always done this, for as long as I can remember. The doctors say it will stop the plague, influenza, any sort of sickness from befalling him, but he looks a fool for it.
    His hands have begun to tremble, the rings on his fat fingers clinking against the arms of his chair.
    â€œMy wife,” he says again. “Where is she?” He attempts to rise, collapses. Small black eyes skip across our faces and linger on the empty air at my side, as if he expects to see someone there.
    Havriel’s knuckles tighten around the blindfold in his hands. “Frédéric?” he says gently. “Frédéric, you must listen to me—” He goes to Father’s side.
    â€œWhere is she , Havriel?” Father hisses, and beside me Delphine jolts upright. She must have been dozing as she stood.
    Havriel lays a hand on Father’s shoulder. Father shrugs it off. Again he tries to stand and again he fails. “Where is Célestine? It promised we would be safe, the wicked thing, it promised—”
    â€œThe guards are with her as we speak,” Havriel says quickly. “She did not want to leave the château, but they will no doubt bring her safely down—”
    â€œThey shot her,” I say. My voice is just a thread, but it jerks Father’s head up like a puppet. Havriel does not turn. He has gone deathly still.
    â€œShe did not want to come,” I go on, louder now, and my voice turns taunting, bitter. “She was afraid. She was so afraid she was willing to die rather than come into your paradisical underground realm. Why might that be, Father, pray do tell?”
    But Father is no longer listening. He is shrieking. He curls in the chair, his spine contorting, his hand scrabbling up the cushion as if he seeks to climb over the back of it, and Havriel is gripping him, and Delphine is whimpering.
    â€œFrédéric, calm yourself! They are bringing her to safety as we speak! We do not know the extent of the damage—”
    â€œThey shot her!” I shout. “They shot her, and if they had not, she might have done it herself!”
    I’m crying, and as I move toward Father, Havriel spins.
    â€œStay back, Aurélie,” he spits. “Stay back.”
    Havriel’s bell rings. A door opens. Someone is here. The sack falls again over my eyes. I’m being bundled away, and I don’t know where my sisters are, but suddenly my body iswax and twigs and straw hair; I am a drained, brittle husk, too tired to fight. I walk on and on, through echoing halls, my feet aching inside my shoes. It feels as if I walk for days, soft hands guiding me through the dark, and yet I can still hear Father screaming.

15
    We stagger away from the wires, examining our bodies for wounds. My foot feels like it’s been sawed off. I pull up my pant leg, bracing myself for partial amputation, exposed muscle, the works. I’ve got a cut just above the knob of bone in my ankle. It’s tiny, the size of a fingernail