Heart of Glass by Sasha Gould

startled.
    “I knew you’d be good company,” he says, slapping his leg.
    The gondolier is grinning too, but wipes the look off his face when he sees I’m watching him. Nothing spoken in a gondola is private. In many ways, the gondoliers’ currency of secrets must rival the Segreta’s.
    “Do you like classical or Eastern-influenced architecture?” I ask, looking up at the church of Madonna of the Miracles. Better to keep the conversation on such matters.
    “Ah, built by Lombardo,” Halim murmurs, taking in the building. His hand moves through the air, tracing the geometrical patterns. “Byzantine-influenced, I believe. All very different from our mosques.”
    I shake my head. “Are you sure this is your first time in Venice?” Finally, I spot a building that Halim can’t possibly know more about than I do—the convent that was my home for more years than I like to remember.
    “This is a very special place in Venice,” I say as our gondola draws near.
    Halim frowns. I can understand why—the convent of Mary and the Angels looks unprepossessing with its bars and grilles. I think of my servant nun, Annalena, and the dull ache of separation lodges in my heart. I wonder what she is doing now. Does she still pray five times a day on the floor of her narrow cell? She will be conversa to a new sister now, of course. She’s probably forgotten her Laura. Certainly, her eyes would pop out of her head if she could see me now, sharing a boat with an Ottoman prince!
    “So tell me why it’s special,” Halim says. He has pulled a short dagger out of his sleeve. It has a golden hilt, inset with mother-of-pearl. He twirls it once in his hand, then again. I try not to be disturbed by the glitter of the metal.
    “I lived there for many years, incarcerated as a nun.” I wait for the words to settle, to see how he’ll react. He pockets the knife in a practiced move and brings his focus back to me.
    “Incarcerated?” he repeats. “You did not dedicate yourself to your God?”
    I incline my head. “It’s not uncommon in Venice for second daughters to be sent to convents, if they are in danger of being a financial burden on their family. I was one of many.”
    “But still …” Halim’s words fade away as he glances at the small windows.
    I point to one set high in the wall. “For five years, that small room was my home.”
    Halim looks at me, then back at the window, as if unbelieving. “Five years?”
    “And every day the same.”
    We drift beneath the shadow of the monastery in silence. “But surely you received visitors. Your father? Your sister? You say you were a second daughter.”
    “It was forbidden,” I tell him. “Visitors take away the mind’s focus, or so the Abbess used to say.” I won’t say her full name out loud. She belongs to the past.
    “My sister used to keep a pet bird in a cage,” says Halim. “It was the most beautiful thing, and it used to sing every evening. I thought it very cruel that it was locked up like that.”
    “We were allowed to sing,” I tell him, glancing upwards, “but only at prayer.” I’m in danger of becoming maudlin.
    Halim reaches across and places a hand on my arm. His skin has the shade of varnished olive wood and there’s a scattering of dark hairs across his wrist. “How did you get out?”
    “My sister died.” The truth, but only a fraction of it, like a painting made up of a million brushstrokes seen only from a distance. It is so simple when said like that. My voice does nothing to betray the pain I felt, looking into her coffin. He cannot understand.
    Our talk turns to other things—the love that Faustina has shown me, the return of my brother with his new wife, the happy times. Halim listens quietly, nodding, smiling. The boat drifts on. It is as if we’re on our very own island of intimacy, the sun rising higher and higher above our heads.The sounds of the city have fallen away. Only the occasional slap of paddle on water reminds me the