a potter turns clay on the wheel. At last she stood back, and one by one I watched the light form into a head and arms and legs. Slower and slower, the sound dying with the light, until on the floor were ten women, their shoes in holes, their bodies wet with sweat.
I fell off the door knobs.
When I came to I was in a much smaller room, propped in a chair on one side of the fire. Opposite me, attentive and smiling, was the woman I had first seen at dinner, what seemed like years ago and might have been days.
'My name is Jordan,' I said.
MEMORY I: The scene I have just described to you may lie in the future or the past. Either I have found Fortunata or I will find her. I cannot be sure. Either I am remembering her or I am still imagining her. But she is somewhere in the grid of time, a co-ordinate, as I am.
'My name is Fortunata,' she said. 'This is the first thing I saw. It was winter. The ground was hard and white. There were late roses in the hedges, wild and red, and the holly tree was dark green with blazing berries. It snowed every day, dense curtains of snow that wiped out the footprints coming to and from the house, leaving us to believe that no one ever came here or ever had. One day a robin landed on my windowsill and sank immediately. I dug it out with a teaspoon and it flew away, the snow falling like fetters from its wings. Because the snow was so deep it muffled the noise we made, and we crept about like a silent order, exchanging glances and surprising one another in the garden, where we moved in slow motion, each step shifting feet of snow like sand-dunes.
'As it grew colder and the snow hardened we carved statues from it, scenes from the Bible and the Greek heroes.
'It was the winter of our marriage, my sisters and I. We were to be married all together, all twelve of us on the same day. On New Year's Day, in blood-red dresses with our black hair.
'We decided to build a church in our garden. We built it out of the ice, and it cut our hands and the blood stained the snow like the wild red roses in the hedges. We worked without speaking, only pausing twice a day for meals and lighting up the dark with flares so that we could continue in spite of the shortness of the hours. It was finished the day before the ceremonies. The night before, our last night together as sisters, we slept as always in a long line of single beds beneath the white sheets and blankets like those who have fallen asleep in the snow. From this room, in the past, we had flown to a silver city that knew neither day nor night, and in that city we had danced for joy thinking nothing of the dawn where we lived.
'When it was dawn on our wedding day we dressed in our red dresses and unplaited our hair, and when we were ready we closed and locked the great windows that had been our means of escape and walked in single file from our bedroom down the marble staircase to the frozen church. We were married one by one under branches of mistletoe, but when it came to my turn, and I was the last, I looked at my husband to be, the youngest prince, who had followed us in secret and found us out, and I did not want him.
'At the last possible moment I pushed him aside and ran out of the church through the crowds of guests, mouths open like fishes.
'I took a boat and sailed round the world earning my living as a dancer. Eventually I came here and built this school. I never advertise. People find me because they want to, as you have.'
'I have met your sisters/ I said, and told her how they were all living together again in one place, and related the story of their various divorces.
'But the story they told me about you was not the same. That you escaped, yes, but that you flew away and walked on a wire stretched from the steeple of the church to the mast of a ship at anchor in the bay.'
She laughed. How could such a thing be possible?
'But,' I said, 'how could it be possible to fly every night from the window to an enchanted city when there are no
I fell off the door knobs.
When I came to I was in a much smaller room, propped in a chair on one side of the fire. Opposite me, attentive and smiling, was the woman I had first seen at dinner, what seemed like years ago and might have been days.
'My name is Jordan,' I said.
MEMORY I: The scene I have just described to you may lie in the future or the past. Either I have found Fortunata or I will find her. I cannot be sure. Either I am remembering her or I am still imagining her. But she is somewhere in the grid of time, a co-ordinate, as I am.
'My name is Fortunata,' she said. 'This is the first thing I saw. It was winter. The ground was hard and white. There were late roses in the hedges, wild and red, and the holly tree was dark green with blazing berries. It snowed every day, dense curtains of snow that wiped out the footprints coming to and from the house, leaving us to believe that no one ever came here or ever had. One day a robin landed on my windowsill and sank immediately. I dug it out with a teaspoon and it flew away, the snow falling like fetters from its wings. Because the snow was so deep it muffled the noise we made, and we crept about like a silent order, exchanging glances and surprising one another in the garden, where we moved in slow motion, each step shifting feet of snow like sand-dunes.
'As it grew colder and the snow hardened we carved statues from it, scenes from the Bible and the Greek heroes.
'It was the winter of our marriage, my sisters and I. We were to be married all together, all twelve of us on the same day. On New Year's Day, in blood-red dresses with our black hair.
'We decided to build a church in our garden. We built it out of the ice, and it cut our hands and the blood stained the snow like the wild red roses in the hedges. We worked without speaking, only pausing twice a day for meals and lighting up the dark with flares so that we could continue in spite of the shortness of the hours. It was finished the day before the ceremonies. The night before, our last night together as sisters, we slept as always in a long line of single beds beneath the white sheets and blankets like those who have fallen asleep in the snow. From this room, in the past, we had flown to a silver city that knew neither day nor night, and in that city we had danced for joy thinking nothing of the dawn where we lived.
'When it was dawn on our wedding day we dressed in our red dresses and unplaited our hair, and when we were ready we closed and locked the great windows that had been our means of escape and walked in single file from our bedroom down the marble staircase to the frozen church. We were married one by one under branches of mistletoe, but when it came to my turn, and I was the last, I looked at my husband to be, the youngest prince, who had followed us in secret and found us out, and I did not want him.
'At the last possible moment I pushed him aside and ran out of the church through the crowds of guests, mouths open like fishes.
'I took a boat and sailed round the world earning my living as a dancer. Eventually I came here and built this school. I never advertise. People find me because they want to, as you have.'
'I have met your sisters/ I said, and told her how they were all living together again in one place, and related the story of their various divorces.
'But the story they told me about you was not the same. That you escaped, yes, but that you flew away and walked on a wire stretched from the steeple of the church to the mast of a ship at anchor in the bay.'
She laughed. How could such a thing be possible?
'But,' I said, 'how could it be possible to fly every night from the window to an enchanted city when there are no
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