on his head, bowed to us, and set off for the main house—and only when the ridiculously tall pipe shape of his headgear departing passed our front window did I allow myself the highly literary indulgence of losing consciousness.
• • •
After recovering my wits that afternoon, I stood before the broad white steps of the main house with Agatha, preparing myself to enter. My aunt wished to see me, a request which could not be refused. Vacillating, I paced, staring miserably at the lofty leaded windows.
“Sooner a thing’s started, sooner as it’s done,” Agatha mentioned.
“I’m frightened.”
“That’s neither ’ere nor there,” she advised, and since this was again inarguable, I made a proud church spire of my spine and walked inside.
No one greeted me; up I went towards my aunt’s bedroom. The servants ought to have been bustling, making arrangements for the inevitable condoling relations and dealers in the commerce of death, but Aunt Patience must have sent them off; the only faces I saw were painted ancestors whispering murderess from the cages of their carved gilt frames. I felt as if I were going to my doom.
I was perfectly correct—but it was a doom of my own making, not my aunt’s. Of this I can at least be proud, if of nothing else.
Following a knock at Patience Barbary’s half-opened door, I entered. The light here was dimmer, keeping its distance as if out of respect for the bereaved. My aunt lay on a fainting couch. She beckoned; it was not until I drew within three feet that I could see her plain, and I stiffened.
“You,” Aunt Patience spat.
Her careful mourning attire had been abandoned for a capacious black robe fastened with silk ties. Patience Barbary had shed her smug bravado as snakes do skins; everything about her was new, from the swollen pink edges of her eyelids to her raw expression, tender as a cut where the scab has peeled away. Years of trials I did not know about had hardened her, but now here she was—in desperate need of a shell, and stripped of her defences as she had been stripped of her son. Her habitual mourning was an ostentation, I realised, maybe even a dig at my mother’s pale Parisian frocks; this was her, bared to the ravages of the whimsical world.
I wanted to be glad of her ruin—but I was only sad in a sweeping, sky-wide way, and sorry for myself despite the unforgivable thing I had done. I wanted Edwin back, and months previous, so that I could scream when I was meant to and none of this would be my fault.
“Tell me,” Aunt Patience demanded. “You are the one who found him. I must know all.”
Hesitating, I cast my eyes down. My silences were beginning to shift from weapons into shields. Now I have a wide array, a blood-crusted and blow-battered arsenal; but then I was still learning.
“He was already peaceful, Aunt.” My throat worked. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know anything.”
“You know more than I do.” Her voice had been ground to sand with weeping.
“Nothing that can help.”
We talked—or rather, Aunt Patience questioned, and I lied. The untended fireplace watched us. No, I did not think Edwin had been in any pain. Yes, it must have been an accident. No, he had not been angry with her any longer when we parted ways.
“He loved me very much,” Aunt Patience choked, pressing smelling salts to her flat nose. “He loved you too, his only close kin—he was as affectionate a boy as I ever saw. Why did Edwin have to die in such a meaningless way? It ought to have been you.”
Numbly, I digested this; and then I understood.
As if a prophecy had been painted in the carpet’s flourishes under my feet, I knew what I must do to survive my cousin’s death. I loathed the prospect; but then I pictured my existence with only Agatha for company, and I knew I was right.
What I did not know was that an inexorable force tugged at my torn sleeve.
Scientists believe that the Earth twirls upon a great pole like a spinning top; this rotational point is theoretically located in the Arctic North, where the land is so desolate and lovely that daylight and nighttime cannot bear to give it up, and trade shifts in six-month intervals. These scientists are mistaken about the Arctic North; for I know in my heart that though the Earth does spin, and spin far too quickly for many of us to