Florence was inspecting her. “Fitness, he says. Germ plasm and the quality of the bloodstream.” She let go of Noemí’s hair and gave her a hard look. “It’s the common lust of all men. He simply wants to have you, like a little butterfly in his collection. One more pretty girl.”
Mary was quietly putting aside the veil, folding it as though it were a precious treasure and not a stained, wrecked bit of clothing.
“God knows what degenerative strain runs through your body. An outsider, a member of a disharmonic race,” Florence said, flinging the soiled shoes on the bed. “But we must accept it. He has spoken.”
“Et Verbum caro factum est,” Noemí said automatically, remembering the phrase. He was lord and priest and father, and they were all his children and acolytes, blindly obeying him.
“Well. At least you’re learning,” Florence replied, a slight smile on her face.
Noemí did not reply, instead locking herself in the bathroom again and peeling off the dress. She changed back into her clothes and was glad when the women laid the dress back in its box and silently departed.
She put on the heavy sweater Francis had gifted her and reached into a pocket, clutching the lighter and the crumpled pack of cigarettes she’d taken to hiding there. Touching these objects made her feel more secure; they reminded her of home. With the mist outside obscuring the view, trapped between the walls of High Place, it seemed very easy to forget that she’d come from a different city and that she would ever see it again.
Francis came by a little while later. He brought with him a tray with her dinner and his razor wrapped in a handkerchief. Noemí joked that it was a terrible wedding present, and he chuckled. They sat side by side on the floor as she ate, the tray on her lap, and he managed a few more quips, and she smiled.
A distant, unpleasant groan dried up their mirth. The noise seemed to send a shiver down the house. It was followed by more groans, then silence. Noemí had heard such moaning before, but it seemed especially acute tonight.
“The transmigration must take place soon,” Francis said, as if reading the question in her eyes. “His body is falling apart. It never healed right since that day when Ruth shot him; the damage was too awful.”
“Why did he never transmigrate before? When he was shot, then?” she asked.
“He couldn’t. There was no new body he could inhabit. He needs an adult body. The brain must grow up to a certain point. Twenty-four, twenty-five, that’s the point at which the transmigration may take place. Virgil was a baby. Florence was still a girl, and even if she’d been older, he would never transmigrate into a woman’s body. So he held on, and his body stitched itself back together into a semblance of health.”
“But he could have transmigrated as soon as Virgil turned twenty-four or twenty-five instead of staying an old man.”
“It’s all connected. The house, the fungus running through it, the people. You hurt the family, you hurt the fungus. Ruth damaged the whole fabric of our existence. Howard wasn’t healing alone, everything was healing. But now he’s strong enough and he will die, his body will fruit, and he’ll begin a new cycle.”
She thought of the house growing scar tissue, breathing slowly, blood flowing between the floorboards. It reminded her of one of her dreams, in which the walls palpitated.
“And that’s why I won’t go with you,” Francis continued, fiddling with the cutlery, spinning a fork between his fingers and setting it down, ready to grab the tray and depart. “We’re all interconnected, and if I fled, they’d know, maybe even follow us and find us with ease.”
“But you can’t stay here. What will they do to you?”
“Probably nothing. If they do, it won’t be your problem anymore.” He clutched the tray. “Let me take that and I’ll—”
“You can’t be serious,” she said, snatching the tray away and laying it on the floor, shoving it aside.
He shrugged. “I’ve been gathering supplies for you. Catalina tried to run away, but she was ill prepared. Two oil lamps, a compass, a map, perhaps a pair of warm coats so that you can walk to town without freezing. You have to think about yourself and your cousin. Not about me. I don’t really count. The fact of the matter is this is all the world I’ve ever known.”