Dark and Deepest Red(26)

And an edict from the authorities, that all occasions of dancing in the open should cease until autumn, as though they can command such a thing. Dancing at weddings may be done only with stringed instruments, they say, but leave each to his own conscience to use neither tambourine nor drum.

None of the instruments that most frightened the horses, and sounded the death of the miller’s youngest daughter.

It is too small an effort, far too late.

As they dye and hang the last sheet, Lala’s eyes catch on the road, on figures too far to recognize.

Lala slowly picks out one leaping form from the next.

The figures twirl and throw their arms toward the sun.

They dance.

With deepening horror, Lala watches them draw nearer, and finds features she recognizes. The papermaker’s niece, with her hair the color of wheat stalks. The long limbs of the eel fisher’s daughter.

The cartographer’s young second wife, with her embroidered skirt meant to show off her husband’s wealth. But neither the fine thread nor his coffers have spared her from this.

And following after, their mothers and sisters, reaching out their arms, calling for them, pleading with them to resist the devils within them and with the devils themselves to let them go.

When they cannot catch them, they stand on the road, weeping into their hands.

The dancers jump higher. They strike the ground hard enough to kick up dust. They trample wildflowers on their way, releasing the smell of summer nectar.

The scene bears the haze of a nightmare.

Lala blinks, but the figures stay. Girls Lala grew up alongside now spin toward town.

She runs after them, trying to grasp their arms.

If she cannot keep Strasbourg from looking toward her to cast blame, she must stop the dance itself.

“No,” she yells, as helpless and desperate as if they were cows escaped through a fence. “Be still.”

She would fall to the ground and beg Sara la Kali, even beg the dancers themselves, if she thought it would halt them. Instead, she runs, trying to catch hold of them. But a moment after her fingers meet an arm or shoulder, it slips away. They are too fast, their limbs too sweat-slicked to hold.

Geruscha and Henne stand by the side of the road, hands clasped. They lightly shake their heads, either in horror at the scene or in warning to Lala, that there is no stopping it.

The afflicted girls keep on, dancing toward town.

“Stop!” Now Lala is screaming. “All of you!”

Their faces show no response. They seem not to hear her at all. Even if they wanted to stop, they are helpless against la fièvre.

They seem made to do it. Compelled, either by something outside them, or so deep in their bodies it is written into their marrow.

Worst among their distant faces, halfway between pained and serene, is one Lala recognizes with a start.

The older of the miller’s daughters.

The one surviving after this fever took her younger sister.

Her older brother, the one whose mourning cry still echoes in the air, runs after her. “No!” he shouts after her. “Do not follow your sister into death!”

But at the sight of Lala, he halts.

He stands, and his glare seems enough to singe her skirt.

Lala remembers herself, and twists from under his stare. She starts again with chasing them all. The tanner’s sister. A knot of ploughmen’s daughters.

And the miller’s one surviving daughter. The single living sister of the young man whose gaze now feels as though it is searing her dress.

“Stop!” Lala screams. “Be still!”

But they do not stop. The fever is worlds stronger than any voice or hand in Strasbourg.





Emil


Emil had known that the next time he saw Rosella would, probably, be an inescapable kind of awkward.

But the night before had worn him down so much that he forgot to dread it until the second it happened.

“Hi,” he said, and he hated how wary he sounded.

“Hi,” she said, seeming even more apprehensive than he was.

Well, this was off to a solid start.

Her eyes ticked toward his hands.

He couldn’t help looking down. Even following the same wash procedure he always did, the brown of his knuckles had reddened and paled in a way he couldn’t pass off as coming from the cold air.

Rosella pressed her back teeth together. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing,” she repeated.

“It’s just acid.”

“Just acid?” she asked. “What were you doing?”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” He put his hands in his pockets.

“Emil,” she said, digging through her purse. “That’s a burn. Come here.”

She pulled him over to one of the benches that dotted the center of town, the wood split by months of sun and cold.

When she took her other hand out of her purse, her fingers gripped a tiny glass jar. The label had been ripped off, like it had held something else before.

When she unscrewed the cap, it smelled green and wet, like rain-soaked grass.

“This’ll hurt for a minute but then it should help,” she said.

“You keep that in your purse?” Emil asked.

“I’m a future abuela,” she deadpanned. “I keep everything in my purse.”