Stepsister(19)

“He thinks so,” the diva said, nodding at Chance. “But who can say? You know what it takes to break free of the crone. It’s a battle, as we who have waged it well know. And battles inflict wounds.”

She pushed up her sleeve. An ugly scar ran from her wrist to her elbow. “From my father. He came after me with a knife when I told him I would not enter a convent as he wished but would go to Vienna instead to study opera.”

The magician pulled the neck of her jacket open to show her scar, livid and shiny, just under her collarbone. “From a rock. Thrown by a priest who called me a devil. Because the townspeople liked my miracles better than his.”

The actress’s hand went to a gold locket pinned on her jacket, over her heart. She opened it and showed the others painted miniatures of a girl and a boy.

“No scar, but a wound that will never heal,” she said, tears shimmering in her eyes. “My children. Taken from me by a judge and given to my drunken husband. Because only an immoral woman would exhibit herself upon a stage.”

The magician pulled the actress close. She kissed her cheek and wiped her tears away with a handkerchief. Then she balled the handkerchief up and pressed it between her palms. When she opened her hands again, it was gone and a butterfly was sitting in its place.

As the three women watched, the butterfly took wing, carried aloft by the breeze.

It flew past a little monkey playing with a rope of pearls. Past a violinist and a trumpeter, a cook, a scientist, and three ballerinas, all with scars of their own.

Past a man with amber eyes, raging at the falling dusk. Swearing at the treacherous roads. Building his teetering human tower taller and taller.

A smile, small but defiant, curved the magician’s full red lips. “That’s what we do with our pain,” she said, watching the butterfly rise. “We make it into something beautiful.”

“We make it into something meaningful,” said the diva.

“We make it matter,” whispered the actress.





Twenty


As night came down, Fate sipped a cup of chamomile tea with Madame LeBenêt, Chance tried to find his way to Saint-Michel, and Isabelle, standing in her kitchen, cast a worried glance at her sister.

Tavi was doing what she always did in the evening: sitting by the hearth, a book open in her lap. But the furrows in her forehead looked deeper tonight, the shadows under her eyes darker.

Always bookish and inward, she’d become even more so since Ella had left. Sometimes Isabelle felt as if she were watching her sister fade like cooling embers, and that one day soon she would turn to ash and blow away.

The two girls were a year apart in age and looked very much alike. They both had auburn hair, high foreheads, a smattering of freckles across their noses, and eyes the color of strong coffee. Tavi was taller, with a lean figure; Isabelle was curvier. But it was their personalities more than anything else that set them apart. Tavi was cool and contained; Isabelle was anything but.

As Isabelle arranged slices of ham, apple, bread, and cheese on a plate to take upstairs to her mother, she wondered how to draw her sister out. “What are you reading, Tav?” she asked.

“The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing by the Persian scholar Al-Khwarizmi,” Tavi replied, without looking up.

“Sounds like a page-turner,” Isabelle teased. “Who’s Al-Khwarizmi?”

“The father of algebra,” Tavi replied, looking up. “Though some believe the Greek mathematician Diophantus can also lay claim to the title.”

“That’s a funny word, algebra. Don’t you think?” Isabelle asked, eager to keep her talking.

Tavi smiled. “It comes from Arabic. From al-jabr, which means ‘the reunion of broken parts.’ Al-Khwarizmi believed that what’s broken can be made whole again if you just apply the right equation.” Her smile dimmed a little. “If only there was an equation that could do the same for people.”

She was about to say more, but a voice, shrilling from the doorway, cut her off.

“Isabelle! Octavia! Why aren’t you dressed? We’re going to be late for the ball!”

Maman stepped into the kitchen, her lips set in an icy frown. She was wearing a satin gown the color of a winter sky and a plume of white ostrich feathers in her badly pinned-up hair. Her face was pale; her eyes were feverishly bright. Her hands fluttered around her body like doves, patting her hair one minute, twining in her pearls the next.

Isabelle’s heart sank at the sight of her; she had not been right since Ella left. Sometimes she was her competent, imperious self. At other times, like tonight, she was confused. Lost in the past. Convinced that they were going to a dinner, a ball, or the palace.

“Maman, you have the date wrong,” she said now, giving her a soothing smile.

“Don’t be silly. I have the invitation right here.” Maman showed Isabelle the printed card she was holding, its ivory surface smudged, its edges bent.

Isabelle recognized it; it had arrived months ago. “Yes, you do,” she said cheerily. “But you see, Maman, that ball has already taken place.”

Maman stared at the engraved words. “I—I can’t seem to read the date …” she said, her words trailing off.

“Come. I’ll help you undress. You can put on a nice comfortable nightdress and lie down.”