My bath went some way toward thawi, but did nothing to soothe the ache behind my eyes. I gave up all thoughts of w for the rest of the afternoon and crept into bed, pulling the extra covers well up over my ears. Inside I was still shivering. In a shallow sleep I saw strange visions. Hester and my father and the twins and my mother, visions in which everyone had someone else’s face, in which everyone was someone else disguised, and even my own face was disturbing to me as it shifted and altered, sometimes myself, sometimes ahen Aurelius’s bright head appeared in my dream: himself, always himself, only himself, and he smiled and the phantoms were banished. Darkness closed over me like water, and I sank to the depths of sleep.
I awoke with a headache, aches in my limbs and my joints and my back. A tiredhat had nothing to do with exertion or lack of sleep weighed me down and slowed my thoughts. The darkness had thied. Had I slept through the hour of my appoi with Aurelius? The thought me but only very distantly, and long minutes passed before I could rouse myself to look at my watch. For during my sleep, an obscure se had formed withirepidation? nostalgia? excitement?—
and it had given rise to a sense of expectation.
The past was returning! My sister was near. There was no doubting it. I couldn’t see her, couldn’t smell her, but my inner ear, attuned always and only to her, had caught her vibration, and it filled me with a dark and soporific joy.
There was o put off Aurelius. My sister would find me, wherever I was. Was she not my twin? In fact, I had half an hour before I was due to meet him at the garden door. I dragged myself heavily from my bed and, too cold and weary to take off my pajamas before dressing, I pulled a thick skirt and sweater ohe top. Bundled up like a child on firework night, I went downstairs to the kit. Judith had left a eal for me, but I had no appetite ahe food untouched. For ten minutes I sat at the kit table, longing to y eyes and not daring to, in case I gave in to the torpor that was inviting my head toward the hard tabletop.
With five mio spare, I opehe kit door and slipped into the garden.
No light from the house, no stars. I stumbled in the darkness; soft soil underfoot and the brush of leaves and braold me when I had veered off the path. Out of nowhere a branch scratched my fad I closed my eyes to protect them. Inside my head was a half-painful, half-euphoric vibration. I uood entirely. It was her song. My sister was ing.
I reached the meeting point. The darkness stirred itself. It was him. My hand bumped clumsily against him, the itself clasped.
‘Are you all right?“
I heard the question, but distantly.
‘Do you have a temperature?“
The words were there; it was curious that they had no meaning.
I’d have liked to tell him about the glorious vibrations, to tell him that my sister was ing, that she would be here with me any minute now. I k; I k from the heat radiating from her mark on my side. But the white sound of her stood between me and my words and made me dumb.
Aurelius let go of my hand to remove a glove, and I felt his palm, strangely cool i night, on my forehead. “You should be in bed,” he said.
I pulled at Aurelius’s sleeve, a feeble tug, but enough. He followed me through the garden as smoothly as a statue on casters.
I have no memory of Judith’s keys in my hand, though I must have taken them. We must have w
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