Seven

I AM HOME, IN MY BED, MY NIGHTCLOTHES tangled around me so that I cannot move. My mother talks to me in the low, sibilant sounds of our language, though her voice is deep, too deep. Her words don’t comfort—their tone is chiding, accusatory, but my memory fails me and I cannot understand what she is saying as her fingers brush my forehead.

Her fingers turn into the touch of feathers and I scream, fighting upward out of the blackness. I’m in the conservatory, spinning, spinning, passed from partner to partner down an infinite line. I look up, begging to stop, to see that it’s Finn who holds me, his hands tight around my waist. Then he passes me to the next man—Finn again, always Finn, and none of them will look me in the eyes, none of them will answer my pleas to be released.

I try to break through but I can’t, and I’m twirled and danced farther and farther down the line of bodies, an endless path.

Just when I can bear no more, Finn pulls me close and finally meets my eyes. “I am so sorry,” he says. And then he spins me into the sharp man, whose arms wrap around me once more, turning into great black wings.

I am smothered in feathers and pulled into darkness so complete I cannot even scream.