Star Cursed

by Jessica Spotswood

Page 21

 

  There are small windows looking into each cell, with tags bearing the patients’ names. I walk down the hall, peering into mostly empty rooms. Halfway down the right-hand side, I finally see Z. ROTH, marked in faded blue ink.

  My godmother.

  Inside, a tall woman sits in a wooden rocking chair facing the window. Her cloud of curly dark hair surprises me. Somehow I expected her to be a little redhead, like Mother.

  I take a deep breath and push at the door. It groans as it swings open.

  “Miss Roth? Zara Roth?”

  “What do you want?” Zara’s voice is a dreamy rasp. Her brown eyes are dazed, the pupils narrowed to pinpricks despite the gloom. “I’m not in the mood to pray today, Sister. ”

  “I’m not—I didn’t—” I panic as the door slams shut behind me and the lock clicks into place. The nurse will come. Sister Sophia won’t leave me behind. But I have to fight the urge to pound on the door with both fists and scream to be let out. The room feels suffocatingly small, barely big enough for the narrow bed and chair. There is not a single personal touch: nothing cheery or welcoming, nothing beautiful.

  How can Zara stand it? She’s been in this place for ten years.

  “Go away and leave me alone. ” My godmother must have been pretty once, but now she’s gaunt: long limbs poke out from beneath her ragged hem and cuffs like a scarecrow’s, her cheeks are hollow, and her hooked nose is a little too big for her thin face.

  I hesitate. I wish I had Tess’s talent for reading people. “It’s Cate,” I say, stepping closer. “Anna’s daughter, Cate. ”

  “Cate Cahill?” Zara’s hand flies to the gold locket around her neck. She searches my face for a long time. “You don’t look like Anna,” she says, turning away as though that’s that.

  “Maura looks like Mother; I take after Father,” I explain, pushing a strand of blond hair back into my chignon.

  Zara squints at me. Closer, I can feel the draft from the iron-barred window; I can see the crow’s-feet etched around her eyes and the gray threading through her hair. She is only thirty-seven, the same as Mother would be, but she looks older. “Brendan was never handsome. Anna was so beautiful, she could have done better for herself, but they were in love. ” She shakes her head. “Why are you trying to confuse me, talking about Anna? What do you want?”

  I bite my lip. “I just want to talk to you. I’m studying at the convent school with the Sisters, and I wanted to meet my godmother. ”

  “The Sisters? Ah. Cora’s heard about the new oracle, then. ” Her laugh is a rusty screech. “She needs me. I knew it would come to this, soon as I heard the nurses gossiping. ”

  I don’t know what I expected—for us to fall into a teary embrace? for her to lie and say how much I resemble my mother?—but it was not this.

  “Damn her for using Anna’s memory to get to me,” Zara says, apparently accepting that I am who I say. She flips open the locket. Inside, there’s a tintype of Mother from when she was young.

  “Oh. ” Emotion knots my throat. It’s been a month since I’ve seen my mother’s face in a picture; I brought none with me to the convent. She does look like Maura, with her curls and big eyes and heart-shaped face.

  “I loved her like a sister,” Zara says sadly. Then she recoils, as if stung by a wasp. “Your sisters—are they both alive?”

  “Of course. They’re on their way to New London now. Sister Cora thought it best—safest—for us all to be at the convent,” I explain, perching on her bed.

  “Is that wise, do you think?” Zara seems more alert now. “Considering the prophecy?”

  “The prophecy is wrong,” I say flatly, crossing my arms over my chest.

  Zara’s smile softens her long, angular face. “You’re a fighter, aren’t you, Cate Cahill? Even when you were a child, you had a temper. Lord, you were such a ragamuffin. Always chasing that neighbor boy of yours. ” I frown. Paul isn’t mine anymore. “You kept coming home with your knees all scraped up from tumbling out of trees. Anna was afraid you were going to break your fool neck. ”

  “Not yet, fortunately. ”

  Zara twists her chair to face me, her knees bumping against mine in the tiny space. “They’ll hang you, you know. Or perhaps burn you alive,” she says, her eyes darting toward the door, and my smile fades to horror. “If you’re the oracle. There have been two others since the Great Temple. They kept them here and tortured the prophecies out of them. That’s what they’ll do with Brenna. But you—they won’t let you live. ”

  I try not to let her words rattle me, but they do. “Because I’m a witch?”

  “There’s never been an oracle with magic before. And mind-magic, at that. ” Zara leaps up and crosses the room to peer out the peephole, then returns to the chair, her voice dropping to a scratchy whisper. “Is it you? Is that why Cora sent you?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had any visions. I was hoping perhaps you could tell me what to expect. What happened to the other two oracles?”

  Zara chews at one fingernail thoughtfully. Her nails are all bitten short, her fingertips cracked and bleeding. “I would like to help you. For Anna’s sake. But you’re one of them now, and I can’t forgive what they’ve done. Not just to me, though that’s bad enough. Do you know how many girls pass through these doors? How many are beaten or used as the Brothers’ playthings? And when they die—and so many do, you know, they stop eating and just will themselves to go—when they die, there aren’t even proper rites. There’s a communal grave over the hill. That’s all that’s waiting for us. And Cora just lets it happen. ”

  I want to echo the vow I made to myself upstairs: I will save these girls.

  But I don’t know how, or when. “She can’t save everyone,” I say softly.

  Zara turns on me, her eyes furious, thin nostrils flaring. “Is that what she told you? She could have saved me!”

  She stares out the window for a moment. The sleet has turned to snow, coating the hillside in sugary white. In the distance, I can see the red silo from a nearby farm—and beyond that, the white spire of a church. “I’m angry with Cora, but not fool enough to make you suffer for it. You will suffer enough, if you’re the oracle,” she says.

  “I hope I am. I’d rather it be me than Maura or Tess. ” I take a deep breath. “Will you tell me about the other oracles? How did the Brothers find them?”

  Zara doesn’t need more prompting. “Marcela Salazar was only fourteen when she tried to warn her father that he would drown swimming in a nearby lake. After he died, they turned her over to the Brothers. It’s a wonder she wasn’t killed outright for a witch. They kept her upstairs under lock and key her whole life. She died at twenty-five in the typhoid outbreak of 1829. ”

  “Not much of a life,” I remark.

  “Not as bad as Thomasina Abbott’s. ” Zara looks at me solemnly, fiddling with the chain at her throat. As she speaks, words rushing out faster and faster, she rocks more violently in her chair. “When she was twelve, she tried to warn a neighbor about a house fire. The neighbor didn’t listen, the house burnt down, and then they accused her of being a witch and sent her here. She refused to speak to the Brothers, but they could tell when she was having one of her spells, so they resorted to torture—cut off her fingers and broke her leg so badly it never healed right. Then she started speaking nonsense, and they couldn’t figure out if she was mad or only pretending, so they tried all sorts of awful experiments on her. Drilled a hole in her skull to try and alleviate the insanity, but that killed her. That was three—no, four—years ago. Then they dissected her brain. The nurse said there was no abnormality to explain the madness or the visions. ”