But there’s no time for astonishment.
Cristofana’s off like a shot, navigating winding streets and alleyways at the edge of the old city, moving with a stealth and grace that seem remarkable now that she’s flesh and bone.
May floats after, faint and amazed, through the gate and along the river.
As they traverse the city’s undeveloped edge, Cristofana points out the rolling green hills beyond, where sheep graze and men stoop in fields, where distant, soldierly rows of olive groves cast stark shadows and larks swoop overhead. There’s not an airplane in sight. It’s profoundly quiet, even this close to the center of the city. The sky’s a rich blue laced with cottony clouds. May’s afraid to touch anything — afraid of what without will really means — but she can’t get over how beautiful Old Florence is, an alien, slimmed-down version of the city she’s only just getting to know back with Gwen and Liam. For the moment, she’s happy observing.
Without a word, they work their way back along angular, cobbled streets full of strutting roosters and rooting pigs, and soon there are people everywhere, though no buzzing mopeds or bleating horns, no blinking streetlights or shining glass.
May can’t help glancing down at her arms from time to time, pivoting them in front of her, milky-transparent in the shade but mostly not visible at all. She seems to fade completely in direct sunlight. When she finally finds the nerve to run her hand along a wall, her fingers pass effortlessly through stone and brick. She still feels hollow and sick to her stomach, a little headachy, but also light and free, more like water than flesh. Emboldened, she tries walking through a closed door. It works, and she turns on her heels in what looks like an empty peasant’s hovel lined with straw, and she walks out again, giddy with success.
Smiling at these antics, Cristofana cautions, “Stay in the sunlight. Remember, it confuses others to see you . . . what there is to see.” She squints at May as if taking mental measurements. “They think they see a ghost.”
They come out into the open sunlight of a different piazza — long, rectangular, columned — surrounded by looming stone towers, some almost eighty feet high and shadowing wooden stalls, pavilions, carts, benches, merchant stands. The place looks like some kind of medieval movie set, full of men in red and blue and brown capes, women with wares laid out on their blankets, and girls with raw pink hands offering baskets of dewy pears and plums.
“Here is our market,” Cristofana says, her voice patiently instructive, like that of a teacher introducing a new student to the class, and then — abruptly, as she seems to do everything — she darts down a long, narrow side alley, hooks a few lefts, a few rights, and marches them right back to the site corresponding with the courtyard in Florence Present where a faint, chalky sideways 8 marks the base of the portal.
“Oh,” May says, blinking, almost disappointed. On the other hand, the queasiness and headache are starting to wear on her.
Cristofana stands very still a moment, lost in thought, the gaping, invisible doorway somewhere beyond her, May presumes. When they first approached from what she now realizes was the future, May’s present, the portal had felt more like an absence than a presence, a blank summoning.
“You remember,” Cristofana begins, again patiently, like an adult speaking to a panicked child, “I told you I flew a bird through this doorway, and out it flew again? I have also flown one bird out and, following after, captured another, like the first in aspect, to fly back the opposite way. The first, from my world, did not return. It remained in your Florence . . . many hundreds of years away. . . .”
May can only shake her head. No.
“The second, from your world, built a nest in a tree outside my window, fully fleshed, feathered, and beaked. It was an even trade, you see. My studies cherish balance.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I beg your indulgence just once more. This time, bella, I will go through alone and take the portone with me, so that you do not blunder in after and lose us both in the wilds of time. Stay nearby. Let the market amuse you until I return.” She points. “It is that way.”
“Are you out of your mind? You’re not seriously going to leave me here? In the freaking Middle Ages?”
“I won’t be a moment.” Again . . . that patient smile. “Forget yourself, bella, your pettiness and fear. Look around, and be humbled. There is a first for everything, for all great leaps of knowledge, and you are making history.”
Before May can cry out or leap forward, her double steps through the portale, reeling what looks like a mirror-sheet of fabric in behind her, erasing herself in a hot streak of black light.
At the same moment, May feels jolted, shocked by what can only be the return of her real form. What was a whisper becomes a roar. Sounds are amplified, distant cart wheels and hammering. Smells rush in — manure, river mud, cat piss, lavender. Her headache is instantly gone, along with the queasiness. Her blood feels like it’s humming in her veins, and for a moment, May turns and turns, trying to take in her own form, veering into walls, disoriented and jumpy. Things calm down, but it takes her body a moment to adjust to “normal,” return to itself. (Unite with its soul? she wonders, incredulous. Their soul, hers and Cristofana’s. The same soul — now here and there at once.)
The panic is swift and intense as it dawns on May that she’s flesh, visible, vulnerable. Feeling trapped in the alley, she stumbles over loose cobbles or a curb, toppling forward, falling hard. The pain is searing and she knows there’s a cut on her leg, a big one, but she rights herself quickly, bolting onto a dirt cart road crowded with rooting pigs.
You can do this, she tells herself. It’s just like being out on your own, in the present, except your guidebook’s no good.
Some things are the same, some few architectural landmarks — Florence is an old city — and she knows that the cathedral will still be there, though maybe not all of it and with a simpler facade, and May thinks she knows how to get back to the market. She sets out confidently in what feels like the right direction, nodding at those who pass, avoiding their curious looks and whispering.
As the frozen moments pass, she feels less scared or stunned and more sick and pissed that she had the bad sense to trust Cristofana, an obvious liar and lunatic, just because she happens to have a trustworthy face. But then May realizes that people are actually crowding in on her, pointing and jeering. They’ve never seen anything like her. An old woman crosses herself. A young man in formfitting — that is, bulging — tights and a short, stained tunic steps way too close, leering into her face. He has winey breath, and his bad teeth are bared, his head tilted like a curious dog’s.
At last, when something hard and slimy — a rind of chewed orange, May thinks — hits the side of her face, she panics and bolts, takes off running with the murmuring crowd collecting behind her. Darting down a narrow side street, she zigzags onto another tight block enclosed by sinister towers. Everything seems to press in and loom over, so she makes for the light between buildings, runs down one claustrophobic street and the next until she can see sky, plenty of it, and keeps running until there are few and then fewer and then no people in view.
She locates what must be a wealthy neighborhood — well-spaced residences with courtyards and small gardens or rows of potted fig trees between — darts out back and steals a plain-looking blue dress from a laundry line. Checking that her phone’s still in the rear pocket of her cutoffs — for all the good it will do her now — she slips the dress on over her tank with shaking hands, almost laughing out loud. Who’ll believe this? Gwen will sign her into the nearest mental institution when May tells her.
Tells her what? How do you explain what even you don’t believe?
Something tells her not to abandon her own clothing, so May wads it into what appears to be a moth-eaten baby’s blanket and slings the bundle over a shoulder. The only problem now is shoes. She has nothing to replace her patterned flip-flops, but the dress is long enough to drag along the ground, so it might no
t matter. She rehearses holding the fabric forward with her free hand to conceal her feet.
Returning as purposefully as possible out to the street again, May spots a group of boys advancing from the direction of the medieval gate and the green hills beyond the city. They’re rough and rowdy, herding a sheep between them, so she turns back toward the city center, trying not to conspicuously hurry, but they keep pace, the poor sheep bleating in complaint.
Feeling less exposed but still edgy, May at last ducks into what looks like a public shop, its door propped wide open, though she can’t read the painted script on the sign dangling from chains over the entryway. Inside, chickens bob around and three young men are seated at easels of varying sizes. The two nearest the door watch disdainfully as she limps in.
But when the third, the man near the far wall, looks up from his easel, squinting in shadows, he seems to look into her — or that’s how it feels — and it knocks the wind out of her chest. He’s crazy beautiful, for one thing: a long, tapered face with a dimpled chin, the classic Roman nose, an expression that makes her cheeks burn. Below thick brows, his amber eyes are a liquid darkness, like coffee.
“Sì?” he asks politely, apparently on behalf of everyone, though the other two only squint warily back at him.
“Mi dispiace,” May tries, speaking directly to the man but dropping her gaze. Even when she can’t see him anymore, May feels him watching her, and when she finally summons the nerve to meet his eyes again, they seem lit from within. He looks genuinely curious, intrigued even, and she’s so grateful for this kindness that she wants to hug him.
“Forgive me,” May tries in English, in case “I’m sorry” isn’t archaic enough, lowering her voice because in a weird way it’s just the two of them now. He probably doesn’t understand her English or her Italian. What year is this? It’s a little late in the game to be asking the question now, and to be honest, May doesn’t care anymore. She can’t believe this is happening. She can’t believe, looking again into those eyes, that it’s never happened before.
The man shrugs. No, he doesn’t understand her any better than she does him. He looks poised at the edge of his seat, and his eyes roam over her as if to solve a puzzle or answer some penetrating question. But the search stops somewhere in the neighborhood of her knees, and his face clouds with concern.
One of the other artists has already turned back to his work with a baffled shrug, but the second, wiping plump hands on his tunic front, continues to monitor the exchange, watching with somewhat stern interest as the man at the back of the room stands up.
He’s young, with a tangle of dark hair and skin the shade of caramel, so tall he seems to stoop just slightly to put the world at ease. But there’s nothing slumpy about him. He’s lean and muscular, rangy like a wolf, and though he hesitates for what seems forever, all May can think, stupidly, watching him cross to her, is Oh, my God.
He kneels at her feet, his long hair falling forward, concealing his eyes. His hands have the same rough beauty as his eyes and close urgently around her calf, giving her what amounts to an electric shock even with the bloodied fabric of the dress between them.
“Stai sanguinando,” he tells her, glancing up, but May can only tilt her head like a confused animal, because she has no idea what he’s saying, no real thought in her head at all except that his voice is deep and a little hoarse and so compelling that he could be reading her death sentence and she wouldn’t stop him, and her heart is still thumping hard from what happened outside.
He leads her back to his shadowed workstation. His puzzled eyes linger on the flip-flops a moment, darting to and from her eyes as he raises the hem of her dress discreetly, working at what must be more than a scrape (it’s finally dawned on May that her right shin is wet with blood, enough to soak through her stolen dress), sopping the wound below her knee with the hem of his linen shirt, his full mouth pursed in concentration, and she’s all but shaking with shock.
He is touching me, she thinks, almost hysterically because she can’t calm down, can’t manage to take all this in. A man is touching my leg in medieval Florence. The most beautiful man in the world is touching me, and he is a man, she thinks, not a boy.
He can’t be much older than May, but he has what she can only imagine is a man’s smell, rich and strong and spiced with the secrets of his trade, walnut oil and shaved wood and turpentine. He moves like a man, capable and sure, his white shirt stained now with her blood.
As he rises and crosses to the big fireplace, where he sets about clanging iron pots and rooting around in the lengthening shadows in search of something, he leaves her skin burning with absence. May feels greedy to have his hands — scarred and paint-and-blood-streaked but beautifully brown and strong-veined and sure of themselves — back on her, and when he returns to lead her to a chair by the wall, urging her to sit, she feels her whole body sigh with relief.
He kneels again at an angle, lifts her leg apologetically, and props it over the hard plane of his thigh. His hands go to work again, cleaning the wound with a wet scrap of linen torn from his shirt, lightly smoothing away pebbles embedded in her raw skin with his thumb. Every stroke is electric, despite the pain beneath it, and May suddenly remembers a morning last summer, alone on a dock in Maine. The sun was just rising, and there was a steady breeze, more than a breeze — a teasing wind — blowing over the surface that made the skin of the water shiver in dancing, swooping spirals, made it rise and shimmer and fall and rise, and that’s how her skin feels now, wherever he touches her, restless and shining.
By the time her medic concludes, pressing her hand over the cloth he’s tied to the wound, applying an instant’s extra pressure, May’s whole body feels quavery and strange. With him at their center, her surroundings have locked into focus. Everything is clear and vivid, alive in her senses as if the room itself is breathing, as if together they have become the room’s heartbeat.
But in her peripheral vision May spots the pudgy painter peering from behind his easel, his eyes full of judgments she can’t guess at, and the spell is broken, her moment’s calm absconded.
What’s more, there’s a clamor out on the street, one that quickly draws the two disapproving artists outside.
If not for his mysterious patient, the man at her feet would go investigate, too — she can see he wants to; he’s torn — and when May gestures that he should go, he nods, quickly covering her hand with his to assure she’s applying enough pressure to the cut, sending another charge through her. He touches her cheekbone lightly, a feather brush with his knuckle. His knowing smile warms her through, and then, as quickly as the artist entered her life, he leaves it.
May sits very still a moment, following him with her eyes, watching him disappear, impossibly confused. She’s almost relieved to find her reflection looking back at her then through the shop’s display window, though there is no window, of course. No glass, anyway, just shutters opening onto the street. On the other side, Cristofana in ghost form smiles gravely and hooks a finger, beckoning.
Somehow May had forgotten.
How long has she been back?
May suddenly feels exposed, unsafe, more vulnerable than ever. It must be the look in her double’s eyes: smug and scheming, the look of a lion about to take down a wildebeest.
“Please,” May says in a voice more confident than she feels, “are we done here?” Her right leg’s really hurting now, but curiosity demands a detour, and she manages to limp calmly to the rear of the workshop and peek at the charcoal sketch on the beautiful artist’s board: it is terrifying, a sort of female gargoyle, its powerful neck extending from the edifice of a building, craning out over a fiery city where hundreds of thousands of tiny figures huddle together, indistinguishable and doomed in the shadow.
It’s incredible and terrifying, nothing like the flat, formal paintings in all the old churches May’s been visiting, thanks to Gwen, or like the Madonna and Child riffs on the other two men’s easels. The sketch is a nightmare as modern
or at least as universal as anything May’s ever seen, and the paradox makes her ache. She felt so safe with him in those few minutes — as safe and seen as she’s felt for a long time — but who would keep him safe? Where did visions like this come from?
May limps obediently to the front of the room, because in the end, she has no other guide, no other way out. She follows the shadow of her double — who’s also limping, May notices, also bloody at the knee (probably more so without a bandage), though the blood on her long gown, like the rest of her, appears opaque — back to the abandoned alley and the stone wall with its faint sideways 8.
May slips back into her own clothes, leaving the blue dress in a heap at her feet, and at Cristofana’s nod steps through without a word, without looking back, onto a hidden archway on a modern street full of buzzing mopeds and schoolchildren in uniform, a street blessedly free of Cristofana.
When May finally works her way through Liam’s barrage of texts and finds him, in the shade of a stone loggia in an outdoor café near the apartment, drinking a limonata, she hugs him over the iron railing, hard.
Caught between sitting and standing, Li is pretty obviously mystified. When she pulls away, he straightens to his full height, letting his hands fall from her shoulders, but one floats up again automatically. Long fingers brush her cheek. “Are you crying? Shit, May. What happened? Why didn’t you answer? I texted you like a million times. . . .”
She casts a greedy eye over the street: parked cars, the still facade of Cinema Edison. “Let’s go?”
He walks around the railing to her. “I thought I saw you go right past me in the piazza, but you were in a mad hurry —”
“You saw me? How did I look?”
“You looked — is this a trick question? — distracted. Busy.” He eyes her up and down. “Anyway, you weren’t dressed like you. I only thought it was, I guess. But I figured you’d text me when you were ready to go. . . .”
Plague in the Mirror Page 3