Peter Sheinfeld had not lied about one thing. The weather dropped below zero after sundown. Snow batted at the window and door like distressed ghosts. Through what the mind weaver could see outside, nobody was out and about. Empty cans or loose paper clattered and fluttered down the street, and rumor had it the train stations would close for the next few days.
That night before bed, Natalie turned the sleeping capsule Piper had made for her over between her thumb and forefinger. It was a pale blue thing, almost like a moon stone. She popped it into her mouth, washing it down with a cup of cold water. She sat in front of the fireplace, the coals shifting under the crackling flames. Not warm enough, she snuggled into her coat, wishing she could disappear into it. She replayed the day's session with Peter with a bit of remorse. Taking his memory did not come easily as she had thought. It was like trying to scribble over an entire painting with a white crayon.
While Natalie had stood behind the fence, a cool breeze rattling the vines around her, the girl scooped up a handle of pebbles. Before she could throw the second one, Natalie came around the side of the fence, up the stone front path, hood pulled up, and took a crumbling piece of coal from her pocket. Ducking behind a stout evergreen, she took aim and threw it at the back of the woman's head.
She turned, her own hood thrown up around her face, and shot for the fence, not even noticing Natalie's shadow played out against the stones, made by the nearby gas lamp's bright yellow light.
Peter opened the window and looked around. Then Natalie heard, "Who is there?" She waited, breath hitched. She would not make the same mistake, and run. She would stay still, and wait it out. He whispered something, but she could not hear what it was, and then he closed the door.
Something fluttered to the soft grass. She scrambled to it, dropping on both knees. It was an origami butterfly. One of its wings read:
Open.
This letter was not for her. She was sure it was for the girl he loved. She had no place opening it, reading a single word. So why did she?
Slipping closer to the gas lamp, she parted the butterfly's wings apart as slowly as possible, so as not to make much noise or destroy such delicate art. The hands it was meant for would not miss it. Peter's actual memory did not involve this letter. It did not exist. Even if it did, Natalie was sure it was tucked safe and sound in a drawer or box belonging to the girl. What was her name, anyway? The letter did not say.
My love, I am sorry.
Natalie started to put the butterfly in her pocket, perhaps out of habit, when it wilted in her hand like a dead flower. It crumbled and fell like dust flakes between her fingers. The memory was breaking apart. She had done her job correctly. Stepping into the gas lamp's shaft of quivering light, she peered up at Peter's window one last time. The curtains rippled, and he looked down just as she ducked around the tower of the house, back to the cold stone wall. She wanted those words to have been written for her, but she knew they were not. Closing her eyes, she pulled herself out of the memory.
It was not her best work, but she had tried. Peter had thanked her as commonly as one would when purchasing a merchant's freshest catch. Around then it was almost the lunch hour, and her stomach had rumbled along with his. She stood and took her hat, hoping he would invite her to come along, but he did not, and though there was nobody to witness this very obvious rejection, she felt embarrassed.
Now, so late in the night, she stood from the fireplace and stretched her sore limbs. After Peter's session, and lunch all alone, she had a couple of other clients, their memories easily handled, their faces a blur. Piper did not stop back by like Natalie had hoped. She concluded that her friend was still upset with her. There was a hollow feeling in her chest now, as she climbed the stairs, like someone had plucked her heart straight out of her chest, and replaced it with a broken clock. One that did not beat, but rattled when she moved.
And she could not understand how someone could possibly live without their true, honest heart. Like a lock without a key.
***
The second envelope from Coldton palace lay on Natalie's door step, covered in specks of snow. She picked it up and opened the seal as though it would bite her if she was not very careful with it, read it away from her face like it had hissed and nipped at her, but very soon found that there was nothing to be afraid of, only running out of time to act.
Nervous excitement still flashed in her chest as she moved across the room, the sheer fabric curtains in the window silhouetted with the soft ghostly blue of early dawn, made bluer by the billows of fog that had cloaked Coldton away from the rest of the world overnight.
At her desk, she pulled out a blank piece of parchment and pen, and began to write back to the Lord and Lady of Coldton Palace. She apologized for her late reply, having been caught up with other clients, which was not, in her opinion, a lie, and she realized, biting the end of her pen a little smugly, that this made her seem quite important, therefore not so easily reached, even if you were the Lord and Lady of the capital city. Mr. Sheinfeld had her memorized, like she worked day in and day out just for the chance to see him, maybe even learn something new about him, build a connection past this mind weaving business.
Perhaps, she realized, she had made a name for herself. Still, Peter told her he had lied about knowing one of her clients. He said he would let her answer her own question as to why he had chosen her. Did he know she was a rule breaker? Or was he a spy from Cape Colette like Piper had suggested? She shook her head. Stupid, she told herself. Do not believe Piper. A friend, yes, but also assistant. Still...
If I lose my job with the mind weavers, she will lose hers, as well.
After walking the letter with her reply over to the post office, where the streets were empty, the only sound being the howl of wind off the mountains in the north, she pressed her hand to the side of her head on the way back. It throbbed. Coffee. That is what she needed.
Even still, up on her balcony, a hot mug of black magic, or so she and Piper sometimes liked to call it, in her hands, her head continued to ache. From her forehead to the back of her neck. Perhaps she should close up for the day. How could she work her gift properly while feeling this distant? And who would arrive in weather like this anyway?
To her left she spotted movement. When she turned to look, she dropped the coffee cup. It shattered at her feet, causing a flock of beautiful buntings to flutter off the pointed roof of the building across the street.
It was the hooded, black figure. Natalie stood, her heart thrashing. She clamped onto the railing and peered as hard as she could, but like before, there was no face. The figure stopped, and Natalie felt all the air disappear from her lungs. It almost seemed to look up at her, its cloak hems brushing the snow-pattered cobblestones. She waved at it, wildly, like a person trying to wave down a cab. When it just continued to stand there, she turned and ran inside, down the stairs, and flung herself out the door, her shoes slipping across the cobblestones as she darted toward it.
It turned and moved down the street, past the other few shops and businesses in the area, all closed, display window lights shut off. "Where are you taking me?" Natalie asked. "Who are you?"
It floated like wispy curtains ahead, not moving dreadfully fast, but no matter Natalie's clunking shoe soles and abated breath, she could not reach it. It passed all the streets branching off into Piper's neighbor hood, taking the loop toward Coldton's Palace, the lane flanked by Coldton's white oaks. In her coat, despite the sheets of snowy wind drifting overhead from the north, she felt her skin start to sweat. Just before she and the shadow made it to the fork in the road that led in the direction toward Stagwood and Willow Haven, which was the farthest she had run in a very long time, she leaped at the hooded shadow, feeling all of her muscles reaching to their full extent, and plummeted into it.
She seemed to float in midair as the world around her moved in slow motion, each flake of snow hanging like ornaments. Natalie's hand was outstretched, eyes wide, as images flooded her mind.
A dress thrown over a chair.
Pressed blue flowers.
Water bugs dancing over the pond.
It all disappeared with the shadow like it was no more than a cloud of dust.
She turned, thinking it had gotten away, that it was too far gone to follow anymore. Nothing was there. Was it trying to take her somewhere? Why did she keep seeing it? And what did those images mean? Her breaths were jagged, hurting her chest like razors. Nobody was out. Not a motor or horse hoof could be detected. Fog rolled toward her from all three streets, but she continued to stand there, unsure of what she was supposed to do, looking as lost as a bird left in winter's grasp without a flock to follow.
Good thing she knew Coldton nearly like the back of her hand. Her parents had raised her here. The family had lived in the neighborhood just between Downtown Coldton and the northern outskirts of Stagwood, because her mother worked in the city and her father at Swan Glade's mill. Just before her parents passed away, Natalie had worked in a chocolate shop in downtown Coldton, where she stole truffles at the end of almost every work shift.
She stared at the sign pole at the corner of the intersection, made visible, if only barely, by the gas lamp that flickered through the smog beside it. Each sign pointed toward its town. Stagwood's was made of its special cedar wood, chipped on both sides. Above it was Willow Haven's copper one, half claimed by webs of moss. On the very top, constructed of wrought black iron letters, was Coldton. A traveler would not find Cape Colette's sign. To a lot of people, the place was only a myth, and the ones who knew about it were rare and few.
Suddenly there was the sound of wheels rubbing over the uneven stones behind her from the main road. Natalie moved toward the sign pole, slipping the hood of her coat above her head. She was surprised to see it was a cabriolet of pearly white and gilded gold, the folding hood pulled all the way down to shield all of whom sat inside from the insistent frost, except for the end of a white satin dress. It came out of the fog like a forgotten memory. Standing on the metal plate behind the carriage, the driver held onto the reins of the majestic white horses, their coats and hair shimmering with flakes of snow.
He nodded at Natalie, who only stared, feeling her heart edge its way into her throat like a mole in its tunnel. It pounded in her ears, over the sound of the horse's clonking hooves, the cabriolet's round metal wheels crushing loose rocks in the road, snow flinging around its pearly spokes.
It rounded the corner, taking the bend into downtown Coldton, past the weeping willows, their leafy sprays shifting in the veils of fog as though waving or trembling at the sight of their new visitor.
Once the cabriolet was gone, under the stone archway and into the main part of the city, Natalie leaned her forehead to the sign pole, clamping onto it like it was the knob of a door into another world entirely. One that did not give her so much trouble.
There was only one person who could have been in that cabriolet. And she was the last face Natalie wanted to see. Fear that Piper had been right all along kept her frozen against the pole. Her secret cabinets. Her job. Peter Sheinfeld. Piper. Her whole world could come crashing down in an instant, all too soon, before she could make something of this life she had chosen for herself.
Before she even knew who she was.