Veronica Roth: Shards and Ashes

“It is, Mother. I’m home.” The figure shifted, and Frankie saw Charles for the first time. She tasted blood from biting her lip so tightly to keep back the gasp of recognition—it was the boy from the garden, the one who had dropped rose petals in her hands.

She had to remind herself that he’d never traced the contours of her face with them or dipped his lips to her own. Those thoughts had been just in her dreams, but seeing him standing there, the darkness making the edges of him hazy, they seemed almost real.

Charles started toward the door and Frankie shook her head, as if by that gesture alone she could stop him from coming. He paused and tilted his head, and for a terrifying moment Frankie was convinced she was caught.

“You’re later than usual,” the Mistress said, her voice still sleep scratched.

Frankie could swear Charles was staring straight at her. She thought of the night the beaked doctors rode into town and how one of them had turned to look at her, though it must have been too dark and the goggles over his eyes too thick for him to see her.

The light from one of the oil sconces on the wall flickered over Charles’ face, making his cheekbones look sharp and his chin pointed. He was dressed all in black so that his head with its closely cropped hair seemed to float in the air. It was clear he’d been gone for quite a while, and Frankie wondered where he’d been all night and with whom.

She had no idea how people like him lived.

“Something smells off,” the Mistress’ voice took on a hard edge. Frankie dared a sniff. She reeked, her nervous body pouring sweat. If the Mistress could smell Frankie from the other side of a room washed in the sweetness of gardenias, then there was no way Charles couldn’t smell her as well.

Frankie kept her eyes pinned on his face, waiting for his features to shift to anger and for him to call her out.

“Did you wash afterward?” the Mistress asked.

A flash of disgust rolled over Charles’ face, and he moved away from the doorway. “As always, Mother,” he responded as his steps pounded down the hallway.

The Mistress shifted in her bed, and Frankie feared she’d light a candle or call for her maid. But instead the Mistress huffed a sigh and settled back into snoring, giving Frankie the opportunity to flee. She ducked her head and slipped out of the room, her movements no longer demure as she raced toward the servants’ stairs and made her way down to the kitchens.

For the rest of the day Frankie kept herself enveloped in the steam of the laundry, not caring that her hands became a raw red from the boiling water or that sweat drenched her uniform. She needed to get the stink of fear from her pores.

It was lateafternoon headed toward dusk by the time Frankie finally made it home that day. Her mouth felt dry, and the blisters on her hands were cracked and weeping. Cathy had already drawn the bath for the evening, and she urged Frankie to go first. Usually Frankie would protest, but tonight her limbs felt weak from the strain of the morning, and she let her sister pull her free of the Oglethorpe uniform and settle her in the tub.

Even though the night was overwhelmingly hot and still, they set a small fire burning in the hope that the smoke would drive away the bad air. Periodically they’d hear their neighbors discharging rifles or setting off crudely made fireworks, the tart brightness of gunpowder a poor substitute for the power of the cannon’s roar farther from the swamps.

The knock on the door that night came earlier than it ever had in the past, and Frankie cursed as she splashed her way from the tub. Cathy’s fingers fumbled with her skirt as she tried to quickly undress so they could switch places. It was always more difficult for the plague eaters to sense the fever on someone immersed in water, and it’s what had kept the creatures at bay for the past several nights as Frankie tried to pull together more money to pay the beaked doctors off.

“Go,” Frankie hissed at her sister, and finally she just shoved Cathy, fully clothed, into the water, not caring as waves sloshed over the edges of the tub and sent rivulets toward the fire that set the embers to hissing.

There was another knock, and Frankie didn’t have time to dress, so she grabbed a dingy sheet from the bed and wrapped it around her body twice before opening the door.

“Oh.” It was the only word she could say.

She’d been expecting the towering black-draped doctors, their masks gleaming in the darkness as sweet-smelling smoke drifted from the tips of their beaks. Instead she found Charles Oglethorpe standing on the threshold.

It took a moment of her staring before her brain kicked in. “You shouldn’t be here.” She pressed her hand against his chest and pushed. He deftly sidestepped her and twisted so that he came behind her and entered the tiny shack.

Cathy sat in the tub, shoulders hunched and knees tucked up under her chin. The edges of her clothes drifted along the surface of the water in swirling patterns.

Frankie recovered herself and followed him inside, closing the door behind her. The man living next door—too close—set off a series of shots, but Charles didn’t even wince or seem to notice, he was so intently examining their little hovel before ultimately turning his eyes on Frankie.

The sheet draped around Frankie was thin, and already the dampness of her body had seeped through, making it almost transparent. She began to blush, every inch of her skin heating.

She suddenly saw her life through Charles’ eyes, then, and this made it all worse. He was used to heavy silver cutlery, thickly piled rugs, and painted plaster walls bordered by heavy trim. Here there was a dirt floor going to mud where the bathwater sloshed out and a hole in the roof to let smoke filter into the sky. Embarrassed tears pricked Frankie’s eyes, which made her mad. Making her even angrier was the sight of her sister huddled in the water, her only clean set of clothes now drenched and unwearable.

Frankie raised her chin—something she’d never be allowed to do anywhere on Oglethorpe property—but this was her house and her domain. “Why are you here?”

Charles’ eyes skimmed around the room again, and he walked toward the bed shoved into the far corner; not even a scrap of cloth hung from the ceiling to afford any privacy. This made Frankie stiffen because it was such an intimate part of her life. This was where she lay down at night, where she dreamed (often of him), and where she was most vulnerable.

For a fleeting moment she remembered him this morning and how he’d come home so late and his mother had asked if he’d washed. She wondered if this was something he did every evening—follow a girl home, stare at her bed, and maybe spend the night with her before returning to his proper life.

Bile churned in her stomach. This wasn’t what she wanted to think of him. He’d been kind to her, once, and maybe even twice if he’d known she was hiding in his mother’s room this morning.

Maybe he thought it was time for her to repay that kindness. Her eyes flicked toward Cathy. She would do anything to keep her sister safe and alive. Anything to keep the plague eaters from crawling over her skin and braying that the illness nestled inside her.

Cathy had been sick for two weeks now, almost three. No one had ever survived the plague that long, and this alone gave Frankie hope. If she could keep piling fresh flowers around her and keep the miasma from the swamps from creeping into the house, Cathy stood a chance.

“What do you want?” Frankie asked Charles again, trying to keep her voice icy sharp.

Charles leaned over and rested his hand on the blanket draped across the bed. Frankie swallowed, wondering where she could send Cathy to be safe while whatever Charles wanted to happen here tonight took place.