Shards and Ashes

loudness of each inhalation she took. The door stood ajar, and for a long time Frankie stared at it, willing the courage to poke her head inside.

Just for a moment. Just to take one deep breath.

But then behind her she heard the rattle of feet pounding on stairs—not in the back passages but from the main rooms downstairs, which were reserved only for family and guests. There was nowhere in the long stretch of hallway for Frankie to hide, no alcove or shadow deep enough to conceal her.

She hadn’t expected anyone to be awake, and even if they were, it never occurred to her to realize that servants were always moving about and she wouldn’t be noticed as out of place. But she knew she was where she shouldn’t be, and that was the only thought that flashed through her mind.

If she was caught, she was fired. If she was fired, they lost the small amount of wages that she’d been using to pay off the beaked doctors who came to the door relentlessly every evening for Cathy.

Frankie panicked and she couldn’t think. The steps on the stairs were gaining ground too quickly—they were like thunder in Frankie’s ears—and she reacted, needing to escape.

She slipped through the cracked door, straight into the Mistress’ chamber. It was a stupid decision, she realized, but it was done, and she held her breath as she waited to hear if the Mistress’ snoring changed pace or rhythm.

The steps slowed as they ate up the ground along the hallway, and then they were passing the door, and from the bed behind her Frankie heard a pause and then a snort and a snuffle.

Frankie squeezed her eyes shut. If she was found now she wouldn’t just be let go, they’d likely call the enforcers on her and have her locked up for her ingratitude. Drops of sweat gathered at the small of her back and began to trickle down.

Frankie knew that terror sweat smelled the worst. She’d spent nights with it as her sister tossed and turned on the bed next to her.

“Is that you, Charles?” a muffled voice called out from the bed.

The footsteps moved closer to the door, a shadow passing in front of the gap.

He’s going to push the door open, and there’s nowhere for me to go, thought Frankie. She knew that the floor was crisscrossed with vines, and if she stepped wrong she could accidentally pull a pot from one of the shelves. Blood careened through her veins as sweat beaded across her forehead and along the seams of her uniform.

“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 late afternoon 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