Page 83 of The Phoenix Bride
I cup her cheek in my hands and whisper her name as we move together. I trace her jaw and nose and hairline with my lips. I learn her, like I have learned the chambers of the heart, or the slicing of chicory root, reading her skin like letters on a page, swallowing her sighs like measures of medicine. She becomes a part of the herbal, a recipe to be memorized. She is both a sickness and a cure. She is part of me now.
—
We sleep intermittently, each waking the other with wandering hands and soft words. At one point, I open my eyes to a dark room, and I feel her lips against the back of my neck. I shift, and she sighs, burying her nose into my shoulder. She whisperssomething unintelligible. Perhaps she is dreaming.
When I turn to look at her, Cecilia’s eyes are closed, breaths slow. The clock on the mantel ticks softly; it is still very early. But she is so beautiful, and the morning so terrifying to consider, that the thought of returning to sleep feels agonizing. Slowly, so I don’t wake her, I slip out of bed and pull on my clothes. Then I leave the room.
I intend to go to the kitchens for a glass of water, but I don’t know the layout of Grey’s home. I soon find myself lost. Monotone in the darkness, the place is overdecorated and cavernous, some sinister quality of sentience in the furniture’s ill-defined bulk. Wandering aimlessly, I turn a corner and bump into someone. Alarmed, I rear back to find that my assailant is Grey himself, half dressed in a silk dressing gown and slippers. He yelps like a cat that has been trod upon.
“Oh, Mendes!” he says once he has recovered. I shush him reflexively, and he repeats, “Oh, Mendes,” much more quietly. “Good evening. Or should I say night! You couldn’t sleep? I hope the room is to your liking?”
“It is excellent, thank you. I only wanted a glass of water.”
“Ah! This way.”
I follow him down the corridor. He is not wearing his wig, and it feels illicit, somehow, as if he is naked.
“I couldn’t sleep, either,” he says to me as we walk.
“Why is that?”
“It is a common affliction of mine. My thoughts sometimes grow very loud and numerous, and I can’t stand the noise. I toss and turn and then must resort to activity, or else go mad.”
“Have you seen a physician?”
“Oh, dozens,” he says. “I am accursed with restlessness. Not much to be done. But it could be worse, I suppose—better too many thoughts than none at all.”
We enter the kitchen. Grey has running water—an extraordinary luxury—and we both drink in an awkward silence. “Look,” he says, suddenly. “I have a mind to show you something. Unless you are desperate to return to bed?” I shake my head, and he grins at me, teeth flashing white in the darkness. “Excellent. This way.”
He takes me up several sets of stairs and into a large room, which seems to be mostly used as a storage area. It is filled with vases and statues hidden beneath tarpaulins, as well as several mountains of dusty books. One wall has three windows, giving a beautiful view of the river and the night sky. It faces south, so we can’t see the fire; the city looks misleadingly peaceful.
Grey claps his hands together. The sound echoes through the room. “I wished to hear your opinion on something.”
He strolls over to one of the cloth-colored shapes and pulls the tarpaulin away. Beneath it, there is a curious object: metallic, tube-shaped, balanced on a large tripod. It gleams invitingly in the light.
“Do you know what this is?” he asks me.
“A telescope,” I reply. I have seen them in illustrations, although I have never had the privilege to use one myself.
“Yes, exactly! Have you operated one before?”
“I admit, I have not.”
“Ah,” Grey says, disappointed. “No matter, then.”
I make an amused noise. “Were you hoping I could instruct you?”
“Well, you are the educated sort, Mendes.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“My father left this to me,” he says morosely. “He loved astronomy. But I can’t understand how to use it. I believed one merely had to look through the eyepiece, but all I see is darkness.”
I walk over and attempt it. He is correct: The view is nothing but black, despite the other end of the telescope being pointed to the sky. “Hm,” I mutter, and I inspect the object more closely. I had some experience with microscopes at the academy in Lisbon, and it seems this might function similarly. I adjust one ofthe rings on the tube and peer again. The moon suddenly appears in the lens, blown to enormous proportion.
It is so bright that I almost flinch. Then my vision focuses, and I wonder at the detail. It had always seemed so perfect from a distance, but enlarged, the moon is flawed and cracked, like impasto on a painting.
I step away. “Try it now,” I say to him.
