A STRANGER IN MY OWN LIFE

Day 6 of 100

She woke to the smell of hot iron and wool, and the sound of someone talking to a cat.

"—and I don't care what you say, Ptolemy, it's not your bed. It's hers. She's had a hard night, and you've had a hard life of sitting on things. Down. Down. Look at that. Look at the hair on the quilt." A pause, and a soft thump. "There. Now you may go and disgrace yourself in the kitchen."

Mara opened her eyes.

She was lying on her back in a bed with a headboard of dark carved wood, under a quilt of faded squares, in a room she had never seen. The ceiling was low and crossed with beams. The walls were papered in a pattern of small brown roses. A coal fire burned in a tiny grate, and in front of it a flat-iron stood on a trivet, with a whisper of steam, and beyond the iron, hanging from a line stretched between two hooks, were gowns. A dozen of them. Silk and satin and brocade, in cream and sea-green and pale lilac, hanging in the firelight like the ghosts of a very good ball.

Her whole body hurt.

It did so in sections, as she took stock. The left leg was strapped from knee to ankle in strips of linen and throbbed dully. Her ribs on the same side were bound tight and caught fire when she breathed. There was a bruise on her shoulder the size of a saucer. Her hands were bandaged, the fingers swollen, and there was a stinging place on her cheek where something had scraped the skin. She was warm, though. That was the miracle. She had been in snow, a hundred feet below the sky, in twenty degrees below zero, and she was lying in a warm bed with a hot brick at her feet.

I'm alive, she thought, with distant surprise. I fell off a tower and I'm alive.

The memory arrived all at once. The belfry, the wine-red velvet, the ember of the wrist. I want to live. She sat bolt upright and cried out.

"Now, none of that."

A woman stood in the door of the room, with a tray.

She was perhaps fifty-five, and small and round and brown as a hazelnut, in a gray stuff gown with a pincushion strapped to her wrist and a tape-measure hung round her neck like a stole. Her hair was iron-gray and scraped back under a cap. Her face was lined, shrewd, and kind, with a pair of very bright black eyes that had the look of a robin's. She advanced on the bed and put the tray on the quilt and put a firm hand on Mara's shoulder and pushed her down again with astonishing ease.

"You'll tear your stitches," she said. "I put in six, and I'm not doing them twice. Drink that."

"Where am I?"

"Merrow Falls. Number nine, Tanner's Row. I'm Ruth Pellam. I make gowns." She said it as another woman might have said I'm the Queen. "Drink."

It was tea, very strong, with a great deal of sugar and a thread of something sharp that burned all the way down. Mara drank it. It spread through her like a lamp being lit. She sat propped against the pillows with the cup between her bandaged hands and tried to put the pieces in order.

"How did I get here?"

"I carried you. On my cart, with Ptolemy's blanket, across the back road. The Academy sends for me on Thursdays, for the girls' fittings. I go up early, at five, to beat the carters." Mrs. Pellam sat down on the edge of the bed. "I was coming round the north wall by the Bell Tower and I saw something in the drift. A boot. Just the toe of it. Sticking out of the snow like a mushroom."

"A boot."

"Left foot. Nicely cobbled. I thought, hello, that's no tramp's." She sniffed. "I got you out with a shovel and my two hands. You'd gone blue. I thought you were gone, to tell the truth. I put my ear to your chest and there it was, thump, thump, very slow, like a clock in another room. I've not been so frightened since the war."

"You didn't call the Academy?"

"No."

"Why not?"

The black eyes rested on her. "Because you had this in your fist," said Mrs. Pellam, "and you'd not let go."

She put her hand in the pocket of her gown and drew out something small. It was the silver paper-knife with the bone handle. The point was bent.

"I don't know what that's about," she said. "But I thought a girl who falls off a tower holding her own knife might have her reasons for not wanting a crowd. So I brought you here." She laid it on the quilt. "I'll not ask. A body ought to have her reasons. I'll only say that I saw the wrist."

Mara went cold.

"You saw—"

"The mark." Mrs. Pellam turned over the bandaged left hand, very gently, and showed her. The cuff of the gown had been cut away; the sigil lay bare on the inside of the wrist. It was a snowflake, three-armed, with the crack down the middle. But it was dim. It was the dim gray of dead ash, a smear of pewter, barely visible against the skin. It had no gleam at all. "It was lit when I found you. Faint, but lit. Now look."

"It's gone out."

"It's going. It went from silver to this over the course of the night." The old woman's face did not change, but her voice dropped. "I sewed for a woman in Burlington once. In '89. A young lady of good family, ever so pretty. She had a sigil that went the way yours is going. Gray as a mouse. They took her away in a closed carriage, and the next week the family put the knocker on the door."

"Took her away."

"I'm just saying."

"Mrs. Pellam—"

"Ruth."

"Ruth." Mara swallowed. "What day is it?"

"Friday. The sixth. You've slept the whole of yesterday and the night."

"I have to get back."

"You can't walk."

"I have to."

"You have a broken ankle and three cracked ribs and a bump on your head the size of a hen's egg. You're not walking anywhere for a week." The robin eyes were bright. "And I'd like to know why you're so sure you want to go."

Because there is someone, thought Mara, in my room.

She did not say it. She sat looking at the old woman in the firelight, with the cup going cold in her hands, and the gowns hanging pale and silent behind her, and felt for the first time the full size of the thing.

…

She went at dusk.

It was folly. She knew it. She lay in the brown-roses bed for the whole of the afternoon, watching the light creep across the ceiling, listening to the cat purr on the other side of the door and the click of Mrs. Pellam's treadle in the next room. She ate broth. She slept. She woke, shaking, at four, with the nightmare still clinging: the wind, the drop, the face. And she lay there with her eyes open in the early dark and made up her mind.

She could not stay. Every hour that she lay here was an hour that someone else was wearing her name.

She dressed in the clothes that Mrs. Pellam had left on the chair: a plain dark wool gown with the hem let down, a gray shawl, a pair of old boots a size too large. Her own things had been washed and hung. She did not take them. She made a splint for the ankle out of two stiff paper-boards from the sewing table and a strip of bandage. She found a walking-stick behind the door, a stout ash one with a crook handle. She stood. Her head swam. Her side lit up like a bonfire. She held on to the bedpost, breathing carefully through her nose, until the room stopped turning.

Then she took the paper-knife from the quilt and put it in her pocket, and went to the window, and opened it.

The back garden was white and still. A small shed stood at the end, and a gate. Beyond the gate, the unlit lane ran down toward the river. She climbed out over the sill. It took a very long time. She came down on her good leg in the snow and stood a moment, with the stick dug in and her teeth shut, listening for the click of the treadle.

It did not stop.

Thank you, she said silently, to the window.

She walked.

…

It was two miles from Tanner's Row to the Academy gate.

She did it in an hour and forty minutes. She would remember it later as one of the most difficult things she'd ever done, and also one of the most clear. The road was packed snow, rutted and iron-hard. The moon was up, a fat cold lemon sliver, and the black pines stood along the roadside like rows of mourners. Every step jarred. At a bend by the bridge she stopped and was sick in the ditch, quietly, and rinsed her mouth with snow. At the second mile she was weeping, without knowing it, with her teeth chattering and the tears freezing on her lashes. She did not stop. She went on, one planted stick and one dragging foot, counting.

One. Two. Three.

By the time she reached the long iron fence that bounded the grounds, the lamps of Thornwick were burning gold across the white lawns. She had come round to the back, to the kitchen road, where the carts delivered, and a small gate stood open. She slipped through. She crept along the wall of the stables, in the black shadow, and over the frozen kitchen garden, and between the dormant rows of the physic bed, until she stood at the corner of the Hall and could see the quadrangle.

Corbin House stood on the far side.

It was lit from top to bottom. Every window shone. Somebody was playing a piano. She saw bodies passing before the curtains, the shapes of girls in the common room, a burst of laughter. Her own window, the one under the eaves, the third from the left on the top floor, stood a little open, and a fire burned in it; she could see the flicker of the coals on the ceiling.

Someone was in her room.

She hung there for a moment, clinging to the corner of the Hall with her stick between her knees. The cold struck through the shawl. Beyond the corner, thirty yards away across the open snow, the side door of Corbin House opened with a bang.

Light spilled out. A figure came down the steps.

It was Josie.

She knew her at once, by the shape of her, and the plum dress, and the wild curls. She was running. She plunged down the steps and out onto the lawn without a cloak or a bonnet, and behind her, in the doorway, others were coming: a knot of girls, a boy or two, laughing, calling. And behind them all, last, slowly, leaning in the door with one shoulder against the frame and a glass in her hand, came a tall girl in a blue dress.

Her hair was down.

It fell over her shoulders in a thick bright chestnut mass, and the light behind her turned it to copper. She was smiling. She raised the glass to the others, with an easy, graceful, amused tilt of the wrist; and she said something that Mara could not hear, and the whole group burst into laughter.

It's the blue dress, thought Mara, quite dully. She's wearing my blue dress.

"Mara!" cried Josie.

She had flung herself at the girl in the door. She hit her with the full force of her body and her arms went round her neck and the two of them rocked together on the step. Josie was laughing and sobbing both at once. Her voice rose across the snow, high and cracked and clear as a bell. "Oh, you wretch, you absolute wretch, where have you been? I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead in a ditch! I went to the Warden Post and everything! I've been out of my mind—"

"I'm sorry."

The voice was soft. It was her voice, warm and low. "I'm so sorry, Josie. I was a fool. I went for a walk and lost my way in the dark and spent the night in the chapel. I fell asleep in a pew. I woke up with a stiff neck and no idea of the time."

"The chapel!"

"I thought it was a good idea at the time."

"You utter, utter—" Josie drew back and took her face in both hands and shook it. "Never again! Never! You write me a note. You tell me where you're going. I don't care if it's the necessary house, I want a note."

"A note. I promise."

"I'll hold you to it."

"I know you will."

"Come in. Come in this minute, you're frozen, you're blue, I'll make you a posset—" She dragged the girl by the arm into the house. The door shut. The knot of onlookers followed with cries of welcome. Somebody started the piano again.

And Mara stood in the dark at the corner of the Hall, with the snow to her ankles and her whole body shaking, and watched her best friend take someone else in her arms.

…

It did not feel like anything, at first.

That was the strangest part. She had thought it would hurt. She stood and waited for it, the way one waits for a bruise to flower after a blow. But what came was only a sort of dull ringing, a numbness, as if she'd been struck on the ear. She looked at the lit windows. She looked at the third on the left on the top floor. Behind the curtain a shadow crossed, tall and slender, and stopped by the desk, and she knew, as clearly as if she had been standing there, that the shadow was lifting a brown notebook with a brass catch, and turning it in its hands.

She has my room. She has my book. She has my friend.

And my name.

Somewhere in the quad, a clock chimed the half-hour. The piano went on. Through the open door of the common room, she could see the hearth, and Professor Pryce standing before it with his glass in his hand and his back half turned. He had come to welcome the prodigal. She saw him lift his head. She saw him say something to the girl in blue; she saw the girl laugh, and lay a hand on his arm; and she saw the old man go quite still, and look at that hand, and then up into the laughing face, for a very long time.

He did not smile.

He lowered his eyes. He drank what was in his glass.

He knows, thought Mara.

She did not know how she was certain of it. It was in the stoop of the shoulders; in the way he drew his arm back, slowly, as from a stove. And then Josie had hold of him, too, and was dragging him laughing toward the piano, and he went, and the door closed again, and the lawn lay empty.

She could go in.

The thought rose in her with a sudden hot, wild clarity. She could simply cross the snow. She could walk up the steps and open the door and stand in the common room in her borrowed shawl, with her stick and her bandaged hands, and say it. I am Mara Ashgrove. That is not me. That woman is a Doppel. She pushed me from the Bell Tower. They would turn. They would stare. Josie would put a hand to her mouth. And at the back of the room, among the astonished faces, she would see the woman in the blue dress smile, and rise, and say gently, in her own voice, Oh, my dear. Oh, you poor thing. Josie, she's confused. Someone fetch the Captain.

She started to walk.

She had gone four paces over the snow when she saw the notice.

…

It was pinned to the gate of the quad.

She saw it only because of the light. A lantern hung from the iron arch, a blue-glass lantern, hissing. Under it, nailed to the post with four brass tacks, was a sheet of stiff white paper. It was freshly printed. The black ink was glossy. Across the top, in a bold, ugly, official face, it said:

NOTICE TO ALL PERSONS.

By Order of the Federal Bureau of Arcane Oversight, Northeast Division.

She came closer. Her breath smoked on the cold air. She read it with her face six inches from the paper.

It has come to the attention of the Bureau that a manifestation of the class known as DOPPEL has occurred, or is presumed to have occurred, in the vicinity of Thornwick Academy and the township of Merrow Falls. All persons are advised that the Doppel Act of 1887 is in force. Any person having knowledge of such a manifestation is required to report it forthwith to the nearest Warden detachment.

Persons are reminded that:

(1) A Doppel is an unstable shadow of the original, and will fail within a short period.

(2) Where the Bureau is unable to determine to its satisfaction which of two persons is the original, BOTH PERSONS SHALL BE TAKEN INTO CUSTODY AND SEALED, in the interest of public safety.

(3) Concealment of a Doppel, or assistance to one, is an offense punishable by seven years' imprisonment.

By order of *Marcus Halloran, Director.*

She read it three times.

Both persons.

The words stared up at her, black and clean. She had read them in the Act. She had read them in the papers. She had even said them aloud, to Pryce, in a warm room, over tea, in the mild bright voice of a scholar considering an abstract proposition. They simply stop. It had been an interesting problem. It was a footnote.

It was not a footnote now. It was a sheet of paper with four brass tacks, nailed to a gate in the dark.

She stood with her hand over her mouth.

If I go in there, she thought, and say, I'm the real one, then we'll be standing side by side in the lamplight. Two Maras. The same face. The same voice. She will cry. She'll plead. She has my whole head, she will say everything that I'd say; she will know the middle name of my cat. And the Bureau will lay us side by side, and the Captain will put on his coat, and look at us with those gray eyes, and he won't be able to tell. He said it himself. "We don't know what we're doing."

And then he will take us both.

Both.

She saw it all in a flash, as one sees a landscape by lightning: the cellar, the iron door, the dark. A table. Two women in two chairs, with the same face, growing old.

"No," said Mara aloud.

Her voice came out thin and strange in the empty snow. She did not recognize it. She put her hand against the cold lantern-post and leaned, and shut her eyes, and made herself think.

If I speak, we are lost. If I'm silent, she lives as me, and I become no one.

There has to be a third thing.

Behind her, over the snow, the piano had stopped. She heard the door of Corbin House open again, and a burst of laughter, and a woman's clear voice raised in a toast. She did not turn round. She stood with her face against the post and her back to the lit windows of the only home she'd had, and listened to a stranger being loved.

When she opened her eyes, the cold had gone out of her.

It was not a comfortable thing. It was not courage. It was a sort of lucidity, flat and dry and clear, such as comes to a person who has spent a night with the last of her options. She straightened. She took her hand from the post. And she looked at the notice, once more, from top to bottom, as a scholar looks at a hostile text.

Unstable. Will fail within a short period.

They've got it backward, she thought suddenly. Haven't they? That's the thing. The Act says the Doppel fails. But look at her. She stood on the belfry in twenty below with her shoulders bare. She threw me across a room. She is strong as a bull and bright as a coin.

And look at me.

She turned her bandaged wrist to the lantern. The sigil on it was gray as dust. Her hands, in the blue light, looked thin. Her sleeve, which she'd pushed back, hung loose on an arm that seemed, for just an instant, strangely pale. She could see the lantern-flame through the heel of her palm.

Oh, thought Mara.

Oh. It's me that's fading.

She did not scream. She was proud of that afterward. She stood in the snow with her heart hammering in her throat and the hand held up to the light, and the thing she'd read in a hundred books, in a hundred careful footnotes, slid sickeningly into place like a bone.

Then she lowered her hand. She tucked it into her shawl. She turned, leaning on the stick, and limped away from the light into the black angle of the wall, as a wounded thing does, and did not look back.

I will hide, she thought. I'll find a place. I'll live in the dark if I have to.

I will find out how to take it back.