Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Eurydice
I stood before the old door with the sun painted on its face. Already I smelled the flour; already I felt her fingers in my hair. I set my hand to the knob, turned it, and pushed in.
“Mama.”
Faint sunlight cast bands on the gleaming kitchen floor. My mother stood with her face to the window, her fingers dug deep into dough. She hummed that song she’d taught me when I was four, the one about the deep forest.
“Eury.” Her face turned, and a softness came over it. Brown eyes, hair pulled back tight. “You’re just in time for the rain. Take your boots off.”
I shut the door, kicked my shoes off one after the other into the corner. “What’s to eat?”
“Guess.”
The faintest tapping began at the windowpanes, the first droplets of afternoon rain. Each droplet hissed with acid where it touched the glass, and a green hue overtook the sunlight on the floor.
“Pork,” I said. “The fat hind end.”
“Oh yes.” Her smile didn’t leave her as she turned back to her work; her fingers kneaded deeper into the dough. “The fattest in the Dip.”
I dropped into the chair at the table. It creaked, wobbled under me.
The dough thudded, then squelched. “What did you learn from Elisabet today?”
I rolled my eyes, examined a hangnail on my index finger. “Nothing worth mentioning.”
“I never took you for a liar, Eury.”
“I’m not lying.”
She snorted, half-turned to me. “A mind like a trap, and you’d rather roll in the dirt.”
“There’s lots to be learned from rolling in the dirt.” I pinched the hangnail off. “For one, how to avoid sunburn.”
She picked up her hand towel, began wiping the flour off her fingers. “All right. And what else?”
“How to overtake a boy.”
Her faint eyebrows rose in the green light. “You’ve been fighting again?”
“If you consider wrestling with Theo fighting.”
“Oh, my girl.” She whipped the towel at me. “Sponge yourself off before you eat. I can smell you from here.”
I grabbed at the towel, missed. “I don’t stink.”
“Of course, and bread doesn’t rise. Go, before the rain really starts.”
I’d only just gotten my boots on and stepped out the front door when Jo the busybody pointed at me through her window across the street. “Where’s your guard uniform, Eury?”
“It’s being pressed.” I ducked around the side of the building, keeping under the overhang. “Can’t have wrinkles, you know.”
She burst into laughter and pulled her window shut.
Beneath the overhang in the alley, the old bucket was half-full of gray water. Not acid, at least. I pulled off my overshirt, grabbed up the cloth, and dunked it into the bucket. Cold, cold water.
I had long ago mastered the art of a three-minute bath.
Three minutes later, I dressed and came out of the alley. Dinner waited—the fattest pork hind end in the Dip. I came up onto the stoop, stood before the old door with the sun painted on its face.
Already I smelled the flour; already I felt her fingers in my hair. I set my hand to the knob, turned it, and pushed in.
“Mama.”