A Winter's Promise

Here, before you, I predict that your husband’s will is going to shatter against yours

In the dusk, through a corridor of crimson-turning clouds, the moon already stood out, like a china plate, against the mauve backcloth of the sky.

Ophelia picked up her parasol, fired with renewed determination. This time, she was ready to brave this world of pretense, this labyrinth of illusions, and resolved never to lose her way in it again.
The golden gate opened on to a blinding light.

As long as Ophelia had scruples, as long as she acted according to her conscience, as long as she could face up to her reflection every morning, she would belong to no one else but herself.
That’s what I am before being a pair of hands,” Ophelia concluded, pulling her fingers out of the mirror. “I’m the Mirror Visitor.”

Soon, when the bruises had faded, when Freya’s clawing had turned into a scar on her cheek, Ophelia would see a familiar face once more. But the look in her eyes, that would never return to how it once was. From having seen so many illusions, it had lost its own, and that was just fine. When illusions disappear, only the truth remains. Those eyes would look less within, and more out to the world. They still had much to see, much to learn.

How could she have allowed herself to keep turning over such defeatist thoughts? It wasn’t just other people, it was also she, Ophelia, who had constructed her whole identity around her hands. It was she who had decided that she’d never be anything other than a reader, a museum curator, a creature more at home in the company of objects than of human beings. Reading had always been a passion, but since when were passions the only foundations of a life?

She felt more fragile than she had the day she’d watched Anima disappear into the night; than the day her in-laws had clawed her; than the day the policemen had beaten her and thrown her into Clairdelune’s dungeons. So fragile, in fact, that she felt that, at the next crack, she could shatter.
It’s my fault, she thought, bitterly. I promised myself not to expect anything of that man. If I’d kept my promise, I wouldn’t be in such a state.

Ophelia didn’t know whether to laugh or get really annoyed. Thorn seemed serious. She sneezed three times, blew her nose, and continued in a snuffly voice: “Your concern is misplaced. No one really notices me.”
Thorn went quiet, pensive, and then leant forward, one vertebra at a time, until he could grasp Ophelia’s hand. She would have pulled away had he not straightened up almost instantly of his own accord. “You believe that?” he asked, sardonically.
And as Thorn left the kitchen, Ophelia realized that he had slipped a piece of paper into her hand.

She looked up and, this time, couldn’t avoid Thorn’s eyes bearing down on her. She discovered what she’d feared seeing in them. A profound weariness. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him, to think about those two little dice.

Ophelia wouldn’t have thought it possible, but she felt even more disappointed in Thorn. He’d expressed no regret, come up with no excuse. She suddenly realized that a small part of her had continued secretly to hope that Berenilde had lied to her and that he had nothing to do with this scheming.