The Binding

by Bridget Collins

A wedge of lamplight was shining through a gap in the kitchen curtains; as I watched, a shadow crossed and crossed again.

pale brown eyes, so pale the pupils were startlingly black.

Here the clock in the hall dredged up seconds like stones and dropped them again into the pool of the day, letting each ripple widen before the next one fell.

The darkness hung in front of me for a long time, like a fog; only there was something new in it, a flash like teeth, sharper than I could bear. Not hatred—but something that would have torn me apart if it could. Then it closed round me, and I was gone.

“Are you hungry?” “No.” “You will be. Five days you’ve been out.” “Out?” “Two more days of rest. At least.

have looked more closely. Did I recognize . . . But I was too mixed up in her to know what I felt—only that she was looking at a front door with a stained-glass panel in the center of it, a lighted lamp and a ribbon border. She was pleased, excited, warmth glowed in the pit of her belly. I felt her grip on the bellpull,

“There’s a growing trade in fakes, you know. Does that concern you?” He paused, but he didn’t seem surprised not to get an answer. “I’ve never seen one—well, as far as I know—but I’m curious. Could one really tell the difference? Novels, they call them. They must be much cheaper to produce.

It makes one wonder who would write them. People who enjoy imagining misery, I suppose. People who have no scruples about dishonesty. People who can spend days writing a long sad lie without going insane.”

“May your darkness be quiet and the light come sooner than you need,”

I didn’t know this Darnay, this voice, this naked unmasked face; and yet I did, I knew him better than the other one, this was the Darnay I had always known, from the moment I set eyes on him.

He slept as though he’d been thrown away, one arm over his head, the veins on his wrist showing blue under the skin.

I MISSED LUCIAN so much it was like a wound. I could feel the outline of it, a desperate fiery ache that started under my sternum and ended somewhere in my groin.

A note, sewn into the collar. It took an eternity to pick the seam apart with the point of my knife; but then at last I could unfold it. Meet me at sunrise at the crossroads between the marsh road and the Littlewater road. I love you.

In my mind I imagine a gray wall rising above me, vast and featureless, so smooth it cheats all sense of perspective. I close my eyes and stand in front of it. I imagine it rising up and over, curling round to meet itself, so that I’m enclosed in a gray bubble the size of infinity. I’m alone. There is nothing here to harm me. Nothing can get through.

I swallow the dry edge in my throat that needs alcohol to soften it. Instead I imagine a gray fog that gets thicker and thicker as I drag a chair from the side of the table into the middle of the room.

My forehead touches his shoulder. I feel him freeze. We stand still, hardly breathing. Every part of me is concentrated on the place where my skin is against his shirt.

As if he knew me already, knew my body right down to my bones.

he’d be flushed and laughing, reeling with fatigue, with his shirt open at the neck. But now he’s dressed differently, in rougher, warmer clothes. His eyes are clearer. Steadier.

His eyes are bright hazel, like rain on growing wood.