He did not write to her, not one single letter. It pained her, but what was one more hurt atop other lacerations?
At the end of summer, Madelena had her baby, and three days later Nina made the trek to her sister’s house. It was the first time she had ventured outside her room, and she felt strange, sure everyone stared at her when she came downstairs with a hat in her hands.
Her mother, however, gave her a warm embrace and declared in a neutral voice that they would travel to Madelena’s after lunch.
Madelena’s baby was a darling thing. It already had hair, and when Nina held it in her arms she saw that the baby’s eyes were gray.
“Will they stay like this forever?” she asked Madelena.
“Martin says they’ll change and turn their true color in due time,” her sister said.
Madelena lay on a huge four-poster bed with crimson covers. The Évaristes had always taken red as their symbol, ever since they’d made their fortune importing precious dyes that would be used to turn plain wool into beautiful, colorful garments. Even Martin’s hair was red, and Nina had teased Madelena about this.
Nina handed the baby back and her sister cooed at the child, smiling down at her daughter.
“What will you name her?”
“I was thinking Viridiana, but Martin might call that a betrayal. Surely he’ll say vermilion is a better color. Vermilion Rose. The child will despise me.”
Nina chuckled at that and Madelena smiled once more. Nina sat on the chair that had been placed by the bed, her hands in her lap.
“How are you, truly, Nina?” Madelena asked softly.
“Mother told you I’m fine.”
“Mother is not here now.”
Nina held her hands together. She did not reply.
“Nina, you can talk to me and I will always listen,” Madelena said.
Nina had a look of perfect misery, which she tried to disguise by speaking calmly. “I loved him and he didn’t love me back. That is all there is to it,” she said.
“Ah, Nina.”
“Please don’t be sorry for me,” Nina said, looking up at her sister, eyes sharp. “All of Oldhouse already pities me—I cannot abide your pity, too.”
Madelena gently shushed her baby, which had begun to stir. She rocked the child.
“I remember when you broke your arm,” Madelena said once the baby calmed down. “You were seven. It was when we went to the Devil’s Throne.”
The Devil’s Throne was a rock outcropping that had a funny shape. In a part of it, one could sit as if upon a chair. They said this had been a sacred spot at one point and that a statue of Ione, goddess of the forest and the hunt, had stood there in the days when pagan customs were the norm, before the fort at Dijou was built. But not a speck of the statue was left now, though in these parts, people might still pray to Ione and honored saints alike. Certain habits did not die.
“It was my left arm,” Nina said. “I remember. Mother was furious at us.”
“The next summer we were playing there again, and again you jumped atop those blasted rocks. As if falling once wasn’t enough.”
“I didn’t fall the second time.”
“I know,” Madelena said. “And you were not afraid to climb a second time.”
Afterward, Madelena spoke of other things. She concentrated on talk of the baby, news concerning the Évaristes, she even told Nina the cat had a new litter, six tabby kittens. On the way back to Oldhouse the next day, Nina thought again about the outcropping.
The leaves were changing color by the time she ventured to the Devil’s Throne, from green to reds and yellows. She knotted her gray shawl around her shoulders and left early. By then there were fewer comments from her relatives.
The Devil’s Throne was far from Oldhouse, but it was good to be outside again, following the familiar paths. She was surprised to see the world had not changed while she was sequestered inside her home. The trees remained rooted to their spots, the mushrooms were popping up in the patches where they could normally be found, the sheep roamed the fields they always roamed. The world remained and there was something remarkably comforting about this thought, since heartbreak often invoked images of cataclysms that would devour every speck of ground beneath one’s feet.
Montipouret could exist without Hector Auvray, and so could Nina.
When she reached the outcropping, she took off her shoes, as she did when she was a girl, and climbed to the top until she rested her back against the smooth rock and looked up at the sky. She had missed all summer and with it the evening flights of beetles, their metallic green carapaces catching the ebbing light.
The rains came fully to Oldhouse a week later, drenching the land. It was the season of storms, when lightning streaked the sky.
Nina no longer ate her meals in her bedroom, joining her family in the dining room each day instead. The mass of the Beaulieus had returned to their homes with the coming of the rains, and now only the core members of the tribe remained. Nina felt more at ease with fewer people staring at her.
Her great-aunts Lise and Linette wrote to her when fall was ending and frost decorated the ground, the earth grown hard. They invited Nina to visit them in the spring. It would be a welcome distraction for all of them, they said. Nina had not thought about Loisail, she had pushed it from her mind, and she did not reply when her mother read her the letter.
The morning when the first snow of the season fell was the same morning Nina practiced a complex card trick, assembling all the cards into a fan that would then be reassembled in the shape of a sphere. When she was done working with the cards, she went to the window and opened it, breathing in the cold air. Snowflakes began to accumulate on her windowsill.
She realized, as she stood there with her head bowed, looking at the flakes, that she had utterly forgotten to say Hector’s name that day. She had forgotten to say it for several days.
Nina went back to the Devil’s Throne. This time she took her heavy coat, her gloves, scarf, and boots. The rocks were tinted white and the snow crunched beneath her feet as she climbed the outcropping and surveyed the sky. She had an odd sensation, as if she were an insect newly emerged from its silk cocoon that must dry its wings in the morning sun.
With the coming of winter, Oldhouse grew even more quiet and sedate. Nina and her mother went to the Évaristes’ household for a party, and all should have been merriment and excitement, but a few of the younger Évariste boys, who had returned home during their winter break, must have heard the stories going around about Nina because they gaped. She was used to such things: the tale of how she’d shoved Johaness Meinard with her talent had been popular a few years before. Still, it hurt to know she was the object of blatant gossip. Everyone from Vertville to Dijou would likely spare a joke or two about the Witch of Oldhouse this winter.
Nina’s mother, sensing her discomfort, asked again about Loisail. Her great-aunts had written a second letter and said the girl ought to stay with them for a couple of weeks.
“Or perhaps you’d rather stay with Gaétan and Valérie?” her mother asked.
“No,” Nina said quickly. “My aunts have certain natural history materials that Gaétan does not trouble himself with.”
This was an excuse, but it was also true. The old ladies maintained an impressive assortment of books and monographs on birds, which Nina found interesting. It was not her passion, but it would be better to spend her time reading about species of fowl than to have to endure living under the same roof as Valérie.