Nigredo: Spero Lucem

Summer’s left hand stayed flat on the shut door a moment longer than it needed to, as if the door might change its mind.

Behind them the Bath was warm and empty and quiet. Steam lay low over the water in the basins and moved a little when they breathed, and the stone under her bare foot was warm right through, like a hearthstone at the end of a long fire. The long pale dress lay where Summer had left it last night—in a heap on the stone, its seam gone—looking smaller than it had any right to. And on the stone lip beside the nearest basin, folded square and white, sat two towels.

They weren’t last night’s towels but new ones, edges lined up, set down by someone who had come in here in the dark and gone out again. Summer looked at them and thought, one more thing. The coffee, and now this.

She let go of the door. The dress they could leave where it was. Somebody would deal with it, or nobody would, and either way they were never putting it on again.

No one could see them in here. The tightness went out of her all at once—her left shoulder came down and stayed down, and beside her she heard Autumn breathe out long and slow through her nose.

They took the garment off together. Summer’s left hand and Autumn’s right lifted it up off the shoulders they shared, carefully, because it was heavy and they had nowhere good to put it, and they laid it on the stone beside the basin, folded once so the hem stayed out of the wet. Then they sat down on the stone lip next to the towels. The stone was warm and a little damp, and the steamy air lay on her skin like nothing at all, which was exactly what Summer wanted from it. Steam came up off the water by their feet and hung in front of their faces.

Autumn’s hair lay loose down her right shoulder and her back, still crimped from yesterday’s braid, the waves gone a little flat on the side she had slept on. Autumn reached up with her right hand and gathered it, and Summer reached across with her left, over the front of the body they shared, and between the two of them they started to plait it.

They didn’t talk. They never talked for this. It was every morning’s first job—Autumn’s right hand and Summer’s left, three sections of hair passing between them, over and under. At home they had done it in the bathroom with the fan going and the radio on in the next room. Here there was only the water, which made a small sound now and then against the side of the basin, and the steam, and the warm, and the hair going over and under between their fingers.

Summer liked this part. Nobody could talk to them while they did it—or ask them anything—and for a minute and a half every morning there was only one job in the world and it took both of them to do it.

Autumn’s hair was heavier with the steam in it. Summer’s fingers found the rhythm without her, left section over, take the middle, pass it across, and a drop of water ran off the end of a strand and down the inside of her wrist. Autumn’s attention was on the work, steady and close, and on something under it that wasn’t the plait. Autumn had something to say. Summer could tell from her mouth, set a little to one side, which was how she held it when she was choosing a word in another language and wanted the right one and not the near one. Summer kept her eyes on the hair and didn’t hurry. Autumn’s lips moved on the crossings, very slightly. She counted things; she always had. Summer let her count. By the bottom of the braid her left arm ached a little from the long reach across, which it did every morning and which she had never once minded.

They reached the end. Autumn held it while Summer finished it off, and then Autumn took the plait in her right hand and laid it over her right shoulder, and let it go.

Then her right forefinger went down to the stone at her side.

The stone was damp from the steam, and the finger left a dark line on it where it went. Summer watched it. She had watched that finger her whole life. Autumn spelled things when she was deciding—a name she didn’t trust the sound of, a word in a language she was learning, the register on the desk in the Study last night.

The finger made a T. Then an R. Then a U.

Then it stopped.

It stayed there, resting on the stone at the bottom of the U, for a breath, and another. Then Autumn turned her hand over and laid her palm flat on the letters and wiped them away, one slow pass, and the stone was only damp again.

Summer had read the three letters; she couldn’t not have. She let them go when Autumn did, and looked at the water instead, where the steam came off it in slow curls.

Autumn looked at the water for a while. Then she said it, in her ordinary voice, neither low nor careful.

“I want him.”

She stopped, and the steam moved in front of her face.

Sulphur State (Desire and Self-Possession)! +1 Sulphur

Summer breathed in. Her chest went tight and then let go, not unhappily, like a knot she had been carrying around in a pocket and had finally gotten a fingernail into. She had known. She had known on the balcony and in the dark, and knowing it and hearing it were two different things, and hearing it was better.

“I know,” she said. “I knew you did.” She turned her head on her neck to look at Autumn properly, close, from about as near as two faces could get. “I wanted you to say it. I wanted to hear you say it out loud.”

“Well,” Autumn said. “Now I have.”

Summer reached across with her left hand and took Autumn’s right, over the front of the body, and held it. Autumn’s fingers were warm from the stone. Summer had no way to know what Autumn felt of the hold, and never had, but she could feel Autumn’s fingers in hers, and Autumn’s closed.

They sat like that. The steam drifted. Somewhere under the floor the caldera turned over, and the water in the basin trembled with it and went still.

Summer watched Autumn’s face, and saw the color come up in it.

It started at the jaw and went up into her cheek and down the side of her neck, pink and then pinker, the same color it had gone this morning in the bed. Summer could see it and couldn’t feel any of it. She could feel her own face, which was fine, mostly, for once.

“Oh, look at you,” Summer said. “You’re doing it again. You went just as red as me this morning. Don’t think I didn’t see.”

Autumn kept her eyes on the water. “My face has never once in my life asked my permission,” she said.

Summer laughed, a real one, and it went around the stone walls and came back. “Same,” she said. “God. Same. We’re a mess.”

“Speak for your half,” Autumn said.

“I am speaking for my half. My half is a mess. Your half is a mess with better posture.”

Autumn’s mouth moved at one corner, which from Autumn was a laugh.

The laugh went out of them slowly. Summer looked at the towels beside her, folded square and set exactly side by side, as if for a guest who might be particular. The water lapped at the side of the basin. Through the door, faint, so faint Summer wasn’t sure she wasn’t imagining it, there was still the smell of coffee. Out there was the Bedroom, and past it the Lounge, and in the Lounge the coffee and the casserole and him. The morning was waiting for them on the other side of one door.

Summer looked at it, the door, and then back at Autumn, and decided.

“So,” she said. “The first thing. When we ask him for anything—touching anything.” She felt her face go warm again and ignored it. “We said we’d settle it between us first. Out loud. So I’m saying it out loud. I want the first thing to be a hug. Just a hug. That’s all. And I want to be the one who asks.”

Last night, in this same room, in the water, she had asked for one thing that was just kind.

Autumn turned her head and looked at her. She looked for a while, the long level look, as if she were reading something written very small.

“Yes,” Autumn said.

Nothing came after it. Autumn’s hand stayed easy in Summer’s, and didn’t tighten, and didn’t let go.

“Okay,” Summer said. She let out a breath. “Okay. Good. A hug. I can ask a man for a hug. I’m a grown woman. I’ve asked people for way worse.”

“You asked a bank manager for an extension once,” Autumn said, “by crying.”

“That was strategic,” Summer said.

Summer looked at the door again, and her eyebrows went up. “Okay, but also,” she said. “We’re about to have breakfast with Martin Ashcombe.”

Autumn didn’t answer.

“Martin Ashcombe is out there heating up our casserole,” Summer said. “I made a diorama of his house in fourth grade. Out of a shoebox. It had a little chimney.” She pressed the back of her left wrist to her mouth, and it didn’t help. “It’s like the face off the history worksheet just made you coffee.”

“He’s a man,” Autumn said. She was looking at the water. “He was there before anybody wrote anything down.” A small pause. “I want to know what he remembers. Before the fire. Who came first, and what the place was called before it had his name on it. Everything that burned.”

“You want to interview him,” Summer said.

“I want to ask him.” Autumn let a breath go by. “And whether he’s sorry. In words. Not his face.”

“Not at breakfast, though,” Summer said.

“Not at breakfast.”

They stood up together, off the stone lip, the plait swinging against Autumn’s back, the warm stone letting go of them a little reluctantly. Summer’s left hand and Autumn’s right lifted the garment off the stone and shook the fold out of it and swung it up over the shoulders they shared, and it settled on them, heavy and stiff and familiar now. Then between them they fastened it across the front, the two hands working together as they had over the plait, until it held on its own and neither of them had to hold it.

Summer looked down at it. It went as far as the hip. It was not going to go any farther, no matter how hard she looked at it.

“Well,” she said. “It’s a coat.”

“It’s a coat,” Autumn agreed.

Summer put her left hand on the door. “Ready?”

“No,” Autumn said.

“Me neither.”

She opened it onto the Bedroom.

---

The casserole came out of the oven with its edges bubbling and its top gone brown in patches, and the smell of it met the smell of the coffee halfway across the kitchen and settled the argument.

Adrien set the dish down on the table on a folded cloth, beside the pot, and stood back from it. The bells were still a little way off. Three plain heavy cups stood at three places: one at the end of the table by the left hand of whoever sat in the chair that faced the door, one by the right hand of the same chair, and the third across from them, at his own place. Two were empty. The one on the right was full to an inch below the rim, and the steam came off it in a thin unhurried line and bent toward the glass.

The last flat round of bread sat on the counter in the twins’ cloth. He had untied their knot for the casserole and tied it again around the bread, the same way, and left it there.

He wiped his hands on the dish towel and hung it over the oven door. His feet were bare on the stone, and he was still in jeans and a dark shirt, the cuffs turned back, because he had nothing else here he had wanted to go and find. The Lounge was the same dim length it always was, the glass at the far end full of red and gold. He went around the table once and moved the right-hand cup half an inch closer to the edge, where a hand would find it without reaching, and then he left it alone.

The Bedroom door opened.

Summer’s left hand was on it. The twins came out into the Lounge together in the heavy gray-brown garment, fastened across the front, the hem of it at their hip and their feet bare on the stone like his. Autumn’s hair was in a braid again, laid over her right shoulder. Both their faces had a flush high on the cheekbones that might have been the warmth of the Bath and might not, and both of them looked at him at once.

He looked at their faces. He kept his eyes there.

“Summer,” he said. And then, turning his head a little: “Autumn.”

“Adrien,” Summer said.

“Adrien,” Autumn said.

Summer’s eyes went past him to the table, and the pot, and the steam coming off the right-hand cup, and her whole face changed. He saw her decide not to say anything about it yet, and fail.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, you did the thing.”

They crossed to the table together and took the chair at the end, the one that faced the door, and sat, as easily as in any other chair. Autumn laid the back of her right hand against the cup’s side first, and held it there a moment, and then she turned the hand and closed it around the cup and lifted it. She brought it in against their front, her fingers and palm wrapped around it, and bent her head over it so the steam came up into her face, and closed her eyes.

He watched her face loosen, the whole of it, all at once.

“It’s hot,” Autumn said, without opening her eyes. “I can hold it.”

“Good,” Adrien said. “It should stay that way a while. They’re heavier than they look.”

“He means he picked the fattest cups in the kitchen,” Summer said. “On purpose. In the middle of the night.” She looked at him sideways. “Didn’t you.”

The corner of his mouth moved, and he let it.

“Did you sleep at all?” Summer asked.

“Not really.”

“Figures,” Summer said, and looked at the pot as if it explained everything.

He sat down across from them. The chair was hard and the table was the right height and the twins were looking at the casserole as if it might get up and leave. He drew the dish toward him and served it: a spoonful onto each plate, more than he would have given himself and less than he thought they could eat. He passed one plate across to Summer’s side, so it came down by her left hand, and one to Autumn’s side, by her right. He kept his own.

Summer reached for the pot. It was heavy and hot through the handle, and she lifted it with her left hand and leaned out over the table and filled his cup first, to the top, without asking, and then her own, last.

“The cook gets his first,” she said.

“So I’m told.”

Then the twins bowed their heads.

It was the same as it had been last night: no word, no folded hands, only the two heads going down together for a breath over the plates. Adrien had his hands on the table on either side of his plate and he left them there, still. He waited until both heads came up, Summer’s and then Autumn’s a moment after, and then one moment more. Then he picked up his fork.

For a while they only ate. The casserole was better than it had been the night before, which he had expected and which Summer had promised, the potatoes holding their shape and the onion gone sweet underneath and the whole thing pulled together. Summer ate with her left hand and Autumn with her right, and between bites Autumn picked up the cup again and held it, and set it down, and picked it up.

“Okay, this is so good,” Summer said, with her mouth not entirely empty. “This is better than last night. I said it would be. Didn’t I say it would be?”

“You did,” he said. “You were right.”

“I’m always right about casseroles. It’s my one thing.”

Autumn swallowed, and looked at her plate, and then across at him.

“The potatoes held,” she said.

It took him a second. Last night at the counter Summer had told him the potatoes had to boil until a fork went in and not a minute longer, or he would have mashed potatoes with ambitions, and had insisted on inspecting them. Now she was handing it back to him, checked. He nodded once. Summer looked from one of them to the other and grinned at her plate.

They ate the first plates down to nothing. Summer chased the last of hers around with her fork. Down the room the glass held its note, and the light in it moved, and somewhere under the floor the caldera went on turning over. The bells were closer now. He could feel the morning coming—not as light, since none would reach the Axis until the sun was well up outside, but as a narrowing, the minutes left getting fewer and more particular. Autumn set hers aside and took up the cup again, her right hand around the body of it, and Summer’s left came across to steady the base, and the two of them held it like that between them for a moment without seeming to notice they were doing it.

Adrien set his fork down on the edge of his plate.

He knew what he meant to say. And still, when he opened his mouth, what came out first was the old shape, the one he had been using for a couple of thousand years.

“If either of you were thinking about how to spend the day,” he said, “I wondered whether you might—”

He stopped. He heard the question coming at the end of that sentence, and he could see exactly where it would put them. They would have to decide whether he was asking, and what he was asking, and whether it was all right to say no, and what it would cost him if they did. They would carry the whole thing out of here on their own backs, and he would sit at the end of it having asked nothing at all. He let the sentence go. He didn’t finish it, and he didn’t take it back.

“No,” he said. “I’ll just say it.”

Autumn’s eyes came up from the cup and stayed on his face.

“The day’s free,” Adrien said. “For everyone. Nobody owns it. So this is what I’m going to do with it. Before the midday meal I’ll be at the glass, there,” he tipped his head down the room, toward the far wall and the slow light in it, “for you, Summer. After the midday meal I’ll be in the Study, for you, Autumn. I’ll be in those places at those times whether you come or not. If you don’t, I’ll still be there, and that’s fine. You don’t owe me the visit.”

Summer opened her mouth and closed it again. “Okay,” she said, slowly. “Wow. Okay. That’s—that’s a whole plan. You made a plan.”

“I made a plan.”

“People don’t usually,” Summer said. “For us, I mean. They make a plan and then they tell us where to stand in it.” She stopped there, and turned her fork over on her empty plate.

Autumn held the cup and held his eyes, the long level look, the one he had felt on him across the Lounge last night while she told her sister what she had seen in his face. He let her have it, and kept his face as it was. Summer looked down the room at the glass wall, at the red and the gold moving behind it. When she looked back at him her face had gone soft at the edges.

“Yes,” she said. “To the glass. Yes. I’d like that. I really would.”

Autumn set the cup down on the table, by her right hand, carefully, as if it might spill.

“Yes,” she said. “The Study.”

And nothing after it. She said the two words and stopped, and picked the cup up again, and bent her head to the steam. Summer glanced at her, quick, and then down at her empty plate, and said nothing either.

“Good,” Adrien said. “Then I’ll see you both there.”

He picked his fork back up, and found there was still a corner of casserole left in the dish, and took it, because it would have been a shame to waste it, and because his hands wanted something to do.

Summer watched him do it. “You’re finishing the dish,” she said.

“It was going to waste.”

“It was not going to waste. I was going to finish the dish.” She looked at the corner of casserole on his fork, and then at the empty dish, and sighed like a woman who had lost fairly. “Fine. Cook’s privilege.”

“I didn’t know that one was a rule.”

“It’s a rule now.”

“Here,” he said, cutting the last piece in half, and sliding a portion on Summer’s plate. When he saw she was about to protest, he shook his head. “No, I insist.” She looked at him for a moment, much like Autumn did, then nodded, and started eating it. Her cheeks were pink.

Autumn held out her cup across the table, in her right hand, a little way toward the pot. Before he could reach for it Summer’s left hand had the pot—by the handle, hot as it was—and topped the cup up, carefully, to an inch below the rim, and set the pot back down, and Autumn drew the cup in against their front again without a word, and the steam came up past her chin.

Adrien ate the last of the casserole slowly. It was good. He let it be good and didn’t do anything else with it. Across from him Summer leaned back in the chair as far as a body with two heads could lean, and stretched her left arm along the table until her fingers touched the base of the pot, and left them there.

“I can’t believe you have a stove in a volcano,” she said, to the ceiling. “I keep forgetting and then remembering. There’s a stove. There’s an oven. In a volcano.”

“There’s a refrigerator,” Adrien said.

“Don’t.”

“Behind a door in the rock.”

“I said don’t.” But she was smiling at the ceiling, and Autumn, beside her, had her eyes closed over the cup and the corner of her mouth had gone up.

“Do we bring anything?” Summer asked, still to the ceiling. “To the glass. Is there, like, a dress code for staring at lava.”

“Yourselves,” Adrien said. “Coffee, if you want it. There’ll be coffee.”

“There’s always going to be coffee with you, isn’t there.”

“Probably.”

“Good,” Summer said. “That’s the correct answer. Autumn, write that down.”

“I’ll remember it,” Autumn said, without opening her eyes.

The plates were empty. The pot was nearly empty. The light from the far end of the room lay along the table, red and gold, and across the backs of their hands, and across the three cups, and for a while the only thing moving at the table was the thin line of steam off Autumn’s. It was the kind of quiet that settles on a kitchen after a meal, with the pots still warm and nobody yet standing up, and he could have stayed in it all morning. He found that he wanted to.

Summer set her fork down on her plate, very carefully, tines in, and squared it with one finger.

Then she sat up. Beside her Autumn opened her eyes and set the cup down, not far, by her right hand, and folded her hand around it again on the table, and looked at her sister and not at him.

“Can I ask you for something?” she said. Her voice had gone a little higher than usual, and she heard it and brought it back down. “It’s small. And you can say no. I mean that. You can totally say no and it’s fine, and we’ll still come to the glass, and nothing’s weird.” She took a breath. “Could we have a hug? Just a hug. That’s all it is.”

Adrien kept his eyes on Summer, because Summer had asked, and waited. He didn’t look at Autumn to see what she thought.

“Yes,” Autumn said.

She said it plainly, and then lifted her head and looked at him, so that he would know it was hers.

“Yes,” Adrien said.

He said it to both of them, one and then the other, and took his hands off the table.

The twins got up. Autumn let go of the cup first, and then they rose out of the chair together and came around the end of the table toward him, not fast, barefoot on the stone, the garment fastened across the front and the hem of it at their hip. Adrien stood. He pushed his chair back with the backs of his knees and stood beside it and stayed there, and kept his hands at his sides, open, and let them come the whole way to him.

They stopped in front of him, close enough that he could see the steam had curled the loose hair at Summer’s temple and the braid at Autumn’s shoulder was still dark with wet at the end. Summer was looking at his face, and so was Autumn, from a few inches farther over. Summer’s mouth was set as if she were about to jump into cold water. For a moment the three of them simply stood there.

Then Summer’s left arm came out from under the side of the garment and went around his back, and on the other side Autumn’s right did the same, and the two of them stepped in.

He closed his arms around them. He did it slowly. Under his hands the garment was heavy and stiff and warm from them, the close weave rough against his palms, and beneath it was the long line of a back that belonged to two people. Summer’s cheek was against his shoulder on one side. Autumn’s head was turned on the other. Summer’s hand was flat between his shoulder blades. Autumn’s was lower, and held on.

He could hear the glass, and two people breathing close against him, one on each side, not quite together. The garment smelled of the Alcove and of steam, and Summer’s hair was against his jaw. He kept his hands where they were, flat on the weave, and held still, and let them hold on.

It didn’t last long. It didn’t have to. After a few breaths the twins’ arms loosened, both together, and they stepped back, and his arms opened and let them, and came back down to his sides.

Summer let out a breath that wobbled a little at the end. Her face was pink again, high on the cheekbones, and so was Autumn’s, and neither of them seemed to mind. They stood there in front of him, a step back, the garment still fastened and still where it belonged, and their hands went looking for something to do. Summer’s went to the front edge of the weave. Autumn’s went to the end of her braid.

“Okay,” Summer said. “Thank you. That was—yeah. Thank you. Okay.”

Hugged by the Master! +1 Salt

“There’s more coffee,” Adrien said. “If you want to sit down again. There’s a little while yet.”

“Is there?” Summer said. “How little?”

He opened his mouth to tell her.

Then the bells rang.

They came up through the rock from everywhere at once, out of the walls and the floor and the soles of the feet. One long note. Adrien felt it in the stone and in his teeth. Then, after a space, the second.

The twins turned toward the entrance door. They crossed the Lounge to it together, past the hooks by the door, and Autumn laid the back of her right hand flat against the metal and held it there for a breath.

“It gives,” Autumn said.

Summer’s left hand and Autumn’s right took hold of the edge of it together and slid it open. It went with a long low sound of metal on stone, and the cold of the Path came in at once around their ankles and across the floor to his bare feet, and beyond the door the glass corridor ran away over the caldera, red underneath and dark above, toward the stairs and the rest of the Athanor—and whatever the day held up there. The twins stood on the threshold a moment with their bare toes at the edge of the metal track, and the cold made Autumn’s shoulder twitch, and neither of them stepped out yet.

Summer’s left hand went to the front of the garment and patted it flat, twice. “It held,” she told Autumn, and not quietly enough. “All morning. Through the hug and everything.”

“Stop talking to it,” Autumn said.

Summer turned her head back to him over the shoulder of the garment.

“Thanks for breakfast,” she said quickly. “Seriously. Best one we’ve had here. Don’t let it go to your head.”

Autumn turned too, and then the two of them brought the rest of the body around to face him. Autumn stood very straight in the doorway with the cold coming in around her, and looked at him across the room, and inclined her head, a small exact movement, a guest’s thanks at somebody else’s table.

The small exact movement was enough. The stiff weave didn’t give by degrees. It went all at once: the top of the front let go with a flat click, and the right side of the garment slid down Autumn’s arm and hung at her elbow.

The light of the glass came over Adrien’s shoulder and lay along the front of them, and for the space of a breath he saw Autumn’s right breast, bare, with the nipple already pebbled by the cold. His eyes went where the movement was. He put them back on her face.

Showed Boobs to Master! +1 Salt

“Oh—” Summer said. Her left hand came right across the front of them, caught a fistful of the fallen weave at Autumn’s elbow and pulled. The cloth came an inch and stopped. Autumn’s arm was still in it and didn’t help. “Autumn. Autumn, your—”

“I know,” Autumn said.

Her right hand did not move. It stayed inside the fallen side of the garment for one breath and then another, with her sister’s fist bunched in the cloth beside it. Her breath went in slowly and came out slower, and her face had gone red from the jaw to the hairline, redder than the Bath had left it. She kept her eyes on his, and he could not have said what was in them.

Then the hand came up, took the edge out of Summer’s fingers, drew it back over the shoulder and set the front where it belonged, and the buckle caught with the same flat click. It had taken four seconds, perhaps five.

Summer’s emptied hand went back to her own side and pressed flat there, hard. Her face was scarlet. She looked at the doorframe, then at the ceiling, then at a spot on the floor somewhere near his feet, and never once at him.

“Okay,” she said, and her voice went up and stayed there. “Okay. Nope. Okay. I said it out loud. I said ‘it held.’ I said it to the coat. That one’s on me.”

The left foot went back a step toward the Path. The right foot stayed where it was. The body twisted in the doorway, and Summer’s left hand let go of the garment and caught the frame.

“Autumn,” she hissed.

“I haven’t thanked him,” Autumn said.

Summer shut her eyes. When she opened them she was still looking at the floor. “Okay. And you don’t—you don’t have to say anything. Please don’t say anything. You were right there, I know you were right there, the light was—” She stopped. “You didn’t stare. So. Thank you for not staring. That’s all.”

Adrien nodded, once. Looking only at their faces was harder now than it had been at any point that morning, because Summer’s would not hold still and Autumn’s would not move at all.

“Thank you for the meal, Adrien,” Autumn said. “And for the cup.” The red had not gone down. Her voice was perfectly level.

He looked at the two of them in the doorway, the light of the Path on one side of their faces and the light of the glass on the other. “I’ll be at the glass,” he said. “Before the midday meal.”

“The glass. Yes. Right. Good.” Summer nodded more times than the answer needed. “We’ll be—yes.”

Autumn looked at him a moment longer. Then the body turned to the Path, and this time both feet went together.

They stepped out onto the glass. It took their weight without a sound, and the red came up under their bare feet, and for a second the two of them stood over the whole slow fire of the caldera as if on nothing at all.

“Don’t look back,” Summer said. She said it low, and the glass corridor carried it into the room anyway.

“I’m not,” Autumn said.

“You just stood there. Five seconds, Autumn. I counted.”

“Four.”

Summer made a sound that was half a laugh and half a groan, and her left hand reached back for the edge of the door and pulled it shut behind them, harder than it needed. It slid home along its track and stopped. The cold that had come in lay on the floor a little while and then went.

Adrien stayed where he was, by the table. The Lounge was very quiet with only one person breathing in it, and very large, and smelled of coffee and onions and the oven.

He had seen a great many people undressed, in sickrooms and in bathhouses, and his face had stopped doing anything about it centuries ago. It was warm now. Autumn had looked at him the whole time, and had not hurried, and he turned that over and could not make it come out one way or the other.

The pot stood in the middle of the table with an inch of coffee left in the bottom. His cup was in front of his chair, empty. Summer’s was by the left-hand side of the chair at the end, with a brown ring dried inside it. Autumn’s was by the right, where she had set it down to stand up, and it was still warm—he could see the last thread of steam come off it and lean toward the glass and give out.

He didn’t pick any of them up. The chair at the end of the table stood a little out from where it had been, turned toward the door, where they had left it when they got up. Across the room his coat hung on its hook by the entrance, and the one beside it was empty. The floor was still cool where the Path had breathed on it.

He stood with his hands at his sides and looked down the long dim room at the glass wall, where the magma went on turning over in its slow red folds, and the note in the glass held, thin and high and patient, and the morning kept arriving somewhere outside where he couldn’t see it.