Artemisia Moretti's Arc

Chapter 2 of 7

A week after the ceiling swallowed a stranger, Beatrice Fiore looked the part but did not sound it. She wore the burgundy dress well. Then she opened her mouth, and the wrong century fell out. At the market she called a shilling "cheap," swung her arms too wide, and asked the baker how his week was going, plain as a woman from a time not yet born. The baker frowned. Artemisia steered her home and drew the velvet drapes shut behind them. "They stared," Beatrice said. She dropped onto a stool. "I know I did something wrong. I couldn't tell what." "Everything," Artemisia said gently. "Your walk. Your words. The way you meet a man's eye without waiting." She had sewn the dress true. But a person was more than cloth. Habits held a shape too, and Beatrice's shape belonged to another age. Artemisia opened her seam kit on the table. Scissors, awls, a silver hook, and the thimble marked with her initials in fine script. She had altered fabric all her life. Tonight she would try to alter a manner. She slid the thimble onto her finger. It warmed against her skin. "Sit still," she said. "This is not a dress. But it is the same work." She took a needle and threaded it. Then she reached toward Beatrice and stitched the air near her throat, her wrists, the set of her shoulders. With each pass she pictured what she wanted: the measured Valserran voice, the small steps, the eyes that lowered at the proper moment. The thread caught on nothing Artemisia could see, yet it pulled. Beatrice's breath slowed. Her spine straightened on its own. "Speak," Artemisia said. Beatrice's lips moved. The old flat words tried to come. Artemisia pushed the needle once more, and the words changed in the woman's mouth. "Good evening," Beatrice said. The vowels rounded. The rhythm settled into the town's own cadence. She pressed a hand to her lips, startled. "That was not me. That was— it felt like remembering." To hold it, Artemisia offered a small tin of mints from the shelf, the kind sold to lend a speaker Valserra's refined voice. "Take one each morning. It will keep the stitch from loosening while it sets." Beatrice took a mint. When she spoke again, the market woman was gone. In her place sat a soft-voiced seamstress's assistant who had always lived here. Then Artemisia noticed her hands. The thimble had cooled, but her fingers trembled. Changing cloth cost thread. Changing a person had cost something warmer, drawn straight from her. She flexed her hands and felt the tiredness sit deep in the bone. But the cost of fatigue seemed worthwhile for Artemisia. Beatrice belonged now, in word and manner both.