Caterina Moderno's Arc

Chapter 4 of 2

Caterina left the shop while Artemisia washed her trembling hands in the back. She had to find the passage before her own mind turned foreign too. But the streets stretched in every direction, and each one looked the same. She had no idea where the passage had opened. She only knew it was still open, somewhere, waiting. Every hour she wandered, the change dug deeper. She caught herself reading a shop sign without effort, though the words were not English. She stopped walking. She had understood them like a native. A voice cut across the lane. "You came out." A woman stood at a black iron gate, brambly rose bushes crowding the porch behind her. She wore full mourning black, and her eyes were sharp with suspicion. "I watch that shop. I keep a record. Dates. Smells. My husband smelled it before he died. Something is wrong in there." This was Lucia, Artemisia's neighbor, the one Artemisia refused to let inside. "You are one of her projects. I can see it. Your hair changed since yesterday." Caterina touched the bun she had pinned without thinking. "She's changing me," she said. "With a mint. It's making me forget who I am. I need to find the passage I came through. It's still open. If I don't find it soon, there won't be enough of me left to leave." Lucia opened the gate. "Then we do not trust her. We trust the record." She led Caterina up the porch and inside, past drawn curtains, to a desk stacked with papers. "I mark strange things. Not just her shop." She pulled one page free. "Three nights past. A moth. Black wings, big as two hands. It circled the old well behind the chandler's row. Moths like that gather where time tears. My husband said so. He was right about the smell. He was right about the moth." Caterina's chest tightened. "You've seen where it torn." "I have seen where the moth goes." Lucia tapped the page. "Follow the moth. It knows the wound." They went out together at dusk. The chandler's row was quiet. Behind it stood a low stone well, half-choked with weeds. And there, above the black water, the giant moth hung in the air. Its velvet wings shimmered green and purple. It turned slow circles over one spot, as if held there. Beneath it, the air rippled like heat over a road. Caterina felt a pull in her teeth, in her bones. The passage. It was here. "That is it," she breathed. Then a thought rose, unbidden and calm: *This well is older than the chandler's guild. My grandmother drew water here.* She had no grandmother in Valserra. The false memory felt true. She gripped Lucia's arm. "I found it. But I'm running out of time. My own thoughts are turning into hers. We have to go through before I forget why I want to."