Lucia Senza's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Lucia waited for dawn at her desk. But dawn did not come first. A crash came instead. Plaster rained from her ceiling. Something heavy struck the floor above her, then dropped through the boards into her sitting room. Lucia grabbed her lamp and climbed the stairs. A girl lay tangled on her rug, coughing in the dust. The girl was young, with green eyes and short brown hair. She wore a thin pink jacket, pale trousers, and white shoes with no heels. Nothing about her belonged to Lucia's world. She sat up slowly and stared at the dark room, the lamp, the widow's black dress. "Where am I?" the girl whispered. "How did I get here?" Lucia knelt. Fear and cunning worked in her at once. She had seen a foreign girl fall from nowhere once before, into the shop next door. That girl now served the woman Lucia hunted. This one had fallen into Lucia's own house. This one was hers. "You're safe," Lucia said. "You fell. You hit your head. My name is Lucia Senza." She helped the girl to a chair. "You must trust me. This town is not kind to strangers." The girl trembled. "I don't remember falling. I was just walking home." Lucia went to her wardrobe. She lifted out a dress she had not worn in years. Soft pastel silk, pink and blue, with a matching hat and lace at the wrists. She had worn it before her husband died, before mourning swallowed her whole. She pressed it into the girl's arms. "Put this on. Your clothes will draw eyes you don't want." Lucia's voice stayed gentle. "And you need a name that fits here. You'll be Valeria. Valeria Senza. My niece. No one will question a girl who shares my name." Valeria looked down at the strange, bright clothes she wore. Then she nodded and clutched the pastel dress. Lucia leaned close. This was the danger. If Valeria wandered next door, if she knocked on that sewn-shut door, the woman inside would take her the way she took the last one. So Lucia built a wall of fear instead. "Listen to me carefully," she said. "There is a woman next door. Artemisia. She looks kind. She is not. She steals people. She strips their memories and stitches new ones into them. The last girl who trusted her cannot even speak now." Lucia gripped Valeria's hands. "You must never go near her shop. Never let her see you. Promise me." Valeria's green eyes filled. "I promise." Lucia sat back, satisfied. She had done it. She had hidden the girl in plain sight, dressed and named and warned. No one would know Valeria fell from another world. Outside her window, a black shape pressed against the glass. A moth, wide as her two hands, its velvet wings catching the lamplight. It clung to the pane above Valeria's head and did not move. Lucia stared at it. She knew that sign. Where the moths gathered, time had torn open. And now one clung to her own house.