Plague in the Mirror by Deborah Noyes Page A

clothing, rags mostly, in a puddle at her feet. She scoops up the animal again and with a sigh of scorn spits on the pile.
    May follows her out through eerie, deserted rooms with high ceilings and secretive hangings. They move without a sound.
    She can’t understand why the streets are so quiet until it occurs to her that there are no bells ringing. Every other time she’s been here, there were church bells tolling almost constantly in the background, too regular to take note of. They tolled for the dead, Cristofana has explained. They were a record of the taken. Is everyone dead now? How long has she been away? Is the artist dead? she wonders, seized by terror. Did he survive these early weeks of the plague? “Where are the bells?”
    Cristofana tilts her head thoughtfully, closing her eyes to enjoy the softness of the little cat nuzzling her ear. “The officials forbade them. . . . Too much ringing. Too much despair.”
    “It’s
too
quiet now.”
    Cristofana looks deflated suddenly, broken, and since May has never seen her twin reveal any emotion at all beyond a kind of ruthless curiosity, she can only stare, which seems to snap her double out of it. “Most of the shops have closed,” she adds haughtily, as if this explains everything.
    A deafening commotion a street away rivets her double’s attention. Hurrying to a gap between buildings, Cristofana turns down the narrow walkway, veers a moment midway, the kitten swaying on her shoulder, and disappears into the chaos and glare on the opposite side.
    May can just make out a group of onlookers over there by the street, surging toward an even bigger crowd passing in the roadway, wailing in grief and lamentation.
    Her eyes lock on a shape in deep shadow by one of the walls between the buildings. A dog, she thinks at first, or some other animal nosing for food scraps, but when the figure starts shrieking and writhing in pain, she realizes it’s a man slumped on the cobbles.
    “He begs,” Cristofana says, reemerging to his right — translating in that obliging way of hers and not bothering to whisper in passing —“for God to loose his soul.”
    Get away from him,
May wants to warn, but there are others like him, so many others, she supposes, all over this city, gaunt in doorways, spitting up blood behind shutters. The man is convulsing now, howling, and May swallows hard, trying to keep down the nausea. The dread.
    “The crowd follows the procession,” Cristofana reports. “They’re parading the fingernail of Saint Roch through the streets to ward away the Pest.”
    “What?”
    “The priests have procured a relic of the saint —”
    “Right,” May says, fighting back bewildered tears, “a relic.”
    “The bishop and clergy advise that the procession should march through the city till nones,” Cristofana continues matter-of-factly, her voice rising above the howling of the dying man. “There must be a hundred candles, as large as torches. Come look.”
    “No,” May says, and starts walking again. “Thanks.” This street is familiar, and when the alley entrance appears, her heart starts racing.
    It’s clear from Cristofana’s smug expression that she’s been leading May here all along, to the artists’ quarter.
    It’s all she can do not to run ahead and around the alley corner, but she lets her double keep the lead, and they pause under the entrance sign creaking on rusty chains in the wind.
    Aching now to know that he’s alive, May strides past Cristofana to peer through half-closed shutters. Relief hits so hard that she has to swivel away, sighing with her whole ghost body, melting into what she imagines is sun-warm stone, smiling at the ground. May knows the moment she looks up that she’s given too much away, revealed a weakness, but it’s too late.
    A smile blooms on the other girl’s face. “As I was saying, most shops have closed. But
some
are still here.” Cristofana steps closer to the window, stroking the devoted kitten. “You