Spring’s Arcana by Lilith Saintcrow EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Lilith Saintcrow
- Language: English
- Genre: Action & Adventure Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
OTHER THAN WINTER
The entire city was full of dirty ice-whipped slush after the first hard freeze;
it had only reluctantly warmed enough for snow. A whistling, iron-cold
wind poured down both the Hudson and East Rivers, slicing between
feathery falling flakes. Thanksgiving was over for what it was worth,
Christmas lights blooming everywhere, and it was hard to believe anything
other than winter had ever existed.
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The bus was a blue-and-white metal beast wallowing up the slight
incline of Pastis Hill on a cloud of diesel smoke; the subway was warmer
but wasn’t worth the stairs involved for this part of the trip. Nat Drozdova’s
throat ached, her nose was full, and her eyes watered. She could claim it
was the cold or the persistent creeping fingers of car exhaust slithering from
street level to irritate tender membranes.
Crying on the 2:00 P.M. downtown special was what Mom would call
your silliness, Natchenka, now stop it.
It was standing-room only; the vehicle swayed and she was almost
thrown onto a thin, sour-faced businessman who had forgotten to bring his
tie back over his shoulder after lunch. He’d also had more than one martini
if the simmering alcohol fume was any indication, and his wingtips were
going to be slush-soaked by the time he got back to the office.
Well, everyone had problems in this world, as Uncle Leo grimly intoned
at the slightest provocation. Nat wiped her cheeks, a sting of woolen glovefingers against already abraded skin, and set her chin. A baby fretted
somewhere along the bus’s flexing, swaying length; a crop of wet croupy
coughs bloomed on either side. Nat hung on to the pole, trying not to bump
the businessman again, and closed her eyes.
Just a moment, that’s all she wanted. A single breath’s worth of rest.
The darkness behind her lids was terrifying, so her eyes flew open again,
filling her head with a regular Wednesday afternoon full of regular people.
Except her surroundings lasted only a few seconds before melding into a
familiar, pale pink hospice room holding softly beeping machines, the reek
of disinfectant, and her mother’s gaunt face, now-graying hair neatly
braided and resting against a sanitized pillowcase.
It was the light, Nat decided. An echo of fluorescent hospital tubes ran
down the bus’s throat like streptococcal stripes, their pitiless glare showing
every pockmark, every pimple, every stray hair, every scrape and scuff and
loose thread.
Just like it showed Mom’s veins, blue and branching, or the papery skin
under her chin.
I’m too young to look this way, Mom had said mournfully during her last
visit, and Nat had to agree. She had to keep blinking; everything blurred
because her eyes were full of brimming hot water yet again.
The bus crested Pastis; skyscraper valleys swallowed a wheeled
aluminum tube-pill. Snow whirled past the windows as she counted the
streets: Nieman, the funny curve of Totzer, the park blocks between
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