Magia Posthuma ✓

Twenty-Two

Irina sat at her vanity table gazing at her reflection as she dragged a brush through her hair. The curls crackled like the candle in front of her as it licked the smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks and kindled in her brown eyes. As she chased the brush with her fingertips – smoothing the brown curls - she wondered whether she'd soon recognise the face staring back.

Everything was going to change, and there would be no going back.

"What you think, Ducesa?" Fiebe asked as she held up a blue stomacher freshly embroidered with black flowers, flecked with blossom white pearls.

Irina took a passing glance at it through the mirror.

Fiebe hovered behind her, smiling hopefully as she held the stomacher up against her chest. "I finish for you this morning. You like it?"

"It's... very fine," Irina replied, her voice flat. She was quietly wondering whether she could get away with wearing black; after all, she was technically still in mourning.

Fiebe's shoulders dropped as she looked down at the bodice. She'd worked on it for days, squinting by candlelight to finish it in time for the wedding. "...It will look beautiful, I think. Blue is your best colour," she said as she carried the stomacher over to the wooden mannequin near the window, stepping over the limp bodies Folie and Scapino as they snoozed side by side on the Turkish rug.

Moonlight trickled into the room through cracks in the curtains and cast an eerie pall over the swathes of blue satin, their colour reflecting onto the floorboards like a puddle.

"What I do with your hair?" Fiebe asked. "I put flowers in for you?"

"It's too early for flowers."

"...Not for some. I see sofran growing in snow outside of kitchen this morning."

Irina set down her brush. "I really don't mind, Fiebe," she sighed as she rested her head in her hand. "Do whatever you want."

Fiebe frowned as she reached down into her sewing basket and plucked out a few pins.

Her mistress had always been so particular about her hair and about what she wore. But in the weeks after her father died she seemed to be more comfortable in her chemise, mules and dressing gown than any of the collection of expensive and enviable manteau in her closet. She hadn't touched her diamonds or dressed her hair or rouged her cheeks. It was as though she'd given up on being herself.

Fiebe sandwiched the pins between her lips, "You know, it is lucky you will be married tomorrow," she carried on cheerfully as she began pinning the stomacher to the bodice of the gown. "Tomorrow is Dragobete – the day the birds are to be married also. The first day of spring; of a new beginning."

Irina's eyes settled on her mother's string of black pearls, curling like a viper on the surface of the vanity. She reached out and touched them, brushing the tips of her fingers over the obsidian orbs. It certainly didn't feel like a new beginning; to her it felt like the end.

"My Mamă say that on Dragobete is lucky to take the last snow, melt it and drink its magic," Fiebe explained as she admired the finished gown – brushing down the pleats falling from the waist. Pleased with the finished gown – her finest yet – she scooped up her sewing basket and strolled to the bed. "I will bring you some, Ducesa; it will give special power to your medicines," she suggested as she set down her basket and then began to peel back the coverlet and arrange the pillows.

"There won't be any more medicines or infusions, Fiebe," Irina groaned as she stood up and walked over to the bed.

Folie lifted her head as the hem of Irina's chemise brushed over her. She yawned and then eased up onto her paws.