We go to the bath houses after the healers leave us. She always likes to go to the bath houses first, to get the smell of their herbs off her skin. She’s never liked healers. Their prodding fingers, their clucking tongues. Their remedies that have never really taken away any of her pain. I’ve spent my life listening to their chatter, listening to them coax her to take just one more sip of whatever concoction they’ve prepared. I don’t like them much either. Not anymore.

The servants help me get her down to the baths. I can carry her now, if I want to. She’s so light, like a bird. But I don’t like to carry her. I’m afraid, with my deformed foot and my awkward gait, that I’ll drop her. And one more injury, one more pain in her body, and I may not have her anymore.

I can’t lose her. She’s my last defense, the only one left who loves me enough to keep me in the palace with her. I need her.

Candles float in the water of the baths, their lights flickering on the surface. Lilies as big as my hand grow in the corners, and the tiles are newly cleaned and smell of lavender oil. I help Mother off with her robe and get her into the water. The servant brings me rose oil, and I massage her shoulders for her, feeling every bone beneath her papery skin.

She’s been sick for so long. My father can hardly bear to look at her anymore, although I think he loves her more than the light of the moon and sun together. He avoids her now, and his deformed daughter. When she dies, I think he’ll give me to one of his nobles as a gift. A twisted little girl, whose only worth to him was in her mother’s faded beauty.

Her booth is in an alley, back behind the dumpsters. She doesn’t like me to come very often, especially since she knows I only buy once a week. I don’t have money for more, but it’s hard to stay away.

I don’t have anywhere else to go.

The streets around her are gray, gray as soot and ashes. The sky is gray. The trees are dead.

The only life left in this dead city is in her alley, and she doesn’t like me to come. Not unless I bring my money with me.

She’s been arrested a few times. They put her in jail for three days once, and I was the only who came to see her, brought her an extra blanket, some food. Harassment, the officers told her. And selling without a license. They told her to stop, but she won’t.

Not while she still has some color left.

I bought crimson last week. I buy every Monday, and the color doesn’t fade until almost Saturday night if I’m careful. If I don’t waste it. Color doesn’t last long in our gray city. It drains away, fades in the cold wind, but I always buy it anyway. A new color every week.

She’s waiting when I get there, and I show her my money first. She smiles at me then, half her teeth missing, the others rotted. She likes to see me when I really do have money, when I come to buy. She doesn’t mind me then. “What’ll it be this week?” she asks, and her voice is as gray as the rest of my world.

“Green,” I tell her. “Forest green.”

She’s the one to come looking for me, although today’s fight had nothing to do with her. She always comes, and she always finds me here. The cornfield is the only place I can hide and be sure he doesn’t find me, at least not quickly. I spent three days hidden among the rows once, waving leaves overhead, sleeping in the dirt. Even she couldn’t find me that time.

Maybe she didn’t try. Those three days are what it took for him to calm down, so I was safer where I was.

She’s three rows down before she sees me. The corn is up to her chest now, the leaves shivering in the slight breeze. I like hiding here, down on my hands and knees among the stiff stalks. I feel safe. Not even the sky can see me.

But she always finds me. She comes to sit next to me, not saying anything, not apologizing like she used to, not comforting. I think we both know it isn’t her fault by this time. And that it isn’t going to be all right, no matter how many times she says it.

I cling to her, bury my head in her chest so I don’t have to see the bruises on her face and arms, the ones hidden beneath her thin cotton dress. She brought a wet rag along with her, and she cleans some of the blood and dirt off my face, wiping away the tears too.

I hate crying. She knows it, and she knows not to say anything. So we just sit where we are, under the leaves, and wait for the storm gathering in our little house to blow over so we can go back.

It will take a while, I think.

They wait for me in the old churchyard, among the gravestones. Their feathers are black as soot, their beady eyes watching the lane they know I’ll be walking along.

I don’t want to pass them. But I have to, if I want to get home.

They’re only here at night, only for an hour or two. Blackbirds, so many of them I sometimes wonder if they roost there. But they don’t. The priest has never seen them, nor anyone else who lives along this lane. Only I see them. Every single night.

They’re perched on the stones when I pass, on the wall. They’re all silent, every one of them, as if they can hear my footsteps on the gravel path, my breathing in the cold air. I try not to look at them, not to breathe, and keep to the other side of the lane as far from them as I can get. I hate blackbirds. They’re nasty, vicious creatures, and they’re thieves too. I’ve never liked them. Not once.

They know I don’t like them. They know I’m afraid too, I think, although whenever I tell anyone that I get laughed at. Birds are too stupid to hold a grudge, to feel fear.

Aren’t they?

The shadows are coming out of the trees when I finally pass the church, reach the bend in the lane. I look back, but the birds are gone already. Disappeared into the darkening sky, just as quickly as they came. But they’ll be there tomorrow night. Waiting for me.

They always are.