Sin

Hell has opened up. And now Zilpha knows that the Devil has come for her. And he will come for her, again and again. She expects no mercy any more.

At night, on the steps. The night's breath cold on her face. The heavenly melodies of Beethoven wafting over her still, from the open doorway. But she is not deserving of heaven.

Her brother's eyes had sought hers in the mirror. As once they had been her mirror. Searching, coveting, finding and grasping tight. As once they had always sought out each other's eyes, at tedious summer tutor's lessons, in the hallways, among gatherings full of starched and self-important adults. But now his face is shadowed and scarred, a savage African face. And it is the wretched sinfulness of her nature that she sees reflected there. He'd downed a glass of her husband's good sherry at one go and regarded her thoughtfully. And I will drink you in like this, his eyes said, soon. He knew very well, damn him, that she had not forgotten how to read what was in his gaze.

She had to come out, of course. If she didn't he'd make a scene, probably just one more glass of sherry would do it. People said that Africa had driven him mad, but she knew that this particular form of madness had sprouted in him before he ever went there. She remembered his low earnest voice in the green glade, reading her a poem:

"My Sylph darting through the moonlit wood at night / Whose noiseless step floods my senses with delight"

"Change it to 'wood-nymph'. That way you'll be able to publish it if you want."

His nose had wrinkled up, as if he'd smelled something foul. "That would spoil the meter."

"Just 'nymph', then."

"No. I'll keep it as 'sylph', and publish it, and let the whole world judge."

"You're ridiculous."

"And you're mine," eyes boring into her, hands pushing her down into the pine needles. Her fault, for coming into the woods with him, for letting him take her, body and soul.

And now he stands on the cold steps with her, importuning her, and she could laugh, she really could. It is just as ridiculous now as it was then. Only infinitely more dangerous.

"You used to straighten your skirts, and march away like nothing had ever happened." The look on his face is one of pagan worship. His low musical voice seems to enter her, as he once entered her, she can feels its vibrations in her body. God, she remembers everything. But she also remembers how he marched away, left her alone in England to deal with their father, left her alone in England to rot. No. Think about sin, it's safer.

And he says his bit and she says hers, and she walks away and actually thinks for a moment that this will be the end of it, and then he calls out some nonsense about the river that connects them, some savage godless nonsense she doesn't want to understand. And at that moment the Devil takes hold of her. Like Eve she is curious, tempted, falls. What has he become? She whirls around to march right into him:

"Did you really eat flesh?"

"Why don't you tell your friends that you're sick, and you can come and hear everything." He does not mean hear. His voice has taken on the same slow singsong cadence it had when he spoke about her skirts. But this time it is tinged with an accent that is not English, an alien and barbarous accent. A picture comes into her head, the two of them naked together in the bed their father died in, sharing an unholy repast, a murderous feast. But she is a sensible woman, and does not believe in rumors.

He is near enough to draw her face to his. She puts her hand on his face, gently, to forestall him. "I would laugh at you, but you're not well." She turns to go. He follows on her heels like one of their father's hunting dogs. "And I can't stand to have you this close to me."

"Well that is a shame, isn't it? Because I will always be this close to you..." His hand moves up to barely touch her face, shaking at her in the old gesture they used to use, that means always. It also means possession. Her heart breaks for her brother, so naïve in his madness, unable to see the truth she learned years ago. It is a sinful, degraded closeness.

"...won't I?"

No you won't, she thinks. But she does not waste more time arguing with him. He cannot understand. He was not there.

She'd visited their father often after her marriage, in his grief and later on his sickbed, a virtuous daughter. Someone had to do it; James was far away in Africa, dead. Or far away in Africa, having grand adventures and forgetting all about her; she did not know which was worse. And that old fool Brace was far too busy drinking away what was left of their father's pipe-dream shipping company to look after him properly. She'd fed him tea and sandwiches and buttered scones with jam. She'd listened quietly as he raved at her, blamed her for not being born of that red Indian woman, blamed her—when he'd gotten too far into the company brandy with Brace—for taking after that red Indian woman all too much. She'd listened patiently as he told her she had Eve's sinful nature, had seduced her poor brother just as Eve had seduced Adam in the garden, and where was the child Cain? Ah, that you'll never find out. He'd even slapped her sometimes, for childish things like bringing the wrong kind of jam, and that fool Brace had just sat there drinking through all of it.

She'd gone down to the cellar, reached out for the shelf where she and her husband kept the supplies for warding away rats. She'd fed him arsenic, drop by ungrateful drop.

She cannot afford to fall into sin again.