Free Plague in the Mirror by Deborah Noyes

confirmed now every day in the streets of Firenze. It’s whispered that each and every rotten corpse the Tartars flung over their walls, the Genoese lifted like a clumsy log. They jogged their ugly, unwanted gifts through town and — heave-ho — hurled them into the harbor. But how will a besieged city fight an enemy within as well as without? Soon the pestilence awoke inside Caffa’s walls. The survivors took to their ships. They sailed for the Mediterranean, to Messina and Genoa, bringing their burden with them.
    “The Great Mortality moves just so over land and sea. It is moving as we speak. The truth is right here at market. Look.” Cristofana waves May over near a girl with a basket, who flinches to hear Cristofana murmuring, seemingly, to herself, but then Cristofana turns her attention almost immediately, hypnotically, back to the preacher. “Usually, her basket is overflowing. All along this wall, she and other girls would stand competing with the clamor of tough old birds, women who sell the dried chestnuts, cheese, and mustard seeds — all manner of good things to make vegetable flans and pies and ravioli with. You see, there are no more craftsmen or wool and flax dealers, either . . . and only the one butcher. Even the dice players and the moneylenders with their green cloth tables are gone. Everyone hoards food and charges too much. To succeed at market now, you must be a purveyor of medical, magical, and spiritual protection against sickness. You must sell potions, like that man over there. He carries the best pottery and bone charms.”
    Cristofana begins threading her way through the crowd again, and May, lost and otherwise in thrall by terror, follows obediently, looking wherever her guide motions. “It is God’s will that medicine will be effective only if taken by a blameless person, but now the holy men are upstaged when a leech or a cunning woman lays out a table with protective charms and potions. My own lady swears by them and spends every florin she has to save her hide as well as her soul.”
    Cristofana stops in her tracks, turning. She leans close and whispers with violent intensity, “I care little for my soul,
bella.
I love my body. I love my sharp eyes, my knowing nose, my clever hands.” She lets those hands hover intently over May’s ghost shoulders, staring into faint, transfixed eyes.
    We correspond.
    “I do not wish to die. Not for Heaven’s sake or any other.” The hands fall to her sides. “You will help me?”
    In a split second, May tears her gaze away, remembering the closing words of the chapter she was copying out before Cristofana showed up that morning:
Before it was over, between one-eighth and one-half of the population of Europe would fall down dead with plague.
    She bolts, running as fast as she can — it feels like flying with no obstructions, nothing to contain her but gravity — retracing her crooked, crowded path to the alley behind the abandoned shop, and the sideways 8, and the relief of an invisible exit.

T he last thing in the world May wants is to go back. Ever. But her better judgment erodes quickly.
    With so many questions and only Cristofana to answer them, May stops sleeping through the night. She stares at the ceiling in the dark. She tosses and turns, and her mind and body ring with waiting.
    The trouble is that Time Present — even among supportive (if complicated, in Liam’s case) friends in a magnificent city like Florence — pales right now in the deep, dark shadow of Time Past. Her brush with Old Florence, the intrigues of a crazy girl wearing her face and flesh, the historic enormity of the Black Death, and her meeting with the beautiful artist — not to mention what the plague means for him and others like him — all begins to rule May’s every sensible thought and impulse.
    If Gwen and Liam have noticed any odd behavior on her part, they don’t speak of it. They seem to get that May needs space, and they let her be preoccupied when