Free The Blind Contessa's New Machine by Carey Wallace Page A

girl answered.
    “Good,” Carolina said, and pressed a letter into the girl’s hand.

    That afternoon, Carolina cut through the heart of the pine forest. The sunlight that filtered down through the needles melded into a bright halo at the limits of her vision, giving the trees and lake the aspect of a sacred painting.
    Turri had arrived before her. He stood on the bank near her house and watched her make her way along the far side of the lake. As she approached, her vision split his face in two and interposed flashes of black water. Uneasy under his searching gaze, frustrated by her own sight, she went up to the house without a greeting. He followed.
    “It is the same?” he asked, before she was even seated.
    Hearing him speak the truth aloud, after keeping it in silence for so long, Carolina was seized with a sudden urge to deny everything and retreat with her parents and Pietro to the refuge of delusion for as long as it would shelter them. But the sound of Turri’s voice also seemed to shake something loose: cut a weight free from her shoulders, throw a window open in the room.
    She nodded and sank down on the couch. “The same,” she said. “Maybe a little worse. It’s hard to measure. It’s worse with bright light. At night it’s better.”
    “It will be easier for you if you stay away from bright light,” Turri said, and turned the chair backward to straddle it. He must have come straight there on receiving her message: he still wore the scarred leather pants and loose workman’s shirt he dressed in for the laboratory.
    “It won’t move as fast?” she asked quickly. “Can I stop it?”
    Turri shook his head. “It will just be easier,” he said.
    While she was gone, some summer storm had torn apart one of her window scarves. A large brown moth struggled through the remaining pink and violet threads. Gaining the narrow sill, it steadied itself, then began to walk the length of unvarnished wood, bearing its beautiful wings like an unfamiliar burden. When Carolina turned her head to see him, Turri was also gazing up at the insect.
    “And you,” Carolina asked, half from habit and half as a dash back to the safety of familiar shadows, “what have you been doing these past weeks?”
    “I am building Sophia a new machine,” he said.
    “What does it do?”
    “It boils an egg,” he said. “She only needs to light a candle, and it will heat the water, deposit the egg for the required time, and lift it out again.”
    “But how does it know the time?” Carolina asked.
    “I spent the week after your wedding crafting candles that burn an identical length each minute.”
    Carolina laughed. “Why don’t you just give her a watch?” she asked. “Couldn’t she keep the time herself?”
    “She could,” Turri said. “But she doesn’t like eggs.”
    Perhaps frightened by Carolina’s laughter, the moth chose this moment to dive from its ledge, over Carolina’s head. She buried her face in the pillows. When she raised it again, the moth had settled on the scarf in the opposite window, pressed flat, revealing wide, pale blue eyes on each wing.
    “We can’t kill it,” Carolina said.
    “No,” Turri agreed, rising.
    “You’ll have to carry it out.”
    “I know.” Deftly, Turri unfastened the pins that held the scarf in place and caught the moth in the folds of fabric. Through the thin cloth, Carolina could see its great wings quiver. At the door, Turri let the scarf fall. The moth hesitated for a moment on his palm, then gathered its courage and lurched away.
    “How long do I have?” Carolina asked.
    Turri turned back to her like a shadow, his clothing and features erased by the bright light that streamed past him from the surface of her lake.
    “You said it was like looking through rolled paper,” he said, taking his seat again.
    She nodded.
    “Like opera glasses?” he asked. “Or even less, like a spy glass?”
    “Like opera glasses,” she said. “But as if someone is always folding