Unsettled

Margret grinned at the thought of a basketball court in the springtime. It felt so long off, but it also felt like something wonderful to look forward too. There were so many things she’d need to learn to do in the course of the next year, handy chores she’d never had to do, physical labor as she learned to build and mend and then languages would need to be learned. So much change it was as much a blessing as it was overwhelming. She would immerse herself in it and not have much time or energy to spare fretting about all that she’d left in the states.

“I would love that.” She said and tried to picture what would go into building one and realized she hadn’t the foggiest notion.

She was mid swallow when Ciprian began the language lessons and she had a moment to swallow before she quite caught on with what was happening. She repeated back what he’d said, hearing in her voice the subtle differences in intonation and accent that she wasn’t sure she’d ever overcome. She repeated back all that he offered and felt a distant familiarity with a few of the words that told her, her time with the CD’s wasn’t entirely wasted. She even managed to recall the word for chair without too much mangling and beamed with pride when she’d done so.

Something had eased in the room, she felt it long before she noticed it. The talk about basketball, the beginnings of the lessons all relaxed some tension between them that had been growing uncomfortably since she’d forced the hand-holding issue and things had gone sour. The ease was an echo of the comfortable companionship they’d so easily fallen into and it told her they would make it back there again. So long as she didn’t scare him off like she scared everyone off.

The brightness in her eyes was back, some of the sparkle was happy tears but mostly it was interest, curiosity and delight. She finished her bowl, sat back in her chair and let her vocabulary grow until he was done and then gathered up the dishes and set to wash them.

“You cooked, it is only fair I wash.” She said over her shoulder to him as she held up the bottle of soap and waited for the Romanian translation for it.
 
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Ciprian did not want to overwhelm her with too much vocabulary, only a couple dozen words for now. Eventually he planned to talk to her in equal parts English and Romanian, but for now he would ease her into things. While total emersion was probably the fastest way to get up to speed, he felt the English was important right now to build trust and comradery between the two.

Whether it was the porridge, the language lesson, the relaxed atmosphere, or a combination of the three, the tension between them evaporated by the time dinner ended. Even with Ciprian’s limited social acumen, he felt the change take hold.

He considered protesting about the dishes but thought better of it. If she wanted to help, who was he to say no?

“Săpun,” he said in response to the raised soap bottle. He rose to his feet and headed for the swinging kitchen door. “I will be right back. I have a surprise.”

He was gone for perhaps two minutes, and when he returned he had a mischievous grin on his face. One hand hid some unknown object behind his back.

“I realized today that we cannot simply go to bed right after dinner every night. It is far too early,” he said, but then immediately backtracked. “Of course, if you prefer to spend your evenings alone, I completely understand. There is no requirement that you keep me company. Please do not feel obliged. But… if you have a mind to… Well, I found these in the basement this afternoon.”

His hand emerged with a pack of rather old and well used playing cards.

“I counted them to make sure they are all there. Would you like to play cards with me, Meg? I’m not particularly good, but you’ll find I know quite a few games.”
 
She was just putting the last spoon into the drying rack when he returned. There was something so meditative about the work, it occupied the body used the mind just enough that she didn’t begin to dwell on bad things. She’d been thinking that at some point she’d really mourn the lack of a dishwasher but that for now she welcomed the homey, relaxing task of hand washing. Maybe she’d take up knitting or something as well.

Drying her hands she turned to him and was struck immediately by the grin on his face. His dark, just a shade too long, hair was flopped over his normally somber face and the mischievous nature of that smile worked some sort of alchemy on his features. She felt something shift and flutter inside her at the sight of such as smile. Her eyes smiled first, warming and then twinkling, coming back from the distant place they’d occupied while washing. Her mouth was next, spreading into a slow broad grin even as she puzzled at the shift inside her.

“Cards.” She said, imbuing the word with delight and novelty. “I haven’t played cards in years.” She hung the towel on a convenient hook and walked towards him.

“You’ll likely have to teach me anything beyond Go Fish and maybe Slap Jack.” She chuckled to think of playing that game as a grown woman.

“Do we have tea? I’d love a cup of tea while we play.”
 
“In there,” he said, pointing to a cabinet. “And the kettle is next to the stove.”

Ciprian knew next to nothing about tea, water and alcohol being his preferred drinks. Luckily, he had the wherewithal to buy some when stocking their supplies. In a place where you couldn’t find a vending machine within 30 kilometers but water was in abundant supply, tea seemed the obvious choice to spice up the beverage selection.

While Margret started the kettle boiling, he began shuffling the cards. “Why don’t we play some Gin Rummy.”

It wasn’t a particularly popular game in Romania or anywhere else in Eastern Europe for that matter. However, he thought she might have at least a passing familiarity. He himself was introduced to the game by an American roommate at university. They’d played at least three times a week for a semester, and Ciprian could count the number of times he’d won on one hand. He’d been concentrating on the nuances of English anyway and less on the strategy of the game.

As he explained the rules, he dealt out hands for both of them, setting the remaining cards face down in the center of the table.

“So, Meg,” he said, “What shall we talk about while we play? I have always found cards to be more of a social activity then a competitive sport.”
 
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She attended to his lessons on Gin Rummy with the same level of attention as she had his lessons on Romanian with a little more success. She must have played it as some point in the past or it was close enough to something that it made sense to her. It felt good to be doing something simple, something low-tech with the weight of ages behind it. How many people had sat across the table from each other and played such a game? How many people had been entertained, distracted from life by small bits of paper and ink? The thoughts made her grin.

She got up when the kettle whistled and made herself and Ciprian a cup of tea if he was interested in one. She liked her tea black, nothing to interfere with the flavor or the caffeine. Carrying the two mugs carefully back she sat down opposite him and picked up her hand, trying to place the rules into line in her head against the display of what she held.

Her eyes brightened when he called her Meg, her pleasure in the simple name quite evident. When he asked his question she paused, clearly considering it. There was much she wanted ot know about her guide. What put that somber light into his eyes all the time? Why had he been happy to take this position when so few others would have? But she wouldn’t ask, that would be nosy and moreover, it would open her up for such questions as well.

“Tell me about where you learned English? Did you study abroad? What did you do before this?”

The last question was cutting it close so she put down her cards and picked up her mug, curling her long fingers around it, letting the heat skin into them as she took a small, scorching sip that was almost too hot.
 
Ciprian sipped his tea as he consider the barrage of questions. None of them touched on the dangerous parts of his life, and he was thankful for that. These innocuous inquiries were just the kind of small talk he was looking for.

“Well,’ he began, making a conscious effort to not ramble on as usual, “I went to the University of Oradea. We had a student population of twenty-one thousand or so, and we were a very popular place for students from abroad. When I was there, I believe there were at least seven hundred students from other countries. As it happened, my roommate for a semester was an American. He was from Chicago, I think. In any case, I was relentless about getting him to help with my English. English, you see, is the language of the world and certainly of business.”

He began to play, trying to remember what the best strategies for the game were. His starting hand was poor, he knew that much.

“I majored in both Political Science and Economics,” he continued, “but really I was there to make connections. A lot of local and national officials send their children there. I made it a point to meet them. I always wanted to work for the government, but as I’m sure you can tell, I lack the charisma to be elected to any important positions. When I left school, I had a number of offers for small government positions, clerks and such. In many ways, I learned more from those menial jobs than I ever learned in school… most importantly, how to navigate the Romanian bureaucracy. And that, Meg, is why I was the perfect candidate for this position.”

He felt he should ask her a question now, but he wasn’t sure what safe ground was. Since first meeting Margret, he suspected she was running away from something. That meant questions about her recent past might be unnerving to her, but as his own history attested, questions about one’s family could be equally as dangerous.

In the end, he decided on the cheap way out. “Did you go to college?”
 
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She looked at her cards and almost laughed, she hadn’t a clue about what she was doing and wasn’t certain if her hand was good or bad. But then winning wasn’t even on her radar, relaxing, chatting and mending were. She tried to picture this somber faced man relentlessly pestering an America for English. She wondered if he kept in touch with the roommate or if he’d ever been to the states. She imagined his career path, the small jobs and the connections and wondered if she detected some underlying frustration in his retelling or if it was simply echoes of her own frustration coloring the tale for her.

His question to her was an echo of her own and she grinned wryly for having set herself up. Not that she minded talking about it, it was certainly easier than talking about Seth and the life she thought she was moving towards and the greatest lost she’d experienced and hadn’t even been aware of it. No, college had been a safe question for her to ask and to be asked.

“Yes,” she said fanning and unbanning her cards idly. “I went to school. Saint Michael’s in Vermont to be precise. I graduated with a Liberal Arts degree with a focus in Creative Writing.” She grinned at her own foolishness. What had she been thinking?

“I planned to get a real job and write on the side.” She shrugged. “But there isn’t much you can do with that degree so I wound up in data entry, a job I was more than happy to give up when an opportunity came up.”

Which was close enough to the truth. She put down her cards and took up her mug, savoring the warmth against palm and fingers.

“So when you are not guiding about helpless Americans what do you do for fun?”

She took a sip, “Basketball?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye and a teasing grin.
 
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Ciprian chuckled. “Oh, no,” he said, “I cannot play basketball. When I was in college, I did play some tennis, but I must admit I was no good at it. I read, if that counts. I enjoy going to the movies, but I suppose we will not be doing much of that here in Heudin.”

A few rounds went by, while Ciprian tried to follow up with another question. They drew cards and discarded without anything particularly exciting happening. Every so often one or the other would lay down their cards to take sip from their tea.

So if the recent past was off limits, and family was a pontentially risky topic, what could he ask her next? This game of what to talk about was nearly as intriguing (let’s be honest, it was more intriguing) than the cards. Finally, he decided to play off something she had mentioned.

“Creative writing?” he said these words as if they were a question. He didn’t want to make fun of her even in a playful way, but he did find that to be an odd and rather impractical major. With as much as American universities cost, it seemed silly to do something you could just learn and practice on your own. “So you still write? Have you had something published?”
 
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They had fallen into a comfortable pattern of playing cards, their chitchat falling away to stray comments and questions about the game, with Margret’s leaning more towards the question end of things. A few rounds passes and she sipped at her tea and was uncertain if she was winning or losing when he asked his question.

She had sort of been expecting it, she’d fielded it a time or two in her life and had an answer but one she was never satisfied with. She did indeed have a degree in creative writing, she still wrote though with nothing like discipline. Simply pecking away at the keys every now and again with distant thoughts of ambition and plans, but those plans never manifested into anything. Life had always seemed in the way, work, friends, Seth. So writing had never taken front stage and her lack of publication showed that. She was somewhat ashamed of that really but she would not hide it. Not anymore. This was her chance to start over, to shrug off everything, including distractions, and do it right.

“I do still write, not as much as I should, but some. I’m hoping that being here will inspire me to write more so that I can get something published. I sort of got caught up in a job I was indifferent too back home and lost sight of my, admittedly vague, dreams and plans.”

She took a long sip of tea, looking over the rim of her mug towards the somber faced man who was her guide here, without whom she’d be lost. In her eyes was a mix of quiet determination and fragile vulnerability. Her wounds and worries, momentarily on display.

“So this feels like a second chance for me, in so many ways. I hope to make the best of it.”

A smile, a card played and the moment was over.

“What do you like to read?”
 
Ciprian nodded as she spoke, convinced now more than ever that Margret was running away from something. As for her words about getting a second chance so she could write, he suspect that was true but certainly not the whole truth. Of course, he had no wish to pry any further. He was elated when she steered the conversation back to safer ground.

He considered for a moment before answering her question. In truth, he read anything he could get his hands on, and these days that was a handful of used romance novels he picked up in the city. Of course, he wouldn’t admit to those, at least not after knowing her for only two days, so he searched for something a little more highbrow.

“Oh I read many things,” he said. “I suppose my favorite author id Dostoyevsky. I guess that means I have a soft spot for the misery of the human condition. Not the most cheerful stuff, you know, but I’m drawn to it anyway.”

That was at least a partial truth. Dostoyevsky was indeed one of his favorite authors, but he also had a great love for Danielle Steel. In fact, he had a couple of her books in his duffle bag upstairs. He preferred to read them in their original English rather than those sloppily translated into Romanian.

“As for the writing,” he went on, “I imagine you will have plenty of time to write come winter. The worst snow storms will have us trapped in doors for days. I think then you’ll be thankful for a way to distract your mind. I—“

And then the lights went out.
 
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She’d Dostoyevsky long ago, in an early comp course and it had felt like duty and not like pleasure. But she found herself wanting to pick one up and give it another whirl as a way of insight into the man sitting across from her. She would make a point of asking him to borrow one when they were done.

She hadn’t really considered winter in these parts. Winter was inconvenient back home but eventually the streets were plowed and once you dug your car out of a spot it was yours so long as you marked it. Jogging wasn’t the best in the muck and cold but she had endured it by taking it to a treadmill, something she never enjoyed but endured. But now, realizing that winter might mean days indoors caused a wee bit of panic and pre-claustrophobia prickling through her. Stuck inside for days, how would she manage it? Probably she would run up and down the stairs, running laps around the foyer until the two of them collectively questioned her sanity. With that panic percolating inside her it was no surprise that she let out a little yelp when the lights went out and darkness rushed in to close around her.

In the wake of her yelp was a thick, deep silence for a moment broken only but the distant creaks of an old house settling and the short pants of breath coming from her mouth. She could feel her hands clenched as the cards in her grasp began to crumble under the force of her grip. She made her fingers loosen and told herself it was just bad timing and nothing more.

“Ok.” She said, trying to rein in the panic and not feel all the weight of the dark pressing on her. “That was neat. Is that our generator or… something else?”

She forced out a little laugh, self mocking and hollow into the black.
 
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While Ciprian found most social situations nerve-racking, when it came to other stressful situations, he was a man of particular equanimity. Little truly unnerved him these days, but that was to be expected considering his past. Besides, the dark was nothing to be afraid of, quite the contrary in fact. The dark was a place to hide. It wasn’t the place where monsters lived. It was the place you went to hide from those monsters.

Where are you hiding little Ciprian? Come out and see your papa. Nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a little blood.

“No, not the generator,” he explained. “This is the fault of Romanian Power. The blame falls solely on them. The generator is for emergencies only. There is not enough fuel to run it all the time.”

He waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust before pushing back the chair and heading for the counter. The sky outside was cloudless, so just enough light came through the kitchen window to navigate by. Most of the house would not have that luxury. He rummaged through one of the drawers, finally finding what he was looking for: some candles and a matchbook.

“As I said when you arrived, the power is quite unpredictable here. I doubt it will be back on this evening. Chances are it will be working in the morning. If not, I will make some inquiries.”

Pulling a couple candle holders from the cupboard, he lit the candles and put them in place. He returned with these in hand, offering one to Margret.

“But I’m afraid our card playing is done for the night. Unless you wish to sit around and tell ghost stories, we can just retire to our rooms.” He said this last part as a joke, for he knew no good ghost stories. “Or I can start a fire in the living room if you wish to stay up longer.”
 
So he wasn’t panicking, that was good, she thought as she sat in the dark and tried to hear past her own racing heart. She heard nothing but his calm voice and his nonchalant explanation and forced herself to calm down. It wasn’t anything to panic about, he’d mentioned the unreliable electricity before when he’d talked about the refrigerator.

“Oh, yes. That’s right.” She replied her eyes, which bring city born and raised had very little experience with true dark and she was as blind as if her eyes were closed. She kept looking around for something, anything to orient her sight on and failing.

Ciprian was still and quiet for a moment before he got up and began to move about the room. She drew in a deep shuddering breath and then jumped as she felt a hand touch her on the shoulder. The touch was unexpected but the hand was a comforting weight on her before it gently squeezed. She smiled, he was so solicitous, so quietly concerned. She reached up and put her own warm fingers over his cold ones.

“Thank you.” She said softly. His hand pulled away and then a moment later, directly across from her a spark of light blazed in the dark, almost blinding her in it’s intensity. She blinked away the bright imprints of the match and focused her gaze on Ciprian as he turned to give her a candle. She blinked at him, her skin prickling lightly with gooseflesh as her heart picked up pace again. Her eyes widened and with a quickly growing dread she made herself look behind her.

Part of her wanted to stand up rapidly, knocking the chair over and whirling about to face, whatever it was. But the rest of her dreaded seeing, knowing. Slowly, almost comically slowly she turned her head to look behind her. Nothing. There was nothing there. Just the blank wall, no draft of a door closing or someone rushing away. Nothing, just her foolish imagination. Rubbing her shoulder where she swore she could still feel a heavy chill she took the candle offered her. She licked her suddenly dry lips and weighed her options. Ghost stories were out, so out.

“I think bed.” She said at last in a tight voice. “I’m exhausted and still a little off schedule.”

The thought of walking up those dark stairs past that painting with just a candle for company help not even a drop of appeal to her, no matter how tried she was.

“Would you… Would you mind walking me upstairs?” she asked sheepishly as the candle shook lightly in her hands.
 
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“Of course,” Ciprian said, reading nothing unusual into her request or its delivery. He simply assumed that, still unfamiliar with the house, she needed assistance getting around in the dark. It never dawned on him that she was unnerved.

Moving slowly out of the kitchen, he paused in the foyer to get his bearings. The room was large, the flickering light from the candle barely reaching the far wall. The portrait of Margret’s ancestor hung there, barely visible. In this light, the man’s gaze looked more malevolent then stern. Those eyes watched Ciprian with a hungry cruelty. Of course, it was merely a trick of candle.

Still, Ciprian made a mental note to ask Margret in the morning if she wanted to keep the damn thing. It didn’t precisely spook him, but its existence in this otherwise stripped house had always given him pause. He’d just prefer it to be gone.

When they reached the second floor landing, he briefly turned his head to look at the far wall nearest his room. He had intended to examine the mysterious crack more carefully, but that no longer made sense. The dim light from the candle was unlikely to help illuminate the situation, either figuratively or literally. He would check it tomorrow. Certainly, it posed no structural threat to the house.

Leading Margret in the other direction, he stopped just outside her bedroom door.

“Is there anything else you need?” he asked. He felt compelled to put his hand on her arm for reassurance, though he didn’t consciously know she needed it. His touch was light, his fingers warm. “I am just down the hall and not a heavy sleeper. Just call out if you need something.”
 
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Her now cold fingers instantly sought his warm ones when they touched her lightly on the arm. Grateful, almost desperate for the contact she tried to brush away the phantom cold of the icy fingers she’d imagined touching her in the kitchen. Imagined because those fingers hadn’t felt a thing like these, warm, alive. How desperately she wanted to hold onto him, to find some legitimate reason for him to walk her into her room, look under her bed and in the closet. Was there any way she could convince him to tuck her in? To maybe slip in beside her and simply be there? But that was irrational, entirely inappropriate and she would not entertain such thoughts. She was simply beyond exhausted, still fighting off jet lag and far too much running.

Even before the hand, holding incident that morning the request wasn’t exactly normal. Very cognizant of that social blunder she made her fingers relax and slip from his, taking a little warmth with them. Suddenly she was doubly glad she’d asked him to stay in the main house with her. The idea of him being in another building, even one so close when she was so spooked was torturous. The hallway that separated their rooms hadn’t seemed so long in the daylight.

“No, nothing else I need.” She said and began to turn away then paused and held the candle up, eyeballing its length and trying to calculate something she had no experience in.

“Um…” she began feeling foolish. “How long does this candle last?” She wasn’t sure she could bring herself blow it out if she had no means of putting it back on.
 
Ciprian cursed himself for overlooking the obvious. He should have brought extra candles with them and a second book of matches she could keep in the room. Better yet, he should have anticipated this occurrence and stocked all the rooms with these items in the first place. He would correct this in the morning. Tomorrow’s schedule was filling up quickly: stock the rooms with candles and matches, check out the crack in the upstairs wall, and see if Margret would be will to get rid of that painting.

“Maybe four hours,” he guessed with a shrug of his shoulder. “Would you like me to get you another? Perhaps you’d like some matched for your bedside table in case you need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night?”

Ciprian had the oddest desire not to leave her. He could not explain where this compulsion came from. It certainly wasn’t a fear of the dark, and he didn’t feel she was in any kind of danger. He just wasn’t ready to give up her company just yet. Maybe it was the need to bond with another human being after being on his own for so long. Ciprian was not a shy man, nor had he lived a particularly isolated life, but he never truly felt close to anyone. If you got close to people, you could get hurt, but something about Margret and this strange circumstance made him long for someone he could share his inner most secrets and fears with. It wasn’t a sexual attraction, at least not for the most part. It was simply the desire to connect with another human begin and to not be alone with his own thoughts.
 
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Oh god yes. Yes she did want another candle, yes she did want matches. She hadn’t thought about going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, how would she handle that? She remembered when she was just a little girl with an over active imagination. She remembered being afraid of the monsters that she was certain lived under her bed. She could recall with painful clarity the feeling of lying there in the dark, having to pee and weighing the options. If she stepped down something was certain to grab her ankle from under the bed, if she jumped, vaulting herself away from the bed and the monster’s grasping hands she’d stumble in the dark and fall and they would be on her in a heartbeat. To lie there until morning meant she would wet the bed and be a baby and she was not a baby.

Her expression shifted as she felt the visceral memory of the fear of those nights dance up and down her spine. She shifted, turning to hold the candle inside her room, looking back at her bed and the deep shadows underneath. The way the light cast over the strange carving on her headboard was grotesque and she instantly regretted it. In some ways the dark was so much more comforting than the strange goblin shadows of flickering candlelight aided and abetted by an overactive imagination.

She turned back to him. “Yes, another candle and matches would be great, but I’ll come with you.”

No way was she waiting in the dark by herself. She knew she couldn’t keep making excuses without looking like a lunatic but she had a perfectly good one now and she wasn’t about to waste it.

“I didn’t see where you got them from before and it might be good for me to know. You know, for if this happens again….”

She smiled and stepped out of her room and gestured for him to lead the way and resisted the impulse to slip her arm through his for the comfort of human contact. She’d learned her lesson.
 
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And so they retraced their steps back to the kitchen, making their first excursion upstairs a complete waste of time. Ciprian didn’t complain or even suggest that Margret wait for him in her room. She didn’t look like she was likely to agree to that, and he really wanted the company anyway.

With light so scarce, the noises of a settling house were amplified. Each creak of the stairs made the place feel like it was centuries old. Each mysterious, but not abnormal, thump in the walls sounded like rodents or other equally unpleasant denizens of the dark had taken up residence in all the secrete nooks and crannies.

He passed through the foyer without bothering to look at the portrait on the wall and pushed through the swinging door to the kitchen.

“They’re right over here,” he said, pulling open a drawer to the left of the sink. Inside were a stash of extra candles and at least a dozen matchbooks. Ciprian grabbed one of the matchbooks and three candles. It was enough to last a few days unless Margret decided to burn them all night. As he set these on the counter, he chanced a look out the window and froze in mid action.

The kitchen window overlooked one side of the house. Neither the servants’ cottage nor the orchard were visible from here. Really all there was to look at was an empty field, or at least that’s all there should have been to look at. Silhouetted against a moonlit backdrop, a small figure stood staring at the house. While impossible to discern any details of their face, one thing was clear. This was a child and most likely a little girl. She was older than a toddler but younger than a teenager, but Ciprian could surmise little else.

Probably just a child from the village, but the way she stood there, staring at the house with preternatural patience, gave Ciprian pause. He might have expected to see a gaggle of girls or boys out to create mischief at night, but this sole watcher felt so out of place.

Ciprian wasn’t conscious of the fact he’d stopped talking. He just stared out the window with unblinking and uncomprehending eyes.
 
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She was used to ambient noise, she’d lived in a city after all. There was always some background noise to tune out, traffic, neighbors yelling, their music or television on to loudly, the sound of the furnace blasting or the whir of a fridge or dishwasher. Noise was normal for her, silence was not. And while this house with the impenetrable dark was not silent, far from it, there was a silence in between the creaks and clanks that was unsettling. It was similar in effect to the way the flickering candlelight made the shadows seem deeper, that much more ominous and she found herself scuttling to keep close to Ciprian as they made their way back down the stairs. She could feel him ahead of her, a blot of warmth on the drafty stairs, or was it the candle she could feel? No matter, any warmth she felt was gone when she happened to look over at the portrait on the wall. It’s eyes, painted in that old trick of good painters, seemed to follow her. They were hard eyes, calculating eyes and not all together unlike her Nona’s. Nona’s eyes had been as hard, as full of dark secrets as she sipped at her “water” and muttered under her breath in Romanian.

It was a relief to be past it and to slip into the darkness of the kitchen with the swinging door as a barrier between her and the eyes. She almost bumped into Ciprian when he stopped at the sink and spoke, his voice startling her. She scolded herself for her inattention and peered past him into the drawer, nodding that she’d seen and reaching to take hold of the candles he’d pulled out for her. But he didn’t let go.

“Um.” She said and then looked at him. In the candlelight the lines and hollows of his face were more pronounced, he looked like some sort of brooding Gothic hero, her breath hitched. In the deep shadows under his brows his dark eyes caught the candlelight and she could see the intensity of his gaze and followed it out, her inexpert eyes trying to fix on what it was that had him so intent. It took her a moment to pick shape from shadows but then she was gasping, her hand falling away from the counter.

“Oh!” she said, worry in her voice pushing out fear. “Is she lost? How late it is? Her parents must be so worried.”

She turned from him, her candle held carefully in her hand and walked towards the door back door that led from the kitchen in a rush. The wind of her movement made the light sputter and dance. She set the candle down to fumble at the locks of the door.

“Poor thing, she must be so frightened.” When she opened the door the resulting breeze put her candle out. She didn’t even pause just slipped out the door down the rickety steps that were not particularly sound towards that small shape in the night.
 
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Ciprian heard Magret ask something about the lateness of the hour, but little else sank in. Though the sun went down a few hours earlier, in truth it wasn’t all that late. However, certainly it was late enough that children as young as this one should be safely tucked away in their homes.

Margret continued to talk, and Ciprian had a vague notion that she was moving away. So transfixed was he by the silhouette that the rest of the world just faded away. His hyper vigilant focus tried to make out any details of the girl’s features, but the darkness was too deep. She just stood there unmoving, like someone had placed a statue of a girl out on the lawn. He felt more than saw the girl’s gaze shift away from him and to the back of the house. Only then did he realize Margret had left the kitchen.

Setting the candle down, Ciprian followed after her. By the time he emerged from the house, his employer was already at the bottom of the steps and heading in the direction of the girl.

“Meg, what are you doing?” he called after her. “Come back inside.”

He didn’t have any concern for her wellbeing. It was only a child after all. He was just perplexed by the rather rash action. What did she hope to accomplish? The girl wasn’t likely lost, and even if she was, Margret’s Romanian hadn’t progressed so far in one night that she had any hope of communicating with the girl.
 
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