“Where is it?” she asked when Celeste appeared to have completed her task.

The child produced ‘Ruin’ with her left hand.

“Wait!” Desdemona cried when she saw her sister lowering the card into the ground. “You can’t actually bury it! Mother will find out.”

“It’s okay, really. She’d want this.”

Desdemona sighed resignedly, and knelt beside her sister. The shadow of the Queen was a concentrated version of the rest of the world. Down here was eclipse-dark and cistern-cool. Desdemona reached out and helped her sister place the card in the pit. To not have a hand in the proceedings would have felt strangely improper.

“It has to be buried upside down,” Celeste explained as she ladled on the first clumps of earth. When it was over she patted the fresh mound and asked her sister if they should say a prayer.

“I don’t know any prayers,” said Desdemona. Her sister’s disappointment was clear. “We should get back to the house. We left an open door.”

Celeste gathered the ladle and Desdemona gathered her and together they retreated to the great house. An uneasy feeling flourished when a queer, misplaced gust of wind passed over the sere land, bringing with it powerful, inexplicable scents: jasmine and sage, tar and the leaves of poorly-stored books. Like the persistent misting rains, this wind seemed to press in on them from every direction.

As they crossed the great yard, Desdemona noticed that the lake had now assumed the abyssal blue of winter midnights and that its surface shivered with countless tiny waves.

*

Their retreat to the great house and the re-securing of the main doors brought Desdemona no relief. Though it was only a shade past midday she was already drained, yet there was still much to do: the foyer’s marble floor required mopping to clear away the rain that had invaded through the open door, Mother’s cards had to be replaced and all traces of their robbery erased, and then there was the matter of the remainder of the day and what to do with Celeste.

By the time these tasks were completed Celeste was complaining of hunger. Desdemona found them a platter of Mother’s ham, along with two cups of cold tea. They had been laid upon a mahogany dining cart, which Celeste then insisted be wheeled into the dining hall. The cart’s sides were carven with Old World images of the harvest: men slashing wheat with immense sickles, bent women shuffling down the crooked steps of a fruit cellar, bonfires, frothing cups of wine.

“Why did you draw the curtains?” Desdemona asked before serving the bounty.

“I want to pretend it’s night-time. Look how dark it is!”

“Yes, I see how dark it is. I can barely see you sitting there, so let’s open the drapes again, shall we?”

“Let’s light the candles instead!”

Desdemona sighed.