Over the next few days, Esme visited the Anais every afternoon. Each trip was more torturous than the last. Her mother looked more and more delicate, more like a fragile piece of porcelain, with each passing day. The keeper’s enchantments had, blessedly, kept the window from shattering, but they could do nothing to fortify Ariane, who appeared as though she might fracture beneath the slightest touch.
In art class on Thursday, they studied portraiture. Meera and Seth painted each other in profile, and Esme was surprised to see Seth using a varied palette for the first time ever. Across from them, she painted Ariane from memory, an Ariane so grey and sombre that Miss Merrow asked if Seth and Esme had swapped bodies.
After school, Esme couldn’t bring herself to visit her mother yet again. I
