Sleep, Pale Sister

And within that twilit border of sleep, a picture seems to emerge-I always was good at pictures when I was sober-a picture which, if I narrow my eyes, almost comes into focus: a picture of a mother who loved her dead daughter so much that she brought her back to inhabit the body of another girl, a sad and lonely girl in need of love; and the need and the love together were so strong, calling her across the dark spaces, that she came, longing for her chance to live again. Oh yes, I know all about that longing. And together, the unhappy pale girl and the lost, frozen dark one created one woman, with the body of one and the mind of both and experience beyond human imagining…

At night, when such things seem possible, I think it very likely that that woman still walks the moonlit cobbles, though the body lies discarded in the morgue: she walks, still longing, still hungry…so cold…and so strong that, if she pleased, she could walk through walls and doors and limitless space to confront her murderers with scenes of black, delicate nightmare and rapturous insanity. She might spin stories of murder or paint visions of the pit…but behind the fury there would always be longing and a cold, despairing hunger. The dead are not forgiving.

There is a pervasive logic in this line of reasoning-and a strange pagan poetry. I find myself remembering snatches of my Classical education, to which I paid scant attention when I was at school. Yes, I read Aeschylus too, and I know where Fa

Almost.

I do have my reputation to think of.

Death

Epilogue

Manuscript, from the estate of Henry Paul Chester January, 1881

The black angel stirs restlessly and I look at the sky, rimmed now with the livid cataract of dawn.

Time.

A sudden panic sends ripples down my ruined spine. I feel the tic which has already frozen half my face begin to twitch again, relentlessly, as if a tiny, furious creature were imprisoned behind my eye-socket, gnawing its way out. The last card of our game is Death…I knew it from the start, but although the looseness in my ribcage is relief, my brain rebels against a

The tale is told and I am no Scheherazade, to slip away at dawn with the wolves snarling at her heels. The wolf is behind my cheekbone, curled in the hollow of my skull, waking…

Hungry.

The black angel reaches for her scythe. My last thought will be of Marta: my crown of thorns, Princess of Cups, hemlock and chloral, dreamchild and executioner, sorceress and pe

Silence.

Imagine a dead leaf drifting down a bottomless well.

Imagine that, for a moment.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to everyone who helped to bring this sleeper back to life. First of all to Christopher, who liked it from the start; to Serafina, Howard, and Brie; to my lovely editor Je

About the Author

JOANNE HARRIS is the author of Chocolat, which was nominated for the prestigious Whitbread Award. Joa

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