Aether Spirit

Chapter 1-4

After the nice tinkerer had walked her back to the women’s quarters, which Claire now noticed was a converted hotel, Claire ran into Nanette. Claire had felt strangely comfortable with the two men, possibly due to their warm welcome.

Or at least the tinkerer’s welcome. The doctor had seemed annoyed by her presence, but she found herself strangely glad he stayed as long as he did in spite of his evident discomfort. His emotions had again been too multilayered to make sense of, but she wanted to know more about him. She couldn’t help but notice how handsome he was with his dark skin and striking gray eyes. But then she imagined them turning steel-cold in anger and shuddered. Where had that come from?

And speaking—thinking?—of coldness, Nanette practically pounced on her when she entered their room and told her, “Your bed is there.” She pointed to the cot, which Claire had made with the sheets provided after unpacking.

“I guessed that.” Claire didn’t give her the satisfaction of looking wistfully at the featherbed.

“The bathing room is down the corridor. If you snore, I will throw my dirty stockings at you. Or worse.”

“I’m a quiet sleeper as far as I know,” Claire told Nanette’s back. Her reluctant roommate slammed the door on the way out. “Well, how’s that for a welcome?” she murmured into the vibrating air. “Note to self—apply for room change once I’m settled.” It didn’t surprise her that no one had wanted to room with the irritable nurse. Or maybe Nanette had been enough of a queen bee she’d succeeded in having women assigned elsewhere until the fort was full.

Claire blinked back tears. Here I am, odd woman out again. Maybe I should have pretended to be a man.

She managed to find the bathing chamber and avoid saying anything else that could possibly irritate Nanette, who huffed when she opened the door and saw Claire waiting in the hallway. Claire brushed her hair and teeth and blinked in disorientation when she exited at the rows of identical closed doors on either side of the hall. Her room—Nanette’s room—was first on the right from the stairs, or so she thought.

“Are you lost, Miss?”

Claire turned to see a girl of middle teenage years. She wore simple nightclothes and her hair in a wrap.

“I think so.” Claire rubbed her right ear, which rang with a high-pitched whine. “I’m sharing a room with the head nurse Nanette.”

“Oh, her.” The girl’s lip curled. “Poor you. It’s last on the left.”

“Thanks, that’s what I thought.” Claire checked the position of the door and turned to the girl to thank her, but she had disappeared. The silence in the hall almost deafened Claire, and she noticed her ear no longer chimed. A draft made her shiver.

Hmmm, she must have gone the other way. Claire crept back to her room and opened the door to the sound of a low nasal rumble—Nanette snoring. Claire closed the door, curled up on her cot, and held the pillow around her head to muffle the sound. She’d throw a dirty stocking at Nanette at some point, but not tonight, not until she could get established as an expert in her own right.

Was there a physician’s lodging? There must be another option.

Scenes from the day played through her mind, but at some point she fell asleep into the last thing she wanted to dream about. Her neuroticist had told her that when she had nightmares of the accident, she had likely inadvertently exposed herself to something that reminded her of it. That was why she had spent as little time in Boston as possible—being around her mother and aunt had caused nightly dreams of what she didn’t want to remember, both because the images distressed her and because they never included the details she wanted. This time she was aware of herself as an observer in the dream, although still powerless to stop it.