Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain by Kirsten Menger-Anderson

layers of cloth, watching his own hand move as if it were a rodent, something filthy. He located the triple fold Doctor Steenwycks had pinned shut and worked the metal from the cloth. “May I suggest —”
    â€œI remain here,” Sarah said. The cloth was not yet open, but already she knew that Nicolas had not recovered. She knew without confirmation that her son was no longer alive. She knew. The horrid Negro had taken her son away.
    The Constable sighed, his will weak beside the widow’s. He stepped back as he slipped the cloth from the boy, allowing the ends of the sheet to fall to the floor. Turning to Sarah, he watched her eyes widen. She pulled her handsfrom under Nicolas’s head, wiping them on her dress as if she could rub all contact away. The boy’s head fell back. His skin had discolored, grotesque as it was the day the midwife first held him aloft, mottled blue and still covered in blood. Sarah had taken the babe in her arms and life had emerged from his lips as a scream that echoed now only in her voice.
    â€œThe light,” Nan said. She cupped her dark hand around the flame and extended the burning wick toward Sarah, toward Nicolas. The flesh of her palm glowed; its lines had a deep red hue. The flame flickered. Sarah took it from the girl.
    â€œLeave me, Nan.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Leave my house.”
    Nan’s eyes narrowed. “Who will care for you?”
    â€œYou can’t dismiss her,” the Constable interrupted. “She’s one of the good ones, your Nan.”
    â€œGather your belongings,” Sarah continued. “Take Nicolas’s old case.”
    Nan bowed her head. Her dress, patterned with stains of gravy, wash water, and soot, hung loosely from her shoulders. Her kerchief had slipped back, revealing her high forehead. For a moment she waited, defiant. Then she ran from the room.
    â€œYou must not —” the Constable began. But Sarah didnot heed his words, her eyes on the fire, the delicate motion of flame.
    â€œI have,” she said. And the Constable had time just to take the candle from her and set it safely down before she collapsed into his arms, her face powdered and damp and, for the first time in her life, a perfect white.

M Y N AME I S L UBBERT D AS
    My name is Lubbert Das, and I was born with a stone in my head twenty-odd years ago. I never learned to read or make sums, I’m fat as a swollen wineskin, and before Father died and Doctor Theodorus Steenwycks discovered me, I chopped firewood from sunrise till mid afternoon, when I had to pile the logs into cart seventeen, which pulled them to the barracks above the Common. At night Mother baked meat pies, or did till the money ran out and we started to burn furniture a few table legs at a time for heat. Now we eat hard bread on the floor, where we still have boards down, and pile our plates in a corner. No one has British pounds, except the people with horses and coaches, and not even they do sometimes.
    Since Father died, Mother has worked for the milliner.Her fingers are always yellow-brown and wrinkled no matter how hard she scrubs them. Her skin is as tough as her voice when she raises it so all the neighbors can hear her say that she and her dim-witted boy won’t end up at the almshouse. There’s disease at the almshouse, that’s what they say, the soldiers up at the Common who always have money for hats. I’ve delivered six of them to as many officers’ wives the past three months. The Sons of Liberty say the British are robbing us and we’ll end up like African slaves if we don’t change our ways, but the soldiers order more hats than anyone else in the colonies, and Mother says she needs to sell hats or we can’t eat.
    I don’t chop wood for the soldiers anymore; the cart men won’t take it. We refuse to supply the enslavers, they say. My ax, bright as the moon, sits in the corner, but