Excerpt from Crossings by Alex Landragin, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Stop, I cannot bear any more of this nonsense!" I turned away again to regain my composure. "Madame Édmonde, my sanity is barely hanging by a thread as it is. Do you wish me to slip into madness once and for all?"

"Charles, you used to call me your Scheherazade. Do you remember what it was that Scheherazade did?"

"She told the king a story every night to stop him from executing her, as he had all his previous brides."

"The difference between Scheherazade and me is that my stories were not intended to save my life but to save yours. To prepare you for your next crossing."

"You misunderstand me. I am not afraid of death. In fact, I long for it."

"Charles, you cannot die. You must return with me."

"Return where?"

"To the island."

At the mention of the word "island," my vision blurred and I felt a hot teardrop inexplicably creep down my cheek. I approached Édmonde and slowly lowered myself down beside her. Her bearing was so still it was impossible to divine what she was feeling behind her veil. "Oh, Jeanne," I whispered, taking Édmonde's hand in mine and kissing it, "how I have missed you! There is not a day that goes by…"

"Charles, please," she whispered, withdrawing her hand. "I am no longer Jeanne. I am Édmonde."

I reached for her veil and lifted it slowly. Before me was revealed that hideous face I'd seen the previous evening. Had an old Flemish master painted the visage of Death itself, he would scarcely have found a better model. Yet I did not feel the revulsion that had taken ahold of me before, but instead detected the stirrings of an old affection.

"I was Jeanne once," spoke those blighted, shriveled lips. "I was beautiful once. But I am beautiful no longer. In my ugliness I have discovered my freedom. And now I am offering you yours. I have come to Brussels specifically for this task. I have rented these lodgings with the sole task of finding you and offering you another crossing. Believe me, Charles, believe and trust me. I will arrange another crossing for you. A crossing with someone who is young and strong. Then, together, we will return to the island. And somehow, we will find a way to repair the damage we have done."

{206}

A Suitable Candidate

HAVING RETURNED TO the Grand Miroir, I did not hear again from Madame Édmonde for some days. This was how she had intended it. "Continue your life as before," she had impressed upon me as we discussed our plans. "Draw as little attention to yourself as possible. Let no one suspect you have had a change of fortune." Giacomo gave me my old clothes and shoes back—laundered and mended—and I left the manor as I had entered it, only a little cleaner and plumper.

Édmonde had taken it upon herself to find a candidate for a crossing. Before we parted, she encouraged me to consider crossing with a young woman, arguing it would be easier to find a suitable candidate. But I was against the idea. What man in his right mind would choose to be a woman?

My return to the Grand Miroir caused a commotion from the landlord Lepage and his wife. Evidently, they'd decided I'd vanished without paying my bills. I gave them twenty francs to ease their worries—Édmonde had given me a little money, advising me to spend it cautiously—but not so much as to raise their suspicions.

My instructions were strict. In preparation for what was to come, I was to write down everything I knew about the crossing, everything she had told me as well as everything Jeanne had told me. "This way, after the next crossing," Édmonde had explained, "you will have all the proof you need regarding who you are and where you have come from, so that if we should be separated again you need not spend a whole lifetime piecing together the clues scrambled in your nightmares." And so, on Édmonde's fine papier japon, I began writing the story you are reading, beginning with the dinner at Madame Hugo's and the accident that followed it, my rescue by a stranger, and finally my encounter with Édmonde. I wrote constantly, obsessively, writing and rewriting, as is a poet's wont, burning the drafts in the stove to prevent the landlady from reading them. In days gone by, I might have protested at the absurdity of the notion of crossing from one body into another, and even now I was assailed by doubts. But passing as I was through the valley of the shadow of death, I surrendered myself completely to it. I was certain that Édmonde's reminiscences of Jeanne constituted incontrovertible proof that what she was saying, however ludicrous, was true. The chance to live again, in a youthful body, the chance to escape the clutches of penury, insanity, and mortality, and perhaps above all the chance to redeem myself for my past failures—all of these taken together added up to a temptation I could not—perhaps even should not—resist.

Excerpted from Crossings by Alex Landragin. Copyright © 2020 by Alex Landragin. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.