"lemon cake. Oh, lemons. I think I miss them most."
Catarina Loss and Tessa Gray were walking down Ludgate Hill, just passing the Old Bailey. This was a game they sometimes played--what will you eat first when this war is over? Of all the terrible things that were going on, sometimes the most ordinary ran the deepest. Food was rationed, and the rations were small--an ounce of cheese, four thin pieces of bacon, and one egg a week. Everything came in tiny amounts. Some things simply went away, like lemons. There were oranges sometimes--Tessa saw them at the fruit and veg market--but they were only for children, who could have one each. The nurses were fed at the hospital, but the portions were always tiny, and never enough to keep up with all the work they performed. Tessa was lucky to have the strength she did. It was not all the physical strength of a Shadowhunter, but some trace of angelic endurance lingered within her and sustained her; she had no idea how the mundane nurses kept up.
"Or a banana," Catarina said. "I never liked them much before, but now that they are gone, I find myself craving them. That's always the way, isn't it?"
Catarina Loss did not care about food. She barely ate at all. But she was making conversation as they walked down the street. This is what you did--you pretended life was normal, even as death rained from above. It was the London spirit. You kept to your routines as much as you could, even if you slept in a Tube station at night for shelter, or you returned home to find the neighbor's house or yours was no longer there. Businesses tried to stay open, even if all the glass blew out of the windows or a bomb went through the roof. Some would put out signs that said, "More open than usual."
You carried on. You talked about bananas and lemons.
At this point in December, London was at its darkest. The sun went down just after three in the afternoon. Because of the air raids, London was under blackout orders every night. Blackout curtains blocked light from every window. Streetlamps were turned off. Cars dimmed their lights. People walked the streets carrying their flashlights to find their way through the velvety darkness. All of London was shade and corner and nook, every alley blind, every wall a dark blank. It made the city mysterious and mournful.
To Tessa, it felt like London itself grieved for her Will, felt his loss, turned out every light.
Tessa Gray had not particularly enjoyed Christmas this year. It was difficult to enjoy things with the Germans raining bombs overhead whenever the whim suited them. The Blitz, as it was called, was designed to bring terror to London, to force the city to its knees. There were deadly bombs that could crush a home, leaving a pile of smoking rubble where children once slept and families laughed together. In the mornings, you would see walls missing and the inner workings of houses, exposed like a doll's house, scraps of cloth flapping against broken brick, toys and books scattered in piles of rubble. More than once she saw a bathtub hanging off the side of what remained of a house. Extraordinary things would happen, like the house where the chimney fell, smashing through the kitchen table where a family ate, shattering it but harming no one. Buses would be upturned. Rubble would fall, instantly killing one family member, leaving the other stunned and unscathed. It was a matter of chance, of inches.
There was nothing worse than being left alone, the one you loved ripped from you.
"Did you have a good visit this afternoon?" Catarina asked.
"The younger generation are still trying to talk me into leaving," Tessa replied, stepping around a hole in the pavement where part of it had been blown away. "They think I should go to New York."
"They're your children," Catarina said gently. "They want what's best for you. They don't understand."
When Will died, Tessa had known there could be no place for her among the Shadowhunters. For a time it had seemed as if there was no place for her in all the world, with so much of her heart in the cold ground. Then Magnus Bane had taken Tessa into his home when she was almost mad with grief, and when Tessa slowly emerged, Magnus's friends Catarina Loss and Ragnor Fell encircled her.
"A Deeper Love" by Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson will be published on August 14, 2018.