Woman in Mourning

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    Do not trust the old woman dressed in black. 
    The woman who waits in the station and appears in the alley just when you are at your most vulnerable. The woman who walks down the streets in heavy black clothes with only her face and her hands uncovered. That face is lined and wrinkled, but it does not sag. It is full of wicked sharpness: her nose the nose of the old nobility, her eyebrows arched with unfaded fierceness. A round black hat with a narrow brim sits immovable on her gray head, untouched by the wind that billows her skirts and her shawl as she strides up the street. 
    If you ever see this woman do not look at her, they said. Do not look at her, hurry away in the opposite direction as quickly as you can. She is shameful and she will show you no mercy if you fall into her clutches; all she knows is an old, old hate. That was what they told her. 
    Bread was extended to her by a strong, wrinkled hand. She saw it and her hand leapt forward without thinking, even as her eyes darted to the face to which the hand belonged. She flinched into herself immediately at the sight of pale eyes lined with age and the black brim like a halo around dove gray hair. 
    The hand didn't falter, and for a long, long moment she couldn't pull her gaze away from the deep eyes in front of her. They were sad. So, so sad. Sad and gentle and sharp. Those eyes felt like she was looking down through a thousand stained glass windows, twisted with pride and knotted anger and sharp clarity that pierced her heart in a way that made her shrink even farther inward. And it was all tempered with sadness and gentility. It was the broken pride that made her take the bread, and the sadness that made her eat it. 
    The sadness softened without losing strength, and the old woman in black stood with a heavy slide of skirts. She didn't try to do anything else. The old woman didn't pat her head in a moment of condescension and leave, and she didn't try to take her with her. Her straight back walked out of the alley with iron strides and turned right down the sidewalk. 
    The one she left behind ate her bread. 

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