Juniper & Thorn(14)

Before any of us could react, he slammed through the door and vanished, taking his magic with him. Undine fell to her knees on the stairs, letting out a broken howl.

“This is your fault,” she snarled, looking up at me from between the curtains of her blond hair. “We let you come one time, and this is what happens? I don’t know what you did, but you drove him here—”

“Undine,” Rose said, voice sharp. “Enough.”

But Undine just stared at me, seething, shoulders rising and falling with her labored and furious breaths. Tears made my vision blur like wet glass.

“You ruin everything,” she bit out.

Rose came down the steps and paused before me, reaching up to smooth the curls from my face. I was vaguely aware of Undine letting out another wrenching howl before fleeing to her room, pale hair streaming out behind her.

“Come on now, Marlinchen,” Rose said. “Don’t cry.”

But there was something hard in her voice. She hadn’t seen what had happened, but she blamed me too. It was my fault that there would be no more midnight sojourns, no more orchestras, no more ballet theater. No more Sevas. One night was all it had taken for me to spoil what my sisters had so carefully and furtively built, like a clumsy child knocking over a stack of dishes. No one would leave the house without a bowl of black sand, and the only black sand was far away on Oblya’s beaches, where the smog from the dredging ships dyed the shores the color of ink.

“I’m not crying,” I said, blinking back the tears that had gathered hotly in the corners of my eyes. “I’m just hungry.”

Rose let out a breath through her nose, a breath of wordless anger. I brushed away from her and she let me. I went through the sitting room, snatching up Papa’s empty plate, and into the kitchen. I put his dish in the sink and opened the icebox.

There was the rest of the filling for the varenyky, cool and hard. There was the blackberry kvass, and a round lump of butter. There was the rolled dough that I hadn’t used yet. I took it all into my arms. I cut the dough into diamonds and filled them. I let the varenyky sizzle in the pan.

As I waited, I saw a full glass of dark juice resting on the counter. I couldn’t remember pouring it for myself, but I must have. It had the color but not the consistency of blackberry kvass. I snatched it up and downed it in one long gulp. It tasted of nothing, the way food always did in these moments.

I dropped sour cream onto a plate, and a heap of pickled cabbage beside it. I cut the rest of the bread into five fat slices and buttered them all. I spooned out my twelve varenyky, still steaming hot.

And then I ate everything, the black bread slick with butter, the pickled cabbage that made my eyes water, the sour cream that turned to a white film on my gums. I ate the varenyky even though they burned my tongue. I only tasted it in quick, hot bursts, the way you could still see the bright-orange splotches of lamplight after you closed your eyes. When I was finished, my heart was pounding and my chest heaving, and my stomach felt like a wineskin filled to its cork.

I did not want to risk seeing my father, so I took the back exit into the garden, through the disused maid’s quarters. The doorframe was cobweb-crusted, wood swollen in the late summer heat. I pushed through it with a thrust of my shoulder and stumbled into a bed of dandelion weeds and thistle grass. Nettles seized the hem of my nightgown, and my bare feet sank into the soft dirt.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something brown and furry. Indrik was standing up tall on his hind legs, nibbling at one of our apricots. When he noticed me, he paused and trotted over, muscles bulging in his bare chest.

“You look distressed, young maiden,” he said. “Would you like to call upon the might and magic of a god? I can shoot a star out of the sky and whittle it into a sword of immense power, or I can summon a bolt of lightning and strike down the lover who spurned you. Have you been spurned by a lover? Perhaps ravished by a group of drunken men? I have had many centuries to think of all the ways to punish those who wrong me and my devoted worshippers.”

“No,” I mumbled. “No, thank you. Please, Indrik, I’d like to be alone.”

Indrik snorted through his nose, affronted, and then trotted away again. I heard the poor goblin scratching at the shed door, and Papa pacing the line of the fence. He was already muttering the magic that would keep us here. As many times as he had warned us with his words, he had never erected a proper spell before.

Undine was right; I had driven him here, with my pathetic flushing and trembling knees and the baldness of my wanting.

When Indrik’s tail had disappeared behind an exuberantly green rhubarb plant, I leaned over, stuck two fingers down my throat, and vomited.

It didn’t take long for everything to come back up, lubricated by the black juice. My throat was burning and raw. I wiped bile from my chin. As I did, Sevas’s face hovered in my mind, his words caressing the shell of my ear.

I think it would make me very happy to see your face in the crowd, Marlinchen.

There was no use thinking of him. I would never see him again.

I knelt in the grass and buried my puddle of sick, dirt caulking under my nails. My stomach churned emptily now, and my mouth tasted greasy with acid. When I looked down, I noticed that vomit was streaked across my nightgown, the black color of the juice I’d swallowed. I cleaned my hands on a soft gray bushel of lamb’s ear and stood.

Even as the memory drove knives into my heart, my mind turned over the name he had given me. Sevas, he had said, wrapped up like a china dish or an ostrich egg hollowed out and painted blue. A gift, and I had nothing to offer in return. Diminutives were a mystery to me; my sisters and I had names that eschewed diminutives. Rose’s sweet, pretty nickname was one we only whispered to each other in secret, never in Papa’s presence.