The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(13)

“Nobody uses that room,” she said. “Not anymore.”



I should have known what would happen when we crossed the threshold of the House of Dreams. I knew all the tales. I understood the texture of enchantment.

But I had forgotten how certain places can be so old they are alive. So alive that they do not simply hunger; they learn to hunt.

If you follow a white stag into an enchanted glen, or open a golden door in an abandoned alley, or find that a mirror’s surface is liquid to your touch—it is never by chance. It is because something has need of you. It has laid its autumn leaves just so, coaxed woodsmoke from thin air, cut the light through the branches so that it spells an invitation.

Gone was my wariness when we entered. Instead, I was grateful that Mrs. Revand and Indigo spoke in hushed tones so that I could wonder at this place that had molded my bride. It felt like cupping my hands around a secret.

The inside was beautiful. The floors were polished chestnut, cut to resemble interlocking stars. A rich, faded blue rug stretched across the entrance, which opened into a sitting room of ornate Venetian furniture and bronze statues of goddesses in repose. From the center of a soaring, pressed-silver ceiling hung a chandelier. Slender windows with cream drapes bound by golden ropes hinted at the water beyond.

I tried to imagine Indigo growing up here—young, too skinny. I tried to imagine her padding barefoot across the carpet, running inside after a swim, leaving puddles of water on the expensive silk couches. I tried to imagine her slouched, boneless, against the ebony stairs, a book propped on her bronze knees.

I could not picture it. There was no sign of the girl Indigo had been. She might as well have been cobbled together from dust motes and shadow, her charred brown eyes a gift of color from the chestnut floors.

I did not realize that as I stared hungrily at the House, the House was staring hungrily at me.

“It hasn’t changed at all,” said Indigo.

Mrs. Revand disappeared down a hallway at the top of the stairs.

“She’s gone to let her know we’re here,” said Indigo. When she looked at me, a flicker of misgiving filled her eyes. “You should know that she will—”

Her phone went off and Indigo groaned.

We did not bother with cell phones until recently. They were ugly and bulky. The attorneys had advised Indigo to purchase one, given the state of Hippolyta’s health. They’d even gone so far as to send her the latest contraption toted by all the teens on the mainland: an insect-red Nokia with a stubby antenna. Indigo glared at the device.

“I imagine I’ll need to take this,” she said. “I’ll only be a moment.”

Indigo usually moved with grace, but her gait as she walked away was almost militant. As if preparing for a fight.

From the top of the stairs, Mrs. Revand gestured to me.

Come, she mouthed.

I looked back to where Indigo had vanished and told myself she would simply meet me there. As I made my way up the stairwell, the sea stretched out beyond the tall windows. The water flexed, muscular as a great tail beneath the sunlight. I thought of Melusine bathing in the dark, anchored to her wild body in the hopes that her husband might let her have this one privacy, might even break the spell.

If only he remembered not to look.



Upstairs, the walls were a dull, meaty red and the air carried the sour, musty tang of an unrinsed mouth. The wall sconces held dead lightbulbs. I found this odd, but what difference would it make to a blind woman?

“Miss Hippolyta?” called the housekeeper, knocking on a pale golden door right off the landing.

From within, an answering creak of bedsprings.

“He’s here, alone,” said Mrs. Revand with a guilty look at me. I understood, too late, that Indigo would not like this, but I could not make myself turn and leave. “Just as you asked.”

I stepped inside. Thin drapes covered the windows, the high-ceilinged room only barely illuminated. Strange art in gilded frames lined the walls—trees and curlicues, hearts, crosses, black-and-white roses. A dozen vases filled with flowers made from a material I couldn’t identify were shoved into a corner. At the center of the room lay a huge, circular bed. Its sheets were as red as the brick outside.

“Are you beautiful?” came a rasping voice followed by a sharp laugh. “She always collected exquisite things.”

My eyes were still adjusting to the light, and so Hippolyta appeared as little more than a small, wriggling shape on the bed. She turned her head, speaking to some invisible thing beside her.

“No, hush hush, I know. There’s only so much time,” she said before sniffing in my direction. “Come, come. Come closer to me.”

I moved to her bedside and Hippolyta came fully into view. She was small, bald, and dark as a chestnut. Her frilled nightgown was doll pink and hung raggedly off her body. Her thin neck and thinner wrists were adorned in braided jewelry. Her face was not beautiful, but it was arresting. Those wide-set, martyr eyes I had seen in the press photos now milky and mottled blue. Her mouth was a lopsided slash, framed by wrinkles. Thick, raised scars made her skin appear oddly folded, and when she opened her mouth to speak, I smelled the rot on her breath.

She cocked her head to one side. “Well? Are you?”

“Pardon?”

“Are you beautiful?”

I considered this, faintly amused. I was aware of how men and women looked at me, of how Indigo had looked at me that first night we met and every night after.