The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(15)

“I don’t mind waiting,” said Jupiter, tapping the side of his nose.

The car started moving again.



Every chance I could, I took my bike past the House of Dreams. It wasn’t more than a fifteen-minute walk from Jupiter’s, though it had the air of another world entirely. Everything seemed brighter, better when I was near the House. I could only imagine what it must be like to live there, reading by a massive fire, finding gold coins in one’s teacup, coaxing your pet leopard on an afternoon walk.

I decided to do a little experiment to test the House’s magic. I took two identical strawberries—both scarlet, shiny, fat as a ruby. I ate one in Jupiter’s house, and it tasted sour. I kept the second in my hand as I pedaled to the House of Dreams. I held the fruit up to the sunlight bouncing off the wrought-iron finials. I took a bite. Sweet, fragrant juice spilled over my lips.

It was the first time I understood that beauty has its own power. Beauty transformed. Its presence could coax ambrosia from sour fruit or take an ordinary, rained-upon sidewalk and dew it with diamonds. I wanted beauty to touch me, change me, declare me worthy of its notice.

At that moment, the front door clanged open. I jumped, dropping my half-eaten berry, and grabbed my bike. I thought an adult was going to yell at me to leave. Instead appeared a girl my age.

I had only to look at her once to understand that one day she’d be beautiful. She was coltish and long-femured, the joints of her shoulders so tanned and glossy her bones shone. She wore a dress that was far too big for her, and her feet were bare and dusty.

A crystal bowl caught the light in her hands. She had a carton of milk tucked under her arm. I silenced the bell of my bicycle and tried to make myself small behind the brick pillar of the gate.

I watched as she set the glass bowl onto the front steps and poured milk into it. She reached into the dress’s front pocket and drew out a knife. Without pausing, she pricked her palm and squeezed the blood onto the milk’s surface. When she was done, she shoved the bowl of milk and blood beneath a hydrangea bush, stepped back, and closed her eyes.

I knew what would happen next. I’d read all about it. She’d made a sacrifice. The air would wrinkle, a star-flecked hand would grab her wrist and yank her into some new place where I couldn’t follow. A place full of magic. Where she’d become a queen.

“Wait!” I yelled, forgetting all about my bike. “Take me with you!”

The girl looked up from where she stood by the hydrangeas. She tilted her head in acknowledgment, though she didn’t move. In her silence, my face started to burn with embarrassment. I pointed to the bowl of milk and blood.

“I thought you were . . . going somewhere.”

Her eyes widened.

“Where?” she asked. “Where do you think I’d go?”

Her voice was slightly raspy, each word elegantly articulated. I’d never heard anyone speak like her. I wished I could speak like that.

I wondered what I looked like to her. The October sunlight lacquered her skin and hair. Around her, the trees on the property wore traces of gold, as if they’d donned it just for her, for the moment she’d step outside.

I wanted to tell her about all the books I’d read, the ones my mom had told me we couldn’t bring with us when we moved here. Books about Aztec sacrifices, gods with two heads. Tales where one step into the shadow of an apple tree could yank you out of this world altogether. But I couldn’t fit all of this into my answer.

“Somewhere else,” I said. The girl seemed disappointed. She looked behind her. She was going to leave and I couldn’t let her do that.

“I read somewhere that faeries like bowls of sweet milk . . . that they’ll come if you leave them something like that.”

“I know,” she said, bored. “They’re supposed to come get me one day. I’m their family.” She pushed her thick black hair over her shoulder. “I thought the blood and milk would speed up the process.”

When she didn’t say anything else, I traced the edge of my bike handles, convinced that in a few seconds she would tell me to leave.

The girl eyed me. “Do you really want to come with me?”

I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I nodded.

The girl lifted one burnished shoulder. “I’m sure they have room for us. I bet they’ve got a palace.”

She walked forward and unlocked the gate that separated us. It opened with a screech. She took my hand and led me to the hydrangea bush, where she offered me the knife.

“Are you brave enough to go to Faerie with me?”

I thought so. I even had a sticker to prove it. I was absurdly proud of that sticker—a quarter-size, neon smiley face with sunglasses—and did my best to preserve it when the glue wore off and the smile began to lift from my sweater. It had since held pride of place in the pocket of a clear plastic folder I took with me to school. The nurse had given it to me when I got my before-school shots in a cold white office that stank of ethanol.

“You’re the bravest one out of the bunch!” she’d said. I hadn’t made a sound when she injected me. She stretched a Band-Aid covered in watermelons over the wound. “Normally, these kids are howling left and right, but not you.” She beamed at my mom. “You should be proud of your girl.”

My mother, who had been sitting in the examining-room chair, listlessly flipping through a magazine, glanced at the nurse and at me. She rolled her eyes, arched one eyebrow. The exchange was conspiratorial. It said: Of course I am.