The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(18)

Turn back, turn back, thou bonnie bride, nor in this house of death abide.

Hippolyta was clearly not sane. Her words were not to be trusted.

So why could I not stop listening?

“Let me tell you a tale, beauty,” said Hippolyta. “One day there was a beautiful revel and a sky of azure and a sky of indigo walked hand in hand into the Otherworld, but only one of them came out. Do you understand me? Only one came out.”

I heard a creaking on the staircase.

“Miss Hippolyta?” called the housekeeper from the other side of the door.

“You must find my Azure,” said Hippolyta. “Oh, the House misses her so much you can feel its ache in the floors! Only Indigo knows where she went, but my Indigo is a slippery girl, always has been. She kept Azure as close as a secret. You have no idea how much they loved each other.”

“Let me go—” I said, but Hippolyta held tight.

“The Otherworld knows the girls’ secrets; perhaps you can ask it where Azure went? Why she never visits?” said Hippolyta, frowning and pouting like a child. “But who can get into the Otherworld without a pair of wings?”

“I can’t help you.”

Hippolyta’s bony fingers caught my face, drawing me to her. Her fingers left damp and sour marks on my skin. I held still.

“I can hear your longing like a heartbeat,” said Hippolyta. “If you find Azure, the House will reward you. The House knows your deepest desires. The House always provides.”

Mrs. Revand knocked on the door. “Miss Hippolyta?”

Hippolyta released me. I stumbled back as the door opened.

“Good visit, I hope?” asked Mrs. Revand with false brightness. “This way, sir.”

Mrs. Revand gave us a moment of privacy. I glanced over my shoulder to see Hippolyta slowly sinking into her covers.

“You say she loves you, but what is she anyway?” said Hippolyta, and then she closed her eyes and sang: “My sly blue-sky girl, too good to be true, and all of one hue, you’re my girl so blue blue blue.”

Hippolyta laughed and I closed the door behind me. I hardly registered Mrs. Revand asking me to wait so she could see what Indigo wished to do next. I sank onto the stair landing.

Indigo would be furious that I had met Hippolyta without her. It wouldn’t matter that I had kept my promise and not pried. Perhaps she knew that Hippolyta wished to taunt me. I wished I could tell the old crone that it made no difference. What I knew of Indigo I loved, and that was enough.

And is it still enough?

I didn’t recognize the voice in my head. It was like a child’s, high-pitched and breathy. The sound of it a finger of frost dragging down my neck.

“Yes,” I said, though I did not know to whom I was speaking. “Yes, it is enough.”

I knew the exact moment when I had decided that what my bride offered was enough. Indigo and I were in Paris, basking in those first, fresh months of knowing each other. It was too early in spring to be beautiful, and the city looked dull and groggy, an aging woman robbed of the winter season’s diamonds.

One evening, we took aperitifs on her terrace. On the small wrought-iron table lay a plate of cheese, marbled slices of meat, and an odd glass terrarium nearly a foot high and full of smoke.

“I have a surprise for you,” said Indigo, removing the glass.

Smoke unraveled in the air, revealing a tiered golden platter. Scattered across its three levels were tiny gold-skinned plums.

“Faerie fruit?” offered Indigo.

A feeble bit of sunlight broke through the gray clouds, illuminating her face. The wind tugged petulantly at her hair as she lifted her hand. For a moment, I thought she would push her palm against the air and the stitches of the world would rip and take us somewhere far away. I thought I heard my brother’s voice on the wind:

Come with me. Come find me.

How? I thought.

But the answer was staring at me. Indigo sat in one of the little iron chairs and reached for a plum. Gold foil glittered her lips, and I smelled the marzipan paste that had molded the fruits.

“Well?” she asked. “Don’t you want a bite?”

“They’re not real.”

I sounded like a wounded child. Indigo only laughed. “How do you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“True faerie fruit is the taste of the threshold,” said Indigo, parroting the words of my own research papers back to me. “The alchemical properties of which might transmute all that we are. It can allow us to move through spaces humans were not meant to occupy. It can give us powers. It can let us see through glamour. Who is to say what it truly looks like?”

Indigo held out the fruit. I understood then that she was not offering a doorway of escape but a means by which to live.

“Faerie fruit is exceptionally dangerous,” I said. “It is beautiful to behold, but they say death laces its ambrosial flavor.”

The ripe fullness of Indigo’s mouth was now the gold of a pagan god. I loved how she sat with her long legs folded beneath her, an artful carelessness to her limbs as if she only briefly inhabited this form.

“Sounds far too treacherous for me,” I said, bending to run my thumb along her bottom lip.

“Don’t worry,” said Indigo, smiling. “If you’re good, I’ll keep you safe.”