The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(23)

So whose room was it?

Without thinking, I found myself climbing the stairs once more and turning down the other side of the hall. Here, time stood still. Even the golden dust motes remained suspended in the air. A small recessed niche caught my attention. Its three chestnut shelves were empty except for a tube of lipstick on the top shelf. I opened it. The shade was deep plum and bore the crescent imprint of a mouth.

Indigo’s mouth? I wondered.

Or Azure’s.

I returned it to the shelf and noticed a ribbon dangling. I tugged lightly, and something broke loose. It must have fallen between the shelf and the wall—

A mask.

Made of blue satin, studded with pockmarks that might have once held rhinestones. It was casual and blithe, and I hated it. In all the years Indigo and I had played, she never once reached for a mask. It would’ve been redundant. But here was proof that once upon a time she had so thoroughly been herself as to need a disguise.

“Careful with that.”

Mrs. Revand appeared on the main stairs, one of her gray hands clutching the banister. Indigo was not with her. I was both relieved and disappointed.

“My apologies,” I said, placing it back on the shelf.

Mrs. Revand flashed a tight smile. “She’s very particular about maintaining the grounds and this side of the House. Not even the cleaning crews or maintenance staff are allowed there,” she said, glancing at the staircase.

I nodded. “Well, Hippolyta seemed—”

“Oh dear, not Miss Hippolyta,” said Mrs. Revand. “Indigo is the one who sets the rules.” A breeze moved through the House, and it moaned as if from neglect. Mrs. Revand laughed. “The House is clearly as nostalgic as Indigo. Pardon me, Miss Indigo. Old habit from knowing her when she was so young.”

I thought of that divot in the lipstick, the satin mask that might have touched her face. At the back of my head spun the image of my brother disappearing into the armoire, and I asked, ever so lightly, for I knew I was testing the boundaries of a promise—

“What were they like? Indigo and . . . Azure?”

Mrs. Revand sighed and folded her pale hands across her belly.

“Beautiful,” she said. “They were walking heartbreak. But mischievous, sweet, always running around outside in their other world. Always playing with their hair, trying out new things . . . I remember one day Azure just clean chopped it off with no warning! Miss Hippolyta was so sad. She loved long hair, you know.”

“Why did Azure leave town?” I asked.

Mrs. Revand shook her head. “I have no idea. One day they were two halves of the same soul. The next . . . separate. I think the last time I saw Azure was at the girls’ graduation party.” Mrs. Revand licked her lips. “Friendships are like that sometimes. Especially with young girls.”

I looked more closely at the housekeeper. Her hair was gray, frizzed. Her face softened with jowls. Her lips wore the creases of years. Her eyes, though, were a surprisingly bright shade of blue. I couldn’t picture a time when she was beautiful, but maybe she had been. Perhaps she had also been half of someone’s soul once.

“You and Miss Hippolyta never tried to get in touch with her?”

“God no. It was her choice to leave, and it’s her choice to reach out,” said Mrs. Revand. She looked beyond me to the dusty carpet, the iron staircase. “Besides, some girls aren’t meant to be found. Memories make their own houses, even more magical than this one, and that’s where girls from the past live.” She touched the wooden handrail. “In those houses, dust can’t touch them. Time never colors their hair silver. Wrinkles never crease their face. They can stay untouched and perfect forever. And that’s how I like it.” She smiled, and I wondered how many times she had thought what she’d just spoken aloud. “In my memories, Indigo and Azure are always happy. Always dancing.”





Chapter Eleven

Azure




You can picture it, can’t you? The moment when time caught up to us, the slant of light in which the familiar turned strange. I studied our faces side by side and felt a lack of myself as the first touch of frost crept into our eternal summer.

I never used to notice time passing, but my indifference was one-sided. Time watched us spit our baby teeth into our palms, pull sequined dresses from Tati’s closets, and pretend we were monsters. Time followed us to school every morning and afternoon. It sat on our shoulders while we dreamt of faeries, heard us sigh when we were lulled into sleep, traced where our knees touched across Indigo’s green bed, smelled our bones lengthening in the afternoons, and watched how as the years blurred and softened, so did we.

At fourteen, Indigo was already beautiful in a way that made people uncomfortable. It wasn’t her body. At least, not yet. It was in the sureness of her gaze, the certainty with which she held her chin.

Sometimes when we went swimming in the creek behind her house, Indigo would snap off her bathing suit, lift her arms, and raise her hips off the ground. “Look. I’m starting to change, and I’ve got hair now. See?”

I could only nod. She’d begun to smell different, too, a tang of salt to her skin. Even her sweat smelled fruited, like she was ripening beneath the moonlight. Meanwhile, I was thoroughly invisible. I had asked for this power the moment I tithed my hair, but I hadn’t imagined how methodically it would cloak me. My mother had curled her lip in disgust when she saw my shorn head. Jupiter’s gaze had gone unfocused with disinterest, and if I held my power tightly, I could escape his notice for days at a time. That invisibility coated my skin, my body, my bones.