The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(32)

“Indigo?”

I looked up to see Tati now standing beside the man. Her face white beneath her domino mask and matching headscarf.

“Hippolyta,” said the elegant man. “I was just telling Mademoiselle Caste?ada that she must visit before she’s all grown up and inherits the world.” He laughed, and it was warm and booming. He turned to Indigo and nodded politely. “She can bring her friend too.”

In the span of seconds, I turned from a giant to a gnat. I hadn’t even known to dream about a life outside of Hawk Harbor, but Indigo could slip into new cities with a snap of her fingers. All I could do was hope she might want to take me along.

“How generous,” said Tati, still staring at me.

Cake was cut. Music was played. Indigo and I ran upstairs and down, our gowns rumpled from switching, our half souls blurring to one. Our feet ached from hours spent dancing and running, and when midnight came and the House yawned in irritation at the remaining trail of guests, Tati found me in the hallway, where Indigo and I had stolen the cake and eaten it by the handful in the dark.

“You enjoyed yourselves,” she said.

I nodded. Indigo was curled onto my lap, fast asleep. I pushed her hair off her face, adjusted my mask, which was set at a jaunty angle on her cheek.

“That could have been very bad, Azure,” said Tati, her voice quiet, but sharp as a piece of glass.

I was flush with power, and so I lifted my chin and said nothing. Indigo and I shared a soul. Her boldness could be mine too.

“Don’t get confused, child. You and I are not like the Indigos of the world,” said Tati. “People like her can remake reality as they so wish, but we are forced to live in the lands they leave behind.”

Tati was wrong. This power answered to me as much as it answered to Indigo. I had just never thought to test it before.

The next day, I returned to Jupiter’s house. I found him waiting for me in the hallway, and this time I did not stiffen. I had relied too long on the invisible armor of my hair, but that was only to slip past him. Not show him that I could not be caught. Not now, not ever.

“Look who’s here!” he said. “Our long-lost princess.”

He moved to ruffle the top of my head. He was wearing his golden watch with the broken link. Sometimes, Jupiter’s watch got tangled in my curls. He would say: Don’t worry. I’ve got it, princess. I’ll get you free.

I used to feel every contour of those minutes. I would count the seconds it took before he moved his arm and even then, I would feel the ghostly echo of his touch hours later. Jupiter’s flesh was almost hot and uncannily soft and pulpy, the peeled paleness of a squashed fruit.

This time, when he reached for me, his fingers glided off my hair. His watch didn’t snag and when he opened his mouth to say Gotcha, princess, I smiled with all my teeth because he was wrong. He had not gotten any part of me.

My power had a slippery quality. I was oiled in it. I could glide into places, armored and unseen. My hair reflected gazes. When I showered, I could sculpt it sleekly over my breasts and stand in the water and know that nothing could touch me.



“I like us like this,” said Indigo.

A few weeks had passed, and we were tucked into our Otherworld.

“Like what?” I asked.

I knew what she would say, though I still wanted to hear her say it. Lately, the muscles of my legs felt sleek, like they ached to shift into fins or backward into talons. The terrain of my body curved to make room, the way a vessel hollows to allow space for wonder. It was not a transforming but an unearthing, and I knew that what I was always meant to be was slowly pushing its way to the surface.

Indigo smiled, staring up at the sky. “Powerful.”

Above, the oak branches groaned and leaned against the stone turret of the Otherworld, as if trying to gather us against its hard body. Indigo laughed and the silver ornaments hanging from the willow branches trilled and sang. If she had told me in that moment that all the world was a dream designed to delight us, I would not have doubted it.

“See?” she said, turning to me. “It knows.”





Chapter Fourteen

The Bridegroom




One must never look with the eyes alone. Things transform with ease and without warning. In one tale, a dead mother becomes an ash tree and, in lieu of flowers and leaves, puts forth gowns of silver and gold for her only daughter. In another, the mutilated bodies of little boys bend into doves who coo and mourn their murder. The material form might be anything, but each tale relies on the ability to perceive the fantastical from the false.

I would be lying if I said I’ve never looked for my brother. On the days where logic thinned and I allowed myself to consider his existence, I imagined him in the silhouettes of the trees, in the sharp tilt of a raven’s head. He would no longer look the same. I expected that his mortal body might have transformed into a slender deer, a bulging frog, a cold wind. But I would welcome him no matter what shape he took, for I knew the secret to such stories:

You must learn how to close your eyes and still look.

As I was looking now.

I could see nothing but the armoire, looming as huge as a planet in the middle of the parlor. With each insistent, deafening knock, I closed the distance between myself and an impossibility. In front of the armoire, the fan whirred. I thought of my secret, unspoken taunt to the House.