The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(37)

“The final test is to wash this mortal slime off you,” said Indigo, touching Puck’s face. She studied her for a moment, a true smile touching her lips. “You really are lovely, Puck.”

Puck beamed even as she shivered and stood in one of Indigo’s old nightgowns. Her red hair was a flattened flame against her neck. Her eyelashes looked fluorescent.

“Thank you,” said Puck.

“Don’t thank me,” said Indigo. “The sky doesn’t thank anyone for taking notice.”

The tops of Puck’s cheeks reddened. There was no cruelty in Indigo’s voice, and I knew she meant what she said. Perhaps Indigo considered it a compliment to Puck that she would take a ruse this far. After all, faeries only tortured those who caught their attention in the first place.

“So, this is the last test?” asked Puck, shaking from the cold.

Indigo gave a curt nod. “You have to stay under the water. You can’t come out, not even when your lungs feel like bursting—”

I frowned, reached for Indigo’s hand. She smoothly folded her arms out of my reach.

Puck—good, earnest, hopeful, stupid—was silent as she walked down the stone steps that led straight into the water. She stayed silent even as a frothy wave lapped at her narrow hips. She sucked in her breath and then, in one fluid motion, her head disappeared below the surface. The moment I couldn’t see her red hair, I started getting nervous. The water turned still. A stream of bubbles rose to the top, swirling out like a breaking strand of pearls. Puck’s little white fingers stabbed the surface once before vanishing into the dark.

“What if she drowns?” I asked.

“She won’t,” said Indigo, bored and already looking over her shoulder at the House in the distance.

We watched. The water turned still as ink poured onto a mirror. The bubbles vanished.

“It’s been too long, Indigo,” I said.

I stepped into the creek right as Puck surged out of the water. She gasped, spitting and clutching the railing of the stone steps. She stifled her sobs before blinking at us. Surely, she would yell and scream that we were crazy and that she could’ve died. Instead, she crumpled, and the nightgown ballooned around her as she offered up her pale, empty palms.

“I-I did everything you said,” said Puck, speaking through her sobs. “I did everything right! Why didn’t it work?”

I looked at Indigo. She wore a long, shaggy fur coat from a costume Tati had worn at some party years ago. I had forgotten who Tati said she’d dressed as, but I remembered the pair of papier-m?ché claws she kept at the back of her closet, along with the sequined handbags she no longer used. On Tati, it looked like a costume. On Indigo, it was like another skin. Indigo sighed, and the wind lifted the fur off the coat as if she were bristling.

“I’m sorry, Puck,” said Indigo. “You belong on the other side of the world.”

Puck broke down and sobbed even harder. Indigo took off her coat and handed it to her.

“It’ll be like a souvenir for you,” she said, and then, with devastating gentleness: “Go home, Puck. You tried your best.”

Tears streamed down Puck’s cheeks as she whispered: “But I did everything right.”

Indigo had nothing left to say. She lifted a shoulder and didn’t even look as Puck left.

“We could’ve hurt her,” I said.

Indigo rolled her eyes. “Nothing on this side of the Otherworld is real anyway. You know that. C’mon. Let’s make some tea.”

But I refused to move. I stood in the creek. The starling key fluttered against my ribs. I could feel the tug of the Otherworld behind me.

“Azure, come on,” said Indigo, an edge to her voice.

I turned and followed her, still holding my ruby-eyed starling key. I watched Puck melt back into the world, now nothing more than a distant whip of fire slipping through the trees. I knew that side was mortal and mundane, choked with the noise of construction and exhaust fumes, stripped clean of magic. But it was also vast. I’d glimpsed this at Indigo’s masquerade, the grown-ups with their foreign accents from foreign places, the fabric of their stories woven from places far away. When I stood in the creek, the water was a line of quicksilver dividing the world, and I wondered what it might feel like to be on the other side.



We never saw Puck again.

We saw a girl shaped like her walking the hallways at school, in line for cafeteria food, but she was no longer Puck. Every now and then I caught her staring at me. Once, I saw her outside in the parking lot, waiting to be picked up. Indigo had run back inside to grab a forgotten textbook and I was alone. Puck walked over to me, stopping a few feet away, a pitying smile on her lips.

“There’s so much more out there than Indigo. If you don’t wise up, you’re going to end up miserable and alone,” she said.

The words clung like a damp chill to the back of my neck.

I never told Indigo that Puck had spoken to me. I told myself she wouldn’t be interested, but the truth was that Puck’s comment was like a blade, and I didn’t want Indigo to see the wound it left behind. I tried to push the words from my mind. I told them to leave me be, to let me live forever on the silver-bellied side of the Otherworld. But by now, the question contained within had grown too comfortable in my presence:

Are you sure? it asked.