The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(40)

Azure




By our sixteenth summer, I had grown accustomed to our usual itinerary. Indigo would hold elaborate picnics on the lawn, and we’d dress ourselves accordingly. We’d go down to the basement and rifle through chests lined with camphor, packed with lavender sachets, draw out her mother’s old party clothes—plunging, velvet gowns embroidered with gold thread, tulle blouses thick as clouds, and sequined scarves that rippled over our palms like water. We laughed at how poorly they fit, giggled when they puddled around our feet.

But on this day, the clothes cinched tighter, and the hem that had once dragged on the floor now softly hit my ankles.

“What is it?” Indigo asked, lowering a broad-brimmed hat onto her head.

“It fits,” I said, tugging at a gown the color of seafoam. “It’s never fit before.”

“So?” asked Indigo.

I didn’t know why it mattered except that it seemed an inviolable rule that the costumes were not supposed to fit. Outside on the lawn, the tea was strong, and the cakes beautifully iced, and yet I struggled to concentrate on our game of chess.

Lately, I’d become convinced that Indigo had altered time somehow. Maybe she’d pulled each hour close to her body and the magic of it had warped my sight. The sky felt too close, and the House seemed smaller. The nights lasted for a blink, and the days limped along as if sprained.

Tati employed a skeleton staff for the season, and the House was quiet, listless, and sun-drunk, far too sleepy to do anything more than sigh underfoot. The Otherworld was the same. I could watch a leaf spiral through the air for hours. The creek murmured the same song on repeat. The pollen refused to fall to the ground.

One day in June, I saw Mrs. Revand standing outside the front door, peering through the glass. She worked part-time during the summer, and we weren’t always sure when she’d arrive. I had been reading in the parlor—a book on Caravaggio’s paintings that I had found in the library—while Tati was in her studio and Indigo sketched in the Camera Secretum. Sometimes she would spend hours in there, holed up with her papers and pastels, her eyes fever bright. Indigo didn’t show her sketches to anyone, but they always took something from her. Whenever she finished one, she’d sleep for a whole day, leaving smudges of pink and blue on the bedsheets.

“Hello?” called Mrs. Revand.

I got up to answer, and the door yawned open. Mrs. Revand was not alone. A girl stood beside her, tall and reddened from the sun. She wore a white ribbed tank top and cut-off shorts. Her hair was shorn and dyed silver. A diamond winked in her nose.

“You must be Indigo,” said the girl, smiling.

“This is Azure,” said Mrs. Revand, stepping inside and cupping my cheek. “Indigo’s sweeter shadow.” She winked at me. “I only came to pick up some donation items Miss Hippolyta set outside her studio. Keep an eye on this one.” She arched an eyebrow at the girl, who I understood must be her child, before smiling and adding, “My daughter has mischief in her bones.”

I always imagined that Mrs. Revand ceased to exist when she stepped outside the House. Apparently, that wasn’t true. The proof stood before me, and she had tan lines on her shoulders, inked words spiraling her wrists, and smile lines around her eyes that said she had let the world mark her. With Indigo, the world would never touch me.

“So . . . do you live here, Azure?” she asked.

“No,” I said, crossing my arms.

I didn’t want to look at this woman. Everything about her stood in stark contrast to my life at the House.

“I’ve never been in the old Caste?ada home,” she said, looking around and whistling. “It’s gorgeous.” She glanced down at the book in my arms. “Caravaggio?” she said admiringly. “You know, I was working in a hotel in Italy a few months ago and got to see his work in the Uffizi. The Medusa painting is wild. I think I stared at it for an hour.”

I’d known it was a painting, but the idea that someone could stand before it, note the texture of the paint rising off the canvas, bump shoulders with strangers . . .

Time dimpled, and for a split second, the House turned to glass and the light of a life beyond it showed through its beams.

“Do you like ice cream?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Well, you’ve never had ice cream until you’ve had gelato heaped into a waffle cone while getting lost in the streets of Florence.” She brought her fingers to her lips and kissed them. “Trust me, angels would fall out of heaven for this gelato.”

“What are you telling this poor child?” asked Mrs. Revand from the top of the stairs. She carried a huge box in her hands, which the girl rushed to take from her.

“Regaling her with tales of the forbidden substance . . . gelato,” she said, winking at me.

Mrs. Revand smiled. I must have done something normal after that—nodded and waved, laughed, or said my goodbyes—but I only remember the moment when the door closed behind them. The sunlight moved over her shorn silver hair, and the wind tugged at the frays of her denim shorts, and I understood that Time was not obedient to her. Here, Indigo held Time captive, frozen, and because of this we revisited our favorite hours. But this woman did not hold Time. She spent it. She wasted minutes in the sun, threw away seconds on winding sidewalks, offered hours to paintings and ice cream and movement, and let herself be changed.