The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(44)

I had not noticed before how the walls on my left side were covered in a pink damask. Now it struck me as lurid. Vulgar. The shade was not rose pink or dawn pink but something closer to that cryptic pink between a woman’s legs.

I heard Indigo’s voice, sultry and taunting, the way she’d look over her shoulder before walking into our bedroom.

“Are you coming or not?” she’d ask.

Are you coming or not? the hallway whispered.

The House was luring me toward Hippolyta’s room, warning me away from the side that led to the turret. Indigo had tensed when I pointed it out, and Mrs. Revand had tartly informed me that no one was allowed up there. But if there were answers to be found, I would not find them in Hippolyta’s addled mind. I would have to seek them on my own.

Not fifty feet away, I heard the physician speaking in her warm, maternal voice from Hippolyta’s room: “No way she’ll last the night . . .”

The caretaker, who must have been with her, clucked sadly. I removed my shoes so they would not hear me and made my way to the wrought-iron staircase. It spiraled straight up, broken only by squares of clementine light. Near the top, I smelled the apples-and-honey softness of Indigo’s neck.

At the top of the staircase was a large blue door. It appeared antique: eighteenth century if I had to guess. The straight-grained, uneven texture suggested oak. Decorative ironwork adorned the door alongside large, domed studs and smaller nails with two large ring handles at its middle.

This was the entrance to Indigo’s childhood bedroom.

When we were first married, I dreamt about what might lie behind this door. Books with creased spines and dog-eared pages, clothes that no longer fit, diary entries filled with looping, girlish handwriting, the names of erstwhile crushes crimping a page from top to bottom. I wanted to see the secret womb that birthed the enigma of my bride, but this place was no womb. It was a wilderness, barred in iron.

I hesitated before it, wondering whether my eyes would betray me.

I have always had problems with my sight. I was barely into my teens when I was saddled with my first pair of thick glasses. And it was at least a year into graduate school before I could afford contact lenses. In those days, I was plagued with the thought that I had not seen something properly. That my ruined eyes—an inheritance, I was told, from my father’s side—constantly tricked me.

An old girlfriend from my graduate-school days had told me this was what she loved most about me. We had returned to my apartment after a professor’s holiday party. The professor was independently wealthy and kind, though clearly aggrieved by the number of people in his home.

I had been absorbed with the man’s library, enchanted by his feast table laden with boughs of pine and holly, roasted meats, and assorted golden pies. The company had turned charming, too, softened by the holiday lights that hung from the banisters and cross-beamed ceilings.

“You didn’t notice the professor’s wife?” my girlfriend had exclaimed when we returned. She was short, with a wealth of brunette hair and a high-pitched voice that turned to delighted squeaks when I took her to bed. I didn’t love her, though I liked her well enough. “That woman was covered in bruises. Honestly, her makeup was either a shitty cover-up or a cry for help. She kept flinching when he talked. And didn’t you notice how he kept taking her knife from her? Like he thought she was going to run him through with it?”

“No,” I said, frowning as I turned over the images I recalled from that evening.

I thought she would scold me for not noticing. Instead, she cupped my face.

“You only see beauty, don’t you?” she said. “It’s what I love the most about you. You don’t see the dark shadows.”

The thought had disturbed me at the time. I broke up with her shortly thereafter, but her words have bothered me ever since. She was wrong. I have dedicated my life to careful observation. Yesterday, the House tested my sight and I proved myself. If something was hiding here in Indigo’s room, I would see it.



Indigo’s bedroom was large and dimly lit. The stubs of candles in crystal dishes lay scattered about the furniture. The eye-shaped glass window took up the entire far wall. A huff of cold air touched my neck. When I turned, it was only the cooling unit gasping alive.

There was a robe hanging behind the door, embroidered on the sleeves with ivy and jasmine. The bed was stately, Victorian, an imitation of Hippolyta’s green canopy in red. Her bookcase held familiar tomes: Grimms’ Fairy Tales, the Ramayana, the Chronicles of Narnia, and Dune. There were no photos of her younger self tacked to the walls. No journals, ribbons, movie ticket stubs. No evidence of the ragged threads we trim or tie as time knits us into adults.

Facing Indigo’s bed was a large antique standing mirror that leaned against the wall at an angle. On the floor beside it sat a small jar, half the size of my palm. It rattled when I picked it up, and inside I saw a single tooth. I remembered the heavy sphinx paw in our Gallery of Beasts, the bracelet of hair, the letter A carved into enamel. An odd tickle started behind my tongue. I cleared my throat, but the sensation persisted.

Near the door was a finely made dresser the color of bone and set with pearl handles. A painting, long faded, stretched across the wood, revealing a pair of birds with iridescent plumage and jewels for eyes. One bird’s eye was a ruby. The other’s a sapphire. The longer I stared at the painting, the more I recognized it: