The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(48)

Was that what the old stories had meant? To shed what made us human? Would I now grow a mandible? Would the skin on my back slough off and reveal a pair of wet, black wings tightly furled against my spine? All night, I touched my back, my fingers uselessly searching for a soft bulge of feathers beneath my shoulder blades.

My last sight was of Indigo standing on the roof of our turret. I lay on my back, sides aching from laughter. Indigo’s shoulders were shaking, her head bent as she sobbed. The twigs in her hair stood up at odd ends. In the moonlight, she looked horned.

I didn’t know who she was speaking to: A god? The moon? There was no difference to us that night.

“You’re wrong. It’s not supposed to end like that,” said Indigo, dragging in a deep breath. “I would never do that. I would never hurt her—”

Something—I could not be sure what—made me start laughing again. I laughed and laughed until eventually the world went dark.

The next day, I woke in Indigo’s bed and couldn’t speak. We were so tired we couldn’t get up for school. I didn’t even remember moving from the turret to the House. When Tati checked on us, she snorted. I wanted to be glad for that sound. She had been so silent lately. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed. Even so, the pitch of her voice sent a thousand beetles crawling inside my skull and I made myself even smaller under the covers.

“Rough night?” asked Tati. I could hear the grin in her voice.

“Not now,” groaned Indigo, curling against me.

Tati walked to the bed and laid her hand on my tangled, twig-scattered hair. I braced myself before finally blinking up at her. I thought she’d yell at us. Instead, I found tears in her eyes. “I’m not mad, sweetheart. You have to grow up sometime, don’t you?”

Indigo threw back the sheet and glared at Tati. “I said not now.”

Tati removed her hand from my hair as if stung. Her shoulders fell. She turned once in the doorway, and woodenly announced: “I’ll have Mrs. Revand send up some aspirin and water.”

Once we were alone, I turned to Indigo. My mouth tasted sour, and my tongue was rough. “Who were you talking to last night?”

My vision was still blurry, so it was probably only in my imagination that Indigo’s eyes looked, for a moment, ringed white with fear.

“No one,” she said. “Nothing.”

“But I heard you talking to someone. You were really upset.”

“No,” said Indigo, her voice cold as she turned from me. “You didn’t hear anything because nothing happened. For what it’s worth, I think we satisfied that experiment. There’s no need to repeat it.”

It was the first time she lied to me, and I tried to be angry, but how could I be?

I was lying to her too.





Chapter Twenty

The Bridegroom




Every fairy tale has blood flecked on its muzzle. Sometimes it’s licked up in the second before the story begins—a queen slowly bleeding out onto her birthing bed, a plague having laid waste to a land before “Once upon a time” slouches from the dark. But every so often, one can trace the thick flow of blood as it seeps from the pages.

I have studied it, translated it, and now I was living it. The point at which the too-curious maiden opens the forbidden red door with the littlest key—and the key is important, something always has to bear witness, something has to mark the instant where you have broken the rules and must be made into an example.

But first, always first, a threshold must be crossed. The page must be turned—and it doesn’t matter if every bone in your body longs to hold the place before the paper lifts against your will—you cannot go back.

I cannot go back.

From under the bed, I stared at the corner of my reflection in the antique mirror propped against Indigo’s bedroom wall. I watched myself draw in quick, shallow breaths. My eyes darted around her room. It was large, though curiously sparse. A decade’s worth of dust coated the floor, and in the mirror’s reflection I could see the newly blank spaces where my shoes had disturbed its rest.

I had the childish notion that if I couldn’t see myself, then no one else could either. My hands were full of treasures—the jar with the one rattling tooth, and the cassette tape—You’re my favorite blue. Love, Lyric.

My face was half-hidden by the bed skirt as the shuffle of Indigo’s shoes hit the wood. I fought a brief, violent impulse to grin or wink at my image in the mirror. That was how I used to play with my brother. If my face was blank, it meant Don’t move. And if I smiled: Run.

The memory of rough, stiff carpet replaced the cold wood beneath me. The ghost of cigarette smoke wove through the dust motes. I was under my parents’ bed now, an heirloom made of polished walnut, while my brother breathed heavily next to me. I looked at my hands. They were empty. My fingers appeared bent and blue, their angles wrong.

“Where are you hiding?” Father laughed.

He loved joining in on our hide-and-seek games. Whenever we heard his heavy step on the floor, we nestled together like puppies. My brother and I faced each other. I lowered myself, sticking out my feet. I wanted to be found.

“Aha!” said Father.

I looked at my brother and smiled. Run.

Abruptly, I was released from the memory, my father’s voice still ringing in my head. Indigo spoke: