The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(56)

“Don’t be sad,” said Indigo, petting my hair. “Maybe the Otherworld is a little wounded and that’s why it’s not letting you in . . . it’ll pass. I’m half of you, and I’ve forgiven you. It’ll come around.”

But where the Otherworld was cold to me, the House was kind. Often, it lulled me to sleep. I wondered if it was trying to help me pass the days more quickly. It seemed to have the opposite effect on Indigo. Her sleep turned fitful, and she sketched frantically in the Room of Secrets, though I never saw a single paper in her hand.

“It’s going to be a wonderful gift,” she told me.

I believed her. I wanted nothing more than to be happy again. But somehow, I kept messing it up.

One evening, we were sitting on the rooftop, bundled in blankets. The Otherworld matched us, listless and drowsy, the sort of numb that accompanies being both too cold and too lazy to do much about it. That day in school had been strange. I’d overheard a classmate, a lovely Black girl with a gap-toothed grin whom I used to see at the warehouse, talking about a trip she was planning with her cousin. They were going to pack a single backpack and see as much of the world as they could fit in one summer. She surprised me by turning around in her seat, smiling. Alia was her name.

“What are you going to do after graduation?”

I was grateful when the teacher stepped inside and spared me from answering. I thought of this now, testing the frayed wounds exposed by my weakness. I wanted to do something.

Indigo went utterly still beside me. I looked up. She was staring at me, her brows pressed down, her mouth a terse slash. Tears stood in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You were humming.”

“What?”

“You were humming,” said Indigo, a sob clawing out of her chest. “You were humming one of those stupid songs from the warehouse, and I-I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. I thought you understood!”

She stood suddenly, and the paintbrushes she’d been cleaning in her lap clattered to the stone.

“All I want to do is protect you, Azure. All I’ve done is love you, and you won’t even try to make things right—”

Around us, the atmosphere of the Otherworld rippled. A low sound, like a whine, gathered. Panic set in. I looked above and saw the sky fragmented through the oak leaves. Tell me how to fix this, I begged even as I stood and grabbed Indigo’s arm.

She threw off my hand, and I stumbled, my foot rolling on the paintbrush. I heard her gasp and felt her fingers reach for my wrist, but it was too late. My jaw thudded against the stone and blood filled my mouth. I rolled onto my back and when I opened my lips to scream, the air froze on my teeth. I lifted my hand, gingerly touching my lips. A jaggedness met my fingers. Something hit my tongue and I spat. In my hand lay two things tucked into one: a bloodied shard of tooth and, finally, an answer.



I was groggy from sedatives on the way back from the dentist. Outside the car window, the world looked rain-soaked, all the lines of the buildings seeped into the trees. Tati stroked my hair. I glanced at the seat beside me, surprised all over again that Indigo hadn’t come with us.

“I need to heal from the pollutants of the outside world,” she’d said, her voice clear and cold. “One of us has to keep pure.”

I hadn’t had time to tell her that I’d found a solution, a means to return to how we’d once been, to remind the Otherworld that I was part of its fabric and finally rid myself of this weakness.

I looked up at Tati. She seemed older these days. Time had stenciled lines around her eyes and bracketed her mouth. She had stopped wearing colorful silk scarves and now only wore plain, cotton wraps around her head.

“Tati, I need our baby teeth back.”

Tati laughed. “What did they give you back there, child?”

“I need them back,” I repeated.

Tati frowned. “I always thought I’d turn them into something special for you girls, maybe for your twentieth birthdays—”

“There’s no point,” I said, letting my head rest on the window. “We’re going to transform. Indigo’s working on our present now.” Sleep pulled down my eyelids, loosened my jaw. I knew in that moment that Indigo sat in the Room of Secrets, her hair trailing in pigment. “She’s always working on our present.”

Tati was quiet. I didn’t look at her face. I was too busy watching the trees tangle themselves in the clouds.

“So then why do you need it?” she asked in a careful voice.

“You said teeth hold our memories, who we were before the world touched us,” I said. “I need to remember.”

“Why would you want to bring back the past, Azure?” she asked. “Little teeth make it quite impossible to consume the world, which is why you are given bigger and better ones. Little teeth mean you’re still tender for eating. You don’t want that, do you?”

That was exactly what I wanted: not to consume but to be swallowed whole by another realm entirely. I wanted to be tender for eating, for the Otherworld to slurp my measly half soul out of my bones so that it might join with Indigo’s forever.

But I’d wandered too far. My teeth ached from the things I’d consumed—concert music, the artificial sweetness of movie-theater lights, a boy’s vulnerable moan, the torn edge of a college brochure holding a false autumn.