The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(70)

I was leaning against one of the brocade couches and Indigo lay in my lap, braiding our hair together.

“This was a perfect day,” I said.

“All the days will be perfect soon,” said Indigo, tilting her chin up to grin at me. “We’ll be forever whole, like a full moon.”

I held that image in my mind. Even the moon existed in phases—crescents that waned and waxed and sometimes vanished entirely. If it was always full, then there would be nothing to dream about.

“Not yet,” I said.

Indigo sat up, and I flinched from the tension in my scalp as our braided-together hair pulled too tight. “What do you mean?”

Now that the first words came, the rest quickly followed.

“I’m not . . . I’m not ready to be in the Otherworld. I’m not ready to transform,” I said. “I want to be part of it, with you, of course, but not yet. The last time we saw the Otherworld I felt that it wasn’t mad at me for wanting this. That it would transform me when I’m ready and I’m not, Indigo.” The way she’d braided our hair forced my chin down, and so when I looked up at her I felt mulish and bowed. “I feel . . . unfinished.”

“Unfinished,” she repeated. She paused for a few seconds. “So then, what will you do?”

“Well, me and my mom—” I started to say before Indigo laughed sharply.

“I’m sorry, you think spending time with the woman who didn’t even want you in the same room as her will make you feel ‘finished’?” asked Indigo. “What has she ever done for you?”

In the shadow of that sentence, I glimpsed the real words: Look at what I have done for you. And there was nothing I could say but the truth.

“She’s different now,” I said. “Or at least, she wants to be.”

I couldn’t keep the hope from my voice, and Indigo smelled it on me like a shark sensing blood. Her eyes narrowed. I pulled back, and our braid loosened.

“What does that mean?”

“She’s changed,” I said. “She wants us to move together to the mainland, where she’ll get a new job and I can work and apply to schools next year. She even wants to get rid of Jupiter.” I almost laughed, picturing him oozing through the doorway only to be cast out. “I won’t be Catskins anymore.”

I thought Indigo would smile. I thought she’d at least understand that much. She frowned. “That’s not how the story is supposed to go.”

I unwound my hair from hers, and only then could I meet her at eye level. “Maybe mine is different.”

Indigo stared at me. Her eyes flicked over my mouth, my nose, my scalp. As if she were studying a counterfeit.

“And that’s what you want?” she asked. “Something . . . different. Just like a Cast-Out—”

“Stop,” I said. It was the first time I’d ever used a steely tone on her, and Indigo flinched. “That’s not what I am, and that’s not what I’ll be. I know that.”

I thought of Susan Pevensie, grown old, her lipstick smearing outside the lines of her mouth. Who was to say she didn’t stretch her neck from side to side, hang up her nylon stockings in her closet, press her palm to the back of her wardrobe, and say: “Now I’ll go”? Who was to say she didn’t know exactly where the lantern in the snow waited for her? What if every time she opened a closet, she saw a path lit by fireflies and merely chose to reach for her scarf instead of that secret doorknob?

“Everything will change,” whispered Indigo.

“That doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” I said, and reached for her hand. “I love you.”

I wished I could show her my daydreams and spread them out on a table like so many cards. Here, there’s me wandering through a marketplace where people speak in a language that smells of rosewater and spices. Look, there’s us, picking apple blossoms while we talk about our adventures. And again, we are holding hands. Now our teacups tremble and Time nips at our heels. Turn the card—

Us.

We are two blues, the neat seam of dusk and dawn.

We share a sky, if not a soul, and yet we are cut of the same shades.



Indigo never wept or yelled. If anything, she seemed resigned. For the next week, I still spent some nights at the House of Dreams. Indigo remained distant though. More and more, her arms were covered in paint splotches. At night, she clutched her starling key so tightly that I could feel my own necklace cinching around my throat like a noose. Sometimes when I woke up, I couldn’t breathe. And when I’d turn over in bed, she would be staring at me, and I’d wonder how long she’d watched me trying to pull the air into my lungs.



A few nights before graduation, the doorbell rang.

I was packing to spend the night at Indigo’s. I knew she was mad at me, but we continued as we’d always done. In the past, I would have been worried, but these days I was blinded by happiness.

That night, my mother was working through the evening. She wouldn’t be home until the next morning, when Jupiter’s plane landed, and she told me she would end things with him that same hour. I didn’t want to be in the house when he was there. I wanted to return when I knew he would never step foot in it again.

When the doorbell rang, I thought it was a delivery, until Indigo stepped across the threshold. In all these years, she’d never once come over. A few times when we were little, I had begged her to stay with me so I wouldn’t have to be alone in Jupiter’s house, but she’d refused. I just can’t, she’d insisted, shaking her shining head. After a while, I’d stopped asking. I’d even forgotten all about it until she stood before me. I’d never wanted to be there, so why should she? But then I saw her expression, and anger—immaculate and sharp as lightning—hit me.