The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(73)

He had left his car keys on the front seat.

I could open the door and sit on the smoke-stained leather. I could fit my hands to the steering wheel, adjust the mirrors, toss out the furry pink dice Jupiter hung from the rearview mirror, and drive us off into the morning fog. I knew I could. After all, my mother had taught me. But that wasn’t enough. I wanted her to ask.

I approached the window right as my mother blotted her lipstick. When she saw me, she shuddered and closed her eyes. Her shoulders shook as she dropped her face into her hands.

In the reflection of the glass, I looked watery, translucent, a phantom. And as I watched her sob, I understood that was what she wished me to be: a ghost.

In the distance, the handle of Jupiter’s front door turned. I could have waited. I could have shaken the car and forced her to speak to me. But in the end, I turned back to the woods.

I chose not to haunt her.



The House of Dreams whimpered when I walked. I did not speak to anyone. I knew my role. I crawled into bed beside Indigo. I wore the clothes she laid out for me. I walked in her shadow. Curiously, it was Indigo who was the most understanding of my silence.

“You’re in shock,” she’d say, patting my back sympathetically. “That’s understandable. You were yanked from one realm to the next, Azure. When you’re ready to come back, tell me. And if you want anything—anything—I will make it real for you.”

There were only a few weeks to go until our graduation, both from school and the mortal world altogether. A single month until my half soul was stirred into the apple-scented pollen of the Otherworld. Indigo refused to let us enter until we were ready, and I missed it.

When we were together, she tended to me with gentle fingers and soothing words. She combed my long black hair and braided it with golden thread. She fed me small cakes and spread herbs and cheeses on crackers and held them warily to my mouth as if I were a beast newly tamed.

Even though we couldn’t go to the Otherworld, I visited it every night in my sleep. It was winter within its walls of stone and when the snow fell, it sounded like a poem spoken in glass. Snowflakes ornamented my hair like seed pearls. Past the threshold, the turret appeared frozen. Beside it, the oak tree creaked, and the Otherworld spoke in a language heard only in dreams—

We are sorry, child. We did not mean to love you so well.

This was a truth I hadn’t understood until now.

You see, nothing good can come from being loved by old gods. Their love of mortals turns them neglectful and petty. When they move on, they lay waste in their path—cicada wings and bear paw prints, sacs of spider silk, echoes and anemone, the limbs of lovers now rendered to stars.



I was nothing but shadow. I existed in the afterthought of resplendence. I was a moving spot of cold. I was a home for ghosts.

I might have stayed that way forever had it not been for the envelope I received in the middle of class one day. It was like a sly gust of air from another land. Indigo had excused herself to go to the restroom when it was handed to me by a pale-skinned, pimpled hall monitor. I recognized it the moment I touched it, the worn edges, the blocky, blue script spelling out my name. My heart raced as I opened it. I knew my mother, but still I found myself wishing for the impossible. Instead, I found hope.

The words “for escaping traps” were hastily scrawled on the slip of paper with the bank account she had opened in my name. There was a small scratched-out splotch beside it, the size of a dime. I stared at that splotch, wondering what had been beneath it. A heart? The letter M? This, of all things, was the most fitting goodbye from my mother. An ugly celebration of a space that might’ve held something other than a dark blot.

The dream I’d held—my mother and me on the ferry, the dingy apartment, the space between us closing on the couch until I might rest my head on her shoulder—was gone forever. But that was not the whole of my dream. I also dreamt of a new city falling open to my touch. I dreamt of horizons.

I would not let one version of my dream trap me.

Slowly, I began to plan.



For our final mortal experience, Indigo wanted a grand graduation party. It was to be a costumed gala, and our whole school was invited. Indigo threw herself into the preparations and on the morning of the celebration, she was too busy to notice when I went to see Tati on my own.

I was lucky Tati was having one of her lucid phases. I stepped into her room and found her crocheting in the dark. A blanket that looked like a pierced and bleeding sunset puddled from the top of the bed and onto the floor. She lifted her head, sniffed at the air.

“Azure,” she said, relaxing when she caught my scent. “What is it, child?”

This wasn’t my first time alone with Tati. She’d found me in the parlor the first week my belongings were moved into the House of Dreams, and I understood my mother was never coming back. Tati had reached out, her fingertips lightly touching my eyelids.

“You did not open them fast enough,” she’d said, her voice thick with grief.

Now I walked to Tati’s bedside. My long braid of hair swung against my hip as I moved. I took her hand and placed it on my hair.

“Like a cold winter night,” said Tati, smiling a moment before she frowned. I think she had guessed what I meant to do with it, and disapproval slashed her mouth into a grim line. “No.”

“Cut it, Tati,” I said. “I need to make a sacrifice.”