The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(78)

“That poor child,” said Tati. “She didn’t deserve that. I loved her, too, you know, but you are my own and I will always keep you safe.”

I cried harder, disgusted by my delight more than my relief. I sometimes dreamt of what would happen if Indigo left and I was Tati’s only choice to love. I dreamt of the way she would let me sag against her body, the way the years would pass before she quietly confessed: I would’ve chosen you from the start.

“I will keep your secrets, Indigo,” said Tati. “I will keep your secrets until they poison me, but you have to leave. Now. Azure wanted to run away, so that’s what we’ll tell the world.” Tati licked her lips, nodding to herself. “No one will look for her, but you must never come back here. Never. To be honest, child, I am glad for my blindness for I don’t know how I could bear to look at you again.”

I raised my head slowly. I tried, once more, to say my name, but it was stuck fast. I took a breath and all I smelled were apples. All I smelled was her.

“I’m—” I tried. “I am—”

“I know you’re sorry,” she said. “I am too.”

I became grossly aware of all the mechanical parts that let me stand and leave that room—every muscle lifting my bones, every synapse flaring to life, every spurt of blood dancing through my heart’s chambers. I was a machine at the mercy of bodily parts no one would recognize as my own.

I slid against Tati’s closed door and pulled my knees to my chest. The buzzing in my skull grew louder, and, finally, I understood the Otherworld’s love. It had tried to give me and Indigo what we most desired. I closed my eyes, remembering Indigo’s frantic, wide-eyed gaze. I will never leave you and you will never leave me.

Slowly, I held my hands up to my face. I couldn’t remember if they’d always looked like this—etched and pale, the fingers small, not quite stubbed and not quite slender—or whether they were secretly Indigo’s. Had she been fitted over me like a shroud? Was that what had made me so deserving of forgiveness, of love?

I didn’t know back then how this question would come to haunt me. How I would wonder whether being denied myself was the greatest kindness the world could have shown me because then, and only then, might I hold some semblance of love.

Alone in the hallway, I touched the ends of my hair. I had bartered its length and all its memories for freedom, but I had been careless in the wording. I was left with everything and nothing. I was free and forever trapped. I was a multitude of blues.

I was many things, but I was not Azure, and perhaps I never would be again.





Chapter Thirty-Four

The Bridegroom




The breaking of a spell is nothing more than a dislocation of light. What could not be seen before can now be glimpsed in a wealth of radiance. The moment I uttered my wife’s true name, I looked through the sudden glow of that broken spell and saw my brother.

He was holding my right hand. My left hand was sprained from when father stepped on my wrist. Before us, the doors of the cedar armoire lay open. The winter coats stood wary and dark as December trees.

We were going to escape forever.

I waited until midnight and carried my brother down the stairs. I told him to pick out his favorite sweets, to pack his best toys and to wrap them in an old kitchen towel. He was quiet, grinning at our new game. He was too young to remember yesterday. He had not been hit, only grabbed by the scruff of his neck like a kitten and hoisted into the air before being dropped. When that happened, he’d looked to me, and I made myself laugh, and this told him there was no reason to cry.

“Go inside,” I said, pointing into the dark of the armoire. “I’ll find you and we’ll go to Faerie. We’ll spend every day outside.” He threw his pudgy arms around my waist, and I held him back: “We’ll always be together.”

When he was safely in the dark, I went to gather my own things. But halfway up the stairs, the light flickered on. I was caught.

Father dragged me back down the stairs. My knees slammed on each step. He shouted. I saw his arm raised and then I saw nothing.

I drifted asleep. I dreamt of snow. Downstairs, in the sweet cedar lull of the armoire, my brother fumbled for air and did not find it. His inhaler had been in my backpack, and lay mute beside me while he waited for me, his face turning blue. That night, I dreamt that when I opened my eyes, we would be running together under trees that grew moons and beneath a sky rippled with rainbows. But when I opened my eyes, he was gone, and I had been left behind.



“Go.”

A ragged voice. I looked up and beheld Indigo. Azure. A split being. The gun dangled from her hand.

“Go now before I change my mind,” she said wearily. “Run.”

I stumbled through the leaves as the Otherworld released me. I limped to the gate, but I could go no farther. I was a mended limb, unfamiliar to this new distribution of memory, and could not remember how I once walked through the world. I stared out the gate, heard the rush of water, the soft tread of a pack of tomorrows moving through the gloaming to find me. I would not survive on my own.

Once, I had let someone I loved go into the dark without me. I did not know if I could survive that again. And so, against the instruction of a thousand stories, I turned my head and looked back.



In the end, a fairy tale is nothing more than a sense of hope. Hope lures and tricks. It tempts with shining thrones, exquisite nectars, and loving arms. It whispers to us that we are extraordinary. Exempt. Thus lured, we follow its path. Sometimes we are led to riches. Other times, we are led astray. But this hope never hides its shape, and for its honesty we reach for it and pull its sweet and stinking furs up to our chins, for to live without it means living without magic.