The Scent Keeper(17)

Now the bottles lay around me in a field of glass and bits of broken green wax. I was already holding the next one, although the murmurs of the previous scent-paper still lingered—an ordinary day, right at the cusp of spring, violets waiting under the ground. My hair had been washed; the wood in the stove was a little green. Details I hadn’t cared about at the time. I pulled the fragrance into me, then felt it leaving, fading. I pulled harder.

“Emmeline!”

The voice came from far away. It wasn’t the first voice I’d heard coming out of the scent-papers, but this time something wasn’t right about it. I pushed it away, burrowed deeper into the smell of new growth and damp wood.

“Emmeline!” It came again, closer—outside the cabin, I realized. I sat up slowly, knowing the voice was not my father’s but hoping anyway. The room wobbled and the fragrance began pulling at me anew.

Don’t go, it whispered.

Footsteps sounded on the porch. The door opened and the scents inside were swept away on a blast of fresh, cold air. I saw the mermaid man walk in, but he didn’t have a black plastic box this time. He didn’t have my father, either.





PART TWO



The Cove





WONDERLAND


The mattress was soft, the sheets stiff.

Not my bed.

I lay there, eyes closed, holding my breath. The moment I let the smells in, let my eyelids open, the world would be different, wrong. It would be what I had made it—and so I told myself I would not open my eyes. I would not breathe through my nose. I would not know where I was.

I tried to roll over, wanting to curl up in a ball and disappear, but a weight on my legs kept me from moving. I inhaled reflexively and smelled damp animal fur. Cleo?

I gasped, half hoping, but in response I heard only hoarse breathing. Not Cleo. I froze, my skin sizzling with panic. A warm exhalation brushed my face, and I inhaled air full of deep, musky tones. Bear? A tongue lapped across my cheek.

I kept my eyes shut, and screamed.



* * *



“It’s okay, ma cherie.” The horrible animal was gone, a voice in its place, the words tilted slightly upward. A woman. A palm rested against my cheek. I could smell yeast, flour, sugar.

“That was just our dog,” she said. “He’s outside now.”

The hand moved across the top of my head. As she stroked, every strand of my hair remembered my father’s fingers slipping through my curls as he read to me. Instinctively, I pulled the front of my shirt toward my face, yearning for the last fragrance from the scent-papers. But the fabric in my hands was soft, thin.

Not my shirt. I inhaled an empty scent of not-quite flowers. No pine pitch and sea salt. No applewood and flannel. No, I thought.

“Your clothes are in the wash,” the woman said. “They were full of smoke. They’ll be fresh and clean soon, don’t worry.”

No. No. No.

He was gone. A hole of grief opened beneath me and I fell in.



* * *



I don’t know how much time passed. I knew the woman came in and checked on me, put her hand on my cheek, my shoulder.

“Emmeline?”

I couldn’t answer.

Hours later she returned. “Emmeline.” Her voice was different this time, calm but firm. “You need to open your eyes now. You need to eat.”

Behind my closed lids, all I could see was a black watery ocean of bottles. Let me jump in with you, Papa. I didn’t care how cold it was, how dark the world would have to stay, if only I could be with him.

“You’re safe here,” the woman’s voice said.

Safe. What an odd word.



* * *



Smells don’t care what the mind or heart wants, however. Scents will find their way around the darkness of closed eyes, slipping past barricades of thought. The body is their accomplice. We can live without food for weeks, and water for days, but try not to breathe and the lungs mutiny.

And so, bit by bit, on the backs of those traitorous breaths, in snuck the fragrance of something baking in an oven. The smell of onions, softening over heat. I tried to keep the scents away, but still they slipped inside, warm and welcoming as summer.

People lie, Emmeline, but smells never do, my father had told me. I could still see him, standing by the chicken coop, teaching me how to find new eggs.

Follow this. His finger tapping my nose. Follow this.

I don’t want to leave you, Papa.

But in the end, there was nowhere else to go.

I opened my eyes.



* * *



It’s hard to explain my shock at seeing a real, female human being for the first time. I’d seen photos and illustrations of other people, but they’d existed in books, had smelled only of paper. Their voices had been variations of my father’s as he read aloud. If I’d thought about it at all, I would have thought other people were simply smaller or taller or rounder versions of him.

But this woman in front of me moved differently. She wore a loose blue dress, with a big apron over it. Her white hair was pulled up on her head, and her skin was tanned from the sun, with plenty of lines around her eyes and mouth. She seemed old and not at the same time, her hands strong but knobby as tree roots.

“There you are, ma cherie,” she said, smiling. Then, as if realizing I might need a moment by myself, she added, “I’ll get you some food. It’s time for you to eat.”