Then the air split like silk and the world separated. All about them sang some high, bad note, all color and texture unsure of itself. There, hanging from just above the ground to the crowns of the trees, was the cut. A door to someplace else. Mae clutched her brother in the shattered opal light of the opening world.
Beyond the cut the sky was nighttime ink, a slice of deep blue against the evening dusk of the glade. The stars hung in thick clusters, no elegant and spare constellations in that world. The ground had long grass, too, but it stood in strands of black and white. A glade beyond this glade, moving in a strange breeze.
well, well. we may have been worth it all along.
If a beast could sound surprised, Sweet James sounded just that. Bobby didn’t say a word. He gave Mae one last nudge: an affectionate gesture, a goodbye—then walked past her toward the cut, toward Rita. He grew and he grew, reality flexing around him, accommodating him. Sweet James took flight, slow, like a stingray gliding through thick water, his wingspan longer than a human reach, longer than a kitchen table, than a kitchen, than a house. Rossa had never felt so small and made of flesh in his life, nor would he again. Bobby stood on Rita’s left and Sweet James, enormous, flew above her right, each beat of his wings a clap of eldritch thunder. Mae retched into the grass at the sound of it, and Rossa dashed to her side, stroking her back as she sobbed.
The two of them knelt there at the feet of a witch and titans. The owl and the cat exchanged looks, either side of the gleaming weak point in the world. The ground trembled, and Rita screamed. Not in terror, but in command: be gone, be gone, be gone.
Two figures approached the cut from the other side, two girls, one giant, one small. Rita cried, “Audrey!”
The small girl broke into a sprint. A singing yellow bird beat its wings behind her, its song a quiet rhythm of trills. The other girl followed slowly behind. Audrey stood at the edge of the cut and extended her arm through the void, trembling as the air of this world hit her skin.
“Are you coming, now, Rita?” she asked, and the smile on her face was a thing of hope.
“I am.” Rita Frost reached up and took the shaking grip of Audrey O’Driscoll and stepped into the other world. They embraced tightly in the glow, on the edge of two worlds. Audrey pulled away from Rita after a long moment and said, “You’re different, somehow.”
Rita knitted her brow, and brushed a stray curl from Audrey’s forehead. “We’re all different.”
Bevan approached cautiously, aglow, her hair a mane of golden curls, too tall. “Sorry, sorry, don’t mean to interrupt, but—Rita, I’m not going back. I’m staying back here. I’m going to walk the corridors.”
Her voice jolted Rossa. He would never see her again after this night. Whatever he had thought was beginning between them was nothing more than a move in a game he didn’t even know she was playing. He was unraveled. Mae gripped him tightly as Bevan spoke, and Rossa could swear he felt a grief much like his own rolling through his twin’s body.
Rita touched Bevan’s face. “I know.”
From either side of the three witches, the cat leapt and the owl flew, with oily silence, and disappeared into the night inside the cut. Audrey, Bevan, and Rita looked up at the dense sky, and even from where Rossa knelt, he swore he could see their shadows swim across the stars.
“I’m going to find them,” Bevan said, head tilted to the stars, her hands clenched into fists. “I’m going to find Sweet James, and Bobby too. They will not feed on anyone like they did on us. No new games will begin. I will be slow and I will be sure and I will meet them again.”
Rita placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I have faith that you will come upon them again, but I will not help you. I have been playing their game my whole life, and have no wish to begin it again, now that it is finally over.”
Bevan shook her head. “I didn’t ask for your help. I’m going alone.”
“That’s dangerous,” Audrey warned. “You’ve barely seen a handful of rooms, that’s nothing of what it’s like out here.”
“Fine, then I won’t go alone.” That bright, capricious spark in Bevan lit up. She looked out of the cut and down into the glade, where the twins were cowering. Rossa gazed up at her. For a second he waited for her to call his name, to summon him to be her knight on this quest for cosmic justice, on her journey through landscapes unknown—but his sister’s breath caught. Bevan was looking at her.
“Mae. Come on then. You’ve a good run of power through you. You’ll be well able for it out here. I’ll make a witch of you yet.”
Mae made a small noise and got to her feet. She was ragged and skin filthy, one hand all but destroyed, but in the maddening light of the cut, she still almost managed to look heroic. This was how Rossa would lose her, he realized. She would be called upon a grand adventure. He never thought it would be like this. That she would be the one to walk away.
He steeled himself for goodbye, for walking alone past the burning house and into the street. For the fire brigade. For their parents. He would tell their parents that he could not save her from the flames—which was not entirely a lie. He could not save her from the bright thing that called her away into another world.
“No. I’m staying here.”
Mae’s voice was small, but it was brave. Human.
“I can’t leave my brother to deal with all of this alone. Not now. There is a time to leave and a time to stay, and I know the difference. Good luck out there, Bevan. Goodbye, Rita.”
Rossa leapt to his feet and went to his sister, taking her hand again in his.
Bevan sighed. “Suit yourself. See you again sometime, Mae. Be safe out there, Rossa.” And as though she was just walking away from the kitchen table to go to her bedroom, she turned on her heel and left. Over her shoulder she called, “Audrey, meet me in the bar later. Rita, I’m glad you’re here.”
The edges of the cut began to contract, like the weight was too much for whatever force was keeping it open.
Audrey said something inaudible into Rita’s ear, and Rita laughed, and she was nobody the twins knew, then. Someone else. Someone gone.
And then, before Rossa or Mae could say a word, the cut snapped closed. The lavender night of the meadow was just that, and the cut was just a scar wavering iridescently in the air. The fog around them could have been smoke as they walked out of the forest and back into the gray world, saying nothing to each other.
The police found the twins sitting on the path at the front of the lawn as the house smoldered against the firemen’s efforts. Rossa couldn’t manage to say a single word to them, and Mae just wept silently, writing down their parents’ phone numbers on a piece of paper.
They were led in great silver shock blankets to an ambulance, where two paramedics put oxygen masks over their mouths and sat them up on a stretcher. There was so much noise, and the adults all around them were frantic, but the twins were strangely peaceful.
Rossa reached his hand across the stretcher to find his sister’s. Her fingers crept across his and they were linked there, in their silence. They sat outside the burning house full of secrets. The time would come for talking later, but for now they just breathed, unburdened by smoke.
What Rita Said to Mae
You will fall in love, again. On an island full of tall buildings. It will be with a woman who will not need to know all of your secrets to choose you. You may never know true peace, Mae, but you will find something close to it with her. You will craft yourself a new family. You will not want often for company. Your gift will get stronger, but it will be up to you to nurture it. You will have to keep listening, keep peering hard through paper for what is on the other side. One day, your mother will apologize. I cannot see if you will accept the olive branch or turn away, but the branch remains, regardless. Listen close to me, Mae. You will receive another call through the walls someday. They will rumble with false promise, but you will know when it truly comes. You may not stay in this world for good. You, page of cups who beat28 the
hierophant.
What Rita Said to Rossa
I never told you this, but you are a boy of swords. You’ll put your weaponry down in time. You will flee as far as you can from this island, farther than anyone expects. You will find who you are amid orange groves. You will forgive29 your parents. I suspect, in fact, that you already have, but you will not tell them this for many years. They will be grateful, and far away enough that you will be safe from them. Love will come to you in those citrus fields. There is a chance you may look past her, so I tell you this now, that she is your family and she will bear you daughters. Your home is a way off yet, but you will find yourself a backbone and become a man who is generous of spirit and tender to the core. Draw this hope into existence. The swords of you will grow into wands, and someday, Temperance. I am sorry we did not get to know each other better.
Epilogue
FIFTEEN SUMMERS LATER
The air seared with an unmistakable energy: just for a blink. Short enough to make Mae doubt it, though even in that half heartbeat she knew what it was. She was filled with the dread that comes when something you believed to be gone is—whoosh—resurrected.
Her first thought was to call Rossa—but she didn’t. She’d call Rachel, but her wife couldn’t know. Would never know. Everyone has secrets.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the wall. The wall with the monochrome zigzag tile that she and Rachel had constructed together when they first moved in. Something in the tiles had moved. She was sure of it. An inconsistency, a ripple, a glitch.
Then it was just a wall again. The air clear. Chevron tiles, a bold accent wall in the otherwise Scandinavian quiet of the loft. The canary singing in the kitchen. Her loft. Her home.
So Mae waited. She waited for the wall to open. She had been told this would happen again.
She picked up her old, well-worn tarot deck, the gift from Rita, and drew three cards, placing them facedown on the table. She doesn’t need to turn them today.
You three, again.
The Fool. A young man holding a white rose and a bindle, carefree, naive, dancing towards the edge of a cliff. Teetering on the abyss. Always, just about to fall. At his ankles, a tiny dog nips at his heel. The Fool is frozen there, about to embark on the deep dive into the blue. Rossa leapt that jagged end of the world, in the end. Settled far away on the other side. Mae always saw herself reflected back too. Sure the pair of them weren’t that different after all.
The Two of Cups. A pair of lovers, one with hair cropped short, the other long and flowing; each raises a golden chalice. Above the chalices, Hermes’s staff. Two snakes entwined, culminating in a lion’s head with great thunderous wings behind it. A caduceus: the symbol of medicine, of healing. The lovers toast their successes, their future, their union. Mae runs her fingers over the card, a warmth rising in her, despite it all, for her great-aunt and the woman she loved. Somewhere far-flung, safe in each other’s trust. Somewhere, dancing.
Mae glances at the last card.30 She shuffles it back into the deck, not letting it sour her day any further, just when she was starting to feel better. Mae does not live in a burning house anymore, nor is she on fire herself. Some days the hearth in her burns a little too bright, but she knows that heat could give her energy and protection, if she let it. Today she feels more like a building full of beasts and flame than a woman, but the elements would settle. They would not make ash of her.
Acknowledgments
One gal can’t find her way through a labyrinth alone, and I had more than a little help in excavating the winding tangle of this book out of myself and into something that made sense. It took three years, but we made it out alive.
Thank you to my editor, Martha—for your vision and patience and for making sense of this haunted old house. Thank you to everyone at Greenwillow. Thank you to Ella and Lydia at Titan for having faith in me and in this project—thank you to Brian Martin, too.
Thank you to Simon Trewin and the team at WME for being at the other end of the phone with answers and support. Thank you, Vanessa, too, for always having an eye out for me.
A vital thanks to Sarah Davis Goff and Lisa Coen, for incredible mentorship. I don’t know where I’d be without you. Thanks also to Sinead Gleeson and Doireann Ni Ghriofa; I am deeply fortunate to be in the way of such kind and wise women, dare I say witches.
Thank you to my dearest, maddest art friends, to Roe McDermott (a great witch) and Helena Egri (to whom this book is dedicated); thank you to Dave Tynan and Erin Fornoff and to my Doomsburies, Dave Rudden and Dee Sullivan. This book made me more than a little difficult, and every pint and walk and text message mattered. Making things in the world can be lonely and ye make me feel like part of something bigger.
Thank you to Ray O’Neill, for everything.
Thank you to the folks at the Booksmith in San Francisco, and in the old JAM offices on Synge Lane. This book was begun at a bookshop counter and finished at a desk in a renovated garage, and everyone in orbit of those spaces mattered. Thank you especially to Mike for the big hug the time my tooth shattered—the tooth made it into the book, in the end.
Thank you to Paula, Paul, and Chrissie Duff, and to the Coen family. I am extremely lucky to have found peace and space in your faraway homes when I needed it, and this book wouldn’t be what it is if it wasn’t for ye having put me up during deadlines.
Thank you to the Arts Council and Maynooth University for your support; it is meaningful to have two such institutions at your back and it made all the difference to me, and to this work—and to more work coming down the line, too.
Thank you to everyone who fought to repeal the Eighth Amendment in Ireland, and who continues to fight for women’s rights and intersectional equality in this country.
Thank you to my parents, Sean and Patricia, and to my gorgeous sister, Katie. Thank you to Paula & Dave & Teresa & James & Steo & Daithi & Deirdre & little Niamh and Conor—and of course, Nana Sheila, for always showing up and having my back. I am from a good tribe and you were the making of me.
And most of all, thank you, Ceri Bevan. You are my home. I love you.
About the Author
AUTHOR PHOTO BY DAVID MONAHAN
SARAH MARIA GRIFFIN lives in Dublin, Ireland, in a red brick house by the sea. She writes about monsters and growing up, and everything those two have in common. She is the author of Spare and Found Parts.
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
OTHER WORDS FOR SMOKE. Copyright © 2019 by Sarah Maria Griffin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2019 by Malena Valcárcel Reyes
Cover design by Sylvie Le Floc’h
&nbs
p; Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Griffin, Sarah Maria, author.
Title: Other words for smoke / Sarah Maria Griffin.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Greenwillow Books, [2019] |
Summary: Fourteen-year-old twins Mae and Rossa’s summer away from home takes a life-altering turn when they discover their great-aunt Rita’s home is full of secrets.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018026621 | ISBN 9780062408914 (hardback)
Subjects: | CYAC: Twins—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Witches—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.G75255 Ot 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018026621
Digital Edition MARCH 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-240893-8
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-240891-4
1920212223PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
Greenwillow Books
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