by Alyssa Wees
They skipped and they giggled and they leaped and they sang, hand in hand, all the way to the place where the trees had teeth and the thirsting brambles slashed their shins and licked the blood dribbling down around their ankles.
When they reached the floating bridge spanning the narrow river, they stopped. Twenty men guarded the glade. The girls turned to each other, their eyes perfectly adjusted to the undying dusk surrounding them.
Half and half? suggested the gorgon with a nod toward the guards ahead, and her friend the nymph nodded, combing her long sea-foam hair with her fingers. Meet me by the princess when you’re through.
They crossed the bridge and separated, the nymph with quiet footsteps and a shy smile, while the gorgon took great care to let the soldiers know exactly where she was as she approached: cracking twigs, breaking branches, humming a melody somewhere between dismay and desire.
Who’s there? said the men, blindly spinning in her direction as she weaved through the trees, raising their guns. Who are you?
Oh, be quiet, she said sweetly, and the soldiers went silent. The lightning-glint behind her eyes was the last sight they saw before they dissolved into harmless shadows, blending in with the dim.
Have you ever heard of calenture? asked the nymph on the other side of the glade, and the men nearest her quirked their heads and listened, delirious in the dark. She picked one first with a cut across his nose, fresh ruby red. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen, and as soon as she saw him, she thought her heart would rupture. It’s when you spend so long at sea that you start seeing things that aren’t there. It’s the same in the dark. And there is nowhere on earth darker than it is right here.
She began walking backward, boldly but slowly winding through the trees. And he followed, of course, drunk on the satiny stream of her voice.
What are you seeing, silly soldier? A maiden with ceramic skin and hair like the wind, silky and warm? Or a creature with saltwater veins, and teeth so sharp, they could split diamonds into dust?
She led him to where the black river rushed in a ring around the clearing, surging swiftly and silently. Murmuring all the while, she stepped backward into the water, wrinkling its sable surface, treading deeper and deeper until her scaly feet no longer touched bottom. The soldier drifted after her.
What are you seeing, my sweetmeat, my love? She laughed and laughed and laughed, and the soldier opened his mouth as if he could eat the sound. Once the water was up to his heart, the nymph stopped and treaded toward him instead of away. She pressed her body against his, wrapping her legs around his hips. A glossy-cheeked girl with plump lips and a thin waist, or a famished little fairy with pearl-ivory eyes and clamshell knees? Tell me, my dear, what do you see?
Then she clasped the back of his head with both webbed hands and dragged him down until he drowned.
It doesn’t matter which one you see, she said after, as she laid his limp form along the shore. She leaned down near his unhearing ear, and she wept and she wept and she wept with such glee. It doesn’t matter, she whispered, because both girls are me.
When she had a collection of slick bodies lined up on the shore, the nymph joined her friend, who was kneeling by the princess.
She’s so beautiful, the nymph breathed, tears dry on her cheeks, reaching to touch the princess’s black tresses tangled up in the leaves of her bed. But then the nymph retracted her hand, as if the curse might be contagious. But she looks so sad.
The princess’s eyes twitched behind her lids at the sound of their voices. The gorgon rested her head on her friend’s shoulder and sighed. We won’t kiss her, as that’s not what she wants, said the nymph.
The gorgon nodded. Yes, we won’t wake her.
What shall we do? mused the nymph.
We’ll stay here. We’ll watch over her while she rests.
The nymph grinned. This time when she reached out, she did not withdraw at the last moment. She touched her fingers to the princess’s wrist, to the feverish flutter of her pulse.
We are your guardians now, the nymph vowed. We will keep you safe.
And they did—for a little while.
When the first set of guards stationed near the princess failed to return to the castle, the king dispatched another corps, and then another when neither the second nor third came back. And though he did not trust the boy, with the fourth set of soldiers, the king sent the infamous necromancer.
The girls tried to stop him, but the boy was quick and clever. At once he raised the decomposing bodies of the drowned soldiers and reassembled the scattered cells of the shadow-men, rendering the girls outnumbered. The gorgon’s eyes could not flash fast enough, and the nymph’s voice was not quite sweet enough to subdue so very many men at once. Soon they were caught, and a blindfold was tied over the gorgon’s eyes as they were led in chains to the crystal castle. The nymph begged for water, her lips crinkled and white, but her pleas went unacknowledged.
The king knew now that sometimes the dead had a habit of rising again, so he did not have these girls murdered for their crime—but they were imprisoned. For them he fashioned a unique kind of incarceration, one that could not exist without magical aid. And there was no way out, and no one to rescue them.
It was here that the Fox Who Is No Fox stopped.
Jarred by his sudden silence, the Witch opened her eyes, and was met with the sight of a smooth, empty sky: colorless and clear, wiped clean of comet-catching moons and crooked silk-snare stars. She did not seem to know when her eyes had first closed. She did not seem to know when her eyelids had then clenched, squeezing so tightly that they had trembled, hypnotized by this fairy story that was no fairy story, just as he had promised.
“Well,” said the Witch, blinking fast, “and how did they get out?”
The Fox Who Is No Fox tilted his head toward her and spoke softly into her hair. “They didn’t.”
The Witch swallowed around the scream resurfacing in her throat, wedging there like powder in the barrel of a gun. “What do you mean?”
The Fox Who Is No Fox watched her, and tightened his arms around her waist. “They did not escape.”
The Witch exhaled. “So they died there.”
“No—it’s just not my story to tell.”
The Witch pressed her hands to his chest and pushed herself away so that she could look at him. “Do you mean to tell me that this story you started has no end?”
“No, no, there is an end,” he assured her. “I just don’t know what it is yet.”
“And what about the queen and the princess and the necromancer and all the people in the forest?” She reached out to thread her fingers through his hair. He let his eyes shut halfway as she combed his hair back from his face. Safe, safe, safe, she thought with desperate vehemence. But she no longer believed it.
“Well,” he said, licking his dry lips, “there was an attack on the king, as the forest folk had planned. A shape-shifter assumed the shape of the princess and lured the incredulous king near to the forest’s edge, where the people attacked. But it did not work—they did not kill him.”
She twisted her fingers into his hair and pulled, just enough to make it hurt. He let his head fall back into her grip, the cords of his neck curving, protruding like the roots at the base of a tree.
“And?” the Witch prodded.
“The queen—she slept.”
“And?”
“The princess—she slept too.”
“And?”
“The necromancer—after he saw the princess in the glade, he thought of a way that she might be saved. A way to reach her.”
The Witch released him. The folded flower in her heart finally flourished, opened like a mouth: petals and pollen, blood and bone, a reawakening so violent that she was surprised when he did not so much as flinch at the eruption.
&nb
sp; “And—and did he?” asked the Witch, shivering. She stood and faced her throne, lifted her chin and gazed down at the Fox Who Is No Fox.
“Yes,” he said.
She knotted her hands behind her back. “And he woke her?”
“No,” he replied. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees. Slowly he looked up at her.
The Fox Who Is No Fox let out a long sigh.
“Not yet,” he said.
Not yet. The Witch smiled. Smiled so hard that her teeth hurt, an infinite ache that tunneled right down to her dizzy, wide-open heart, a garden of glittering veins and shining chambers where a wish waited to be plucked and devoured.
She said, “Little fox, little fox, get out of my throne. It is almost time for you to go home.”
It’s Saturday, the day for bird-watching out the window and fox-crawling around the house to see what Gabrielle sees. Saturdays are for crunchy cereal and constructing forts out of books and blankets on my bed. Saturdays are for gathering the paint swatches Dad brings me from the hardware store, dozens of them, then standing on the sidewalk and holding them high overheard, finding a match for every color of the daylight universe, and taping the swatches to the wall over my bed, a spectrum of sky-dyes. Saturdays are for dust and daydreams.
But not today.
Today I will not let Dad out of my sight, even if that means following him around inside as he tidies up, then out to the front lawn to walk right behind him as he mows the grass. I hover while he makes sandwiches for lunch. I trail him back outside so he can trim the bushes in front of the house.
“Don’t you want to relax, maybe have a cup of cinnamon tea?” he asks as I kneel next to him with dirty gloves on my hands, ripping weeds from Mom’s now neglected garden. The sun shines, unrestrained, no clouds left from yesterday’s storm. “After the, ah, breakdown you had yesterday, I thought you might want to, you know, take it easy.”
Silence and silence and silence. I grab a particularly spiky, gnarly-looking weed and tug at it.
Why can’t things just go back to the way they were?
“Dad.” I lean back on my heels, staring at him. He has a huge smudge of mud on his stubbly cheek. “Listen, please. I’m going to tell you something, and all of it’s true.”
His jaw clenches; his neck tenses. “Rhea—”
“Please, just listen. Okay? Okay?”
I wait until he nods. I wait until he sighs. I wait until he turns his attention away from the mushy ground and says, “Okay. I’m listening.”
Words like boils bubble in the back of my mouth, popping pustules that need to get out, out, out.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s start with yesterday. Yesterday I had a sister named Raisa. She’s fifteen, almost sixteen years old, and she’s stubborn. She’s snippy sometimes, and she’s always telling me to shut up. Are you with me so far? Last night she snuck out, and I didn’t stop her. I tried to, but she was gone. I think…I think she stopped existing as soon as she left the house.”
He frowns. “That doesn’t—”
But now that I’ve started, I can’t stop. Gabrielle continues to tear weeds out with her teeth.
“The day before that, Mom was alive. Alive, Dad. She was here. She made us waffles and you dueled with the silverware. The day before that, I had another sister, Renata, fourteen years old. Dad, are you listening?” I blindly grab for a lone dandelion nearby, as if everything will just melt away around me if I don’t hold on to it. I have to fight for what’s mine, even my memories. “Renata, she—she had fantastic dreams that she thought were real, and she would always hide when she was upset. The last time I talked to her, she told me to wake up and—are you following any of this? Do you understand?”
“Uh—”
“And throughout everything, I’ve been talking to this boy. No—it’s not like that. Don’t make that face. I don’t know his name—I just think of him as ‘the Darkness.’ Because I can’t see him, Dad. He’s just a voice, and he wants me to guess his name. He says if I guess it, then he’ll—then he’ll take my curse away. He’ll make it so that I don’t have visions anymore.” I pause, catching my breath. “But the thing is, the thing is, even if the Darkness could do it, if he truly could take my curse away, if he’s even real and not just in my head—I’m not sure that that’s important anymore. Because the real curse is that my family is being taken from me, one by one.” I stare at him and I don’t blink, even as my eyes water, even as they burn. “And I think—I think you might be next. You or Rose. What if she doesn’t come back from ballet? In fact, maybe we should go there, to the studio, right now. Just to make sure. Because what will happen then, when both of you are gone? Will I disappear too? Will I see you again? Will we still be together, just somewhere else?”
Dad shoots to his feet. “Rhea! I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about. No one is disappearing, all right? Except your mother, but—it’s just your imagination talking, okay? Your strange but beautiful imagination. With that big brain of yours, you can create whole worlds, Rhea—or you can destroy them. It’s up to you how you use it. There is always, always a choice.” He sighs. Tired, tired, tired. “Just start with something simple—think happy thoughts.”
Happy thoughts. Right, of course. How hard could that be?
Um, very.
Like trying to catch sunshine in a cup. It’s not liquid; it’s light. You have to let it be what it is. Don’t fight it.
“That’s not simple,” I say. “That’s starting with the hardest thing.”
“Just try.”
“But my head hurts.”
“I’ll get you some ibuprofen.”
“No!” I stand now too, wrenching off the stupid gardening gloves, my hands sweating. “I mean, it’s—it’s not that bad. I’ll do without.”
“Really, it’s not a problem.” He moves across the lawn. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“You need to stop this. Stop following me around like a shadow. You’re driving me crazy. I’m just going inside the house. Right over there. I will be back in a few minutes, okay? Stay here!” he snaps when I start to trail after him again. “I mean it. Don’t. Move.”
“Okay,” I whisper, and watch him go, my gaze fixed on the back of his head. Dad raises his voice so rarely that it’s a shock when he does, and I don’t like making him upset.
Besides, Raisa disappeared when she walked out of the house. Dad is going in, and I have a clear view of the door from here—I’ll see him as soon as he comes back.
Seconds pass, and then minutes. I shield my eyes with my hands, watching the house. Panic like a rash radiates down the back of my neck, twines around my spine, crashes across my chest. Slowly at first, then faster. My thoughts burst like bug bites across my brain, itchy.
Dad, I think. Come back.
Please, please, please.
I tally my heartbeats, counting down from one thousand. At zero, I begin again.
And again.
And again.
And again and again and again and again until I know.
He’s not coming back.
He’s not coming back, and I let him leave.
“Never ever,” I whisper in a voice like dry skin, wrinkled and rough. “Wake up.”
No. All I have to do is wait. Wait right here, just like he said. Maybe he just can’t find the ibuprofen. Maybe he had a phone call. Maybe he’s making me tea.
I sit down facing the house, crossing my legs. I barely blink. Gabrielle comes and sits very close to me. We wait.
Just like he said. Just one minute more. He’ll be back.
He will.
I wait.
* * *
—
I can’t wait anymore.
I run toward the house. I throw the front door open, let it flap on
its hinges as I dash into the foyer. Then I circle around to the kitchen, the laundry room, the living room.
“Dad?” I bellow, so loudly that it is almost a scream, but not quite. “Dad! Where are you?”
I tear up the stairs, with Gabrielle sprinting ahead of me. I tumble in and out of each empty room, opening the closets, ripping aside shower curtains, even stooping to peek under each bed. Twice. Just in case I’ve missed something.
“Dad, please—”
In the hallway I stop, slumping against the wall.
There’s one room I haven’t checked. Just one room left.
But I will not look there. Not yet.
Gabrielle blinks up at me, her pink tongue hanging out.
“Are you going to disappear too?” I shout at her, and she recoils, backing away from me so fast that she almost falls down the stairs.
“I’m sorry.” I wipe a sweaty strand of hair off my cheek. “I’m sorry,” I say again, trying to make it true, because suddenly I want to break things, and the only thing near enough that would make the kind of crack I crave is her heart, and mine. We stare at each other, breathless and wild.
I wish—
I wish—
I wish I knew exactly what to wish for.
If I got only one, what would be the wish to reverse this mess? Should I wish that I never opened the door, that I never dreamed that dream? Or should I wish for the Darkness’s name?
If I knew, then maybe, just maybe, I could make it come true.
My family is gone. All but Rose, I think. And me. I’m still here. Stuck at the point where madness meets miracles, immovable. Me, the goddess of all shadows that shimmer, of all souls burdened with a bottled scream.
I have never felt so strange. Like I’m not real. Like nothing I say or do will matter. There’s a distorted sort of comfort in that, in the absurdity of my own smallness, in all the space I do not occupy.