And while Flora could, by now, easily make soup from stones, she could do little else.
“The problem,” Xenobia told her, “is the stories you tell. Nothing will believe you if you do not fully believe them yourself. You cannot make a new reality if you do not even understand your own.”
Which, of course, sounded like good advice. Flora had come to accept that Xenobia was no fool. But it was not advice she knew how to follow.
Most curiously, Xenobia had ordered Flora to fix a broken looking glass. It had been hanging in Flora’s room for the entirety of her stay with the witch, and Flora — who was no stranger to disrepair — had simply figured that a broken looking glass, which had been split in two by a crack, with one long shard missing, was still better than no looking glass at all. She could still see herself within it, in clouded fragments.
“You will fix it,” Xenobia told her. And it was less of a command than a statement of fact.
There was the added bonus that, in concentrating on the myriad seemingly impossible tasks Xenobia put forth, Flora was able to distract herself — for moments at a time — from the horrible thrum in her chest where Evelyn’s rejection lay. And though the pain remained, constant and hollow and aching, any distraction from it was sweet respite, the likes of which Flora had not known in her life. Pain, she knew. Relief was new. And so her study — though burdensome and frustrating — was essential. Without it she could not sleep, could not eat. So she worked.
Still, the looking glass hung broken on the wall.
Seeing Flora’s exhaustion, Xenobia made dinner that night. A hunk of goat leg, delivered along the elevators, and two round, juicy onions that she had cooked with it. Flora had long since realized that even the witch could not use magic for every meal — the loss of appetite it cost to do so would starve the witch to death if she were not careful. And Flora relished the meals they ate together. Quietly and in companionable silence. Like family.
How long had it been, how many years, since Flora had seen her mother? She’d been so small, but still she could remember the warmth of her body, the tight grip of her hugs. The food stirred those memories in her, and it was, she realized, the fullness of her belly that did it. The only other time she’d felt that way was when her mother had been there to care for her, and for Alfie.
When they were done, Flora stood to attend to the dishes, but Xenobia stopped her and bade that she remain where she sat. Xenobia rose and picked up one of the many carnivorous plants that she kept in her kitchen. Flora did not much like the plants, with their strange mouths like eyes. She did not trust them and did her best to ignore them.
“This plant is called witch’s mouth. Do you know why?”
“Because people are afraid of witches?”
Xenobia smiled. “No, child. Because they share our nature. They take, but they can also give. The leaves of the witch’s mouth can be used to heal all manner of ailments, if the plants are raised correctly. But one must feed them a steady diet of flies and spiders for them to be of use. And they are hungry little plants, and difficult to maintain if not fed. Their hunger defines them.
“If one knows the nature of this plant, and its truth, then one can harness its power.”
Flora looked at the eerie little plant. Its mouth hung open, wanting and hungry.
“You do not know your own nature,” Xenobia said. “That’s why you can’t fix the looking glass.”
Flora blinked, confused. Of course she knew her own nature.
“You said it was because I did not understand my reality,” Flora said.
“Same same, but different. You may not completely understand all the forces that made your life the way it’s been — that much is true. But then, most don’t. Most can’t. There are simply too many factors in any given life for any person to possibly parse without devoting their life only to understanding their life. And what good would that do anyone? None, even to the person who pursued it.”
Flora’s head ached. Frustration boiled in her belly. Xenobia was wise. But her tendency to speak in circles made Flora’s skin itch with irritation.
“Your problem,” Xenobia went on, “is that you have never reckoned with yourself. Or rather, any time you have tried, you have only ever taken on pieces of yourself. Tell me, Florian. Who are you?”
Florian. The name startled her: she had not heard it in so long. She had introduced herself to Xenobia as Flora and had been thus addressed for the entirety of their time together. Hearing Florian aloud dragged her back to the Dove, back to her life on the sea with the Nameless Captain and Rake.
And Alfie.
“That’s not my name,” she said finally.
“Isn’t it?” Xenobia held Flora’s eyes, unblinking. The room behind her swayed into darkness and was gone. All Flora could see was the witch and the terrible truth she bore. “There are those who are neither a man nor a woman. Those who were born and called the wrong gender and must reshape their story for those around them. But you. You’re something else. You’re whatever is safe. Both, maybe, but not neither. Or interchangeable. Names are funny things, because they can feel like lies but tell our truths.”
It was true that Florian was Flora’s spell of choice. Casting him felt like a ward of protection. It had been Florian that Evelyn had kissed. But where did Florian end and Flora begin? For the first time, she felt she could hold both in her heart. That both might be true.
Xenobia pushed the plant to the side and pulled from her pocket the missing shard of the looking glass. Flora recognized it right away. Now that she had spent hours staring into the space where it belonged, she knew its contours perfectly. In it, her own gray eye peered back at her.
“Tell me,” Xenobia said, her voice hard. “Who. Are. You?”
Flora held the shard of mirror in her fingers. It was warm now from her touch, from the rising morning sun, and from the thin blankets Flora and the shard shared on her bed. In her mind, Xenobia’s question echoed.
The answer, Xenobia said, would mend the mirror. And so Flora had been starting and then restarting, over and again, to tell the story of her life to the shard.
Orphan.
The abandoned child of a man she’d never met and a mother who left. Those adults who should have been the guard against danger in her life were long gone, probably dead.
Sister.
To Alfie. Distantly, she knew she should be worried about him, the only family she had. But where her love for him usually lived, there was only ash. One does not choose their family, and she would not, if given the chance again, choose Alfie. He was weak. He was a coward. And his nature had forged hers, for better and certainly for worse.
Pirate.
A life of tasks and duties and shame. Of blood and of eyes averted. And though she had revered Rake, in a way, as the distant father she’d never had — for gruffly teaching her to tie knots and fire straight — she had hated her life aboard the Dove. Had hated the captain, and Fawkes, and the men who drank and told untrue stories of their own grandeur. They were liars, all of them, drunkards and liars and killers. And they’d made a murderer of her.
Still the shard remained, broken and jagged, in her hand. She looked into the shard, at her own gray eye, which blinked back at her.
“Come on,” she pleaded at a whisper. “Show me who I am.”
For a moment after she spoke, her breath fogged the glass.
When it cleared, the eye that looked back at Flora had changed.
It was brown, with black eyelashes that pointed skyward, as though they had been painstakingly curled daily for years. The heavy lid of the Imperial-blooded. Tears pooled in the eye, around the minute pink veins that told Flora the eye had been crying for some time.
It was not her eye.
But before Flora could even make sense of what she was seeing, she heard voices coming from Xenobia’s kitchen. At least two of them. In her time at the witch’s house, there had not been a single visitor. Her curiosity piqued, she pushed the shard into h
er pocket and went to see who had come.
“Of course I remember you,” Xenobia said. Her voice was curt and, if Flora was not mistaken, a little scared. She held back instinctively at the sound of it, hiding in the hallway so that she might still eavesdrop upon the witch and her visitor.
There was the sound of a man clearing his throat, and then, “Well, I need your help once more, my lady.” He was a younger man, Flora guessed, perhaps Alfie’s age or just older. His voice bore the affected accent of the Imperial elite, that theatrical enunciation.
“I’m no lady,” Xenobia spat.
“Well, the Lady Hasegawa is.”
For a moment, Flora’s heartbeat lurched to a halt. Evelyn.
“Your point?”
“My point is that she is a gentle creature, one who requires my aid. She does not love her betrothed, and he does not love her back.”
She does not love him. The news lifted Flora, a gust of wind beneath a flapping sail. She does not love him.
“I was not under the impression that love was a matter much considered in the marital arrangements of the Imperial nobility.”
The man laughed, a low, mirthless chuckle. “Perhaps not. But she is such a lovely thing, and —”
Thing. Flora felt her fists clench.
“You want her for yourself.”
A silence stretched out between the man and the witch, long and, even from Flora’s vantage, uncomfortable. She heard the scrape of a ceramic cup being lifted off the table and then the clunk as it was returned.
“She does not love me, nor want me, either.”
Of course she doesn’t.
She loves me.
A smile spread across Flora’s face, her first true smile in ages. She had not been wrong all this time. Evelyn did not want any of these men. Because Evelyn wanted her. The truth of it filled Flora; it was the only thing she was in that moment.
In her pocket, the shard flashed hot. Flora pulled it out and regarded it, hoping to see the eye once more. It had been Evelyn’s eye. It had to have been. But the eye was gone — all that was reflected back now were the cobwebbed wooden beams of the ceiling.
Flora heard Xenobia stand, pushing her chair back from the table. “Then I am sorry, Lieutenant. There’s nothing I can do to help you. Go comb your hair and try harder. Perhaps your charm can be conveyed to her over time.”
“Please,” the man begged. “I can pay you.”
No, Flora pleaded. She does not want you.
“What is it, exactly, that you think I can do for you? There is nothing, I assure you.”
The man sighed. “You should know, under interrogation the girl admitted you were a witch. To Commander Callum. Commander Callum of the Imperial Guard,” he said meaningfully. “Officially, I am here to ensure that you are not one, or else to bring you to him if you are.”
“Ah.” Xenobia’s voice was a knife, cutting and derisive. “Blackmail, then, is it?”
“Are you a witch?” the man asked.
“Are you a sniveling coward?”
“Mutually beneficial assistance, I should say. You help me, and I help you.”
“I have already helped,” Xenobia said. “I gave you the girl, I have done my duty by the Emperor. If you men can’t wrangle her feelings, that’s your problem. Not mine.”
The floor dropped from beneath Flora, and she was falling through the infinite darkness of Xenobia’s betrayal. Evelyn had not left her at all. Evelyn had been sold out. By the witch.
All this time, Xenobia had let Flora wander her home, heartbroken. All this time had been a lie.
Evelyn had not left her. Evelyn had not left her. The truth of it beat a drumming song in Flora’s chest.
Flora had to rescue her. From this man, from Commander Callum. From interrogation and cruelty.
And as soon as the thought crystallized in her mind, the shard burned hot in her pocket once more, so hot that it burned Flora’s skin. It was all she could do not to cry out from the pain of it. It was like all the pain she’d ever known, all the pain that had ever been. It started where the shard touched her skin, and then in a breath it was her whole body, alight with the fire of her own truth.
Lies.
She was a liar. She saw Evelyn’s face, saw her as she did when she first met her. Naive, so willing to stand for what she thought to be good, to be right. Flora had seen that goodness in her heart and still she led her knowingly to torture, to humiliation, to death. She had been willing — even for a moment — to lead this kind and silly creature to a terrible fate in return for her own safety. Worse, Evelyn had been told where they were headed. And it was not Flora who had told her. She saw through the other lies, though, didn’t she? She thought of Evelyn’s fingers on her neck, the kisses that confirmed she did not care.
And Alfie. She had left him. Without so much as a look back or a note to explain. She had jumped at the chance to be rid of him and the difficulty he made in her life. She saw Alfie’s face, saw him as he peered up at her from his hammock. They’d always stick together. That much she had sworn time and time again, not only to Alfie but also to herself. All lies. He was her blood, her kin, her only family left. And all she’d felt, all she’d had room to feel, when she left him was relief. But now the guilt of it, of her love for him and her acute awareness of her inexcusable betrayal, bore down upon her, threatening to break her.
And Mr. Lam. The sailors of the Dove had not made her into a murderer. She had made herself into one. In her desperation to be recognized as worthy by them, Flora had eagerly become a murderer, too, so that she might earn their respect, might be granted power finally among the men who scared her so. The cost of it was her respect for herself. Like a spell running its natural course. Blaming them had been the lie she told herself to guard against the horrible shame that swelled in her chest now, incendiary and burning.
The knife was what Florian had made it; it had not made Florian.
Power.
Her life as a pirate, the murder, even now her time with Xenobia. All of it was just a desperate grab for any kind of power, to see herself lifted above the wretchedness of her birth, to know that she might be worthy of something more, to know that maybe she could have something more. And she was willing to kill for it.
But — oh.
Love.
She was love as much as she was lies and a hope for power. For in her lying, terrible heart was the love for her brother, dormant these many weeks. The brother too gentle to kill, too fragile for life aboard the Dove, but who lived that life anyway so that he might ensure a home for Flora. How had she lived for this time not seeing it, not feeling it? And yet, even as she wondered, she knew the answer. It was what Xenobia had taken. She’d felt it leave, but she had not known what it was.
It was not the only thing the witch had taken from Flora.
Evelyn.
She thought of the warm press of her hand in Evelyn’s, the gentle press of her lips. Evelyn had understood. Evelyn could see that Flora was many things, some contradictory, and that did not matter. Evelyn loved Florian and Flora. If Florian was the wall that guarded Flora, then Evelyn had scaled his heights. Evelyn had loved her before Flora could have loved herself, had guided Flora to a life worth living with her affection. Because what had her life been before Evelyn? What was her life without Alfie? Their love defined her life; it was the part of the story that had been missing, the most important part. Yes, she was an orphan, a sister, a pirate, a girl, and also a boy. But more importantly, she was a person who sought power to protect those she loved.
Including herself. Or himself. Both were equally true to her. Neither told the whole story.
For what was any of it, the lying and the shame, the desperation and the desire, other than a devotion to protecting herself? To surviving?
Distantly, Flora was aware of the sound of glass shattering, of cries of surprise, of chairs being pushed away from a table and footsteps on the earthen floor. But those noises meant nothing, were nothing to her. Sh
e felt Xenobia’s cool hands on her cheeks, heard the sound of the man’s frantic voice but not the content of his words.
She lay on the ground of the hallway, drenched in sweat, her mind and body both too exhausted to move or care or do anything other than to weep and to breathe and to hear the pounding of her heart in her ears.
And though she could not see it, she knew the same way she knew she could hold two identities in her heart at once, the way she knew she could be a murderer and beloved, complicit and brave, that the looking glass was mended.
It was a point of great irony to Evelyn that her mother’s excruciatingly boring education of Imperial architecture might save her from the terrible arrangement her parents had made for her marriage. Just the thought of it brought a smile to her lips.
For Commander Callum’s keep was, indeed, modeled exactly after that of the 900th Emperor’s. From close examination of her own quarters, she could find more than ample evidence to support it. The carved details in the beams of the ceiling. The eastward-facing windows. The two doors, one to the west and one to the north, each built of heavy mahogany. It was a replica of the palace. Which meant there were secret passages that wound all throughout the keep, and even, if Evelyn navigated carefully, out of it.
Claiming boredom, Evelyn requested some needles, thread, fabric, and a pair of scissors so that she might begin work on sewing her bridal kimono. It was, she thought, an admirably proper Imperial lie. Lida had brought her the requested materials without question, and even offered to help as she could, but Evelyn declined. She did not want Lida to be blamed for her escape. Just the supplies, she’d said, and brought right to her quarters was nearly everything she might need to escape.
The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea Page 20