by Kim Smejkal
“I wasn’t being sarcastic,” Celia whispered.
Lyric frowned, but it wasn’t their usual sharp one. More like confusion. Or discomfort. As Xinto perched on Celia’s top hat, Lyric laughed, as if grateful for the distraction. “I’ll never be as devoted a friend as your bee, sorry.”
“Eh,” Celia said, shrugging. “As cute as he is, Xinto’s not real. You are.”
Celia didn’t know how long the two of them stood there awkwardly. Long enough that Xinto got bored and flew away.
Although she wasn’t full-handed yet, Celia straightened her spine and made a snap decision. Maybe it was fatigue getting the best of her, maybe it was thinking of Zuni and friendship. She needed to push aside her shame, be brave, and check on Griffin. She was doing what she had to for him (even though he might not see it that way), but it wasn’t fair to him that she hadn’t visited to explain herself.
“Can you give me directions to Rian’s, pretty please?” Celia finally asked. Ree-un. The pronunciation fell off her tongue strangely, like it was covered in cotton. A weird name, fiercely dated. Rian had been the first ruler of Illinia after the civil war ended, a much-hated figure from history whose grandest claim to fame was not in restoring peace—that had been her predecessor, Iadanza—but for pissing off both sides and almost inflaming the war anew. “Why would she choose that name for herself?” Celia wondered aloud.
Lyric waved a dismissive hand. “She lost her mind years ago.”
“What?” Celia exclaimed. That was where Griffin was supposed to be safe.
“Relax, I’m teasing.” Lyric shrugged and wouldn’t meet Celia’s eyes as they stepped out the door to lead the way. “She does her best.”
Celia was glad that Lyric accompanied her; otherwise she would have wandered around in circles for an age. The healer’s house lay at the outskirts of town on a large swath of farmland. Picturesque, with rows upon rows of carefully tended crops: orange pumpkins, green peas, blood-red tomatoes, purple-topped beets. Celia knew next to nothing about farming, but enough to know that no one growing season could bear all these vegetables at once.
The path passed through tall corn and sunflowers, yellow and bright against the evening light. Despite the perpetually clear skies of Wisteria, Halcyon either couldn’t be bothered or couldn’t quite manufacture stars properly. A few twinkled against the darkening canvas, but not nearly as many as should have been there.
Xinto flew ahead and returned to Celia, back and forth, thrilled with the adventure no matter how many times Celia or Lyric swatted him away, his buzzing a low, comforting hum.
A gnarled old soul appeared on her front porch as they approached. She looked them up and down with one gimlet eye.
Raising a shaky hand, she pointed to the road they’d just come down. “Begone, peddlers,” she grunted, her breath raspy with age. “We make my own tinctures and tonics here, thank you very much.”
“Hello, grandmother,” Lyric said with a forced smile.
Grandmother.
Grandmother?
At that, the old soul waddled with great speed toward them, proceeding to inspect Celia from head to foot. “Yes, this one needs my help,” she said, her murky eyes glistening with something like glee. “You did well to bring her to me, Lyric. The pallor of her skin, the slight sheen of fever in her eyes. Yes.” She nodded, placing her weathered palm on Celia’s forehead, then the back of her hand on her cheek. She grabbed Celia’s wrist and felt her pulse. Celia had never known a healer to be so thrilled at the idea of illness in her midst. Rian clicked her tongue and shook her head. “And not a moment too soon. Poor dear.”
“She needs nothing from you. She’s fine,” Lyric said. “We’re here to visit the traveler Halcyon brought to you the other night.”
Halcyon had told Rian that Griffin needed to be quarantined for a spell. Nothing serious, but he was a potential danger to himself and others and needed protection and solitude in order to recover.
Rian eyed Celia dubiously, as if sensing that the “she’s fine” part was debatable. “Right. Well, he’s inside. Though he looks perfectly well to my expertly trained eye, if only a little tired and sad. He did request no visitors, however—particularly, and I quote, ‘a small, shattered soul in a top hat.’”
Flushing bright red, Celia looked toward the fields. Xinto flew in tighter and tighter circles around Rian’s pumpkin patch.
Something about Rian was off, not in any sinister way, but she reminded Celia of Lupita: both absent-minded and deeply traumatized. Lupita had tortured Celia for years, doled out punishments, regimented her life, but had somehow become one of her only friends. She was the one Celia often missed the most; her unpredictability had become so perfectly predictable.
But the image of Lupita’s wrinkled hands on a dagger, helping Celia do an unspeakable thing, rose up in her memory, unbidden. The stark contrast of pale white cracks and crevices of age, filling, filled, overtaken by the warm, crimson red of life . . .
Celia bent in half, hugging her head to her knees, trying to hold her insides in, breathing through it until she managed to push the images away. She could run from Asura, everything that had happened there, everything she’d done, but it still managed to sneak up on her and land a punch. To Lyric’s concern, she gasped out, “She reminds me of someone from the temple,” but then couldn’t continue.
She concentrated on not curling up in a ball. She listened hard for Anya’s voice. Stand up, Cece. You’re such a disaster. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
The hollow space inside crawled with rot, and Lupita had helped put it there. Most things could be forgiven, but there were some that lingered like a fungus, growing over time rather than healing.
Lyric rubbed her back tentatively, but with a kind of understanding that was deep and full. “I understand more than you think I do,” they whispered.
Celia grabbed Lyric’s hand without thinking. She squeezed. After a few heartbeats passed, she was able to straighten and walk toward the farmhouse. She didn’t let go of Lyric’s hand, and Lyric, surprisingly, didn’t pull away.
Chapter 14
Griffin’s knuckles had dried blood on them. He was wearing his plague doctor mask, his feathered cape, his black coat and pants, and, most infuriating of all, his wide, brazen plague doctor smile.
But all Celia could focus on was his knuckles.
She hadn’t expected a huge smile and a hug, given the circumstances, but she definitely hadn’t expected blood on his knuckles. They were alone, Lyric and Rian doing their own awkward dance in another part of the farmhouse, with Xinto buzzing circles around their heads until Celia summoned him.
The room was lavish: high ceilings, comfortable furniture, a bookshelf stocked with more books than Celia had ever seen in her life, enough space to jog around for exercise, and a big bed heaped with pillows. Somehow the room was ten times bigger than Rian’s entire farmhouse appeared from the outside. Celia was almost jealous of the luxury, except that it didn’t look at all like Griffin had enjoyed any of it. The door Rian had led her through had disappeared. No matter how luxurious, it was still a prison, and she’d put him there.
Griffin stared at Celia through the glass lenses of his mask. Arms crossed, feet planted apart, he waited for her to speak first, explain herself. His hands pinched tight on his arms, the scabs over his knuckles threatening to draw fresh blood with a crack. His hands were meant for playing with purple and blue fire from Kinallen, mined in some magical way he’d once hinted at when they could still sit with each other and talk. They were meant for fixing wobbly floorboards on a stage or the wheel axle of a wagon. They were meant for tenderness, for gestures in the air as he told stories to the Kids.
Nothing about his body language said that he would entertain any horseshit.
“Diavala was going to run,” Celia said. She commanded her feet to walk toward him, but they were stubborn as hell and didn’t move, other than shifting from foot to foot. It was as if there were a gaping crack in the groun
d between them, perilously deep, rather than a few steps.
“I figured that part out,” he said. Up close, Celia could see his fatigue more clearly: his head and shoulders sagged uncharacteristically, his mouth a tight line. How much of it was a result of spending a few nights in captivity, and how much from housing a monster? She wished she could see his eyes, and at the same time she was thankful for his mask.
“I needed to keep her here,” Celia said. “This was all I could think of to do.” She begged him to understand. To forgive her.
“Look at how much power he has over you,” the plague doctor said. He shook his head, his beak swiping left and right slowly.
Celia bristled. She’d made the choice, however terrible it had been. It hadn’t been Halcyon. “I can undo any of this whenever I want,” she said. In essence, the whole of Wisteria was one giant, interconnected life form—like a bloom of algae on a pond or a bed of lichen covering a rock—it could spread, retreat, and change. Halcyon nurtured it like a topiary: snipping away imperfections, molding it into an ideal.
And it was, in fact, easier to unravel than to create, as she’d already learned. Like swiping your hand across an image in the sand. All she had to do was call her ink back and the knot she’d tied in the sweater would unravel and return to her.
“I can undo it and let you out, but I won’t,” she said, meeting his eyes.
Because Diavala will still run.
Because now, perhaps, you would run too.
The plague doctor smiled ever wider. “At least Halcyon cuts his prisons from the most extravagant cloth.” With a sharp laugh, he opened his arms to encompass the room. “When you inevitably join me, when whatever scheme you’re orchestrating blows up in your face, we’ll live like the richest rats in the world. Unless, of course, we die for our trouble.”
The way he said it sounded very much like he believed that death was the expected outcome. “This is the only road that has a way of protecting you, and I’m happy to walk it,” she said.
“But what is this road you’ve hidden from me, Celia? What have you bargained for? Where is all of this going?” He leveled a look at her, his manner weary and angry at the same time. “Is it possible he might indeed be a bigger problem than she is?”
So careful not to say her name, as if the walls had ears and could hear their secret alliance. Celia had come to make sure the jipep seeds hadn’t harmed him, not to be confronted with the vile idea that Griffin and Diavala were bonding.
“I’m working on it,” Celia snapped. She would master scent, start her service, and get the inoculation. “And whatever lies Diavala is feeding you, you need to stop eating them,” she said. “She’s had a thousand years to perfect the art of manipulation.”
“I can discern her lies easy enough. I am sharing my head with her, after all.”
The crack between them widened, threatening to swallow them both.
Turning away from her, Griffin examined the expanse of wall where Celia had come in. Griffin’s hands trailed along the wall with an intensity of concentration she hadn’t seen since he’d performed with the Rabble Mob. Moving to another space, he examined another section of wall, the evidence of her choice highlighted in the blood on his knuckles as he compared every dip and crack in the stone faces. “The door is in a different spot every time,” he mumbled to himself. Bending, he examined the floor.
“Griffin, I—”
“I know you don’t want to listen,” he said, cutting her off, “but we made a big mistake coming here.” His words were swallowed by the stone, but there was a manic edge to them that echoed back to Celia’s ears. When he said, “We have to be prepared next time Rian comes,” Celia wasn’t sure he was even talking to her.
And if he wasn’t talking to her, he was talking to her.
“Griffin,” she said, louder, trying to overtake the poisonous voice in his head. He couldn’t possibly be aligning himself with Diavala. The thought was unconscionable.
Still, he didn’t respond.
“Plague doctor!” Celia yelled.
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t look at her as he tried to pry a section of stone up from the floor. Judging from the amount of scraped-away mortar and the state of his fingernails, he’d been working on that section for a while. He acted as if she’d made the wrong choice, but then what was the right one? Celia wanted to scream at him until he told her. To leave Wisteria, chase Diavala around and doubt everything Griffin said and did forever, and hope that Diavala didn’t hurt him? To wash her hands of everything, leave him behind, and try to start a new life with everyone destroyed in her wake? Those weren’t choices, they were failures.
“Your jailer is bigger than this one room,” she said, “and it isn’t me!”
“Stop,” he said, hissing as his raw knuckles scraped against stone. Whatever he was doing was causing more harm, one knuckle freshly bleeding, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Didn’t Diavala always claim to have noble intentions? Didn’t she claim to be saving people? And here you are, doing exactly the same thing.”
“How dare you,” Celia said, her voice pitched low. She clenched her hands, resisting the urge to ink a hand slapping his perfect jawline or a bird swooping in and stealing his precious mask. “I would never take away your choice—”
“But you did, Celia. The moment you drugged me, put me in here, and decided not to let me out. I may have resigned myself to a certain fate—death is no mystery to me—but there was a freedom in that resignation. A freedom you’ve now stolen from me.”
“It isn’t you I locked in here!”
“Okay, but what if I refuse?” he said, standing. “What if I say I don’t trust Halcyon’s promises and I want to leave and deal with this on my own?” Griffin took a step closer. “You know what I think would happen? You’d convince yourself that I was under Diavala’s control, you’d force me into whatever web you’ve spun with Halcyon, you’d continue using the ink you hated only a few weeks ago, and I think you’d justify it to yourself every moment until it was done, and then all the years after.”
She shook her head. “All of this has been for you.” How could he toss it back at her like this?
He turned and stared her down. “It hasn’t been for me in a long time. Your ghosts are taking over your reason.”
Just then a door appeared, on a different section of wall from where Rian had let Celia through, a dozen steps away from where Griffin was trying to pry up the floor.
He took three graceful leaps over to Celia’s side and put his hands behind his back as Rian eyed him suspiciously. “I made you some biscuits.” Her milky gaze skittered between them. “Is it a good visit?” Concern laced her voice, and Celia wasn’t sure who she was worried about.
“Fine,” Celia said.
“Fine,” Griffin echoed.
“Well, this tea should help,” she said, placing the tray on a side table. “Linden flowers and honey.”
It was likely the same tea Halcyon had been serving Celia, though Celia had yet to see a linden tree in bloom. “Help with what?”
Rian straightened and blinked, already on her way to the magically appearing door. Because Rian wasn’t an inkling, Halcyon must have worked the door into the illusion for her. “Well, your headaches have been better since you started drinking it, haven’t they?” And she tapped her temple with a smile. “Stress always aggravates things. Let’s call this preventative medicine.”
“Yes, things are definitely aggravating in here,” Celia said.
Beside Celia, Griffin had turned into a statue. Only his eyes moved, assessing Rian’s movement. He whispered something, too low for even Celia to hear, that sounded like a garble of sounds together, ending with “. . . not now.”
With one more appraisal of them standing there side by side and staring at her, Rian nodded and left the room. As the door closed behind her, Griffin launched himself to it, grasping at the wood and scrambling to find purchase on any of the ridges even as it turned to stone and disappea
red from under his fingertips.
A line of blood from one of his fingers marked the wall where the door had been, and he stared at it, shaking his head at some unheard words.
“Don’t listen to her, plague doctor,” Celia said, choking on the name she used to address him. Whatever was going on with him, he’d fallen back into his plague doctor role. Hiding, scared.
“She isn’t manipulating me—”
“She’s doing exactly that,” Celia said. Her hands began to shake. “She’s inside your head, like you just said.” Tears had sprung to her eyes, but that only made her angrier. “She knows exactly what scares you the most, what would make you panic and listen to her and want to leave. She’s using your deepest fears to turn you against me.”
He watched her. He was still beautiful, but in a fractured way now, as if something were scraping at his insides, hollowing him out bit by bit, like a sculptor carving into wood or marble, creating something new by omitting. The plague doctor mask highlighted his deep wounds so clearly now. It was his protection in the face of death.
One thing was obvious: Griffin had spent too long alone with only one toxic creature for company. He’d spent his whole life free, on the open road, without any walls around him. Leaving him here, as lavish as it was, had been a mistake.
The plague doctor had moved to the lone window, staring out, his palm pressed to the glass. Old, dried blood tainted most of the panes, as if that was where he’d tried to escape first. “It won’t be much longer,” Celia said to him. “I came to tell you this is almost over. Just a few more days.”
He nodded without turning around, but his reflection off the glass stared at her, a ghostly version of an already ghostly plague doctor. “I doubt that very much.”