by Kim Smejkal
Nothing was real there, not even time.
“That it is, Celia!” Garuld responded warmly. “Everything in Wisteria is just as pretty as everything else in Wisteria, isn’t it?”
Her stomach turned over, squeezing itself into a knot, but she managed a nod and a smile.
In addition to being deceptively clever, infinitely angry, and remarkably talented with the ink, she was also a passable actor.
Chapter 19
Thief, thief, thief, the shadows whispered. Abhorrence, liar, miser, lost soul . . . Celia could think of a hundred words to describe Halcyon now, all of them distilled down to the fact that he was not on her side and never had been.
He had Zuni and Griffin under his thumb, and he thought he had Celia—poor, naive Celia—squashed there too. She would have bet her soul (and I have, haven’t I, Anya?) that there was no cure for the Touch. That there’d never been any hope for Griffin to outlast Diavala with his mind still intact. That Halcyon had survived her probably had something to do with the ink, and a thousand years, and maybe he didn’t even understand it himself.
It didn’t matter. Now that Celia knew where she stood, she could formulate some offense. Her rage would be fuel.
Good things came from having everything stripped away from you. There was a certain freedom underneath. When the worst has already happened and you’d lived through it, what is there to fear?
Halcyon needed her, and she would use that.
Celia barged into Rian’s farmhouse without knocking and made her way up to Griffin’s room, Rian hobbling behind, looking about as much like a serial killer as Xinto did.
But in Wisteria, everything was just as pretty as everything else.
Where was Zuni in this maze of a home? It looked so humble from the outside, yet inside was a palace.
Celia pretended she didn’t remember exactly where Griffin’s room was, and she used the ink to create a door every few steps. She threw them open one at a time, from the downstairs sitting room to the kitchen and down each hallway, all the way upstairs to where she knew Griffin was.
No Zuni.
But she was there, somewhere. Zuni hadn’t been directly involved with anything that had happened in Asura; she wasn’t famous like Lupita, Anya, the plague doctor, and Celia. Lyric couldn’t have made it up.
When she finally threw open the door to Griffin’s room, she rounded on an out-of-breath Rian.
“We’re going out for a bit,” Celia told her. Knowing what she knew now, it was hard for her to look at Rian. Were her eyes so wide all the time because she was used to peering around corners in search of hidden nightmares? Was she so stooped from fighting off years of literal demons?
Despite herself, pity tugged at Celia’s heart.
She’d seen displays of Halcyon’s anger exactly twice, and both times he’d been restraining himself: once with the storm, and once when she’d put her hand on the sunflower doorknob.
She could only imagine what his true displeasure might look like, given how adept he was with the ink.
If he could create a paradise, he could easily create a hell.
Griffin was in his plague doctor costume, casually sprawled on the giant bed. He sat up slowly as Celia burst in. Whatever he’d been doing moments before (it clearly wasn’t sleeping) was disguised by a dramatic yawn and stretch routine.
“Halcyon didn’t tell me anything about this,” Rian replied, clearly unsure whether to let them go. Her eyes darted to Griffin as he straightened his mask.
“I’m telling you it’s fine,” Celia said. “I just spoke to him.” She laced her arm through Griffin’s and led him past Rian. Not toward the new door, but to the window. “Let’s go.”
Rian deferred to Celia’s authority, bowing her stooped form even more as they passed.
Like a spectator in her own life. Waiting for the next order.
Killer, disappearer, knife to her throat. Rian could be overpowered by a strong breeze, yet poison didn’t require strength.
The window was four stories up, with nothing but a straight drop into Rian’s garden.
“Ah, are we flying away?” Griffin said, smiling down at her and not meaning the smile at all. “Finally! I’ve tried everything else.”
Celia ignored him, concentrating on bending the window into the shape of a door and then calling up the stairs that would lead them down safely. She still used her quill, but one day soon she would be like Halcyon and not need to draw on her skin anymore. She would move the quill in the air and draw on the wind. Or she would need only to think it, as he did, and it would come to pass.
For now, she saw the stairs in her mind’s eye and traced the outlines, filled in the shadows. Just like the series of doors, the stairs appeared without applause, without sound. One moment there was nothing but a terrible fall ahead of them, the next was a circular wrought iron staircase with gilded Commedia masks decorating the banister every few steps. Xinto, always trailing behind Celia even when she was doing grand things, landed on the nose of the sparkling Gemello mask and began preening his fuzz.
Griffin turned and bowed to Rian. “It’s been a pleasure, dear healer, and I will miss your cakes and tea, but it’s time for us to fly.”
Celia elbowed him in the ribs and scowled. “I’ll bring him back in an hour or so,” she said apologetically. “He clearly needs some air.”
Relief washed over Rian’s haggard face. It had looked, moments before, as if she were weighing the cost of reporting a legitimate escape against showing vast disrespect to the almost-second-in-command with a false alarm.
“I could fly from here, you know,” Griffin said conspiratorially.
“Save your tricks,” Celia said as they started down the stairs. Something told her they would need them later. She subtly added glitter to the steps, so with every footfall, the stairs under them sent periwinkle-blue and plum-purple sparks up in glittery plumes, soon coating their lower legs.
Rather than carefully choosing their steps to avoid crushing Rian’s flowers, Celia moved them out of the way; bending the tall sunflowers, shuffling aside the azalea. It was still amazing to her how much she could do with only a thought and a stroke of her quill—how powerful the ink actually was.
She caught Griffin’s tight jaw of disapproval, even though he still smiled. “It’s my imagination come to life,” she said defensively. “Sometimes it’s actually fun.” Fun wasn’t what she had in mind just then, more like honing her skills, but she didn’t elaborate.
As the garden resettled behind them, Griffin turned to her. “So, where to, jailer?” His tone was deceptively light, considering that his new nickname cut her like a blade.
With a quick look around and a wave to Rian, who was watching them from the top of the ornate stairs, Celia led him toward the far end of Rian’s farm, past the large barn, opposite the main road. “You need to leave. Now,” she whispered. “There is no help for you here. I was wrong.”
So very, very wrong, her bees agreed.
Griffin’s demeanor changed immediately. He dropped the stage smile, and his strides got longer as he altered his path in a deliberate way. Part of her wondered why Diavala hadn’t run immediately after they were out of sight of Rian’s.
“Griffin. Listen to me,” she said, trying to keep up. They followed the wide road that skirted along the western edge of town. Small homes with large gardens dotted the right side, while grassland gave way to thickening trees to their left. The path was rarely used by the townspeople, and Celia had yet to see another traveler pass through, so it was overgrown with tufts of knee-high weeds. “Be mad at me, go ahead. You were right about Halcyon, right about this place. But I’m begging you, you have to leave. Now. Before the celebration tonight. Are you listening to me, Diavala?” Why, when she wanted Diavala to leave, wasn’t she doing so?
“This way,” Griffin said. He turned abruptly down a faint path of trampled grasses. “To the lakes, in search of river lobsters,” he said far too loudly.
Ever
since Celia had fetched him from Rian’s, Griffin had been in performance mode, as if he knew they were being watched.
“I need to talk to her,” Celia whispered as she followed. Her stomach knotted—demanding to speak with Diavala?—how things changed.
“Ah, yes. Sadly, that’s not possible. We’ve come to an arrangement where she talks to me, and I talk to you, and you two never talk to each other. But never fear, she heard you.” With each word, Griffin made flamboyant gestures with his hands. If there was someone watching, they’d see a casual conversation. Two people, perhaps catching up after a long period of fighting, both finally coming to their senses and feeling remorse for how they’d acted.
Celia blinked and pasted a smile on her face, following suit. “And why would you make that arrangement?” She added a soft chuckle and trailed her fingertips along the tall grasses at either side of her, keeping up the ruse of nothing’s wrong, of course nothing’s wrong.
“I want you to know it’s me.” He stopped and turned around so suddenly she bumped into his chest. He grabbed her shoulders to help her regain her balance, and his hands stayed there, gently holding her.
A soft breeze swished the grasses, their hair. A few paces away, the forest beckoned with the distant sound of lapping water at the lakeshore. With careful movements, he removed his mask, letting it hang at his back, and looked down at her as Griffin. Serious, unsmiling. His hands moved from her shoulders to her upper arms.
Her breath hitched. When he removed his mask, it was always the constellation of stars beside his dark eyes that caught her attention first. An act of rebellion when traditional tattoos were still banned, a way of making his sharp features even more so, the symbol that something more lived under the mask.
“It will always be me from now on.” He searched her eyes again. “Know that.” Though he whispered it, there was heat in his words. It sounded like a demand. “I need you to know it. By far the worst part of being possessed by a devil,” he said with wry tilt to his mouth, “is the way you look at me.”
She inhaled and tried to look away, but his hand went to her chin, cupping it gently, not allowing her to move. His lips tilted into a faint smile. “You only just started to look at me, Celia Sand, before you started to look away.”
Celia knew that none of this was his fault, but knowing it hadn’t made it easier. She couldn’t even imagine how she must have looked at him, what her body must have told him these past weeks. So much hatred, coiled and ready to strike.
“So what would you like to ask her? I will be your messenger, Ce-li-a.” He stretched her name out into three distinct syllables. A whispered song on his lips. He bent a little closer, his gaze dropping to her lips, then meeting her eyes.
Her heart beating madly, Celia flushed. That familiar push and pull of him flooded back.
As much as she still loathed the idea of Griffin talking to Diavala, it meant everything to have him back. A weight had lifted from her shoulders, and she was surprised by how fully and completely she trusted his words: that he would always be him and she had no need to worry about Diavala’s taking over again, pretending to be him.
She stepped up on her tiptoes and leaned closer, and he bent obligingly, offering his ear. “Where did she get her ink?” she whispered.
As he relayed Diavala’s answer, with pauses in between sentences as he listened, he didn’t let go of Celia’s eyes. It’s me, they said. Even though these words are not.
“I found the Chest Majestic,” he relayed.
“You found it . . . in this world?” Celia choked out.
Griffin blinked at the question, but responded, “Yes. Near the small settlement that would become Asura. And I began using the contents to ink tattoos, which became the start of Profeta.”
Griffin paused longer than normal. He swallowed before continuing.
“It didn’t take Halcyon long to find me, the way my notoriety spread.”
After what Celia had seen behind the door, she had expected this, but hearing it confirmed still took her breath. This meant that Halcyon was just as old, if not older, than Diavala herself.
Somehow, Celia and Griffin were embroiled in a feud that had started centuries ago.
The small smile had fallen off Griffin’s face. “Is she saying what I think she is?” he asked. None of his casual act remained. Blunt and angry, the question was equal parts shock and understanding.
With stuttering words, Celia whispered to Diavala, “Let me make sure I understand this perfectly. It was Halcyon’s chest? His ink?”
“Since the beginning, it’s been the two of us.”
Griffin was having a difficult time relaying Diavala’s words now. With the way his posture had stiffened, it looked like he regretted being the intermediary.
“But technically, the chest I stumbled across was Martina’s. He still has his own chest to this day, as I’m sure you’re aware, Inkling. He insists that I stole it from her and killed her, when in reality, I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and here we are, a thousand years later.”
It was harder for Celia now, too, to pretend at the intimacy. She knew it was Griffin in front of her, but the words Diavala spoke through him triggered her fierce hatred. How blithely she spoke of centuries of pain, how easily she dismissed her role in it all and painted herself a victim.
Just like Halcyon, who would have Celia believe everything he did was out of love.
A few hours ago, Celia would have laughed at this information. Now she felt the truth of it, even if she didn’t understand all the details.
She’d seen the ink’s origin point behind a door in his home, in his town full of strange and perfect. There was far more to Halcyon’s story than an ink-loving, artistic hermit. He’d somehow figured out how to steal the ink from the afterlife and extend his life unnaturally. As a child, Diavala had pissed him off by taking his toy and using it as her own.
Three people, two chests of ink, and one doorway. Everything was there: Celia just needed to put it in the right order.
The most important thing was already confirmed: Halcyon had started everything.
Griffin put his hands on Celia’s shoulders again, squaring his body with hers and forcing her to look up at him. “Tell us what happened. What changed?”
She hesitated, wanting to tell him everything: what she’d seen behind the door, where the ink had come from, that the souls on the other side were suffering. But just because she suspected Halcyon of treachery now didn’t mean that she trusted Diavala.
“I need to ask her one more thing first,” Celia whispered. “If she took the ink from Halcyon, where did he get it in the first place?”
Xinto finished his examination of the field and flew over to snuggle into her chest. The afterlife, of course! he seemed to buzz. I’m made of something that comes from the other side of the door. Everything here is made of death, Celia. Buzz buzz buzz.
After a moment’s hesitation, Griffin said with a frustrated tone, “She says she doesn’t know.” His grip tightened, and he pulled Celia closer. “She always assumed that he and Martina made it with alchemy. She’s not lying, Celia. I would feel at least a hint of it. But she’s definitely leaving gaps in what she’s relaying . . . Aren’t you, Diavala?” He was speaking as much to Celia as he was to Diavala with that last statement, his words a low growl.
Griffin laced his fingers through Celia’s and began walking again. Slower this time, an intense look of concentration on his face that he covered with his mask again in short order. “Give me a minute to deal with this devil,” he whispered.
So Celia walked through a perfect grassy field beside a perfect town toward a perfect lake with a perfectly unnatural bee now sleeping in her shirt; and she was holding hands with a plague doctor who was having a silent conversation with the immortal creature who’d killed her best friend and now possessed him.
If only Celia were still in the Commedia and this was all just make-believe.
Always such a mess, Ce
ce, Anya whispered. Everything is always such a mess.
Interlude
Just when I thought we were starting to get along, the plague doctor said, shaking his head at the purple-eyed child in his mind. It turns out you’ve omitted a fair amount, Diavala. Like the bit about Halcyon being an ancient scourge. Just like you.
“You know, I liked you much better when you were scared of me,” Diavala said. “When your mind trembled at my presence and worried what I could do. Now it almost feels like you don’t care that I’m here at all—except for the inconvenience.”
He ignored her. I sense your happiness. He loaded as much mistrust and accusation into his thought as possible, lobbing it at her like a perfectly delivered line of dialogue. If she was happy all of sudden, something had changed, and he needed to know what.
“If Celia is asking these questions now,” Diavala said, “if she’s trying to get you to leave, it means she doesn’t trust Halcyon anymore. Obviously I’m happy about that. Halcyon is an untrustworthy scoundrel.”
He grumbled. She’d said variations of that so many times, it had lost meaning.
Tell me everything, he demanded.
When he looked down at Celia, she arched an eyebrow. One dainty little eyebrow, bending from its usual stern v into a mountain peak. “Griffin?” she said softly.
He turned away, but his wasps settled for a moment, hearing that name on her lips. It wasn’t one the plague doctor recognized often, but it always sounded right, coming from her.
No, don’t tell me, he said to Diavala. Show me.
He took Celia’s arm for support as Diavala opened the window into her memories again, and they walked toward the lake together. He became the young, purple-eyed child and saw a hazy memory through her eyes:
A gilded box lying under a bush, abandoned. A pinched feeling in his stomach, a hunger he’d never known. The brief debate about whether he should take it, hunger soon winning out.
The plague doctor ground his teeth. Halcyon’s extravagance wasn’t a new trait, then. And in this case, it had acted as a lure for an impoverished child and began a series of events that would take over a nation and last a thousand years.