Shana Abe - The Sweetest Dark

dragon-girl, come, come, last of the chosen, beloved of our beloved, come up.

All three times I’d Turned to smoke in the grotto, I wanted to reach the stars so badly it obsessed me. I wasn’t sure what would have happened had I escaped the cavern. Would I have gone up and up? Would I have ever returned to earth, even for Jesse?

I couldn’t say. As I looked at them now, they winked and twinkled back at me like a fiery scattering of my most bosom friends.

There was only one way to find out.

I Turned to smoke, sifting up and out through the window.

They pulled at me right away, drew me in threads from the castle. I blew out over the liquid silver of the channel, marveling at the shrinking world, at a pod of seals darting beneath the surface of the waves. At the nests of gulls dotting the mainland cliffs beyond the island, eyes that stared and beaks that clattered.

Higher. The separation of land and sea below me was a jigsaw line of rough forest and fields edging rougher water.

yes, yes, you’re free like us! come up!

There were winds up here, brutal ones. I felt myself begin to tear in their currents and tried to duck down beneath them again, but they were too strong.

up!

This was bad. I was having difficulty holding myself together. Within minutes I’d been swept so far out to sea, I couldn’t even see the coast any longer. Everything was indigo and silver and dark, and the stars in their almost-purple heaven.

up!

I strained to obey. Attempting to slide beneath the river of wind only thinned me more; I gathered my strength and forced myself upward, becoming more like a blade than a sheet of vapor, and when I ripped free of the current I found myself in blessed calm, tumbling about until I was able to right myself and go calm, as well.

hello, sang the stars, their hallelujah chorus of lights twinkling now every color of the rainbow.

Hello! I would have sung back, a hallelujah of my own, had I a voice.

...

I Turned back to girl inside Jesse’s cottage. He was in the bedroom; it was all very dark. I Turned by the pair of chairs near the back window, because there was a blanket slung over one of them and I used it as a wrap.

I stood there, feeling like I needed to catch my breath, although I wasn’t even winded.

I was wearing flesh again. I was firm inside a body, feet flat on the floor. I made a fist and pressed my nails into my palm. When I released them, red crescent moons marked my new skin.

Jesse emerged from the bedroom carrying a candle spilling wax into a holder, closing the door behind him. He didn’t look sleepy, like I’d woken him up. He looked tired, though. There were lines bracketing his mouth. His hair hung long and limp.

“I’ve been out,” I said.

“I know.”

“I listened to your friends. The stars.”

“I know.”

“I want you to finish the story now, Jesse. I want to know what happened to the Elemental after Death came to her in the desert. What was their ending?”

He walked to the chair that’d had the blanket and folded himself into it slowly, one limb at a time, as if he had to consider how it would happen. He was wearing a regular shirt and trousers and even shoes. Surely I hadn’t actually woken him?

“Where did I stop?” he asked absently.

“When she—the unraveling.”

“Oh, yes. Death had come and done his work. But in her dying moments, even as she unraveled, the goddess reached up and dragged what stars she could from the sky down to earth and sent them into the seeds of men. So that a few humans, a very few, would be born with fragments of her power and theirs. It was a gift of gold and death.”

“Death? That’s a gift?”

He gazed up at me.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Do you mean to say—are you telling me that your powers are linked to your death? Is that your sacrifice?”

“Power begets power. It requires it, too.”

“For God’s sake.” I stomped over and threw myself at his feet, just like one of the eighth-years with Mrs. Westcliffe. “Would you please stop talking like that? Would you please tell me in plain words what I want to know?”

Jesse leaned forward and touched the fingers of one hand to my bare upper arm.

“Everyone dies, Lora. I don’t mind knowing how my own death is going to come about.”

“That’s—that’s—” I groped for the right words and could only come up with ones I’d blurted to him before. “That’s completely unfair!”

“Aye,” he said, soft.

“You’ve got to stop, then! Stop making gold. Stop doing anything like that that brings you nearer to dying.”

Despite the lines of exhaustion, his lips smiled. “Breathing? Existing? Being who I am?”

I buried my face against his knees, then wrapped my arms around his legs to pin him in place. I realized then that the blanket I wore was one of the fleece ones that had been in the carriage on the very first night we’d met. It was his, not the school’s. All along it had been his, and he must have put it in there for me.

Because, even then, Jesse Holms had known what I needed.

His fingers began a glide up my arm, across my shoulder. Down my back. He drew figure eights upon me, five-pointed stars, our initials entwined.

“When will it happen?” I asked, to his knees.

“Well, not tomorrow, in any case. Or the next day, or the next. I’ve years in me yet, dragon-girl. Don’t fret.”

We stayed like that, he in the chair, me on the floor, with his hand tracing those clever, soothing patterns along my skin, until the sky began to pale and the morning larks began to stir in the woods and break into their own versions of heavenly songs.

“The Duke of Idylling has invited you to go yachting with him and his son.”

“Yachting?” I knew I was gaping at Mrs. Westcliffe, but I couldn’t help it. The last thing I’d expected was for Armand to try to reach me by way of his father. I wasn’t even entirely certain what yachting was.

I guessed my expression made that clear. “Yes, Miss Jones,” said the headmistress testily. “Yachting. It means to go out to sea on a yacht. For pleasure.”

It was a bright and balmy Friday afternoon, and I was trapped in her office. Blue sky, blue as cornflowers, shone through the tall windows around us. One of them had been opened; bridal lace surged and fell with a lazy breeze, and everything smelled of cut grass.

All the other students were off enjoying the hours of freedom that stretched from now until Monday morning, but I had been summoned here and directed to one of those fat, sinking wing chairs to contend with a person whose mood seemed far more suited for a wintry day than this one.

“How kind of him,” I said. It seemed a benign enough response.

“The trip is scheduled for Sunday. I suppose, just this once, you may be excused from chapel.”

I sat in silence, trying to make sense of it. Was this good? Was this bad? Was this how I wanted next to encounter Armand, trapped on a boat with him?

Mrs. Westcliffe talked on. “I am unclear on the precise number of guests attending. A few of the better sort of locals might be present, along with any visitors currently staying at the manor house. Everything will be perfectly proper. I am confident you will have a most delightful time.”

“Yes.”

“But,” she added—a hard, expelled sound; perking up, I thought, Ah, here’s the rub—”none of the other students are included in this invitation. Only you.”

I pursed my lips. I looked innocent.

Westcliffe pressed her palms together atop her desk, forming them into a steeple. “Miss Jones.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I understand that you have been without proper social or maternal guidance for most of your life. It’s possible you do not understand all the potential consequences of this situation.”

“Indeed,” I said, waiting for her to simply go ahead and forbid it.

“It is considered an honor to be … plucked from the crowd, so to speak. There are fine families in the district who have lived here for generations, none of whom have been so favored with the duke’s attention. Yet I wonder if it’s not truly His Grace himself behind this invitation, but his son.”

“Perhaps there’s a piano aboard.”

Her nostrils flared. “Don’t be pert. This is not a matter of jest, Eleanore. If you go on that yacht, your every move will be scrutinized. Your every word will be dissected. Your manners must be irreproachable, and they must be so at all times, even if you believe you are alone. Do you understand me?”

Do not steal anything. Do not belch or scratch your arse.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Should Lord Armand choose to favor you with his attention, you will react politely, graciously, but always with an aloof, dignified demeanor. It could be that he believes you to be … less than what you are. You will show him the error of that thought.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He’d already seen me naked. I supposed everything from there would be a step toward dignified.

“Do you still have the bangle he presented to you?”

The cuff, I wanted to correct her. As if I was going to lose it.

“I do.”

“Wear it. Let him see that you value it, but take my strong advice on this, Eleanore. Do not accept another such gift from him. One is permissible. Two becomes a suggestion.”

“Oh.”

“Do we understand each other?”

“Yes, ma’am. We do.”

A smatter of laughter and applause reached us from beyond the open window. Some of the girls had set up a game of lawn pins, and the sudden crack! of a ball hitting its mark echoed through the room.