The Faceless Thing We Adore, page 7
The thought makes me dizzy; I look up. The air’s thick with sugar, the first drops of rain slapping the windows, curtains moving in a breeze I can’t feel.
Maisie’s gone. It’s just Larissa, leaning against the table, watching me. Her grin’s playful, all teeth. Something about it makes me aware, with a thud, that we’re alone. Everything’s still, the rain thickening outside, cocooning us. Lightning flickers; I wait for thunder.
A peach sits in Larissa’s palm, ready to be sliced for the pot. All that soft, sun-freckled skin. It’s so fragile, isn’t it? It could come apart in her hand.
It’s so quiet; I’d have expected everyone to be piling into the farmhouse to escape the rain, dripping and whooping, but nothing moves. It’s just us in the steam and rattle of the rain.
She says, “Hey, Aoife,” and steps up close to me. “Do you want to know a cool thing I learned once?”
I nod. There’s the thunder, a warm rumble that just thickens the close air around us. Back home, thunder booms once. Here, it begins and doesn’t end, resonating. Makes it feel like time’s gone wonky.
If that carnivorous flower closed up around me right now, I might let it, for another few instants of standing here beside her.
“There’s this idea,” Larissa says, soft. “That time’s just something we perceive. To string everything together. That actually, all moments exist all at once, bunched up and forever. Your brain tells you that you’re moving forward through time, but really, it’s all simultaneous and eternal. Which means even if we don’t know it, we are always going to be standing here in this kitchen listening to the thunder and making jam; this moment cannot be destroyed, and I really, really like that, don’t you?”
A shudder and a grin all at once, rippling through me. “I was just thinking something like that. Only, way less coherent and philosophical, and it involved carnivorous flowers.”
She laughs. “I don’t actually even want the context for that.” She examines me as the laugh dies down, something growing soft in her gaze. “Hey. I want to show you something, okay? No questions, because this is going to be weird, so you just have to go with it and trust me. All right?” She’s standing so close. “About time you got a beautiful secret to play with.”
I hadn’t thought my chest could get any tighter, but apparently it can. I nod. No questions.
“What you do,” she whispers, voice half lost in the thunder, “is let go. Feel the sensation, breathe out, and let it go. It’s easier than it sounds. Something’s there to take it.”
“Something—something is what?” I had not had a single expectation; I had not in any way been prepared for her to say that. A shudder rises, remembering those cold passageways, the hunger in them.
“What did I say?” She raises an eyebrow, eyes glittering playfully.
“No questions?”
“No questions. Just trust. Like this.” She raises the peach to my lips.
I bite down. Sweetness bursts on my tongue—
“Give up the taste, let it go—”
She’s right, it’s easy. My mouth and mind were holding that flavor only lightly.
Something else is there, around me, inside me, to accept that offering.
The taste is gone from my mouth, there only in echo; the air, the steam, the swimmy light, and the storm, all shiver and flicker as they accept what I’ve given. It’s like my body belongs to something else, is an organ through which something can taste the world. I feel its appreciation, its pleasure, redoubled in me, sweeter than any mouthful.
I feel the edge of something, so close. My senses are jumbled; it’s like it’s speaking to me through the thunder.
My thoughts tumble. There were so many hints and promises that the universe was stranger and more magical and dangerous than life so far had promised. This is not a hint; this is as good as a confirmation, and it leaves me giddy with belief and disbelief and terror.
“You feel it?” Larissa breathes. “That’s how it starts. Does it want more?”
I can’t say what it is. I can’t separate it from the thundering of my heart or the smell of sugar or the patter of rain. But I know. It wants more; it always wants more.
Larissa’s hand finds my wrist, my pulse. Her fingers move there; I shiver.
The shiver continues, out through me, into whatever’s around me. I offer the sensation, of Larissa’s touch, of what that does to me, and it’s no longer mine, and the fabric of everything sucks it up greedily. More.
“Are you scared?” Larissa asks.
I nod. I don’t say, I don’t know if I’m scared of this presence, of what it’s doing, or that you’re going to kiss me.
“Give up the fear.”
I feel my shallow breath, the ache of the uncanny behind my breastbone, the dark places in my mind stirring with panic at her closeness. I find fear in every cell. I say to the presence, This is yours.
I’m not afraid now. The stone walls and cool flagstones and colored shutters flutter like firelight, a shudder of satisfaction. Is that just lightning?
Thunder murmurs. I don’t understand its language; I don’t care. Larissa’s hand finds my waist. If I look up, that’ll be a yes, and something will happen.
You think she wants you? Bless your silly little heart.
I feel her breath. She does.
She steps away, leaving me blinking, peach juice sticky on my lips. She’s laughing. “Good! It likes you, I can tell, it likes you so much.”
I open my mouth, but she puts her finger to her lips. It’s a secret and I’m in on it and I’m not. Thunder echoes, and it’s just thunder; there’s footsteps, whoops, doors slamming. Sage passes the kitchen with his usual glare. The rain’s soaked a pattern onto his t-shirt; it looks like a map.
Larissa whistles ostentatiously and returns to slicing peaches. My mind’s too giddy to form questions. I pick up the half-devoured peach and eat it down to the last shreds as rain streams down the steamed-up window. Some bites, I let myself taste and relish. Some, I offer the taste up and feel that delighted ripple.
I savor this fearlessness; I imagine something unearthly coiling in my stomach and spreading. It feels right, holding something like that inside my body. Like it belongs there.
This evening is quieter, a bonfire in the garden, Kiera reading local fairy tales from a book, Kai and Larissa contributing dramatic voices. Kiera’s face enthralls as much as the story, but I’m yawning, overwhelmed by the day’s strangeness. When my eyes drift closed one too many times, I follow the general drift back to the huts and tents in the grove.
Not straight to sleep, though. The thought of the girl singing in the cabin has been nagging at me all day; I’d been looking out for a teenager around the farm, but there’s been no sign of her; is it concern or nosiness that make me want to check on her? But she’s made it clear she doesn’t want me around. She’s trying to keep to herself, and I’ve stumbled in on her privacy twice.
That’s why I’m quiet as I slip through the trees to the cabin, and that’s why I’m surprised when she calls out, “Hey!”
I freeze. “Um—hey?”
I wait for a window or something to open, but nothing. Still, she speaks again. “Who are you?”
What a question. I have only the bones of it now. “I’m Aoife. I just got here.”
“Aoife,” she says. “I’m Myri. Short for Myristica, if you can believe that.”
I snort. The words come out automatically. “Wow. Your parents must be brutal.”
I wince. Can you get anything right?
“My parents love me very much, actually!” Myri says. “Thank you.”
The quiet pulses, insects, wind-whispers, distant guitar strumming echoing from some group down on the beach. I’d like to ask, Why don’t you come out? I’d like to ask, Are you all right in there? I’m scared I’ve invaded too much already with her; I have no idea how to interact with a girl behind closed shutters, face unseen, just a voice crying and singing in the night.
“Where are you from, Aoife?”
“England. Tallerton, you wouldn’t know it.” I grin. “You definitely don’t want to.”
“Try me,” Myri says. “I have heard of it. You have black swans, right?”
“Yeah. That’s probably the most exciting thing we have.” I grin and sit on the cabin steps. There’s movement behind the door, like she’s sliding down to sit back-to-back with me. “Think I like it better here.”
She snorts, though I’m not sure if it’s a snort of agreement.
“Have you been living here long?” I ask. Seems safe.
She’s quiet, for long enough that I think she’s going to ask me to leave again. “I’d like to go to Tallerton,” she says suddenly. “I’d like to see the black swans and buy cheap jewelry and eat fast food. Right now, that sounds really, really great.”
“I’ll take you someday, then.” I have no intention of ever taking her or anyone there. I could float into the sky and pop at the thought: Maybe I never have to go home. “I know a really crap burger place, you’d love it.”
She laughs. “This is going to be weird. Can I ask you something? Aoife who’s new?”
I don’t say that it’s already weird, talking to her through a closed door, unable to picture her face, getting the sense that asking questions will get me nowhere. I don’t say anything except, “Sure.”
“Can you tell me a bit about your town?” There’s a shift, like she’s stretching. “I’m having a day where I … miss the world. Can you tell me about the swans and the shopping center and the crap burger places?”
For a second, yeah, that’s weird, and then it isn’t. It’s a disorientating flip: This place is the pinnacle of adventure to me, promises of something beyond the canny, friendships and freedom and secrets. But imagine being a teenager here, cliffs and hills and horizon pressing in, dreaming of a wider world. No wonder she sulks alone in a cabin.
That’s probably why the story that stirs in my mind is an old one. “When I was thirteen,” I say slowly, “I just got on a bus. To see where it was going.”
I don’t say that it was the day that I’d done well in my exams and come home expecting a family party, like my brothers had had; that I’d arrived to an empty house, nobody caring; that I’d decided in that instant to run away.
“What was the bus like?” Myri asks.
I blink. “Bus-y? It had patterned chairs and schoolkids and old ladies?”
“Did you have a window seat?”
“Yeah.” I focus the story on every tiny detail I can: the rows of flats, the arcades and rail yards and half-built office blocks, the fading historical buildings and the kids who smoked on their steps, the mums with pushchairs by the weed-clogged river. How I’d found a park holding an open-air cinema night, with deck chairs and fairy lights—a rare, actual event.
I don’t tell her how I couldn’t get in, too young and no money, and how I slunk home, dejected to learn that I couldn’t even get into a film showing; I wasn’t going to make it anywhere alone. I don’t tell her how nobody had even noticed I was gone. I don’t tell her how that bright-lit place lodged in my mind, a splinter, a promise that there would be somewhere like that for me someday.
I peer up at the stars. Even then, I was listening for something, wasn’t I? For some call. And now I’ve heard it. And it’s lulling me, tangling me up, and I don’t want it to stop.
“Thanks,” Myri says after a long while. “I … this is weird, too, but can you not tell anyone you talked to me? I’m … it’s complicated, but I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
A vice closes around my ribs. I’d settled down to the idea of her being reclusive, sulky, but my mind zooms off in terrifying directions: I imagine cruel punishments, a cabin where people are isolated for weeks for stepping out of line.
Which is silly; that doesn’t fit at all with this place. I’m being overdramatic. I am overdramatic; Craig always reminded me.
I settle on: “Are you okay? Is something going on?”
She sighs. “There’s a hell of a lot going on you don’t know about yet, new girl. Can you just … keep it private? We can be friends, but just for us to know about?”
I can choose, I realize. I can push, ask why she doesn’t show her face, why nobody’s mentioned her, why I could get into trouble; I can choose to follow my instincts, the nosiness forever tugging at me. Or I can choose to trust that, despite the secrets, this place is still that splinter of bright light and laughter I’ve waited for.
I felt something today, something undeniable, something beyond, with peach in my mouth and my breath mingling with Larissa’s. I want to trust it and let understanding unfurl. I have to trust it, because if I don’t, the sheer terror of it will be more than I can handle.
Besides. Everyone here seems to be bursting with secrets. Maybe I get one that’s for me.
“Okay,” I say. “If you like.”
“Thanks,” she says again, and yawns, and it’s contagious, and I yawn too, and we both laugh. “Goodnight, Aoife who’s new.”
“Goodnight, Myri who I’m not supposed to talk to.” I’m a few steps out onto the crunching olive leaves when she calls out.
“Have you been dreaming?”
“… How do you mean?” A breeze ripples across my skin, too warm to raise gooseflesh.
“Dreaming. Or seeing glimpses, visions. Of the cave.” There’s a sudden tremble in her voice. “It opens, and you go inside, and … and it’s just dark in there, complete dark, and the dark is smiling, all sleepy and well-fed—”
Terror grips me by the scruff of the neck, and the grove whirls around me.
“There’s no cave,” I manage. “I searched the whole cove. There’s nothing there.”
“You are dreaming,” she says grimly, then: “I’m sorry.”
“What—”
Her footsteps recede. Nothing but insect-spangled silence.
Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m awake, fear rendering everything unreal; maybe I’m wrapped in sheets, dreaming uneasy of walking in the cove.
My toes sink into the pebbles and sand, cooled by the night air. I keep my eyes on the tree line, on the ocean, on the sand; I look up at the cliffs only when I’m halfway across the beach, like I might surprise the cave into existing.
Nothing.
Nothing, but even as the mingled relief and disappointment and embarrassment descend, something else does, too. That now-familiar thinning of the air, that sensation like approaching thunder, that new vividness to every color and sharpness to every shadow.
New instincts stir in me. I find all my fear, my worries about what’s going on with Myri, my nerves that my new friendships will crumble, my terror at tumbling into the unknown. Like Larissa taught me earlier, I close my eyes, and I offer it all up.
And just like before, the tension unspools, loosening, no longer mine. Like something is, so tenderly, easing the doubt out of me. Like sucking the juice from a ripe fruit. I savor it for a moment, the new calm, the intimacy, the communion with something vast and delighted. Then I open my eyes.
The sickle moon turns the cliffs to jagged pearl, so I see it clearly, where it evidently was not just a few moments ago.
The gash of dark. The mouth of a cave.
I flinch; horror and fascination and temptation swoop down; like a frightened child, I squeeze my eyes closed again.
When I open them, the cave is gone, like a wound healed over.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A COLLECTION
ANOTHER MORNING. THIRD, OR FOURTH? I SHOULD BE COUNTING. I SHOULD care, about things like time, or the world outside. This morning, I am not going to care.
Later, I’ll let myself be fearful, curious, return to wondering about Elise, the mysterious Myri, visions that might not be dreams, about a presence that takes my feelings when I offer them. But this morning, Oscar’s handing me coffee and ruffling my hair, and I’m scraping butter onto still-warm bread and the sky’s alarmingly blue, washed clean. Some of the calm that came across me in my dream last night—or on the beach, if that really happened—lingers, cool and soothing.
A warm breeze sends puffs of flour and spices through the air, and disrupts Kiera, who’s hesitating in the doorway, eyeing the kitchen with what can’t be nervousness. She makes a beeline for me, and something that is definitely nervousness stirs in my sternum.
She pulls up short in front of me, and we both open our mouths to say something like, Good morning, or Nice bread isn’t it, or I like your hair today, or one of a million normal things that normal people say to greet each other in the morning. I cannot remember a single word in the English language.
Kiera’s mouth opens and closes, and she finds something to say, or rather, to blurt. “Do you know what was on this land before the farmhouse?”
Okay, I’ll admit, this is more fun than “good morning.” “Ooh, no, what?”
We made those grins on each other’s faces, didn’t we? That was us. She takes my enthusiasm and redoubles it, apparently relieved. “A burned-out monastery! Completely destroyed!”
She could tell me anything, and I’d feel just as thrilled as this. “Really? That’s cool!”
“Yeah! Let me show you my collection!” There’s a momentum, like she didn’t plan any of this but she’s in it now. She grabs my hand in this unthinking touch that I decide not to panic about. Her hand’s marked with illegible scribbles.
I look down at the hand and panic about it, and she pulls away so I panic about that, too, but it all leaves me so breathless that I follow her. Feels like she’s some fairy-tale imp sent to show me more hidden doorways; feels so good I don’t bother to question who or what might have sent her.
The library’s upstairs, behind richly colored stained-glass doors. Inside, it’s wood and glass and iron, splashed with carpets in vivid blues and starry white, a vaulted whitewashed ceiling painted with black stars. I turn in a circle, caught up in wonder.
The bookshelves are stacked high. I’ve never read much; Craig scoffed when he found me with a novel and quizzed me to trip me up when I tried nonfiction. But I could sit here for hours, read every word, letting them change me.
