Chapter Ten #2
“I don’t know how to read it,” Theodore continues, “but I visited Madame Delonir yesterday—she teaches at the schoolhouse—and she played it for me.” His cheeks burn a bright red when I turn to him, but his grin only widens in the face of my surprise.
“It was beautiful. She said whoever wrote it must have been a wonderful composer. That she’d never seen anything so lovely written by someone who wasn’t a master. I hope you don’t mind.”
Do I mind? Fuzzy memories dance in the corners of my vision, shaped like small crowds and intimate parties, my fingers on keys and my voice echoing each note. There is an old anxiety there, buried deep in the bones of my hands, that trembles at the idea of someone else hearing my music.
And yet… that old fear does not seem to apply to Theodore. The thought of him hearing one of my songs, even if I am not the one to play it, stirs an unfamiliar excitement in my chest, a buzzing in my fingertips, for I fear it might be the closest he will ever come to hearing me.
Would Azizi think it beautiful as well? Would she have that same look of fascinated excitement on her face that Theodore does now?
Would she play it herself, I wonder? I have never seen her so much as touch an instrument, but she is clearly educated in the arts and comes from a wealthy family.
She has the fingers for the pianoforte—long and graceful, dexterous.
“I wish I could play it for you,” Theodore says with a sad little smile. “I asked Madame Delonir, but her lessons cost too much, and I’m afraid I wouldn’t have time anyway. The village keeps me busy with work when I’m not at my father’s shop or up here.”
I do not like this new smile on his face. Small and straight and just a little bit anguished. It looks too comfortable there, too familiar. Like a knit cap, aged and full of holes from being worn too often.
I raise my fingers to brush across his lips, and though I cannot feel him, he shivers beneath my touch.
“You’re cold,” he answers the question I do not ask. His sad smile does not go away, so I brush it again. He blinks, curious, before realization tapers in his gaze. “Oh—no, I don’t mind it. The work, I mean. Is that what worries you?”
The work only worries me because it makes him look sad. Settled, but not content. More like he is so used to the way his life is that he sees no reason to argue the distaste he may hold for it.
But I have no way to tell him this, so I simply nod.
Theodore shrugs, tugging lightly at one of the curls tucked behind his ear.
“I really don’t mind. It keeps me busy and keeps others from being worried about me getting into trouble.
I—” His eyes skitter away, but he does not pull away from my touch, if it could be called that.
“Father Thompson does not like me much, and the others in my village… they think I’m strange.
Doing work for them usually keeps anyone from looking at me too closely, you know?
It keeps me… unseen, I guess, which isn’t so bad a thing to be sometimes. ”
Unseen.
It’s a strange want to have, I think. I have been unseen for so long that it settles over my shoulders like a familiar cloak.
I fear it is all that I have ever known, even before my death.
While I do not know what my life was like before the water and the wallpaper and the darkness, I cannot imagine ever having wanted to be unseen. It sounds sad. Lonely.
And I so desperately do not want to be alone.
Water bubbles beneath my skin, shifting and receding with the waning of the moon. My hand drops to my side. I glance at the painting on the wall and wonder if the woman in it wanted to be seen as well.
Theodore visits me often in the next few days, regardless of the fact that Azizi has yet to return from the city. With Azizi gone, he has been staying later in the night than usual, tucked up in one of my chairs in the music room or in front of the fire in one of the parlor rooms downstairs.
I do not mind. In fact, I am glad for it. The more Theodore visits—the more he speaks to me—the easier I find it to not fade away. To feel real again.
And he does not seem to mind my lack of voice. I cannot remember if I had one before my death, but Theodore seems to understand me well enough now and enjoys making a game of trying to interpret me on the occasion he doesn't.
He makes up for my lack of speaking with his own, anyhow.
Telling stories about his life in the village and about the fictional tales he writes in his journal.
I get the idea that not many people care to listen to him at home, that he's unused to having someone so attentive and interested.
Once he begins, he rarely stops until he is falling asleep or heading back home. It's rather adorable.
I'm unsure if my home has ever heard so much conversation before, but I feel it's all the lighter for it. The lamps burn brighter than usual. The floors do not creak so often. Even the wallpaper seems to quiet when Theodore is speaking. As if the house itself is listening just as intently as I am.
"I've met you once before, you know?" he says quietly one night as we are sitting side-by-side on the floor of the parlor.
I cannot feel the heat of the fire before us, but it's warmed Theodore's skin enough to leave a dusting of red across his cheeks, distracting enough that it takes me a moment to register his words.
My head snaps up in shock, something in my chest squeezing tightly when he rests his cheek on his knee to stare at me.
"Or, I suppose it would be more accurate to say I have seen you before.
When I was a child." A melancholy smile presses into his lips, his fingers fiddling with the edges of his too-big sleeves.
"I wasn't sure it was you at first, actually.
It's been so long, and that day… well, it's not one I really care to remember, if I can help it.
You visited my mother the day she died, and you sang to her. "
His mother? I had suspected she was gone, since Theodore has only ever mentioned his father before, but to know she had died when he was so young. To know I had been there…
Why had I been there?
"I thought you were an angel," the boy continues. "You just appeared in her room, and you were so beautiful, how could you be anything else?"
The idea of me being an angel is almost laughable, but I do not argue it, too desperate for more information, too desperate to know. I touch my fingertips to my throat, parting my lips just enough to get the point across without releasing a flood of water with it.
Theodore nods like he understands. "Yes, you sang to her.
I think it eased some of her pain there at the end.
The doctor said she died peacefully, and I always thought it was because of you.
That maybe God sent you as a mercy. I still hear your song sometimes, carried along the wind at night. It's beautiful."
Is it? I never remember my singing. I know I do—Theodore has mentioned the rumors and the stories in his little village—but whenever I reach for that song inside me, I cannot find it.
What must it sound like to him? Is it one of the songs penned in the manuscript he has taken to carrying with him?
Is it something new that I cannot recall? Is it even my song to begin with?
Theodore hums a bit under his breath, mimicking a few scattered notes and the hint of a melody before he sighs and turns back to the fire.
"I suppose I know now that you're not an angel.
I tried to tell Father Thompson I'd seen you, but he…
" The boy cuts himself off and shakes his head.
"I was convinced for a while I'd gone mad, but I think I just wanted to know that there was something else out there like me, even if you weren't real. "
I am not used to this quiet hush of hesitance the boy adopts as he speaks, his arms tightening around his legs like a frightened child as he stares at the flickering flames in the hearth.
I want to comfort him, to reach for him and tell him that it is okay, that I am real, but I do not know if the words are a lie or not.
"Have you—do you know what Azizi is?" he asks me after a long moment, tipping his head to the side so he can meet my gaze.
The sudden question has me reeling at first, but when I think about the answer, memories flicker to my mind in bursts of colour, fluttering like wings behind my eyelids, one after the other.
Azizi’s eyes glittering red beneath the candlelight, an almost primal look filling them when a stranger knocks at her door and she leads them inside.
Mr. Allard cooking for Theodore yet giving Azizi only a glass of dark liquid to sup upon, one that never sits in her cups quite the way wine is supposed to sit.
A curtain left open a crack in the early morning, a stream of sunlight spilling across the rug in the foyer as Azizi leaves her studio to rest. Her slow movements as she reaches for the light, a strange curiosity invading her tired eyes as the skin of her hand begins to crack and decay.
Do you know what she is?
I know that she is different. Different, perhaps, in the way that I am different. In the way I think Theodore is different. A sort of unreal way, existing in a world that does not fit the things that we have become.
Theodore frowns when I shake my head in denial, and I press a finger to the point of my tooth, hoping he understands.
He must, because relief smooths out his worry in an instant, his shoulders sinking with it.
“Yes, her teeth. I saw… Well, I’m still not entirely sure what I saw, but it was something monstrous, I’m sure.
Something…” He shivers, and I shift away, worried that I am making him cold.
He offers me a smile and shakes his head.
“There are stories of demons who feed on the blood of men. Of monsters who hunt the holy to create an army for the Devil. I always thought… I always hoped they were just stories. Then I saw her.”
Her. Azizi.
There is fear in his eyes when he speaks, but there is something else too. The same thing that filled him when he asked if Mr. Allard believed in ghosts and the old steward told him yes.
Something shaped a little bit like hope.
“Kolfina, can I tell you a secret?”
He says it quietly, hesitantly, like he is afraid that I will say no.
There is no reason for it, as I have no one to tell his secrets to, nor the ability to do so in the first place, but the question has a weight to it that I cannot ignore.
So I pull my knees up and rest my cheek on them in a mirror of his position, and I nod.
Theodore draws in a heavy breath as he turns back to the fire, and that hopeful look turns haunted in the face of the flames.
“For as long as I can remember, I have been hungry.” He pauses, clenches his fingers so tightly in his trousers that his freckled knuckles go pale.
“I know that is normal, of course… but it's not the same for me. Not for the things I hunger for.”
I do not have the words or voice to ask for clarification, and he does not turn to see the confused expression on my face, regardless. I think, perhaps, I do not need clarification anyhow. While I do not know exactly what Theodore craves, I am no stranger to hunger.
The walls writhe around us, the vines creeping across the floor and clawing at my skirts.
Feed us, little bird, come their cries, echoing loudly in my ears. We are so very hungry, and you are so very weak. Let us devour you whole, and you will know no misery, no pain, no longing. Feed us, and we will set you free.
“I don’t think it’s the same as her hunger,” Theodore continues, “but it’s similar, in a way. I just want… more.” He swallows thick, smacking his lips. He glances at me, brows pinched together but gaze distant. “Were you there? The other night when the man was here? Did you see—”
He cuts himself off, but it’s no terrible hardship to guess what he is asking.
While I do not know what happened that night, I do remember the man appearing on my doorstep.
I remember the gentle cadence of his voice as he apologized to Azizi and begged for shelter.
I remember her leading him into the parlor with a coy smile and dragging him out hours later as the stench of death began to seep into his skin.
“There was a man with her, in the parlor,” Theodore says when I shake my head.
“He was just sitting there, letting her feed from him, letting her eat. And I was… God help me, I was jealous of her. Jealous that she could sate that hunger inside her, but I couldn’t.
Can’t.” He takes another shattering breath, his shoulders beginning to quake with the effort to hold himself together.
“There is a demon inside me that wants to consume, and in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to let it. I—I did let it.”
Tears prickle at his eyes when Theodore looks up at me again—devastated and unmoored—and I reach out as if to brush them away. My fingers only pass through his cheek, the tear dripping off his chin to stain his sleeve, but he leans a bit into the phantom touch anyway.
“I let it feed, just a little, and it was”—his voice cracks; his breath hitches—“it was the most divine thing I’d ever tasted. And now it’s hard, so hard, to fight the beast back into its cage.”
I do not know how to tell him that I understand.
That I know the beast he speaks of, even if mine looks so terribly different.
This is why he told me the story of his mother, I realize.
Because even if he does not know what I am, even if I do not know what I am, there is no denying that we are something different, the three of us.
The house groans beneath us, and I lean closer to rest my forehead against his, imagining that I can feel his warmth against my skin, his strength beneath my hands.
His curls shift slightly with a soft breeze, his eyes sliding shut as he releases a shaky sigh.
“I am afraid,” he whispers into the ocean of me. “Afraid I cannot fight it anymore. Afraid… that I do not want to.”