Chapter Eight. Rory
Rory
It was a long, warm day. The sun was just starting to slant downward, and the fortress was still filled with a day’s worth of drowsy, wood-scented heat.
Daye was sprawled on the floor, lost in thoughts or dozing—Rory couldn’t tell from this angle.
A gloaming wind ruffled the surface of the pond.
It swept through the open window, licking a path of goose bumps across Rory’s forearms, making the new, darker hairs that had arrived that winter, following his fourteenth birthday, stand on end.
He was ostensibly reading, but his eyes kept skipping from the page to examine the trees through the window. A yellow leaf was taunting him from the next tree over. It kept rustling with the wind, catching his eye with flickers of gold.
It was not yet the end of August, but it was a strange, temperate summer, full of cool rains and unexpectedly chilly evenings, so the season turning early wasn’t out of the question.
There was nothing to panic about, Rory reminded himself.
He’d know long before it happened, and there were still three full weeks of summer.
Daye was usually fine until the very last week.
Well, mostly fine.
Another flicker of yellow at the corner of his eye.
It was impossible to tell from here if it was a summery, sun-bleached sort of yellow or an early autumn kind, and getting up to check was as good as admitting that he was obsessing over it.
Again. It was probably nothing. That leaf probably wasn’t even all that yellow.
It was only a trick of the light or something.
But—
But. But did Daye’s hair look duller today, or was it only the pond water from swimming earlier?
Disgusted, Rory slammed the book shut.
It was probably a strange way to mark the seasons—this ratcheting up of tension, the constant minute inspection of foliage status and daylight hours, the color of Daye’s hair and the sureness of her step—but Rory could no longer imagine it any other way.
A gust of wind blew through the fortress, sending a shiver up his spine. Through the window, he saw the yellow leaf drifting downward, revealing brown sun-scalded spots as it spiraled to the ground. On the floor, Daye stretched and yawned, pink tongue flashing between red lips.
Not yet, Rory thought. Not yet.
By the second week of September, it was clear that whatever happened to Daye at the turn of each season was happening now. Fast.
“We’ll go to Wynne first thing when she gets back,” he told Daye when she stumbled for the second time that day. “In the meanwhile, let’s go inside where it’s less cold, okay?”
Daye nodded and followed him. Her fingers kept worrying the ends of her hair, sliding again and again against the coarse texture.
“I’m sure she’ll be home any day now,” he assured Daye when a week had come and gone, and there was still no sign of his sister.
Twenty now, Wynne was rarely home for more than a handful of days at a time.
For the last two years she had taken to wearing long, dangly sleeves and her hair even longer.
Usually Rory had no idea what to say to her.
He vaguely knew she was still at the university, studying for some advanced degree, but their conversations always dissolved into petty squabbles and long, strained silences before he could figure out what exactly it was she was studying.
But three more days passed, and there was still no sign of Wynne.
Rory racked his brain, trying to remember when he’d seen her last. He was sure he’d seen her in June, because that was when she fixed Daye for summer.
And he was sure she’d stayed at least a week then, because he and Daye kept bumping into her in the back garden whenever they went to the fortress.
They had that nasty argument when she kept referring to Daye as it.
Or was that the spring before? No, Rory was pretty sure it was this summer.
And when he came to think about it, he was pretty sure he hadn’t seen her since.
It couldn’t be on purpose, could it?
No, he was sure it wasn’t. She was just … doing her thing for longer than usual. Which meant she was bound to come home any day now. Any minute.
But it might be better to give her a call, just in case.
The note with Wynne’s number was still hanging where she’d left it, years ago. It was yellowed and faded now, the numbers only just legible. Rory couldn’t help the slight sense of transgression as he carried it to the phone and dialed.
Wynne never picked up.
No matter how many times Rory tried calling, there was never an answer, only the faint crackle of the line, the endless ringing— the honk of a train, growing closer; a pulse, so much steadier than his own.
Was it even Wynne’s phone number? There was no way to tell. He had never tried calling her before. She could have moved, or changed it. Could have made a mistake while writing it, all those years ago. Or, a small part of Rory whispered, she might have given him the wrong one on purpose.
She wouldn’t, he told himself.
Right?
Rory spent the next afternoon digging through Wynne’s room, looking for an address book, a different number to try, anything.
It was the first time he had entered the room in years now.
It smelled very faintly of Wynne’s perfume, like a ghost of a scent, and it made him feel even more like an intruder and even more alone.
Between Wynne’s records he found a crumpled letter, full of gossip about people he didn’t know from places he’d never heard of, with Wynne’s name and an address somewhere in St. Claire scrawled across the front.
Was that where she lived when she was away?
Would she be there now? Rory had no idea, but he didn’t have any choice but to hope.
He copied out the address carefully, and the next morning he walked to the village post office through the slowly ripening fields to send Wynne a letter begging her to please, please come.
Then he had nothing to do but wait.
The first week of autumn came and went. Rory had never felt so helpless. They had never let it get so far, not since that first summer. They usually went to his sister at the first sign of brittleness, the moment Daye stumbled for the first time.
They were so far past that point now that Rory felt like he couldn’t draw a full breath.
Days passed. Daye’s steps turned hesitant.
Her golden skin faded into a sallow grayness, spiderwebbed with gossamer-thin cracks.
Rory started to wonder if the question wasn’t so much whether Wynne would come back in time as whether she’d come back at all.
During the day he banished this thought forcefully, diligently.
But when he woke up at night, gasping, from nightmares of finger-strewn grass spreading endlessly into the horizon, he couldn’t help but imagine what his life would be like if Wynne just didn’t come back.
No sister. No Daye. Alone in this house, with only the disapproving Mrs. Matthews and Mr. Benson’s stern lectures, the two of them coming and going like circling planets.
An empty, open-ended loneliness, stretching in every direction.
And then he’d give in and reach out his hand, fumbling in the dark until his palm landed on the bed across from his. Until he could feel the steady rise and fall of Daye’s chest and remind himself that it hadn’t happened yet.
That it wasn’t going to happen at all.
Another week passed. They spent most of the time in their room, Rory reading tales of adventure out loud while Daye lay on the bed, listening with her eyes half closed, fingers rubbing her favorite heart-shaped shell.
But more and more often their reading sessions sputtered into silence, both of them staring into space, daunted by the sheer passage of time.
Daye napped a lot. The colder it got, the more tired she became, and her naps grew longer and longer, as if her body was training for what was to come.
As if it was already giving over to the inevitable stillness.
They never went outside the house anymore.
Neither of them would say it—Rory hardly even allowed himself to think it—but it was in case …
in case his sister did come too late. So that when the inevitable happened, he wouldn’t have to move Daye’s body from wherever it gave out.
So there wouldn’t be a chance of … a chance that parts of her would fall away in the process and get lost. Or blow away—
Rory had to stuff his fist in his mouth and go to another room until his shoulders stopped shaking.
When he came back, he and Daye smiled at each other.
Bravely. Insistently. Daye pretending she didn’t know why he went to a different room, didn’t notice the redness of his eyes; Rory pretending he didn’t see the jerky movements of her hands, the way she shivered under the mound of blankets covering her, the pained slope of her mouth.
He could never tell if the tremors in her hands were because she was cold or because she was afraid.
“I’m sure she’ll arrive any minute now,” Rory kept saying, voice hoarse with tears, but the words rang hollow. Daye nodded anyway.
Even if it did happen, Rory told himself, fiercely, even if Wynne didn’t get there in time, Daye would still be okay. Wynne didn’t have any problem putting her back together. She’d said it was fine.
Although.
Although that was only minutes after Daye fell. Would it be the same after hours? Days? Weeks? Was there a time frame, or was it an infinite, open-ended sort of revival?
He hated himself for not asking all of it sooner. For not demanding to be shown how to—revive Daye? Change her? Take care of her? He didn’t even know the correct words to describe it, let alone do it. And now it was too late, and she was falling apart, and there was nothing he could do, and—
And then he had to go to another room again.