Chapter Fifteen. Daye
Daye
“Summer is almost over.”
Rory’s voice was startlingly loud in the morning hush, catching Daye mid-movement, her arms extended over her head, the remnants of a yawn still rounding her lips.
The light fell softly across the fort of coffee cups and books Rory had erected overnight on the kitchen table, smudging dark hollows under his eyes and cheeks.
Rory looked down at his notes, then up again, his eyes finding hers. “I was thinking about trying something a bit different this time. Nothing drastic. Just different kinds of herbs and flowers.” He smiled at her crookedly. “Is that okay?”
Daye finished stretching. It was early enough that the smell of nighttime still lingered in the kitchen, among the scents of coffee and paper and bread. Early enough for her thoughts to still feel sleep-heavy, almost too soft and tangled for the concise weight of words.
‘What are the new things supposed to do?’ she signed, plopping into the chair beside him, fingers plucking the words morning-slow.
“Ideally? Give you a few more weeks until you need to transition. In reality? I don’t know. Make you a bit stronger?”
‘Weeks? Do you really think that’s possible?
’ It didn’t sound right. No, it was more than that.
When Daye tried to imagine her summer self marooned weeks into autumn, all she could feel was frangible skin and relentless chill and the taste of leaf dust on her tongue and the world closing, shrinking, collapsing—
“I don’t know,” Rory’s words cut into her thoughts.
“Probably not. At least, not with the things I have here. It’s more like a first step in that direction, I hope.
” Another shrug. Another crook of his lips.
Only this smile was tenser. He cleared his throat.
“Which actually brings me to the other thing I wanted to talk to you about.”
‘What?’
Rory fussed with the stack of books before him. “I was thinking that maybe, after the transition, if everything goes right, I’ll go visit Wynne for a few days?” He kept his eyes on the books, very carefully not looking up.
Daye froze. Go away? Rory had never been away.
‘Why?’
Rory tapped the stack. “The new things I was talking about? These are things I managed to get out of these books. But I read them all backward and forward. Even this one”—he pulled out a heavy book with a faded red cover—“which is honestly not even relevant, and the few things in it that are relevant are straight-up wrong.” He looked up at her.
“So here I have six, more like five and a half, books that are even remotely relevant to all of this. Wynne says that in the library there are four shelves. Four shelves. Just on construction work. Can you imagine what I might learn?”
‘But why do you need to learn anything? You already know how to do the transition by yourself. You did it this spring and this summer …’ Daye trailed off, her hands balling into fists. Her fingers were shaking slightly, making her words feel like ungainly creatures, unsteady on their feet.
“There’s so much I still don’t understand. About any of it. I know how to do the transition, but I don’t know why any of that works. And”—he swallowed—“if there’s any chance that I can prevent what happened last autumn from happening again, I have to at least try.”
‘But,’ Daye gestured, ‘but to go away?’
“It’ll just be for a few days. Three. Four at most. I’ll be back before we know it.
And I’ll get some new books for us while I’m there, something we haven’t read a million times.
” He tried for a teasing smile, but his hands fisted on the books before him, knuckles white.
“And right after the transition is the safest time to go, so there’s nothing to worry about.
You’ll be fine.” She wasn’t sure if he was saying it to her or to himself.
Daye’s thoughts were whirling. They had never, not once, been apart for that long.
Even in the deepest depths of winter, when Daye couldn’t stay in the house and Rory couldn’t come out, they had never been more than a handful of miles apart.
Daye knew it was monumental, important in a new, sharp way, but her feelings were a muffled, distant thing, only just beginning to bud.
In summer, it was always hard to unfurl her thoughts completely.
The season was always pushing at her to move, to do, to run.
When the time came, Daye hugged Rory in the doorway. Her cheek rested against his, thanks to the new inches of height she’d gained three days before. She waved goodbye from the front gate and kept waving until Rory was out of sight.
Now, autumn eloquent, words bloomed in her readily, ready to fall.
She could say Please, don’t go. Or, Take me with you.
Or, I don’t mind the transitions that much, now that it’s you.
But all these words remained on the still tips of her fingers, unshed.
And now Rory was a disappearing wisp of an outline, and Daye’s hands hung at her sides, amorphous and deflated. What was she to do with them now?
What was she supposed to do?