Chapter Seventeen. Daye
Daye
Once, four years before, a snowstorm had crept in during the night.
Daye was sleeping in the fortress, as she did every winter, while Rory slept in the house, in his bed.
By morning the world was transformed into a muffled landscape—the trees into amorphous white shapes, the streams into blue-white roads.
There was nothing but a steep, window-speckled lump where the house used to be, a thin ribbon of smoke trailing from the snow-capped chimney. And the snow kept falling.
The storm had raged for three days. It piled snow too fast to shovel, roared too loud to hear Rory’s words through the windowpane, blew too harsh to do anything but wait for it to end.
For three days Rory and Daye were reduced to waving at each other through the frosted windows, Daye’s black hair snowed-white, Rory little more than a vague, dejected outline.
Daye tried to tell herself that Rory’s visit to the city was the same. That Rory was just … snowed in. Close, but out of sight. And that, just like with that storm, all she needed to do was wait, and soon Rory would be there again, like he had never left.
Still, the days of his absence seemed to stretch on forever, vast enough to drown in, no matter how many small tasks and adventures Daye crammed into them.
She collected all the late blackberries and climbed every tree in the southern grove.
She polished and organized their collections—rocks, shells, pressed flowers, and strangely shaped acorns.
She played with the bunnies in the meadow, lean and long-limbed now that summer was over.
At night she slept in Rory’s bed. The pillow smelled like him, and with her eyes closed, she could almost imagine that he was there. She knew he wouldn’t mind.
On the last morning, Daye woke up extra early. She smoothed down Rory’s covers, and then her own. Arranged the bowl of berries just so. And then she sat down on the front steps and waited for Rory to return. She had to pin her hands between her knees to keep them from shaking, only a little.
All she needed to do was wait, she told herself. And then these endless days would be over and gone, like they never happened at all.
The sun was hanging low on the horizon, slouching to the ground as if it was too tired to hold itself, when Rory finally pushed through the gate.
His arms immediately closed around Daye, gathering her to him and holding her close.
Daye laid her cheek on his shoulder, basking in his nearness.
Slowly, the almost imperceptible shake in her hands stopped, the hunch in her shoulders loosened and dropped. Rory was back, here, with her.
In their room, Rory flopped on the bed, shoes haphazardly shoved off, and scooted to the side, making space for her to sit beside him as he told her about the streets, the people, the cakes, how very vast everything was.
“And the library, you wouldn’t believe how big it is,” he was saying, hands gesticulating widely. His lips, stained blackberry-purple, slackened in something close to awe. “It would take months just to go over the books’ names.”
‘But you found everything you wanted, right?’ she asked.
Rory popped another berry in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
“I don’t know. I spent most of the time just trying to understand what was there; I barely got to actually reading anything.
I managed to convince Wynne to let me borrow these.
” He wiped his fingers carefully on the bedsheets before reaching into his bag and pulling out three books.
“Mrs. Finnebone—the librarian there—said they are the ‘fundamentals.’ ” He smiled ruefully.
“Actually, she said it about something like twenty books, but Wynne only agreed to let me borrow three, and even that only after I promised to bring them back in a month.”
Rory’s words landed inside Daye like an avalanche, a slow distant thing at first, then growing, spreading, picking up speed, until all she could hear was their roar.
‘Wait.’ She gestured urgently, knocking her knee against Rory’s when he didn’t look up fast enough. ‘Wait, go back? You’re going again?’ She searched his eyes, waiting to see him registering the mistake.
“I have to, Daye. I had no idea how many books there were or how long it’ll take me just to figure out where to start.
I barely got anything done. It’ll probably take months to find what I’m looking for.
” There was a spark in his eyes as he said it, like it was a good thing.
Like he wanted to spend months searching.
‘Find what?’
“The way to make it so you won’t fall apart.” Rory said it so simply, like it was obvious.
Daye felt dizzy. It didn’t seem real when he said it all those weeks ago—not with summer pulsing in her veins and Rory shrugging self-deprecatingly.
But now? She tried to imagine it, how it would feel not to fall apart.
Would she stop feeling the ebb and flow of the seasons, the slow surge of rot twining through her branch-bones?
Who would she be without it? Would she still be herself?
‘Do you really think that’s possible?’
“It must be.” Rory wrapped a palm around her knee, berry-stained fingers leaving behind five purple shadows.
“There are types of constructs that live for dozens of years without any intervention. There must be a way for you to do so, too,” he said, voice fierce.
“And the answer must be in one of these books. I just need to find it.”
For a moment she fumbled for words, searching for the gestures that would encompass the apprehension simmering in her chest or the tremor in her hands or the way the word months tolled in her head.
But then she looked up, meeting Rory’s eyes, and all the words she’d scraped up fled, leaving her hands empty and still.
Because Rory was still grinning at her, smile berry-stained and wide. He looked happy, happier than he’d been for months now. The shadows under his eyes were finally gone, for the first time since last fall.
So Daye took a deep breath, and smiled back.
But long after Rory fell asleep, Daye lay in bed, staring at the window, listening to the low hum of dread flaring inside her. Every month. Rory would go away every month. Leaving behind him a trail of days flapping loose.
She could already feel the hours on the front steps piling on her, an endless, suffocating weight.