Chapter Fifty-One. Daye
Daye
On Sunday evening Rory went back to the city, leaving behind wilting grass braids on the coffee table, dishes in the sink, and Daye, standing quietly in the foyer.
The house echoed without him, and Daye spent the evening creeping silently from room to room.
Her voice felt like a monster that might waken.
It kept creeping into her breaths, every deep exhalation accompanied by an aah, an ohhh, a faint whistle when she tried to cage the sound in.
She flinched every time.
Every inadvertent sound was a reminder that she hadn’t imagined the last couple of days.
That Rory really did put parts of a bird in her body.
That over the span of three days, Rory had lied to her again and again.
It felt like her world was crumbling, and every sound-laden exhale chipped off a little bit more of it.
There was no anger in her. Even the sadness had drained away, leaving behind only a hollow sort of longing for the Rory she had before this weekend, the Rory of a few years ago.
She wanted him back.
She went upstairs and climbed into bed. The same bed Rory had occupied when he occupied this home: their two twin mattresses shoved messily together, the gap always widening overnight so that if they weren’t careful, one of them found themselves half swallowed by the crack.
When Rory was home, that is. Now she had acres of bed, miles to drown in.
Her throat kept feeling too full and too rough.
It reminded her of the first time Rory had entered her, the feeling of flesh parting and rubbing in strange, foreign ways.
Only then there was that incredible heat, like liquid sunlight sinking into her skin; and there was Rory’s smile, a tender half-moon above her; his voice whispering in her ear how much he loved her, how wonderful she was, how long he’d wanted this, that she was his and he was hers.
And then the pleasure came, cresting in wave after wave and sinking everything else.
Now all she had was this dirty, exposed feeling.
A raggedness in her throat. A voice she could barely stand to use.
It felt like being sick, but unlike any sickness she knew.
There was no slow weakening, no chill stealing into her branch-bones.
Only this: again and again Daye thought about getting up from the bed, and again and again she turned on her side and closed her eyes.
She knew it was time for her to acknowledge this: Rory was never coming back home.
And this: when Rory said she should be independent of him, what he meant was that he should be independent of her.
It left her gasping. She was created for Rory. For ten years, he had been the epicenter of her. She didn’t know how to untangle him from herself. She didn’t know if she could. Did she even want to?
Downstairs, doors opened and closed as Mrs. Matthews moved through the house.
Voices drifted up through the open door.
It took Daye a while to recognize them. To realize: They belonged to Mrs. Matthews and her nephew, Owen.
For a moment Daye could all but see two looming Owens, layered one atop the other: The first holding her wrist in the village, ten years back.
The second reaching for her, two winters ago, by the gate downstairs.
Both with their eyes tracking across her skin as if they could peel it away.
Daye drew in a shuddering breath. Remembering how that look had unsettled her then, those first times she saw it. How used she was to it now.
The front door opened and closed, the voices growing farther away, disappearing down the road. I could have talked to Owen now, she thought. I could talk to anyone. Then she turned in the bed and closed her eyes.
Rain torrented. It pooled by the open window, soaking the carpet.
A droplet sprayed her cheek, but she simply pulled the blanket higher.
Later, gray, watery sunlight washed in. Daye turned over and went back to sleep.
She was empty, paper-cutting thin. The sunset light could shine through her.
She could fall between the threads of the sheet and never be found again.
Eventually, she got up. She didn’t want to leave the bed. It was a struggle to even sit up—the blankets kept twining around her legs and arms like vines, sucking her back in. But Rory had asked her to practice, so here she was.
Mrs. Matthews was long gone, not to return until Friday.
Still, Daye moved gingerly through the house.
She was careful not to look at the shed as she crossed the back garden, but movement kept flickering at the corner of her eye, the sound of scrabbling ever-present.
She couldn’t help but imagine herself as one of them, circling the house like she was beating on an invisible window.
The thought made her shiver. She walked faster.
The wilted piles of her transition flora still littered the clearing, gray and decaying all these days later.
Near the clearing’s edge, something glinted silver in the sunlight.
A knife, Daye saw when she crouched next to it.
Nestled in the undergrowth, like a branch blown from a strange, faraway tree. And beside it—
It was mostly hidden behind the tree trunk.
Like it was stashed there for later, and then forgotten.
At first glance, it looked like it was sleeping.
That made the horror of it feel strangely muted, like a misplaced item she’d accidentally come across on her way elsewhere.
The blue and yellow of its feathers were bright and pristine, incongruous against the damp browns and reds of the clearing.
It took her a moment to see the thick line of ants stretching from it. The dark red seeping into its feathers. It was only when she righted the cage—its bars dented and scratched—that she saw the gaping wound where the throat had been.
The pain in her chest was a fast-plunging sensation. She groped for anger, for sadness, but all she could find was an open-ended desolation, a horror edged with a barren sort of grief.
Daye unlatched the cage door. Reaching inside, she smoothed her finger over the bird’s feathers, avoiding the patches of red crusted on its breast. She couldn’t help but imagine it: Rory’s hand closing around the bird.
The slash of the knife. And her, lying there, her own throat splayed open.
Blood soaking into her branch-bones, dripping into the cavity of her chest. The spasming twitch of a wing, growing still.
And then she closed her eyes and tried to think of nothing at all.
Her breath burned in her throat, as sharp as the knife in the grass beside her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she signed against the small body, her fingers shaking almost too much to form words. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
She wished she could weep. Instead, all she could do was shake.
Night fell. She thought about going back to the house. To the too-big bed, smelling of Rory and sex. To the endless sound of talons, clicking restlessly against glass outside.
She turned around and climbed into the fortress. Curled on the winter blanket she always kept there.
In the morning birds crowded around her, hoping for offerings, as Daye wove flowers, the miniature torso Rory had asked her to make slowly taking shape under her hands.
She kept her eyes trained on her fingers. She couldn’t feel anger, but she could still feel shame.
Geese wheeled overhead like stars on their way to the lake. The forest slowly blazed around her, teetering on the edge between ripe and dead. Again, she thought about going back to the house. Again, she didn’t. Just a little while more, she told herself. Just a few more days.
Rory came back on Friday evening, a whirlwind of movement: sex and lessons and sex again. He held his smile like a shield before him, and tickled her until she squirmed and laughed. “Getting to hear you laugh, it makes everything worth it,” he said, absently rubbing his hands, his gaze faraway.
Daye bent her head to the new pattern Rory was teaching her, but her eyes kept straying to the point between the trees where the ground was soft and bare, her fingers stilling mid-movement again and again, until Rory took the braid from her hands and pressed his lips to hers.
By Sunday afternoon, he was gone again.
That evening, Daye spent an hour tucking everything into place.
Then she closed the door behind her and went to the fortress.
It was better there. The rough wooden walls didn’t echo the sound of her breaths.
There were no empty rooms to shout Rory’s absence at her, or to remind her what it meant.
She curled in her winter blanket, which smelled only of dust, sap, and pine. At night, owls hooted her to sleep.
She started staying in the fortress whenever Rory was gone. Slowly, their room emptied of her things—the extra sweaters, her rain boots, her favorite heart-shaped shell.
Rory never seemed to notice.