Chapter Sixty-Five. Daye
Daye
“Let’s go to the lake.”
The words seemed to echo, snagged on some unseen cord, then dissipated into the air.
Rory was already taking his bathing suit out of the closet, not waiting for her reply.
Mechanically, Daye slid her legs into her bathing suit.
The sky outside was endlessly blue. Relentlessly blue.
Bunnies flopped in the sun. Forget-me-nots nodded at the edge of the wood.
It was a perfect spring day. She had been living it for months now.
At the dock, Rory heaved himself up from the water, eyes tracking her.
There was a familiar heat in them. This, too, Daye had lived again and again.
This lake, this perfect spring day, the dock warm under her back, Rory warm above her.
Daye kept swimming, circles growing wider and wider.
She was almost to the far shore now. The colors looked different there.
Gold and green, not a soft pink to be seen.
The light, too, seemed different. Pale yellow under a pale-blue sky, etching harsh, precise shadows under every rock, every shell.
Summer.
Daye swam harder. On the other side of the lake, Rory shouted something, but the water rushing past her ears muted his words, rendering them harmless.
She kept swimming. Water splashed behind her as Rory started following.
She didn’t care. She just needed to reach it, touch it.
She was close enough that she could see the mosquitoes buzzing on the shore; feel the breeze, bringing with it the scent of sun-scorched earth and dried grass.
Summer. Summer, summer, summer. She yearned for it with her whole body, every part of her straining toward it.
The heat, the dryness, the sun-drenched days, the change. She had been spring for so, so long.
“Daye!” Rory called behind her. He was gaining fast, but her legs had already found the bottom, and she was climbing onto the shore, breathing summer air, feeling summer gnats batting against her skin.
The mud was warm under her bare feet. Mosquitoes hummed in her ears.
She rushed forward, up the slight incline.
Before her, summer fields stretched as far as the eye could see, gold and green under the noon sun.
A laugh rolled out of her, a tangle of joy and longing and the sheer relief of having a thirst quenched. Summer, now, here.
Behind her, Rory was splashing closer to shore. Daye ran forward between the stalks. The dry shafts grated against her shins, her thighs. Daye didn’t care. She ran harder, faster, breathing in the dust, the heat, the heaviness of the air.
And then she stumbled.
She managed to catch herself on hands and knees, but only just. She paused for a moment, studying the arms braced beneath her.
Blue and purple spots were climbing up her wrists, like a field of bluebells bursting into bloom.
A tracery of cracks was webbing through her skin.
Not the dry fissures she knew, but strange, discolored splits, seeping clear, resinous liquid that mingled with the lake water still beading on her arms.
She tried to get up, but her limbs wouldn’t respond.
What?
She fell to her side. The wheat stalks reached above her, obscuring the sky.
And then Rory’s arms were under her, picking her up.
His fingers pressing into her skin, or maybe it was her skin giving way.
Rory’s voice chanting no, no, no as he held her against him and ran.
In seconds he was wading into the lake, moving forward until the water lapped against the backs of Daye’s legs.
No, Daye wanted to cry out, take me back to summer, but the splits in her skin were smoothing out before her eyes, the discoloration disappearing with every step Rory took.
By the time the water reached her chest, there was no trace of this strange new withering left.
Daye pushed away from Rory, finding her legs strong and whole beneath her. Rory’s eyes were round with terror. His hands, still reaching toward her, sprayed water droplets as they shook.
“What … what just happened?” she asked.
“I— I don’t—” He shuddered. Opened his mouth. Swallowed. Tried again. “It must have been the addition of the syrinx. It really did change the way the withering works. Made it more like flesh. I thought I just imagined it. That it was because I was the one watching, instead—”
Daye swallowed hard. So it was different—the withering, her body, the mold and softness inside her. It really did change. Because of the syrinx Rory had woven into her throat. Another change, she thought, another change Rory made in her body. It never seemed to end. But—
“Why was the withering happening?”
“I thought you knew, Daye. I swear, I thought you understood. Are you okay? Is it still—”
“Rory,” she cut him off. “What happened there?”
“You were …” he shuddered. “You were about to fall apart. Because out there—” He pointed, then looked at his hand. Whatever he saw there made him shudder again, hard, and thrust his hands into the water. “Out there, you’re out of season.”
“What are you saying?” It couldn’t be. He’d said it wouldn’t affect her directly. That it wouldn’t change anything for her. He’d promised.
Rory opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. His hands kept shaking, kept spraying water in soft tinkling sounds.
“Are you … are you saying that I’m trapped here, in spring? Actually trapped? That I’ll fall apart if I go out?”
She had to be wrong. Rory wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t. There was no way that something meant to keep her safe would make her fall apart.
Rory’s eyes, still wide with fear, were all the confirmation she needed.