Chapter Seventy-One. Daye
Daye
September melted into October. Beyond the border, leaves were yellowing. Each day, Daye walked the border line, watching them drift downward, out of reach. Each night, she imagined stepping over it, how the leaves would crunch. The exact feel of them under her heels.
On the other side of the border, the leaves kept darkening.
Yellow faded into orange. Orange into red.
The colors so much bolder than the endless pastels around her.
A sunset that broke and splashed between the trees, violent and vivid and alive; so different from the gentle timidity, the endless egg-yolk softness of spring.
Standing with her toes against the border, Daye watched the leaves rustle as if whispering behind cupped hands. She wanted nothing more than to lay her ear against them and listen until their secrets became hers.
A gust of wind surged forward, stretching cool fingers against her cheek.
The wind swirled again, stronger, louder.
Plucking a single red leaf and carrying it, twisting and tumbling, just past the border of spring.
Daye crouched and picked it up, tracing the raised veins, the curling edges, the way it shaded from bright red to deep, almost purple.
A small piece of a different season, clutched in her hand.
A piece of a different season.
Wait.
Frantically, Daye scoured the borderland near her, collecting every autumn leaf she could find.
She spotted a patch of cyclamens just past the border and, lying on her side, reached over and plucked as many as she could before her skin started to split and seep.
By the time the sun started descending, she had twelve leaves in brilliant colors, two acorns—one missing its jaunty cap—and a dozen or so soft, supple stems crowned with purple blossoms. It’s not a lot, Daye thought, and not an ideal combination. But it should be enough for a try.
She unwove her left forearm, gently pulling free bruised flowers and crisp-green vines.
In their place, Daye twined the flora she’d collected, careful not to crack the leaves against the acorns or pluck the flower petals as she wove them into herself.
Now, a smooth patch of pale skin circled her forearm.
It contrasted with the tanned skin surrounding it, like a bracelet slipped onto her wrist.
Okay. Not letting herself hesitate, Daye plunged her arm past the border.
She waited thirty seconds, fifty, a minute.
The fatigue swept through her, as it always did, but it was a muffled sort of weariness.
She didn’t know if it meant that something was different, that something was working, or if it was only the loud beat of her heart drowning everything else.
She counted in her head. Another thirty seconds.
Another minute. Soft green spots spread on the back of her hand, their appearance still startling all these months later.
A soft cracking sound came from her wrist. And still, that band of pale skin remained smooth and supple, untouched.
It worked.
Daye pulled her hand back, groaning in relief as the splits in her skin began to seal. Her wrist was another matter—she would have to replace that. But still—
She gazed at the pale expanse of her forearm, cradling the soft skin in her other hand. It worked.
Daye blew out the breath she’d been holding and collapsed on her back, exhausted with the sheer relief of it. Her exhale turned into a chuckle, and then into a full-blown laugh. She had a way out. She had a way out. All she needed was some careful planning, and then—
With a soft, wet sound, the autumn-pale skin split open, a tracery of cracks twisting outward until they reached the edges of her spring skin. Drawing a sharp breath through her teeth, Daye sat up and unwound the patch of autumn before it could disintegrate any further.
By the time she’d rewoven her arm back into springtime, the last of the daylight had faded, and Daye was left to trudge her way back to the fortress by the light of the moon. Tomorrow, she promised herself, her steps light. Tomorrow, I’ll work it out.
Nothing Daye tried worked. She spent hours collecting every piece of autumn foliage that blew past the border.
At first, it was slow going, and most of her finds were dry and cracking, barely fit for weaving.
But soon, a couple of blackbirds grew curious enough to join her.
After that, the collecting went quicker, the blackbirds depositing leaf after leaf in her lap until Daye had a pile big enough to experiment with.
So big that it might just be enough to reweave …
everything, if only she could figure out how.
That was when the problems began.
She simply wasn’t fast enough. No sooner had she finished weaving her whole leg into autumn than her ankle began splitting, followed by her shin, her knee, her thigh; pale skin growing yielding-soft and dappled, a delayed wave following the path of her hands.
No matter what she tried, it never worked.
The spring parts of her kept withering once in autumn, and any autumn part she wove into herself withered in minutes while in the range of spring.
She tried everything. Weaving only her hands into autumn.
Weaving only her feet. For a few hours, she thought the secret was weaving herself on the other side, inching her body past the border, inch by inch.
None of it worked. She never managed to weave enough autumn into herself.
After three frantic days, Daye let the last of the autumn foliage slip between her fingers and slumped next to the border.
Her arm was half-woven, her shin fissuring with autumn stranded in spring.
Her shoulders shook with defeat. It wasn’t going to happen.
No matter how hard she worked, how much she pushed herself, she couldn’t outpace the gap between autumn and spring.
And now, lying on the ground, she couldn’t find a reason to get up.
Daye remained where she lay. The sun set.
Across the border, an autumn downpour drummed on the yellow leaves, sending the scent of camphor and leaf litter her way.
The droplets slid across the border line, transforming into a soft spring patter that beaded in her hair.
Puddles formed around her, soaking into her dress, into her unraveled arm, into the soft, seeping cracks in her autumn-pale skin.
She remained there, staring into the darkness.
Trying to imagine how it would feel: To get up, to take one step, a second, a third.
To walk into autumn and never come back.
The rain on the autumn side deepened into a deluge.
Small rivers started snaking through the underbrush, twining around Daye’s body.
They carried with them Daye’s foot, broken at the fault line where autumn flesh met spring skin.
Daye didn’t move. She’d make herself a new one.
Or she wouldn’t. For now, it was enough just to lie here, in this autumnal rain, imagining taking that single step.
It might have been easier, she thought, if she believed that she’d still cross the border someday.
If she believed that, as Rory said, they’d figure it out when he returned.
That Rory would simply spool back the border if she asked.
Or that the coming of spring beyond this bubble, just months away, would cause the border to wink out of existence, setting her free.
She didn’t.
Deep down, she knew that, if not now, she would never leave this spring-covered land.
Not if Rory had any say. Lashed down with his words or with a different season, the outcome would be the same.
She knew it like she knew that Rory would never come back for good from the city.
Like she knew that his absences would continue to lengthen while she remained tucked here, alone, like an unopened box of sweets.
She knew it deeply, intrinsically, undeniably.
A knowledge that curled in her leaf-guts.
She knew there would be no escape.
So Daye lay there, and stared, and let the scent of autumn envelop her as her last hope of escaping washed away. Watched through rain-dampened lashes as droplets slid between red leaves, just on the other side of the border, forever out of reach.