Chapter Seventy-Four. Daye
Daye
The skies on the other side of the border were a still blanket, sleet-gray and low.
It won’t be long now, Daye thought. Winter was just around the corner. A few weeks, maybe less.
Above her, the cloudless blue of a temperate spring stretched. All around her, trees bloomed softly. A gust of wind twirled past the border, sending a shower of white flower petals into the grass.
Daye looked down at the unraveled palm resting in her lap.
From the crease of her thumb, she pulled out a crumpled, forgotten autumn flower, a tiny throb of rot.
It was mold-flecked, the petals so soft they almost dissolved under her touch.
Hands were the hardest part of self-transitions.
There were so many delicate moving parts, so many intricate braids needed, and only one hand, one set of fingers, to shape them with.
Before, she had always put it off until she had no choice, until the rot was throbbing in the beds of her nails.
She guessed she did so now, too. At least she was almost done.
She picked up a supple green twig and tested its pliancy between finger and thumb.
“Can you hold this for me?” she asked the blue jay perched on her knee.
Her voice felt scratchy these days, frayed with disuse.
The bird took the twig in its beak, holding it steady as Daye wove it into her palm.
She tucked flower petals around it, twisting them together until a tapestry formed, blue and violet and white.
Daye patted the grass beside her, searching for one last flower.
Her fingers were just closing around a cluster of blackthorn blooms when a gust of wind from the other side of the border tore them out of her grasp.
Another surge raked through the grass, tossing her hair into her eyes.
When she managed to pat it back into place, no flowers were in sight.
She sighed.
“Did you see where the flowers went?” she asked the blue jay.
It didn’t.
“Well, I guess I’ll go and search for another one,” she told the bird, sliding a finger down its chest.
The blue jay looked at her, considering.
It hopped closer and examined her unwoven hand, a miniature garden of forget-me-nots and bluebells and pine, a few blackthorn petals floating between them like water pierced with shafts of light.
With a decisive click of its beak, the blue jay turned around and plucked a feather from the underside of its wing, placing it gently on Daye’s palm.
“This helps?” it asked.
Daye looked down, surprised. The feather was about the size of her fingernail, soft and downy, shading from pale gray to blue to stark white.
It fit perfectly, somehow. Like it was supposed to be there.
Daye petted it with the tip of her finger, admiring how straight, how orderly, the quills were.
“It’s wonderful,” she told the blue jay.
It puffed its chest in pleasure. “Will it work?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. She’d never woven into herself anything that wasn’t green and growing.
But how could it hurt? Rory had put a bird’s syrinx in her throat, after all, so she knew it could be done.
If it was foreign to the weaving, the words would simply not work, and skin wouldn’t close over her hand, leaving a tangle of plants instead of bones and flesh.
“Let’s give it a try,” she told the blue jay.
There was something quietly lovely in having this act of caring marked within her, carried in the palm of her hand.
She had forgotten that friendship could be so simple, that emotions could run like this, clear and straight and unsnarled.
She murmured the words, and the tangle of vegetation closed into itself, turning into smooth spring skin.
The blue jay prodded her hand with its beak, turning it from side to side and cawing in amazement.
Daye laughed.
The wind tore across the border again, tossing her laughter upward. It smelled like snow. As Daye watched, small flakes started swirling downward, melting on the ground with a hiss.
Not weeks, then, she thought. It must be December already.
Winter is here. She felt curiously out of breath.
She must have missed more days than she thought.
Soon, there would be Saint Winebald’s celebration in the village.
And then … Despite spending the last months drowning in a single ceaseless spring day, Daye felt like time was running out between her fingers faster and faster, never to return. And then … and then Rory would be back.
Maybe things will be better this time.
Even in her head, that sounded hollow.
The snow kept falling. It was strange, to yearn so much for something and dread it at the same time.
Daye walked to the border and thrust the palm of her hand past it, to the winter side.
This soon after reweaving, the chance of fingers falling off was slim.
And even if they did, it would be worth it to feel the bite of the wind, to catch a flake of snow in her palm.
She stood like that for a long minute, feeling the soft flakes brush against her, the crystals fizzing into water with a hiss as they met her skin.
It was only when she was halfway back to the fortress that Daye noticed that the border fatigue had never come.