Chapter Three #2
When it’s ready, I pour the coffee in two chipped mugs, add milk and sugar, and carry everything to Sélie.
She waits in her nightgown at the table, hair unbraided in long, loose waves.
When she stands, it reaches nearly to her ankles; now, while seated, it cocoons her like a cape.
She only drinks half her coffee, nibbles politely on her cookie, but still, it’s something.
I manage to finish mine though it’s like swallowing chalk dust. When she takes out her drawing book, I blow out a relieved breath.
She hasn’t sketched much since Aven went missing.
“What are you working on?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Something light, silly.” She doesn’t say something that doesn’t matter, but I understand. If she tried to draw Aven now, she’d break. “Any suggestions?”
“Draw me one of your fairytale scenes.”
Sélie gives me a thankful smile and bends her head, crafting a smudgy charcoal outline of a castle, complete with a dragon perched on one turret. She adds a beautiful princess, leaning longingly out the window.
“Which tale is this from?” I try to recall but come up empty. I’ve always preferred losing myself in romance novels or ballet instructionals rather than that type of story.
She smiles, gazing down at it. “I’m not sure. I made it up. Something with magic.”
Tonight, I only nod, instead of scoffing like I normally would when she speaks this way.
Ever since we moved here, when Sélie was just eight years old, she’s believed in what she calls possibilities.
She’s always said, “There’s magic in The Pins” and held fast to that belief, which Aven quietly shared and I’ve always loudly dismissed.
I don’t begrudge her fancies. I simply cannot pretend to believe them myself. I don’t want to believe them.
Only secretly do I ever admit there’s something peculiar here that we never saw in any other town we lived—every grandmother in The Pins can mix up a salve to clear away warts or poison ivy; pretty girls flash their eyes in the direction of eligible mates then find themselves married within the week; shadows creep along the walk from our cottage to town, curious and snakelike.
Marieta’s face flashes in my mind, her words echoing there, but I will the memory away. Not just from what she told me today after the funeral, but from years ago. Not real. Not real.
Instead of hanging on to foolish thoughts, I sit back and watch my sweet sister draw from across the table for several long minutes, sipping my now-cold coffee.
When my cup is empty, I light a few candles and clean up around the cottage, and when the moon hangs over the sea, I measure out a spoonful of dream draught, emptying the bottle.
There’s less than I thought. Only enough for one dose—for one of us, not both.
“Here,” I say, holding up the spoon for her to take it from me. “It’s late, love.”
“In a moment.”
“We have to open the shop early,” I remind her, playing at being the responsible one.
This was always Aven’s role. No matter what guardians we lived with, bouncing from place to place, or even when we settled here with our Aunt Mavis—who wasn’t really an aunt at all, but an old friend of our dead mother’s dead sister—no matter how old we got, Aven still took care of us.
She would have been a wonderful mother. I swallow the thought, and grit my teeth, silencing the howl of agony from the wild beast inside me.
“Fine.” Sélie groans a little, taking the spoon and downing the anise-flavored sedative with a gag. Then she sets her drawing aside and stands, stretching her willowy frame. “Are you coming to bed?”
“I think I’ll read awhile.”
She hovers. Hesitates. “Don’t stay up too late. You need to take care of yourself too.”
I give her a soft nod, and she leans down to hug me quickly, then heads to the bedroom.
I find my book, a love story firmly grounded in reality, one of my favorites, dog-eared pages and a cracked spine.
I open it more for the comfort than the distraction, for I know most of the words by heart but they swim before me anyway.
I read—or try to—for a good hour, until my eyes are tired, and the book feels too heavy to hold.
I blow out the candles. Sit a long time in the dark.
When I start to nod off, I finally force myself to stand, go to my room, climb into my bed.
My eyes close, and I whisper across the dark room, “Sweet rest.”
There’s no reply. Sélie’s asleep by now, under a mound of Mavis’s patchwork quilts. At least in dreams she has peace. Even without any draught, I find my own sleep, a blessed darkness that allows me to forget the ache of grief.
But sometime in the early morning, just as the birds begin to trill outside, I snap my eyes open, something nagging me awake.
I sit up, the memory forcing its way to the forefront of my mind, refusing to let me ignore it any longer.
Because years ago, Marieta told me of another vision—that she saw our Aunt Mavis in a black dress.
Mavis, who only wore autumn colors, shades like the burnished rust of her hair, the olive of her eyes, the warm gold of her lashes.
“She doesn’t wear black.” I tried to move away, dismissing Marieta easily. At sixteen I had flirtation on my mind, and I wanted to walk past the docks, to see the handsome sailor who kept winking whenever I passed.
The old lady grabbed my apron strings, stopping me. “In my sight, your aunt wore a black dress, a crown of white on her red, red hair. Leaving her body behind for the world of souls.”
I scoffed, walked away, but only a fortnight later, Aunt Mavis dropped to her knees in the middle of our cottage. Dead in the time it took for her body to hit the floor.
Aven picked out a fine, black wool dress for the funeral, and Sélie insisted on a wreath of white lilies to lay over Mavis’s dark-red hair. I’d barely spoken for the next several days, shaken that Marieta’s forewarning had come to pass. It had to be a fluke. Visions couldn’t come true.
Now I push my sweat-dampened covers aside, climb out of bed, and fling the door open, careful not to let it slam behind me, though Sélie usually sleeps heavily, and with the dream draught, even more so.
I rush out of the cottage, half-wild with adrenaline, half-expecting to see Aven standing right outside, barefooted, nightgown shredded, hair wet.
But no. Because she can’t. Because she died.
I reach up and slap myself—hard—across the face.
The sharp crack of my hand upon my cheek breaks the silence.
My eyes flood with tears, but the pain steadies me.
Marieta’s recent words wash over me. That certainty.
I shift my gaze in the direction of that mansion and the supposed demon who resides there now.
I stand outside longer than I’d care to admit, staring at it, softening my hard lines, willing myself to consider the possibilities, as Sélie calls them.
The unexplainable. The things that I never let myself believe before this.
For Aven’s sake, I’d believe in magic. For her sake, I’d go to hell and back.
But maybe, just maybe, hell has come to me.