Chapter Twenty-Six
The waves come through first, the lap of them at my legs, at my feet.
I blink, face against the sand. The taste of blood in my mouth, saltwater bubbling out of my lungs.
I’m freezing and sopping wet, weaker than I’ve ever felt before, but I’m alive.
My everything aches, still I don’t care.
I blink again against the dizziness, search the expanse of shore, the rocky cliffs in the barely there light.
I feebly manage to stand, though every bit of me aches.
There are people wandering up along the shore, past me, lost and dazed, backs to me as they climb, wet—and some of them—bloodied.
I even glimpse the dazed, bloody-fingered harpist and Orrin’s demon friend with the citrus-tinged soul.
But not the two I’m seeking.
Then, behind me, someone calls my name. I turn, and Orrin is carrying Aven out of the ocean.
My heart stops in my chest. He sets her gently down, and I cry out in gratitude as she races toward me.
Aven is alive. And Elisavet is dead, and I killed her.
And I’m alive. Am I alive? The red shoes killed me.
The red shoes saved me.
I look at my sister, cry as I take in the beloved sight of her before me, herself once more.
I fall to my knees, weak, and I retch seawater onto the sand.
With my eyes shut, and the tears streaming down my face, I sob out as my sister reaches me, takes hold of me. “You’re alive!” I cry. “Thank God. I love you, Aven.”
She wraps her thin arms tighter around me and whispers, “I love you too. Are you okay? Your head is bleeding. For a moment there, I thought you were gone.”
“I don’t care. I’m fine.”
Then I open my eyes, to find Orrin standing over us, the earliest light of dawn just breaking the ocean’s horizon behind him.
I catch my breath as I stare at his face up close.
Not at the blood caked from the cut on his skin.
Nor the beauty of the rest of it—the fact that we survived—but at something else.
As though I’m seeing a stranger, or someone I’ve always known, it’s unclear. I yank off my gloves and touch the side of his face in wonder, reveling in the feel of him, awed by an unfamiliar sight. It’s different than seeing my sister back to herself. This is him for the first time.
“Your eyes…” I say, soft.
Green, like the sea.
Wet, washed ashore, far from the carriage and the horses who must still be waiting, we head to the cottage, only minutes away.
“Are you hurt?” I ask Aven as she walks, exhausted but eager. Orrin carries me, and I hang one arm over his to touch my sister, so that I’m connected to both of them. I hold Aven’s hand, the cool skin against my own. “He can carry you instead.”
“I can manage perfectly fine. You’re the one who nearly died.”
Nearly danced myself to death in order to save those I love, I wonder silently. That’s what I was willing to do—and the slippers heard my plea.
She tightens her hold on my hand then glances at Orrin, who stares ahead, looking for the cottage. Her eyes hold a question when she turns back to me, asking. But there will be time for talking later, time to explain everything. I lean into Orrin’s chest and breathe slowly, still dizzy, spent.
The cottage finally comes into view as the sun rises, and life is fine again.
Energized at the sight of our beloved home, I motion for Orrin to set me down.
I jog the few remaining steps, faltering, staggering, grasping at the frame of the door for strength.
I bang at the door, voice hoarse. “Sélie! Let us in! It’s us! ”
Within a minute, Sélie has swung open the door. She stares at me and Aven, mouth gaping in shock, and bursts into tears.
Aven pulls her into her arms, and then grabs me right before I fall, my legs still weak. We lie in a wordless jumble of grateful tears across the threshold of the cottage.
Sélie leans out of our embrace to look at Aven, crying, “I thought all this time, you were dead.”
“I was among the dead,” Aven whispers. “But Corliss saved me.”
“What? What do you mean? Where have you both been?”
I hug her to me, hard. “It’s a long story. We will explain everything. Later.”
“Alright.” Sélie frowns, glancing at my soggy ball gown, then over my shoulder.
Orrin, leaning against the front gate, somewhat awkwardly, looking utterly human. Clad all in black, his face bloody, hard features but soft eyes.
“Who is this?” Sélie sounds a little wary.
I look back at Orrin. He appears completely benign to me. My safety.
“That’s an even longer story,” I say.
“I’m sorry about Mr. Brown.” I take Orrin’s hand in mine when we are outside the cottage, to say good-bye, not long after he returned with the carriage and horses.
It was impossible not to grin at the sight of him leading the gentle creatures who followed him willingly, if a bit hesitantly.
But now, soberness has descended on us both.
“He shouldn’t have gone like that.” His voice is heavy. “I suppose it was quick, at least.”
“Are you sure you won’t stay with us tonight?” I nod toward the cottage.
“No. I should go—let you have time with your sisters. I don’t want to intrude.”
“You wouldn’t be.”
His green eyes are soft but no less deep than the black eyes had been. “It’s fine. I should go back and see if anyone needs help.”
“How do you think you survived?” I ask, wondering if he has a theory of his own. I add, “And do you think most of them did?”
“I’m not certain.” Orrin ponders this. “Maybe I was wrong about it all. Maybe we were never at risk. Or maybe, somehow, you saved us all.”
I shake my head. “I think it was the slippers.”
“Maybe that too.” He smiles softly.
“I think—” I study his face, wondering how to say it. “When I was dancing, I got a feeling that I wasn’t alone. Like, that the slippers did have a life of their own. Or a soul. At first, I thought yours—you’d implied that they were attached to your soul. But it wasn’t yours.”
His eyes widen at my implication. “Glisa’s.”
“Yes. The slippers, all this time, they wanted to dance—because they held, somehow, the spirit of a dancer!”
“I believe you.” He looks off to some faraway place in time, shakes his head slow. Comes back to me. “It would explain so much. The slippers’ connection to me and my soul—I literally gave up my soul to save her, and perhaps a part of her could never part with me because of that.”
“Or maybe she didn’t want to,” I gently say. “And being a ballerina, the slippers called to me. Through me, she got to live again.”
“It’s a nice thought.” Orrin’s expression goes a touch bittersweet. He squeezes my hand. “I must go. Come to me, though, when you’re ready. If you want. I’ll be waiting for you, Corliss.”
Then he lifts me off my feet and hugs me to his chest. I bite back an argument. I want him to stay, but I want him to want to stay, not to do it for my sake.
Can we go back to what we were before this? Or have things inevitably changed? I rest my head against the crook of his shoulder and breathe him in. Stay, stay, I silently plead. Or take me with you. Or at least, beg me to go.
But he doesn’t. He sets me down, tips my chin up, and gives me one chaste kiss, only one.
I reluctantly move away, stepping backward.
I watch him from the doorway as he walks, turning to look back at me, even as he climbs onto the driver’s seat of the carriage, the horses nickering pleasantly.
He clicks his tongue, and they begin trotting away.
His eyes stay locked with mine until he’s too far.
Until I can no longer see him. Back to the mansion he’ll go. Without me.
I have my sisters, I have my life. I breathe, trying to push back the feeling of loss.
Will I have him again? Will he have me? Or has that which drew us together been irrevocably broken?
The ache in me is so great that it is a wonder I don’t shatter to pieces.
I picture the ballroom. The way he watched me dance.
His hands, tracing the lines of my body.
His laugh, a secret, sudden thing. As if it were for me only. I think of the shape of his soul.
It is only when I enter the cottage and glance across the room, to where I kicked off the wet ballet slippers, that I realize they have faded, the rich red turned to a sickly brownish-orange.
Glisa is free.
The magic is gone.
For many days and nights, my sisters and I do not leave the cottage. We don’t do a thing but eat good food—Aven lets Sélie do all the cooking now that she’s proficient at it—and laugh, and cry, and hug each other, and stroll around the garden. Aven doesn’t want to walk by the water.
“I’m not ready yet,” she says. I know she’s upset, even if my magical senses have dulled. I still seem to know things, to see things, to sense them, in a way that doesn’t feel entirely normal. Then again, perhaps I never was normal—and Orrin had to show me that.
I wonder, if given practice and time, my gifts could be as strong as they were before. Maybe it’s only a talent I must hone, no different than ballet.
“She’s never going to come back for you, love,” I tell Aven in a soft voice, as we sit, bundled in the garden in wicker chairs, without saying who I mean. We both know. “She’s never going to hurt you again.”
“It’s not just that…” Aven hesitates, a gust of cold salt-air lifting the hair around her face. “I don’t think I’ve forgiven the ocean yet. For what it took from me. Besides, I’m not exactly afraid of her.”
“How did it happen?” I finally ask, after so many conversations of holding back.