Chapter 18
THE CURSE
Aster’s shadow fell over me, and the pride in his voice could not be missed. Excellent. You and I make an unstoppable force. You can stop now, if you want.
I blinked, and my fingers froze over the keyboard.
A momentary confusion flickered in my mind.
The sound of waves, the view from the catwalk.
The sun high in the sky while Aster took off his sandals to wade in the water.
The last thing I knew, I was slipping into bed after pulling the curtains to my windows shut for the night.
But Aster’s voice had summoned me straight to the living room and straight to our work in progress...
exactly as I had once summoned him. The tables had turned.
It was night. Still night, or night again. I couldn’t tell. Nor did I know how long I’d been sitting here writing, but one glance at my word count assured me that I had covered a lot of ground since my last conscious writing session.
A smile dimpled Aster’s cheeks when I turned my head and found him standing at my right.
I shook my head and looked away from his gaze. I felt too unsettled for company right now.
Aster stepped back with a zest that felt uncharacteristic even for him.
There’s not a person on Earth who won’t adore it, or at least highly respect it, he said, holding up a hand in enthusiasm.
Books like this fly off the shelves. Drama.
Theme. Symbolism, intensity. No one alive can write lightning the way you can.
His words sounded far away and echoed with the pronouncement of a curse rather than positive editorial feedback. “How long have we been here?” I asked.
A few days. Maybe a week? He glanced out the nearest window to the blackness outside that indicated the night.
My hands trembled. “Can you help me up, please? My eyes are so dried I can barely see.”
Aster offered me an arm of support. I could feel his muscles more solid than ever underneath his rolled-up linen sleeve. Just now he felt more solid than I did. I can get you a drink if you like. Wine?
“Wine, right now? You’ve got to be joking,” I groaned. I wanted a retreat. A cave with a few sleeping bats for company. “I think I’m blacking out. A glass of wine will only finish the job.”
I took Aster’s arm and stood up, walking only to the couch. The soles of my feet stung with every touch of the floor beneath them. I looked out the window, and saw that there weren’t any stars at all tonight, or fireflies. Only black.
Aster vanished into the kitchen for a moment and came back with two filled wine glasses.
I realize you said you didn’t want any, but I know better than you about such things.
After a couple minutes we can get back to work.
You know, the two of us are one of the most dynamic duos on the planet right now.
There isn’t a thing in the world that isn’t ours to claim. I say it’s time for another toast.
I blinked. My eyelids weighed so much I struggled to raise them again. When Aster attempted to place a wine glass in my hand, I refused and shifted myself upright. “I don’t understand,” I said. “How long has it been since my parents’ visit? Have we been writing the entire time?”
The thought of Aster’s magic sent me into a sickening frenzy, but I felt like we should have established better boundaries in the beginning.
Aster could keep me from needing to eat or sleep.
He could take me to the bottom of the sea for a field trip more fascinating than any research venture I could imagine and bring my own characters to life before me.
But I couldn’t fight the fact any longer that this magic wasn’t meant for me, and it wasn’t meant to be used so intensely over such a brief period.
I was losing touch with time and space. In my effort to grab onto something solid, I had instead surrendered what little hold I had on reality in the first place.
Drink some wine, said Aster. Cheer up. Your eyes have that sad look again, and I can’t handle it.
“I told you, I don’t want to drink,” I said. “And I don’t want a lighter mood, either. I want clarity. How long has it been? Since my parents came by?”
Aster scratched a spot behind his ear.
I took a breath. Slowly my energy returned. I didn’t know time and space, but I knew Aster, and I knew he was keeping something from me. “Can’t you tell me?”
I could, he said. I could lie and say they came by only today. That you could check out the goodies they left for you in the kitchen if you wanted reassurance. But—
Here he held out a hand and almost spilled some of his own wine to restrain me from checking out the gift basket for reassurance.
It isn’t there. You won’t find it.
Now he relaxed his touch. I stood, this time stronger than moments ago.
I walked into the kitchen and flicked on the light, glancing at the dining table for any trace of the gift basket.
All I found in that spot was a tall paper bag of apples from the nearest grocer, with several removed from the bag and shining red and yellow on display.
Aster walked into the room behind me.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Where is it? What did you do with it?”
The care package doesn’t exist. The food. The coasters. All my design. Temporary objects, the stuff of dreams.
I closed my eyes and forced myself not to cry or throw anything in arms’ reach.
Your parents never came here, either, Aster continued. I took your phone when you were working and told them something came up. An exciting change of plan.
I clenched my hands until my nails cut into the skin of my palms. Even the thought of what he’d just said grated on me. “Aster, that visit was important to me!”
Aster’s face didn’t betray any concern, but instead adopted a dreamy and contented calm. He traced the grain of the wood on the rim of the chair in front of him.
“I wanted to see them,” I said. “And if we needed to call it off, I wanted to be the one to do that, too. What were you thinking? You just made me hallucinate my own family?”
It hurt to see your loneliness. You wanted the company, he said. You were distracted and couldn’t perform adequately, and I can’t work either when you’re distracted. I did only what I needed to do. What we both needed. I apologize if I acted wrongly.
“Don’t do it again,” I warned.
Is there any way you want me to make it up? Should I take the memories back?
My heart began to race. My face felt hot.
I was going to cry if this went any further.
No, the tears had come already. I hurried to the table and took some of the apples into my hands.
The memory of my parents coming to this place rang too clearly for me to drop all at once.
A hallucination. A dream. Just like the trip to the shipwreck. My life was unraveling before my eyes.
“But they must have here,” I insisted. “We planned it beforehand. We mapped it out. And I brought them out to the beach and up the lighthouse…”
We went to all those places alone. Nothing was scheduled.
We both looked at the calendar and its perfectly blank roster of days. Even my handwritten note to mark the visit had disappeared.
“Alone?” I asked. “No, it’s impossible.” My voice cracked in a blend of frustration and misuse.
I turned around back to Aster where he waited.
“This is because you made yourself invisible, isn’t it?
Maybe you didn’t notice. Maybe they became invisible to you as well.
Here, I’ll call my mom. She can back me up. ”
Our agreement, Stella, said Aster, and he held up a finger in warning.
No calls until the end of summer. I assure you your parents realize you meant no harm in canceling.
I gave them a believable excuse. He spoke slowly, enunciating the syllables as if he found pleasure in them, or as if he found pleasure in bringing the fact to light in front of me.
He took a sip from his wine while I watched in an uncomfortable silence.
Perhaps the intensity is too much for you.
Not everyone was cut out to create works of magnificence, you know.
If an odd rhyme or limerick would do just as well, or a cheap genre imitation good enough to make it to market, we can change gears…
“No,” I said, and the conviction returned to my voice. “I want to go through with this. I want to write something that will give me a mark in history. I want to last. To be real.”
Real? You don’t even know what nonexistence is like.
“I just don’t understand what happened. Things have been so different since you took me to the wreck... since you first told me I didn’t need to sleep anymore…”
Simple. Aster offered me my glass of wine again, and I took it with eagerness.
I altered your consciousness so that you could get the best energy out of the most words possible.
I helped you. I want a legacy for you as well, possibly even more than you want it for yourself.
I will take your work to its furthest potential.
“Even at the cost of my sanity.”
Aster leaned back and rolled up his sleeves, enjoying the confrontation. What even is sanity, anyway? You and I will succeed at any cost. This will be the greatest thing you’ve ever done.
The wine tasted good, light and fruity, and I was glad he gave it to me.
The yellowed light in the living room shimmered as if it were illuminated by candles.
I sat back and let the warmth of the wine fill me while I sorted through recent events to the best of my ability.
Perhaps none of this was worth trying to understand. “The book is good, you think?”
No one has written a story with that much depth in centuries. You will restore everyone’s faith in humanity, and give them a good story while you’re at it.
“And you’re sure about that? It isn’t just getting to your head?”
His smile was indirect, the shadow of a smile covering his features as his wine glass sparkled in the night.
I shifted forward. Suddenly, as if a storm had lifted, I didn’t want to be angry with Aster anymore.
I wanted him to undress me. I wanted this to turn into another of those magical moments between us, the intimacy that Aster promised me would last forever.
When he didn’t appear to take the hint, I lowered the sleeve of my shirt around my shoulder.
Aster blinked. And what’s this?
“Just an idea,” I said. “I thought we could have a bit of fun.”
You’ve been worrying about your parents for too long. We need to get back to the book.
“That’s not fair. You said I could have a break.”
That’s what this was: your break. He spoke quickly, impatiently. For the first time I wondered if he had grown tired of me.
I threw my head back. “But I still haven’t recovered from of all this.” I didn’t mean to sound flustered. Suddenly I felt hurt. Embarrassed. Every time I thought I understood what I had with Aster, he changed the rules, and suddenly I landed myself on my own again.
Aster reached forward and corrected my sleeve. His touch was strict, not affectionate. Finish your wine. We still have a lot of writing in front of us. We’re a dynamic duo, remember? We must always stick together.
I shook my head but took another swig regardless. The wine stabilized me like a mild sedative. “I can’t keep up with this,” I stammered. “How much time do we even have left in the summer?”
The calendar still hung on the wall, but looking at it now didn’t help. It showed only the month of July, dates unmarked by my hand. Early July had passed by now, but by how much? How much more time did I have before I’d pack and move out of this place?
I remembered scraps of my writing over the days.
It had come not from ideas or intentional design but from consciousness instead, as if my own pulse and breath had been transformed into a kinetic drama searing across the page.
This was the strain of passion that would go down in history.
This was what the literary world had awaited for generations without relief.
When I walked to the calendar, Aster had followed me, but he didn’t move or speak until I lifted the flap to see the next month. Then he pulled my hand away and caused me to drop it and return to the present.
I promised I’d keep you safe, he said. I promised we’d do this together. What would it take for you to trust me?
“I know I can write the book,” I said. “But it’s taking too much out of me. My parents came here. You might say they didn’t, but I remember their coming clear as day. They parked in the front, and I showed them around, and they left, and the whole thing ended in a flash.”
His pupils dilated, and he lowered his shoulders.
I know you’re stressed out. I know you’re not used to attempting anything like this.
When I saw you begin to fall apart, I felt it too.
I stepped in. I intervened and gave you the kind of reprieve you saw yourself having so that you could work with all the satisfaction of knowing that you never were cut off from your family.
My stomach seized. If I’d had any food in there, I would have thrown it all up.
I didn’t know if Aster spoke the truth, or whether I could trust him if he did.
After all, I wasn’t the only weak one here.
He’d been the one suffering from delusions, the one who kept seeing members of a shadow race he imagined to be chasing him.
What if he decided that he couldn’t drown alone—that he needed to pull me down with him to the depths of his own insanity?
Aster raised my hand with the glass and tilted it against my lips. His smile grew more apparent as he forced me to drink it and led me step by step into the living room where the draft waited to be completed.
My computer idled on the desk, the screen still lit, and I realized that I had only stepped away for a handful of minutes.
The words sat exactly as I had left them with familiar blocks of paragraph and odd strings of dialog as I only vaguely remembered typing them. I knew the shape more than the content.
“Can I read it over before we go any further?” I asked. “I can’t remember what any of it says, and it doesn’t feel like mine if I can’t understand it.”
It’s better if you don’t, warned Aster. Then his expression softened.
The humanity returned to it, and the stars returned to his eyes.
Oh, what am I even saying to you? I’m a merciful god.
Read over what you must, but no more than a page or so.
If you spend too much time away from this draft, the entire thing could unwind like thread pulled from a spool. And we wouldn’t want that.
I laughed nervously and agreed that we wouldn’t, but before I sat down, I looked out the window a final time. It felt too hot in this room, and Aster’s presence left me suffocated and worn out.