Chapter Sixteen Idris #3
Kit brings a narrow stick of coral from her reticule. It’s not very long—perhaps about half the length of her forearm.
“Speir told me that this wand would break one curse,” she says. She lifts her silver eyes to meet mine. “It just takes a tap.”
She extends her arm, ready to touch my chest with the wand, but I step back. “Wait—”
My foot hits one of the buried rocks, and I almost fall, but Kit catches my arm and yanks me forward.
As we stumble together, my nose touches her hair, and I have an impulse to press my face against her neck.
Heat burns through me, and I straighten, making space between us. The wind cuts my flushed skin.
“Are you all right?” Kit asks, her hand still on my arm. She releases her hold and reaches up, brushing the back of her fingers against my forehead. Her eyes widen. “Your fever is worse.”
I want to lean against her hand. Maybe it’s the fever or something else, but my pulse is racing. My thoughts are jumbled, and words spring out of my mouth: “When was the first time you experienced beauty?”
“That …” She pulls away. “I think we should break the curse and get you home.”
I catch her hand. “Humor me.”
She thinks before she answers, a crease between her eyebrows. “I suppose when I was eight. There was a meteor shower, and I ran through the fields chasing the stars. I thought I could catch them.”
“I was five,” I tell her. “My mother brought a lantern from her homeland. The panes of glass were dyed—purples and blues and greens and yellows—and whenever she put a candle inside, it covered the room in colored light.”
Confusion still masks her expression. “That sounds lovely, but I don’t understand why—”
“Don’t you miss the person you were when you felt beauty first?” I ask. “Don’t you miss your old body?”
She stares at me, her cheeks paling.
“I only mean, don’t you want to go back?” My head swims, and the only way I can find my own reasoning is to speak aloud. “When I leave my body during the dances, I feel void. But you bring me back, and I find beauty. Wholeness.”
“It’s different for me.” She lowers her gaze and seems to shrink in front of me. “My old body was not all delight.”
“Mine isn’t either.” I shift on my aching feet. “But it isn’t all pain, is it? You were in that body when the stars fell. And when you stood in the fog on the dock. And a thousand other moments that you haven’t shared with me.”
She winces, and I fall silent. I don’t know what she remembers, but I feel the darkness of it between us.
Carefully, trying to find what I’m feeling as I go, I say, “Use the wand for yourself. Break your own curse.”
“That’s foolish.” She jerks away from me as if I’ve struck her. “Catharine and I are only inconvenienced—you are dying.”
“I don’t want to break this curse at your expense,” I counter. “I don’t want a cure. Not like this.”
She crosses her arms over her stomach, the wand still in one hand. “Why in the world not?”
“Because I would have you be yourself,” I blurt. “Whole and happy. Your own person. Radiant.”
“I can be myself like this.” She gestures to her face. “There was nothing ‘radiant’ about what I was before.”
I remember our brief interactions, back when she was herself. Her stubborn grace when she was hurt. Her ready smile and laugh. The vastness contained in her when she stared over the loch. “On the contrary.”
She shakes her head fervently, refusing to look at me. “That’s not true. You don’t mean it—you only think that because I look like this now.”
“I thought you were amazing even back at the ball.” I reach for her hand, but she draws back. “It’s not what you look like, it’s you. Your spirit. Your laugh. I am mesmerized by you.”
She waves this aside as if batting off a fly. My heart twists, raw from the confession, but I keep pressing. I can’t seem to stop. “I want you to be yourself, and safe, and all right.”
“And what if I’m meant to remain this way? What if this is my healing?”
“Who you are is body and soul. Can you heal one without the other? When I danced—”
“We are not the same!”
“I just mean that if you were back in your own body—”
“You do not—you cannot order me to go back! You cannot … dictate how I choose!”
I blink, surprised. Had I been doing that?
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “It … I do not seek to command you, one way or the other. Only to offer you my sincere feelings.”
“I do not want them!” she cries, flinging her hands over her face. “You would not … if you knew …”
I open my mouth to insist but force the words back. I have said too much, and at the wrong time, and I’ve hurt her. I can’t seem to stop hurting people, even when all I want is to spare them. A dark corner of me whispers: Everyone around you will hurt, as long as you are with them.
“Keep the wand,” I say as gently as I can. “Do what you will with it, but let me make my own choice. I’ll find another way free. If I cannot find the selkie skin, perhaps I can at least remove the iron boots.”
She does not answer, turning away from me with her face still covered.
But perhaps that voice in me is right.
As long as I am here, there will be pain.
So I leave.