Chapter 5 Arthur, Before
Arthur,
Before
Mom and I wintered in the southern states, tuned to the sun like a migrating flock. I turned seventeen only days before the warming spring weather woke her need to uproot us again.
The sun chased us north into the Blue Ridge Mountains.
I looked up from my book in time to catch a glimpse of a fading sign naming our destination: AUDREY, PENNSYLVANIA.
It wasn’t the worst pit-stop town I’d seen, though it was quite out of the way.
Pastels washed Main Street in soft, childlike hues, Victorian-style storefronts fringed in frost-white trim, like something from a storybook.
Cute.
“Why are we here, exactly?” When I’d asked before, Mom had been very cagey about this little detour, but I was used to her impulsiveness and hadn’t given it much thought until now.
Mom parked beneath a wooden sign featuring a painted yellow bee. “You’re staying with a friend of mine for a while.”
The monster slithered up my spine, its cold touch raising the hairs on my nape.
I could practically taste its suspicion.
The monster had been with me most of my life, twined between bone, sinew, and something else…
something soul-deep and far too delicate to protect on my own. That’s what the monster was for.
“A friend?” I repeated, sounding far calmer than I felt.
Mom killed the engine and turned to face me. She wore her slightly too-bright smile. “You’ll like Jack,” she strained. “I promise.”
My heart beat a staccato no. No, no, not again. She’d left me before, of course. My mother was a bird, and sometimes birds flew away, leaving their younglings behind in a nest.
“Is this one my father?” It took guts to ask, heat crawling up my neck.
Mom shook her head. “No. Jack and I, we never—”
“I don’t need the details.” I sank into the embroidered seat cover, chest deflating, whether in relief or disappointment, I wasn’t sure. My mind raced. I couldn’t remember her ever mentioning a Jack, and I didn’t know if that was good or bad.
“He’s smart,” Mom offered. “He can help you with calculus.”
“I finished calculus.”
She opened and closed her mouth. “Well, he’s… got a daughter your age.”
“Is she pimping us out?” the monster asked.
“Maybe the two of you could be friends,” Mom pushed.
“He already has a friend.”
I shooed the monster’s grumble away. It had never liked sharing, but I wasn’t in the mood for its jealousy right now.
For the vast majority of my seventeen years, I’d spent my life on the road, camping and hiking.
Mom liked the freedom of van life. She collected boyfriends in every state and rocks from every national park.
I collected books and Polaroids but never a friend who lasted.
It wasn’t worth it when we never stayed in any one place for long.
“Eva is different,” Mom said, encouraged by my silence. “She’s like you.”
Like hell she is.
I looked away. No one was like me. Sometimes I wished I could find someone who was. Someone who craved death as much as they feared it, who knew what it was like to hold rot in your hands. But that was selfish, to wish my curse on someone else.
Still, sometimes it was hard not to fear that I was the only person in the world this broken.
“Wholeness is much like a puzzle, little death-touch. Do not confuse its many pieces for brokenness.”
My fingers ticked a familiar, anxious rhythm against the side of my leg in a desperate attempt to calm the voice in my head before it got louder.
“I just…” Mom trailed off. Her frown made her delicate, drawn-on brows curve like the jut of a wing in flight. “I can’t keep doing this, Artie.”
I closed my book and held it to my chest. The Edgar Allan Poe anthology weighed heavy against my sternum. I liked the pressure of it, how that beating, maddening heart under the floorboards hid the crack in my own chest.
I’d tried to be small for years. I’d tried to be light as air, but I was still too much for her.
“You’re coming back.” It wasn’t a question, and I hated that my voice trembled like it was.
Mom’s fingers wrapped a little too tightly around the door handle on the driver’s side. “Let’s go inside. You’ll like it here. I promise.”
I determined I would not.
A little bell announced our arrival. The Honey Shoppe was all warm wood and glinting glass.
Amber-colored jars lined the shelves, each tied with a neat burlap bow and a rustic label: MOREAU HONEY.
Behind the counter, soldier-straight rows of jars full of brightly colored loose-leaf teas broke up the overwhelming glow of gold.
My gaze snagged on a gingham cloth by the window, where a loaf of focaccia had been cut into cubes, toothpicks spearing the crust. A folded white card invited shoppers to slather on the house-whipped honey butter.
My mouth watered at the smell.
“Don’t touch anything,” Mom murmured. When she turned her back, I swiped one of the samples and popped it into my mouth. Surprise and pleasure at the taste spread through me. The herbal undertones were rich and earthy. Rosemary, perhaps?
“You haven’t eaten today.”
I speared another sample, my stomach growling as my eyes skated over the labels detailing the various flavors of tea lining the shelves. Some I recognized, like rosehip and dandelion, while others—like meadowsweet or usnea—were unfamiliar to me.
“Is your honeyman in today?” Mom asked the girl behind the counter. She had raven-dark hair that stretched all the way to her waist.
“Not today, no. He’s…” The girl paused and cocked her head. “Mrs. Connoway?”
“Charlotte, please.” Mom’s smile could have melted a candle. “I’m surprised you recognize me. Missy, isn’t it?”
“Izzy.” The girl looked faintly stunned.
“Izzy.” Mom nodded pleasantly. “I was so sorry to hear about your mama.”
“Oh. Thank you, ma’am.”
The bell rang behind us, signaling another customer. When Izzy caught their eyes, her bewildered expression fled, replaced by a sudden tightness around her own eyes.
“Whatcha doin’ here, Lenny?”
I turned, not realizing how close the newcomer stood until the bone of his shoulder knocked hard into mine. “Watch it.” He shot me a glare before turning to face the girl behind the counter. “Your sister ’round, Moreau?”
I didn’t hear her reply, anxiety sparking in my chest as I crossed my arms and pushed past him, almost tripping over my feet in my desperation to get outside, away from those too-gold walls.
I’d touched him.
Panic strobed through me, and my heartbeat quickened as the door swung closed behind me.
“Hey. Take a breath, little death-touch.”
But I couldn’t. The anxious trill of my thumb down my fingertips wasn’t enough to soothe the rising flood. It was so hot today that I’d left my jacket in the car, and I was certain that when the stranger had knocked into me, his bare arm had brushed against mine.
My next inhale came too shallow, too quick. I should have been more careful.
“He was fine. You would have felt if he wasn’t.” The monster paused, its presence soothing the center of my chest like ice to a swollen wound. “It takes more than that, and you know it.”
It was right, of course. Simpler life-forms, like flowers and fruit, withered with a single touch, the glow of their fading light sparking new life in me.
Animals like voles or robins took longer to kill, due to their size and complexity.
I didn’t know how long it took to kill a human being, but surely it would take more than a mere brush of skin.
And the monster was right. I would have sensed it.
Still, I couldn’t help feeling shaken. I wasn’t used to being touched like that.
The monster sighed and opened our awareness to the threads of life in the weeds growing through the cracks of the sidewalk. “There,” it said.
I looked and saw a sunflower stalk swaying near the passenger side of the van. Making sure no one was looking, I took the stalk between my fingers. The petals shriveled, and a vegetal pulse bled to autumn on my tongue.
I sighed in relief, panic ebbing away. “Thanks.”
We rode in silence past a flowering orchard, potholes bouncing us out of our seats. I tasted sunflower the whole way. Soon, a house emerged. It looked like a cottage drawn by a child who’d never seen one before.
“How do you know him?” I asked when Mom put on the brakes.
Dust plumed around the Volkswagen’s windshield. “We’re old friends.”
“Bullshit.”
“Language,” Mom shot back. The old van door creaked on its hinges as she got out and slammed it shut behind her. “I trust him. Isn’t that enough?”
I didn’t know how to answer that, but I followed her to the porch, not knowing what else to do.
Wildflowers of all sorts grew in place of grass: ironweed, yarrow, and heavy-scented lavender that made my nose itch.
Each delicate plant whispered to the beast in me and tempted me closer.
It would be so easy to slip off my shoes, to crush them underfoot and let the monster feast.
Instead, I pulled my gloves out of my pocket and slipped them onto my hands.
The air vibrated with the steady thrum of honeybees as Mom raised her hand to the door. Before she could knock, however, the door sprang open and a giant man holding a toolbox filled the entryway, gray suspenders stretched over a broad, muscular chest.
All three of us jumped in surprise.
The man rocked back, his toolbox clanking as he stared at Mom. “Lottie?”
I blinked. Displeasure knotted my neck in promise of a future headache.
“Jack!”
I didn’t like the delighted way she had said his name. Not at all.
The giant’s bewilderment slowly melted into a broad smile. “It’s really you. Do you want to—?”
“Can we?” Mom let out a laugh as the two spoke over each other. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Can we come in?”
“Of course!” Jack sprang back—oddly spry for a man his size—and emphatically motioned us in. I caught him studying me in the hallway mirror and shivered, feeling suddenly as overexposed as a canister of film held to the light.