CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
Anyone else wouldn’t hear the edge that creeps into his tone, but I’ve learned the subtle inflections in his temperament. Sure enough, there’s a tightness to his profile. “Still no word from your siblings?”
“No, but that’s not what we’re talking about,” he says, side-stepping the topic like he always does.
Everest is an open book with most things, but he’s tight-lipped with family.
All I’ve gleaned is that they’re distant, despite his every effort to connect with them.
He’s only mentioned Cyrus more than once, his closest friend and confidant who, over the years, has also drifted away.
“If I get to trauma-dump under the stars, you do too,” I reason with him. “We deserve one heart-to-heart under Halley’s comet.”
He turns to me. “Does that mean I have to wait another seventy-six years for another piece of you?”
“Maybe.”
Everest nods seriously. “I’ll have to use my godly powers to yank Halley around more frequently, then.”
I smack him gently on the shoulder. “Tell me about them.”
He sighs, one thumb absent-mindedly drawing circles on the back of my hand.
“We were born with time, the twelve of us. I have vague memories of us growing up together, back when chaos thrived and the universe had just been conceived. Obviously, that didn’t last long, and we all went on to take dominion over a realm.
The fair has always been…the least desirable. ”
“You’ve mentioned that before, but why? You’re not even the one who has to go into the carousel and do the work.”
“Because of the ghosts,” Everest says, frowning like it’s obvious. “And the keeper. My siblings aren’t big fans of people-management.”
“When did you last hear from them?”
“I don’t know.” His voice is strained. “A couple hundred years? I should take the hint, but I tried reaching out recently, actually. That’s why I was away.”
I sit up at that. “You went to go see one of them?”
“I tried reaching out to Cyrus to see if he would help me with our issue.”
His expression is so worn that, for a second, I’m overwhelmed by anger towards these gods I’ve never met.
But there’s something else there, an ugly sense of relief in knowing where he went.
This possessiveness I feel towards him is horrendous, and precisely the reason I’ve drawn such a hard boundary between us all these years. We crossed it once, and never again.
“This shit just gets harder, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” he says, turning to me. “But it has its moments.”
His thumb brushes the back of my hand again. It’s a gentle, nothing touch, but the combination of my traitorous thoughts, his skin against mine, and the particular intimacy that accompanies lying side by side with someone under a luminous night sky sends my blood pressure soaring.
“You’re not too bad at the listening thing either,” I gently mock, desperate to conceal the flambeed mess that is my emotions. “But you’re never allowed to repeat that back to me.”
“Too late,” he says, but his next words evaporate and he sits up. “Is that Valentin?”
I get up too, shivering as the cold swarms my body. Sure enough, there’s a dark figure wandering about the tents who looks decidedly like Valentin. I call her name.
She turns, hesitates, then sets out towards us.
“What are you doing?” she asks suspiciously. I realize what we must look like and drop Everest’s hand.
“Watching for a comet,” I tell her, and her apprehension melts away.
“And hiding from the ghosts,” Everest whispers conspiratorially. “If one more resident asks Ryka if they’re about to be held hostage by the carousel, we may have our first evidence of a secondary death.”
I pat the space next to me. “Want to join us?”
Valentin clutches her shawl tighter around her body, then plops down. “This is warmer than I thought.”
“I do aim to provide comfort,” Everest says, folding his arm under his head to prop it up. “Ryka here, took great issue with previous iterations of star-gazing blankets.”
“Those got damp,” I exclaim. “I might as well lie down on the snow.”
Valentin shudders. “Do you do this often?”
I reposition my body to make more room for her. “Yes, actually. You’d be surprised at how many celestial events happen here, and the fair is usually good at giving us clear nights for viewing. And even if nothing special is going on, it’s nice to look at the constellations.”
She’s studying the sky, and awe creeps into her face. You don’t get a view like this from most places on Earth, and I’d bet wherever she’s from is accustomed to the same degree of light pollution that I remember.
“I don’t know much about stars,” she admits. “And I don’t think it’s just my memory loss. I can’t explain it. Do you have a favorite constellation?”
“Oh, that’s an impossible question,” Everest moans. “How am I supposed to choose?”
I laugh. “I do. It’s called the Ophiuchus, or the snake charmer. It’s actually the thirteenth Zodiac. You can see it there.” I trace its shape in the night sky, pointing to the collection of stars off the center of the Milky Way that looks more like a house than a man holding a snake.
Valentin doesn’t look terribly impressed. “Why that one?”
“It’s so obscure,” I tell her. “Everyone knows the twelve Zodiacs, but no one talks about this one, even though it’s in the sun’s path.”
“Ryka has a soft spot for forgotten places,” Everest says.
He’s studying me intently, his fingers only a hairsbreadth from my hand, and I wonder if he’s thinking of the night he showed me the constellation.
It was my first eclipse here. I was lonely, drunk, and very averse to the celebrations taking place around us – but also intrigued.
He’d pulled me away to his telescope, and we spent an hour studying the night sky.
When he told me about Ophiuchus, I’d felt an immediate affinity towards the sprawling constellation that I’d never heard of. Caught in an orbit but never seen.
It was my most vulnerable moment here. Everest’s eyes darken and I know he’s reliving the memory with me. Nothing could dispel the warmth that spreads from my core. When he gives me a small, knowing smile, I’m eternally thankful that Valentin showed up when she did.
“Yes, well, it should be someone’s favorite,” I finish.
“That’s lovely,” Valentin says, still fixated on what lies above us. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the sky this way before.”
“Wait till the eclipse,” Everest says, still fixed on me.
His hand inches closer, grazing my fingers, so subtly that I can’t tell if it was on purpose or not.
I wait for him to pull away, but he doesn’t, and there’s more electricity between us than in the carousel, the heart of time itself.
The palpable press of history claws at us like a child that we’ve persistently neglected.
“That’s when everything is unforgettable. ”