CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #2
“Which is when?” I ask, nervously glancing up at the clouds.
The sky is darkening quickly, and the silver of the moon thrusts out of the clouds.
Does the garden need the moon to be out of cloud cover?
What happens to the clock vines if the sky remains trapped behind the gloom so clearly clustering above our heads?
“Will you relax?” he says, loping towards me. “Look, it’s starting now.”
He turns me by my shoulders, pointing towards a thin strip of blackened soil that sits in front of the rear face of the mountain.
A sliver of moon lights the soil and the very air splits apart along an invisible seam.
Silver sweeps across the mountain side, and every inch the light touches turns to green.
The resulting sight is impossible to describe, because every frame is filled with so much motion and color that I don’t know where to focus.
Carnivorous Venus flytraps the color of polished gold snap up at the sky.
Roses bloom with shimmering petals the size of my face, emitting the sweetest scent.
Hypnotic dahlias whirl at the front, and along the right edge are bird of paradise flowers that flutter, then soar off the stems. A pond appears, lush with water lilies with color-changing pads, and toads that look like shooting stars.
It’s mesmerizing.
He nudges my shoulder. “Want me to show you around?”
I nod wordlessly and he takes my hand, launching into a tour, pointing out each enchanted plant, some based on ones from the world I came from, others from worlds I’ve yet to see. Flowers that sing, seeds that birth fantastical creatures, and nectar that can make one change its form.
“This one’s my sister’s favorite,” he says, stopping at a strange plant I don’t recognize. It looks like a four-leaf clover, but the leaves are more diamond shaped. Compared to the other magnificent flora here, it’s fairly unassuming.
“How come?”
He shrugs. “Sienna’s not the most forthcoming with her reasoning.
I’m pretty sure I’m not even supposed to know she loves this plant.
It’s just that she cares for Mother’s garden the most, definitely has the greenest thumb of us all, and I caught her singing to it one day. She has a tattoo of it on her wrist.”
Everest is speaking with such ease, like he’s always regaled me with stories of his family.
I settle into his tale of how Sienna’s voice is so magical she made the whole garden uproot itself and follow her around one day, much to Mother Time’s despair.
I’m engrossed, but this feeling presses on me, this desire to wrap my arms around him, to picture his childhood and his life and be a part of his past, present, and future.
It’s intrusive, to the point I impulsively reach out for the plant and graze its edges, gasping as it shocks me.
“She must like violent plants,” I comment, nursing my aching fingers.
Everest takes my hand and brings it to his mouth, kissing the point of injury. “That aligns with her personality.”
I’m still staring at his mouth, and the ghost of his kiss has spread all over my body. But that’s not what we’re here for. “Where are the clock vines?”
Everest points to the far-most corner.
There, small stubs poke their heads out from a dark rock. They elongate into vines, sprouting green leaves along their length until the entire rock is covered in a moss-like curtain.
The first flower blooms in the middle. A dark-purple bud appears along a thick cord then blossoms, five delicate petals that unfurl from its center before turning silver.
Everest walks through the garden straight to the clock vines and plucks the flower from its place.
I wait with bated breath as he tips his head up and drops the nectar in its center down his throat.
The magic is instantaneous. It looks like he has lights threaded up the sleeves of his thick sweater, because the fabric turns luminescent.
He gasps, and it’s only because Calliope sets her tail between us that I don’t rush to his side.
Whatever is happening in his body is demanding his all; he’s gasping for air as he drops to his knees, clawing at the magical garden around him.
“Everest!” I call, but he can’t hear me. Just like that, the light extinguishes, and he collapses. A bird of paradise blossom flits down and rests on his shoulder. Calliope pulls her tail away, and then I’m there next to him, helping him sit up, while flowers dance around us.
His eyes flicker open slowly, then widen like he’s taking me in for the first time. The garden fades, but the magic around us grows into something ineffable.
“I’m okay,” he says, taking my hand as the first snow falls. “She doesn’t want to go.”
As I squint through the flurries, Calliope tosses her head back in indignation.
“Does she not like the snow?” I ask slowly. “This isn’t even heavy. She’s a dragon.”
Calliope snorts.
“She says it’s not her she’s worried about,” Everest translates.
The tips of my hair are damp and cold, like needles of ice pricking my neck and cheeks.
Everest, on the other hand, looks revitalized.
There’s a glow to his skin, color rushing back to his cheeks and his exposed arms. His veins have faded back to blue-green, and I look away from where they disappear into the folds of his sweater.
“You don’t get cold,” I remind him.
He arches a brow at me. “She says you were shaking so much on your way up here that she thought you’d fall off. The way back will be even worse in the snowfall. You’re freezing already.”
I blink at the dragon and she huffs, refusing to acknowledge his comment but not exactly fighting him on it, either. Guess I won brownie points for playing caretaker tonight.
Everest reaches for one of the saddle bags and pulls out a blanket. His breaths emerge as billows of steam as he steps to the front of me, and I think it’s just static that jolts my body when his hands graze my shoulders, wrapping the blanket around me.
He tugs at my arm. “There’s a cave back there we can shelter in.” When I don’t budge, he adds, “You’re going to be too cold to keep yelling at me.”
“I’m done with the anger,” is what I want to say but can’t.
He guides me through the thicket and towards a small opening in the unyielding mountainside.
We sit down at the entrance just under the lip of the cave, where I’m no longer exposed to the snow but we still can see how the light of the full moon reflects against the falling snowflakes, twirling crystals settling on evergreen leaves, turning this place into the fairytale I dreamt of when I was told about the fair.
It’s the first time I’m seeing the brilliant expanse of this land from this angle, studded with so many small miracles, but I can’t look away from the man next to me.
Everest gives me a half grin, then reaches out to brush the snow from my hair. Each touch of his finger feels like an attempt to shock my heart into rhythm. “Is this when you tell me you missed me?”
So much. I swallow the words, the ones that have been kindling inside for years but have swelled to a firestorm in the last two weeks.
This dance between us has ebbed and flowed, but I didn’t know how much it would demand from me until the crescendo came to a crashing halt.
The humor on his face fades when he sees my expression, the blatant truth that’s always been there.
But how do you find words to describe a centuries-long affair that has always had roots in me? I’m afraid to touch it, now that I know how deep they go.
“We never properly talked about the night of the first eclipse,” I say before I can change my mind. That night has always lived in the back of my mind, but recently, with his near-loss and the all the reflection I’ve done since, I’ve been playing it over in a loop.
Everest grows wholly still. “You made it clear you didn’t want to.”
This is true. He tried to find me after I ran away, multiple times.
He came down to the bank to stop Calliope from charring me when I went to the river to seek refuge, letting his pet know that I had not destroyed his heart.
But I avoided him for weeks, confused and unsure about what had happened and what it meant, and then I’d given it proper thought.
We were as different as the sun and the moon.
He didn’t understand where I came from, and I couldn’t begin to understand him.
His blasé disposition chafed at me, and my emotions exhausted him.
We fought more than we communicated, and it took centuries of coexistence to get to a place where we really, truly liked each other.
Our kiss only came up in passing jests, like this recent eclipse, and now it haunts me every time he draws close.
“I kind of threw myself at you and didn’t want to hear what you had to say about it,” I confess.
“I told myself that either you’d be nice out of pity, or you’d tell me it meant nothing, and, well, we were to be stuck in the same place for who knows how long, and I thought it was easier to not talk about it at all.
And then we became really good friends, and it felt better to stay like that. ”
I wait for him to make light of the moment, but he takes it all on the chin. “I wasn’t human enough for you.”
“And I was nowhere near a god,” I say, smiling sadly.
He takes my hand to his mouth and plants a soft kiss on the back of it. The sensation goes straight to my core. “What about now?”
What about now? I don’t know what I am – but it’s certainly not human. And Everest is still a god, but not the kind that he used to be. His words during the card game play in the back of my mind.
I should’ve known you’d feel like this.
Like home.
I’ve been searching for how to describe him, and that word feels most right. Home.