Chapter 33
THE SUNSET HURT to watch. Corin’s eyes remained swollen long after crying, and the light didn’t help.
She’d gone through the trouble of climbing on top of the overlook in Summerland to be alone. Miles of landscape stretched endlessly, the sands turning gold under the sun, the ocean gleaming under marigold skies. She tried to replicate the colors on a canvas, but the paint didn’t mix quite right, and the shapes were all wrong. The brush felt stiff in her palm, the bristles prickly against her skin.
A frustrated groan hissed from her lips. She threw black paint across the canvas and smeared the dark oils until no other colors were left. The sunset, as if sensing her derision, melted below the ocean. The sky turned black in response, and the world enveloped itself in the night. She stared into the darkness and watched ocean waves turn so black it blended with her ruined painting, as if it were a colorless void.
The night was quiet except for crickets and a quiet stream of waterfall from the cliffside. If she listened closely enough, she could hear howling in the distance, the tides of wind that swirled around Autumnland and threatened to pull her legs down the cliffside. Perhaps that was why the island kept calling. No matter how terrifying the nightmares were, that pain was still the most familiar thing to her. At least in the darkness, she knew she would get hurt. Better the comfort of familiarity than the possibility of loss.
“Our minds are such messy things.”
Corin pulled away from the cliffside, attention snapped to the figure approaching. Malicine emerged from the jungle’s foliage. Their fingers flexed in the awkward absence of their staff as they sat beside her at the cliffside and observed the island in the distance.
The clouds surrounding Autumnland rumbled. Corin thought of the beast that ripped through the bloodred moon with his horns, the echoes of laughter as he’d taunted Malicine with lies that they would never belong in any world. He’d been the darkness within them that kept everyone tied to the island. Corin had pushed the darkness at bay, but it never truly left.
“She’s a good kid,” Malicine said. Corin didn’t need to ask who they were talking about. “I like her. And I don’t like most people.”
Corin shook her head. “You’ve never even met her.”
“I met your memories of her. She lives there, too.”
But memories weren’t enough. They couldn’t change the reality that Elly was gone. Corin refused to see Elly in her dreams now that she acknowledged the aching truth of her sister absence. How could someone escape from shame and sustain themselves with imagination? How could she do that with the knowledge that none of this was real?
“I don’t understand how we’re expected to just move on,” she said.
Malicine let out a bitter laugh. “You think the pain goes away? It doesn’t. We just make a bigger space to contain it.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she murmured, “or deserve to.”
Her gaze dipped below the waterfall, watching the stream make its way to the rest of the ocean. Dark waves rolled gently across the surface. They glittered underneath stars and buzzed in dormant strength. But there had been nights when the waves were wilder, when tides grasped her ankles and tried to pull her down to the bottom.
“I told her I never wanted her,” she whispered. “It was the most horrible thing I said to her, because it was true.”
That was it, the very thing that kept her from embracing forgiveness. Maybe she could have fooled herself into believing Elly’s death was unpreventable, but she couldn’t deny this. She wasn’t meant to be a parent, let alone a sister. There were too many tireless days she worked to feed two mouths, too many sleepless nights where she came home to a crying child, and she couldn’t stand dealing with that burden.
She hated Elly, and yet, she loved her. Corin loved her so much more than dreams could ever make of her.
“She died thinking I didn’t love her.” Corin let out a sob, then covered her mouth, biting into the skin of her palm. It wasn’t fair for her to cry.
“She knows,” said Malicine.
“No, she doesn’t. I never told her.”
“You did.”
Malicine gripped Corin’s shoulder, forcing her to look at them and listen.
“You tell her every time you warn her to be careful or ask if she’s eaten. You tell her every time you hold on to her the second there’s danger. You tell her every time you look at her when something amazing happens, because you want her to be there. I know what lack of love from sisters feels like, Corin. And it is not you.”
Malicine’s gaze dipped below to the shores of the beach, where a girl had been walking across the sand. Briar was a speck in the distance, yet her skin illuminated from the stars sewn in her dress. Her toes balanced across rocks as Talon circled around her. He perched on her fingers, and she talked to the raven in a secret language, like they were friends.
“Humans speak about love all the time as if they have something to prove,” Malicine said. “But love isn’t always obvious, and you don’t need to state it to be true.”
Stars emerged from the sky like tiny lights. Constellations danced across a dark canvas, glittering into delicate lines and shapes. Corin pictured Elly’s fingers tracing each spot. In the abandoned building they slept in, Elly had often positioned herself beneath the hole in the roof to see the stars. Corin used to yell at her to stop or she would get sick.
In the dreamworld, a shooting star leapt across the sky. The motion was so sudden that Corin blinked and nearly missed it. The star descended to the shore and drifted toward Briar. She caught the light in her palms and cupped it like a firefly. The rock shimmered on her skin, a moment of life before it disintegrated into colorful dust. She looked up at Corin, realizing who was watching. When Briar waved, her hand glimmered in the darkness.
Corin held her breath, watching stars twinkle between Briar’s fingers, remembering Elly’s own hand stretched to the sky. This was the fairy tale Elly had been talking about. She hadn’t searched for gold or some grander power to rule over a kingdom. She had been looking for the magic of ordinary things, seen the possibility of an infinite night sky.
A new dawn broke through the atmosphere. Fractures of sunlight whisked away clouds until a crown shone over the ocean. An itch to capture everything in memory compelled Corin to grab the black canvas and return to work. Careful strokes painted golds that hit the peak of the mountains. Green shimmered over moss-covered rocks, while specks of white dotted the pale sky to show the remaining stars.
She was so absorbed in painting this scene that she didn’t realize Malicine had spoken.
“Don’t get into any more trouble while I’m gone.”
Corin jerked her head up, but the demon had already stood to walk away. “Where are you going?”
“I’m getting my amulet back.” Their silhouette disappeared inside the jungle. Corin followed the flicker of their cape, bounding past the foliage until she could reach them. Her boots pressed heavy into the soil as she blocked their path.
“I’ll go with you,” she said. “It was my fault you lost the amulet in the first place.”
“No. It’s too dangerous, and you’ll only cause more trouble. The more people who venture inside the island, the more chaos unfolds.”
Corin swallowed hard, remembering how Malicine had to carry her through the island. Terrors in all figments had swarmed them both. The two of them had barely made it out. If she joined Malicine, she couldn’t guarantee she would prevent the nightmares from taking her again.
The demon brushed the woody vines from their view to catch a glimpse of the rumbling island across the ocean. Their eyes turned distant, a veil of thoughts that Corin couldn’t discern.
“It’s strange. I always thought abandonment would be all I’d ever know. Yet somehow, the most unexpected of people have come back for me. First Amelia, now you.” A chuckle escaped Malicine’s lips as they shook their head, finding humor in the irony. “I wonder how many people in the real world share your foolish hearts.”
Corin followed the demon’s descent down the mountains. Sunlight brought warm air to the jungle as bees buzzed around orchids and giant water lilies. Sweat slicked the side of her temple, but instead of humidity, it came from frantic thoughts racing through her head. There was no way Malicine could escape Autumnland unscathed. She tried not to listen to crackling branches as they moved, or else she would continue to imagine them trapped in the island forever.
A path of rubber trees parted way for the beach’s sandy opening. The sun fully emerged above the ocean as Briar waved them over. Before Malicine took another step, they turned to Corin.
“If I don’t make it back, tell Briar that I . . .”
The words drifted away like salt in the air. They paused, lost in thought.
“Tell her what?” Corin asked.
“It’s fine. I don’t have to say it for her to know.”
Briar stopped when she saw the expression on Malicine’s face. Her arms fell to her sides, like a sunflower drooping once it sensed the light would not stay forever.
“You’re leaving.” She said it not as a question but a sad truth, one of many she had been accustomed to in a previous life. Malicine nodded, and Briar’s face fell, as if she already knew she wouldn’t be able to change the demon’s mind. She balled her hands into fists for a long moment. Her fingers eventually flexed free as she threw herself to Malicine in a tight embrace.
“When you come back, we’ll have a tea party,” she said. “There will be pastries, and scones, and even those ugly floppy hats you hate. That’s why you must come back, Mal.”
Malicine ran their nails through Briar’s hair. Corin witnessed a flicker of sadness pass their eyes, an unspoken truth that settled on their lips. They didn’t reply, because they couldn’t promise anything. Instead, they pressed a kiss at Briar’s temple. It was the most tender Corin had ever seen Malicine, and that was how she knew the demon did not expect to return.
Malicine and their raven spread their wings and soared toward Autumnland, their figures swallowed whole by gray clouds. Briar watched with a quiet intensity that Corin recognized in fleeting moments. The girl’s eyes were the color of sea glass, filled with endless water and light. They knew more than she let on, and more than Corin had understood before. She was not a naive princess cursed against her will, and Malicine was not a villain. They were simply people who wanted to escape.
This world wasn’t real, but its inhabitants were. Like a secret, Corin wanted to protect it.
“You should paint again,” Briar spoke while staring into the ocean. “That way, when Mal and Talon return, you’ll have something to show them.”
Saliva dried in Corin’s mouth. “I can’t—” She cleared her throat. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“You don’t know how to paint? I don’t believe that.”
“No. I don’t know how to do any of this.”
Corin gestured to their surroundings, the waves washing over rocks, the sunlight filtering through clouds. Beautiful colors, whimsical shapes, a sense of peace that could never be possible in the real world. These had always belonged in paintings, not reality. But Briar placed a hand on Corin’s cheek, and somehow, her touch didn’t feel like a lie. As their skin warmed against each other, Corin realized she was trembling, and that Briar had tried to keep her still.
“You’ve always shielded yourself with anger, but that doesn’t have to be the only way to deal with the pain,” Briar said. “Maybe you can’t forgive yourself out there, but you can here.”
Corin wanted to hope this was true. That all she needed to do was remember she loved Elly, and that would be enough. Perhaps, in this world, she could think of impossible things and make them possible. She closed her eyes as her heart ached with a strange, sweet throbbing. Her fingers wrapped around Briar’s hand and squeezed them, so she could feel the warmth of the Briar’s skin, the pulse in her veins, that truth in her voice.
Waves rippled gently against her feet. A burst of seagulls chimed in the sky at the arrival of a new presence.
Corin opened her eyes to see the water swell. The sea gave birth to familiar life. She ran to the ocean and caught the girl in her arms. The girl wasn’t limp and cold, like the infant Corin once saved in the river, but full and warm. Her face slicked wet like a newborn, her spiky hair peppered by the salt of sea. Water dripped down her long lashes, and Corin’s thumbs rubbed over her cheeks to wipe them away, cupping her small face until the girl finally took a breath. Brown eyes opened, round and full of light from a sun that kissed her skin and brought her to life.
Corin stared at her for a long time, memorizing every detail of her beautiful sister’s dark skin, her pattern of freckles, her crooked tooth. Elly was here, and at the same time, Corin knew she was not.
“I wish you were real,” she whispered. “There were so many things I should have done for you.”
Elly blinked, as if processing Corin’s words and the truth of her existence. Her chin slowly raised as she stared at the sky. A bird’s whistle cracked through the dawn. In the pale blues, there were still glimmers of white dots for her to reach.
“We could try again,” said Elly. “Maybe we can start by watching the stars together.”
Corin raised her head at the constellations. The stars were difficult to spot in the morning light, yet she waited patiently, watching her sister’s fingers trace each one.