It’s Not for Brownies
It’s Not for Brownies
TWO
"This was not a good idea," I say, as wings flutter every which way around us in Snow's small apartment.
Ariel and I stare wide-eyed at the flutterbuns that have found various perches in the living room. From the window ledge to the top corner of the television, and atop a bookcase.
As soon as we brought the cage of vampire rabbit creatures to Snow's apartment, she opened the door, releasing them without warning.
They exploded in a frenzy, trying to escape their prison. Almost as soon as she released them, Snow announced she'd be right back and to watch them for her, then darted out the front door.
Ariel had been on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, eyes tired and red-rimmed from crying over Carolee, but now they’re wide as saucers as she, and I warily watch the newcomers to the apartment.
"Err, I'm going to go to bed," Ariel says, transferring from the couch to her chair seamlessly, still shooting a wary gaze around the room. "I took a metric ton of melatonin already and I plan to jam earplugs in and pretend like none of this is happening."
She rolls carefully, eyes darting every which way as if expecting an attack, but none of the flutterbuns seem interested.
"And Seven, Six, whoever the hell you are right now," Ariel says, pausing at the threshold of her room. "I'm putting it on you to get this place cleared out by tomorrow. Also, the lock on our bathroom is broken, so no barging in unannounced. Got it?"
"Yes, ma'am," I say, wanting to sound sarcastic, but it comes out entirely sincere.
We’re not afraid of her, One reiterates with impatience.
The rest of us silently disagree.
Ariel narrows her eyes at me in consideration for another beat before disappearing into her room.
It's not long before Snow returns with a large paper grocery bag clutched to her chest.
"What is that? Where did you go? Don’t you think we should have just released them outside?" The questions fall from my mouth quickly.
Normally, I'm the laid back one, but nothing about this situation makes me feel at ease.
My skin crawls as I feel the many red eyes on me, and I get the sensation that as soon as the flutterbuns are acclimated they'll move onto plotting my delicious death.
Snow drops the heavy brown bag on the counter, then reaches under a cabinet and pulls out a large baking tray.
Are we making brownies? Five asks with a little too much hope.
I don't think so, Six says skeptically but at this point none of us underestimate what Snow might suddenly do.
I hope it's brownies, Five says quietly.
Then Snow crosses to the window above the fire escape and shoves it up one-handed. Warm, damp air rolls in.
"They stay until they're ready and then they can leave when they feel like it.
" She returns to the bag and removes what looks like a partially full trash bag.
"I figured even though they were lured in with food, they'd be stressed and hungry.
And we can't let them back out into the wild just yet.
What if the HAMs are out there sharpshooting these poor little guys?
I think it would just be safer if we made sure they were okay here for a while. "
Snow flips the bag over, and several pounds of raw beef slap onto the tray.
Wings erupt from every corner of the room. Air gusts over my face, stirring the warm, coppery smell until my stomach turns. The flutterbuns launch themselves at the meat in a frantic blur of white fur, red eyes, and tiny snapping fangs.
All but one.
A single flutterbun remains inside the cage, wedged against the wire where one wing is twisted at a wrong angle. His little body rises and falls too fast, exhausted from fighting a trap that didn’t break. His nose bumps the metal once. Twice.
Then he looks right at me with wet red eyes.
My heart twists at the sight of it for some strange reason. It shouldn't.
It's an abomination.
"These creatures don't belong here," I say, even as I approach the cage.
"Well, don't squeal on me to our landlord and it will be cool," Snow says, spreading the meat out evenly on the tray.
Still, I approach the injured wild animal, trying to see it for what it is. A curse. A plague. A threat to humanity.
As I near, it shrieks and wriggles a bit before dropping exhausted.
Again, a sharp pain twists in my heart. I have to clench my hands into fists to keep from reaching in.
"I mean, they are magic, Snow. They aren't natural. And they certainly don't belong in Boston. The Humans Against Magic aren't totally wrong."
Snow finishes washing her hands off then turns from the counter, baking tray balanced in her hands, knuckles white on the metal. "They killed Carolee. They were going to kill these things too."
"You don't know HAM killed Carolee."
She crosses the room. The tray clatters down onto the coffee table. A flutterbun drops from the lampshade onto the rim and shoves its snout into raw beef before her hands are off the edges.
Snow rounds on me, color high in her cheeks, eyes too bright. "Why do you keep saying that?"
My jaw works.
There's dried blood crusted along her palm where the wire cut her in the alley, a streak of dirt up the side of her jaw, her chest rising and falling too fast under her shirt.
"HAMs are idiots in matching jackets with bumper sticker slogans," I get out. "They hate magic. They aren't the disease, Snow." Heat climbs the back of my throat. "Magic is the disease."
Snow goes still. "Carolee wasn't a disease."
She was infected, Seven says.
As are we, Six says. Should we be killed too?
It's a real question, and not the first time we've asked it of ourselves.
So far, we've been too useful to put down like a dog, Three says with an unusual amount of disgruntlement.
She was a person, and she had a name, Four cuts in, raw. We knew it. We brought her there.
My gut goes hollow. Cold sweeps under my ribs.
The flutterbun in the cage shrieks again. I snap, unable to take the little flutterbun's pain any longer.
My knee hits the floor beside the cage. My hand goes in, fingers finding the trapped joint.
Snow is there in two strides. Her hand clamps around my wrist, hot, shaking.
"Don't hurt it," she protests.
"I'm helping it."
"Then act like it."
Her grip eases. Mine does too. The wing is folded backward at the second joint, wire cutting through fluff into skin.
I lift. Slide. Ease the joint clear of the bend.
The wing settles along the body. The flutterbun shivers into my palm, heart hammering against my thumb.
It's too exhausted to fly off or try to escape.
Snow's hand rests on my wrist. I feel every fine tremor in her fingers.
"You don't get to call something a disease while saving it."
"I shouldn't be saving it," I say, staring down at the creature.
The flutterbun shivers in my palm. My hand stays lightly closed around it. It trusts me.
It shouldn't.
Snow shouldn't.
Snow's grip on my wrist tightens, knuckles bone-pale.
"Then put it down."
"I should have walked past the alley." My voice scrapes coming out, even as I continue to hold the flutterbun. "I should have left them in the cage."
"Don't." Her voice cracks on the word. "Don't you dare."
The little thing looks up at me with sad eyes and then drops its head and begins to lick me. Like it's grooming me in thanks. My stomach clenches and I feel sick. "It's an abomination. It's a magic being, sickness with teeth and a heartbeat and it doesn't belong in this city."
"Stop."
"None of it belongs here." The pulse under my thumb keeps hammering even as it continues to lick my palm.
Slowly, carefully, I lean over and set the flutterbun down on the couch cushion, though it seems resistant to let me slide away. As if it finds comfort in my touch. "None of it. Including me."
"Stop it." Snow's other hand fists in my hoodie at the chest, close enough that her breath stutters warm against my jaw. "What is wrong with you tonight? Who put that in your head? Who the fuck taught you to talk about yourself like this? To believe this shit?"
"My mother." It slips out before I can stop it. "And when I forget, she reminds me."
"Wait, what?" Snow rears back, releasing my hoodie. She narrows her eyes. "Why would you lie to me?"
I push up off the carpet. She rises with me. The freed flutterbun lifts its head from the couch cushion. On the coffee table, the others crowd the tray, beef in their teeth.
"Lie to you?" I ask.
"You told me your mother died."
Now it's my turn to be confused. "I never told you my mother died."
"Yes, you did. You said you remembered her loving you, and you missed that."
Every emotion inside me hardens to stone. "She didn't die, Snow. She stopped loving me."
Snow looks at me like what I'm saying is either stupid or crazy. "What?"
"She stopped loving me," I say, over-enunciating like she’s dense.
"Why?"
"I told you when I was a kid I got sick. That was why."
Say it. You're talking around what she needs to hear, Four demands.
But I don't want to say it. I don't want to care. I want to act like it doesn't hurt, though it's a constant pain, an always open festering wound that rots us all through our core.
"We developed magical abilities. That was the sickness. We became an abomination, wrong. It's a sin, Snow. I'm a sin."
"You developed a magic power and your mom stopped loving you because of that?" she sputters. "Well, that's fae shit. Magic powers aren’t a disease, and that's not love at all, a mom is supposed to love you no matter—"
"And what the hell do you know about being loved by a mother? You barely even had one."
Her mouth flaps open and closed a couple of times, her breath quickening. Then it snaps shut. Everything drains out of her face. "Alright, you got me there. My birth family may have died before I knew what that was like, but I found my family. And they love me unconditionally."
I can't help the humorless smile from stretching across my face until I feel like a deranged joker.
"That's fae shit, as you put it." I shove my hands in my jean pockets.
"Everyone loves each other conditionally.
A man cheats on his wife and the wife stops loving him.
A friend steals from their friend and that friendship ends.
Politics divide and split up people who thought they'd love each other forever.
Same with money. People who travel too far from each other stop loving each other after a while.
So no, Snow. No one loves anyone else unconditionally, not even mothers. "
Her eyes blaze, and I can see the gears running hot and fast as she reaches for her argument, but she didn't have parents. She can't deny what I'm saying. Anyone who has lived on this earth, in these realms, for any amount of time realizes what I’m saying has truth to it.
"I love unconditionally," she finally gets out through gritted teeth.
"What?" My hands emerge from my pockets as I readjust my stance. Whatever I thought she'd throw at me, it wasn't that.
"I know you're wrong because I love people unconditionally."
"No, you don't," I roll my eyes, turning to go. My boot clips the leg of the coffee table. The tray rattles. Flutterbuns scatter into the air, resettle. She grabs my arm.
"I love my friends more than life itself. I loved," she stops and swallows hard, "Rosie more than life itself. I would do anything for them. I would love them no matter what they did. If they killed someone, I'd be there with the shovel to help bury the body. Just like I would for you."
A tidal wave of emotion pressed inside my chest until her last words. The tidal wave crashes and roars in my ears, as my brain struggles to comprehend what she's saying.
For a moment, I don't feel fractured, all of us are wrapped up in the moment digesting with a coherence of confusion and disbelief.
"Don't—"
"I love you. I love you, Two. I love you all. All Seven of you."
My hands tighten into fists as a red mist fills my vision. "Don't fucking say that, Snow. Don't you fucking dare," my sentence ends on a strained whisper.
"You're extraordinary and I've fallen so hard for you I can't see straight." She lets out a near hysterical laugh of disbelief.
"It's your fetish with our magic. That's what's making you say these stupid things."
"No." She tightens her hold on my arm. "I love you with magic, but I'd love you without magic.
I love all your different parts, One's controlling behavior, how you pretend you don't care about anything, but you really care about everything.
How cuddly you are when you nap. I love Three's shy, deep nature that always leaves me in wonder.
Four's passion—you light a fire in me, Four. "
I try to pull away but she doesn't let me, instead gripping my face. I put my hands over hers to rip them away, but they don't do it, they simply cover hers.
"Five, I haven’t met you yet, but I love you too.
I love you, Six, the way you think, the way you speak.
How you make sense of the world, giving me new eyes like Three but in a different way.
And Seven can hate me all he wants, but I love you too, Seven.
Do you hear that? I know you are just trying to protect yourself and the others. I want the same thing."
We can't hear this. We won't hear this.
If Snow loves us exactly as we are, if she loves us even with our damned abilities, flawed, fucked up, and Mother can't...
No, we can't absorb what that means. We won't.
We push her away, turning so she can't see us. A hot stinging forces our eyes to water even as our jaw flexes wildly, trying to beat back the storm she's stirred up.
"You don't love us. You don't know us. You don't know what we've done." If she knew, she'd never forgive us. She'd hate us. She'd see the monster we are.
I catch a movement from the corner of my eye. Snow shakes her head. "I don't care. I love you."
I whirl around. "Stop saying that!" I roar at her.
She has to stop.
She has to stop saying that.
My world trembles, shakes, an earthquake breaking the ground beneath our feet until we fall to our knees on the carpet.
If Snow loves us just as we are and mother doesn't, that means that it's not our fault. That we aren't wrong. We aren't what we thought we were. That Mother is...
The freed flutterbun on the couch pushes itself upright on the cushion as if concerned. As if it also has a stake in this. Which is ridiculous because it is a worthless creature and I shouldn’t care that it licked me like it was bonding to me. Neither of us deserve that kind of connection.
Because Mother is right. We are wrong. We are broken and sick.
Snow drops in front of me. She looks at us with pity as she reaches out and brushes her fingers over our cheeks. We’re crying.
We feed on her pity. We drink it in. We are ravenous for all her pity, to allow ourselves to be pitiable. It’s disgusting and weak, but we fold into her arms as she holds us. She strokes our hair and murmurs that it’s okay. That we are so lovable. That she’ll never stop loving us. All of us.
Taking her love hurts, but we can’t stop. We claw at her, needing to take it all.