S D
V
“Do you…” I swallow, not sure how to phrase this.
He angles a gently inquisitive smile at me. “Do I…?”
“Do you have any peculiar word associations? Not the usual suspects, like how the wordhappymeanshappy. I’m not describing this well. Like, maybe you hear the wordhappyandautomatically think about…oh, I don’t know…the specific ringtone of one of your novelty telephones. Or maybe the wordhat, for you, will always feel like the color green, because of a bucket hat you wore when you were a kid. Hypothetically speaking.”
I truly do not expect him to understand what I’m attempting to communicate, because out loud, it makes little sense. But he says:
“Formidable. When I hear the wordfairy, I think of fairy rings, and that jumps to the wordformidablefor some reason, written all in fancy cursive, right below your face.” He scratches his jaw, thinking. “But I don’t see your face in normal color, like a photograph, when I think offormidable; I see you as one of those old-fashioned oval brooch things. A cameo, I think it’s called. I also see your face when I think of the wordfantastic, but the image is different. Forfantastic, you’re in your raincoat, looking up at my window from the street below. And you’re all black and white like a noir film.”
There is a tightening in my chest, almost to the point of pain. I cannot breathe through it. Morgan doesn’t seem to demand an explanation for why I asked this question, content to busy himself writing about the hollowhead.
I watch him for a while, summoning courage. “I think you’refantastic, too,” I say. “In Luna’s kitchen the night we planned all this. There’s an amber glow on you from the pantry light left on, and I can still taste the Earl Grey tea I was drinking.”
He smiles slowly, skin around his eyes creasing. “I like that. Very much.”
I’m not sure what to do with all of Morgan’sfantastic. He isn’t right for me, and yet he is, and yet he’s not, and I wish I knew for sure, one way or the other. But he doesn’t fit neatly into either column. He’s all over the place.
I think I sort of love that he’s all over the place.
This revelation, very at odds with a brain that seeks to label, organize, tidying every word and person into their correct little box, runs through my mind over and over. I drift asleep to the scratch of his pen chronicling impossible things—and his quiet, his so very curious quiet, that makes me wish I could see all that he imagines.
Thirty-One
Turn off your lights when there is a meteor shower; some of them are cursed fairies, who are attracted to light and will aim to become part of whatever it is they fall into.
Legends and Superstitions, Expanded,
Tempest Family Grimoire
I am wokenby my own scream, and a piano on my leg.
“You shouldn’t have moved in your sleep,” Morgan says urgently, and if I weren’t pinned by this piano, I’d deck him. I can just make out his profile, dampened by the darkness of surrounding trees.
“How am I at fault here?”
“It isn’tForte’sfault.” He manages to lift the piano off my leg, but it nearly falls onto my face and I scream again. Morgan makes a quick, slippery grab. From below, I fight against my sleeping bag to get unzipped. “He’s sensitive to touch,” Morgan insists. “A defenseless baby.”
I doubt Forte is all that young. By the patchwork of scars on his spiteful little face, I’d say he’s been picking fights for a decade at least.
“He’s going to kill us!”
“Unlikely. Forte hates faces and sleeps far away from them,so all your vital organs are safe. If anything, he’d mangle your feet.”
My voice is like a clatter of pots and pans. “Oh, is that all?”
“Grab my water,” Morgan orders. “Splash some on him.” He grits his teeth as he adjusts his hold on the piano. “Hurry!”
“I can’t see your water. It’s dark in here.”
“Feel around!”
I stand up, still loose-limbed from sleep, and grope in the darkness. Feel along the walls of the tent to gain my bearings. Some of the fabric’s rather lumpy—
“Well, hello,” Morgan rasps in a fluttering baritone. His voice is located directly above the bit of tent I was patting down.
