It was being eaten alive, and yet it sang.
“What a waste of time,” Indigo said as she ducked into the car, the door slamming shut.
The chauffeur held open my side. “Sir?”
The starling’s threnody followed me. I found myself thinking of omens and cedar wood, the slow turn of strange faces and thesound of a door closing. Indigo curled against me in the back seat. I tried to feel the warmth of her, but I thought only of those ants, of their thousand wet mouths opening and closing.
All full of teeth.
By the time we arrived at the Casteñada hotel, it was completely dark. The drive from the car and subsequent ferry trip to the mainland left us tired. As the valet stacked our bags and the night manager enthusiastically greeted Indigo—and, by a far lesser extent, me—I recognized my handprint on the property.
Over the past few years, I had conceptualized and brought to life more than half a dozen homages to my wife. Here I rediscovered a love letter in the lapis lazuli and bronze tiles of the lobby, its nacreous tables and chandeliers of pearls and windowpane oyster shells.
“Melusine,” I said.
I had told Indigo the tale of Melusine early in our courtship. We were in the bathtub of her Paris penthouse, slightly intoxicated and muzzy from a day spent in bed.
“Tell me a tale,” she had begun, climbing into my lap.
I caught the slow glint of hunger building in her eyes. I gripped her waist, held her in place. She squirmed as if she were trapped.
This was part of our game.
“Once upon a time,” I said, “there was a man who married a water spirit named Melusine. Except he didn’t know what she was. Before they married, she made him promise that for one day out of the week, he would let her bathe in private and never disturb her.”
“Did he keep his promise?”
“He was a weak man,” I said, running my thumb along her full bottom lip. “Of course he did not.”
She liked the way I said that and rewarded me with a kiss.
“One day, curiosity overcame the husband and he spied on her through a hole in the door, and that’s when he realized his wife was not fully mortal. Below the waist”—here, I paused to demonstrate, and Indigo sighed as I stroked her—“she was a serpent.”
Indigo gripped my shoulders. “Then what?”
“Then Melusine abandoned him for the sea.”
“Poor Melusine,” said Indigo as she shifted to let me in. “You can tell she really loved him.”
“Is that so?”
By then, I was distracted by her fingers in my hair, the heat of her thighs. And yet I never forgot what she said as she lowered her mouth to my ear.
“She kept him alive when she should’ve done so much worse.”
Indigo’s voice now reached me through the memory. A soft, tired smile curved her mouth. The chandelier lights picked out hues of ruby in her hair.
“Do you remember when you told me this story?”
How could I forget?
“Maybe you can tell me again tonight?” Indigo said, right as a voice called across the lobby.
“Azure!”
All softness left Indigo’s eyes. That name,Azure, iced over her. Across the lobby, a young Black woman waved and walked toward us. She had large, dark eyes and her hair was a bouncing golden halo, like the corona of a saint.
“Azure!” she said again.
