I thought about this. “You’re the only one who heard me, so give it back.” I tried to say it like I was joking, but I wanted to cry.
Indigo looked at me, one corner of her mouth tilted up. Her eyebrow arched. “It’s mine now!”
I tried to grab her. She shrieked and dove into the pool. After that, we played for hours. We stood with our legs wide apart in the water and took turns wriggling through like slick mermaids. Sometimes, we pretended to trap each other. We did handstands and opened our eyes and looked up at the sun through the cold blue. It wasn’t until I went home that night that I realized Indigo had never given me back my name. It was just a formality though.
From the moment I met her, I had always belonged to Indigo.
Chapter Eight
The Bridegroom
How well do you know your bride?
I had not moved from my place at Hippolyta’s bedside, and yet her voice was now transposed over a rhyme so old there was moss in its joints—
Turn back, turn back, thou bonnie bride, nor in this house of death abide.
I had seen the words, but I had never heard them so clearly until now. It was a familiar-enough motif; its skeleton found in everything from Grimm and Perrault to a neat dissection in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther folkloric index. A young maiden visits the house of her betrothed, and there finds an old woman who bids her to hide behind the oven. The girl waits. Soon the door opens and her beloved stomps in, dragging a dead girl by her hair and heaving her onto the table. He tells the old woman that he means to eat well tonight and cuts the dead girl into her choicest bits. Behind the stove, the girl sees the firelight fall upon her beloved’s treasures. In the corner, he keeps a pile of snowy breasts. His rich rugs are shining strands of raven, ginger, and golden hair. His precious porcelain is made of glazed pelvic bowls, and his many gems are teeth set in gold. In the betrothed’s haste tocarve the meat, the dead girl’s little finger flies into the lap of the hiding maiden who, by now, has realized her beloved is not what he seemed. And all the while, the old woman sings.
Turn back, turn back, thou bonnie bride, nor in this house of death abide.
Hippolyta was clearly not sane. Her words were not to be trusted.
So why could I not stop listening?
“Let me tell you a tale, beauty,” said Hippolyta. “One day there was a beautiful revel and a sky of azure and a sky of indigo walked hand in hand into the Otherworld, but only one of them came out. Do you understand me? Onlyonecame out.”
I heard a creaking on the staircase.
“MissHippolyta?” called the housekeeper from the other side of the door.
“You must find my Azure,” said Hippolyta. “Oh, the House misses her so much you can feel its ache in the floors! Only Indigo knows where she went, but my Indigo is a slippery girl, always has been. She kept Azure as close as a secret. You have no idea how much they loved each other.”
“Let me go—” I said, but Hippolyta held tight.
“The Otherworld knows the girls’ secrets; perhaps you can ask it where Azure went? Why she never visits?” said Hippolyta, frowning and pouting like a child. “But who can get into the Otherworld without a pair of wings?”
“I can’t help you.”
Hippolyta’s bony fingers caught my face, drawing me to her. Her fingers left damp and sour marks on my skin. I held still.
“I can hear your longing like a heartbeat,” said Hippolyta. “If you find Azure, the House will reward you. The House knows your deepest desires. The House always provides.”
Mrs. Revand knocked on the door. “Miss Hippolyta?”
Hippolyta released me. I stumbled back as the door opened.
“Good visit, I hope?” asked Mrs.Revand with false brightness. “This way, sir.”
Mrs.Revand gave us a moment of privacy. I glanced over my shoulder to see Hippolyta slowly sinking into her covers.
“You say she loves you, but what is she anyway?” said Hippolyta, and then she closed her eyes and sang: “My sly blue-sky girl, too good to be true, and all of one hue, you’re my girl soblueblueblue.”
Hippolyta laughed and I closed the door behind me. I hardly registered Mrs.Revand asking me to wait so she could see what Indigo wished to do next. I sank onto the stair landing.
Indigo would be furious that I had met Hippolyta without her. It wouldn’t matter that I had kept my promise and not pried. Perhaps she knew that Hippolyta wished to taunt me. I wished I could tell the old crone that it made no difference. What I knew of Indigo I loved, and that was enough.
And is it still enough?
