“With hair,” I added, relieved that I didn’t have to explain why I wanted this magic so badly.
“Withhair,” Tati repeated, nodding. “Hair has power. It helps us communicate to the outside world how we wish to be seen, or not be seen. It is a language of identity.”
Tati got up from her table and walked over to us.
“Look, sweetheart,” she said, placing her hands on my shoulders and turning me toward the wall.
A small mirror hung there, its borders decorated in elaborate curlicues of finely worked hair.
“If you cut off all your beautiful hair, you would be making a great sacrifice, but it’s a sacrifice of yourself,” said Tati. “You would beseveringa part of you.”
A spot of cold opened behind my ribs. I ignored it. Maybe that was true, but I didn’t want this part of me. I stared straight into Tati’s face and felt the pressure of Jupiter’s fingertips on my bare shoulder.
“Please,” I said.
Tati sighed. “I’m not doing anything unless I’ve got your mother’s permission. Why don’t you ask her and then we’ll talk?”
But talking to my mother meant I had to go home. I’d left so quickly I didn’t have any of my things for school, but after spending the day hiding, I had no choice. I let the House relinquish me back into the cold. I could tell it didn’t want me to go. My foot caught on a trail of ivy poking out of the ground. The iron finial of the gate bit down on my scarf as I left.
“I’ll be back soon,” I said.
As if to express its displeasure, a harsh wind blew through me, and it no longer felt like music. The sky on the walk home was gray and stripped of its diamonds, and with every step, the end of my braid slapped dully against my back.
I hated walking through Jupiter’s front door. Even when all the windows were open, the air in the house was cloying. A damp smell, like mushrooms and dirt, seeped up through the carpet and mixed with the intensely sweet candles my mother lit in the evenings.
I kept my jacket zipped to my neck as I walked through the foyer. I planned to disappear into my bedroom, but then I heard my mother humming. I could smell onions sizzling in butter and knew she was making my favorite pasta. An ache went through me. For a moment, I felt that same hum against my scalp as she rubbed oil in my hair. Beside the front door, the key holder was empty. Jupiter was not home.
“Mom?”
She poked her head into the entryway. Sometimes I forgot how beautiful she was, tall and dark-skinned. She wore her hair in ringlets that hit the top of her collarbones. She had on a red dress and her lily-of-the-valley perfume.
“Oh,” she said, her shoulders falling. “I thought you were Jay. He stepped out to grab some wine. We’re having a date night at home.”
I walked into the kitchen. The dining table was set for two with a long white candle flickering in the middle.
“I’ll bring the food to your room,” my mother said, her voice too bright as if selling me something. “Withtwopieces of cake.”
She was trying, but it wasn’t for me. I reached to touch my hair and found that my braid had come undone by the wind and fallen around me like a protective cloak. Her words stung right through it.
“What do you think?” she asked, smoothing her dress. “How do I look?”
“Beautiful.”
She almost smiled then, and I should’ve left it at that. But I had an odd glimmer of understanding. It was like reaching for a knife just to know its weight.
“Jupiter says I look like you,” I said. “But when you were younger.”
Her smile turned so brittle I thought it would snap her face. Her gaze went to my unkempt hair.
“You look like a slut with your hair down like that,” she said. “Get out of my sight.”
I stuffed my school things in a bag, grabbed an extra set of clothes, locked my bedroom door, and climbed through the window. An hour later, I sat on the edge of Indigo’s copper bathtub. A pair of kitchen shears lay in my lap. I held out my hair to her, my palms upturned like a supplicant. In the candlelight, Indigo looked like a priestess.
“Take it from me,” I said.
I felt nothing but the loss of weight as each lock hit the bottom of her tub. With every snip, my spine straightened. Indigo worked with quiet focus, her fingers hot on my neck as she shielded me from the blades. When it was finished, she took my face in her hands.
“There,” she said. “It is done.”
