Puck hesitated. Indigo sighed and slouched against me, laying her heavy, warm head in the crook of my neck. She smelled of apples. Usually when she did this, she was boneless and sleepy as a kitten. Now, I could feel the taut energy in her body, the careful way she arranged herself against me. I saw what Puck saw: a glossy-haired, elegant puzzle, a red fruit split between our hands. Indigo made us look like icon and enigma, less like sisters and more like two beatific halves. Puck gaped.
“I’ll manage,” said Puck.
When she left, Indigo lifted her head from my shoulder. I felt cold without her against me.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
Indigo shrugged. “Playing. I like her hair.”
Puck met us after school before the wrought-iron gates of the House. I noticed that she had changed her clothes. She wore an oversize black pea coat, a white smock shirt, and black rain boots. A parody of Indigo’s outfit.
Indigo had us wait on the other side of the fence, careful to maintain the separation. When Puck saw us, her pace sped up until she was almost running, clutching a pocketknife in her sweaty grip.
“I brought something sharp,” said Puck, breathless and bright-eyed.
Indigo barely smiled. Puck never looked at me. I was anecessary, silent backdrop, both as expected and unremarkable as a cloud in the sky.
“Cut yourself,” said Indigo.
“Um, where?” asked Puck, turning over her palm.
She had chubby wrists and stubby fingers and wore a power-bead bracelet of false jade around her wrist. It was too big for her and kept slipping down to her knuckles even as she shoved it farther up her arm.
“Blood is blood,” said Indigo, impassive.
Puck screwed up her face, squeezing her eyes shut, and slashed the knife down her palm. She sucked in her breath, held out her bloodied hand.
“Press your hand into the earth,” said Indigo. “And tell the earth your real name.”
Puck cast about. On the outskirts of the House of Dreams, the ground was mostly sharp mulch, but she dutifully crouched down and pressed her hand to it.
“M-My name—”
“I forgot, you have to put your forehead on the ground,” said Indigo. “It’s called ‘kowtowing.’ You can look it up in history books. It’s how you’re supposed to greet powerful things, and the earth is extremely powerful.”
“Oh, right,” said Puck.
She knelt and placed her forehead in the dirt. Her jacket fell open, puddling around her. Her red hair flopped over her head. Indigo laughed silently. I glared at her, and she winked at me.
“My name is Puck,” the girl said, her voice nasal in that position.
Finished, Puck stood, sniffling and blinking.
“Come inside, Puck,” said Indigo, opening the gate. “Come into the House of Dreams.”
I didn’t like Puck.
At first, I felt bad for her. I felt bad for the way she mimicked us, how she’d try to tuck her knees to her chest and fold delicately into chairs as Indigo did, or pull at her hair, as if by tugging it long and hard enough, she could make it grow like ours.
“Real faeries subsist off dew and forest fruits and the choicest of honeycombs,” Indigo told her one day. She licked a bit of honey from her thumb. “You have to purify your body with our diet before you can become one of us.”
After that, Puck pushed aside the cafeteria food and nibbled on apples, even drank from a birdbath when Indigo told her it was considered a delicacy amongst the Fair Folk. I should’ve stopped Indigo before it went this far, but by then, I had stopped feeling bad for Puck.
I hated how she breathed through her mouth, how she’d clutch at a scrap of Indigo’s attention. A few times we kept her waiting outside the House, watching her from behind the trees just to see how long she could stand it. She looked weak—her shoulders curved in; her legs squeezed together as she rocked on her heels. Even her bored humming reminded me of a wounded thing mewling in the dark. Looking at her embarrassed me.
Two weeks after Puck joined us, Indigo invited her to the House for a second time.
“Are you serious?” I asked her.
