She was sitting up in her bed, staring into nothingness. Her eyes were ruined, but her focus sharpened when I entered. She was lucid, and I might’ve fallen to my knees to have this one last conscious moment of her knowing me, loving me, persist a minute longer. Tati sniffed the air, a muscle in her cheek twitched in distaste.
“I can smell your sins on you, child,” she said. “What have you done?”
I went to her, knelt by her bed, and bowed my head. My voice trembled. “Tati, I need to tell you something. It happened when we went to the Otherworld.”
Tati shrank against her pillows, her fists balling the covers. She began to shake, and even though her hand lay inches from mine, I didn’t touch her. I didn’t want to see her revulsion. “There is a heart that has ceased to sing.”
“It was an accident, I swear—”
Tears rolled down Tati’s brown skin. She sobbed for almost a whole minute before clutching her blankets and nodding. “An accident,” she said hoarsely. “I believe you, child. I know you didn’t mean to. You couldn’t have known, could you? You never meant to do anything wrong.”
Tati turned her palm faceup. I couldn’t speak. I used to remember my mother on the sidewalks offering me her hand like that. Offering herself to be a living link, that which would mark me and say I belonged to someone. I grabbed Tati’s hand, pressed my face into it, and I wept. She sighed, her other hand stroking my head.
“That poor child,” said Tati. “She didn’t deserve that. I loved her, too, you know, but you are my own and I will always keep you safe.”
I cried harder, disgusted by my delight more than my relief. I sometimes dreamt of what would happen if Indigo left and I was Tati’s only choice to love. I dreamt of the way she would let me sag against her body, the way the years would pass before she quietly confessed:I would’ve chosen you from the start.
“I will keep your secrets, Indigo,” said Tati. “I will keep your secrets until they poison me, but you have to leave. Now. Azure wanted to run away, so that’s what we’ll tell the world.” Tati licked her lips, nodding to herself. “No one will look for her, but you must never come back here. Never. To be honest, child, I am glad for my blindness for I don’t know how I could bear to look at you again.”
I raised my head slowly. I tried, once more, to say my name, but it was stuck fast. I took a breath and all I smelled were apples. All I smelled washer.
“I’m—” I tried. “I am—”
“I know you’re sorry,” she said. “I am too.”
I became grossly aware of all the mechanical parts that let me stand and leave that room—every muscle lifting my bones, every synapse flaring to life, every spurt of blood dancing through my heart’s chambers. I was a machine at the mercy of bodily parts no one would recognize as my own.
I slid against Tati’s closed door and pulled my knees to my chest. The buzzing in my skull grew louder, and, finally, I understood the Otherworld’s love. It had tried to give me and Indigo what we most desired. I closed my eyes, remembering Indigo’s frantic, wide-eyed gaze.I will never leave you and you will never leave me.
Slowly, I held my hands up to my face. I couldn’t remember if they’d always looked like this—etched and pale, the fingers small, not quite stubbed and not quite slender—or whether they were secretly Indigo’s. Had she been fitted over me like a shroud? Was that what had made me so deserving of forgiveness, of love?
I didn’t know back then how this question would come to haunt me. How I would wonder whether being denied myself was the greatest kindness the world could have shown me because then, and only then, might I hold some semblance of love.
Alone in the hallway, I touched the ends of my hair. I had bartered its length and all its memories for freedom, but I had been careless in the wording. I was left with everything and nothing. I was free and forever trapped. I was a multitude of blues.
I was many things, but I was not Azure, and perhaps I never would be again.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Bridegroom
The breaking of a spell is nothing more than a dislocation of light. What could not be seen before can now be glimpsed in a wealth of radiance. The moment I uttered my wife’s true name, I looked through the sudden glow of that broken spell and saw my brother.
He was holding my right hand. My left hand was sprained from when father stepped on my wrist. Before us, the doors of the cedar armoire lay open. The winter coats stood wary and dark as December trees.
We were going to escape forever.
I waited until midnight and carried my brother down the stairs. I told him to pick out his favorite sweets, to pack his best toys and to wrap them in an old kitchen towel. He was quiet, grinning at our new game. He was too young to remember yesterday. He had not been hit, only grabbed by the scruff of his neck like a kitten and hoisted into the air before being dropped. When that happened, he’d looked to me, and I made myself laugh, and this told him there was no reason to cry.
“Go inside,” I said, pointing into the dark of the armoire. “I’ll find you and we’ll go to Faerie. We’ll spend every day outside.”He threw his pudgy arms around my waist, and I held him back: “We’ll always be together.”
When he was safely in the dark, I went to gather my own things. But halfway up the stairs, the light flickered on. I was caught.
Father dragged me back down the stairs. My knees slammed on each step. He shouted. I saw his arm raised and then I saw nothing.
I drifted asleep. I dreamt of snow. Downstairs, in the sweet cedar lull of the armoire, my brother fumbled for air and did not find it. His inhaler had been in my backpack, and lay mute beside me while he waited for me, his face turning blue. That night, I dreamt that when I opened my eyes, we would be running together under trees that grew moons and beneath a sky rippled with rainbows. But when I opened my eyes, he was gone, and I had been left behind.
“Go.”
