In Which I Have Grown Accustomed to the Idea that I Spent a Full Day Dead. In Which I Am No Longer Frightened by It, and No Longer Desperately Trying to Remember if There Had Been Anything Beyond the Nothingness. In Which, Thinking Further upon the Matter, Perhaps It Still Does Affect Me, and Perhaps I Could Use a Bit of Peaceful Contemplation without Any Further Stresses for a Time. In Which I Have a Brilliant Idea for How to Secure This Peace.
When he found me in the inn bedroom, Merulo’s face was white with fury. “You!”
“Me?” I said, in panicked surprise. “You can’t be angry with me today. It’s my birthday.”
He paused, anger giving way to bewilderment. “Is it?”
“Uh, well, I was born the day after the summer solstice, so . . .”
There was silence as we both tried to work out the date. Time moved differently underwater, without weather or input from the seasons. “The summer solstice passed well before we left,” he cried at last. “It is not your birthday.”
“Then my birthday passed by and we never even celebrated,which is even worse. I feel just awful about that.” And I tried to rearrange my features into appropriate mournfulness.
It didn’t work. The lines on his forehead twitched, before sloping into Vs. “Enough of this nonsense. Did you or did you not tell my sister that I sought to beg her forgiveness, but was too”—his face contorted, and I winced in anticipation—“emotionally incompetent, to do so in person?”
“I didn’t say that!” I protested.
“You didn’t say, and I quote, that ‘my loneliness eats at me like a cancer, but that my only method of coping is to shove my head further up my ass, so as to huff my own fumes’?”
“What’s a cancer?” I asked. His glower deepened, and I quickly amended, “No, I never said any of that! Only that—”
“So, you did say something, then? Out with it!”
“That I wished you two would get along better,” I finished miserably, “and that I wanted Hydna to make more of an effort.”
He maintained his suspicious glare. “And you didn’t use any of that . . . ‘colourful’ language?”
“Of course not. Merulo, you know how highly I think of you.” I grimaced. “I mean, I didn’t at first, so I understand the confusion, but back at the start you didn’t like me much either.”
“And who’s to say I like you now?” The sorcerer sneered.
I bit back laughter. He looked constipated with pride, drawing himself up tall in his patched black robes, but by now I knew that the more frozen he appeared, the more flustered he was beneath the surface.
“I suppose that’s why you used up all your magic on my resurrection,” I said, trying to keep my mocking gentle. “Because you dislike me so much.”
He quivered, before turning with a sweep of his robe. “I have matters to attend to,” he said, though he did not leave. Then, in as lethal a spit as he could manage: “Of course I don’t dislike you.”
I tried not to cackle as he marched from the room. For the rest of the day—which I spent going door-to-door in the inn, investigating the decay of the uninhabited spaces, before washing all the filth from my body in our room’s luxurious bath—I felt a buoyant warmth. “He must like me quite a bit,” I said to myself, sinking into the tub of water, which filled from a streaming spout at its end.
“I may also likehimquite a bit,” I added, then clenched my hands in embarrassment, sinking beneath the water’s surface. “I do. I even told Glenda so.”
And did you mean it?asked a tiny voice in my head.Or were you caught up in the emotions of ‘Oh God, oh no, I’m about to die?’
“Well, why shouldn’t I mean it? He’s an impressive guy! All powerful and magical, and cool, too, in a scary sort of way. And he pays me special attention.”
That isn’t enough.
“Okay.” I slapped at the water’s surface to create miniature waves. “He’s alone like I am. There, are you happy?”
Nope.
“Damn, then what are the reasons to love someone?” I sank my head beneath the water’s surface, feeling my hair float about me. When I sat back up, the water drained from my face in rivulets, my tension leaving with it. “Okay. Here goes. There’s something that connects us, and it goes deeper than that stupid prophecy, like we’re both . . .morethan we would otherwise be, so long as we’re together. I mean, I full ondiedfor him. And dying’s a big deal for me. That’s enough, isn’t it?”
For once, the voice was silent. Then:That’s true, it said, astonished.Dying is an especially big deal for you.
“You see?” I flicked the water’s surface, trying to keep the smugness out of my voice. “I meant what I said.”
Feeling as though I’d earned it with this revelation, I reclined further, closing my eyes against the bath’s warmth, and letting myself thoroughly prune.
