She didn’t realize her knuckles had whitened until Briarreached for her. The girl’s fingers tightened around her own.
“I’ve seen the things you make,” Briar murmured, “and your hands are gentler than you think.”
Corin’s ears grew hot as she recalled painting around the dreamworld. It had been a way to pass the time once she accepted living here, but she hadn’t considered Briar’s eyes watching her brushstrokes. Self-conscious, she looked down at her palms, the discolored patches of skin from old scars. Her hands had always been rough like sandpaper. But maybe she could make something soft and beautiful, like a world where even gentleness could survive.
Would it be foolish, she wondered, to dream of such a thing?
Night descended into a shifting sky of milky colors. Their boat passed Winterland, or perhaps the land shifted itself upon the memory of their first meeting. In the distance, glass deer glistened like crystals. Ice-coated fur reflected ribbons of pink and violet pulsing in the air. The aurora wrapped around the darkening sky above their heads, so that when Briar looked up, her eyes shone like magic. Corin would remember her like a painting, with every trace of sadness and joy that flickered in the lights across her face.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Briar whispered, looking at the sky.
“Yes,” Corin replied, looking at her.
They watched the aurora dance across stars and ripple through trees. Briar set aside her bow and stood up. Her arm stretched to the sky, fingers splaying to touch the lights. She reached too far, and her weight toppled over the boat.
Corin jumped to grab her. They fell over the ledge and plunged into water. In the crystal blue, their limbs moved in slow motion, their fingers still grasped between one another. Briar’s gown swelled like a balloon, the fabric enveloping them both in silk.Bubbles spewed from the girl’s lips with silent laughter. Corin’s skin tingled as she felt the brush of Briar’s hands wrap around her body and lift them both to the surface.
They gasped for air, and this time, Corin could hear the chime in Briar’s laughter. Her eyes lingered on the salt stuck to Briar’s cheeks. She wanted to brush her thumb over it and leave her hand there. She would have, if Briar’s touch hadn’t made her jolt first.
Warm skin brushed against her collarbone, fingers hovering inches away from the chain around Corin’s neck. Briar left her hand on Corin’s pulse, too fixated on the necklace to notice the tiny drum beating against her.
“I won’t touch it,” Briar murmured. “I know it’s important to you.”
Instinctively, Corin placed a hand over her chest where the pendant hid beneath her shirt. She felt the weight of it in her palm where every heartbeat thrummed beside it. They climbed back into the boat and attempted to wring water from their clothes. She could still taste the salt on her lips. The air turned quiet, and she waited for her heart to still before deciding to open it.
“It belonged to my grandmother.”
Aurora lights shifted gently in the sky like softly blowing curtains. Beyond it, an endless expanse of stars stretched beyond Corin’s imagination. She thought about how there were miracles that existed in ways she would never comprehend.
“When she was younger, she tried to kill herself. A fortune teller stopped her just in time. She had no idea who this stranger was. The woman was elderly and didn’t appear to have family either. She had insisted my grandmother needed to survive and see a better future ahead. I don’t know if it was a fortune, or a plea. But she saved my grandmother’s life that night and left behind this necklace.”
Corin untucked the chain from her shirt and held the necklace tothe sky. Under any other light, it looked incomplete, the pendant’s shape a hollowed ring that didn’t hold gold or any sparkling gem. Yet the aurora’s light glimmered streaks of green and blue around the ring’s edges, so that for a moment, Corin could almost believe she held magic.
Perhaps the fortune teller truly saw the future, or perhaps she made a lucky guess. Corin’s grandmother had lived to have children and buy a farm in Gyldan. She had rescued stray animals, discovered favorite foods, witnessed dozens of sunsets. She’d given the necklace to her daughter, who dreamed of painting the same sunsets that had moved her mother to tears. That daughter met a man whose rough hands made beautiful things, clay pots to hold flowers, misshaped dishes to hold soap that smelled like honey and goat milk. She eventually passed the necklace to her first daughter, an angry girl who wanted to throw it away so many times because she thought the fortune teller was wrong.
So why couldn’t Corin let it go?
“We can’t survive without each other,” Briar said, as if recalling a memory.
The familiarity of the words struck Corin. “Do you really think so?”
“That’s what my stepmother said. She dedicated her life to housing people who were fleeing from war, even if it was dangerous to do so. There’s so much cruelty in the world, perhaps the only thing that made sense to her was helping people in ways she wished she had been helped, too.”
Their boat passed by icy rocks that were chipped into familiar pieces, a flicker of Harlow’s burning gaze. Corin shook her head to ward off the presence. “That’s a noble cause, but it’s not how reality works. We only survive by helping ourselves.”
“Maybe you’re right.” There was a long pause. When Briar spoke again, her voice shook. “Lilith was the most selfless person I knew, and she died because of it. When I tried to help, my father died next.”
Tears spiked her lashes. She pressed a palm over her face and began to cry quietly. The stars blinked into dying lights. The aurora dimmed into silver before vanishing into wisps. Darkness descended on them like a blanket. Corin reached for Briar’s free hand. She focused on the gentle rocking of the boat beneath their bodies as proof that they were still here, and not disappearing as well.
“I keep wondering, does anything we do matter? Am I foolish to wish that it does? When I think about the people that Lilith brought to Gyldan, surely, their lives have changed. There are generations that exist, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, who live and dream and experience wonderful things because someone once helped.”
Briar inhaled deeply, letting the tears subside. A quiet conviction overtook her voice.
“That’s why you keep your necklace, isn’t it? Without a stranger’s kindness, you wouldn’t have existed. And what a terrible world that would have been.”
Corin thought about what would happen if she were to wake up and return to Gyldan, existing once more in reality. Would the time she experienced here no longer matter? She hardly remembered her dreams after waking up. Memories often turned abstract and blurry, disintegrating into wisps. She fixed her sight onto the snowflakes that fell on Briar’s lashes. She counted each one, so that if she forgot, she could still piece together the details of the girl before her. The slope of her ear, the freckles on her cheeks. The truth was that Corin didn’t plan on wakingup at all. Not if it meant saying goodbye to Elly, or never seeing Malicine return, or losing her only connection to Briar Rose.
“The only way I can exist is by being here,” Corin said. “If you wake up, I’ll disappear. And for the first time in my life, you make me not want to.”
