A few days.Maybe a week?He glanced out the nearest window to the blackness outside that indicated the night.
My hands trembled.“Can you help me up, please?My eyes are so dried I can barely see.”
Aster offered me an arm of support.I could feel his muscles more solid than ever underneath his rolled-up linen sleeve.Just now he felt more solid than I did.I can get you a drink if you like.Wine?
“Wine, right now?You’ve got to be joking,” I groaned.I wanted a retreat.A cave with a few sleeping bats for company.“I think I’m blacking out.A glass of wine will only finish the job.”
I took Aster’s arm and stood up, walking only to the couch.The soles of my feet stung with every touch of the floor beneath them.I looked out the window, and saw that there weren’t any stars at all tonight, or fireflies.Only black.
Aster vanished into the kitchen for a moment and came back with two filled wine glasses.I realize you said you didn’t want any, but I know better than you about such things.After a couple minutes we can get back to work.You know, the two of us are one of the most dynamic duos on the planet right now.There isn’t a thing in the world that isn’t ours to claim.I say it’s time for another toast.
I blinked.My eyelids weighed so much I struggled to raise them again.When Aster attempted to place a wine glass in my hand, I refused and shifted myself upright.“I don’t understand,” I said.“How long has it been since my parents’ visit?Have we been writing the entire time?”
The thought of Aster’s magic sent me into a sickening frenzy, but I felt like we should have established better boundaries in the beginning.Aster could keep me from needing to eat or sleep.He could take me to the bottom of the sea for a field trip more fascinating than any research venture I could imagine and bring my own characters to life before me.But I couldn’t fight the fact any longer that this magic wasn’t meant for me, and it wasn’t meant to be used so intensely over such a brief period.I was losing touch with time and space.In my effort to grab onto something solid, I had instead surrendered what little hold I had on reality in the first place.
Drink some wine,said Aster.Cheer up.Your eyes have that sad look again, and I can’t handle it.
“I told you, I don’t want to drink,” I said.“And I don’t want a lighter mood, either.I want clarity.How long has it been?Since my parents came by?”
Aster scratched a spot behind his ear.
I took a breath.Slowly my energy returned.I didn’t know time and space, but I knew Aster, and I knew he was keeping something from me.“Can’t you tell me?”
I could,he said.I could lie and say they came by only today.That you could check out the goodies they left for you in the kitchen if you wanted reassurance.But?—
Here he held out a hand and almost spilled some of his own wine to restrain me from checking out the gift basket for reassurance.
It isn’t there.You won’t find it.
Now he relaxed his touch.I stood, this time stronger than moments ago.I walked into the kitchen and flicked on the light, glancing at the dining table for any trace of the gift basket.All I found in that spot was a tall paper bag of apples from the nearest grocer, with several removed from the bag and shining red and yellow on display.
Aster walked into the room behind me.
“What’s going on?”I asked.“Where is it?What did you do with it?”
The care package doesn’t exist.The food.The coasters.All my design.Temporary objects, the stuff of dreams.
I closed my eyes and forced myself not to cry or throw anything in arms’ reach.
Your parents never came here, either,Aster continued.I took your phone when you were working and told them something came up.An exciting change of plan.
I clenched my hands until my nails cut into the skin of my palms.Even the thought of what he’d just said grated on me.“Aster, that visit was important to me!”
Aster’s face didn’t betray any concern, but instead adopted a dreamy and contented calm.He traced the grain of the wood on the rim of the chair in front of him.
“I wanted to see them,” I said.“And if we needed to call it off, I wanted to be the one to do that, too.What were you thinking?You just made me hallucinate my own family?”
It hurt to see your loneliness.You wanted the company, he said.You were distracted and couldn’t perform adequately, and I can’t work either when you’re distracted.I did only what I needed to do.What we both needed.I apologize if I acted wrongly.
“Don’t do it again,” I warned.
Is there any way you want me to make it up?Should I take the memories back?
My heart began to race.My face felt hot.I was going to cry if this went any further.No, the tears had come already.I hurried to the table and took some of the apples into my hands.The memory of my parents coming to this place rang too clearly for me to drop all at once.A hallucination.A dream.Just like the trip to the shipwreck.My life was unraveling before my eyes.
“But they must have here,” I insisted.“We planned it beforehand.We mapped it out.And I brought them out to the beach and up the lighthouse…”
We went to all those places alone.Nothing was scheduled.
